All three Local Threat slots are unlocked at start of game. A slot can go from "No threat detected" to an enemy ship present in the slot in only one turn. Shooting a Local threat does NOT delay the effects of that Local Threat. I'm assuming that at least one of these things is a bug.
As it stands, this puts a MASSIVE amount of pressure on the player to focus on Defense to the exclusion of everything else.
The last update had a lot of changes to the defense system. Enemies no longer spawn with a countdown tied to the slot but instead there is a single timer for the whole system and it spawns in a single new enemy in the first open slot. We also deliberately removed several of the hit to delay effects as it incentivized not killing enemies too much. It sounds like the balance is off though so we might have to lower ship health and/or increase the time it takes for new ships to appear so that there isn't as much pressure to focus on defense.
In the game I was playing when I wrote that comment, the "Tactical Systems" technology was a fourth-column technology. I only had "Cannon"s to deal with the threats (no "Ammunition Factory" unlocked, yet), so I was getting hit with a significant number of extra Unwellness and Crisis Points. I managed to win the game once I SLOWLY crawled forward on the technology tree to "Missile Systems" (I think that's the name? Tier 3 building, 7 Combat Points when played), but it took an hour-and-a-half with a lot of very careful thinking on most turns.
Three enemies that each have 7 to 12 hitpoints and cycle their effects every 3 turns is a lot to deal with when I can, at best, manage an average of 3 Combat Points per turn. "Tactical Systems" got this up to around 4 or 5 per turn, but it still had me in a minor panic.
Thinking back on it now that I'm calmer, I'm starting to wonder if "kill everything that isn't a Raider and just manage the unwellness" would have been an easier strategy. :P
