Author Topic: Newbie and the Beast  (Read 23965 times)

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #30 on: August 11, 2014, 07:15:22 pm »
and you seriously want me to mine salt by hand.
Even galaxy-dominating AIs need a hobby.
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Offline Alex Heartnet

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #31 on: August 17, 2014, 02:15:40 pm »
The joys of doing LP's by screenshot, where you don't quite remember exactly what you did and have to improvise a little.

I could of sworn that I unlocked MKII tractor turrets.  Did I?









<_<




Offline Alex Heartnet

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #32 on: August 19, 2014, 02:55:13 am »
If I research awesome effective defensive toys then I'll be able to afford the AIP increase from taking more planets so I csn unlock more defensive toys, correct?  And I'll be able to hold off indefinitely just by researching more and better defenses?

MKIII grav turrets are awesome!  Sadly I only currently have the science for the MKIIs.





I must fix that.  Since I was planning on taking Iota Horologii anyway...







uhh...don't I already have these?

<_<







It turns out the update that mis-aligned everything also affected the AI systems.  The AI's Tachyon Scoutkiller Thingiemabobers are no longer next to the wormholes, making scouting trivial.  My scouts occasionally complained about hull breaches and reactor containment, but in the time it took to complete the hack I was able to get the entire galaxy scouted.

There's simply too much info to share with you all, so here are a few highlights:

The Sterve system tops the list of my planets to take.  It's in an isolated pocket of the galaxy and has a missile turret controller and an armor ship fab.







The Altair system has an Eye in it that was staring at my scouts menacingly.  When I finally attack the AI homeworlds I'll strike from a direction that is not this one.





Xi Scorpii seems to of somehow acquired a new moon...





Luyten's Star.



Remember this thing?



Bingo.

That won't do all that much to a game in progress :)  It'll give it some more guardian types to be a jerk with, but not the new station/post/subcommander types, etc, as that's all picked at mapgen.



Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if this somehow generates !!fun!! regardless.



Hang on, picking up an encrypted transmission from my scouting party...

"Sir, we have found something in the Lenois Minoris system, it looks like a huge object, I'm transmitting the data now...it seems to be some kind of massive supercomputer, moving in to get a closer look oh my god it's a giant space shark arrgghhh!!1!"

*static*

*transmission lost*

 ???

Well, at least I know where the other AI Houseworld is.





oohhh wonder what I got

Autocannons, MLRSs, or Space Planes.  Hmm.  Well, it makes no sense for planes to be in space, and if I wanted autocannons I won't be doing this hack at all, so I'll go with the MLRSs.





And to cap off a successful victory, I get to destroy the local Core Shield Generator for having taken the system.  How should I kill this one?  Lasers, missiles, bullets?  Monkey Wrench?  Should I pop it fast or slowly draw out its demise?


Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #33 on: August 19, 2014, 09:52:53 am »
FWIW, space planes are one of the premier dispensers of murder in the galaxy, due to having a firing range longer than they can be fired upon (due to radar dampening).

MLRS make a decent contribution to main-blob-firepower, though.

And those dire guardian lairs won't be too troublesome as long as you don't do anything like kill one without sufficient firepower on hand to deal with the result.
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Offline Alex Heartnet

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #34 on: August 20, 2014, 03:54:21 pm »
Don't change that channel!  Stay tuned for an EXCLUSIVE sneak preview of episode negative zero of AI War!










Offline Alex Heartnet

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #35 on: August 22, 2014, 09:16:46 pm »
Objectives are important, yes.  It's good to know what you plan on doing before you set out to do it.





Whoa.  There are 140 AIP worth of data centers in the galaxy?!  Didn't think there would be that many.  If I pop them all, I should be able to poke the bear rather hard.

But first I gotta kill this thing.



I don't care what you guys voted for, I'm going to kill it with my sniper turrets.  It won't even matter anyway – core shield generators are squishy, and their durability instead comes from them being invincible until you take the entire planet.

Boom, it's dead.

The Data Center in Iota Pegesi is next on my list of targets.

My fastest units are:
1. Raid Starships, with a speed of 256 (!)
2. Autocannons, with a speed of 188
3. Raiders, with a speed of 140

Raid Starships are squishy!  This can be solved somewhat by having my autocannons and raiders accompany my raid starships as cannon fodder.  It will slow them down but ensure that my starships live a lot longer, plus I can always have them leave their expendable escort behind.  Sadly raiders cannot shoot through forcefields – currently only my Raid Starships can - so the additional firepower they bring won't help much for this particular task of Orwellian Memory Removal.  Of course I can still find targets for them afterwards...







This is a MKIII Grav Turret.  It is awesome, and will aid greatly in defense of my systems.





I would love to reposition my entire defense grid in this system, but I can't afford such.  My fleet should be way more then enough for now.



Luyten also contains a Data Center.  And it's right next to my territory!  Gee, would be a SHAME if anything happened to it!  sssss...





I want to take the Struve system for the turret controller and armor ship fab, and I want to pop the data center at Ursae Majoris.  I see no reason why these two objectives cannot be done at the same time.

Especially with the aid of transports to help move them around...



ESPECIALLY with clumsy transport pilots moving around while unloading my raiders in hostile territory!  I thought I told him to hold position.  Apparently not.



Blargh!  Fine my carefully planned assassination of the data center will instead have to be a disorganized charge.



And then apparently my transport captain is all like "So the fleet want to board my bus so they can leave safely well TOO BAD I'm not done offloading all the ships on this transport so I'll continue offloading the ships until I am done no matter how many times they attempt to board.  Okay that's all the ships offloaded you guys are on your own now good luck making it back without my help bye!" 



Glad to see I can rely on Sirius Cybernetics to provide good pilots.  Anyone know of someplace where I can find more reliable hired guns?  At this rate I'll at least be able to get the existing ones killed off quickly so I can replace them all sooner.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #36 on: August 22, 2014, 10:02:54 pm »
Noooo, not the data cen-

(bzzt)

...

...

Innocuous Query: Would you like to play a game?




On the transports continuing to unload thing, I think if you select the transport and give it a "stop" order (the "end" key, by default) it will cancel the unload in progress so you don't have to keep playing whack-a-mole with your own troops.
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Offline Alex Heartnet

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #37 on: August 22, 2014, 11:06:31 pm »
Innocuous Query: Would you like to play a game?



On the transports continuing to unload thing, I think if you select the transport and give it a "stop" order (the "end" key, by default) it will cancel the unload in progress so you don't have to keep playing whack-a-mole with your own troops.

Wait, I can do wut?
Sweet!  Now how do I tell my Zenith Bombards and auto-kiting units to hold position?

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #38 on: August 23, 2014, 09:28:52 am »
Ah yes, a game that cuts to the chase and focuses on the warheads.


Now how do I tell my Zenith Bombards and auto-kiting units to hold position?
I think if you put them in stand-down mode (K, by default) they'll stop trying to position relative to their target (because they won't have a target).

Alternatively, I suspect a Spider Guardian would be happy to help with that.
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Offline Alex Heartnet

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #39 on: August 25, 2014, 02:53:05 pm »
The DENIS system looks to be a bit tricky – it has a Raid Eye standing sentinel over the local Data Center.  Presumably the Data Center records anything the Raid Eye sees?  I hate automated survellence systems, and I'm pretty sure this one is not for my own protection.



My fleets have their orders.  My main force will proceed to Setrve along with a colony ship, engineer, mobile builder, and remains rebuilder so when I dispose of the command center I can set up a warp jammer and pretend nothing happened.  Meanwhile my raiding unit will hit DENIS and remove the military-industrial security state there.

Both task forces have been packed into transports and are ready to go.



The two striketeams travel together for an entire second before breaking off in different directions.





Wait, what?

DO YOU ROBOTS NOT SEE THE WARP JAMMER?!  As you can see this system is quite clearly under AI control.  Nothing to see here, move along.  And tell the sniper guardian to stop shooting at the...sigh.



By unloading my entire transport full of raiding ships at once, I can drain the AI's warp grid!  After all, we all know how high the price for energy is these days.  My plan is flawless!



The Setrve op has run into a problem.  Apparently the transport carrying the construction ships went pop before it could make the jump.  Right in range of two MKIV MLRS Guard Posts.

The only survivor was the remains rebuilder.  How very helpful.



But hey, AIP is all the way down to 30 now!  It's as if I have only popped a single command station.  If 10 is "The humans don't exist the AI has already won the war", then would 30 be "There are ants crawling around my house, how annoying"?





In retaliation for the death of my construction ships my fleetball lashes out at the MKIII force field protecting one of the guard posts, while ignoring the guard post that doesn't have a force field protecting it.





The Geminorum warp jammer is now a smouldering ruin.  But all the attackers are dead courtesy of the sniper turrets and hey the remains rebuilder is still alive!

Yeah nice try robots.





Erm, wow.  I seriously lost that many ships attacking the force field?  How big is a Reprisal Level 3 wave compared to a normal one?

Well, it's almost dead, might as well finish the job.



And we just lost the last few space tanks and one of the MKI Bomber Starships.  The only fleetships remaining are the MLRSs.  With the fodder gone I cannot put my MKIII starships at risk.  That blasted guard post will have to wait.  I'm ordering a strategic withdraw.  All units, assume formation and proceed to Iota Pegasi as a group.



Looks like the AI Special Forces has set up an ambush at Iota Pegasi, consisting mostly of riot starships and beam guardians.  Glad to see the enemy forces aren't equipped for task for once.  All ships, maintain formation and otherwise fire at will.  With all our combined firepower, we'll stand a better chance together.

(also what's with the AI special forces and its obsession with Riot Starships?)









And so the fleet lives to fight another day.





...oh joy.  This is a large wave even by my current standards.  For AIP 30 this is a monster.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #40 on: August 25, 2014, 03:03:51 pm »
A level 1 Reprisal is roughly in the ballpark of a normal AI wave, and it "saves up" salvage until it has enough for one of those (and then launches it, however big it got, after something like 1.5 or 3 minutes).  Each level after that is twice the size of the previous.

When you lower AIP you lower the size of a normal AI wave, but not the amount of saved salvage the AI has.  So it can quickly drop the "bar" way below the stored level, and potentially if you're also taking significant casualties at the same time...

Still, nothing a few BombBots can't handle.
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Offline Alex Heartnet

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #41 on: August 29, 2014, 03:45:30 pm »
Out of curiosity...



Both AIs should be Mad Bombers, right?

Quote from: ArcenWiki
Better Than Trelawney (Reveal Random AI Types - added in 4.049)

...who or what is Trelawney?  ???









...wut?





Quote from: Prerelease 7.047 Beltsander of Worlds MKII
Corrected Mad Bomber tooltip to include that it likes to send Plasma Siege Starships, as well as Bomber Starships.
Thanks to Alex Heartnet for pointing out the need.

I don't even

So this entire change was made off of a faulty assumption on my part?!?

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #42 on: August 29, 2014, 03:52:08 pm »
Well, Mad Bombers do emphasize both of those starships.

But it does appear the AI's been pulling a fast one on you here :)
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Offline Alex Heartnet

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #43 on: September 04, 2014, 09:30:22 pm »


Wait, I can do -what- with a command station?



Huh, this is new to me.



Why oh why would anyone ever want to use a MILITARY command station?  It's better to not let the bad guys reach your command station at all.

Safer for your fleet, too.  Makes autokiting easier.



LIES!  CAKE!  The command station is just FINE I'm just rebuilding it quick!!

whatever I got my fleet ready let's do this





... i assume this horrible-looking ring is the attack wave?

Match up unit strengths to enemy weaknesses.  Tanks, bombers, plasmas, all focus fire on the siege starships.  Frigates, MLRSs, Flagships, Riots, intercept those raiders.  Do not let them escape!

Raiders, raid starships, and autocannons. Withdraw at once.  Your presence is useless here.



What at first looked to be an epic clash turned into a complete one-sided rout.







woooowwww.  Riot ships, continue engaging the enemy, all other vessels withdraw.  This battle has been already decided.





To all ships: Rally at Geminorum.  It's time to show them how the big boys do battle!

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Newbie and the Beast
« Reply #44 on: September 04, 2014, 09:33:07 pm »
To all ships: Rally at Geminorum.  It's time to show them how the big boys do battle!
C'mon Norbank, be a badass just this once.
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