Messages

16

After Action Reports / Re: During Action Report

« on: February 28, 2012, 08:15:22 PM »

The cool thing about references is how they totally destroy the original meanings of stuff! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria_%28continent%29

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Lemuria (besides "lost continent") is an underwhelming album from Therion. I don't think I got up to Lemuria in Golden Sun.

As for the other homeworld, I had my suspicions, which turned out to be well founded. Take a wild guess, I bet you'll get it. Spoilers below!

ANYWHO

So the fleet and I were just sitting there in our stable little rut, wondering what we could possibly do next. I was getting worried about the AI's perception of us. I called for a scout report showing a map of all the AI processing centers we'd found. The report looked like this:


Well. I fired those scouts (into a MK IV planet filled with tachyon guardians) and sent some new ones out. A lot. And killed tachyon guardians. A lot. Built transports. Quite a few. Nearly 2 hours later (Hence the lack of hourly updates; some games are just slow) I found a single data center! It was on Braxis in the right cluster, past Horus which had an ARS on it. I set up shop on Horus and whacked the data center. With a planet I had a reason to take and some AIP reduction to offset it, I finally had a foothold in another quadrant. I set about grinding more scouts into neutron dust.

This quadrant was actually populated with 2 or 3 Data centers! I wanted to take the ARS on Tenebrae, back near my home quadrant, but I noticed that another ARS planet, Elysium, all the way in the upper right, was actually only 4 hops from Horus, so I was able to take it with just minimal fuss from a nearby raid engine. From Elysium I was able to complete scouting the galaxy. 3 more Data centers were on Fermat, Tatlin, and Faust, and the last 3 co-processors were also in this upper area. Also found a Zenith V cache that I broke open, heedless of AIP.



Oh, while this was going on, waves continued to hit whipping boy Mithos, and Horus which was surrounded by 4 warp gates - too many to justify gate raids, especially when I have so many turrets not anywhere near cap. Between the remaining turrets and my fleet, Horus was very secure. I don't know if it was the work of the planetary armor inhibitor or what, but I found I could just ignore any waves that went to Mithos, even when the AIP was above 200. Even the bomber waves. The last thing I had built there was 2 force fields over the incoming wave wormhole, so the ships couldn't escape after spawning. They never broke out.

Here is a list of Mithos' defenses: Basic Turret: 10. Flak Turret: 49. Lightning Turret: 49. Grav turret: Basically 3. Heavy Beam: 7. Laser Turret: 30. Missile Turret: 20. MLRS: 25. Sniper Turret: 15. Spider Turret: 25. Tractor Beam: 34. Force Field I: 2. Hardened Force Field: 1. Fortress: 1. And of course, Planetary Armor Inhibitor: 1.

These defenses seem kind of paltry for the sort of waves I had been getting, but they did the trick every time. I don't know if the P. Armor inhibitor helped that much, or maybe... I hate to say this... maybe certain turrets deal too much damage when under force fields. ButICouldBeWrongItsOnly7.6DifficultyDontNerfMyTurretsPlz!!

Ahem, where was I?

I was able to handle a CPA on the western front by using residual forces and mercs that had built up in concert with stolen Engie IIIs constructing and saving emergency turrets. After that I upgraded to Raid IIs and killed all the data centers and coprocessors in the galaxy, landing me at a sweet 119 AIP. This freed another 1500~ish ships that I was basically able to ignore as half of them obligingly filed into my defenses, and the other half came one by one to dance with the entire patrolling fleet. Oh, they destroyed Elysium and I didn't bother to rebuild it.

ARSs yielded Munitions Boosters! and Acid Sprayers  and Bulletproof Fighters. It seems that all business is taken care of and... ah, a human colony rebellion. Right at Strife, on my doorstep. Ok, I can spare 20 AIP to connect my worlds and gain some serious firepower! (I should be kinder to the Acid Sprayers. They are fast, and thus good at scaring enemy Bombards away.)

So now I have taken 12 entire planets. All the CSGs are gone, except D. The CSG-Ds are on planets with Factory-IVs, which I haven't taken. One of these is on Jung, just two hops from the upper right homeworld! I would prefer to take out the left homeworld first, as the low AIP would help deal with the AI Eye, but it might be tough without the factory. I'll also probably have to do some K-raiding to get my fleet up to snuff - a lot of my fleet ships are very low mark. Munitions-boosted Bombards have been doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but they may not cut it for homeworlds.

This game has gone out of its way to make this easy for me... I'm starting to get a little paranoid... Or maybe it's mocking me for turning off the hybrids. That's probably it.

17

After Action Reports / Re: During Action Report

« on: February 26, 2012, 04:50:15 PM »

Spent most of that hour destroying the AI eye on Wolfwood. MK IV AI Eyes take a long, long time to kill with a MK 2 army. I really should have gotten MK 3 bombers instead of bombards. It might have actually been faster to resort to K-raiding to fix that error! Got Spire Stealth Battleships from the ARS! And OMG my AIP is at 215! How did that happen?!

Hm, now what... I'm curious about that long chain. Yes, the tip of the tail is an AI Homeworld.



This is pretty nice. None of those worlds will ever be in my way, or on alert before i want them to be. There's really nothing in the entire tail that I want. 2 Fabs (Spider and Youngling Tiger.) Found one Data Center and destroyed it. The homeworld itself is pretty tame except for the AI Eye, but I've dealt with those before. I'm just gonna leave the whole thing asleep. Till I stab it.

18

After Action Reports / Re: During Action Report

« on: February 26, 2012, 12:37:49 PM »

Yep, it's mostly referential stuff, with some latin words and others that just sound nice. I've only got about 200 right now though.

Anyhow, Not too much happened. Took Ayame and Shakuras, the two IIIs on the left flank. Shakuras had an ARS hiding under a stealth guardpost! I could have sworn i saw one for an instant when I looked at the summary on the galaxy map, but I dismissed it. Got BOMBARDS out of it. Game over.

Cleared a path towards the two MK IVs that I have to take. Getting really sick of these counterattack guard posts. Is that something support corps does, or am I just really unlucky? I keep getting hit with large waves that are nonetheless bearable. Some 1900 raiders came and went. All the support was in the carrier, not that it would have made much difference. A handful of speed boosters, some decoy drones, and a LOT of decloakers. Are people defending their wave points with cloaked units or something?

It seems that this AI combo is not as bad as I'd feared. All the terror comes from the raw size of the Vicious Raider waves. The handful of not-very-useful support units that come out definitely do not provide enough trouble to warrant having half as many waves. Does Support Corps get better support units as AIP advances, or is it a similar mix all game? As it is, this shouldn't do much of anything.

I'm considering restarting with the hybrids on. Gonna take a break and think on it.

19

After Action Reports / Re: During Action Report

« on: February 26, 2012, 10:33:03 AM »

Update the first. AIP 116. The galaxy as it stands now:



I cleared out the surrounding environs. A couple of forts made this take a while. My first starships would be raids to keep the warp gates down. Or so I thought; at least one planet had a warp gate protected by a fort, and only one raid came back, necessitating a rebuild. I tried to see if the remaining raid could clear out the warp gate on Tarth. Answer: nope. Rebuild 3 raids.

Abaddon has 2 Counter posts on it. "I'm going to regret this later," I say to myself, "But it's not later. It's now." I kill them both not a minute apart from each other.

Meanwhile, I want Ayame to be the first MK III that I take, because of the resources. I go in to clear it our with my fleet ball consisting of MK Is and MK II bombers. It gets reinforced several times and my attrition rates are very high. Zenith Bombards contribute to this, though I managed to get some leech starships up and reclaimed a few of them.

At about 2 minutes until the counter waves hit, with my fleet at half strength, a wave is announced. 480 bombers(!) to Abaddon! I panic, pull all my ships home, pop open a Zenith Reserve I and a distribution node. I put down 30x turret II, 10x Heavy Beam cannon, and a line of gravity turrets on Abaddon. One counter wave is going to Mithos which is pretty well fortified, the other is going to Thymara which has no fortifications at all. I add some spider and sniper turrets to both planets. I split my fleet something like 75% to Thymara, 25% to Mithos.

All 3 waves hit at about the same time. I focused on Thymara since it had the fewest defenses. The defense was going ok, so I took a look at the minimap to see a huge number of ships still on Mithos! I had relatively clustered my spider and sniper turrets on the opposite side of the planet from the hostile wormhole. The counter wave spawned almost right next to them and took out half the line. I split off part of the fleet to Mithos, but it wasn't enough to hold the command station. And I didn't leave enough to finish defending Thymara properly either. And I didn't send enough to catch the ships that filtered into Moria, either. The rampage was finally stopped on Abaddon. I'd lost every other planet except my homeworld. Moral of the story: Leave a long, long time between killing counter guardposts.

Rebuild. Some blowback from a gate raid takes out Thymara command station about .01 seconds before the shield finishes building. Continue clearing Ayame. Take out ONE of the Counter (III) guardposts, and go somewhere else. The counter hits at the same time as a wave, of course. 2000+ laser gatlings to whipping boy Mithos. I pause the fort that won't be done in time, finish placing full caps of lightning and flak turrets, and a second shield over them. I thought I didn't have enough tractors, but I forgot that such waves come in carriers. I think most, if not all, of the support units were also in a carrier, so they got separated from the main wave. The turrets kept the planet clean, as my fleet stomped the counter wave.

Back in 1 hour of play time!

20

After Action Reports / During Action Report

« on: February 26, 2012, 08:37:11 AM »

I tend to play in ridiculously long blocks of time. My theory is if I do an AAR, and update it every hour while playing... something will happen. Seems like an idea, almost. So this may not be super entertaining, but it's a thing.

Settings:
Realistic, 100 planets (up from 80)
Seed: 1891544160
Minor Factions: Human Colony Rebellions, Broken Golems (easy) [I have played this once before, and feel bad about the (easy) so I tend to use them only if I have to.]
AI Plots: AI1: Hybrids [Really sound like fun, been meaning to play this]
AI: 7.6/7.6 (up from 7.0/7.3, didn't really feel the bump last time.)

A note about AI types: I haven't bothered to set disabledaitypes, so I get numbers from random.org and count. I am using moderate/easier, and picking the nearest AI type if the one I roll is one I've already played. I roll 11 and 32, Vicious Raider and.... nope... not that either... lets go upwards instead and... Support Corps! Sounds good!

...Vicious Raider and Support Corps. The game hasn't even started and I have to break a rule, of never changing settings after the AI types have been picked. Between the increased difficulty, increased galaxy size, and terrifying AI combo... I disable HYBRIDS AI plot. Ok, I have no willpower; I have to set disabledaitypes from now on.   

Operation Unlock-A-Lot-Of-Turrets is a go!



100 Planet realistic maps, hard to untangle. Oh wow look, an 8-planet snake tail! I wish I could relocate my home command center somehow.

Random Homeworld start, or else I'll pick the same few ships over and over. Bonus ship is... anti-armor ship, neither terrible nor great.

After some Scouting:



Wolfwood is noteworthy for having an ARS and an AI Eye on a MK IV world. Mithos has a Planetary Armor inhibitor! Ladies and gentlemen, we have our whipping boy. Resources are scarce. I will likely take almost this whole lower-left area, between securing resources and tactical concerns. Also unlocking Econ III ASAP.

Meanwhile, first wave occurred. 170~ish fighters, speed boosters, decoy drones, and decloakers. I am underwhelmed. I think the support corps AI is actually to my benefit, as I plan to invest in leech starships and merc parasites to score some easy support units.

21

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Knowledge Spending: Offense vs. Defense

« on: February 25, 2012, 07:24:52 PM »

MRS costs 4k knowledge... fortress costs 3k. Using forts offensively is impossible, but using MRSs offensively is extremely difficult. If the other side of the wormhole is really hairy, the MRSs will die, or will not be ready to repair before the fight is over. In either case you could send injured units back to a fortress on your side of the wormhole for the same effect. The utility advantages on the side of the MRS are nearly unrealizable.

In K costs, MRS = fortress + engie 2. MRS + 3k = Fortress + engie 3. It's not even a close comparison. Even if I can't repair properly, the cost I have to pay is metal/crystal and/or game time. These are much less valuable than K, in most cases.

22

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Warp Gates - Bug? Something I don't understand?

« on: February 25, 2012, 07:07:21 PM »

Do you mean it got real, actual waves sent to it with countdowns? Or did a lot of ships just come in? If there were no countdowns, yeah that's because you took out every single warp gate touching your entire galactic territory.

However, if you got countdown waves to that planet, that means there must be another warp gate in the system. If you look at the system You'll see something like: "1(wave) 3 (reinforce) enemy warp gates at this planet" in the upper left corner in green text. The 1(wave) means that there is one warp gate (or warp gate-type thing) that can send waves to adjacent planets.

Point being, actual warp gates are not the only things that can send waves. There are warp gate guardians also, and AI eyes function as warp gates! That is really annoying considering how difficult it is to take out an AI eye. Since you're a new player you probably don't have warp gate guardians running around... you probably have an AI eye on that MK IV world... good luck with that!

I'm not sure if anything else functions as a warp gate. If you mouse over the icon in the right-hand bar, warp-gate-thingies say something like "Warp Gate FULL (AI Only)" in purple text.

23

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: What do you do with surplus resources?

« on: February 25, 2012, 06:46:02 PM »

Forts and mercs will use up money fast. You can scrap the fort later and get an infusion of emergency resources if you need it.

If my cash is like 800k or above I'll build mercs, and stop when it gets down to a few hundred K. Who cares how much they cost? Mercs are much more cost effective than wasting unused cash. If you don't play really fast and aggressive you are probably gonna make use of mercs, since you'll probably hit resource cap a lot. Don't be scared to use them, either. You're never gonna "get your money's worth" out of mercs, priced as they are. Just think of them as kind of bonus ships that make your fleet a bit scarier. Or, hoard them like kuresuti does until you have a significant force of them.

And obviously if you have zenith traders you can throw down all sorts of goodies, pause them, and continue building when you have too much cash.

24

AI War / Re: Non-military ships people want to be able to select with military

« on: February 24, 2012, 09:31:54 AM »

Is this a universal toggle for all these ships, or separate toggles for each ship?

25

AI War / Re: Knowledge Raiding: Too easy/boring?

« on: February 22, 2012, 07:39:02 PM »

looney ideas my butt. Implement all of this right now please

^This.

I also really like the random rolls for K-raiding, but I DON'T like the idea of it spawning random roaming ships anywhere in the galaxy. It doesn't make sense thematically, as the AI is simply trying to stop the sabotage.
Here are some things for the K-raid roll table:

- Setting planets on alert for a fixed time period. Increase duration of alert, the MK lvl of planets to be alerted, I-II-III-IV-Core-Homeworld, depending on total K-raiding. This also has problems thematically, and further it is not an up-front cost.
- Chance to ring an alarm bell on a neighboring planet.
- Chance to trigger a CPA, wave, or Warp counterattack wave (with a long warning time so it doesn't disrupt the K-raid. Maybe warning time decreases depending on severity of k-raiding.)


So far all of the suggestions work to dissuade players from K-raiding too much. None of them address the fact that K-raiding is boring. It will certainly become interesting as more and more K is raided, but the first 1-3 raids will suck.

As I understand it, k-raids are supposed to:

- Have an up-front cost in being forced to fight NOW
- Have an opportunity cost, in that you have to pay attention and devote fleet ships/turrets/resources
- Not be terribly difficult at first, but become difficult later
- Never be a total cakewalk

I see no way to fix the early K-raids if all of these are required. You can already make it harder/faster by building multiple stations. My stock response to these situations is "Mini-game!".

26

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Warp gates and proper whipping boy setup.

« on: February 16, 2012, 09:13:29 PM »

Thanks guys. Another question: Are both AIs allowed to send waves through any warp gate, or is the owner of the warp gate important?

27

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

« on: February 16, 2012, 01:57:18 PM »

The last shard is on the homeworlds? Oh jeez...

I'm not playing that game anymore, as I said I can't get out of my home system, haha. If anybody wants the seed, I can look it up.

28

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Capturing Structures and other questions...

« on: February 15, 2012, 09:23:37 PM »

Yeah, it's off by default. Shouldn't be IMO.

I started with an 80 planet. It's a bit of a slog. I wound up quitting that game and tried again at 50, which was pretty quick and easy; then a 40, then a 60, then a 10 (which was nasty!), then an 80 which I believe I'm doing now with my Fallen Spire campaign. I'll probably wind up sticking with something like 60 TBH, the pacing is better and I feel like I'm making more progress. So I recommend experimenting with map sizes in addition to everything else.

29

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

« on: February 15, 2012, 08:50:38 AM »

I just started my first FS Campaign. My homeworld was between two MK IV teleport turtle worlds. At first I assumed this was part of the setup, but when the third shard spawned and was instantly captured on my homeworld, my suspicions flowered. According to the walkthrough, shards cannot spawn along a path that goes past MK IV worlds. I could potentially have recovered them all without an ounce of effort. Of course, I can never get off my homeworld!

30

AI War Strategy Discussion / Warp gates and proper whipping boy setup.

« on: February 12, 2012, 09:19:34 AM »

Apologies for asking, this is a bit difficult to search for.

"Q: What does gate raiding really accomplish? I was reading that there are situations where enemy waves appear from nowhere - because while they have no immediate gate connections, they do still warp things to their planets and then walk them over.

A: The AI will always attack your planets directly if possible. That rule you are referring to only kicks in if there is literally no way for them to do that."

 Does this mean that a) if I leave one gate adjacent to one of my worlds, all waves will come through that gate? Or b) If I have a section of worlds with no gates adjacent, these will be vulnerable to cross-planet wandering type waves, even if I have one warp gate somewhere else?

Example:

A--B--C--D--E--F--G

Key
AI Worlds with gates destroyed
AI Worlds with gates left
My Worlds

Will planet B receive wandering unannounced waves, or will every wave hit planet F? I assume everything will go through F, but the other planets will still be subject to special forces raids, border aggression, CPAs, etc.