Messages

481

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Various things

« on: March 11, 2012, 08:02:23 AM »

I''m afraid I can''t help you with the reference thing. Usually I just try to find an enemy planet that has the specific ship type of the incoming wave on it. then I hover over it and check it''s hull type. They worked on something new though. hovering over your wave warning itself should now pop up the info you need. It''s still bugged now though, but that should be fixed for 5.030

Fortunately for you, the planet you're having trouble with seems to have mosly Mk I ships. Building full caps of all your regular ships and just storming the front should work out. If you're still having trouble you can send in smaller waves to make small amounts of enemy ships attack you, instead of the whole planet at once. Usually sending fighters on FRD mode through the wormhole while having some engineers rebuilding them fast can do the trick.

the fact that you do not see the red wormhole glow from the counter attack, is because the counter wave is not like a regular wave. Counter attack waves can spawn on any world, regardless of destroyed warp gates, and they won't spawn from the wormhole, but from the edge of the planet.

Hope to have helped a bit =)

482

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: What I'm up to for the next release of AVWW (probably for tomorrow).

« on: March 10, 2012, 12:59:02 PM »

Okay, two more funny/fun bugs that I just found:

-Enemies and self getting heads stuck in ceilings.  So there were a number of icicle leapers embedded in the roof of a cave, helpless.
-Enemies melee-ing spells that were hit at them.  Which mostly doesn't make any difference, the spell still hits them and all that jazz.  But what blew my mind?  I fired creeping death at a giant skelebot, and he takes a swing like a baseball bat, and knocks that creeping death off in a completely other direction.  He still got damaged by the spell, but that move was just made of awesomesauce.  I think I'm going to have to make that one of those "boss orb" modifiers.

the first one is the one I reported. My head got stuck in the ceiling when I went through a ventilation shaft lol. It was funny and a good thing that restarting the game fixed it for me

483

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Various things

« on: March 10, 2012, 12:51:09 PM »

nice try Keith
I seem to be stalking this forum to much lately lol

484

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Various things

« on: March 10, 2012, 12:44:36 PM »

hi and welcome to the forums =)
You''ll find out that this game is quite difficult and complex. If you have never finished a game yet, perhaps starting out at difficulty 5 or 6 would be better. That way you can learn all various aspects of the game in a more relaxed way, instead of risking being overwhelmed. (I personally started playing at dif 1, but that was a bit to easy).

Bombers are THE hard counter against fortresses. You will notice the fort's 0.01 bonus against polycrstal, which means he will do very little damage to bombers (who have a polycrystal hull type) compared to other ships. If you send fighters or frigates to attack fortresses, you will stand no chance.

If you have built a warp sensor, and at least one bordering warp gate is alive, the wormhole ships will be coming from is coloured red, instead of green. That's where the ships will come from.

Zenith beam frigates also have a counter. They have a composite hull type, which means that any ship with a bonus against that hull type deals a lot more damage to them than others. In this case, missile frigates will do just fine =)

If you have any more questions about this game, don't hesitate to ask. There are a lot of kind players in this community who are more than happy to help a new player out and give advice =)

485

After Action Reports / Re: 7/7 Variety Games

« on: March 10, 2012, 07:36:16 AM »

welcome to the forums ^^
interesting looking map you got there. And yeah, realistic can be confusing sometimes (which is exactly why I like it).
Already found an ARS so close to your homeworld on a 120 planet map? nice.
Turning all minor factions and AI plots on could be... deadly lol, even if it's just for base game. Playing with the avenger on while you have no golems or spirecraft to take it out seems like a serious challenge to me.

486

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Stealth units

« on: March 10, 2012, 07:21:48 AM »

put a bunch of blade spawners in a transport and send the transport through a wormhole with 1 or 2 cloacker starships (make sure the tachyon guardian is already dead). Move them to a spot as far away from enemy units as possible, but still within the limits of the gravity well. Unload the transport units and let them do their work. They will attack guard posts, causing the guards to attack you. when the enemy ships get close, put your blade spawners in the still cloacked transport. Watch enemy ships move away to go stalk your wormhole. when they're far enough, repreat the process. Even Mk IV worlds will eventually die like this.

487

After Action Reports / Re: Keith's Challenge

« on: March 09, 2012, 12:52:58 PM »

ah yes, talk about another ship I have never used... the riot I should try them out soon.
the fact that I'm not impressed by the firepower of the plasma siege starships is probably because my enemies were all Mk IV they're doing really great against Mk I waves, but I don't think they're overpowered. Combined with the engine damage they really seem like a nice asset to the rest of my fleet; like starships are supposed to be in my opinion.
But the only reason I build them in this game was to stop those Mk IV ships from moving to fast. And they're doing their job fairly well.

The CPA told me ahead that it was going to be 88 ships. I think it occured when my AIP was 45-50. I agree it wasn't much, which is why I laughed. I had regular waves with more ships (neinzul ships, but ships nonetheless).

ahh that makes sense.. normally I would have a lot more AIP at 4 hours ingame, hence the exo spawning faster. What if you have a 250 AIP per 5 minutes increase? does that mean you get an exo within 10 minutes? lol.
Still, about twice as stronger isn't something to overlook. and I was aware of the difference between FS exo's and "regular" exo's. One of the reasons I'm waiting with collecting shards for now.

mapgen has quite been working out in my favor mostly, so far. I'm very satisfied with the botnet on an edge world, only 5 hops away.

488

AI War / Re: Seed Request - Disposable Heros

« on: March 09, 2012, 12:25:34 PM »

this actually sounds intersting, it will make me get used to playing with neinzul ships (which I never really have). I should try this out once I'm done with Keith's challenge.

489

After Action Reports / Re: Keith's Challenge

« on: March 09, 2012, 12:17:08 PM »

well, the ONLY reason I like plasma siege starships is because of the area of effect engine damage. Slowing enemies down with them has already saved me more than once. the amount of enemy ships streaming into my homeworld sometimes is nuts, and when your fleet is dying and you have little resources left, keeping my plasma siege starships alive is of vital importance (and not easy when you are out ranged).
anyway, I finally managed to destroy and capture the second Mk IV world I'm proud of myself of getting this far and I wouldn't mind if I would get killed right now lol.
Taking the second Mk IV world was much, much harder than the first one, mainly because it simply had build up forces quite a lot more. There is one single advantage to having a mk IV world next to your homeworld (or any mk): They have no tachyon guardians. After more than 500 hours of AI war playtime, I figured it was finally time to use the cloacker starships for the very first time. And they did their job very well.
Caps of mk I and II blade spawners in a transport (for some silly reason blade spawners are immune to cloacking so I had to use a transport, which actually worked out very nice), and send the cloacker starships + transport through the wormhole. Make them go to a spot as far away from any enemy units as possible (but staying within the limits of the gravity wells) and unload the transport. Blade spawners unleash their blades to some guard posts, guards become threat and attack. when they come close, move the blade spawners back in the still cloacked transport and watch the threat ships move towards your wormhole to stalk it. When they're far away enough from your transport, unleash spawners again. Repeat a couple of times and the enemy forces get thinned out pretty quick. Of course another batch of resistance fighters spawned as well so I could move in my fleet to clean things up.
Still took me a while to get all this done though (or even to figure out this tactic), because a bunch of waves and the first CPA spawned during that time. CPA freed 88 Mk I ships... I laughed at it.
However, I'm getting really scared of the very first Spirecraft exo, which is at 54% now. I expected the first exo would hit me a lot earlier, like it usually does in my 7/7 games (1:30 - 2 hours, while I'm almost at 4 hours now). The fact that it has been building up for so long makes me think it could be a massive exo. Next steps are unlocking bombers Mk III, neutering all of my neighbouring systems, and prepare for the exo.
I didn't do much scouting, because I didn't want to waste my precious metal on scouts, but I did scout 2 new planets... One of them had an unusual high amount of ships on it so I started to wonder... I scouted the next planet and I was right: the Dyson Sphere. Additionally there's an ARS and a Cursed Golem on it.
This sucks. I had hoped the dyson sphere would be on an "edge planet" but now it has 8 worlds on alert at all times. I've realized that this might very well kill me eventually, especially if some of the alerted worlds are Mk IV. Knowing my luck, a lot of em probably are.
Ah well, that's a worry for another time. I better focus on the matters at hand. Next time we'll find out how the first exo went.

490

AI War / Re: Seed Request - Disposable Heros

« on: March 09, 2012, 07:08:16 AM »

I'm absolutely positive I've come across the game you want sometimes, but I don't seem to be able to get it to happen again right now.

491

After Action Reports / Re: Keith's Challenge

« on: March 09, 2012, 07:01:19 AM »

yes I had thought of using raid starships to take the guard post threat, but I disregarded that tactic for now. I only had limited energy available (stacking up unefficient energy reactors would cost me a significant resource income) and I decided to build plasma sieges instead of raid starships with my extra crystal. Considering the amount of enemy ships already on the planet, I figured my raid starships would die to fast. It might have worked out well anyways, but I'm happy with my choice of plasma siege starships. They did save the day after all.
number 2 will be an excellent tactic for this game yes, especially since I have blade spawners to thin them out from afar. It is a tactic I will most certainly use for taking the second Mk IV world, since I will neuter the remaining border planets first.
Thanks for the tip about the wormhole guardposts, I would have made the same mistake as you did. I was already planning to take them out when I start neutering right about now. But now I will wait until I have mk III bombers to speed things up (which I should have after taking the second mk IV world). I don't want to K-hack just yet though. I rather save my hacking for a super terminal in case there is one and otherwise for 1 or 2 of the ARS. With the amount of planets I usually take in a game (and especially will in this game), I shouldn't have much knowledge problems.

492

After Action Reports / Re: Armageddon

« on: March 08, 2012, 08:21:08 PM »

use the nuke right before triggering the fallen spire end fleet. That should take care of things I suppose (unless they don't have nuke immunity, which i dont remember). Of course you'd need fallen spire enabled for that
sounds cool though.. I still need that achievement

493

After Action Reports / Re: Keith's Challenge

« on: March 08, 2012, 07:25:06 PM »

wow, this game sure is interesting. I didn't want to post again until I had my first planet captured. And god it took me more than 2 hours
2 out of the 5 bordering enemy worlds turned out to be mk IV. "Could be worse",I thought. Well probably it could, but it was painful nonetheless. The worlds were reinforcing faster than i could kill off ships (and they still are). The numbers of enemy ships were going into the 200... on ultra low caps -.- Sending my fleet in would be suicide and I didn't have the resources to handle it. so I send waves of caps mk I and II fighters. I had to attack about 3 or 4 times to kill a single guard post. The enemy starts out with Tractor Platforms -.- have a few fighters get taken away, destroy them before they enter another wormhole, and TP still goes into that system, waiting there as threat. After I few maneuvres involving fighters and frigates (I have way more crystal income) I could finally destroy 2 more guard posts. My ships die and a threat of 70+ ships stalks the wormhole. A wave launches and the threat comes by to join the fight. Damn, that was tough. Good thing I had gravity and tractor turrets up everywhere already. About 100 mk I and II ships really isn't enough to kill 70+ Mk IV ships before they reach your home command lol. Thank god I had plasma siege starships, they saved the day by succesfully destroying large chunks of enemy engines.
After I managed to destroy the attacking threat, I noticed I had free game on that mk IV world (the one in the corner), so I send in what little remained of my fleet and my full caps of mk I and II blade spawners... Blade spawners did all the work, destroying guard posts and enemy ships from afar. Finally victorious. It will soon be time to take out the other mk IV world, which is getting close to the 300 ships now.
I don't think it will be possible for me to get very far in this game, but so far I'm enjoying the early epic battles
As a side note, enemy Armor ships are Extremely hard to kill. Even bombers do fairly little damage, even though they're supposed to be hard counters. 24k armor on mk IV... Yeah, they're Armor ships allright.
A small list of the goodies I've found so far in my galaxy:

co-p and Warbird factory on Ember
Zenith power generator on Rime and Balm
ARS on Eclipse and Neptune
Factory Mk IV on Spark
Black widow golem on Sleet
Hive golem on Flower and Fog

and my favorite and most important target for now:
Botnet golem and Blade spawner mk V fabricator on Haures

Black widow, hive and botnet planet are all in a straight line at the upper edge. If I can reach the Botnet I can pretty much take care of my defense for the rest of the game (I hope) and actually move my progress "inland". But getting there is another story since it's 5 hops away
-.-
I already figured it would be best to destroy every single wormhole guard post whenever I neuter a planet... And I neuter a lot.
First spire shard is on a planet deeper in enemy territory (Balm). I figured I'd wait with the first shard until I have that botnet. Or at least the black widow.
So far very entertaining and really challenging already. Not enough challenge to run me over, but enough to keep me on my toes. I have to admit I have already savescummed several times though. Not because I lost the game, but simply because I knew I could play more optimal and have fewer losses. Learning new strategies along the way I guess. I'm so not used to playing dif 9 games

Adding screenshot of current galaxy. More to come!

494

AI War / Re: some kind of 'hardcore mode'

« on: March 07, 2012, 06:52:30 PM »

Looks like we have +1 vote for 'I have no willpower' mode...

New challenge?  AI 10/10 Core/Raid Engine 1 homeworld Crosshatch map Hardcore Mode?

I was planning to do a double Raid engine on crosshatch someday. 7/7 though, not 10/10. I want to have at least a small chance of survival

495

AI War / Re: some kind of 'hardcore mode'

« on: March 07, 2012, 06:44:00 PM »

normally I would agree with you. But this game is so complex and sometimes there are so many things happening at once, that it is sometimes hard to keep track of everything and then mistakes are made. There is no shame in "savescumming". I too would like a permadeath option, but just for the extra thrill it would give. I savescum if I feel like it and other times I just live with the mistakes I make.