General Category > After Action Reports
The AI 9 through 10 run
Wanderer:
Oh, I should mention. The Cutlass? Still target practice even against Grav Is. The Black Hole Generator is just to make sure they can't escape and annoy me in large quantity later. Mind you, they're Cutlass Mk Is, soooo... Yeah, they're not as big a deal as I'd expected after the first few invasions. I thought they'd escape more being tractor and FF immune, but my grav density is holding them tight. Now that they can't escape they're just more fodder.
keith.lamothe:
--- Quote from: GUDare on February 17, 2012, 10:35:53 PM ---Oh, I should mention. The Cutlass? Still target practice even against Grav Is. The Black Hole Generator is just to make sure they can't escape and annoy me in large quantity later. Mind you, they're Cutlass Mk Is, soooo... Yeah, they're not as big a deal as I'd expected after the first few invasions. I thought they'd escape more being tractor and FF immune, but my grav density is holding them tight. Now that they can't escape they're just more fodder.
--- End quote ---
Can they not even reach the gravs holding them down? Or are they going after other stuff? Or do they kill a couple gravs only to look around and see the (event) horizon filled with more gravs?
Anyway, yea, it will be good to see what sort of difficulty slope there is :)
Wanderer:
--- Quote from: keith.lamothe on February 17, 2012, 10:47:07 PM ---
--- Quote from: GUDare on February 17, 2012, 10:35:53 PM ---Oh, I should mention. The Cutlass? Still target practice even against Grav Is. The Black Hole Generator is just to make sure they can't escape and annoy me in large quantity later. Mind you, they're Cutlass Mk Is, soooo... Yeah, they're not as big a deal as I'd expected after the first few invasions. I thought they'd escape more being tractor and FF immune, but my grav density is holding them tight. Now that they can't escape they're just more fodder.
--- End quote ---
Can they not even reach the gravs holding them down? Or are they going after other stuff? Or do they kill a couple gravs only to look around and see the (event) horizon filled with more gravs?
Anyway, yea, it will be good to see what sort of difficulty slope there is :)
--- End quote ---
They can, ish...
Then they hit the next one and have one behind them at the wormhole under FFs. They can choose to hit a short-range turret or the grav turret, not both. And a good chunk of that is that my turrets are more distracted killing other things. :-)
Wanderer:
Starting position:
So, where was I? Oh, yes, right, I'd just went home for more troops. Well, first stop, Kerensky. I want more ships. I head to Kerensky with a transport full of Engis and and a Colony Ship and dig in while I collect myself up another ARS.
And I getttt..... Armored Ships. *groaaan* Well, at least they're GOOD cannon fodder.
Just as I setup, I get word of an 800 ship wave coming to Kerensky. Oh, goodie, yay. Also a CPA of around 500 ships is getting ready to spawn. Even better. My fleet trapped between Craps' wave and Cyborg's CPA. I wreck both and I'm down to ~350 ships. I head home and get reinforcements. Kerensky gets its knowledge done with the help of 4xScience IIs, and then falls.
I'm not done with Kerensky, I need it for transport hop-off points, so I rebuild it again once my fleet's up and running. Then we head south to Cyborg, clean up the locals, and I look to see which way I want to go.
I proceed to fight my way up the NE neck a bit. I fight through Confederation, letting my Raids handle the Eye on Eridani. I setup a transport hanging onto a few colony ships and some Engis for repairs under a cloaker on Confederation, which I use to clean up damage on the Raiders as they head back and forth. I've upgraded (sometime a while ago, sorry I forgot to mention it) to Raid Starship IIs as well, so I've got a fleet of 6 of them.
I let the primary fleet start neutering the wormhole posts on Confederation in anticipation of taking Cyborg and Eridani later. I get some Replacement Raid starships for the ones I couldn't get out in time for repairs and finish neutering Confederation. It takes FOREVER. Gyeah. It gets done though. I'm about 3:30 at this point.
Scouting continues deep into the Eastern bloc, but I can't get scouts down past Kirk. Kirk, however, is a blinkin' Core World. That means taking Eridani's out for the moment. Time to go west, young man.
Blackjack's a monster of a world and I eventually take it down. My transports were sent up to Kerensky to heal up again as I went through Cyborg, and I bring them back down as I head for SolarMoon's ARS. I send the raiders into Caesar while I'm fighting in Blackjack, getting them to dump MK IV units into Blackjack as I one-off pop the guard posts so i don't have to deal with them in bulk later. I repeat the process of using cloaked engineers off in a corner to repair my raid starships, and am able to get a good hunk of Caesar done before I look to knock down Solarmoon. I send in the raids there to pop the two whole guardposts and knock the eye down, and bring the raids home. I hide them in the transport with the engineers until needed.
I hammer down the backwash from SolarMoon's guardposts falling and debate on neutering Blackjack now or later. I decide for later, maybe I'll get something handsome for wormhole guardpost killing.
I drop into SolarMoon, and pop the CmdStation. I hold off on taking the system yet though, but tuck the transport group and cloaker in a corner, and unload my engis and raid starships again. We've got work to do in Green Lantern and Camel before I crank this open. I need more econ and I want to hold this station. Kerensky has fallen along the way and shipping new troops down to myself is getting to be a PITA. I'm also trying to finish building up my 'extras', like my new Black Hole Generator, on Macross. Need income.
The Raids head into Green Lantern first, and pop the Ion cannon there. I pull them back and heal them up while the main team (with my new, fancy, useless armor ships) head into Green Lantern and start wreaking havoc. The Raids start working Camel down, trying to knock down enough so I can get the eye to fall over. Eventually I clear enough of Green Lantern up to send the bombers/starships at the fortress II in there. I'm seeing leakage into Solarmoon from the backwash from Camel, though, so I'm glad I held off on the cmdstation build. Camel, though, had not one but TWO Spire Shield Generators. There's no way my raids can deal with this. I split off my troops, bringing only my starships, bomber IIIs, Frigate IIs, Maws and Blade Spawners into Camel. I ignore everything they send at me and pound down the spires. Eventually most of my Bomber IIIs are dead so I need to bring in the Bomber IIs.
At about 4:10 or so I finally knock out GL and Camel to wormhole guardians only. Yah woot. Fall back to SolarMoon, send down fresh raid starships, and start building up. It's got an Anti-Starship V on it (Oh, YAY!... not. Can't hit guardposts, can't hit guardians, can't hit... yeah, what is the damned point of this ship again?) and I get.... jeez. Bulletproofs. Oh, joy. Fighters. Fine, start up a new space dock on homeworld (the other one's out of queue positions) and start building bulletproofs. I'm tired of sending raid starships down here to myself so I put up a starship constructor on SolarMoon as well so I can rebuild my starships locally and turn off the one on homeworld.
I decide to kill some time and neuter GL and Camel completely. I put a token defense turret setup on SolarMoon and soak the knowledge.
At about 4:30 I'm done cleaning up the hinterlands and I head back to SolarMoon. No problem, I head up to Blackjack, start neutering that full out while getting a new batch of transports and reinforcements setup to head down from Macross. Kerensky's fallen along the way but oh well, no biggie. I keep digging scouts in deeper along the chains and trying to see what I can see. I bring the fleet into Caesar and clean out the Tachyons there, and I'm finally able to get deep into the SW corners. I find my first Factory IV down at Canopus. Hmmmm.....
In the Pai Gow branch is jack and... Arrakkis and Solaris VII are also useless. So, Canopus is the only other world worth working on. I bring the fleet down to Caesar, The raids head for Pox Aurelia to start banging on the doors there, and I proceed to clean up the two systems. I nerf Caeser and Neuter Pox before I head into Canopus. I really neutered Pox because I had to use the raids to clean up Canopus. I ship a transport with colony ship down from SolarMoon and begin reinforcing the Fact IV world with turrets and a Fortress I. I've only got Bombers at III at the moment, so I start debating with myself what to upgrade next... and SolarMoon falls down.
Wait, wut?
Some backwash must have gotten through the fleet. SolarMoon was whining I just thought it was Kerensky moaning again. Kerensky had fallen and I didn't notice. I think that was the 6th time I'd rebuilt Kerensky. Just a faux pas. However, everything on SolarMoon's dead. Crap. I manage to start building up on Canopus and there's another Fabricator here. Guess what this is. Yep! Another Anti-Starship V. *ca-click* *boom*. They don't even make decent cannon fodder.
Well, at least I get to replace the all important one I just lost on SolarMoon... :-\
I proceed to buildup Canopus and laugh as waves crash on the Macross shore. I stop rebuilding Kerensky, it's pointless at this point. I've got other jump points and Cyborg is the real 'jump point' for center map, I just haven't opened it yet. I drop a fortress on Canopus as well while I'm building off bomber IVs and decide that I should beef up my Blade Spawners, so I open Blade Spawner IIIs. Which gives me IV's now as well. :) I also build my Scout IV and send him haring off for the Riker corner, the last place I can't see into.
It's now about 5:25. I've got ARS's still on Desperado and Eridani. A couple of data centers have died in my travels so I'm at ~133 AIP. Pox Aurelia is a MK I station that seems to spawn MK II ships for some reason, but whatever. I decide it's time to do a K-Raid. I want more MK IVs before I continue on.
I start setting up in Pox Aurelia. 2 Fortresses, 35 snipers, and I open up HBC Is to deal with the inbound blade spawners. I also send up a new transport to SolarMoon to rebuild that, and open Basic IIs to help defend itself.
So, map looks about like this right now:
I start rebuilding SolarMoon while I do this and they get waxxed by another roaming patrol. Grrr, fine, you can wait.
It takes about 20 minutes to get the K-Raid setup, mostly because my econ's rather abused at the moment, particularly after building a fortress not 10 minutes ago in Canopus and trying to finish getting the last piece (Radar Jammer II) online in Macross.
I decide I need more snipers so I steal some from Macross. I've got 60 Snipers, 10 Grav turrets to deal with blade spawners, 2 fortresses, and 12 HBC Is. 5 Engi IIs and 5 Rebuilders under FF. Crank it over.
My fleet was powered down as a 'just in case' behind the k-raid ball. I wanted to see how things would go.
How it looked:
Close up of defenses:
System overview:
At first, things went fine.
When we got to things looking like this, things went afoul:
I could handle everything but the blade spawners. The constant traffic jam a the edge of the grav turrets soaked up all my HBC firepower, so other ships were being ignored. Dropping in 50 Basics didn't help enough either. I finally had to turn on my own stack of Blade Spawners to even the odds out. There's really no good way to deal with the blade spawner traffic jam that I found in the time I was there, other than countering with my own. It's really a viscious thing and I almost fell once trying out different strategies. I had to bring up the fleet ball to cover while I dealt with rebuilding the grav turret wall.
Eventually, I got that done. I just had to leave my own spawners online. I suppose putting the maws up front would have worked too but I think what I really needed was a 3rd fortress just to deal with the traffic jam. At that was against MK II spawns. It really felt like I was doing an AI 10 K-Raid because of the spawners. They unbalance K-Raiding rediculously.
So now it's about 5:45 and I decide it's time to rebuild SolarMoon. I'm also getting whined at that a CPA is coming. I leave the K-Raid defenses up to block inbounds to Canopus from the CPA, and merely take down the couple of things that aren't necessary anymore. I escort a transport up to SolarMoon and rebuild the station off in a back corner of the universe, give them 25 Basic IIs, a dozen or so snipers, some gravs, and wait for the CPA with my fleet watching over SolarMoon. The CPA hits, I clean out the 300+ ships freed from Camel, and then clean out Green Lantern again for good measure. With SolarMoon now stable, I prep to head north.
It's 6:15. I've got a transport with a colony ship and 5 Engi IIs, and Cyborg's about to be my new friend. Kerensky will stay neutral so the only warp gate I've got open is the one against Macross from Craps.
I've found the last AI Homeworld. It's on Riker. I also found the last Co-Processor. It's ALSO on Riker. Oh, that's cute. The AI Homeworlds: Earth has a Core Raid Engine and a Core CPA Engine. Riker has a pair (2!) of Neinzul Spawners.
Desperado and Eridani both have ARS's and CSG-As. They're both bordering the core world Kirk.
There's a Decoy Fab up on Hacker I'll probably skip. There's another Fact IV on Batman that'll be basically useless to me.
There's not a lot left in the universe I care about. Cyborg's fabricators are going to be very tasty. I'll setup warp gates there for the Fact IV, star dock, and starship constructors so I can stop worrying about hopping over Craps and just let Macross and Craps have their war of the worlds without me. With Cyborg as my front base, I'll be able to hit in a number of directions and get reinforcements pretty easily. Those forces will also help to defend my pretty little fabricator land from the evil AI.
After that, KRaids off Solarmoon to the 3 worlds. Kirk is off the AI homeworld with the Raid Engine. I can't nerf/neuter Kirk without taking a crapton of nastiness from the homeworld. Which means I dig in on Eridani, and raid Kirk into never never land while my fleet absorbs the raids trying to get past. Once I can completely neuter Kirk, with better forces from the K-Raids (I'll need Raid Starship IIIs for this) I'll be able to get my two ARS's and let Kirk hit its 500 max ships without significant concern. I think.
I still need to figure out which of the D-Class CSGs to take down, Llama or Jumping Jax. They both have Counterstrike posts on them, so it'll probably be Llama, allowing me 2 additional K-Raid worlds instead of 1 in a back corner. It'll also make a reasonable, but not close enough, staging area down to Riker. I'm half tempted to blow the SuperTerminal since I'm ignoring it so I can get the room for another Econ II station. I'll leave it in the back as a just in case though. I'm not too concerned about winning but that dual Raid/CPA post setup can make things very very ugly. I think I'll have to kill that one first, so I don't have to deal with the 100 point jump of killing off the other one first.
keith.lamothe:
Ah, so the AI continues to swing while you hold it out of range with the good ol' hand-to-the-forehead.
Glad it was having a party with Kerensky, though, if not much else. Oh, blade spawners vs K-raids was pretty funny too.
Anti-Starship Vs will be getting a buff...
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