Topics

1

After Action Reports / 1/1 Chaos Rules the Galaxy

« on: December 03, 2012, 08:00:22 PM »

Yes that's right, this is going to be a 1/1 game. I've been planning to do this for quite some time now, just to see how chaotic it can get. I put my other AAR on halt for now so now is the right time.

These are my settings:

All Expansions
1/1 Golemite/The Core
Map Seed: 613433689
Number of Planets: 100
Map Style: Crosshatch
Available Ships: Complex
Unit Cap Scale: Low
Extra Fog of War
Auto AIP per minute: 1 every 15 minutes

AI Mods:
Schizophrenic
2 X Waves
Nuclear Command
No Wave Warnings
Cross Planet Waves

Minor Factions:
Human Marauders 10
Human Resstance Fighters 10
Human Colony Rebellions
Zenith Traders
Zenith Miners 10
Zenith Dyson Sphere 10
Zenith Devourer
Neinzul Rocketry Corps 10
Neinzul Preservation Wardens 10
Neinzul Roaming Enclaves 10
Fallen Spire 10
Spire Civilian Leaders
Broken Golems Hard 10
Spirecraft Hard 10
Botnet Golem Hard 10
Dark Spire 10

AI Plots:
Avenger
Hybrid Hyves 10
Advanced Hybrid 10
Astro Trains 10
Beachheads
All of these are for both AI's

Personal Rule:
Ironman Mode (dead is dead)

So yeah. I have nearly no idea what to expect here. This could be really easy or this could be over in 5 minutes. No second chances.
Things I know I have to watch out for:

Pain Trains, Cargo in particular. If intensity 10 really only gives you about one and a half hour time for the first H/K, I better make sure I expand quickly and get some Implosion Artillery ready. That and Bombers should hopefully do the trick. Using Rams to deal with the Golems.

Hybrids and their plots. Hybids have always been annoying and I can't wait to see what they're like at intensity 10. Also the Dyson Sphere plot surprised me last time when it was newly introduced. I won't let that happen a second time.

Triple or Quadriple exo's. Dif 1/1 but still, I don't know how bad intensity 10 is.

Nuclear commands. Can't have allmy ships go boom at once.

Everything else I'm just curious to see what happens. I know I haven't picked the most chaotic AI types, but I wanted to play against a few I would enjoy.
I click new map seed until it would show a bonus ship at one of the corners of the crosshatch. And the first one is Zombards. Awesome, I'm taking it.
Homeworld is named Drake and I'm ready to play.

2

AI War / Botnet Golem causes both exo's AND a +100 AIP penalty on repair

« on: November 14, 2012, 08:33:43 AM »

copied from my mantis post:

I'm playing with Botnet golem on hard and regulair golems on medium. I've been getting exo's that say they're from Broken Golems - Hard, which should be Botnet Golem - Hard. And now that I managed to repair the Botnet, I suffer +100 AIP, while I'm clearly playing the Botnet on hard and the other golems on medium. I'm guessing the Botnet finds it quite hard to adept to the fact that he is no longer a regular golem, but the god of golems instead, and thus acts accordingly.

Uploading 2 saves. The first one has the botnet repaired at 89%, so before the +100 AIP. The second save is right after I suffered this severe penalty. Serves me right for wanting to abuse the botnet I guess. Still a bit harsh though

EDIT: Energy cost seems to be where it's supposed to be though. Botnet costs me 80k energy, not 800k.

MORE EDIT: This unfortunate accident does bring me an idea. Broken Golems, Botnet and Spirecraft - Very Hard. Combine effects of Medium and Hard and voila.


So? What do you guys think of a very hard option?   Yes, I enjoy pain. Virtual pain that is.

3

AI War / After more than 700 hours of AI War I'm supposed to know this, but...

« on: November 14, 2012, 05:33:51 AM »

When viewing a planet, the right side of the screen has a list with icons that indicates what kind of ships there are on that particulair planet (and more importantly, how many). But somehow I changed that list to a different list (blue and purple icons) that explains about a lot of different objects and structures but doesn't show what ships there are on the planet I'm viewing. I don't know what button or button combo I used and I want to change it back. Please help this poor noob out =) Thanks

4

AI War / What is the most chaotic maptype?

« on: November 03, 2012, 02:36:47 PM »

I'm planning to play a game that's all about chaos and lots of stuff happening at the same time after I finished my current AAR (which is a long way to go still, but I like thinking ahead), but i can't figure out what would be the best map type for this. Preferably a map that's both tough to defend and attack on, but just hard to defend is fine with me too. I'm thinking of crosshatch myself, maybe lattice. Any thoughts?

5

After Action Reports / A "simple" 7/7 to get used to the game again (postponed)

« on: October 27, 2012, 12:07:51 PM »

Allright it's been a while. Real life kept me busy but AI war is one of the few games I always keep coming back to. Deleted all my old saves, time for a fresh start with some of the new stuff from the AS expansion.
My AARs tend to be quite long and detailed, so it might bore some/a lot of you to death But I'll try to add some screenies here and there.

These are the settings I play with:

Difficulty: 7/7
AI Types: Fortress King and Heroic
# Planets: 100
Map Type: Clusters - Microcosm
Campaign Type: Conquest
Map Seed: 618341767
Available Ships: Complex
Combat Style: Normal
Unit Cap Scale: Low
Visibility: Extra Fog of War
Show Unexplored planets: Off

Minor Factions:
Human Marauders 4/10
Human resistance Fighters 4/10
Human Colony Rebellions 4/10
Zenith Traders
Zenith Miners 4/10
Zenith Dyson Sphere 4/10
Zenith Devourer
Broken Golems (Moderate)
Botnet Golem (Hard) 4/10
Neinzul Roaming Enclaves 1/10
Fallen Spire 5/10
Spire Civilian Leaders
Spirecraft (Hard) 4/10
Dark spire 5/10

Auto Ai Progress: 5 every 60 min

Ai Plots: Avenger for both


So yeah, I'm going to get my butt kicked. 2 tough Ai Types I have never fought against and a strange new Minor Faction. Colony Rebellions are still pretty new to me also and I might actually get 3 exo's at once in this game. I will not play with the champion. I'm saving that for another time. I'm just curious to see what the champions from the Heroic AI type are capable of.
Starting with the Zenith Medic Frigate because it looks both interesting and useful and we're ready to go.

GAME START


Homeworld is called Atalanta. First thing I do is build 10 mk I scouts and 2 extra science labs. Sending 1 scout through each of the 4 hostile wormholes to see what my neighbours are like. Nothing special on the planets Blitz, Shade and Wild Gorilla, but Salt happens to be a mk IV world :/ It has a mk II Zenith Reserve on it though, so I'll be using that to my advantage.
Sending the remaining 6 mk I scouts to scout past Salt, only to find a mk III Ion Cannon and a Translocator eye on Ramses. Time for some unlocks then.

New Unlock(s)!:
Scout Drone mk II
Metal/Crystal Harvesters mk II and III
Advanced Warp Sensor
Grav Turrets mk I

Building 15 extra engineers to speed things up and making some fighters to defend this place in case some lonely AI ships pass by to say hi. Also building mk II scouts. I have yet to find a good first target.
1 minute later I get to see my first modulair fortress command station. They look... painful. I'm going to need lots of bombers this game.
Building some Missile frigs and later bombers while I'm scouting everything in the near area. What ships I build first always depends on how much excess crystal or metal I have got.

Current Scouting Results:
First ARS discovered on Kilia, 2 hops from my homeworld. Lucky.
Second ARS, first Spire Civilian Leaders and a Dark Spire Vengeance Generator (DSVG) on Poseidon
DSVG on the mk IV world Balm and mk III world Gargoyle
Nuclear eyes on Needle Egg and Iron

(11:40) 35 fighters and 1 starship to Atalanta

At this point my bombers and zenith medic frigs have been built and my grav and tractor turrets are online as well. Those 35 fighters are a joke. Oh right, musn't forget to build that warp sensor or my missile frigs won't know what wormhole to stalk.

New Unlock(s):
Bomber mk II

Wave has been dealt with and I decided I need those extra bombers to deal with the fortress command station on Kilia. I'll wait till i have a few starships ready as well before I attack Blitz.
At 15:37 the zenith traders come for a nice chat and a cup of tea. Bought a mk V Ion Cannon, OMD, Counter Spy, ZPG, Armor Inhibitor and a Radar Jammer mk II. They're all offline of course. Repairing bits and pieces of them whenever I have lots of spare resources.

(17:30) 36 fighters and 2 starships to Atalanta

I'm still building plasma sieges and mk II bombers so I'll just deal with this wave before I attack something.
Oh right, champion in the wave. These things are nasty. Full salvo from a caps of mk I and II bombers and mk I plasma sieges was not enough to destroy the thing, it needed a few more extra shots. And this was probably just the weakest kind of champion....

Blitz fell quickly to my forces and the survey ship I just build tells me that the subspace signal is on Giant Leech. It borders the DSVG world Balm so that might cause problems.

Nearly 30 minutes ingame and I'll continue tomorrow when I have some time.
Current state of the galaxy:

6

AI War / Omg, my nickname is in the credits :O

« on: October 27, 2012, 08:39:56 AM »

I only noticed that just now lol. What did I do to earn that honorable spot? :O I've contributed some ideas and thoughts about the game over the past 2 years, but I didn't think it would be enough to earn a spot in the game's credits.
Well, whoever decided that I should be in it (I'm asuming Keith), thank you ^^ I know it's silly, but reading your own name in the credits of one of your favourite games is a real boost for one's ego

7

Mods & Modding / List of alt planet names (ToS and GS:TLA monster lists)

« on: July 14, 2012, 10:22:51 AM »

hey there guys. I will post the list of planet names I use here on the forum since it has been requested by several people now.
I've used the full monster list of 2 of my favourite games (Tales of Symphonia for the gamecube and Golden Sun: The Lost Age for the GBA).
In case anyone has played Golden Sun... At first I only used the names of all Djinni's and summons. But that way I wouldn't have enough names if I wanted to play with 100+ planets. So I decided to add 2 full monster lists. About 300-400 names in the alt planet file now.
Enjoy.

8

After Action Reports / 7/7 ALL Minor factions and AI plots (4/10)

« on: May 30, 2012, 04:19:12 PM »

After beating the crosshatch at 9/9, I realized I had enough of both crosshatch and 9/9 games for now. So instead of increasing the overal difficulty with map type and difficulty, I decided to make use of minor factions and AI plots. All of them. The only thing not turned on is Broken Golems hard, which is on moderate instead. More exo's or more energy / AIP cost both makes the game more difficult. But I enjoy the fact that golems cost AIP much more than I enjoy exo's, so I play with moderate.
All factions and plots are 4/10. I will increase everything to 5/10 if I manage to beat this one and so on.

This game will be played on a good old Realistic map, which is probably one of the easiest yet still my favorite.
42079345 is the map seed.
120 planets (this game will take a while)
normal combat style
low caps
AI types are Golemite and Spire Hammer. I might be condemning myself even more with these opponents, but I wanted something slightly more interesting than just Vanilla.
Starting bonus ship type is parasites. Been ages since I played with them and I've been meaning to do so ever since all reclaimers got a buff (quite a while ago already).

I'm actually already more than 2 hours ingame while I'm typing all this and so far things are looking really good. I didn't think I was ever going to say this, but.... I think the RNG is my best friend right now.
At first I thought it was screwing me over again, as both of the bordering worlds were mk IV. But after I took them I did some more scouting and realized the RNG wants me to win. So far I found:

Super Terminal at Soul Army
Co-p's at Cybelle, Salamander and Water Element (just 1 more to find)
Spire Civilian Leaders at Mini-Goblin and The Fugutive
Broken Hive Golem at Harridan
Broken Black Widow Golem at Hare
Broken Cursed Golem at Stone Soldier
Broken Botnet Golem (yay) at Auto Repair Unit
Advanced factories at Evil Sorcerer and Wild Gorilla
ARS at Luna and Forge

Most of these targets are at 5 hops or less from my homeworld. The golems I've discovered so far are all I need to win a regular game (I can finally mess around with a botnet again). However, this is a game of madness so we'll see where this goes.

So far the chaos settings haven't given me to much trouble yet. Hybrids often crash themselves on my defenses, occasionally a bunch of roaming enclaves attack, some marauders came to say hello twice, and I just destroyed my very first NRC missile ever. Last time I played with those on they were broken and wouldn't launch their rockets. Not that it matters much now. A single plasma siege shot took care of that mk III lightning missile.
The most annoying thing so far are SCL. They have given me +30 AIP so far. Thank god I'm only playing at 7/7. They really really shouldn't fire off at 1 minute. It's nasty and makes little sense.

But besides that I'm doing good. I own 5 planets and am just 1 hop away from the botnet. It will soon be time to dominate the galaxy with zombies. The only thing that terrifies me is when I get to see the "an abnormally strong hybrid is somewhere in the galaxy" message. That's when I will start crapping my pants (figuratively of course).

9

After Action Reports / Keith's Challenge Attempt #2 (victory!)

« on: April 24, 2012, 06:56:41 AM »

Allright, fired up a new game. Settings are mostly the same. Most important change is of course the dyson sphere. I turned it off because it was creating to much threat in my previous attempt. Furthermore I changed ultra low caps to low caps, just because I prefer battles with a lot of weak ships over battles with a few powerful ships (a shame my laptop won't be able to handle normal or high caps). A few new map seeds and I managed to get a blade spawner at an edge again
For the rest:
9/9 difficulty
80 planets
Crosshatch map
Vanilla / The Tank AI types
Resistance Fighters
Traders
Miners
Golems Medium
Spirecraft Hard
Fallen Spire
Complex ship types
Extra fog of war
1 AIP per 30 minutes

Homeworld is called Fire Bird. Screenshot of game start attached. I will update more in a while.

10

AI War / How to see what available ship types there are for ARS hacking?

« on: March 15, 2012, 05:32:14 PM »

Now the tech menu's ARS tab (which is used to view and select what bonus type you want to unlock after hacking and capturing an ARS) displays even if no hacking has been done, so you can make a decision about whether you want to hack or not without savescumming (not that anyone would do that).
The tab still won't show if there were never AI-controlled ARS's on the planet, since then the planet has no bonus types to show.

This is great and all, but it doesn''t explain to me HOW I can view the ARS TAB without hacking. In one of my current games I have scouted the location of 2 ARS's, but I'm nowhere near ready yet to take those planets. Whenever I look at the tech menu I see nothing and on enemy worlds it is not possible to open the tech menu (for as far as I know). So I wonder, how do I get to see which possible 'hack' types there are available without actually having a science lab or something on that particular planet?
I have started all of these games before the patch though, so perhaps that's why I can't see it?

11

After Action Reports / Keith's Challenge

« on: March 07, 2012, 04:46:12 PM »

original:

Concentric is my favorite for anything, really, and I like it for FS too.

It'd be interesting to see someone win a diff 9+ on grid (crosshatch is probably too brutal), as it really complicates the defensive situation.

I will take you up on that challenge when I have finished my current game. Not going to play with random AI types though... I'm not THAT confident.

So here goes

80 planets, dif 9/9 and AI types are Vanilla and The Tank. I was planning to go with Gravity Driller instead of The Tank, but after giving it some thought I figured Gravity Driller would be to much of a pain in the butt. Besides, i have already played against Gravity Driller quite recently (even though that was only a 7/7 game) and I like variety in my games.
map seed: 1777452422
map style is Crosshatch of course and I play with complex avilable ships. all ships are turned on, even the hateful (to a lot of players, but not to me) CSG's.
Furthermore there is a 1 AIP increase per 30 minutes. That's more than i used to play with in the past (0 AIP increase), but I figured one per 30 minutes wouldn't matter much.
Minor factions are resistance fighters, traders, miners, dyson sphere, fallen spire, golems moderate and spirecraft hard.
Usually I play with the avenger on, but I figured I'd leave the plots alone for this game (especially the hybrids). I've already made it hard enough as it is.
Oh and I play on ultra low caps. In my previous 120 planet low caps game, my crappy laptop was still having trouble with the thousands of zombies who were patrolling my systems. I have a feeling that this game is going to last longer than 18 and a half hours (if I don't screw up) so I figured the new ultra low option would be best.
I have to be honest and say that I cheesed with the "new map seed" option until I had my fav ship type at the location I wanted; blade spawners at an edge (not in a corner, but it would probably take to long to get that done ).
So, here's a screenshot of my current galaxy layout. I'll occasionally post some updates.

12

After Action Reports / first time with Fallen Spire...

« on: March 07, 2012, 07:09:51 AM »

and I won
played against 7/7 attritioner and Raid Engine. Good god, that was tough. Attritioner was no big deal really. The way that AI type is now, it should be a moderate one, instead of hard. The attrition emitters don't deal much damage and they die way to fast. I suggest to either boost their damage output or put a small AIP increase on destroying it.
But the Raid engine AI type... it's defenitely worth being a red type. Raid engines EVERYWHERE, sometimes triggering 3 or 4 at a time, not to mention the +5 AIP for each one you destroy. I will someday try a 7/7 game on a crosshatch map, 2 raid engine AI types... just to see how long I'll last
I hated collecting shards in my game. It simply took forever and the exo's weren't too threatening so it was just waiting for the shard to get home really. But I loved the spire ships. Beam weapons that eat through fleets and then the big and massive dreadnought. Mk I H/K's didn't have much chance to accomplish anything.
The Super terminal was more dangerous in fact. Managed to get AIP down a good 162 points. Not that 971 or 809 AIP made much difference for me in my endgame, but I wanted to see how far I could get with a good fleet and a few turrets. When the ST decided to spawn a lot of mk V ships every second, it almost got to much for me to handle, so I destroyed it fast and then dealt with the 900 remaining mk V ships on my planet (low caps). They actually managed to destroy 1/3 of my spire fleet and they almost killed a golem. Super Terminal feels right now. It can no longer easily be used to ride it to the AIP floor, but can still give a decent decrease.
After that it was time to build the exogalactic transceiver. I could have easily destroyed the homeworlds myself, but I figured I'd see the Fallen Spire campaign through to the end. Not much nasty stuff spawned during the build time and the 30 minute wait, but it was just dif 7 after all. Lost a few undefended planets but I had my entire fleet on my homeworld. I also build about a hundred of mk III energy reactors to make up for the losses on other planets. Inefficient maybe, but mk III reactors won't give less than 8k energy anyways so it was just a matter of building a lot of them to keep my golems operating.
And then the endgame... I was surprised by how quick it was over. Even the avenger died in 2 seconds.
And I really wanted to share a pretty screenshot I've made. See if you guys can figure out what happened in my screenshot, shouldn't be too hard ^^

long story short, fallen spire was entertaining but I wont play with it very often. It takes away the homeworld battles which is often a very exciting part for me. Plus the shards... but from what I've been reading that's something more people find to be time consuming.
Allright, time to fire up a new game "Keith's challenge", as I will call it

13

AI War / requesting exo's not being able to spawn from backdoor hacker's wormhole

« on: March 04, 2012, 02:42:33 PM »

as the topic title says. My last experience with it was quite... deadly. I was playing co-op with a steam friend, an 8/8 game. One of them turned out to be a backdoor hacker. It was already annoying from the start of the game, but we could manage it so far. about 2 and a half hours ingame when the first exo spawns... right at my partner's backdoor wormhole. The lead ship turned out to be an artillery golem... An early game fleet was not enough to stop an artillery golem before he could destroy his home command. Of course we took revenge but after that we decided it was best to start a new game lol.
I request something to be done lol. Playing with exo's on against a backdoor hacker will make it very very difficult to win, if not impossible so. Perhaps make it so that certain ships can not spawn from backdoor hackers wormholes, like artillery golems (or golems in general), at least for the early game.

14

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Are Enchant Charges allowed to spawn in such huge numbers?

« on: March 02, 2012, 07:42:13 AM »

I just stumbled upon a building filled with maze rooms and there are EC's everywhere, already gaining me up to 3 enchants. I something off or is this normal for maze room buildings and am I just really lucky?

15

AI War / Are shards allowed to spawn at the same AI world twice in a row?

« on: February 12, 2012, 08:39:57 AM »

Is what I would like to know. First shard spawned on a planet called Mud, 2 hops away from my homeworld. Second shard spawned at Mud also. Is this allowed or is this a bug? This is my first serious playthrough with Fallen Spire on, so I figured I'd ask.