Arcen Games
General Category => AI War Classic => AI War Classic - After Action Reports => Topic started by: Wanderer on February 17, 2012, 02:24:27 am
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So, having beaten my head on the wall a bit lately with AI 10 and wanting a nice calm game, I booted up a dual AI 9 game. The intent here is to play at each level from AI 9 through AI 10 on the exact same seed and have an idea of just how the ramp up is currently, and to determine if I can recommend any tweaks to polish off the incline.
So, how's it going? Not bad. The setup:
40 planet map
AI 9/9 Vanilla / Mine Enthusiast
Special Plots: Schizophrenic
Minor Factions: Dyson Sphere, Rebel colonies and revolts, Zenith Traders.
AIP Increments: 1/30 mins
All expansions
So, I crank myself up a nice little game on a Tree Map, find a decent starting point close to an edge but not in a dead end (which has a Maw, rock on!), and detangle the map. I do a little scouting while building up the starter fleet, and I end up with this:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI9_10-OpeningPosition.gif)
Things start off nice and easy. I wreck the locals a bit. We'll need a map with names on it to make more sense, so bear with the next map, it's from much later, but it's a reference point.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI9_10-2hourmap.gif)
I explore my locals first, and lo and behold, right off my doorstep is a superterminal in a MK II system. Awesome.
Checking out the back corner reveals an ARS in Fraggle Rock, and a Blade Spawner V and Younging Weasel V in Huge, along with an AI Eye. Janeway's got a fortress II in it, and my count of Spire Shield areas is inane.
I start working my way west with the starter fleet after bouncing off two weak waves. The AI has: Space Planes, Blade Spawners, Munitions Boosters, and polarizers. My Maws inhale the blade spawns so no huge deal at this moment. I chew up Shawshank and decide I'm going to chew on the Mk III world (roulette) before I proceed much further. I've decided I'm going to whipping boy on my homeworld while I contain the western flank.
I get my scouts out to Macross and it's got 3 Ion Cannons on it and has a good long run from Craps towards the SuperTerminal and Dyson wormholes. I don't realize this early the Dyson's on Dyson, and AIP is so low I don't notice the reinforcements yet. My little Scout Is only go so far.
My opening research was Warp Sensor, Grav Turret, and Tachyon Turret. Nothing else, I wanted to stay mobile while I poked around. I pound down Roulette, retreating off and on to deal with invasions into Sushi, the homeworld. A couple of grav turrets were all that got dropped on the homeworld at first. Over time I built it up with five turrets here, five there. Eventually it has about 20 snipers, 30 lasers, and 30 basics on it, along with 3 more FFs on the wormhole from SuperTerminal (which I let send in waves until I went east) and a bunch of tractors.
At about 20 minutes in I research Scout IIs, and start looking east deeper. I find the Dyson and decide we need to wake him up and start clearing out the eastern arm so I don't have to brawl my way through, so I shove my scouts in there until one finally lives. Craps has nothing of interest and Kerensky has another ARS, but it's way out of reach.
I decide Macross will definately be my whipping boy with Dyson next door to feed in support units as well. SuperTerminal is going to be ignored for yet a little while longer.
At 25 minutes in I take Shawshank and research Econ IIs. I'm 500 K short of Econ III so I let that build up. While my fleet of MK 1s has been being replenished, I built off a set of Raid I starships. I drive into Fraggle Rock, deciding that's the most important target in the rear, since I've given Roulette a good nerfing. Once I get 500 more K I research Econ III and build one on Shawshank.
Waves are still reasonable and in the 300-400 realm. Because I haven't gate raided yet I'm bouncing back and forth between Raid assault, using my main fleet after ions are dead and moving the raids to the next target (and rebuilding them), and using my main fleet as a mobile defensive unit, because homeworld just can't stand on its own yet.
Along the way after building the earlier turret build, I decide I'm going to try the new lightning turrets. I slap down ten under the FFs on the entry and go back to where I was, cleaning out Fraggle Rock. I eventually pop it and send in a construction unit to start building another Econ III down that way. A wave heads for Sushi so that gets my attention.
I LIKE the new Lightning Turrets. I like them so much I slammed in an entire cap after defending that wave. 40 ship max/burst or not, they chew up little things like it's nobody's business. Hiding under the FF they last long enough for usage too, and at 75% they're nothing to shake a stick at. I'm probably going to drop another 1500 k on them for my whipping boy eventually.
So, I get the ARS on Roulette and it's Blade Spawners. Oh, ROCK. Time to deal with Janeway. I need to Raid the Eye on Huge out before I head for Roulette, so I warp gate raid Roulette so Sushi is taking the brunt (yes, my homeworld) and pound Janeway down. I'm keeping an eye out on Macross to see when I need to deal with Dyson.
Janeway takes a bit, primarily because I'd thought Spire Shields needed supply, they don't. The fortress was easy enough without supply though. :) I had to retreat and deal with a bit of backwash back in Shawshank who's packing 20 basics now for minor annoyances, but otherwise we're good to go. Research is going strong and I'm sitting on a decent supply of K that I'm just waiting for usage. I'm about an hour in now. I research up Maw IIs since they're being so dang useful on defense and offense (damned spawners) and start building them off.
I poke my head into Macross and the Dyson's about done chewing up the locals. It's time to set them free. I start working my Raids through to Dyson, and it takes two tries to get in there and pop both the command station shield post and then the command station with all those enemy dysons hunting down my wee ships. I get 'er done though about 1:15.
Which is when an AIP 100 wave hits. I've popped 4 systems now, plus a gate, plus little things here and there like SF forces. My Raids are in the back working over Huge, and I've got a 257 ship + 880 ship wave coming into Sushi. Well, alright then.
It's blocked easily. I stick the maws under the FFs on the wormhole, leave the main fleet out of range, and let the lightning turrets go to work with other turret support. It chews through all the little guys and I send the main fleet in to deal with the starships who got stuck in the FF pocket.
I start going back to work on the west and realize I'm going to need the whipping boy, and soon. It's time to head east, but I don't want to break the existing blockade on homeworld until I'm ready. I leave Huge and Roulette nerfed and head to Macross to thump it across the back of the head. I get in there, Raids fly out to deal with the ions, and I nerf SuperTerminal's 3/4 guardposts while I micro the raids around.
The raids get done with their job and start getting a little friendly support from Dyson. Perfect. I get my main fleet in there and we mop the floor with Macross. Transport over 5 Engi Is and a colony ship and start building off my new whipping boy. I look at Sushi for a second to figure out my next move and my new station is blown to pieces. Damned space planes. Repeat process, surround with fleet, try again. Much better. I build a Combat I station in Macross.
It's time to get down to business, I need more FFs. Open up HFF Is. Start building out the primary Whipping Boy with 2 FFs on the Ion III/V, 1 FF on the Ion I, 2 more on the Cmd Station, 3 on the wormhole from Craps. 20 Tractors, a string of Grav turrets from entry to any point of interest, and a spare FF on the Dyson FF just in case. That's sucking down Crystal like it was a joke so I've got no real defenses other than the fleet. I send the Raids down to Dyson to clear out everything but the local Ion Cannons (which I still haven't taken yet) and chill out waiting for things to build. Glad I didn't take out SuperTerminal, they sent another wave at Sushi, where my defenses are still sound.
Which was good, I'm getting about 1000 ships this wave. Blocked and stopped, no problem, rebuild the fleet for a few minutes. at 1:30 I decide it's time to make SuperTerminal a neutral and crank up Macross as a full on turret ball. I drop into SuperTerminal, pop the CmdStation, and head Macross for now to defend it in case anything pops in the meanwhile. I drop in a full stack of everything, and then start destroying/moving turrets and extra FFs from Sushi to it. Hardened edge of the shield. If Macross goes, there's nothing behind it to hold onto.
My AIP is ~120 at this point and I'm feeling alright. I ignore SuperTerminal for now, I want to clear out my backfield. I head for Roulette and Huge and crank through them, having raided them into uselessness. At ~1:45 my AIP is 166 and I get a 1700 ship wave. Macross and the Dysons handle it incredibly easily.
Well, alright then, I don't need to save scum. I was still working on Huge when it announced. I get Econ III's built throughout the backfield and start sending all troops from homeworld and the Fabricators to Macross.
AIP is now 181. It's time to start working SuperTerminal while I get some scouting done. I build off a Military I station in ST, drop an FF on each of the exits, a few grav turrets between the ST and the way out, and start going to work. My fleet needs a bit of a build anyway and my science guys are going to work. I build off two Science IIs in Macross, let them go through their routine, and send them (cloaking is nice) into Dyson to get that too. Meanwhile the guys in the back go through the rear planets and I let them soak ST's Knowledge too.
Having had 0 AIP reduction so far I'm inhaling the ST's troops pretty easily, particularly with 10 maws sitting there. For those curious, every 75 AIP reduction increases MK by 1. You're reducing by 2 for each burst of troops, but adding one. It's mostly to mess with the floor. It also does one other thing. My AIP never crossed the 200 threshold, but the AI now has Cutlasses.
This is 5.026, most recent release. Cutlasses got a bit of a boost. They're not super-deadly, at least not with gravity, but you're not laying waste to these guys anymore. Even with 50 Lightning 50 Flak sitting there, they're able to retreat a goodly portion of them. I'm not sure how to block the auto-retreated threat of these guys. Luckily, I'm schizo, so it's not like waves of 2000 of just those are coming in.
But it was a surprise, I hadn't realized it was a big deal. I get my AIP down to around 120 and decide it's time to neuter my neighbors. Which means, I need more firepower if I'm going to knock down wormhole guardposts sometime before the ice age. I research up Bomber II, Bomber III, Fighter II (I meant to do bomber II earlier but misclicked on Fighter II. Literally wasn't worth mentioning till now), Missile Frigate II, and Scout III. I've got exactly 3k left, so I research up Fortresses for K-Raids later and emergency defenses now in case the ST gets out of hand on me (I hadn't figured out exactly how it worked yet for incrementation).
I start nerfing Craps and blow through a huge (500+) ship stack sitting on the other side of the wormhole while my new tech ships start building. I've added Starship Is, Bomber Star Is, and Siege Is to the main fleet now. My Blade Spawners are on their own hotkey and hang out at the edge of the fight.
It's a brawl, but I clear Craps enough to get scouts through finally. I retreat to heal and start doing deeper scouting. I'll give you the update on that soonish. It's about 2:15 now and the map looks like you see above, just with less AIP.
Well, I decide I'm going to lick my wounds and work the ST some more, so I do. While my fleet builds out I just hammer on the ST for 15 minutes, dropping my AIP to 66ish before my fleet's rebuilt. ST is now at MK III units but my upgraded fleet is handing them their butts.
Along the way the traders came through again, so I dropped a Z Gen on homeworld (along with a backup set of armor increasers/reducers and radar jammers) and a full set on the Whipping Boy. None of it's even remotely close to built, and with the cutlasses I REALLY need them to visit again so I can get a black hole generator. My income is ~1500/s of each material, and that's basically keeping the fleet operational. I've only just started to make a profit so I've started to build up the whipping boy's structures. Power's solid for the moment so the ZGen is chilling in the background, waiting for resources.
I brawl my way down to Cyborg, and run into a massive, continuous stream of troops. I check F3 to see what's going on and there's ~2000 ships between free and special forces, just using this as the highway. I soak as much of them as I can, reducing those values by about half (Kerensky really chewed me up a bit) and retreat what's left back to Macross to pick up the rebuilds.
So, for the last hour I really haven't done much but utterly neuter Craps, nerf Kerensky and Cyborg, and clean up a whole stack of enemy free-floaters, gotten in deeper scouting, and reduced my AIP to 69. Hm, alright, that's not exactly nothing.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI9_103HourMap.gif)
So what I'm looking at is ARS's on Kerensky, SolarMoon, and Eridani. Cyborg has a fat stack of fabricators (Armor V, Bombard V, StarBomb IV). There's Co-Processors on Craps (which means I can't K-Raid yet) and Pai Gow.
My next step is to pop Kerensky and hold it for however long I can. Get the ARS, and use the neutral world (I'm not defending it) as a stepping stone to deep strike down to LLama, Ceasar, PaiGow, and Solar Moon, to clear the way for my scouts to get that much deeper. Blackjack and Eridani have Eyes on them, and PaiGow has both a fortress and a SuperFortress on it.
So, I expect the next hour or two will simply be deep space combat, working these systems down to nothing and opening the doors to whatever I'm looking to do. I'm hoping to find the other two Co-Processors soon so I can break the supply lock on Craps and K-Raid it. My guess is AI homeworlds are Canopus and Riker, but we'll see. It might be Riker and Davion/Liao but that's unlikely. Threat's low, power's good, resources are taking a pounding but I'm back down to 400-500 ship waves so I'm pretty sound on the whipping boy. I've got a ton of Dyson allies in the backfield from when I took SuperTerminal for a while so I've got a 'spare' force in the back if any of those cutlasses actually do sneak in.
Research plans are to get Military IIIs up for the whipping boy +100% boost to turrets, and then will make rest of my decisions based on what I find in Kerensky and SolarMoon's ARS.
I'll be back. Is it bad that I'm considering AI 9 a 'relaxed' game? The super-Terminal's nice but Macross could handle the 190 AIP I'd be at normally right now. Really, I'm not entirely sure giving the AI cutlasses to reduce AIP was in my favor. I'm really, really, really not that sure.
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Wow, after all that Diff 10 stuff you're just strolling through 9 :) I'm wondering if wave sizes need a bit of a general buff after all the various changes in the last few weeks that have buffed the players.
Great read, as always; I'm just hoping the AI will make some kind of comeback and not get slain in its sleep at AIP < 100 ;)
Glad to hear that lightning turrets are doing right by you. They may be my favorite (shooty) turret, now.
And glad to hear the cutlasses have gained a bit of respect :)
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I'm wondering if wave sizes need a bit of a general buff after all the various changes in the last few weeks that have buffed the players.
I'm not entirely sure I'm the right one to ask that. Ask someone who usually plays at 7/7 would be my guess. I can tell you they're blessed WEAK at 100 AIP to me at 9/9. That may have more to do with the fact that I'm waaaay too used to handling 10/10 at this point though.
Great read, as always; I'm just hoping the AI will make some kind of comeback and not get slain in its sleep at AIP < 100 ;)
If it wasn't for the SuperTerminal I'd be deep scouting/raiding out Data Centers, and there's two I've found and just didn't mention. It's become a bit of a habit to never let AIP get over 150 for long.
My guess is the SuperTerminal will probably have done me more harm then good in the long run because of the massively raised floor and early extra unit. I might bring up Riot IIs and test them out to see if I can shutdown the Cutlass. They'll be getting ANOTHER extra unit shortly just because of the increase/decrease volume.
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I can tell you they're blessed WEAK at 100 AIP to me at 9/9.
Yea, that's kind of what concerns me... or, rather, it's a combination of how easy (for you, at least) it is at 100 AIP and how (relatively?) easy it's been for you to keep AIP from going all that much higher than that.
That may have more to do with the fact that I'm waaaay too used to handling 10/10 at this point though.
That's the other side of what concerns me: 10/10 isn't meant to be "handled", it's meant to be feared ;) Which I think it's still basically doing, aside from the first few waves.
Generally speaking, what I'm thinking would be good is that the really intense/insane players could get a very stiff challenge out of 9.6, really push the envelope on 9.8, and basically die before mid-game (but not really early, if they play well) on 10/10. Of course, you're only on 9 here so maybe that's ok, we'll see.
My guess is the SuperTerminal will probably have done me more harm then good in the long run because of the massively raised floor and early extra unit. I might bring up Riot IIs and test them out to see if I can shutdown the Cutlass. They'll be getting ANOTHER extra unit shortly just because of the increase/decrease volume.
Definitely interested in seeing what works against the cutlass. My guess is it will always involve fairly large concentration of (preferably mkIII) gravs.
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I can tell you they're blessed WEAK at 100 AIP to me at 9/9.
Yea, that's kind of what concerns me... or, rather, it's a combination of how easy (for you, at least) it is at 100 AIP and how (relatively?) easy it's been for you to keep AIP from going all that much higher than that.
When I jump a level I may pop the ST early and not use it, to get a 'fair fight' out of the AI. I don't want that to be the excuse of a crutch. 8) Really though I've basically ignored it as I've wandered around for the last 2 and a half hours and my whipping boy is laughing at anyone coming in. I haven't had to beef it up since I first built it. The Dyson support is a chunk of it, but that cost me 20 AIP early to get so it's a catch-22 there. I'm at 134 now (just popped a few data terminals I've passed by) and I don't even pay attention when waves hit. My troops go there from the homeworld construction farms, but they're set to park, not FRD, when they get there. I don't want them dying when I go back to get reinforcements for the main fleet.
Well, that's part of why I wanted to do this, to see the 'slope' of difficulty.
As a side note, you'll notice I haven't posted a WIN against 10/10 since that first time... ;) It's kicking my arse around, don't worry about that. The other reason I wanted to do this, to build up to facing 10/10 waves. I think my expectations are just way higher as to volume of inbounds, so my defensive aggression is built around a much more intense foe.
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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.
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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.
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 :)
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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.
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 :)
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. :-)
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Starting position:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI9_103HourMap-1.gif)
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:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI9_10-5andahalfhours.gif)
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:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/KRaidinitialDefense.gif)
System overview:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/KRaidRange.gif)
At first, things went fine.
When we got to things looking like this, things went afoul:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/K-RaidAttackString.gif)
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.
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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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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...
That's great news. Anti-Starships have always been an annoyance to me. Feels like a wasted Fabricator. What ARE they supposed to hit? I'm actually kind of serious about that. I can't find a single ship they can shoot at.
I've gotten better with the K-Raids, and figured out a few things. Usually I want distance so the snipers can get their work done on the bombers before anything else wastes shots on Polycrystal. However, with Blade Spawners out, I wanted to get closer. I haven't tried parking directly on top of the command center yet but I moved to put the fortresses in range.
The last two hours of this fight have been nothing but K-Raids and the taking of Cyborg. Cyborg fell pretty easily. Zenith Bombard V, Starship Bomber IV, and Armor Vs. The AI's gotten Anti-Armor ships a while ago I didn't mention mostly because they basically just counter my Armor ships, so that's alright. I've dug in a decent amount of FFs (even opened up standard IIs) on Cyborg to not lose the Fabricators.
After that I spent the time K-Raiding from Solar Moon into 3 areas with 3*Fortress, 35 snipers, 9 HBCs, 50 Basics and my 20 Blade Spawners. That took a bit (about 30 minutes per raid). The volume of firepower is just nuts to deal with the blade spawners. The next time I try I'm going to see about getting a ton of shortrange turrets up and parking on top of the CmdStation to see if that will require less resources. I've also researched up and produced my Raid IIIs in anticipation of striking down towards Kirk. It's 8:15 now.
Regarding Zenith Bombard Vs:
They're 6400/64000 to build, cap at 12 (normal, 1 HW), and DPS at 30,000 each for 360,000 by cap, which costs 844,800 materials by cap.
By comparison, the Bomber Starship MK I is 80000/8000, cap at 4, and dps at DPS at 70,000 for 280,000 by cap, which costs 352,000 materials by cap.
On a one to one basis though, the Bomber Starship is kicking the MK V's Zenith Bombard's butt for nearly the same price. I don't think the power of the bombard should be increased, but the price isn't viable in damage comparisons. The bombards bonuses of *2 for Heavy, structural, and Ultra-Heavy are limited in usage.
There's a Range vs. Speed argument that the two argue over, so I'm leaving those out as a moot point. One's a support fire craft and the other's a raider. I'm just not convinced the Bombard is balanced price-wise. We already know it's a powerful ship, particularly in AI hands. I think the caps could use a minor adjustment as well.
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I use them to kill Spire Starships and Zenith Starships. That's all they are good for.
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On mkI bomber starships vs mkV bombards: higher mark stuff is always way more expensive; and mkV stuff is particularly ridiculous. Partly it's a matter of "we can barely even make this tech at all, we had to capture an intact factory to pull it off".
And Bombards are rather expensive to begin with.
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Re: Anti-Starship Vs, I'm just making those Spider Vs since that's what they are internally before the special overrides are set, and the AS-V's special role in the game (while it was once huge) is long, long gone.
Re: the nomination of spiders for worst ship: I'm not sure how much of a buff they really need.
Their cap-health is at the very flimsiest end (5M) and I'll go ahead and double that since they aren't really supposed to be as fragile as eyebots, etc.
Their cap-DPS actually looks fairly respectable: 39k non-bonus, 235k bonus (on epic combat style). Only 9 fleet ship types have a higher cap-bonus-dps, and 3 of those are self-destructers. Bonus against Light means vs Fighters, against UltraLight means vs Raid Starships, against Swarmer and CloseCombat means most melee ships, and a bunch of other types fall under those 4 categories too.
Their cap-Engine-DPS was way lower than competitive ED sources, so I'm buffing that to bring it up to par-ish. But by the numbers these guys wouldn't be bad in blob-combat even if they had 0 ED.
Move-speed is a bit on the slow side, but not abysmally so.
Energy cost is quite low. m+c (or, rather, c) cost is also really low, lower than fighters.
So... why are they so bad, again? :)
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Re: Anti-Starship Vs, I'm just making those Spider Vs since that's what they are internally before the special overrides are set, and the AS-V's special role in the game (while it was once huge) is long, long gone.
Re: the nomination of spiders for worst ship: I'm not sure how much of a buff they really need.
Their cap-health is at the very flimsiest end (5M) and I'll go ahead and double that since they aren't really supposed to be as fragile as eyebots, etc.
Their cap-DPS actually looks fairly respectable: 39k non-bonus, 235k bonus (on epic combat style). Only 9 fleet ship types have a higher cap-bonus-dps, and 3 of those are self-destructers. Bonus against Light means vs Fighters, against UltraLight means vs Raid Starships, against Swarmer and CloseCombat means most melee ships, and a bunch of other types fall under those 4 categories too.
Their cap-Engine-DPS was way lower than competitive ED sources, so I'm buffing that to bring it up to par-ish. But by the numbers these guys wouldn't be bad in blob-combat even if they had 0 ED.
Move-speed is a bit on the slow side, but not abysmally so.
Energy cost is quite low. m+c (or, rather, c) cost is also really low, lower than fighters.
So... why are they so bad, again? :)
I think it was frustration from the AS Vs more then an actual review of the Spider itself. If the Mk V was useless, I expected I-IV to be equivalently pointless. I'm also not usually a fan of engine damage except concentrated from long range, since the idea is to stall out an enemy until you can get around to them. The Siege is really the only ED I like using, because the AoE of it stalls out a vector, where as spider turrets and the like ping everybody around town equally.
I'll recheck my concerns with it and pop into the appropriate thread when I get a chance.
EDIT: On a side note... who cares what gets a bonus against fighters? They're nothing more then cannon fodder. I certainly don't need an ED using unit to care about stalling out fighters.
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So, no maps at the moment, just words and a few oneoff screenies, I'm sitting here waiting on a rebuild after a few massive waves. It was around 8:15 when I left off and I decided I was going to go neuter Kirk. So, I bring the fleet down into Eridani, neuter the entire system, and sit my fleet on the wormhole into Kirk. I setup my engineer repair corps off to the side under cloakers, and begin raiding Kirk.
Good grief. Talk about waves. AIP was around 220-230 and 700 ship MK IV waves are after me. Sometimes they'd come through, sometimes they'd just SIT there. Little fegs. I'd retreat to bait them through to Eridani with the raiders hiding, let the raid come in, hammer on them, and repeat.
Eventually I got all but the shield spire guardpost and the 9 wormhole guardposts down. It took about an hour, with reinforcements and baiting and the like. Now, I need to head for Arrakkis. A rebel colony has revolted. I could use the firepower and I've been ignoring them for about 30 minutes. I make my way across Cyborg and head for Arrakkis.
I neuter Ceaesar's Wormhole posts before I head into Arrakkis, figuring I really don't need the cross border aggression. Then I take Arrakkis with very little trouble, and setup another Econ II on it, with minimal defenses. I hang out for my rebel ships and head back to Cyborg, and evaluation my options. It's now closing on 10:00.
I need to pop the CSG-Ds before popping the A against the core world does any good. I've done what I can here for the moment. I head for Llama. It's got a MK IV Counterstrike on it. Joy.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/CounterstrikeMkIV.gif)
Well, alright then. I pop down some research stations, neuter one of the local systems while I wait to head for Arrakkis to lower chances of aggression on Llama, take out the CSG-D, and head for Arrakkis with about 8 mins left. En route, a CPA lights up, around 1400 ships. Well, at least I'll be there to defend the locals.
I'm also getting raids like this, which got me to open up Riot IIs for stunning at the gates.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/WaveExample.gif)
We stop the CPA on Arrakkis and I don't lose much mostly because I stayed back and let them come to me, so they came in piecemeal. Dragged two Riot IIs along with me here. Stunning the MK IVs also helped a goodly bit and about the time we're done cleaning that up the CPA starts landing. I clean up the inbounds to Arrakkis and then have to make a choice. Head for Canopus which has adequate defenses and help them or protect SolarMoon which is going to flash fry.
That's not a choice. I head for Canopus. :) I build a spare colony ship for SolarMoon on Arrakkis and I'll pick it up on my way back up. I clean up the threat against Canopus, and head back to SolarMoon which has died again. Part of the CPA spawned in one of the worlds behind it and just blew through it. No biggie, rebuild the Econ II sitting there, clean up, and move on. I'm now dragging a Colony Ship, 6-10 Engi Is, and a Mobile Builder ina transport protected by two cloakers everywhere I go with the main fleets.
It's just shy of the 11th hour. It's time to start making moves on the homeworld. Welcome to savescum land. Gah. I had no idea what I was in for with the raid + cpa combination.
When I crack the first ARS, I always get Autobombers. Just so I can stop repeating myself as I go through this list... :)
Attempt 1)
I save, figuring this should be ugly, before I take Eridani. I slam into Eridani, drop a Mil I on it, and force a raid to head through by ducking into Eridani and waking up the locals, so I can try to get the fleet through.
It works, I lose about half my Raid ships, and the raid + most of the ships in Kirk head into Eridani at me. I've got about 2/3s of my fleet left, mostly high marks. I drop into Kirk and beeline with the raids for Earth. We hit the gate and my raids get out. They don't even make it to the Raid Engine before dying on the cold storage over there. Most of what's left of my main fleet is retreating and a 1500+ CPA is about to be released. I get steamrolled.
Well, crap.
Attempt 2)
Same plan, but leave the fleet at Eridani with the Mil I support to catch the backwash from the raid attempt. I can't even get off the gate from Kirk because of the MK V Gravity Rippers. I catch the backwash + CPA and get steamrolled. Cyborg is flattened, Arrakkis is flattened, all I've got left is the homeworlds behind the Whipping Boy. No Bueno. I've got nothing for the loss.
Attempt 3) Trying to use Autobombers.
I shut off the warp gates and move my starship constructors and space docks to Cyborg before doing anything else. I figure I need to do this anyway, so I resave after moving the construction facilities in general. I move the engineers from homeworld down as well, and cleanup a few that were hiding in the back (I've been running tight between Is and IIs. May need to open IIIs).
That done, I keep my entire fleet intact and try a streaming assault into Kirk from Eridani with Autobombers. This is ludicrous. They can barely kill MK V Missile Frigates when they're alone (took 5/6 of them). They can do nothing pouring into the hole when the Raid is just sitting there shooting at them one at a time. A waste of energy.
Attempt 4)
Mad Rush. Drop two Fortresses on Cyborg to help it defend itself from the CPA and a Mil I complex. Take the fleet and bumrush Earth. Primary target: Raid Post. It ALMOST works. But yeah, no. the Mk IV raid pours through Cyborg behind me and with support from the CPA rips through the front of the whipping boy before being finally stopped by the Dyson Brigade. I was curious.
Alright, this isn't working. Step back and rethink the plan.
I decide before I take down the AI HW I need to get in more K-Raiding. I head over to LLama, where I recently popped the CSG-D, and start setting up K-Raids on top of the CMDStations. That works a lot better. The defense looked like this, after I stole a bunch of Lightning Is from the whipping boy.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/ShortRangeK-Raid.gif)
This worked pretty well and netted me 9000 K. I couldn't get the last world because the CoProcessor screwed up supply and I'm not ready to deal with the other AI HW yet.
9k gives me enough for another Tier III/IV ship. I've got nothing that's 'amazing' and my Maws are already upgraded sometime in the last hour. I also opened up Flagships for more gunning support. It still wasn't enough for earlier. I need something with a broader based build. Tier III/IV Autobombs will be pointless. What the heck am I gonna K up to make all the difference? If only I could shove a Mil III station up their... wait, I can.
Research out to Mil IIIs. I decide I'm going to move the whipping boy, and soak the Raid Engine for a while. I'm gonna have to be quick about this. Setup a Mil III on Cyborg since it could use it and then head for Kirk. I slam Eridani enroute and drop a fast econ II on it, but that's not the primary.
I send the fleet into Kirk. I've got *1* minute to clean house and get myself setup. Immediately drop another colony ship as a Mil III behind the wormhole and get my 10+ engis working on it. Well, right after my raid starships suicide their way to the cmd station on Kirk, anyway. I got two back from that run. Worth it.
Crash through the locals with my 2x firepower, and get ready for the wave with about 5 seconds to spare. I start building off what few turrets I have kicking around (mostly my K-Raid turrets. 15 Snipers, 100 Basic IIIs, a few gravs, a FF II) and use the fleet for the first wave defense. It works like a charm, I lost maybe 120 ships. Rock this can work, but I've gotta move. Drop 50 Lightning Is on the wormhole and go steal a few FFs from all over the place. Get my Riot IIs under guard and in place and supported by a bunch of tractors. This is chewing into my econ reasonably fast but not horribly. Macross takes a wave while this is going on, then so does Kirk.
GAH! Raid Engine + wave at the same time. I'm not ready!!!! Head for Macross, steal all their snipers, chuck them into place on Kirk. c'mon engineers, move it move... wait, why are there only two of you? Dangit! Build some more. ~900 fleet ships left. Head for Cyborg and load up the transport squad, and start shipping replacements down (about 300 of them). Econ's taking a beating, 400k right now and dropping fast. We need to move.
Cyborgs got 7 Raids on it. Ah, almost enough, wait for the other two... wait, they're on Kirk. D'oh. Send them to Cyborg so I have a full flock of 9 near the homeworlds. Steal all the Lightning IIs and Flak Is from Macross, and drop them on Kirk. Try to figure out why I'm short FFs, and realize I got a little nuts in the backfield. Steal two more FF Is from the back and drop them on Kirk's entry wormhole. Kirk gets a wave, and they're coming in from Desperado. D'oh, well, only Mk IIs. Thump them over the head with the fleet. I guess I need to deal with that, but not yet.
Raid Engine attacks are landing every *4* minutes while this is occurring. This is all happening at what feels like the speed of sound.
I take the Raid Starships up to Craps and blow the warp gate. I debate on taking the system and remember the co-processor is still there so no point. I run for it with the raid starships back to Kirk while the Dyson Crew does a cleanup in aisle 2. I steal all my remaining turrets and wormhole forcefields from Macross, leaving just the tractor turrets on the wormhole. I figure the Dyson crew can keep me safe from random incursions and Cyborg's going to take the brunt of any serious inbounds, being the cutoff system.
I plant all my turrets on Kirk and wipe out my economy doing it. The only turrets I don't drop there are on other worlds as spot defenders, and only Canopus and Cyborg have any serious turreting. Basics I, II, and III, lighting I and II, Flak I, MLRS I, LRMs I, Laser Is, about 60 snipers. and the fleet. I take the Raid Starships into Desperado and clean house. Enough of the dual point wave attacks down here.
Send in the colony ship after my fleet pops its head in the door to clean up the wormhole hangers and start a quick build. Space Planes still hanging around pop it. Send the BladeSpawner/Bombard crew in to cover the next rebuild and they flatten the space planes nice and quick. There's a Warbird and a Translocator factory in here. Nice, but expensive. I try anyway.
Things are finally stabilizing on Kirk with my fleet + turret power (x2!) handling the Raid Engine's constant assault. I pull the fleet back to see if the turret wall + Riots can handle it. They can't. Alright, my fleet's basically stuck here. Now what?
Save.
I need options and I need to be able to handle the CPA when it blows. I won't bore you with the effects me trying that once had. Either I held the door to Kirk or I held the galaxy.
I have fortresses and Mil III stations waiting to be placed. Drop an Econ II in Kerensky now that it's not wave bait. Swap Cyborg for a Mil III. Two Fortresses on Cyborg, two on Kirk. Swap the Mil III in on Canopus. I needed to do Solar Moon and Arrakkis too but we'll get back to that. Econ III on Desperado since it's protected. Get that stabilized and wait about 40-45 minutes for the forts to build while reinforcing Kirk now and then. Even with forts, Kirk can't hold on its own, but now I can handle a CPA on Cyborg without getting flatlined.
I can't build warbirds yet so I turn that off, forts are more important than raiders.
Finally, I get the prep done. I forget to swap a few things around like Solar and Arrakkis from Econ II to Mil III (because I didn't realize the econ difference was minimal. 64 on the Mil III vs. 80 on the Econ II).
Hm. Riot Is with Tractor Beams. Shield Bearers. I have a plan! Group them together, send them briefly into Earth and have them drag me back a few hundred wormhole hangers.
I lost 2 of the riot Is and most of the shield bearers in about 2 seconds. Yeah, ow. The fleet wrecks my new friends though. Repeat again to clear the wormhole for the raid starships. CPA igniting shortly. AIP is currently 287. I don't dare risk getting Mk V homeworld backwash from a raid right now, that's a HUGE CPA coming alongside the Raid Engine. It'll wait.
We handle the 5000+ (4 carriers of 1k each) ships of mixxed MK II and IV in Kirk while small pockets of 300 ships or so wander into Arrakkis and SolarMoon. I've got an Autosave just as LLama is being hit so I slam together a Mil III on that just to make me a little less 'all over the place'.
I lost both fortresses on Kirk but we held. Awesome. Check the other side of the wormhole and there's a few token defenders. Do another Raid I tractor pull and send the raids through.
They survive the mass driver long enough to finally KILL the !@#!@#!!!!! Raid Engine! Rock ON. They don't even get CLOSE to the CPA driver. My fleet is in tatters (maybe 500 of the main fleet left) and my econ's taken a beating.
Well, Kirk can whipping boy the standard waves, just not the Mk IV waves from the engine. That'll work, time to go cleanup. I get Arrakkis back and drop a Mil III on it and Solar Moon. I hang around, waiting for rebel replacements, and truck back up to Cyborg for the rest of my squad.
We hang around a bit and my economy starts to feel a little more sane. With reinforcements and my long range squad back at full strength, I clean out the threat against Canopus and then head to Cyborg to finish refilling. The homeworld is reinforcing but I can deal with backwash if I'm careful. With the shield bearers my Riot Is will live long enough to do gate clearances. I finish figuring out what cmd stations to put where and bring the newly refilled fleet back down to Kirk.
I've got 9,750 K to work with if I need it, and I'm debating on what to use it on. Nothing seems 'need to have' so I may just sit on it awhile. Riot IIIs to backup the Riot Is on wormhole pulls might be nice. Shield Bearer III/IV would also assist the I's to live longer, and be more versatile in supporting the main fleet as well. Counter-Missile could be handy on the whipping boy to protect against the unstunnable Missile Frigates. I'm just not sure.
While I was gone, the CPA counter reset on me. My next visit triggers another one, so I'm going to make sure my raids are ready before I trigger it. Gametime is 13:39. I'm running a little behind, but that's alright. I'm learning still. :)
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Note to self: When AI Command station falls and waves are hitting 2k+, you're now fighting continuous CPAs until you get a whipping boy to work again. You cannot use the AI Command AS the whipping boy after you've killed it.
OW.
Just OW.
New plan.
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A-ha! Now that's more like it, Diff 9 AI ;)
Riot Is with Tractor Beams. Shield Bearers. I have a plan!
I love Utility units :)
Were there no actual warp gates on the AI HW? Just the exo wormhole?
All in all, stellar play; it's particularly fun to see things I didn't anticipate being useful.
FYI, those warbird starships aren't very good in 5.026. Those and Beam Starships are moving up in 5.027.
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I'm wondering if wave sizes need a bit of a general buff after all the various changes in the last few weeks that have buffed the players.
I'm not entirely sure I'm the right one to ask that. Ask someone who usually plays at 7/7 would be my guess. I can tell you they're blessed WEAK at 100 AIP to me at 9/9. That may have more to do with the fact that I'm waaaay too used to handling 10/10 at this point though.
As someone who usually plays difficulty 7-8, I can say that yes, wave sizes seem a bit small. I think maybe a small overall buff in wave sizes may be in order. This should be combined with a decrease in wave rate. I think that would help out with the "you get locked down even mid game" effect that many games seem to devolve into.
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Just wanted to say, only you could consider diff 9 a stroll in the park. I play on 8 most of the time and find it challenging. Kudos to you. I look forward to reading more of these in the future
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Heh, harsh map setup, but good way of dealing with it. Forgot riots even had tractors. Also wonder what would happen if you kept triggering the CPA post repeatedly. Is it possible to deplete the entire galaxy of ships?
And yeah, diff 9 is fairly tame after spending a substantial amount of time on 10. Nine out of ten doctors recommend mark i waves instead of mark ii.
re: autobombs, the best way I've found to use them is to set up a few spacedocks on the whipping boy, drop a few engineers for the docks, and just have them set to pump out a stream on frd. They're really not that good if you set them to frd into an ai planet, but they're great at doing AOE damage to waves since they come in all bunched up. And once you set it up it runs forever.
(I also do a thing where I prioritize building higher marks (i.e. queue up 10 mark iii, 5 mark ii, 1 mark i on the docks), although I'm not sure how much that helps, if any)
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Heh, harsh map setup, but good way of dealing with it. Forgot riots even had tractors. Also wonder what would happen if you kept triggering the CPA post repeatedly. Is it possible to deplete the entire galaxy of ships?
No, because then the waves will exo-galaxy spawn.
@Keith: No, there is no warp gate in the AI Homeworld. There's a Warp Gate Guardian which is what I'm assuming is allowing me to whipping boy it. I have to get back to that game but my weekend was crazy.
And yeah, diff 9 is fairly tame after spending a substantial amount of time on 10. Nine out of ten doctors recommend mark i waves instead of mark ii.
No joke. I think that's really what ups the ante between AI 9.8 and AI 10. Depending on how well that goes I may try a 10/9.8 game.
re: autobombs, the best way I've found to use them is to set up a few spacedocks on the whipping boy, drop a few engineers for the docks, and just have them set to pump out a stream on frd. They're really not that good if you set them to frd into an ai planet, but they're great at doing AOE damage to waves since they come in all bunched up. And once you set it up it runs forever.
Yeah, I'd thought about that but when you start using warp gates for Space Docks that fails. It's all good though, I've moved my main production facilities, so I will most likely do that. Thanks for the recommendation that it's as functional as I'd expected.
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(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI9YouWin.gif)
Woot.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI9FinalMap.gif)
So, I grabbed my save from before I went into Earth to pop the command center. I handle the inbound CPA and rebuild up to the point of attacking the system. I get my fleet back intact and I'm barely able to raid the Raid Engine in the meanwhile. I can't seem to get near the CPA engine no matter how hard I try, and I'm going bonkers pulling back 50-100 ships at a time with the Riot Is.
I setup the autobombs on the whipping boy and they're VERY effective at laying into the opening of a wave. Good call on that, thanks.
Eventually I get rebuilt and a normal CPA fires up at around 14:00. I clean up the mess that leaves and get down to Earth again. I clear the wormhole with Riot Is to a reasonable level and send in the troops. There's a fortress under the FF covering the homecommand station, but otherwise there's not much left here I'm concerned about. With the Fleet on the wormhole taking most of the fire, I pillage the place with my raid starships. they die on a fort on the opposite side of the system but they take that guard post with 'em.
I nerf the system and leave just the command station intact (I forgot to clear the wormhole guardposts, all 5 of them, though) after cleaning up all the locals. Time to move for Riker. I head back to Cyborg, and rebuild again. About 14:20 I head east.
I decide I'm going to take a world one world away from the coreworld. That would be Krupp. Tau is easy to drop and I fully neuter it while I raid Three Kings. Three Kings is a real piece of work. Tau wormhole is central, and the exit wormhole is in the SE. There's a gravity guardian sitting on top of the Orbital Mass Driver behind a ff down that way, so my raids literally cannot get to the blasted thing before they die a horrible death. There's two Fortresses in here as well, a II and a III, and they bracket the entry wormhole at the extreme edge of their range. You can get in small groups but if you bring in a large mass they flatten the edges.
It also has an Eye. And about 10 guardposts.
Good grief.
I rebuilt the factory world on Krupp and get engineers moved over and the like. Whipping boy is going strong as long as I don't pop the Cmd Station they hit it just fine. I start trying to raid Three Kings but it's just too much between the double fortresses and that Mass Driver. I ship in a full fleet of bombers and for once the hidden space planes are in my favor. As long as I bring in 300 units or so I'm free and clear of the eye. I blow apart the northern fortress first. The southern one has a lot of firepower on it and I can't quite reach it, so I rebuild and reraid the north side of Three Kings. When I retreat or rebuild I pull fully back to Krupp to keep the core world off alert.
Eventually I'm able to pop most of the system but I can't quite reach the guardpost that's under the FF. The gravity is just too much. Finally I remember I have Rebel Ships, who ignore gravity. About time, dum dum! Send them in and that's dealt with, along with the nearby MLRS post, very easily. Woot woot. Time for the final system.
I rebuild and head back down at around 15:15 or so. This system has two Neinzul spawners, 2 Fortresses, one of which is on the cmd station and under two FF Vs, the other has a heavy beam post next to it which chews up any and all raid SSs, and a Forfield guardpost. The rest of the posts are negligible annoyances.
I head in and clear the opening wormhole. While we're dealing with the first of the major waves that are pouring in from all over the planet one of the blades apparently triggered the first of the spawners. I Max speed the entire fleet at that post to keep it from spawning again. While we're cleaning up the cockroaches, the other one goes. I ship the Bomber Starships up there and they take that out again as it's still spawning extra roaches. All the shields and Fortresses are on the extreme left side of the system, so we clean out the place. Now to figure out how to handle this. I take the bombers and starships up against the beam cannon post/ff/fortress in the upper left. They get hammered to itsy bitsy pieces but thelast 90 or so are able to pop the beam cannon post and then the fortress.
Head all the way home for reinforcements. Wait for them to build as well as starship replacements.
Head all the way back. We conquer the ff guard post first now that the fortress covering its approach is dead and i've got room to move. With the gravity guardian again under 2 FFs and a fortress near the cmd center, blades are useless, and I can't get the raids near it. Another pure bomber attack, with the raids coming in from behind. The raids died a sorry death but eventually we clear the FFs, Fortress, 100 or so core ships, and the cmd center. Kaboom. Time to finish the job on Earth.
I get to Earth and there's 1000 or so core ships that have reinforced the Homeworld. Half of them are on the gate at the wormhole guardposts. Meh, there's no reason to drag this out. Send the entire fleet in and beeline at the cmd center. ANOTHER dang gravity guardian. I get what's left of my rebels to concentrate on it, and it's a free pass at the cmd center. POP. Bye bye!
Now, to do it again on 9.3 with the same settings. :D
Edit: I forgot to mention, the next special ship the AI got was eyebots. The one research I did was Missile Counters and dropped them all over the place so I didn't end up eating Eyebot raids continuously. Other than that, I didn't even remember to build research stations on Krupp. I just didn't need them.
Edit 2: The Warp Gate was IN the Command Center on homeworlds, which is what I'd missed. Ah well.
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9.3 begun. Opening notes:
Tried Scout Starship II, figuring their speed would allow them to get deeper. The Scout Is go further. Well, it was only 250 K to open them and try them (and a little time), but what a waste.
9.3 AIs start at Tech II. It's not 10, it's anything over 9.
The Dyson and the SuperTerminal are not where they were. My closest ARS is still in Fraggle Rock in the 'backfield', and instead of Weasel Vs the Fab is a Fighter V. Might be handy.
No more easy outs in the beginning. Now we fight! 8)
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Current Status:
Time: 4:08
Worlds: 8
AIP: 173
Ships: Fighter I, Bomber I/II/III, Missile I, Maw I/II/III, Armor I/II, Blade Spawner I/II/III, Scout Fleet I/II, Scout Starship I/II, Riot II, Raid I/II, Engineers II, Starships (The Rest) I.
Whipping Boy Erected
Unlocks: Grav, Tachyon, Warp Sensor, Econ II/III, Blade Spawn III, Bomber II/III, Maw II/III, Fortress I, Riot II
This game started out a bit differently than last time. Twycross, the world that had the SuperTerminal last time, was just a dead system off the port bow. This gave me some options. A little deeper scouting showed that Macross, not Craps, had the Co-Processor. That kills supply unless I'm willing to pop an extra 20 AIP to no purpose for a long time. My immediate world will end at Twycross.
Here's the 2 hour map so you have a reference point.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI932hrmap.gif)
So, I need econ because it's hurting a bit deflecting these waves. I neuter the level III Roulette before I take anything, there's an Eye in the back in Huge, and an ARS in Fraggle Rock again. Alright, cool. I pop Shawshank after researching Econ II, which is the end of my researchables at this time. I've got grav, warp sensor, Tachyon, Scout II, Econ II, Bomber and Maw II open off the homeworld's research. Once I get the research from Shawshank I can open Econ IIIs. I warp gate raid Roulette and Janeway, while my fleet cleans up Fraggle Rock and heads back when the token 10 snipers and 5 basics can't handle the leftovers. I don't take Fraggle yet though, it's just prepped for later. I also gate raid it. Now, everything's coming in via Twycross.
I head to Twycross with the fleet and take the system. I immediately begin prepping the whipping boy, which was good... because a double wave of about 600 ships is coming in already. This won't be pretty, and it's only getting an Econ II for the moment. I research III once I get enough research from Shawshank and both areas get an Econ III. I need the income.
With a couple of dozen snipers for support my fleet holds off the inbounds on Twycross. Tech II Bladespawners were hurting but we got there.
While the rebuilds I keep building up the whipping boy. I start production on the basic starship set (Leech, Siege, Light, Bomber, Cloak) as well now that the economy's strong enough and default homeworld to 15 Engi Is to keep up with the new income. I also start building off converters like usual, whenever I'm overloaded on one material and not enough of the other.
I take the fleet over to Fraggle and pop it while the whipping boy continues to build. I get another Econ III in play there and I get Blade Spawners for my trouble. Quite nice.
I wait and let the whipping boy get comfortable and mostly built out. I'm building off entire stacks of turrets in the middle of waves, and it's taking a bit. I send the blade spawners to Twycross to help out until the full turret stack is up. With the research from Twycross I research off Riot IIs and get a set of 4 under the inbound FF. Those Riot IIs will live there until I move the whipping boy.
I can't seem to get scouts any deeper so I'm stuck about where you see the map above after I use the Raids (I/II, needed to research them) to clean out Huge because of the Eye. I completely clean out the backfield and get my econ up and strong. That nets me CSG-E and CSG-Cs as well.
So, now, I'm seeing waves like this:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI93WaveSample.gif)
Actually not too hard to handle, as long as the Riot IIs are in play. I should probably Military station Twycross but for now I need the economy. It's not going to be the permanent whipping boy anyway, I have a plan!... again.
So I take the fleet out and we hammer our way through to Kerensky, the next ARS on my list. Nothing much to speak of here, it takes a bit to fight my way in and I clear out the next few systems leading out, either by Raid when there was an Eye or brute force. I offline the space docks at homeworld, leave the starship line only producing Riot IIs for the whipping boy, and move the entire production unit to Kerensky. I also open up Engineer IIs to keep up with production needs now that the econ can (kind of) handle the additional assistance. There's also a Polarizer V on Kerensky. There's a Fighter V back on Huge that I need the Fab WarpGate for to bring out of the backfield easily.
At around 3:00 I decide it's time to K-Raid. I do the whole fortress research/turretball routine (leaving me at 0 K again) and setup the process. At Tech III K-Raid responders it's too weak, even with stolen lightning Is and 60 snipers. I shove the fleet over the top of the enemy cmd station and my turrets and fortresses go start a poker tournament out of boredom. Well, alright then. I full Neuter Craps to remove any Aggression and do a simple 'sit on the cmd center' K-Raid there. Well, that kills roughly 40 minutes but I've got 6000 k now. Bomber IIIs it is.
At about 3:40 a 1500 ship CPA is announced. I've finally found Dyson as well, and it's hiding behind a MK IV world. I finally get a scout on it to wake it up and watch as it bangs its head on the MK IV world it's been annoying for the last 3 and a half hours which has 800+ ships on it. It's not getting far. Good, I have time and it can do some cleanup of the mess it's left me.
That CPA wrecked me. I tried to block down in Cyborg but the constant stream of 1500 MK II ships just ramming into the fleet nearly erased it. At around 300 ships I fled back to the fortress I'd built on Kerensky (there's one on Twycross now, too). I get some more ships and I just keep watching all the threat build up on the other side of the wormhole. This can't end well. I head out and thin them down some more, and retreat again. Without the shield bearers the whole Riot I grabs stuff and runs away trick doesn't work.
It takes me nearly 20 minutes of rebuilding and raiding to clear off all that CPA threat. I head north, neuter Macross completely in anticipation of moving the whipping boy, and for giggles nerf Sox with the Raid Starships just to lower chances of silliness behind me.
At 4:10, map looks like this:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI934hrmap.gif)
So far things are going pretty well. Other than the CPA nearly taking my head off because I was on a forward base (I could have surrendered the Polarizer if I had to) and that I can't KRaid Macross because of the Co-Processor, things are progressing pretty well. Econ's strong, I've got a good scouting base. I want to see if the Co-P is on Riker again, soon, though. My immediate plan is to push through to Ceasar and Dyson, opening up Dyson and using Ceasar as the whipping boy with Dyson support. Then I'll head down to Canopus and grab me a Fact IV. With the research from those +3 KRaid targets, I should be able to fix myself up with a good heavy duty fleet.
I'll also want to clean up 4 worlds out along the east so I can dig scouts in further, particularly down into Earth and the Riker arm. I'll probably do that so I can send the scouts down and give the Dyson a little longer to clean up its mess, and I want to see if I'll need to whipping boy against the AI Homeworld again before I go through all that work at Ceasar. There's two more datacenters in easy reach that I'll pop once I clear the way for the Raid Starships, too, so that'll pop my AIP down a nice bit.
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Whipping Boy Erected
Hmmm, that sounds really dirty. Anyway good job, does splitting up your empire really not cause you grief later on?
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Whipping Boy Erected
Hmmm, that sounds really dirty. Anyway good job, does splitting up your empire really not cause you grief later on?
It can. Notice earlier I was constantly retreating to Arrakkis and SolarMoon to rebuild them because they'd fall to random things like CPAs or a couple of whiney bombers off the Mk IV. It depends on how important the system is to me long term (A Fact IV will be a lot more important than, say, Speed Booster V Fab) and how much defenses I'll invest.
However, those problems are a lot easier to deal with than 300+ AIP to string everything together. You'll notice I use the term Neuter and Nerf a lot. To me, that means: Nerf = pop all the easy guardposts, get the system down to a manageable level. Neuter = The only thing standing is the Cmd Station and Warp Gate, and probably not a warp gate if it connects to one of my systems. By taking the time to neuter systems cross border aggression is lowered, or even non-existant, because no system builds up high enough to actually free ships to attack me. Make sure the Special Forces don't need to travel over you and you're golden. A few snipers and some basics will usually keep the free floating 5 here 10 there at bay.
With effective use of warp gates you won't even have to make your guys travel through those in between systems so they stay nice and quiet.
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Congratulations on conquering Earth! Wait...
Good to see the 9.3s putting up a bit more of a fight thanks to tech II waves, though they don't seem to have a much better chance of cracking the shell ;) Higher mark waves get a downwards multiplier to keep it from being simply 2x harder, but it's still a pretty big jump.
Interesting fight with the CPA, but you still didn't even have to fall back to the whipping boy if I read that right.
I'm starting to wonder about this K-Raiding business, but you're having to wreck your economy (edit: not really, with parking the fleet on the cmd) and 20-30 minutes to pull each one off, so it's not like it's free. But the point of the mechanic is to be there in case you're stuck, because it gets to feel repetitive to do it over and over.
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You could take Craps, leave the Co-Processor up, and get the Knowledge with a regular Science Lab. That's 20 AIP but you get a Command Station's worth of economy boosting.
Maybe K-Raids might need the Super Terminal surges. Or maybe K-Raids should stack in difficulty, so each successive K-Raid becomes more and more difficult.
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Or add a mechanic that gives the AI a slim chance to trigger on a CPA or counter attack as retaliation, perhaps the chance should grow the more times you have knowlege raided? I'm only suggesting since you're probably going to nerf it in some way now anyway :)
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I'm not so much looking to nerf k-raiding as I am to make sure it doesn't get boring. One way is to nerf it so hard that you don't do it unless you absolutely have to, but closing off strategies like that isn't good for the fun of the game. So something like surges or making it go more and more nuts the more k you've raided, etc. Making the AI do something unexpected would be fun, I think. The one thing it can't do is raise AIP: the whole point of k-raiding is to make it so even if you're totally stuck you can squeeze out a bit more K without AIP gain.
The difficulty from a design standpoint is that it's intended for players who are on the ropes to have a chance to get back in the game, but it can also be used by players who have a good handle on the game to get their midgame K to build up to a lategame fleet without getting up to mid/late AIP. The hard part is having the game recognize the difference between the two... I think "total amount of k already raided" is probably the best metric to go on for that, thanks for that suggestion :)
All that said, I wonder if the author thinks this is all rather an overreaction ;) Just because he pulls something off doesn't mean it needs to be changed.
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I think GUDare hasn't met a challenge he didn't like.
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I think GUDare hasn't met a challenge he didn't like.
I could have it randomly trigger an exo composed entirely of Raid Starships. That might push the "didn't like" line ;)
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Maybe because the k-raiding process means that you have to have your computer and and ai computer linked together the AI can play tricks with your buildings, maybe make reactors go into low power, or shields fluctuate, defense go off line / shoot each other?
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Maybe because the k-raiding process means that you have to have your computer and and ai computer linked together the AI can play tricks with your buildings, maybe make reactors go into low power, or shields fluctuate, defense go off line / shoot each other?
That seems more appropriate for the SuperTerminal.
After all, if you are using your systems to hack the AI, why couldn't the AI go the other way around and try to hack you back while you are still connected?
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I have to agree though. Even on difficulty 8 with highish AIP, the response to knowledge raids has usually been easy to deal with.
Perhaps a variant of the bursting mechanic for superterminal could be used. Instead of the strength varying with AIP reduction and AIP, it could increase with total knowledge collected.
In fact, the non-burst waves should scale with total knowledge collected, just like the non-burst waves of the superterminal scale with AIP reduction. The more you abuse it, the more harsh the AI gets with its response.
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Knowledge raiding discussion moved here (http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9906.0.html) so GUDare can continue abusing the AI.
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All that said, I wonder if the author thinks this is all rather an overreaction ;) Just because he pulls something off doesn't mean it needs to be changed.
In this case, I'm not sure. If you push K-Raiding up to the impossible level, anyone on the ropes literally couldn't survive to have their fleet off doing a K-Raid in the first place. As to K earned is difficulty, there's very easy work arounds to that too. Don't research your real worlds until you've hit your K-Raid Spokes worlds, and gone after them when things are low. There's a balance to be sure but that I'm not sure is it. You'd almost have to have a K-Raid counter independent of the K Counter, as mentioned.
Yes, I'm abusing the mechanic to keep AIP down. Yes, it's slow (and boring). Slow enough I'm probably going to try 2xResearch IIIs the next time I do it. It's 20 minutes with my fleet parked this way, and that time can be expensive pricewise. Then again, so is taking forever to kill off four wormhole guardposts. Methodical is not necessarily bad. Having to do it over and over as repetitive is almost the same as having to sit on guardposts. Some things are just boring, until you make that *1* mistake. Then you're in for it.
Besides, it gives me time to write up AARs. ;)
Making the mechanic interesting could be fun, but I'm not sure how to do that without invalidating the mechanic. That said, there is one way you could make sure that K-Raiding was dangerous. Spawn the zombie revolution at random OTHER cmd stations so you're dealing with free-floating threat of a rediculous volume instead of an easily controlled point of entry.
Which means every K-Raid right now would give me a 3k-4k CPA, or possibly worse. Okay, that's a little much. You see my concern.
I'm more than happy to discuss making K-Raiding interesting. I don't want to see a strategy that trades time for K though ruined unless it breaks AI 10/10.
RE: Wiseguy...: If you start sending me exos of Raid starships, I'll stop whining about the Spider's bonuses. ;) That right there is just some evil though!
Regarding the CPA: No, I didn't have to pull back, but I had to wreck my 650 ship fleet twice and use fortresses as power points to make sure they'd hold on the outside of the cutoff system. I also blunted the power of it so it was about an 800 ship CPA when they had a chance to gather on the edge. The CPA cost me 30 minutes, at least.
Co-Processor on Macross: The regular researchers needs supply. You can't put anything up (research, turrets, etc) on a on a Co-P planet and have it function.
SuperTerminal Galaxy Hack: This makes a LOT more sense to me and is probably one way to ease reliance on the SuperTerminal without nerfing its actual use.
And I'll go pop into the other thread eventually.
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I finally got down to Earth. I included Eridani's planet list because I found it funny.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI93ThatsSomeUgly.gif)
That's SOME ugly. Raid Engine x2? I'm not even sure what to SAY to that, nevermind do about it. I'm gonna have to think on that one. If I could trigger them in a stagger of some kind I might be able to handle it, but... WOW.
Oh, yeah, and the Co-Processor in there is just ADORABLE. Thanks RNG. Grouchy grouchy grump grump.
10 AIP suddenly became VERY important.
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Well, I'm currently rebuilding. Ugh. The last hour has been clearances and raids. I had to free the dyson, it'd popped enough of the Mk IV world I got concerned. 20 more AIP. I also raided deep to the east, popping 3 Data Centers. Taking Llama, a Mk IV world with 300 units and Ceasar with 500 wrecked out my fleet, so I retreated. I also cleared the fortress off Blackjack.
Once done, I decided I need to get that Co-Processor off Earth. I'm going to be forced to raid it. I try. Ummmm... a sec.
In the meanwhile, the AI's been being cute by buying stuff like black hole generators and replacing ion cannons. My fleet deals with that annoyance in Cyborg while the Raids make their way down towards Earth.
I sit the fleet on the wormhole towards Earth in the Cyborg system, figuring if they can take the raids as they come inbound I'll be alright, right? Riiiiight.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI93RaidWave.gif)
I'm getting little waves (500 + 200) of Mk IIs at the whipping boy, and they're holding strong, particularly since they got a rebel revolt. I know I can fall back if I have to, but we're going to try this.
A few things happened I hadn't realized I was going to trigger.
1) I sucked about 50 core ships each off both Kirk and Earth. Mk V Guardians with the wave didn't help (not yet).
2) The raids didn't stagger in travel as much as I'd expected.
I shouldn't have tried to defend in Cyborg. I actually have an Ion V on Kerensky that I'd captured when I took the world (I scrapped the dual Is that were on it). I also have a fortress and bonuses. I lost dang near most of my fleet. I retreated with 300 ships. They sent in a small chase squad behind me who got eaten up and about 150 more Mk IV/V ships are hanging off the wormhole. So, in the last hour I cleared some pretty heavy Mk IV systems and got my AIP down, but I need to take those Co-Processors all the way down so I can whipping boy on Kirk. I won't survive the setup against Dual Raids if I don't.
However, this has some possibilities. Deep striking at the coreworld isn't necessarily a wise plan due to roaming threat but I'm still hard-choke pointed at Kerensky with a fallback at Twycross. If I keep draining off troops from Earth and Kirk I might be able to get myself into Kirk and up and running before serious issues occur. I kind of wish CSGs were off right now. I've still got As, Bs, and Ds to clear. If they were I'd raid the raid engines. ;)
However, if I can eventually pop all the Co-Processors, I'll get myself down to ~97 AIP when I setup the whipping boy against the homeworld. If I'm VERY specific about my next hits, I only need 60 AIP to pop all the CSGs, leaving me around 160. I intend to take Liao's Fact IV for the B-Class (Canopus has one too but I need to be able to deeper strike into the eastern arm) and I'm hoping to find a D-Class enroute to Riker. I haven't decided if I'm going to take Eridani or not yet. I might free-float the whipping boy on Kirk for a while to keep the silliness at a reasonable level. The problem is I'll need my fleet... which is cause for concern. Last time I couldn't hold Kirk without the fleet, and that was against *1* Raid Engine. I might have to make due with a partial fleet for a while.
Oh, and one side note. I haven't got my Maws to MK III yet. I meant to and then didn't, getting distracted by other things.
This is some serious ugly.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTT!!!!
(Thank god for K-Raids)
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Um, errr. Homeworlds can have AI Eyes? I just noticed that lovely minor factoid about Earth.
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So, rebuild, Re-Raid, I get it with the last Raid Starship Mk I that I own. I deal with the next assault in Kerensky and that goes much better. About 450 ships won't commit from Cyborg, so after the rebuild I head in and clear them, and rebuild again.
Econ is ~1.8k/second right now. Good enough to allow rebuilds, but a full abuse takes time.
After the rebuild I float the fleet up to Macross while my Raid Starships go out and pound down the two Co-Ps out in the galaxy. Once they're done I pop the one on Macross, and prepare another K-Raid.
My current AIP and what waves look like:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI935pt5Hr.gif)
There's a +1 (I'm at 80) from time at the moment.
The K-Raid goes off mostly without a hitch but I was losing a little ground. I forgot to drop a Grav turret on them to shut the blade spawners down. After that we're good to go. On my way back to Kerensky I chased about 100 ships in from Craps. They died to the rebuilding units, fortress, and Ion V rather easily.
I'm tired so I'm gonna call it a night at this point. I'm literally stuck between two decisions. I can either go take out Ceasar and open myself up 15000 in K between Dyson, Caesar, and 3 K-Raids. However, that's 20 AIP. I can also start raiding out Kirk from range, and dealing with the lowered AIP for Raid Engine Defenses until I can get Kirk nerfed so I can get in there when I bring the full fleet down to deal with wave 1 as I prep to move the whipping boy. But, 15000 K will get me my Mil III station and Maw IIIs, which I'm pretty sure I'm going to need. Especially if I go get 20 more AIP and eat around 3-4 time AIP increases as well.
I'd also like to deep strike the living daylights out of the Riker arm and find out what's down there. I've got no more AIP reducers left on the field within my scouting vision (though 200 is a lot). I'm probably going to need one or two more to hold things afloat against two raid engines, but I'd also like to find out what I'm dealing with over at Riker.
See, I'm thinking I have one other option then fighting with Earth like this. It's take out Riker and speed slam Earth before the 400 AIP raids that'll happen can reach the homeworld. But I need to know what I'm fighting against down there and at the least I need to pop all the Tachyon Guardposts to get the scouts in. That's a pretty significant Deep Strike. I could just shove my foot down their throats and save scum once I know, but that seems unsporting.
However, Earth is a bit nasty at the moment. Between the Eye and a Fortress III next to the cmd station with two FFs covering it in range of the wormhole, I don't know if I'll have enough left TO speed-slam Earth. It's a conundrum.
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Um, errr. Homeworlds can have AI Eyes? I just noticed that lovely minor factoid about Earth.
Um. Ouch. I had no idea. Chris probably intended that, but I'm not sure how great having one of those on a HW is ;) 2 core raids is one thing, slapping you down for bringing in a large fleet is another. It'd be something else if the AI Eye weren't invincible as long as the guard posts were up (on homeworlds), though. But an exception like that would be a bug report waiting to happen. Will consider.
In general, a fascinating conundrum :) The actual AI attacks (at least the waves) aren't being much of a challenge to thorough defense, but the overall situation is still highly non-obvious in how to win. Basically it's more you versus the map generator than you versus the AI, sometimes ;)
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yeah having AI eyes on homeworlds is possible. Have had it a couple of times myself. Luckily I had an artiller golem which could snipe it out most of the times.
Having a co-processor on a homeworld is just really bad luck lol :D The whole purpose of co-p's is to lower the AIP, so you can win the game more easily. Having to kill a homeworld before you're able to reduce the AIP seems kind of silly to me lol. Imagine if there would be a co-p on both of the homeworlds. Would be hilarious :D
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In general, a fascinating conundrum :) The actual AI attacks (at least the waves) aren't being much of a challenge to thorough defense, but the overall situation is still highly non-obvious in how to win. Basically it's more you versus the map generator than you versus the AI, sometimes ;)
Heh, the Waves are a little ignorable compared to the output of two Core Engines, so the fact that I'm actually fighting that, not waves, is really making the difference to the AI's attempts to annoy me.
This particular seed is definately mapgen controlled for strategy and tactics. The AI isn't really involved (though I might turn off Zenith Traders, they're more annoying then helpful) because if I get AIP up to the point where we're actually at war, Earth eats me.
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In general, a fascinating conundrum :) The actual AI attacks (at least the waves) aren't being much of a challenge to thorough defense, but the overall situation is still highly non-obvious in how to win.
Actually, in my experience, most games at >=8 wind up like this if you know how to defend yourself. This is what I think to be the number one pacing problem of the game as it currently is. (Actual difficulty cutoff depends on skill)
Basically, if you are playing at a high enough difficulty to be interesting but not be rolled over by the AI, you will wind up in a near stalemate situation way too frequently.
But that it just my experiences with the game.
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In general, a fascinating conundrum :) The actual AI attacks (at least the waves) aren't being much of a challenge to thorough defense, but the overall situation is still highly non-obvious in how to win.
Actually, in my experience, most games at >=8 wind up like this if you know how to defend yourself. This is what I think to be the number one pacing problem of the game as it currently is. (Actual difficulty cutoff depends on skill)
Basically, if you are playing at a high enough difficulty to be interesting but not be rolled over by the AI, you will wind up in a near stalemate situation way too frequently.
But that it just my experiences with the game.
I like stalemates actually. Just another puzzle to solve.
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I like stalemates actually. Just another puzzle to solve.
Then it wouldn't be a stalemate would it since a true stalemate nobody can win? :P
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I like stalemates actually. Just another puzzle to solve.
Then it wouldn't be a stalemate would it since a true stalemate nobody can win? :P
Ever met a windmill in chess? Look it up. It's inane, insane, and utterly effective.
Mapgen = strategy. AI = Tactics. You react to tactics to make the strategy work, or you rework the strategy when tactics dictate the strategy is ineffective. Lot of dead soldiers when you choose badly.
My AI 10/10s stalemate. This is 9.3. I have a plan. The AI will chew on it like a damned bone as soon as I choose. Wait for the wheel. :)
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Or think of the strategy as a cog wheel and the tactics as the teeth which make the stategy turn / advance etc
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It cost me me 2250 in K for Scout IIIs, a few sets of Raid Starships and a whole lot of threat defense, but...
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/MapGenEvil.jpg)
The MapGen apparently went to the Laurel and Hardy school of comedy.
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I... wow. On the homeworld? Forget Laurel and Hardy, this thing went to the Crocodile Dundee school of humor. That's the mapgen telling me about Super Terminals:
"That's not a nerf. That's a nerf."
And the dual neinzul spawners is just taunting your Raids, too.
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I... wow. On the homeworld? Forget Laurel and Hardy, this thing went to the Crocodile Dundee school of humor. That's the mapgen telling me about Super Terminals:
"That's not a nerf. That's a nerf."
And the dual neinzul spawners is just taunting your Raids, too.
Yep. I'm thinking I gotta go with Dirty Harry right now... "You feelin' lucky, punk? Come get it."
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Though I have to say: riding an ST to the AIP floor on the homeworld on Diff 9.3 would be rather hardcore.
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Though I have to say: riding an ST to the AIP floor on the homeworld on Diff 9.3 would be rather hardcore.
Heheh, you're readin' my mind. 8)
The story so far. I was trying to long range raid Kirk out for later while the AIP was low. It was working at meh levels with only Raid I/II. Waves looked like so:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI93LowCapDualRaidEngine.gif)
I'd drop the fleet back to Craps and try to bait the wave into Kerensky with it's now 50 snipers (stole a few off the Whipping Boy), 2 Fortresses, and Ion V. It worked for about half the raid, then I'd have to go out and finish the job with the fleet. Rinse repeat. After 3 tries I decided it's not working until I get Raid IIIs.
However, at that point, I've got most of a wave sitting on the doorstep to Kerensky that just WON'T commit. For anything. A 600 ship CPA announces, I figured that'll push 'em in. Nope. Really guys?
Gah. Threat's been building in Macross so while the fleet's in the back I go clean it up, hoping these guys will eventually commit. I get done with that (10 minutes of travel, Craps is a LONG system) and head back, still no love. Fine.
KOWABUNGA!!!!! Ow. Nearly 80% of my fleet is wrecked and I only halved the 800+ ships (420 or so MK IV, rest MK II) on the wormhole. I retreat in utter tatters. However, a Human Rebels attack spawned at the system while I was in there. Once they drag off the majority from the wormhole I send the tattered fleet with a few reinforcements back through to deal with the rest. It's carnage. You could build a Spire Dreadnaught with all the dead ships in that region of space, it's a flight hazard at this point.
So, I pull back, and start re-evaluating my options. I can't raid out Kirk yet, so it's time to look at what has to happen. The CSG map looks like this. The purple worlds are worlds I will HAVE to take. The only CSG-D is on Jumping Jax, I tried but there's nothing enroute to Riker so I'll have to take a random world. Liao is on the east and while the Dyson would have a better chance of stopping/slowing whatever goes after Canopus, Liao lets me get one world deeper without deepstrike on the Riker arm.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI93HaveToHit.gif)
That's 100 AIP + time + random silliness like SF posts. Then I still have to drill my way through to Riker, as Three Kings is a little better but still rather ugly.
However, that gives me some K-Raid opportunities. The yellow dots are the K-Raid targets.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI93HaveToHitwithKRaid.gif)
That's 5 standard worlds of K + 8 worlds of K-Raid for 39000 K to hit Riker with. I'll also have added two ships to the arsenal, even if I do have to put Kirk on permanent alert, and I'll have a MK IV factory to work with from Liao.
What can you do with 39k? :) The only way I can take Earth is to get BEHIND the wave and deal with the Eye in the system. I know of only one way to replace troops on an enemy world. I'll be spending 11000 K on Engi IIIs and Neinzul II/III craft builders. Another 6 for Maw III. Another 9 on Frigate II/III. 13k to work with. If ARS's go as usual that means I'll get Bulletproofs and Autobombs. Neither of which I consider good choices for significant upgrades.
Which means my best choice will be to harden the shield that protects the homeworld. 9k on Mil II/III. Mil III into Kerensky, Twycross, and Liao. SolarMoon and Jumping Jax will be disposable, but they'll get some Mil IIIs just to help tie up Earth Raids as well. The last one will be for the wild pony ride on Riker. The last 4k will go into Basic IIs, Lightning IIs to harden up the shield edge.
Once I can take Riker, I'll also take Three Kings. There's a Spire Archive on Three Kings that will give me another 12k to work with after I drain Riker's K too. This will most likely be invested into the Neinzul IV builder.
Then we go to Earth. Most plans don't survive contact with the enemy, but that's where I'm going to take this for now. :)
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C'mon AI, you can pull this off! ;)
I know when you're planning to drop K on defense that there's going to be fireworks.
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Minor update. So far so good with the plan. SolarMoon fell easily enough and I K-Raided the locals. With the K I've gotten I've opened Basic IIs and Maw IIIs. With the Maw IIIs in play it's been very easy to hold down a double research K-Raid.
I got my bulletproof fighters again. No big surprise but if a system's lightly defended I can use them instead of dragging my Raids along for Ion fighting. Of course, I drag my raids along because I'd like the Ions to die *today*.
Next boost was Missile Frigate IIs. I head for Jumping Jax, I forgot to pop the local warp gate connector, and it blows up while I'm dealing with a Counter III that landed on Roulette. 15 minutes to get there, took me 10 just to walk the fleet back there. Yeesh.
With that cleaned up I K Raid and normal science that, and I get Missile Frigate III.
At 8:30 plan is so far so good. The Zenith Traders FINALLY got into the back systems. I just finished my ZPG, and I've got the whipping boy quartet placed and slowly building up on Kerensky and Twycross. That quartet: Black Hole Generator, Armor Inhibitor, Armor Boost, and Radar Jammer II. Kerensky is up to 3 Fortresses at the moment.
Next stop, after I get my Missile IIIs built, is Liao. It's time to get the Mk IVs in play. AIP is 152. Income is roughly 1650/second each once I goofed around with the power supply units. I've got everything behind the Twycross wall with double generators for later. Once the outer systems start falling I'm going to need overpriced power.
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Fireworks it is... Yeeeesh.
Well, I get to Liao. No big deal, we ace the place and a nice small 1800 ship CPA decides to spawn on top of the 500 or so threat I caused by deepstriking it. I dig in down at Liao for a few and research up some HBCs to help with defenses here and there for drift-off. I K Raid the neighbor while Liao digs in and I produce myself a nice MK IV fleet for my Maws, Blade Spawns, Missile Frigs and Bombers.
I take the fleet down towards HotStar, figuring I'll end up eating a lot of the inbound wave on approach. I clean up the two systems and as I'm finishing up most of the wave sidesteps me. I take out about 400 of them and a chunk of the threat. Great. I leave the Engi IIIs and a colony ship to setup shop on HotStar with some token defenses and make my way home.
Note to self. At 207 AIP you go to Tech III. I'm now at 219. This becomes important shortly.
I clean off the front door of Kerensky, where I've recently dropped a MK IV Warp Gate to bring troops out of Liao into the main corridor. That's about 900. There's a carrier with 600 or so troops and some friends over in Macross. I head that way and a 900 ship wave pops up. No problem, I figured. I start cleaning out Macross and ANOTHER wave pops. 1200 more ships.
I repeat, I did NOT notice I went to Tech III. The difference was phenomenal.
I continue to clean up the leftovers from the CPA and refill the fleet. While that gets going I research up Basic IIIs and Lightning IIs. I figure I'll go drop them on the whipping boy I've been ignoring and watch the wave get eaten.
The first wave hit and was stalled out as expected. They weren't getting very far. The second wave hit and MELTED the 4 FFs I had covering the Riot IIs, the Lightnings under construction, and all four Riot IIs went down about four blinks later.
Oh crap. They flashed the joint. There was no way it was going to hold. I pop out and save scum off the autosave.
I check around to figure out what the hell happened and notice the tech jump. Oh crap. It's just as the first wave announced on the autosave and the second one pops up with 30 seconds of gap as my fleet is racing into Macross. I ignore the CPA targets and Speed move my entire fleet through the mob to get to Twycross as fast as they bloody can. Remember, that's a 5 minute run between Kerensky and Twycross, roughly, as the fleet ball. I can't wait on the sieges and missiles.
Meanwhile my econs on Jumping Jax and SolarMoon fell to the CPA. I thought I'd have time. I don't. Engi IIIs are becoming a lifesaver. I toss together a quick transport with a few colony ships and ship them to SolarMoon for a speed rebuild.
Meanwhile I'm slamming turrets and FFs into play in Twycross. I drop the entire bank of L IIs under the FF, open up HFF I, and dump 10 on the wormhole. They just literally can't build fast enough though and the first wave hits. My fleet's 1/3 to 2/3s of the way through Macross and this is not going to end well.
I concentrate the Engis on the HFFs, figuring the Riots can buy time. It works, to an extent. Most of the midrange turrets are dead as I haven't been able to get the Jammer (or any of the Trader toys) up on the whipping boy yet. My econ's been busy. It buys me JUST enough time. As the Riot IIs fall to the second wave, the fleet finally starts pouring in through the wormhole.
It's a NASTY little brawl. My fleet of 1200 or so ships streams smack into the middle of their 1700 MK III fleet who are busy trying to figure out their next target. My LRMS and MLRSs are basically the only turrets left on planet, along with about a half cap of snipers. The brawl gets ugly.
When it's nearly done, my bombers are micro'd on a few starships that made it to the final FF on my cmd station, I've only got 6 Maws left, the bladespawners are down to 7 or so, and I've got 350 ships of mixed marks. The entire whipping boy is just wreckage except for the command center.
So, now my econ is burning. I pop 10 rebuilders up on the whipping boy, replace dead FFs, and try to get econ back up on SolarMoon and Jax. My own econ drain is stopping me from getting my econ improved! D'oh. Head to Liao, shut down the Factory. Head to Kerensky, shut down all the builders there too.
At 9:40 I'm rebuilding the whipping boy still. My fleet's back at Kerensky to make sure I can respond to any significant hits. Most of the whipping boy is back up but my econ's wrecked and my fleet needs a full rebuild. I do, however, have 9500 in K. It's time for Mil III stations. That was just brutal. Those were both nearly max time waves that landed simultaneously.
I'm sure as HECK not ready to hold back 2xRaid Engine waves. I may have to approach this slightly differently. MK I/II units will probably stay on Kerensky to help hold the first section of the line, with rebuilds ready to happen to help defend Twycross once it falls. My econ is going to concentrate on getting the trader toys online in both locations for a bit. At 1700/s or so in econ, that's going to take a while. 5 Mill for Radar Jammer II, 1 mill for the cloaker killer (space planes and eyebots, oh my!), 5 mill for the two armor adjusters, and another 2 mill for the black hole machines. That's 13 mill/planet, 26 mill total. Luckily the first Jammer's about 65% done. That'll take 3 mill off the top.
At 1700/s 'calm' income, that'll take... 3.7 hours. No bueno. I'm going to have to adjust for power somehow and play hamster games. My true income is 2200/s or so, I'm just powering up half of Chicago on a cold night right now. At max it'd be 3 hours.
Oh, did I mention I've only got an hour left to go save a rebel colony on Argyle? It's right next to Jax as a dead end world. It gains me NOTHING but its 3k in knowledge and the colony. I sure as heck can't afford the 100 AIP so I'm gonna have to suck the 20. Well, it'll keep me busy while things build I guess. The Mil III and additional turret firepower should help Twycross hold. It's holding up against singleton short time waves of 300 or so without blinking. It was just one heck of a tandem suckerpunch.
I had intended to spend a good chunk of time down at Riker screwing around getting K and playing with the ST anyway. I'm most likely going to concentrate first on getting the Whipping Boy fully tricked out (even spinning rims!) and then start Kerensky's stuff up while I go after Riker.
This game is not going to be a 13 hour game. I thought I'd make it if I pushed it hard enough but I'm going to have to pull back a bit.
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A Wave actually made a difference! ;) Well, waves. I'm a little surprised Tech III made such a difference, since they're only 1.5x as tough (numerically, I imagine the actual-power-increase of 1.5x health and 1.5x attack is somewhat higher than linear), and they get a smaller number of ships due to the lower multipier for tech III. But then again, if TII is all you've faced on the whipping boy all game, getting double-whammied by 1.5x harder waves is going to surprise you if anything will.
Seems like we're getting closer to the Diff+AIP point where "vanilla" AIP mechanics alone are capable of threatening even a solid whipping boy. Not capable of simply overpowering it and requiring massive savescumming and cleverness to survive (like 10/10), and not even threatening except when "the stars align" for a double-wave or whatever, but at least getting to the point where those "peaks on the graph" are making legitimately stabbity motions towards your homeworld ;)
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A Wave actually made a difference! ;) Well, waves. I'm a little surprised Tech III made such a difference, since they're only 1.5x as tough (numerically, I imagine the actual-power-increase of 1.5x health and 1.5x attack is somewhat higher than linear), and they get a smaller number of ships due to the lower multipier for tech III. But then again, if TII is all you've faced on the whipping boy all game, getting double-whammied by 1.5x harder waves is going to surprise you if anything will.
I think it was a combination of the volume and the tech increase. I'd handled 1000 ship waves before, and usually if their buddy showed up it was with a short-time wave of around 200-300. That and I hadn't kept up with the Joneses. I'd let FF volume fall off. That was key, I think. That and the anti-armor ships. When they showed up their range chewed deeply into the medium range turrets alongside the Missile Frigates, causing my damage over time quotient to drop like a rock.
Include the additional armor of Tech III and the like, and my AoE turrets under glass were much less effective. So, in those 2 second gaps, they died. This was also the first major wave I'd faced since the .027 upgrade. It's possible I was getting better Riot II locks then I'd figured. The new mechanic released them for longer 'short stints', which probably made the biggest difference to the few hundred cutlasses under the FFs.
Seems like we're getting closer to the Diff+AIP point where "vanilla" AIP mechanics alone are capable of threatening even a solid whipping boy. Not capable of simply overpowering it and requiring massive savescumming and cleverness to survive (like 10/10), and not even threatening except when "the stars align" for a double-wave or whatever, but at least getting to the point where those "peaks on the graph" are making legitimately stabbity motions towards your homeworld ;)
Definately. Now that I'm pushing up the AIP and we've tech jumped. However, the additional FFs and the outright doubling of the whipping boy due to the Mil III should handle most of the issue. Out of curiousity, was it a design decision to not allow Fortresses to get bonuses, or is that an oversight?
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Include the additional armor of Tech III and the like, and my AoE turrets under glass were much less effective.
That would nail your flaks, yea, but iirc all lightning stuff (turrets included) have max armor piercing.
So, in those 2 second gaps, they died. This was also the first major wave I'd faced since the .027 upgrade. It's possible I was getting better Riot II locks then I'd figured. The new mechanic released them for longer 'short stints', which probably made the biggest difference to the few hundred cutlasses under the FFs.
Yea, I think that probably did equate to a net nerf of the riot tazer. I don't think it was too much, though, as I imagine if you didn't have riot IIs unocked by now for whatever reason you would unlock them even for the reduced tazer effect.
However, the additional FFs and the outright doubling of the whipping boy due to the Mil III should handle most of the issue.
Yea, once humans get serious about piling up a stack of forcefields the total hp count can get pretty serious.
Out of curiousity, was it a design decision to not allow Fortresses to get bonuses, or is that an oversight?
It was intentional; turrets used to not be boostable at all, but when we made boosting a non-binary thing (used to be you receive +400% or +0%, period) it seemed ok to let them have some. Letting fortresses be boosted sounds pretty intense ;) But we could probably let them get +20% like starships or something like that.
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The last of the humans were relatively secure in their recent position. While K-Raiding the eastern front (which apparently always spawns +1 MK from current tech level) largish waves hit Macross and were able to be turned away with the help of recent research and the Zenith Trader's deliveries.
The Zenith Trader's builds were progressing nicely on Twycross, having gotten a Radar Jammer II, a Cloak Killer, and an Armor Inhibtor up by now. Construction was progressing nicely on the Armor Booster.
Recent researches into Neinzul Factory Craft had progressed nicely, and they were now able to generate Neinzul Factory IIs.
The foreign colonies had been converted to Mil IIIs and Econ IIIs, as thought appropriate. The Rebel Colony at Argyle had kindly provided a small fleet to assist in the endeavour.
At 10:45 game time, the human fleet took Eridani and the AI's ARS stationed there. The two fortresses went down without a hitch and the humans also captured a Spider Bot V fabricator. The Spider Bots would do very nicely against the massive volumes of Cutlasses being sent at the fleet. At 10:55 the human commander realized there was going to be a significant warp gate problem. Clipping the wings off Confederation wasn't going to be the problem.
After a discussion of suicide tactics and the necessity for the human race, 6 Raid Starships head into Kirk to remove the dual Warp Gates stationed there. Their job was further compounded by the need to continue to nerf Kirk to help avoid significant AI logistics due to alerting them to the nearby capture of the system, made necessary by the CSG-A.
The humans stationed a Mil III on Eridani and the fleet dug in, waiting to take on the raid as it crossed the wormhole into controlled space.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/2xLateRaidEngine.gif)
The humans, hoping that direct confrontation before releasing the waves into known space might help save the satellite colonies, stand tall in Eridani. Twycross command realizes the situation and stop calling for immediate support from all known fleet elements, and digs in. C&C is moved to the chapel. It can't hurt.
The Engineer corps head for Argyle, to help with their rebuilding efforts once the main fleet has been damaged. Colonists the galaxy over pray for the safety of the fleet. It was in vain.
Twycross's defenses hold with the help of the autobombers, who did the best they could in spite of the enemy missile frigates ignoring their area blasts. With that, everyone turned towards Eridani in hope. A transport had arrived dropping off the last of the fleet reinforcements from Kerensky, where the Fab Warp Gate had pulled the new Spider Bots to.
The wave heads into Kirk, and beelines for Eridani. Local guardian defenders on Kirk join the parade of AI forces pouring towards Eridani. The first guardians come out of the wormhole and the fleet pounds down a few bomber starship IVs and assorted guardians. Then the raid starts to pour through.
The cutlasses, in spite of gravity altering structures, pour through the nearby Military command station's force field and proceed to chop it to finely carved bits. The soul who thought putting the command station on the wormhole to Kirk would be courtmarshalled, but he's dead now, lost in the firey explosion of the tactical center supporting the fleet. Once the tactical center fell, the fleet had no chance.
The 2500 MK IV ships poured through our mixed fleet of 1200 ships in a sheerly fear inspiring array of death. Our maws and Blade Spawners tried to get out of the line of fire, doing what they could to pick off as many ships as they could before they escaped into the colonial areas.
As I stand here in the cloaked starship on the edge of the galaxy, it's a sad sight. There's nothing left of the fleet. Nothing. All of our brave souls are dead except for a handful of ships trying to race back to the homeworlds to help, and they're being heavily outrun.
When the wave hit Cyborg, the cutlasses split off, beelining for the western colonies. The rest of the wave poured into Kerensky. Emergency power was recently brought back online, activating the 3 fortresses on the planet. Troops manned the Ion V cannon with effeciency, but again, the defense was in vain. Kerensky fell along with our Polarizer V fabricator and all hands lost on the Military III station. In a fit of pique, the AI left us a fortress behind. Without supply, though, we hear reports of hunger and cold from the men manning the station. They request assistance as soon as they can, so they can go back to their duty of helping to protect the last of mankind.
The cutlass troop of over 300 MK IV cutlasses poured into Solar Moon and destroyed our token defenses there. They did the same in Jumping Jax, destroying both Military Class III stations. The main force, heavily blunted but by no means less dangerous by the war in Kerensky, of around 900 ships continues to travel through the AI neutered systems towards Twycross.
On Twycross command, a larger chapel is hurredly built. Construction of the Armor booster is taken offline to help rebuild the fleet. Whispers across Twycross state that homeworld command has dictated that Twycross MUST hold. No matter the cost. If Twycross falls, humanity is over.
The Merchants at Argyle are hurridly trying to build off a replacement fleet from the rebel colony, getting a pair of Heavy Beam Cannons and a large gravity well to help deal with the marauding cutlasses. There's no chance they'll be getting pilots from homeworld with the mass fleet cutting them off, so anyone able to fly is being hurridly trained and pressed into service. When the cutlasses arrive, only 20 ships have been able to be brought online.
There's no reason Argyle should still be alive, but they are. The Cutlasses were apparently getting horrible orders from the AI with the confusion at Twycross and must have crossed its circuits. As the cutlasses arrived the rest of the raid began its assault on Twycross. The cutlasses took out the HBC inside the gravity wells, and with still 280 cutlasses left, must have gotten orders to come to Twycross and assist the assault. Yet, they were stuck in the grav well. Our fleet, maneuvering the best it could, thinned out the ranks of the cutlass forces by half as the cutlasses retreated back into the wild.
On Liao, two starships have shown up to menace our Factory IV. The Bomber IV that's pounding on the forcefield is popping the 4 HBC cannons as quickly as they rebuild while our 3 sniper turrets harass it, barely scratching the paint. With the FF 50% down a Leech starship joins in, but the HBCs are finally able to overcome the Bomber starship and the leech retreats.
Twycross has held. As the enemy fleet poured into the system, our civilian engineers continued fighting in the midst of heavy firepower raining down on it, holding the forcefields up. The rest of the raid died in what's known as the 'Land of Lightning' on Twycross, amongst the Riot II tazer region.
At 11:15 into the war, humanity has been hammered back to a whisper of its previous glory. In one bold stroke, the AI that nearly destroyed all of us has beaten us down again, reminding us of why we must utterly destroy the machines we made if we ever hope to live.
Fleet's been erased, utterly. I've lost pretty much all the fabricators except for the Fact IV on Liao and that's only because the AI didn't really go after it, I got some token drifters. It was a risk and a price. I HAD to shut down the warp gates on Kirk, or I'd be eating CPA waves when they ran over Eridani. I knew it was going to be inane but YEAOW! At least I know what I'll be dealing with later after I'm done banging away on Riker. The core economy's still strong and the last defensive line is still up. The Zenith toys on Kerensky are gone so they're a moot point at this point.
1) Get the fleet back up and rebuild the economy.
2) Finish improvements on Twycross.
3) Don't put the darned Mil III station right on the wormhole again INTO the raid area (dumb ass....)
4) Proceed as planned, with a 2 hour delay (roughly)
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Include the additional armor of Tech III and the like, and my AoE turrets under glass were much less effective.
That would nail your flaks, yea, but iirc all lightning stuff (turrets included) have max armor piercing.
You're right, the lightning are max AP.
Yea, I think that probably did equate to a net nerf of the riot tazer. I don't think it was too much, though, as I imagine if you didn't have riot IIs unocked by now for whatever reason you would unlock them even for the reduced tazer effect.
True, very true. I'm just thinking it's a combination of the little things that made for a massive difference.
It was intentional; turrets used to not be boostable at all, but when we made boosting a non-binary thing (used to be you receive +400% or +0%, period) it seemed ok to let them have some. Letting fortresses be boosted sounds pretty intense ;) But we could probably let them get +20% like starships or something like that.
Yep, I figured that was it, but wanted to doublecheck.
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Wow. Now that was some serious pain. Good work by the chapel construction crew. Or the Forcefield crews. One of the two, probably.
Those cutlasses sound pretty nasty.
Congrats on surviving :)
Working on some the hacking stuff right now, but making a note to make sure the super-terminal spawns in a place you can actually realistically use it before killing an AI (if it doesn't it may as well not spawn, for all the good it would be on a non-trivial difficulty, though having it not spawn is a valid option in the land of the DM).
How's real-estate value looking in the Land Of Lightning?
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How's real-estate value looking in the Land Of Lightning?
For humans, rather high. For the AI... ;D Seem to be a lot of vacancies.
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Have you counted how many ships come out per k-raid pulse? Looking at the code it seems to be doing the spawns once per AI player, so instead of 4 ships every 2 seconds (on diff 9-9.8) you'd be getting 8. Or do you really only get 4?
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Have you counted how many ships come out per k-raid pulse? Looking at the code it seems to be doing the spawns once per AI player, so instead of 4 ships every 2 seconds (on diff 9-9.8) you'd be getting 8. Or do you really only get 4?
I'm 99% sure it's 4. But it's hard to be completely sure with Maws.
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I'm 99% sure it's 4. But it's hard to be completely sure with Maws.
(cue burping noise)
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I'm 99% sure it's 4. But it's hard to be completely sure with Maws.
(cue burping noise)
Hmph, you're right, I am getting 8 per burst. But, it's weird, every now and then a burst only has 1 in it.
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I'm 99% sure it's 4. But it's hard to be completely sure with Maws.
(cue burping noise)
Hmph, you're right, I am getting 8 per burst. But, it's weird, every now and then a burst only has 1 in it.
Thanks for the confirmation. I've changed it to all come from the owning player instead of both players, but the same amount. This way if you've got one AI player whose bonus types are particularly annoying, you can raid the other guy and not get those in the spawns. Unless you don't have any viable targets held by the other guy, of course :)
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There is still the oversight where non-zombiefiable stuff can be spawned as a zombie in k-raids. (Spikey00's find, found at http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=5913)
I'm pretty sure this is an oversight and not an intentional design choice because AI eyes are not allowed to spawn non-zombiefiable stuff.
Superterminals may need double checking about this as well.
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There is still the oversight where non-zombiefiable stuff can be spawned as a zombie in k-raids. (Spikey00's find, found at http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=5913)
I'm pretty sure this is an oversight and not an intentional design choice because AI eyes are not allowed to spawn non-zombiefiable stuff.
Superterminals may need double checking about this as well.
For k-raiding it was an oversight because it wasn't even paying attention to cap-scale, let alone individual-type ship cap multipliers. In the recent work for 5.028 I changed that anyway, but thanks for the mantis link as I it can now be marked resolved; as I said there:
"Fixed for 5.028 to consider ship cap in determining how much "spawn strength" it "costs" to spawn each unit, whether smaller (laser gatling) or larger (blade spawner) :)"
Superterminals were already doing it that way, that's the logic I copied.
AI Eyes don't spawn the "capped" stuff at all, but that's just the AI Eye using a different mechanic.
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First half of this AAR is a little boring.
11:30 - 12:00 was a rebuild/beef up on the whipping boy. Nothing particularly fancy.
12:00 - 12:30 was retaking the rear systems and cleaning up leftovers. Even the 800 ship parking lot on Cyborg wasn't interesting enough to stick in my head to describe.
12:30 - 13:00 Travel down to HotStar staging area taken earlier, do a 2x K-Raid on Krupp.
13:00 - 14:00 Play hide and seek with a blasted stealth guardpost on Tau. Opened up Decloakers to find the blessed thing. Many attempts taken, finally located the little bugger. No, it wasn't on a material point. Formations of Scout SS IIs were pointless, I must have ran over it 15+ times.
14:00 - 14:15 Move the fleet to Tau and neuter it completely so the fleet could quietly eat backwash. Setup builds with the Factory ships to replace local ship losses.
14:15 - Begin more amusing pieces of AAR.
Three Kings was a royal PITA. The command station was a 2x FF (III and a v) 1xFortress III blockade. With a zombie guardian. Did I mention the AI Eye? Alternating between 6x Raid SS attacks to drain off troops and try to get at the weaker positions, and dropping in my Bombers I/II/III (I didn't want to donate my IVs to the attacks, I don't have that factory ship for a while) and doing bomber runs against the 2xFF'd fortress. The Eye wouldn't trigger unless I full fleeted so the little (little?!) 250 bomber fleet would get some work done until the zombie had eaten about 1/8 of the fleet and eveyone else chewed them to pieces. Then rinse/restart. This was pretty much inhaling my economy but we were getting there. Ish.
Add to that a few things. A grav guardian was hiding on top of the orbital bombardment cannon again and 2 Bomber IV starships were roaming the place, chewing my little Raid SSs to pieces when they stopped to shoot at things. An MLRS post under glass was also pretty well protected, so I had to give up actually killing it with Raid SSs and bombered it to death. This process took about an hour. Luckily the homeworld didn't get TOO built up during all this, only about 450 units.
Once I cracked Three Kings with a backup of the blade spawner brigade and a bomber run, I was able to setup shop on Three Kings into Riker. CHAAAARGE!
Primary attack was nothing but a defensive brigade to cover the blade spawners. I tried sending off the raids but quickly realized that just got them dead. After we cleared the initial mass of ships, however, the bomber starships went out and popped the couple of ion cannons that were pounding on me, and then played hunt the cockroach spawner. When prepared for them and being defensive, it wasn't too bad. Any escapees were handled by the respawning I-IIIs that were being produced on Three Kings. Having cleared the majority of areas but needing to still deal with the fortresses, I backed off to Three Kings to rebuild.
This didn't take too long, and I shipped down MK IV and SS replacements via transport from HotStar, where I'd setup a Fab and Fact IV warp gate.
Rebuild and smackdown Riker a little shy of 15:45. 420 (ish) AIP at this time. The whipping boy is going to get eaten if I don't get this lowered, but look! What a lovely little SuperTerminal. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
Queue massive inhalement of fleet ships with a MK III Military Command Station on it. Raid the gates on Three Kings to avoid issues. At first I got a 2x wave of ~2000 MK III ships that decided to hit Riker while I was trying to work the superterminal and savescummed that away. Hey, if they can be cheesy, so can I. ;)
After that, I only had one mini wave come in of about 300 ships that we just inhaled. While I was working them, a 2500 ship CPA announces and launches. It wrecks the back systems, though I'm able to hold onto Liao by turning off all the Fact IV warpgates. I'll pick them up later if I have to.
At around 500 reduction the SuperTerminal decides it's going to start being bigger than me and fires off three surges in a row. That's the beginning of the end of what I could handle. I saved after clearing that to test a strategy and tried popping the Mil III station to turn it off. Nope, dangit, it's still going! Quickly head back to pre-kaboom. I've got a transport with a colony ship hiding under cloak in Three Kings if that worked, but it didn't.
At around 580 removal I can't take any more. I'm down to roughly 700 ships and my Maws are all fat and bloated. If it surges the core fleet will run rampant through the galaxy and I'll literally NEVER get back to it to turn it off. I blow the ST. I quickly blow the Mil III station as well to avoid further 'random wavepoint' issues from the Exo-Galaxy wormhole.
I head into Three Kings, pop the station and neighboring WarpGate in Tau, and setup shop for Research. There's a super-research thingamabobbie here for 9k in the system. Cool. Set it up with a Mil III guardian and a FF and K-Raid Tau. Time to head home and clean up my mess.
Bring along colony ships for HotStar and start rebuilding my way home. I pick up the MK IV units on Liao after clearing the border threat and turn the warpgate back on for Kerensky. K is building, I need 10k for the Mk IV builder for the final push of this plan. I hit Cyborg and they clean out the front door. I go through and clean off Macross for good measure. Then drop a 4th Fortress on Kerensky and get some more Trader Toys going. Clean out the rear systems, get the rebels back online, and refill that portion of the fleet. Then I wait a bit, letting the econ work trader toys while I wait for research with the primary fleet on Eridani, waiting to go.
Finally, I get my 10k Research. I turn off Liao's factory. I build off factory IVs and get them prepped on Eridani. I set the entire fleet up in transports and save. This will take a few strategical attempts, I'm sure.
I haul arse for Earth. Earth with its multiple Ion Cannons, AI Eye, 2x Raid Engines, and a Fortress III under 2x FF with the Cmd Station covering the single entry portal. That Earth. I bypass the 800+ core ships parked on Kirk while I do it, too.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/TransportsAway.gif)
Not too shabby an AIP for what I've researched and already killing one of the AI Homeworlds. Also, not an impossible fleet to stop, but Kerensky's gonna bite it.
I get to Earth and unload, albeit slowly from the massively packed transports. It's no good. The idea is completely sound but the AI Eye was just too much. Having an equivalently continuous zombie spawn of Core ships land on your head just doesn't work.
I have no idea what the heck I'm going to do. I've thought about bringing in my Maw/Blade Spawner stacks with Starship support and only MK IV Missile Frigates. Get them off the gate and setup shop, and I might be able to lay waste to most of the guardposts with the Blade Spawners. Depending on their fussiness that day they might take out a raid or two before they fire again. If I can hide the Raid Starships in the pack until we clear up most of the interference I could Raid SS the Raids down too. That's a major part of my problem. If I can get rid of that I can get on Kirk and then just raid Earth into oblivion.
That AI Eye + Raid Engines are just too blessed powerful on their own though. No matter what I do, however, the MK I/II ships will have to stay behind. I'll set them up on Kerensky to help the defense there, but they're just getting me killed on Earth.
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Ah, so the first homeworld falls to dogged persistence, and the ST is taken for a ride all the way to the bank. Then Earth decides to be extremely stubborn. Perhaps the Vogons could offer some advice?
At around 580 removal I can't take any more. I'm down to roughly 700 ships and my Maws are all fat and bloated. If it surges the core fleet will run rampant through the galaxy and I'll literally NEVER get back to it to turn it off.
At least it's keeping you that honest now :) It's going to want a rematch in 5.028, though.
As far as what to do about Earth... just stuff transports with as many ships as the AI Eye would let slide, starting from the ones best suited to kill a raid engine (probably bomber starships) and working down. Then throw that against a raid engine. Repeat as many times as necessary to kill the raid engine. And hope the defenses back home hold during the process.
If I had time, I would provoke some AI Eye spawns and then use transports+riots (+cloakers if necessary) to kite and engine-kill the entire swarm so that it's out of position and not going much of anywhere. But 2 raid engines = distinct lack of time.
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Ah, so the first homeworld falls to dogged persistence, and the ST is taken for a ride all the way to the bank. Then Earth decides to be extremely stubborn. Perhaps the Vogons could offer some advice?
Hitchhiker's Guide. Mk II.
At least it's keeping you that honest now :) It's going to want a rematch in 5.028, though.
LOL, I'm sure. :)
As far as what to do about Earth... just stuff transports with as many ships as the AI Eye would let slide, starting from the ones best suited to kill a raid engine (probably bomber starships) and working down. Then throw that against a raid engine. Repeat as many times as necessary to kill the raid engine. And hope the defenses back home hold during the process.
I'd thought about that, but part of the problem is the Kirk releases, and 250 core ships on the homeworld, apparently of which over half are guardian or starship. It's not, just feels that way.
I just tried a MK III/IV raid, well spread amongst the transports to unload in 4 pumps at most, with the spawners and maws. That's about when I realized I'm trapped between the Fortress as described and a Heavy Beam Guardian with an Ion V on the other side of me. *facepalm* I've been tempted to transport raid. Once concern is that I've got an EMP Guardian that releases in Earth, which is heavily defended by the 2x raid. You don't want to know how quickly Kerensky fell when it was EMP'd for 45 seconds. The secondary fleet didn't even stand a chance. They were 2/3's dead as the 3000+ ships poured into the system.
The factory ships are a killer idea, but ONLY if I can get a reasonably defendable beachhead. They're dying far too easily as 10+ bombers pour into the fleet and hunt them down. One of the few times I want to use them and they can barely survive to produce anything. Sure sure, they're helpful when doing wandering deepstrike, but they were my strategy. My strategy is dying to mass. That's 20k or so I'm gonna have to flush. Well, at least it was only K-Raid K. ;)
If I had time, I would provoke some AI Eye spawns and then use transports+riots (+cloakers if necessary) to kite and engine-kill the entire swarm so that it's out of position and not going much of anywhere. But 2 raid engines = distinct lack of time.
Not a horrible idea, but definately not something I have time to do. I may have to try the primary fleet at home and a massive transport raid with bombers. If I can take *1* of the raids out AND drain the homeworld of most of the fleet, I have a chance in dren. I almost have to take down that EMP Guardian before it reaches me though.
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Yikes, either I don't know how to transport raid or that's just not going to fly. ~165 III/IV bombers died before getting off two salvos due to homeworld defenses, all dumped simultaneously due to a massive fleet of transports loaded up with 10 each.
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Yikes. Is this static/non-chasing defense or can it be kited? Is any of it susceptible to lightning warhead spam or is the damage on those just too low? Do you have autobombs?
Do you have supply? I think a mobile builder can plop down turrets anywhere on the planet, which tends to pull things towards them. Of course, if you have any turrets on the planet it frees everything, I think.
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Yikes. Is this static/non-chasing defense or can it be kited? Is any of it susceptible to lightning warhead spam or is the damage on those just too low? Do you have autobombs?
In theory, kited. In reality? Not with that much firepower, not for long. Also, side note: Raids are neutrons. :) Missile Frigs next time. ;)
Do you have supply? I think a mobile builder can plop down turrets anywhere on the planet, which tends to pull things towards them. Of course, if you have any turrets on the planet it frees everything, I think.
Of course not! :) Then the Raids would be non-stop.
Update on the mess. After the Bomber run I pulled about 150 ships off the homeworld, about 100 off Kirk as well. We engaged the resulting EMP kaboomage in Cyborg, with mixed results. i'd used a portion of the fleet to deal with bleedoff and the rest of the fleet came in behind them after the EMP hit. About the time the full blown Raid caught up to them I was down to about 700 fleet ships and ran.
During the rebuild, this happened:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/Ungh.gif)
Okay, this was getting silly. Built off a warhead creator and dropped a pair of Lightning I's on the entry gate to Kerensky, taking about 600 of the buggers out. The CPA hit so I shipped a few boys up to Macross and cleared the rear gate, and the front gate poured in during this.
I'm right, Kerensky CANNOT hold. The so far rebuilt fleet came back and helped on FRD to try to defend the joint. When the 300+ cutlasses got under the shields and took out the Mil III the fortresses went dead, that was the end of that. I still had plenty of fleet left but 500 or so ships made it out and sat on the entry to Twycross. I built off a transport convoy and got a new colony ship out to Kerensky and started rebuilding there. Meanwhile, I'm trying to get scouts back oot and aboot for where the EMP shorted them out. A short-time wave (700 ships or so, not much) hit Twycross and the CPA+Raid leftovers crashed into Twycross. With guardian support and the like they ALMOST crashed the 10xHFF Is sitting on the wormhole. It held though.
Currently Earth has ~100 ships, most of them in cold storage. With all that firepower gone if I can ever get myself rebuilt I'm going to try another transport raid with Missile Frigs this time against the 2x Raid Engines. The outer worlds have mostly held, just Eridani (the road from Earth -> Kerensky) took a beating and Solar Moon fell when 600+ ships from the CPA poured over them.
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Remarkably stubborn, this Earth. But things seem to be progressing into a more tractable state.
The bypass will be built.
There aren't any alternatives :)
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LOL, no kiddin'. :) I did finally manage to land a full flight of Missile Frigs right on top of the Raid Gate that's not under FF. Blade Spawners dropped in with them and did some damage to the leftover defending starships. Rest of the fleet hung back at Kerensky.
At 18:20 I'm basically staring at a 2200 ship fleet hanging in Cyborg waiting for entry codes to Kerensky. They just won't commit. Apparently you won't let me power down 4 fortresses to encourage entry. ::) Was worth a try.
I tried an EMP on them... that was useless. Oh, sure, it shutdown a viscious volume of MK IV ships, but even then the core ships and guardians slaughtered my entire mobile fleet. I'm going to have to try to bait them and deal with the backwash/rebuild again. At least I'm down to one raid now.
This game is taking forever. And it's all the 2x Raid + Eye's fault. Grr grr. Silly mapgen.
Side note, the Raid wasn't triggered until my transports unloaded in Earth. Which was kind of nice right until they all spawned IN Earth and flooded what was left of the fleet trying to batter a few more guard posts down. D'oh! Note to self: Make sure one ship triggers the raid in Kirk if I do it again.
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Ah, that makes sense actually: the transports aren't military, and thus don't trigger the raid engine. Similar to how the scouts don't trigger it (now wouldn't that be fun).
On baiting that 2200 fleet... yea, that's tough when you have such a huge amount of non-wormhole-traversing firepower. You'd literally have to scrap and speed-rebuild those forts to both bait and have the forts on hand.
Does the AI have any tachyon coverage on the Cyborg side of the Cyborg-Kerensky link? CloakerSS+Transport+Goons => unload on far end of cyborg => kite the 2200 away from the wormhole => deploy nastiness or at least be able to fight from non-point-blank-range?
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Ah, that makes sense actually: the transports aren't military, and thus don't trigger the raid engine. Similar to how the scouts don't trigger it (now wouldn't that be fun).
<ow>
On baiting that 2200 fleet... yea, that's tough when you have such a huge amount of non-wormhole-traversing firepower. You'd literally have to scrap and speed-rebuild those forts to both bait and have the forts on hand.
Well, dropping back into Macross did it, but now we're rebuilding again.
Does the AI have any tachyon coverage on the Cyborg side of the Cyborg-Kerensky link? CloakerSS+Transport+Goons => unload on far end of cyborg => kite the 2200 away from the wormhole => deploy nastiness or at least be able to fight from non-point-blank-range?
For some reason or another, the AI seems to like dropping off 20-30 MK V Microfighters (IE: Tachyon) when they send things at me... They don't have them unlocked, but like the gravity rippers, apparently they just get a few extra MK Vs.
So.... Yeeeeaaaahhhh... Ow.
Edit: Remnants from the swarm blew out the SW colonies completely. I'll have to rebuild there. I also have modified the positioning in Kerensky. Both wormholes are in the Upper Right of the planet, and I'd built the Mil III 3 grav Is away. It's now 9 Grav Is to the SW. They won't pop me so easily next time!
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The AI gets just-mk-V of a few extra types, which is probably why you're seeing the tachyons. It's a little extra special gift for humans who tick off a homeworld :)
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From the wiki (http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_AI_Techs), the bottom question and answer is the latest information. The section right before has similar information, but mentions 3 Mark V unlocks which I believe is incorrect. I'm not sure about the extra Mark I-IV unlock for tech 7+.
What ship types and tech levels does the AI have access to?
A:
1) The triangle ships (Fighter, Bomber, Missile Frigate), Mark I-V
2) Any ship types unlocked by their AI type, Mark I-V
3) An additional ship type, Mark I-IV
4) Additional ship types unlocked based on AIP, Mark I-IV
5) Two ships types, Mark V (does not unlock Mark I-IV if that ship type isn't unlocked by points 3 or 4)
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Heh, yeah, I just thought they only got one. Ah well.
Anyway, at 19:00 rebuild was complete and I sent in a small squad with Riots and Blades to take out the final Raid Engine.
Once I deal with this, I'm going to suffer a 100 AIP increase due to a Rebel Colony being ignored for too long. Instead of that, I try to drive a fleet of transports to Vulture (Upper right, just off LLama) and they get hung up on the gravity rippers off the wormhole. When they pop two of the 5 transports carrying 200 ships a piece those ships make a stand while the Rebel Ships and the rest of the transports make for Vulture... and run into a brand new black hole generator on Llama... sigh.
Well, +10 AIP later after blowing that we blow the station on Vulture, saving the rebel colony. I also clean out some lingering threat that was against Liao with a portion of the fleet. I need to warp gate pop Llama and Davion, or I need to abandon ship ( and get a 2 hr reprieve) in Vulture. I shouldn't need more than two hours. I'm speed building research stations to get a quick 3k and we're off to the races again, after I blow my own station.
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Yeesh, what a bloody grind...
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI93Win.gif)
So, after popping Vulture and getting a 700 ship wave against it, and I run to Kerensky for a bit. The wave heads south. I don't want to deal with an 80 AIP so I throw up a few dozen turrets and kill all rebuilding on Three Kings to protect the super-research thingie. They barely hold off the 400+ ships that come after it.
And while I clean up from that, a lovely 2500 CPA pops to make life even more interesting.
I finally get some decent fleet up and we go after Kirk to empty it. That takes out enough fleet i move the factory planet to Eridani. I grind Raid SS Earth for a bit until I can get the majority of the Ions down and then drop the blade spawners off in a corner to finish cleanup. Eventually I get everything cleaned up. The final assault goes down with the main fleet and shatters the 2xFF and fortress, finally letting me clear the homeworld. Pop.
Wow, what a blessed grind. Things learned:
1 ) Next time I find a homeworld with 2x Raid Engine and an AI Eye, I quit.
2 ) Whenever arguing with a long haul game, make sure I've got a good queue on NetFlix for massive rebuilds.
3 ) Don't pop Dysons without intent to use. If you have to pop the Dyson, make sure you use the thing. I'm pretty sure it would have chewed up some pretty lively pieces of the CPAs.
4 ) I REALLY need to use Raid SS IIIs. I've become dependent. Next time just open the things. Early.
5 ) Fortresses cannot hold a whipping boy. Even with heavy spider/sniper backup.
6 ) Riot IIs are powerful, but nowhere near the old power, even on single homeworld. They shouldn't be that off but they are.
7 ) I'm gonna hurt, badly, when heavy K-Raiding is done away with.
8 ) You can't hide from Raid Engines on their own planet. You have a 4 minute window. Use it wisely.
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Congratulations! 9.3 put up a significantly better fight than 9, it looked like, but once again that sniveling Earth has been put in its place ;)
1 ) Next time I find a homeworld with 2x Raid Engine and an AI Eye, I quit.
Hahaha, and the mapgen scores a kill ;) I'm considering having AI Eyes not spawn on homeworlds, but I dunno, it's kind of entertaining ;) Maybe after a balance pass on guardians and guard posts (some of which need more teeth, imo), and in light of the k-raiding changes, etc.
2 ) Whenever arguing with a long haul game, make sure I've got a good queue on NetFlix for massive rebuilds.
Yea, I keep trying to figure out a way of not having those massive waiting periods. I've considered and looked at implementing a "fast forward mode" that would just do a really coarse simulation (like an extreme version of what you can do now with performance-profile="Extremely Low" and +10 speed) but making that more than say 50% faster than Extremely-low (I'm looking for like 500% faster than that or more) would involve the equivalent of a nervous-system-transplant for the game. We've done those before, but now's not the time.
Maybe some kind of device you could build that when it's not in low power mode it increases all resource gain by 10x (or 100x, whatever) but also increases AIP-over-time, AI reinforcements, wave timer countdown, cpa countdown, exo countup, hybrid spawning and maturation, etc by the same factor. And maybe have it auto-disable if you have over X ships attacking you or are attacking an AI planet or something like that. The key would be making sure the speedup applies to all the things that "time passage" is supposed to "cost" (other than minor things like how far AI ships move; if the Avenger is up or something it should probably just suppress this device). It would probably take a number of releases for you folks to find all the stragglers, but does that sound useful/tenable from the player side? It'd be involved code-wise but way more feasible than literally speeding up the game that far.
3 ) Don't pop Dysons without intent to use. If you have to pop the Dyson, make sure you use the thing. I'm pretty sure it would have chewed up some pretty lively pieces of the CPAs.
Friendly Dysons are a Good Thing (TM). Hostile Dysons are a- (is blasted to smithereens).
7 ) I'm gonna hurt, badly, when heavy K-Raiding is done away with.
But you'll enjoy the pain ;)
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Maybe after a balance pass on guardians and guard posts (some of which need more teeth, imo), and in light of the k-raiding changes, etc.
I agree (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3728), Guard Posts do need more teeth. You could also make each home world have no more than one "Really Bad(tm)" spawn. Like double Raid, AI Eye, or whatever. Of course 10 should be allowed two such spawns :) .
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Maybe after a balance pass on guardians and guard posts (some of which need more teeth, imo), and in light of the k-raiding changes, etc.
I agree (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3728), Guard Posts do need more teeth. You could also make each home world have no more than one "Really Bad(tm)" spawn. Like double Raid, AI Eye, or whatever. Of course 10 should be allowed two such spawns :) .
Should the "no more than 1 (2 for diff 10) 'nasty spawn'" rule also apply to core planets?
What about planets in general? (Ok, for planets in general, this could be bumped up by one, so no more than 2 (3 for diff 10))
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Normal planets can be bypassed and are at best Mark IV, making things a ton easier. I could see the issue with Core Worlds, but I'd probably give them +1 "Really Bad" spawns because they don't have some of the other nastiness of a Home World. If I even limited them. The current map gen doesn't stick people with insane stuff all that often as is.
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Yea, I keep trying to figure out a way of not having those massive waiting periods. I've considered and looked at implementing a "fast forward mode" that would just do a really coarse simulation (like an extreme version of what you can do now with performance-profile="Extremely Low" and +10 speed) but making that more than say 50% faster than Extremely-low (I'm looking for like 500% faster than that or more) would involve the equivalent of a nervous-system-transplant for the game. We've done those before, but now's not the time.
Maybe some kind of device you could build that when it's not in low power mode it increases all resource gain by 10x (or 100x, whatever) but also increases AIP-over-time, AI reinforcements, wave timer countdown, cpa countdown, exo countup, hybrid spawning and maturation, etc by the same factor. And maybe have it auto-disable if you have over X ships attacking you or are attacking an AI planet or something like that. The key would be making sure the speedup applies to all the things that "time passage" is supposed to "cost" (other than minor things like how far AI ships move; if the Avenger is up or something it should probably just suppress this device). It would probably take a number of releases for you folks to find all the stragglers, but does that sound useful/tenable from the player side? It'd be involved code-wise but way more feasible than literally speeding up the game that far.
Well that would be useful, it also needs to make the shards a lot faster or something. I play normally on Epic, as the time is perfect for me for everything but when it time to bring shards home. For every shard in my 10/10 game, I basically put my entire fleet and turrets in one system, waited for the traders to fly in (several hours) to build the Armor Inhibitor I needed to hold off the hunter killers that fly in under several hundred shield bearers. (Mainly so that I could kill them without having to go though all those shields first.). After that is done, it scan, order shard home. Leave desktop running, turn on Tivo with a movie and grab my laptop to have access to my email. It takes that long for a Shard to fly home, and that is on +10 extremely low.
I normally have to throw on a TV show in a normal game, and those I don't have to wait for the traders, but it still is where almost all of my waiting time on epic are, so I don't think I should change my speed setting, as most of the time I am doing stuff somewhere when I am not waiting on those shards.
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You could also make each home world have no more than one "Really Bad(tm)" spawn. Like double Raid, AI Eye, or whatever. Of course 10 should be allowed two such spawns :) .
I don't think I want to put a lot of constraints on what it does there; those are basically the only things keeping GUDare from walking all over 9+ ;)
But stacking an AI Eye on top of that big pile of pain so that you can't even bring in the fleet without an unending spawn of mkV ships...
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Oh, and I almost forgot.
Congratulations on beating these (intentionally) absurdly unfair AI difficulties. Quite an accomplishment, and a testament to your skill.
Dang that was overly ornate, but in any case, congrats! :)
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I'm impressed. GUDare is a true master. Or just insanely patient. can't tell. :D
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I have a feeling the AI may target Netflix in the near future.
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I have a feeling the AI may target Netflix in the near future.
Whether to prevent its use or to make viewers unable to focus on strategy games, it's difficult to say.
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You could also make each home world have no more than one "Really Bad(tm)" spawn. Like double Raid, AI Eye, or whatever. Of course 10 should be allowed two such spawns :) .
I don't think I want to put a lot of constraints on what it does there; those are basically the only things keeping GUDare from walking all over 9+ ;)
But stacking an AI Eye on top of that big pile of pain so that you can't even bring in the fleet without an unending spawn of mkV ships...
Thanks for all the pats on the back folks, they feel nice, but I personally don't feel I'm up to level yet. The 9.0 game would have given me the same pain if the mapgen had spawned the same way, it really wasn't the level difference except in early game trying to argue with the Tech II, and one whipping boy malfunction on the cross to III. Admittedly as I crank up the level the results of the mapgen are worse, but it's the same net effect.
Keith, regarding the AI Eye. Most of my strategy involved getting underneath the raid engine. Since the Raid engine spawned locally as well it was a moot point. I just didn't put all the pieces together when I developed the strategy. It's frustrating to not be able to fully smash the system in one go though when you're fighting double raids, which is why I'd probably just bail if I faced it again. There's almost literally no way to handle Eye spawn + Raid spawn if it takes too long to get at them. It'll flush your game. Personally I'd merely like to see (generically) if Raid engine on planet no Eye. Ship mass is just too much. That it's a MK V Eye doesn't help any. Early game Eye II + Raid would be enough to shutdown a parsec or two.
For waiting on resources, I don't have a good answer. It's part of the process for the game I'm playing. I was over-extending constantly against foes with better marks and higher numbers. The fact that I was able to use a whittling technique at all was pretty powerful. I might beach-head Cyborg next game with those fortresses to abuse inbounds instead of trying to wait on Kerensky. Since they don't get the Mil III bonuses, there's no point being that contained with them. Admittedly they'll die a lot but oh well.
Any option that involves better resources for a higher permanent result (IE: AIP) is not something I'd ever use. You'll notice I don't ever pop Zenith ship storages, I almost never pop distribution nodes except in VERY early game to get things going. I usually, near midgame, have about 200+ of each converter somewhere in the back for when I end up in heavy rebuilds of certain items (Raid Starships comes to mind with their crystal costs). I wouldn't mind something that could reduce wall clock time but I also want to reduce game time. I rarely play at +10 time, because things get away from me too easily, and I tend to micromanage a bunch of things or use that time to clean up minor problems. Also, game time is an issue too.
It cost me an hour to have to go deal with the second Rebel Colony, the extra CPA was just icing on the cake. I could have spent resources on the metal/crystal boosters, but they're just sooooo overpriced on a non multi-homeworld game. I'd rather have more of just about anything else that will help keep me from having to spend the resources in the first place by being bigger and meaner. Of course cheapening them basically is a gimme for a multi-homeworld. Right now they're unfeasible though. 6500 K for what's usually a VERY small gain (what, MAYBE an Econ III's worth?) is not worth a MK III ship. Ever. I rarely take Fighters to II and I'd rather upgrade THEM to III on non-multi-homeworld.
For boosts of a non-permanently pain inducing nature, it'll be driven by the result. What's the point of rebuilding my fleet twice as quick if I have to nearly suicide them on CPAs twice as often? I know, everything needs a tradeoff, but that's not necessarily one I'd bother with.
Resources are a huge part of the game. I don't have anything I could recommend as a wise fix.
On a side note, one of the most frustrating things I ran into was the need for the baiting mechanic. Oh, I understand not sending 100 ships into a whipping boy to die. But it's just confusing. I had 2200 ships sitting on the other side of a wormhole playing poker, MK IV and V, and not entering. Their firepower was MASSIVE. They wouldn't budge. Yet later, with only 500 of those same ships sitting against the whipping boy, they flooded in with a tiny little 400 ship MK III wave. Against MUCH stronger firepower. I don't get it.
K-Raiding to insane volumes really allowed me to test a few different strategies, one of which was the Neinzul Factory ships. That was 18k (6 worlds) worth of knowledge for something that basically just 'came along for the ride' and didn't change the real game outcome, just sped it up a bit, and required an investment to Engineer III to use well. They're only truly worth it to avoid MK IV factory captures, which you can't avoid with CSGs on anyway, and you're unlikely to HAVE MK IV ships if you spent that K on the builders.
It also let me put up weaker defenses at different points which still were utterly consumed by minor components of the CPAs, to the point where I'm not sure if it was worth it to spend K on that. I'm still refining my strategy, to be sure, but there were aspects of this game that were significant wastes of resources.
For the Dyson... once you know where it is, just don't keep a scout on it if you're not ready to use it. It's quieted down and will just happily sit there, as far as I know.
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I'm really surprised you don't upgrade Fighters to II that often. I find them excellent cannon fodder. On an M+C per HP, only the Armor Ship and Shield Bearer beat them (plus the Younglings, Autobombs and Mirrors, which are all special cases). For the K-cost, Fighter II is a no-brainer for me. They just absorb too much damage. Especially early game when your economy is strapped, they can blunt waves without your docks even feeling it.
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I'm really surprised you don't upgrade Fighters to II that often. I find them excellent cannon fodder. On an M+C per HP, only the Armor Ship and Shield Bearer beat them (plus the Younglings, Autobombs and Mirrors, which are all special cases). For the K-cost, Fighter II is a no-brainer for me. They just absorb too much damage. Especially early game when your economy is strapped, they can blunt waves without your docks even feeling it.
Oh, I will occassionally, but a lot of times it'll depend on my extra ships. In the early game I usually need bombers. It never fails that some wise guy decides to drop a fortress on my head. That last game I won with Fighters at Mk I only. I disagree with damage absorbtion, though. I know pound for pound you're correct, intellectually. What I see on screen though never makes me feel like they're worthy, particularly for my extremely limited early game K. There's just too many other things for my K to do in the early game, like bolster my Economy for stronger ships. At 2500 K that's half my Econ III. It's an entire world worth of K to upgrade to MK II. I could upgrade to Flagships and get a 1.7 boost for my better ships for the same K price.
If my enemy has unlocked something early and vicious with polycrystal armor, I'll unlock them. But they're definately a seasonal thing. I don't want cannon fodder. I want staying power. In particular on offense when I can't replace them, the K feels significantly wasted.
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So, 9.6/9.6 game started up. Mapgen did something different again.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI96Opening.jpg)
Fraggle doesn't have my ARS, but Huge and Dyson do. Dyson's also pretty well dug in. There's a fortress on Shawshank making life into the backfield annoying. There's also an attritioner on Roulette but it's off the Shawshank gate so no biggie, but there's another Fort (II this time) on Roulette. Janeway has a troop accelerator that I'm going to need to take out the system relatively early if I don't want to be stalled up in my early game.
Looking east, Twycross is nothing but there's an alarm post on Macross, and Macross is heavily built with posts and ions... and a Co-P, killing any chance of using that as a Dyson connected whipping boy unless I want to soak 20 AIP. Dyson's also pretty heavily built, and is the only system I've scouted with more than 4 resource nodes on it. Most of them are 1/1s or so. I can't use that however. There's an ARS on Dyson, too, though. So, two ARS's in easy reach, but I'll have to take down Macross to get to it. Looks like I'll have to soak that Co-P.
Research so far has been Warp Sensor, Grav Turret, Maw II, Econ II. Space Planes haven't been enough of a nuisance yet to bother getting Tachyon Turrets up, but they'll be shortly once the economy stablilizes. After building off the MK I fleet I've started on Starship and Raid lines. Deflected the first two waves rather easily, though Twycross sent in some 'help' for the second wave.
I'm curious to see what the sphere does now that I've scouted it but don't have a scout on it. It'll take it a goodly amount of time to dig out of Dyson and onto Macross, so I'll work the back. Eventually I'll drop a few scouts on it and see what it's done for the last 30 minutes or so.
Assuming the homeworlds are still Earth and Riker, but that might be different. Up till now the ARS's have always been in the same location. This should be interesting.
Immediate priorities: Clear the Fortress off Shawshank, take Shawshank, Janeway, and blow Roulette to pieces. Nerf Fraggle Rock and Twycross (I don't have the firepower to full neuter yet) and then work my way into Huge for the first ARS. Then look east.
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Personally I'd merely like to see (generically) if Raid engine on planet no Eye.
Yea, that would probably be a positive step. I need to look at the core guard post seeding in general just to make sure I understand what kind of variance we're looking at. The raid/cpa posts are supposed to be way more brutal than the other ones, but it's like the other ones don't even matter compared to those ;) Which may be as it should be
Any option that involves better resources for a higher permanent result (IE: AIP) is not something I'd ever use.
Yea; for instance taking planets for resource spots isn't something one sees in successful 9+ play, generally :)
What I was talking about was basically saying that you would get the same amount of resources produced for the same amount of "bad stuff happening elsewhere" that you would without the device/option/whatever, you would just get it without having to wait it out in real-time. In theory the actual game result is exactly the same, and if so I don't know why you'd not use it simply because there happened to be AIP involved (because it would have been involved anyway since you have 1-AIP-every-30-min on, which is good because without it it really is just a matter of whittling down the AI without freeing too much at once).
I wouldn't mind something that could reduce wall clock time but I also want to reduce game time. I rarely play at +10 time, because things get away from me too easily, and I tend to micromanage a bunch of things or use that time to clean up minor problems. Also, game time is an issue too.
Well, I'm not sure what you mean, but the relationship between "game time elapsed" and things like aip-over-time, reinforcements, wave generation, wave countdowns, cpa generation, cpa countdowns, etc... that's all intentional. If you bust your entire I-IV fleet and your economy cannot support rebuilding it in less than 3000 game seconds rebuilding, that's 3000 game seconds the AI has to counterattack against your weakened forces and reinforce its own position against future attacks. That seems balanced ok, and is the whole reason there's an m+c system at all, really. The only thing I'm wanting to change is the necessary correlation between game seconds and how much time you physically have to spend on the game.
On a side note, one of the most frustrating things I ran into was the need for the baiting mechanic. Oh, I understand not sending 100 ships into a whipping boy to die. But it's just confusing. I had 2200 ships sitting on the other side of a wormhole playing poker, MK IV and V, and not entering. Their firepower was MASSIVE. They wouldn't budge. Yet later, with only 500 of those same ships sitting against the whipping boy, they flooded in with a tiny little 400 ship MK III wave. Against MUCH stronger firepower. I don't get it.
If you have a save of each (or get saves of similar situations in the future) I can interrogate the little buggers and make them show their math.
On the factory ships, they do serve a purpose but really could do with being easier to use. Cloaking, maybe, though I dunno if that would make it too easy to just have a "spawn my ships here" invincible-mouse-cursor. On the other hand I wonder about giving them some kind of "warp gate" capability so you can also have your factories produce to them. But I'm sure the exploits would be strong with that one ;)
Anyway, interesting stuff :)
Oh look, 9.6 already :) Time to see what happened...
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it doesn't matter if you leave no scouts on the dyson planet. It will start spewing out ships once you scouted it once, regardless of scouts being present. At least that's what I believe.
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Personally I'd merely like to see (generically) if Raid engine on planet no Eye.
Yea, that would probably be a positive step. I need to look at the core guard post seeding in general just to make sure I understand what kind of variance we're looking at. The raid/cpa posts are supposed to be way more brutal than the other ones, but it's like the other ones don't even matter compared to those ;) Which may be as it should be
The only other post that is a significant annoyance is the Heavy Beam Guardpost. It annihilates Raid Starships trying to get at Ion Cannons (and other assundry annoyances, like Orbital Mass Drivers) that are parked next to them. Add a FF and they're a significant pain. Otherwise... no, not really. Neinzul cockroaches can be a problem if you fire one up too early, but that's mostly because your scouts fired up a homeworld defense you had no intention of dealing with yet.
Yea; for instance taking planets for resource spots isn't something one sees in successful 9+ play, generally :)
What I was talking about was basically saying that you would get the same amount of resources produced for the same amount of "bad stuff happening elsewhere" that you would without the device/option/whatever, you would just get it without having to wait it out in real-time. In theory the actual game result is exactly the same, and if so I don't know why you'd not use it simply because there happened to be AIP involved (because it would have been involved anyway since you have 1-AIP-every-30-min on, which is good because without it it really is just a matter of whittling down the AI without freeing too much at once).
Because I can use half a fleet to take care of small objectives, like threat removal, while the rest rebuilds. If I turn that on, the timers could get away from me. I understand exactly what you're saying and you're right, which is why I don't have a good answer. I'd like something that could improve my econ but not, at a 1:1 basis, speed up the game clock's repercussions for it. Something different, maybe. Otherwise, not sure I'd use it. It'd be a case by case basis as to what I felt I could handle vs. what I wanted to deal with.
If you have a save of each (or get saves of similar situations in the future) I can interrogate the little buggers and make them show their math.
Will do. I'm not sure I've got a save of that one. I'm quite sure it'll happen again.
On the factory ships, they do serve a purpose but really could do with being easier to use. Cloaking, maybe, though I dunno if that would make it too easy to just have a "spawn my ships here" invincible-mouse-cursor.
They need a serious armor/hp upgrade, at the least. Right now if you don't control the system or have a near-invincible beach-head, they die. They also could use with built-in engineer support. Must Have Engineer IIIs (which die to a left-over sneeze) reduces their value in combat scenarios. Right now their only use is to reduce time to go home and collect reinforcements during near-deep strikes.
On the other hand I wonder about giving them some kind of "warp gate" capability so you can also have your factories produce to them. But I'm sure the exploits would be strong with that one ;)
That... could be useful. Significantly devalue the worth of the MK IV though, which is as an alternate to your Fact IV if you lost it. Would need a very significant K reduction.
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Comments based on what I have seen tracking this topic.
- Bombers are still a little too "always useful/needed" compared to the other triangle ship types, though it is better now than it used to be (See http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2579 for related discussion)
- I think that the ships that come in to a WAY defended planet in some cases were special forces ships. There is a chance that a special forces ship will ignore the "is it safe for me to go in and not get insta-deaded" logic when a human planet is in the path they are patrolling
- On a similar note, right now, the AI seems to be undervaluing turret firepower, meaning ships will gladly throw themselves onto turrets with just a little bit of build-up, and of course just to get insta-deaded by the turrets. (See http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=5001)
- Higher Mk. Neinzul enclave ship builders need more reward than just allowing higher mk builds. I heard a suggestion about giving them higher intrinsic construction rates at higher marks, and I like that idea. Enough of a boost without radically changing how the ship works.
- The Mk. I Neinzul enclave ship builder by itself pumps out most MK. I ships at a pathetic rate without assistance. A boost in intrinsic the construction rate across the board (including Mk I) is, IMO, almost certainly in order. Additional health may help too
- For higher Mk. resource gatherers, they need either a nerf in knowledge to unlock, a buff in how many extra resources that gather per mk, or a merging of the two lines (eg, unlocking metal harvester Mk. II comes with crystal harvester Mk. II), or some combination of these (IMO, some magnitude of all of these is in order)
- Thanks to the conflicting pressures of a raid engine and the AI eye, having both on the same planet seems like an unfair lose-lose scenario. Not allowing AI eyes and raid engines on the same planet I think would be a great idea
- The current balance of the upcoming changes to the knowledge hacking may make it that the point where hacking is no longer viable due to AI response magnitude may be way too early for the amount of AIP you need to avoid raising in a >9 game (too early is fine, and fits with the whole "unfair" thing that >9 is supposed to be, but if it is too early, it becomes practically impossible, which is not good for <10)
- Similar to above, but for Superterminals instead of knowledge hacking
That's all for now.
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45 minutes in and not a lot has happened. Here's the deal, Huge has a Counterstrike II on it. I want AIP as low as possible when I trigger it and breaking that down as well as the fort has been painful, particularly with fleet retreats to cover Sushi for waves. Sushi's starting to build up a turret defense but digging through Roulette has been ugly.
Huge has an AI Eye on it so once I break down most of Roulette I'll just raid the CounterStrike II post and deal with that. Once that's done I can get econ up on Janeway. Popping the Warp Gate on Shawshank with that intent was pre-emptive, and I've been paying for that AIP increase with only homeworld.
I lost a good bit of fleet over on Roulette and it's taking a bit to rebuild. I may have to take Janeway early like it or not, but I'm going to get hung up on the pair of FF IIs that's on it. I may just raid it out and collect the backwash in Shawshank.
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I've been early game experimenting a bit, seeing what I can get away with basically only the homeworld. I eventually took Janeway about 15 minutes ago just to shut down the Troop Accelerator before it gets ugly later and also researched up Econ III.
At 1:30 I can confirm, the Dyson will NOT spawn if you don't have eyes on the planet. After a few rounds of transport assault I finally got my Scout Is in there.
The Fortress on Roulette's down and it's nerfed, as is the Eye on Huge. Macross is still fat and fluffy but I'll get back to that. I've taken Janeway but that's it. AIP is 45 and I've decided I need to put up the starter whipping boy. I can hold with the fleet but it's getting annoying, and I don't want to over-build the homeworld.
Besides, putting up the whipping boy on Macross gets me Dyson, 2 worlds of K, and the Dyson ARS if I flash control it. I'll need to pop a fortress on Dyson but that shouldn't be a big deal.
Trying to get into Dyson the Transports pissed off an EMP II that I had to deal with offworld, so I caught it in Twycross and shut it down there. Took a bit of fleet though. I've also opened up Tachyon Turrets to rid myself of stray Space Planes. I had plans for that 250 K but oh well. So far so good. I'm not sure how much, if any, of the 'backfield' I'm going to take. I'd like to keep AIP way down, and I can ignore Fraggle and only need to take the warp gate on Roulette out. I can neuter them into oblivion to remove aggression later, though CPAs might be troublesome. I'll have to think on it. I'm not even sure I'll take Twycross, though having the Dysons available for homeworld would be nice. Then again, Dyson support on Macross will be very powerful. Trade offs trade offs trade offs...
Keith, what's max Friendly Dyson galaxy population? I think it's ~200 but I'm not positive.
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I let the fleet rebuild and nerfed Fraggle while I let the Dyson run havoc amongst its own planet and Macross. It actually took out the Fort I on the planet, too, which helped. When a good chunk of Macross had fallen, I sent the Raids over to pop the command and let friendlies fight enemies. Once friendlies were the population, I started using the riots to pop guard posts, to clean up the mess.
The fleet mostly rebuilt, I nerfed Twycross and sent them to Macross to assist the cleanup, sending a colony ship along with them. After popping the Co-P, I send the fleet after the command center and take that down. I immediately start building an Econ III and ship 5 Engi Is up from Sushi to help out. Meanwhile, my Raids have been parked on Twycross, just waiting for this moment. They blow the warp gate. Macross is now the whipping boy, with Dyson support.
While I'm building I start getting waves. This is 1:55 or so. First wave is 600 ships. Yeek! Well, the fleet's still there but they certainly won't handle that alone and I'm just barely getting the starter turrets up. I pull back with the fleet, hoping to space them out. The 30 or so Dysons laugh as they blow past me going for the enemy. My fleet, not to be insulted, chases them in. It's a slaughter.
Macross is a long system, as I've mentioned in the past. Twycross/Dyson gates on one side, Craps on the other. It takes the Dysons who park on their wormhole a bit to ever get to the defense point, but when they do... wow. I could defend this joint with nothing but grav turrets and ffs. I don't, of course, but still. If you've never seen 120+ Dyson Gatlings defend your whipping boy, try it sometime. It's a bit spectacular. The AI starts sending half/quarter time waves and they just get chewed up (4 of them, back to back to back to back). All they're doing is causing a resource drain since I can't get the FFs back up and they're popping the short rangers like butter. Not that it matters. The Dysons inhale them.
Well, since the fleet's not needed, I pull them back while turrets continue to construct and briefly toss a Mil I up on Dyson. Why? I needed to pop the CSG-A and get my ARS. :) Blade Spawners. Woot woot. Well, some things never change. CSG-A dies before more than two Enemy Gatlings spawn and I take down the Mil I and take the fleet back home. The Friendlies abuse the enemies and we're back in business.
I grab reinforcements from Sushi and head for Huge. I've got another ARS I want to go get. An easy pop, and another Econ III. Armor Ships. Well, pattern stays tight. Hacking will probably come out during this game so I'll eventually get to swap out the bulletproofs and autobombers. Depending on how things go. I am purposely not looking at K-Raids yet for that very reason.
So, with Macross setting up and my turrets building, I've got Blade Spawners and Bulletproofs building at home. Guess it's time to dig in a little. I start to blow the wormhole gates on Roulette and pop the warp gate. Less annoyances in the backfield, the better. The wormhole gates take FOREVER with this measly fleet, but it's eventually getting done. About 4 reinforces happen during this time. No biggie, just chews up some ships. I research up Raid IIs and Scout IIs, time to go deeper with scouts while I'm snoring killing Wormhole Guardians.
Superterminal on Kerensky! Well, alrighty then. Wait, how'd my... heh, some dyson gatlings invaded Craps and cleaned it out. Raids go out and nerf Craps, including the Ion V sitting there. One less problem for later. So, SuperTerminal. That'll keep, I want to see what it'll look like later on the update. Push my Scout IIs through and 2 of them live on Cyborg. Awesome collection of fabricators. Acid Sprayer V, StarBomb IV. And Spider V, which I still have't had a chance to see in action as more then a speed bump in the road of Raids. Looks like Cyborg is going to become the front door again though.
At 2:30 I'm back at homeworld collecting up new fleet. Before I push forward I want to neuter all the rear planets of guardposts, then I'll push for Cyborg. I've got 3 Econ IIIs up so far, Dyson's a neutral, and ~140 AIP. Waves are usually around 600 ships and I'd be pushing for Riot IIs or Military bases if the Dysons weren't so effective. It just costs me some turret rebuilds.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI962pt5Map.jpg)
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The only other post that is a significant annoyance is the Heavy Beam Guardpost. It annihilates Raid Starships trying to get at Ion Cannons (and other assundry annoyances, like Orbital Mass Drivers) that are parked next to them. Add a FF and they're a significant pain. Otherwise... no, not really.
I'm tempted to have it have an X% chance of throwing an FF on every single guard post and ensuring a Neinzul post, and if it doesn't do that then a Y% chance of seeding a Raid Engine, and if it doesn't do that then a Z% chance of an AI Eye + CPA-post, etc. But that would be too static in general. Some nastiness-ensurance may happen though ;) I'm getting the impression that some AI homeworlds are like 0.5% as hard as others simply due to the guard post selection (and seeding of FFs and Forts and Eyes), and that doesn't strike me as a good thing (correct me if I'm wrong). But I also want to avoid setups that are just such an obvious kick in the pants that the appropriate response upon scouting the homeworld is to start a new game.
Because I can use half a fleet to take care of small objectives, like threat removal, while the rest rebuilds. If I turn that on, the timers could get away from me.
That's true, and by all means make use of that time. If you have something fun to do during that time, then you don't need this feature. And I've been toying with some ideas that would provide additional fun uses of "downtime" between major fleet actions (which almost always involve rebuilds afterwards), so I don't know if I even want to add this "just gimme the resources, and give the AI its stuff, and let's get back to playing the bleeping game" button. Maybe it's possible to just make sure there's always something there to do that's fun. The "that's fun" part is the tricky thing, though. You say you go and clean out threat and whatnot, I'm not sure that's what you consider a good time.
Anyway, by the netflix thing, did you mean that you would literally not even be watching the game for long chunks, or just that you wanted something to listen to or glance at while you were doing the small stuff? The provocation of the just-gimme-the-money-button idea was numerous players telling me over the past year or so that they spend a lot of their game time just going and doing something else non-game-related while they wait for resources/rebuild.
I understand exactly what you're saying and you're right, which is why I don't have a good answer. I'd like something that could improve my econ but not, at a 1:1 basis, speed up the game clock's repercussions for it. Something different, maybe. Otherwise, not sure I'd use it.
If it were truly 1:1, then why not? Because of stuff that you'd miss seeing/doing and thus the game would be harder due to the quasi-mistakes? If there's enough to see/do, then there's not a lot of need for it, I think. I imagine it varies widely by difficulty and what sorts of things are on (hybrids, exos, etc).
On the other hand I wonder about giving them some kind of "warp gate" capability so you can also have your factories produce to them. But I'm sure the exploits would be strong with that one ;)
That... could be useful. Significantly devalue the worth of the MK IV though, which is as an alternate to your Fact IV if you lost it. Would need a very significant K reduction.
I didn't mean that it would remove their personal production capabilities, just that they would also be able to warp in stuff coming out of friendly factories. I'm not sure if it would be feasible to have them have both, though, due to interface confusion on what the "low power" button would mean, without making the gate a module on the ship (and I'm not sure Chris would be keen on me adding modules to existing types). On the other hand, modules could be a way of giving it other forms of utility... anyway, I've got enough plates spinning on new-AIW-stuff already, don't need to worry about these too much :) But some survivability wouldn't hurt 'em, that's for sure.
At 1:30 I can confirm, the Dyson will NOT spawn if you don't have eyes on the planet. After a few rounds of transport assault I finally got my Scout Is in there.
Yea, the "neutral dyson" spawn condition requires ( this.CurrentPlanet.OrbitalCommandStation.UnitData.Player.Type == PlayerType.AI ) and ( this.CurrentRollup.AlliedNonMinorFaction.Count > 0 ) , so if there's an AI command station and you don't have any ships there, it doesn't spawn. Even if you had ships there in the past.
Keith, what's max Friendly Dyson galaxy population? I think it's ~200 but I'm not positive.
Max? :)
If you've never seen 120+ Dyson Gatlings defend your whipping boy, try it sometime. It's a bit spectacular.
Minor faction ships can be quite determined :) Particularly the Invincible Death Machine ones.
Hacking will probably come out during this game so I'll eventually get to swap out the bulletproofs and autobombers. Depending on how things go. I am purposely not looking at K-Raids yet for that very reason.
My guess is next monday on 5.028; I don't really have much dedicated AIW time during the week at this stage in AVWW development. So don't hold off on my account, unless you're planning on slowing down :)
Acid Sprayer V, StarBomb IV. And Spider V
Wow, fabulous. *hit by a truck
Be a shame if anything happened to them.
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Anyway, by the netflix thing, did you mean that you would literally not even be watching the game for long chunks, or just that you wanted something to listen to or glance at while you were doing the small stuff? The provocation of the just-gimme-the-money-button idea was numerous players telling me over the past year or so that they spend a lot of their game time just going and doing something else non-game-related while they wait for resources/rebuild.
I know that during any shard retrieval, I personally just leave the game running for hours at a time to finish getting that shard home well I am away watching a movie/tv/making dinner/playing the PS3 as there is no way to send the troop out with the AI waves knocking in the door so often. I find however that the rest of the game does not have that many long pauses in the action. When you don't have a wave a minute coming knocking, there is always something to do somewhere.
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The issue there is more that you can defend against the ongoing exos completely unattended :)
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I'm tempted to have it have an X% chance of throwing an FF on every single guard post and ensuring a Neinzul post,
Which, besides the roaches, basically ensures a Raid SS assault tactic or a Bomber Run. That'll lack variety.
and if it doesn't do that then a Y% chance of seeding a Raid Engine, and if it doesn't do that then a Z% chance of an AI Eye + CPA-post, etc. But that would be too static in general. Some nastiness-ensurance may happen though ;)
I get your drift but there's only so much you can do with a seed randomizer.
I'm getting the impression that some AI homeworlds are like 0.5% as hard as others simply due to the guard post selection (and seeding of FFs and Forts and Eyes), and that doesn't strike me as a good thing (correct me if I'm wrong).
It's just a variable, really. Sometimes the map is dang tough so when you finally do get to the HW it's almost a sigh of relief. Other times it's a pushover.
But I also want to avoid setups that are just such an obvious kick in the pants that the appropriate response upon scouting the homeworld is to start a new game.
Yeah, those are sooo much fun.
That's true, and by all means make use of that time. If you have something fun to do during that time, then you don't need this feature. And I've been toying with some ideas that would provide additional fun uses of "downtime" between major fleet actions (which almost always involve rebuilds afterwards), so I don't know if I even want to add this "just gimme the resources, and give the AI its stuff, and let's get back to playing the bleeping game" button.
Well, threat removal is more janitorial work then 'fun', but it's always been just part of the game to me. Unless you've let it get out of hand, at which point it can be challenging. The other side is my Raid SS's usually generate threat because I don't stop and engage until after the defenders have wandered off. I typically 'buzz the tower' with my Raid SSs, get the locals to move off as free threat, then come back and hit whatever they were guarding.
Anyway, by the netflix thing, did you mean that you would literally not even be watching the game for long chunks, or just that you wanted something to listen to or glance at while you were doing the small stuff?
Turn on Netflix, pick episode of random anime. Flip screens. X+G my fleet at threat target. Wait for kabooms to stop. Listen for strange whistles or announcements. Pick up fleet, examine, decide if reinforce or next target. Rinse Repeat. If economy is no longer on floor pause show and examine current scenario.
If it were truly 1:1, then why not? Because of stuff that you'd miss seeing/doing and thus the game would be harder due to the quasi-mistakes?
That's one of them, yes. I see it as far too easy to shoot myself in the foot. Reinforcements that I don't whittle down, travel time I didn't anticipate, any number of things.
Keith, what's max Friendly Dyson galaxy population? I think it's ~200 but I'm not positive.
Max? :)
I'm about to break a game... There's got to be some kind of max or I'd have been at 5 billion of the gatlings by end of game on a number of occassions as they endlessly patrolled the homelands.
My guess is next monday on 5.028; I don't really have much dedicated AIW time during the week at this stage in AVWW development. So don't hold off on my account, unless you're planning on slowing down :)
We'll see. I won't be monitoring overnight processes this week so I might slow down. But no worries. :)
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The issue there is more that you can defend against the ongoing exos completely unattended :)
If I could not defend against it with every fleet ship I have unlocked capped, every turret I have capped and carefully placed and a full cap of fortresses, and all the special buildings and my entire Spire fleet in the world, with a full cap of MK3 engs attached to factories attached to warp gates with Auto attack set, several golems and a full cap of Spirecraft Attritioner stuck as far way as I can. Then defending takes too much micro for me. I rather like the minimal micro that is required.
I likely have enough firepower in that system to hold it to just walk into the AI homeworlds and take it down, but I really like winning by the Fallen Spire Exo trans a lot.
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I've pushed through with the main fleet to Cyborg, and started digging in. The traders have come by and I've started work on a ZPG and have toys on Macross. The only one that's going to be important though is the Black Hole Generator. Bear with me, I'll explain shortly.
From 2:30 till 3:05 or so I blow away every wormhole guardpost behind Macross. Yes, as boring as it sounds. I also opened up Raid IIIs so that was building while I dealt with this. In the meanwhile Macross is shaking off 1000 ship waves without a problem. I head for Cyborg, taking the time to nerf SuperTerminal along the way and blow its warp gate. When I get to Cyborg I'm pretty beaten down, about a quarter of the fleet's dead. We engage Cyborg and clear it, with Raid SS help, but I'm dealing with the highway of ships again. Oh, joy. Well, we clean out most of that but I need to go back for reinforcements, or I can try to transport them down...
<Warning: 1500 ship CPA inbound>
... right, returning home. I've got scouts in the backfield and there's about 30 ships back there but I don't trust the AI not to do something goofy like spawn a 500 unit carrier behind me at a warpgate I didn't pop on Fraggle.
Well things go simple enough and everyone's in front. Cool. I take the fleet back to Macross and let them sit on the Twycross gate. I'm curious about something. I turn off all my turrets. I've got the fleet for backup and I want to see what the Dysons are going to do. I'm chillin' out and the Dysons start haring off for the Craps gate for no obvious reason. Just this mob of 200+ Dyson Gatlings + some human rebellion guys. Errr, ooookay.
I finally figure out they'll respond to neighboring system threat. They head into Craps and just INHALE the line of troops coming in from SuperTerminal. They keep trying to head back to Macross but little 1s and 2s of Missile Frigates keep dripping in, turning the entire squadron around. I've got 1400 ships in 2 waves heading to Macross. Well, hrm. Alright, turn the turrets back on, and send the Raid squadron out to stop the interlopers confusing my allies.
The raids get to SuperTerminal pretty fast and keep the wormhole clear. The mob of 1400 ships have blown the FFs off the wormhole and are proceeding towards my fleet, who are still just sitting on the command center. The dyson squad blows in behind them and lays waste to the entire double wave.
Very nice. I can make my whipping boy a dyson ball instead of a turret ball. That'll give me some nice defenses on Cyborg. Load up a transport with a colony ship and 5 Engi Is and we make our way to Cyborg.
Easy enough to build up, and I pop the warp gate and couple of guard posts on Blackjack pretty easily. I've got 3 FFs on each of the fabs in Cyborg, enough to hold against a small to medium attack while the fleet which is parked in system can respond. I turn off the factories on Sushi and build them local, replacing lost ships. While micro-ing my Raid army around in Confederation to blow away the posts (and remove the AI Eye there) a little 400 ship wave attacks Cyborg. I steal all the snipers off Macross and start building them on Cyborg. Obviously they won't be done in time but worth a shot. The fleet handles the inbounds pretty soundly, with the 15 or so Acid Sprayer V's that have been built so far just weed whacking the bomber squadron. Nice upgrade, that.
Slowly but surely I've removed every turret from Macross so far except for LRMs and MRMs. Cyborg could be a whipping boy in its own right, but I just want my axle well defended. I'm going to take a bit of this and bit of that and drop it on Sushi, though, to rear guard a VERY undefended homeworld. It'll get two fortresses too when I open those.
It's about 4:00 now and I'm getting prepared to dig into the world. Solar Moon and Eridani have ARSs again, and Kirk's a Coreworld, so Earth is basically confirmed. I need to try to get scouts on Earth to see what I'm dealing with this mapgen.
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Here we go again:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/Herewegoagain.jpg)
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I'm beginning to think the mapgen is reading this thread.
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I'm beginning to think the mapgen is reading this thread.
Yea really. What crazy ISP is still giving service to AIs trying to conquer the galaxy?
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So, I've passed an hour cleaning up portions of the map, drilling holes into areas with fleet or raid, with nothing particularly spectacular occurring.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI96Hr5CSG.jpg)
Of particular note is I have net -80 AIP available to me. I've found the other three Co-Ps (P4 planets). Two of those have Data Centers on them as well.
What's annoying me is the CSGs. Once again, the only CSG-D available is on Jax. Annoyingly, there isn't even an E down in the Riker arm. So, I have to make a choice. I have to take Jumping Jax, that's obligatory, it's the only D in the galaxy. Solar Moon and Camel as an ARS/Fact IV combo is pretty obvious too, just need to give Green Lantern a good neutering. The question is what E class do I take?
If I take Blackjack or Confederation it means I have an 'interrupt' world enroute to Cyborg, which might turn CPAs down into Eridani or SolarMoon, not something I want. I'd rather they stayed on the bee-line.
If I take Twycross I dilute the power of the dyson ball, but I'll have defenders readily available for homeworld. That might be handy, and in theory the longest the dyson ball would have to travel is the length of the wormholes in Twycross as they bounce back and forth.
I could take Fraggle Rock and not significantly upset the eco-system I have in the backyard, possibly buying time for a response for Sushi should something go awry.
Of these, I have to lean towards Twycross, and hope I'm right about the Dyson ball dilution. I'm up to ~380 dysons right now in Macross. I've had some pretty significant bleed off as they chased threat through Craps/SuperTerminal to Cyborg before the black hole generator went up, and those have kept the borders pretty clean. Scoured would be a better term...
Once I have those I could take Eridani, and that'll pop the last of the CSG-As and give me the ARS.
I haven't K-Raided anywhere yet, to a particular purpose. I'm trying to get better at working with less.
The SuperTerminal is still right there, waiting for my attention. I might go take it for a little spin before I pop more of the CoP's and Data Centers, just to break it down on the easy side for awhile. I don't have the fleet to ride it into the ground right now and I'll be exposing myself to waves from Craps, though. It might be worth it, however, if I can nearly put the AI to sleep and then push a second whipping boy up on Kirk to deal with Raid Waves, prior to popping all the CSGs. It'll cost me 20 AIP just to be able to touch it however, which is half a level of 'raise' due to the 2:1 nature of it and 75 being the next cutoff.
If I can Raid Wave defend Kirk, I'll be able to deal with the outer CSGs and get the rest of the fleet built up awhile, particularly if the AIP is nearly underground. I need to raid Kirk clean though, but that's doable with Cyborg as a nearly full-bore whipping boy. I have 3k in research that's unused, and I could beach-head a few fortresses up in Confederation to chew on inbounds. They'd also help with the SuperTerminal. So would Maw III though, with the 3000 K I'd get from SuperTerminal.
You'll have to pardon me, I'm typing out-loud a bit here. With a single K-Raid, most likely on Shawshank, I could pick up Maw III. That would give me a significant advantage in dealing with the SuperTerminal. Blow up SuperTerminal's command center, and that'll give me the 3000 K I'd need for Fortress Is due to supply from Cyborg for my Research IIs. After I put in a fortress or 3, fire up the SuperTerminal. I have full Raids, so I can dip out to the rest of the reducers once I'm forced to blow the ST, which I expect will be around the high end of Tech IV or low end of Core ships. One surge will tell me. I'll need a Mil I station on ST. I'd prefer a Mil II but I won't have the K available.
As I hit the CSG worlds I'll be able to improve that, but that'll be for the Kirk whipping boy. I'll have to setup on Kirk THEN head for the CSG worlds, but only after a few raids against Kirk to pick the coreworld clean. Raid SS the CSGs if I can't get the fleet out. That'll leave Cyborg pretty exposed but that should get the timer about right to allow for one of them to pick up (hopefully) the rebel colony so I won't have to tag an extra world. With the research off Kirk and another planet, I'll be able to pick up Riot IIs for front-door lockdown (needs 4k, I'll have 3k). I've got a bunch of FFs that Macross doesn't use anymore so I'm good there.
Yeah, that should work. I think.
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Hour 5 - 6 was me doing a K-Raid on Shawshank, clearing off SuperTerminal and researching it to prep for the eventual invasion, and waiting basically an hour in resources to finish up the ZPG so I could build the Fortresses.
However, I've got this CPA coming in, see? And well, it's a measly little 1100 ship one, k? And about 200 spawn behind the homeworld, right? No problem, my blade spawners shipped up there handle it.
Problem: The rest of the CPA is composed of Mark IV and V ships.
What. The. BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP?
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There's only one thing I can say..
Shoulda cleaned up more bro!
;D
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I'm tempted to have it have an X% chance of throwing an FF on every single guard post and ensuring a Neinzul post,
Which, besides the roaches, basically ensures a Raid SS assault tactic or a Bomber Run. That'll lack variety.
Point ;)
Keith, what's max Friendly Dyson galaxy population? I think it's ~200 but I'm not positive.
Max? :)
I'm about to break a game... There's got to be some kind of max or I'd have been at 5 billion of the gatlings by end of game on a number of occassions as they endlessly patrolled the homelands.
Friendly spawns are 1 every 3 seconds; 10 hours = 36,000 seconds = 12,000 gatlings... hmm, yea, seems like it must be throttling it somewhere. But looking at the unit def I don't see a cap, and looking at the spawn logic I don't see it counting or branching out. In the actual processing of the AIBuyShip message (which is used to spawn it) there's a clause that would prevent the spawn if there were >= 5000 _AI_ ships on the dyson planet, but that's not gonna happen here.
From 2:30 till 3:05 or so I blow away every wormhole guardpost behind Macross. Yes, as boring as it sounds.
A more interesting result from firing upon a wormhole guardpost could be arranged ;)
I'm chillin' out and the Dysons start haring off for the Craps gate for no obvious reason. Just this mob of 200+ Dyson Gatlings + some human rebellion guys.
"1500 CPA? We'll be right back."
with the 15 or so Acid Sprayer V's that have been built so far just weed whacking the bomber squadron. Nice upgrade, that.
Glad to hear they're doing well :) Yea, that's a lot of anti-polycrystal dps... and in theory they'll be nice against the core raid engine too, due to neutron hull.
I need to try to get scouts on Earth to see what I'm dealing with this mapgen.
Sorry you asked?
I have to take Jumping Jax, that's obligatory, it's the only D in the galaxy.
Interesting, that means it must have been the _only_ planet in the entire galaxy with a counterattack post but without an ARS, Adv Factory, or Fabricator. If Jax had rolled a fab, the map wouldn't even have a D.
You'll have to pardon me, I'm typing out-loud a bit here.
Don't worry, the AI's taking notes.
Problem: The rest of the CPA is composed of Mark IV and V ships.
And, apparently, taking names.
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Side note: This game's on pause until Keith gets a chance to review the save and help me understand why I'm eating a massive core wave. If I have to lose Cyborg, fine, I'll lose it, but I'd really rather not lose my fabulous planet if it's due to a bug of some sort.
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Game on.
Alright, to deal with the CPA and the 200 ships that spawned in the back, I had to get my blade spawners back to Sushi. They took out Huge immediately on spawn but that wasn't the big deal. Twycross, instead of sending their ships to Macross, went after Sushi. Not a huge a surprise, I guess, but the extra 50 ships made the difference. To get them there quickly, I needed a transport. The transport kept getting hung up in Macross due to a Grav Guardian. Great.
My Bomber starships dealt with that pretty easily. With the blade spawners on duty and a few extra grav turrets to give them time to work, Sushi could hold.
That left Cyborg and the insane release of Core ships that came after me. Two save scums and an inquisition of Keith later, I find out this tragedy is *expected* if you clean up after yourself of your threat and reinforcements. Oh joys.
Well, luckily the majority of troops have to come through Confederation from the two homeworlds/core worlds. There's about 250 ships that come from the west, but the turret ball SHOULD deal with those. It needed 6 FFs on the fab that sits against Blackjack's gate, and 2 dozen Flak Turrets under glass, but they dealt with Blackjack.
The real fight ends up in Confederation. Confederation's wormholes are basically a triangle, Cyborg on top, Eridani and Llama below it, roughly equilateral. Eridani's troops hit first. Sweet. Send the main fleet on attack against that wormhole, and maneuver the maws out to range to soak up what they can as it enters. As that starts to bleed off the main thrust comes in from Llama. Move fleet, move maws, repeat. Now they're both drifting in so I split the main fleet against both wormholes and micro the maws to whoever's got the most inbounds.
I clear it losing maybe 100 fleet ships. Excellent. Meanwhile, two waves have hit Macross and I barely noticed.
It's now 6:10ish. I research up Fort Is and drop three on SuperTerminal to start building, as well as a few FFs and a grav/tachyon turret. The forts are going to take a bit and my economy can barely handle them building (+/- 100 material) so I don't help. What I do though is take the main fleet and neuter all the guardposts on Confederation in preparation for later defenses. Additionally, I use the Raid SS fleet and bait in some of the 150 reinforcements on Blackjack just hanging out into the turret ball. Without losing any ships, I successfully clear Blackjack, then go down and nerf Camel and Jumping Jax with the Raid SSs while I wait for my fortresses to build. I occassionally have to turn off fortress building to allow Macross's grav/tractor turrets to recover from waves of ~1500 ships.
The Dyson Ball is at 600 ships and growing. It occassionally gets Rebel Rebellions to basically refill the ones there. The Rebels are always the first to the battle, so they're the 'cannon fodder' of this arrangement. It's pretty slick. It's also broken, but we'll get back to that at a later date. It takes a near perfect map to setup.
So, at around 16:40 the main fleet's done goofing off with Confederation and I park the Raid SSs in a transport under cloaker on Cyborg for safe-keeping. Rebuilding 3 mill in fleet because I wasn't paying attention is annoying. The fleet heads to SuperTerminal and parks. The Maws and Blades are under glass right off the ST, and the rest of the fleet's on FRD. The factory on Cyborg will send in replacements automagically.
ST work is going well, and at 94 reduction I'm still at MK I units, which is nice. Surges are handleable and the grav turret is shutting down the blade spawners. With 3*fortresses to help with repairs, I'm not losing much, if any, ships. My econ's strong enough I've continued to build the counterspy on Macross in anticipation of the eventual Eyebots. That and Space Planes are annoying that way.
It's 6:53, I'm at 153 AIP with a Floor of 49. I'm gonna ride this puppy into the GROUND... or until half my fleet's gone and I get scared. :)
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Two save scums and an inquisition of Keith later, I find out this tragedy is *expected* if you clean up after yourself of your threat and reinforcements. Oh joys.
9.6 = Tragedy :D
The Dysons were probably armchairing that one. "What's he so scared about 1300 ships? Shoot twice and go home."
The Dyson Ball is at 600 ships and growing. It occassionally gets Rebel Rebellions to basically refill the ones there. The Rebels are always the first to the battle, so they're the 'cannon fodder' of this arrangement. It's pretty slick. It's also broken, but we'll get back to that at a later date. It takes a near perfect map to setup.
Heh, yea, the glowing "Nerf Indicated" light lit up a while ago on that one, I just figured I'd let you have fun with it for now. Dysons used to just path into AI planets and nature took its course. They also used to auto-attrition when not on the dyson planet. They also used to not hit MkV stuff. Dysons are riding kind of high on the hog right now :)
It's 6:53, I'm at 153 AIP with a Floor of 49. I'm gonna ride this puppy into the GROUND... or until half my fleet's gone and I get scared. :)
The ST's probably muttering to itself. "Have yer fun, buddy, you'll get yours." ;)
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The Dyson Ball is at 600 ships and growing. It occassionally gets Rebel Rebellions to basically refill the ones there. The Rebels are always the first to the battle, so they're the 'cannon fodder' of this arrangement. It's pretty slick. It's also broken, but we'll get back to that at a later date. It takes a near perfect map to setup.
Heh, yea, the glowing "Nerf Indicated" light lit up a while ago on that one, I just figured I'd let you have fun with it for now. Dysons used to just path into AI planets and nature took its course. They also used to auto-attrition when not on the dyson planet. They also used to not hit MkV stuff. Dysons are riding kind of high on the hog right now :)
LOL. Honestly, a simple cap of 100 (choose your x) per planet would suffice. That way they could support, be nice and fat like they are, but not be this overpowering armada.
The ST's probably muttering to itself. "Have yer fun, buddy, you'll get yours." ;)
Heh. Side note. Perhaps surges should be 250 Current MK + 1 instead of 250 MK Vs?
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At 7:15 we blew past the floor.
Total: 349
Reduction: 294
Floor: 69
Actual: 55
Let's see how low can you go... More curiousity then anything, I'll savescum after this most likely, I don't need the raised floor that badly.
I'll edit this post with the results. Fleet: Maw I/II/III, Bomber I/II, Blade Spawner I/II, Fighter I, Missile Frig I, Armor Ship I/II, Light Starship, 3xFortress I, 4*Riot I on max damage build, Mil I. 3 FFs nearby with Grav I and Tach I under them. Blades and Maws are hiding in there too. Single Space Dock with FRD set to near the ST building all ships. Planet next door provides Spider Vs and Armor Sprayer Vs. Rally Post for FRD also near ST to FRD out of system builds near the target.
Kowabunga!
Edit 1: I attached an image of what the defense looks like below in case of curiousity.
At Inc: 424/ Dec: 442/Floor: 84 I've gotten to where I want to be on this. I still have -80 worth of decrease out in the boonies I can abuse, and that'll give me my five free worlds to setup on Kirk and have all the CSGs down. From here on it's just pure curiousity.
Edit 2: With a stack of nearby Lightning 1s waves began to overwhelm after at 444/480/88 roughly. With 2 more fortresses and a little K investment into Missile Counter Turret it could have held till roughly 530. Add in Riot IIs and 550/560 would have been feasible. Now back to my regularly scheduled game.
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So, I get done with the SuperTerminal at around 7:30 game time. It's time to take over the world. I send the raid crew down to Jax to pop the Counterstrike post. It spawns in Janeway. This works. The fleet heads north, the Raids clean up Jumping Jax in preparation for conquering. I send a Transport with a Colony down to Jumping Jax. The fleet eventually gets up north and I pop Twycross on my way by, dropping in a colony ship and another Econ III. I blow the CSG-E while I'm there. The Raids then head out to pop all the Co-Ps and 2 more Data Centers. When I'm done:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AIPReduction.gif)
Overkill? :)
We head for Janeway while the Raiders defend Jax. Jax builds and the Raids leave, and a few boys from PaiGow pop in to say HI!. Great. I've got no spare turrets at the moment for even a token defense. Reverse, kill, repeat, reverse, kill, repeat... finally able to leave and head through BlackJack... who's troops ignore me, head to Pai Gow, and head to Jax, and pop it. *facepalm*
Well, the counterstrike spawns on Janeway practically on top of the Shawshank Wormhole. That's probably because the Troop Accelerator was also on said wormhole. 3/4's of them escape and a Warbird cloaks past the armada and pops the very lightly defended Econ III... Oooookay, this is going well, isn't it? Clean house and start chasing the massive wave heading for homeworld.
Well, after I popped Twycross the DysonBall basically moved into the wormhole bounce from Dyson through Sushi. So, when the enemies started coming in from Shawshank, the Dysons responded, and boy-howdy did they. They slaughtered the silly fools in Sushi, and then promptly waltzed all over Shawshank, too. Plenty of Dysons left over to deal with the wave in Macross as well.
Well, that's dang nice. I take the fleet, clean up Roulette, and get Huge/Janeway rebuilt. Time to head south again. Fleet heads for Cyborg, I take the raiders down and clear out Green Lantern's Warp Gate so I can take SolarMoon, and send another colony ship transport to Jax, with the raids heading up to Confederation to clean out some locals and let the Mobile Builder in. It's a little too much for the raids so I back 'em off and the enemy follows me in. Well, that's nice. Clean them up with the turrets, rinse/repeat, and start setting up 2 fortresses on Confederation in preparation for later. I also steal 20 Snipers from Cyborg to help with bombers.
In the meanwhile, the fleet floats through, grabs reinforcements, and heads for Camel. We clean that up, clean off SolarMoon (with a lovely Blade Spawner V Fab), and nerf Green Lantern of a pair of spire shields.
Map looks like this now:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI968pt5Map.gif)
About this time a 1300 CPA warning pops up. oh, great. Here we go again, right?
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/Redemption.gif)
REDEMPTION! Now, that's just funny. It's 8:30 and I'm prepping to start raiding Kirk to dust. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with my research yet, I'm keeping it avaiable to stay agile if something seems dangerous. Once Kirk's raided out, I can take Eridani (or Argyle) and get the last CSG-A. From there, I can raid the engines. Earth should go down like butter since they emptied themselves out. MUAHAHAHAHAHA. I'll get over to Riker eventually.
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At 9:00 I've done two runs on Kirk. First was a pure Raid run. Raid Engine is spawning a mere 600 MK IV ships. I cleaned out a pretty good chunk of Kirk but got hunted down by a ton of spire starships and bomber IVs.
Since that was going to take a bit to rebuild, I dropped the fleet off at Argyle and took the last CSG-A. Homeworld is open. The fleet then suicided Kirk, trying to clean out what was left + the Fort on the planet. I only got the fort halfway and lost my stack of Bomber IVs too, but I managed to escape with the nearly full Maw fleet (16/18) before they got popped by sacraficing everything else as kites. The leftovers hit the fortresses + autobombers in Confederation and died.
I'm rebuilding the fleet now and the Raids are ready to go again. Once the fleet's up I'm going to transport the Raids in next to the Raid Engine and pop the bugger, then, hopefully, get the CPA core too. After that it's smooth sailin'.
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YOWCH.
Well, the core world had built back up to ~150 ships. My fleet finishes rebuilding and the raids are ready. I unlock Basic IIs and scatter them around to help deal with the bit of fallout from the CPAs. Heh, right. You'd think I'd have learned last time. If I need defense, DEFEND, not this piddly crap.
Anyway, my main fleet heads for Confederation to defend the Eridani Wormhole with the support of the Fortresses. I build off a flock of transports, and stuff the blade spawners and Raids into the center one. CHARGE!
The transports all blow up as they enter Earth. *facepalm* RUN!
Leave the blades as bait on the wormhole and the raids run around a few things and get to the raid engine. I'm getting Mass Drivered and I absolutely cannot fire up the EMP V sitting in between the Raid and the CPA engines. Well, not and survive. We pop the raid engine under glass and maneuver around the outside of the system and get to the CPA engine with 4 left. It gets to 8% and I'm out of raid ships. DAMN!
My main fleet is cut in half on Eridani. EVERY outer colony is dead. Fact IV: Dead. Blade Spawner V: Dead. Econ II/IIIs: Dead. Crap.
Get to Cyborg, switch everything OFF, and get Raid Is building ASAP. That CPA Engine MUST die or I'm screwed. Build up the 3 raids at warp 2 and shove them in a new transport with one on lead to take any hits. I just need them delivered.
They get to Earth and it's a race. Mass Driver vs. Raid Is. The first one dies in transit avoiding the fortress in the center. The second dies on nearly on contact with the CPA. Arrive at 10%. 6% on first salvo, one raid left. 4%. 2%. Mass Driver fires. 0%. You're KIDDING ME!? One last shot goes off as the Raid I dies. BANG! Got it!
Bagged baby! Alright, that was the hard part. Now to flatten Kirk and Earth. I've still got that blasted Eye to deal with but with the heavy hitters down I should be able to clean up relatively nicely. Just need to pop that damnable Mass Driver. 9:20 on the clock. Time to rebuild and re-colonize. Probably take Ceasar too so I can recover my dead Factory IV, have to decide if it's worth it. Need to get down to Batman too, I've been ignoring a rebellion working on Earth. At least it's a jump point for Riker.
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LOL. Honestly, a simple cap of 100 (choose your x) per planet would suffice. That way they could support, be nice and fat like they are, but not be this overpowering armada.
X*(number of non-AI planets) did come to mind as a galaxy-wide cap (per-planet caps are fiddly for mobile units). A meaner thought was making the galaxy-wide-cap = effective-AIP :)
The ST's probably muttering to itself. "Have yer fun, buddy, you'll get yours." ;)
Heh. Side note. Perhaps surges should be 250 Current MK + 1 instead of 250 MK Vs?
Surges don't actually say anything about mark level directly, it just multiplies the "raw strength" (total reduction times 2) of the spawn by diff / 2 (so 4.8 in this case) and sets recharge to 1 instead of 15. After that, it's the normal logic, which is in psuedo:
while(strength>200 && mark<5){strength-=150;mark++;}
while(strength>500 && recharge > 1){strength-=33;recharge--;}
if(strength>500)strength=500;
After that it actually converts strength into ships, and deducts the actual ship-strength from strength; on high 500 => 500 fighters (or whatever 1.0x ship cap stuff), on normal 500 => 250, which is why you generally see that number.
Edit 2: With a stack of nearby Lightning 1s waves began to overwhelm after at 444/480/88 roughly. With 2 more fortresses and a little K investment into Missile Counter Turret it could have held till roughly 530. Add in Riot IIs and 550/560 would have been feasible.
Deeeeee-Scusting! ;)
We head for Janeway while the Raiders defend Jax. Jax builds and the Raids leave, and a few boys from PaiGow pop in to say HI!. Great. I've got no spare turrets at the moment for even a token defense. Reverse, kill, repeat, reverse, kill, repeat... finally able to leave and head through BlackJack... who's troops ignore me, head to Pai Gow, and head to Jax, and pop it. *facepalm*
After the ST performance, they needed to make some kind of point, even a small one. "We just lost the queen. That' pawn over there's going down!"
About this time a 1300 CPA warning pops up. oh, great. Here we go again, right?
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/Redemption.gif)
REDEMPTION! Now, that's just funny.
Haha, yea, the AI literally doesn't have enough ships left in that galaxy to oppose much. You've pretty seriously outstripped their ability to reinforce.
YOWCH.
The AI pull the ol' explosive-whoopie-cushion trick? A good one, that. No? Pity.
The transports all blow up as they enter Earth. *facepalm* RUN!
Ah, transports. And the engineers were so excited when they discovered a way to design a carrying vessel that could unload an arbitrary number of ships in constant time.
They get to Earth and it's a race. Mass Driver vs. Raid Is. The first one dies in transit avoiding the fortress in the center. The second dies on nearly on contact with the CPA. Arrive at 10%. 6% on first salvo, one raid left. 4%. 2%. Mass Driver fires. 0%. You're KIDDING ME!? One last shot goes off as the Raid I dies. BANG! Got it!
One for the movies ;)
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(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI96Win.gif)
And AI 96 bites the dust. Let's see, I last left off at 9:20 or so. Right. Alright, well, I let the fleet partially rebuild and I take them off to the Southwest and start rebuilding the economy. Econ's a bit in the dirt and I don't have a lot to work with. After about 20 minutes we get the SW rebuilt up without any turrets and head for home. Fill up more of the fleet and head over to Batman to pick up the Rebel Colony. At about 10:00 or so they've got a nice set of Basic IIs surrounding them and the fleet heads home. My Raids are about ready (still waiting on the IIIs) so I send them down there to pop the warp gate in HotStar. They had popped up a Black Hole Generator and I wasn't ready to commit the fleet yet and saw no reason to get 10 AIP.
They start building off Rebels, whom I notice ignore Black Hole Generators. Ah, this will work nicely. There's fortresses and Tachyon Guardians and a bunch of stuff I'd like to clear out on the east. I'll use the Rebels to do it. So, while the rest of this story is going on, I'm microing around 80 or so rebels to pop fortresses, tachyons, etc on the east, retreating when I'm down to 50 or so, and then heading out again after a rebuild.
Time to start pounding Earth to dust. Roger Dodger! Take the fleet down and park them on the inbound gate to Earth. Raids head in and primary targets are the Ion Cannons and Mass Driver. Those go down with about 4 raids left and the fleet's handled the backwash, so I send the Raids home to get replacements. I can't send the fleet in because of the eye. I micro a bit on the east and then get the Raids back down to Earth, and clean house. Right up until they run headfirst into a Heavy Beam Cannon. *facepalm*
I finally figure out I need to micro my raids in all different directions so the cone attack can't erase them all at once, and kill it with 5/9 raids left. They pop the last guardpost after that, an electric core, and poof, down goes the eye. Send in the troops. Bombers are now at III, so my flock of Bombers and Bomber SSs start working over the FFs on the fortress/command center. We get about halfway there and I'm barely able to pop the Starship Eater Guardian before my Bomber IV SSs die. I'm basically out of polycrystal units so the fleet heads home for more troops.
On the East, I've broken into Tau which was nothing spectacular but it had an Eye and a Spire Shield. *rolls eyes* Greeaaaat. Can't kill those things easily without mass fleet and the eye wouldn't let me do that. Allllrrighty. Send the Raid SSs down and they slowly but surely chew on the spire shield until it finally pops. I can get scouts into Three Kings now. It's about 10:45 or so. There's nothing special in Three Kings for once, just a fortress and the usual core guardians. I setup the Rebels to do a bit of microing in there via shift-click and they got chewed to pieces by a ton of starships. Ah well. The Raids retreat to Batman and regroup with the local rebuilding rebels. That backwash should be arriving shortly.
The main fleet's rebuilt and I ship them down towards Earth again. It's 11:00 and another CPA announces. Didn't we just do this? Alright, fine fine. I basically ignore it for now and continue to pound down Earth. Finally, we're able to pop the fortress and all his buddies. Yawhoot. I leave the Command Station intact for an easy pop later and not have to build out the AIP.
Take the fleet back towards home and park 'em in Blackjack. While they're waiting another 5 minutes for the CPA, I start neutering Blackjack for the fun of it.
CPA goes as expected. Majority of troops were 400 or so back on Shawshank and Roulette. They blew Huge to pieces and then died horribly to the Dyson Swarm. I sent a colony ship back to Huge to rebuild the econ station. The troops in Blackjack pretty much blocked everything coming at us except for Green Lantern troops. I snuck my blade spawners in and they cleaned up the little bit of annoyance attacking that. Good to go, time to head east.
In the meanwhile, the rebels and raids cleaned up the coreworld backwash and went back for seconds. Clearing the Tachyon Guardians meant I got my first look at Riker. 2x Neinzul and nothing else of note. Main fleet gets to Batman around 11:30 and starts pushing through to Tau, which I'm going to use as my 'takeoff' point. The raids head into Riker and chase down the Mass Driver and a pair of Ion cannons, triggering a cockroach spawn at the same time. Unconcerned, I continue on my merry way. A transport with some Engi Is and a colony ship gets to Tau as I finish popping Krupp's Warp Gate and the cmd Center on Tau, and head for Three Kings. The place is pretty nerfed at this point. Polycrystal units and blade spawners enter, and they grind down the double FF and fortress. That dealt with, I pop both warp gates there to force waves to continue to hit Macross and we proceed to assault Riker.
Everyone heads into Riker to clear the wandering defenders. My Raids head off to pop the cockroach spawns and we clean up the locals. Two of the spire shield guardposts will take a bit of time to kill. Most of the standard guardposts die pretty easily and what's left of my fleet (about half) starts working on the first shield post. My blade spawners are basically ignoring a heavy beam post that I'd like them to kill, they're hung up trying to get blades onto the home command center which is grav guardianed and fortressed. *rolls eyes*
Well, I clean up the two shield posts and decide I'm going to need more firepower. I send reinforcements from Cyborg as a group down to Batman, and my main fleet retreats back up to Batman. My Raids stay behind on Tau to defend it from drifters. Rearm, pick up fresh Rebels, and we head in again. This time my blades didn't utterly ignore the heavy beam, but maddeningly stopped hitting it at ~35%. Raids head in trying to time them between shots. Thawck, that's done. Polycrystal assault on the 2xff+fortress+gravity guardian. This is taking *forever*, and I'm losing ships because the blades can't hit the actives under the ffs. Send in the entire armada. It's gonna hurt but to heck with it. Pile on the Fortress and the grav guardian. Once they're both down, the rest go down like butter. Pop the Cmd Station while my Raids are high-tailing it back to Cyborg to pick up a few buddies. They get to Cyborg, I've got 8. Wait for the 9th while I start bringing the fleet home.
I take a look at Earth. Because it's unalerted there is no defenders who reinforced while I was gone. 8)
Raids head in, pop pop pop, bye bye command center. Woot woot, 9.6/9.6 Win.
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Another victory for the Vogons. What can stop this steamroller? :)
Is it still fun? I'm figuring that playing the same map on the same options against the same AIs with the same bonus types, etc is... shall we say, not showing off the variety of the game ;)
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Another victory for the Vogons. What can stop this steamroller? :)
Is it still fun? I'm figuring that playing the same map on the same options against the same AIs with the same bonus types, etc is... shall we say, not showing off the variety of the game ;)
Fun, not exactly. You're right, it's not quite the preference. It is the only way to truly test the slope of difficulty though.
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I appreciate the testing, it is bringing a lot of things into sharp relief as well as showing the diff slope (9.6 didn't seem a lot worse than 9.3; 9.3 had tech II which made it worse than 9). But don't burn yourself out on the game :)
Still looking like monday on 5.028, but I'm happy with how the tests came out, hacking looks like it's working right, etc.
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I appreciate the testing, it is bringing a lot of things into sharp relief as well as showing the diff slope (9.6 didn't seem a lot worse than 9.3; 9.3 had tech II which made it worse than 9). But don't burn yourself out on the game :)
Still looking like monday on 5.028, but I'm happy with how the tests came out, hacking looks like it's working right, etc.
No worries, I was more curious than anything, really, as to how the 'slope' was. 9.6 vs. 9.3 is minimal in difficulty difference. Then again, I was dyson balling the 9.6 so I can't really tell you HOW hard that was, but since they never broke the Tech III level it's a moot point.
I thought the counter-spy was a mass-killer of cloaks. It almost acts more like a sniper, kills 1 every 2 secs or so. That's not what I'd expect from the description.
Don't worry too much about burnout. I'd had a few weeks of watching overnight processes run so I got in a lot of 'sit and stare' time. :) I'll probably wait for the update and check out hacking on an easier game and the like for some fun then come back to this.
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For fun, I cranked up the 9.8 game, figuring I'd get early game out of the way to be able to play with the changes.
No dyson in range, CoPs on Twycross and Craps, ARSs on Huge and Sox (used to be Dyson). Can't find the Dyson yet. 45 mins in I'm still on my homeworld because I don't see a need to take my neighbors and everytime I travel to do some damage to Roulette, I'm pulled back for a little 35 ship wave. I've got Bomber IIs and Maw IIs building/built and Flagships. Raid Is as well. The bombers are primarily because I have enemy fortresses on Twycross and Roulette. I've also unlocked Econ II (unused so far) and am sitting on 3000 K.
Some early observations. A Heavy Laser Guardian III under a FF III is nearly indominatable to early fleets that don't upgrade Raid Starships. My raid Is got it to 50% before I lost one and I had to run. It had already eaten half my fleet and I barely dinged the FF.
A bunch of micro-waves are annoying. I've blocked over 10 waves in the first 45 minutes, most of them 30-40 ships a piece. I've started turret balling the homeworld so I can go get some work done, particularly since Huge has a Counterstrike on it.
The icon I made is very obvious and is actually kind of nice. I'll probably keep it with a little more work on it even if it fails inspection. I like the larger icon. The smaller one would get buried under a handful of tractors.
Nothing else of particular note to report. This game won't get overly interesting until I've taken Huge and Sox for their ARSs and I start seeing real waves.
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2:30 in. Turret ball is up on homeworld. Getting waves at
48 77 AIP (Edit, sorry) between 200 to 650 ships, depending on time buildup. Main turretball can handle 300 with no issue, 500 gets a bit nasty, a full 650 requires some fleet backup so I'm not concerned about rebuilds. This is partially because not all of my turrets are available to deal with the alpha waves. Some of them are 'pulled back' towards the command station to deal with drifters from Shawshank and friends in the back.
I've taken Huge and Sox, and their ARSs. Resarched Scout IIs, Tachyon Turrets, and Econ III. Brief scouting to Cyborg shows the 'highway' in full effect so I'll have to batter that down before continuing. I've cleaned up everything with a good nerf through to Kerensky. I've found the four Co-Ps, for once one didn't spawn on Homeworld. Twycross, Craps, Cyborg, and Confederation. Confed's a deepstrike at the moment from Sox.
Currently I'm debating on popping the Co-Ps one at a time to artificially inflate the AIP, and keep the fleet at home and powered down to test the true strength of the homeworld turetball. That'll take me through to 110'ish before popping the last one drops it down to sleeper levels. It'll give me a solid idea of the wave incrementals and what, if anything, I'll need to do to continue supporting this method of attack. Of particular note, I don't have Riot IIs up yet.
Otherwise, I'm just scouting. Economy took a while to keep up with the fleet as I struck out in most directions, and the fleet's just not big enough to really handle a 100 ship Tech III world with guardposts without having to retreat and rebuild after. I can sometimes push two worlds, but it's risky and usually requires a full rebuild afterwards, with some blade spawns and maws being all that's left.
I'm basically approaching this like it's a 10/10 game. Gently touching AIP, doing lots of work before I move ahead a single AIP step. The 1/30 AIP increase actually started to affect the minor waves before I took Huge, but luckily not enough before I was popping Wave Gates and stations.
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At 98 AIP I'm getting waves of 600-1200 ships. The 1250 ship ones bring carriers with them varying from 200-500 ships. I've needed to put 7 FF Is on the inbound wormhole to guard the tractor net and AoEs. I've also had to triple the Tractor Net, my first defense went poorly. The carrier tends to escape the AoE net and the secondary turrets deal with the leftovers for now.
Another increase will probably require a turret upgrade somewhere. In particular one of my issues is the mid-range turrets. Basic Turrets are your primary defense against Missile Frigates, and they are in range of said missile frigates. Either I need to FF them, removing their bonuses, or I need the Radar Jammer II from the traders, which I can ill afford to build right now.
I may play with FF positioning, see if I can force the spawn to the 'back' of the FFs, buying me some time. I'll bang around at this AIP for a few waves then goose it again. My team is currently eating the 'highway' on Cyborg so it's not wasted time, though I may savescum to back before the experiments when I'm done.
Edit 1: At ~100 AIP I'm having a hard time getting another max-time wave to hit me. At 3:00 a CPA of ~900 ships is spawning. Guess I'll find out if the back turrets can handle the CPA. The fleet is back to chilling on the homeworld to keep alerts down in places the scouts have to travel. I've found the remaining ARSs (Eridani, SolarMoon, and Argyle) so I'll know where to drag down an 'ARS Selection Team' and check that out. Haven't located my ST yet, wonder if it's on Riker again.
Edit 2: In the current configuration, no, the homeworld can't hold off the CPA with only the 'backup' turrets. At 800 ships or so the pressure is too great when the majority of the firepower is against the 'furthest' wormhole, and the closest one is the one invaded. Most of my firepower can't reach to defend me. I'd have a decent chance if I had alternated the wormhole to defend vs. not defend, as my firepower would be better concentrated for the two directions.
As it stands though, the Twycross wormhole, while being the closer one, will usually be better protected by fleet activities out in the wild. My real concern was reverse attacks from the Shawshank direction. While interesting from an academic standpoint for other games I don't consider this a valid concern for this game's strategies.
Edit 3: Something I hadn't ran into in earlier 10/10 games because I'd usually end up with a bit of overexpansion is power issues. If I lose one of my two satellite stations right now I've got serious power containment problems. The ghosts get out.
At 100 AIP waves average off at 300-700 a piece, with bursts to 1200. Average tandem comes in at around 1000. When they come in back to back though it's actually worse. The defenses took a bit of a beating and then the next wave comes in behind it. Add in a heavy reliance on blade spawners for that wave and they can tear down the ff protected turrets, including the grav. Homeworld can barely hold at this point against 1000-1200 ship waves. It doesn't get any turret boosts and I can't even toss a Mil I up next to the command center so this has to happen with no bonuses.
I did get a Radar Jammer II dropped off but it'll be awhile before it can build out.
This last wave nearly did me in. I turned on the Blade spawners to deal with some errant threat. A series of ships escaped the grav line and were beelining for the other wormhole. Then hung a right at Albequerque and went after the Command station from an odd angle. I'll be tossing up a few random Grav Is shortly.
I've only got 3250 in K right now because of the Scout IIs and Tach Turrets, but if I had 4k I'd probably invest in Counter Missile. With Counter Missile shutting down the destruction of the Laser and Basic Turrets (and basics are cheap to K up) my DoT wouldn't decrease quite so heavily and I could probably handle MUCH stronger waves.
On Schizo, fleet composition isn't as heterogeneous as I'd prefer. I'll get heavy frigate waves, heavy bomber waves, etc. When the bomber waves come they melt the ffs, and then a different 'heavy' wave will come in and chew up the AoE's they used to protect.
I've popped the second CoP and pushed AIP to 121. We'll see where this goes. Oh, yeah. And stuff like this is fun to me. ;D
Edit 4: Letting the neutral Dyson try to dig its way out has been relatively useless. On one portal, there's an artillery guardian and enough blade spawners that it chews the one offs to pieces on entry. I can't see the other side (Dyson's about 8 worlds away, I'm not deepstriking that far) but they're not faring much better when I can slip the one/two scouts in for a moment before they die. I'd hoped to abuse the dyson's "on/off" switch without having to do much work but that doesn't appear to be a valid tactic.
In the meanwhile 121/122 AIP waves are unspectacular on average for difference. Waves average around 400-500 ships. I'm still waiting for the 'big one'. The 500 ship attacks are enough to nearly burn up the 6 FF Is and Basics/Lasers in range of the wormhole, but they don't get much further. Occassionally they'll blow the Grav Is and get up to the LRMs, and die there to the secondary turrets. My LRMs are placed for max effeciency against both wormholes and the Cmd Center, so they're at nearly max range.
Side Note: The reason I'm notating in chunks instead of one huge post is because I'll forget otherwise. I'll put up a 'new post' when I'm done with all of this experimentation. It's about 4:00 in the game right now, but this game is no longer about winning in 13:00. :)
Still waiting on a wave bigger than 500 or so at 4:30. The Dyson's finally begun to dig out of its hole. The problem is it's wrapped by a pair of MK IV worlds that been building for a while. Neither planet, even when scouted, shows as alerted, that seems odd to me if they're getting reinforcements. Do they still fall under standard reinforcement rules?
One of the biggest problems the Dysons seem to have is that they're heavies. That alone doesn't explain why an Artillery Guardian IV with an attack of ~1.2 mil and a x2 boost to Heavy insta-kills a Gatling that has 7.2 mill base hitpoints. The math doesn't seem right. The dyson pretty much only makes headway when the home system reinforces and it can bunch up 4/5 dysons as an attack group, then it stalls out again for a bit. This could be useful long term if it can ever dig its way free. Both of those Mk IV worlds are ~260 units at the moment.
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yeah I think that's a bug with dysons. The dyson sphere planet and the worlds bordering it don't show on alert... but they are.
And yes, I seemed to notice the math was a bit off too. A zenith bombardment ship with an attack power of 1.8 mill (or even lower) and a bonus of 2 against heavy also one shot a dyson gatling in my game. I can't provide a save though.
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Just a notice for those curious and following this: I haven't discarded the game or the intent. Just... Mass Effect 3. It's eaten me!
I'll be back in another week or so. :)
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Mass Effect 3. It's eaten me!
It all makes sense now! ;) Were it not for... well, a lot of things, but AVWW development being in crunch time is the big one. Were it not for all that I'd probably be lost in ME3 right now too. ME1 was good, and ME2 was one of my favorite gaming experiences of the past 5 years.
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You all make me think I missed something in single player campaign in ME 3. It seemed very short for me.. for sure shorter than ME 2. And I tried to be quite through doing all the side quests except one that got bugged.
You seem to be still playing it? Or is it multi-player that has your attention?
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You all make me think I missed something in single player campaign in ME 3.
I don't actually have the game.
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You all make me think I missed something in single player campaign in ME 3. It seemed very short for me.. for sure shorter than ME 2. And I tried to be quite through doing all the side quests except one that got bugged.
You seem to be still playing it? Or is it multi-player that has your attention?
Multiplayer with some friends. Having a blast with it. I'm also doing the second run through at insanity levels on Single Player, and let me tell you that is not something to be taken lightly.
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By about 5:45 the Dyson has finally broken the stranglehold and started to drop neutrals out into the real world. Also, at ~145 AIP, I've gotten a single AI wave of ~1450 ships. This took the entire fleet plus homeworld turretball to stop. They wrecked the fleet but enough was left to clear the entry.
Of odd note, the mass lightning/Flak field didn't seem to want to take out the fighters in bulk, but concentrated on one-hitting the Missile Frigs. Quite annoying.
At this time, I've popped the last CoP, bringing my AIP down to 29, so those experiments are over. I'm going to experiment a bit with letting the Dyson run loose and see what happens.
Change of plans. I savescummed to experiment. I want to see if the Radar Jammer II is as powerful as I believe it is.
Two further waves of 2200+ ships with a 1100 ship wave about five minutes behind it overwhelmed my econ. I was able to barely stop the first one and the second landed on my head.
Retrying from save-start with the deep-strike popping of a data center to bring AIP down to around 125. First wave was still 1200 as the Raids hadn't gotten there, but followup wave is ~1900 ships instead of 2200+. Minor difference but might be the alteration I need. My econ is nowhere near strong enough to really handle wave defense + building the Warp Jammer II for this experiment. Tempted to cheat for resources to bring it online, but I didn't turn them on for this game (actually, I never turn them on, this is the first time I'd want to use it) so it's a moot point.
Still no go. Partially because of bad micro'ing of the Maws and I lost them when a carrier broke and insta-popped 7 of them. Either way, the second wave of 750 ships coming in right on the tail of the kill would have obliterated any chance of recovery in a reasonable amount of time. So, I got my wish, I got some max-time waves. ~2000 ships from both AIs at AIP 125, around 2600 ships at 145.
They land too frequently and with too much power to handle with an un-assisted fleetball + basic turretball, particularly if you artificially inflate them with Co-Ps and get nothing for your trouble, like strong economy and knowledge. I've popped the 4th Co-P to re-assess. Had I taken 3 worlds for the AIP and gotten 9000 knowledge + 3 more Econ IIIs up, it quite possibly could have held against repeated waves and rebuilt between. As it was, no love. I wanted to perform minor experiments with my 3250 K I had bankrolled, but my econ wouldn't allow it. I particularly wanted to use fortress Is as a test.
To show the wave equivalent, first wave after popping the 4th CoP, bringing AIP to 29, is 47 ships.
Opinionated thoughts:
With a Mil II/III station, + Radar Jammer/Armor stripper, this is handleable. Particularly with some Basic II/III investments and Lightning IIs. Carriers were becoming a bit problematic, getting outside the killzone, but could be handled. The wave size increase from 9.6 to 9.8 is tremendous. At equivalent AIP I was seeing maybe half this. Brutal.
A huge deal here was the lack of bonus items for my additional AIP. I don't like leaving my fleet behind, however, so my whipping boy should be able to stand on its own unless it's getting hammered by dual waves, so the fleet assets actually made up for any K I would have normally invested. However, the lack of 3 planets worth of econ significantly hurt. If I could reverse time on this game I'd use the harvester boosts instead of the econ station boosts and that would have made some difference. Well, I'll know for next time.
I was right, in a way, however. The non-max-time waves really lulled me to sleep about what I could *really* handle coming out of the AI in waves before it slammed me with those 3 mass waves back to back to back.
More experimental/observation notes:
It would appear Neutral Dysons try to get at the nearest possible threat. I think I can use neutral worlds to control their pathing. Dyson Gatlings won't set off a Raid Engine, that's helpful at least, but that might be due to the '1 enemy free' rule they use, compared to the CPA sender, which I haven't been able to check. Not that they're overly useful against MK V ships, but one thing at a time. They can, after ~3-4 hours, clear out an area of ~20 planets. They're dying harshly to Fortresses when they aren't being concentrated against them (IE: Homeworld/1 world they can probably take one, past that... not so much).
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Dangit, I hate it when I screw up my clicks. Lost my post. :'(
Try this again.
Popped Kerensky as a stepping stone and sent the fleet out to assist the Dyson a little by clearing all the posts (and Eye) off of LLama with the main fleet and used raid SSs to clear the two posts (and Eye) on Dyson. I've otherwise let the Dyson have its own leash to see what it would do.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI98DysonWars.png)
The Dyson (yellow circle) has pretty much cleaned up the Purple dots for me. It will occassionally land a single gatling on Kirk, but since neutrals can't hit Vs, that's useless. One of the other problems is the double fortress down on HotStar. They obliterate the Dysons so they can't get further down there unless they can concentrate a bit, which is hard to do with them spreading themselves across the galaxy.
So, my next experiment will be to neutral Confederation (the blue circle) to see if I can keep the gatlings penned up in the Red Area. If that works, then I'll be able to concentrate on picking up the CSGs and ARSs I need to go after Earth while the erstwhile Dyson fleet accidentally ends up tackling the entire Riker run for me. We'll see.
Then, hopefully that'll let me deal with Earth:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI98Earth.png)
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Of odd note, the mass lightning/Flak field didn't seem to want to take out the fighters in bulk, but concentrated on one-hitting the Missile Frigs. Quite annoying.
The lightnings cannot target immune-to-aoe things, so I don't know what was going on there. The flaks could have been trying to focus the frigates though. I'll make a note to have them sort immune-to-aoe things to the bottom of the target list.
Interesting that the waves are hammering so hard in only the 120s and 140s; max-time really does matter, it seems.
Tempted to cheat for resources to bring it online, but I didn't turn them on for this game (actually, I never turn them on, this is the first time I'd want to use it) so it's a moot point.
"cmd:enable cheats" will turn them on, but not flag "has cheated" unless you actually use one. For science only, of course ;)
To show the wave equivalent, first wave after popping the 4th CoP, bringing AIP to 29, is 47 ships.
2000 / 47 > 42, 140 / 29 < 5. Something seems off about that ;) Do you have the wave-calc logs for both?
The wave size increase from 9.6 to 9.8 is tremendous. At equivalent AIP I was seeing maybe half this. Brutal.
Glad it's actually hitting you with something, but I don't know why 9.6 -> 9.8 would do this. I should probably remember this but, did the AI types change? If you drew Mad Bomber then fahgettabowtit.
Interesting plans for neutral dyson stategery ;)
Ah, and here's another one...
Dangit, I hate it when I screw up my clicks. Lost my post. :'(
Straying from the path of "write it in a text editor first" brings much suffering, for the browser is a cruel and fickle beast.
If that works, then I'll be able to concentrate on picking up the CSGs and ARSs I need to go after Earth while the erstwhile Dyson fleet accidentally ends up tackling the entire Riker run for me. We'll see.
Ah, those clumsy dysons, accidentally laying waste to the galaxy...
Then, hopefully that'll let me deal with Earth:
RAID!? (*poof*)
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Of odd note, the mass lightning/Flak field didn't seem to want to take out the fighters in bulk, but concentrated on one-hitting the Missile Frigs. Quite annoying.
The lightnings cannot target immune-to-aoe things, so I don't know what was going on there. The flaks could have been trying to focus the frigates though. I'll make a note to have them sort immune-to-aoe things to the bottom of the target list.
Yea, I was wondering why my nanoswarms had this obnoxious tendency to go after groups of missile frigates rather than that nice juicy group of bombers just a little way to the left of it.
Thankfully, the new "aggressive spread" targeting of paralyzers help with that, but that won't help with flaks. ;)
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The lightnings cannot target immune-to-aoe things, so I don't know what was going on there. The flaks could have been trying to focus the frigates though. I'll make a note to have them sort immune-to-aoe things to the bottom of the target list.
I can't be sure of who shot whom, really. I was making gross guesses about what was going on. The sorting will help.
Interesting that the waves are hammering so hard in only the 120s and 140s; max-time really does matter, it seems.
2000 / 47 > 42, 140 / 29 < 5. Something seems off about that ;) Do you have the wave-calc logs for both?
Max-Time is everything.
Round 1 before the savescum:
3/21/2012 2:39:53 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Normal Wave for player 9; wave size factor: 2.46; Game Time: 5:43:40
3/21/2012 2:39:54 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Receiving AddInboundWave from AI Thread at Game Time: 5:43:40
WaveSize factor: 2.46
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
MissileShipII => 74
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 77
FighterII => 79
MunitionsBoosterII => 78
BomberII => 78
BomberStarship => 1
LeechStarshipII => 2
3/21/2012 2:39:54 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 2.46 on wave at Game Time: 5:43:40
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 74
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 182.15
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 91.07
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 109.28
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 98.34
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 98.34
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 373.69
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 373
CheckWave: populating count of SpireBladeSpawnerII with base magnitude of 77
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 189.53
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 5.65
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.65
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.08
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 5.08
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 19.3
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 19
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 79
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 194.45
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 97.23
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 116.67
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 104.99
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 104.99
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 398.94
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 398
CheckWave: populating count of MunitionsBoosterII with base magnitude of 78
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 191.99
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 19.17
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 19.17
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 17.25
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 17.25
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 65.55
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 65
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 78
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 191.99
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 96
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 76.78
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 69.09
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 69.09
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 262.54
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 262
CheckWave: populating count of BomberStarship with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 2.46
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 2.46
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.46
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 3.69
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 3.69
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 14.03
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 14
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of LeechStarshipII with base magnitude of 2
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 4.92
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 4.92
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.92
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.43
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 4.43
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 16.83
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 16
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
Wave total ships: 1119
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
MissileShipII => 373
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 19
FighterII => 398
MunitionsBoosterII => 65
BomberII => 145
BomberStarship => 1
LeechStarshipII => 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
BomberII => 117
3/21/2012 3:13:19 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Normal Wave for player 8; wave size factor: 2.48; Game Time: 5:59:57
3/21/2012 3:13:20 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Receiving AddInboundWave from AI Thread at Game Time: 5:59:57
WaveSize factor: 2.48
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
SpacePlaneII => 111
ZenithPolarizerII => 91
FighterII => 88
MissileShipII => 79
BomberII => 95
DreadnoughtII => 1
LeechStarshipII => 2
3/21/2012 3:13:20 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 2.48 on wave at Game Time: 5:59:57
CheckWave: populating count of SpacePlaneII with base magnitude of 111
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 275.71
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 241.25
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 241.25
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 217.1
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 217.1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 824.93
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 824
CheckWave: populating count of ZenithPolarizerII with base magnitude of 91
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 226.03
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 113.02
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 113.02
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 101.7
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 101.7
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 386.46
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 386
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 88
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 218.58
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 109.29
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 131.14
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 118.02
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 118.02
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 448.44
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 448
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 79
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 196.23
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 98.11
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 117.73
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 105.95
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 105.95
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 402.58
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 402
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 95
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 235.97
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 117.98
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 94.36
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 84.92
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 84.92
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 322.67
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 322
CheckWave: populating count of DreadnoughtII with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 2.48
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 2.48
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.48
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.24
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 2.24
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 8.49
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 8
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of LeechStarshipII with base magnitude of 2
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 4.97
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 4.97
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.97
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.47
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 4.47
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 16.99
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 16
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
Wave total ships: 2384
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
SpacePlaneII => 824
ZenithPolarizerII => 176
DreadnoughtII => 1
LeechStarshipII => 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
ZenithPolarizerII => 210
FighterII => 448
MissileShipII => 402
BomberII => 322
3/21/2012 3:24:10 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Normal Wave for player 9; wave size factor: 1.93; Game Time: 6:07:57
3/21/2012 3:24:11 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Receiving AddInboundWave from AI Thread at Game Time: 6:07:57
WaveSize factor: 1.93
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
MissileShipII => 95
Flagship => 2
MunitionsBoosterII => 99
BomberII => 87
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 98
FighterII => 104
DreadnoughtII => 1
3/21/2012 3:24:11 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 1.93 on wave at Game Time: 6:07:57
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 95
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 182.95
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 91.47
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 109.76
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 98.78
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 98.78
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 375.34
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 375
CheckWave: populating count of Flagship with base magnitude of 2
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 3.85
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 3.85
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 3.85
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 3.47
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 3.47
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 13.17
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 13
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of MunitionsBoosterII with base magnitude of 99
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 190.65
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 19.04
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 19.04
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 17.13
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 17.13
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 65.1
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 65
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 87
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 167.54
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 83.77
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 67
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 60.29
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 60.29
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 229.1
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 229
CheckWave: populating count of SpireBladeSpawnerII with base magnitude of 98
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 188.73
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 5.62
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.62
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.06
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 5.06
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 19.22
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 19
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 104
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 200.28
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 100.14
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 120.16
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 108.14
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 108.14
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 410.89
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 410
CheckWave: populating count of DreadnoughtII with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 1.93
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 1.93
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.93
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.73
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1.73
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 6.58
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 6
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
Wave total ships: 1100
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
MissileShipII => 375
Flagship => 1
MunitionsBoosterII => 65
BomberII => 229
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 19
FighterII => 312
DreadnoughtII => 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
FighterII => 98
3/21/2012 3:32:55 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Normal Wave for player 8; wave size factor: 1.31; Game Time: 6:16:28
3/21/2012 3:32:56 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Receiving AddInboundWave from AI Thread at Game Time: 6:16:28
WaveSize factor: 1.31
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
BomberII => 362
SpacePlaneII => 10
FighterII => 7
ZenithPolarizerII => 9
MissileShipII => 5
Flagship => 2
LeechStarshipII => 1
3/21/2012 3:32:56 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 1.31 on wave at Game Time: 6:16:28
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 362
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 473.98
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 236.99
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 189.54
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 170.57
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 170.57
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 648.14
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 648
CheckWave: populating count of SpacePlaneII with base magnitude of 10
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 13.09
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 11.46
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 11.46
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 10.31
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 10.31
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 39.17
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 39
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 7
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 9.17
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 4.58
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.5
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.95
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 4.95
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 18.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 18
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of ZenithPolarizerII with base magnitude of 9
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 11.78
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 5.89
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.89
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.3
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 5.3
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 20.15
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 20
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 5
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 6.55
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 3.27
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 3.93
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 3.53
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 3.53
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 13.43
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 13
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of Flagship with base magnitude of 2
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 2.62
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 2.62
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.62
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.36
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 2.36
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 8.95
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 8
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of LeechStarshipII with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 1.31
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 1.31
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.31
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.18
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1.18
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 4.48
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 4
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
Wave total ships: 740
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
BomberII => 648
SpacePlaneII => 39
FighterII => 18
ZenithPolarizerII => 20
MissileShipII => 13
Flagship => 1
LeechStarshipII => 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
3/21/2012 3:39:46 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Normal Wave for player 8; wave size factor: 1.31; Game Time: 6:16:28
3/21/2012 3:39:47 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Receiving AddInboundWave from AI Thread at Game Time: 6:16:28
WaveSize factor: 1.31
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
SpacePlaneII => 82
FighterII => 58
ZenithPolarizerII => 68
BomberII => 95
MissileShipII => 89
LeechStarshipII => 1
BomberStarship => 1
AIRaidStarship => 1
3/21/2012 3:39:47 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 1.31 on wave at Game Time: 6:16:28
CheckWave: populating count of SpacePlaneII with base magnitude of 82
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 107.36
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 93.94
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 93.94
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 84.54
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 84.54
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 321.24
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 321
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 58
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 75.94
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 37.97
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 45.56
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 41
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 41
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 155.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 155
CheckWave: populating count of ZenithPolarizerII with base magnitude of 68
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 89.03
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 44.52
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 44.52
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 40.06
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 40.06
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 152.22
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 152
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 95
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 124.39
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 62.19
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 49.74
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 44.76
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 44.76
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 170.09
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 170
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 89
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 116.53
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 58.26
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 69.91
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 62.92
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 62.92
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 239.07
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 239
CheckWave: populating count of LeechStarshipII with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 1.31
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 1.31
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.31
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.18
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1.18
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 4.48
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 4
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of BomberStarship with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 1.31
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 1.31
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.31
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.96
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1.96
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 7.46
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 7
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of AIRaidStarship with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 1.31
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 1.31
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.31
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.96
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1.96
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 7.46
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 7
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
Wave total ships: 1040
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
SpacePlaneII => 321
FighterII => 155
ZenithPolarizerII => 152
BomberII => 170
MissileShipII => 202
LeechStarshipII => 1
BomberStarship => 1
AIRaidStarship => 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
MissileShipII => 37
Round 3 after dropping the AIP to 29ish on second wave, and a few of the followup waves (250-400 ships avg):
3/21/2012 4:08:47 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Normal Wave for player 9; wave size factor: 2.46; Game Time: 5:43:40
3/21/2012 4:08:48 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Receiving AddInboundWave from AI Thread at Game Time: 5:43:40
WaveSize factor: 2.46
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
BomberII => 80
MissileShipII => 68
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 74
AIRaidStarship => 3
MunitionsBoosterII => 80
FighterII => 77
3/21/2012 4:08:48 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 2.46 on wave at Game Time: 5:43:40
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 80
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 196.91
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 98.46
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 78.75
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 70.86
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 70.86
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 269.27
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 269
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 68
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 167.38
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 83.69
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 100.42
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 90.37
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 90.37
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 343.39
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 343
CheckWave: populating count of SpireBladeSpawnerII with base magnitude of 74
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 182.15
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 5.43
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.43
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.88
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 4.88
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 18.55
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 18
CheckWave: populating count of AIRaidStarship with base magnitude of 3
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 7.38
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 7.38
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 7.38
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 11.08
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 11.08
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 42.09
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 42
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of MunitionsBoosterII with base magnitude of 80
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 196.91
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 19.66
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 19.66
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 17.69
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 17.69
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 67.23
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 67
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 77
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 189.53
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 94.76
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 113.71
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 102.33
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 102.33
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 388.84
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 388
Wave total ships: 1086
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
BomberII => 269
MissileShipII => 343
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 18
AIRaidStarship => 1
MunitionsBoosterII => 67
FighterII => 303
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
FighterII => 85
3/21/2012 4:16:39 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Normal Wave for player 9; wave size factor: 0.42; Game Time: 5:48:57
3/21/2012 4:16:40 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Receiving AddInboundWave from AI Thread at Game Time: 5:48:57
WaveSize factor: 0.42
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
MunitionsBoosterII => 20
FighterII => 19
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 20
BomberII => 15
Flagship => 2
MissileShipII => 18
AIRaidStarship => 1
3/21/2012 4:16:40 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 0.42 on wave at Game Time: 5:48:57
CheckWave: populating count of MunitionsBoosterII with base magnitude of 20
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 8.36
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 0.83
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.83
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.75
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 3.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 3
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 19
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 7.94
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 3.97
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.76
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.29
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 4.29
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 16.29
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 16
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of SpireBladeSpawnerII with base magnitude of 20
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 8.36
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 0.25
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.25
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.22
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 3.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 3
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 15
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 6.27
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 3.13
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.51
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.26
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 2.26
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 8.57
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 8
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of Flagship with base magnitude of 2
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 0.84
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 0.84
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.84
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.75
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 3.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 3
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 18
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 7.52
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 3.76
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.51
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.06
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 4.06
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 15.43
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 15
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of AIRaidStarship with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 0.42
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 0.42
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.42
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.63
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 3.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 3
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
Wave total ships: 47
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
MunitionsBoosterII => 3
FighterII => 16
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 3
BomberII => 8
Flagship => 1
MissileShipII => 15
AIRaidStarship => 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
3/21/2012 4:35:13 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Normal Wave for player 8; wave size factor: 2.48; Game Time: 5:59:57
3/21/2012 4:35:14 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Receiving AddInboundWave from AI Thread at Game Time: 5:59:57
WaveSize factor: 2.48
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
MissileShipII => 19
ZenithPolarizerII => 12
SpacePlaneII => 18
FighterII => 7
BomberII => 19
LeechStarshipII => 1
Flagship => 2
3/21/2012 4:35:14 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 2.48 on wave at Game Time: 5:59:57
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 19
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 47.19
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 23.6
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 28.31
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 25.48
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 25.48
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 96.82
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 96
CheckWave: populating count of ZenithPolarizerII with base magnitude of 12
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 29.81
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 14.9
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 14.9
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 13.41
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 13.41
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 50.96
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 50
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of SpacePlaneII with base magnitude of 18
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 44.71
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 39.12
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 39.12
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 35.21
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 35.21
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 133.77
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 133
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 7
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 17.39
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 8.69
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 10.43
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 9.39
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 9.39
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 35.67
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 35
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 19
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 47.19
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 23.6
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 18.87
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 16.98
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 16.98
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 64.53
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 64
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of LeechStarshipII with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 2.48
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 2.48
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.48
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.24
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 2.24
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 8.49
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 8
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of Flagship with base magnitude of 2
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 4.97
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 4.97
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.97
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 4.47
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 4.47
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 16.99
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 16
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
Wave total ships: 380
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
MissileShipII => 96
ZenithPolarizerII => 50
SpacePlaneII => 133
FighterII => 35
BomberII => 64
LeechStarshipII => 1
Flagship => 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
3/21/2012 4:45:04 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Normal Wave for player 9; wave size factor: 1.64; Game Time: 6:09:36
3/21/2012 4:45:05 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Receiving AddInboundWave from AI Thread at Game Time: 6:09:36
WaveSize factor: 1.64
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
FighterII => 22
MissileShipII => 25
BomberII => 14
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 16
MunitionsBoosterII => 13
BomberStarship => 1
Flagship => 1
AIRaidStarship => 1
3/21/2012 4:45:05 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 1.64 on wave at Game Time: 6:09:36
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 22
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 36.02
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 18.01
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 21.61
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 19.45
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 19.45
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 73.91
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 73
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 25
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 40.94
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 20.47
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 24.56
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 22.1
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 22.1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 83.98
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 83
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 14
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 22.92
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 11.46
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 9.17
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 8.25
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 8.25
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 31.35
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 31
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of SpireBladeSpawnerII with base magnitude of 16
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 26.2
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 0.78
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.78
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.7
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 3.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 3
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of MunitionsBoosterII with base magnitude of 13
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 21.29
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 2.13
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.13
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.91
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1.91
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 7.27
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 7
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of BomberStarship with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 1.64
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 1.64
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.64
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.46
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 2.46
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 9.33
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 9
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of Flagship with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 1.64
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 1.64
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.64
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.47
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1.47
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 5.6
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 5
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of AIRaidStarship with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 1.64
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 1.64
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 1.64
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.46
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 2.46
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 9.33
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 9
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
Wave total ships: 200
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
FighterII => 73
MissileShipII => 83
BomberII => 31
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 3
MunitionsBoosterII => 7
BomberStarship => 1
Flagship => 1
AIRaidStarship => 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
3/21/2012 4:52:56 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Triggering Normal Wave for player 9; wave size factor: 0.61; Game Time: 6:17:17
3/21/2012 4:52:57 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Receiving AddInboundWave from AI Thread at Game Time: 6:17:17
WaveSize factor: 0.61
Raw Units Dictionary Entries:
MissileShipII => 25
FighterII => 23
LeechStarshipII => 1
BomberII => 23
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 22
MunitionsBoosterII => 15
AIRaidStarship => 1
BomberStarship => 1
3/21/2012 4:52:57 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 0.61 on wave at Game Time: 6:17:17
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 25
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 15.21
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 7.6
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 9.13
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 8.21
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 8.21
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 31.2
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 31
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 23
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 13.99
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 7
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 8.4
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 7.55
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 7.55
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 28.71
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 28
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of LeechStarshipII with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 0.61
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 0.61
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.61
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.55
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 3.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 3
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 23
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 13.99
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 7
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.6
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 5.04
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 5.04
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 19.13
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 19
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of SpireBladeSpawnerII with base magnitude of 22
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 13.38
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 0.4
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.4
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.36
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 3.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 3
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of MunitionsBoosterII with base magnitude of 15
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 9.13
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 0.91
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.91
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.82
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 3.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 3
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of AIRaidStarship with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 0.61
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 0.61
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.61
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.91
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 3.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 3
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of BomberStarship with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 0.61
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 0.61
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.61
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 0.91
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 1
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 3.8
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 3
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
Wave total ships: 87
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
MissileShipII => 31
FighterII => 28
LeechStarshipII => 1
BomberII => 19
SpireBladeSpawnerII => 3
MunitionsBoosterII => 3
AIRaidStarship => 1
BomberStarship => 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
cmd:enable cheats" will turn them on, but not flag "has cheated" unless you actually use one. For science only, of course ;)
Good to know. I might retreat to that save and test it.
Glad it's actually hitting you with something, but I don't know why 9.6 -> 9.8 would do this. I should probably remember this but, did the AI types change? If you drew Mad Bomber then fahgettabowtit.
Nope, exact same settings, Vanilla + Mine Enthusiast.
RAID!? (*poof*)
Heh, easy HW this time. Single Raid engine, no CPA engine, no AI Eye. Woot woot!
That's kinda bad that I consider a single engine good, isn't it...
-
Max-Time is everything.
No kidding. Goodness. 2.46 / 0.42 ~= 6; 140 / 29 ~= 5, so 30x decrease; all of a sudden dropping from 2000 to 50 isn't so much of a stretch.
Nope, exact same settings, Vanilla + Mine Enthusiast.
Ah, right. Yea, just the wave time, wow.
RAID!? (*poof*)
Heh, easy HW this time. Single Raid engine, no CPA engine, no AI Eye. Woot woot!
That's kinda bad that I consider a single engine good, isn't it...
When the AI beats you that much, it seems like kindness when it only yells ;)
-
Side note: Neutral worlds do not help path the neutral dysons. Drat. Next theory.
It's okay, I have other plans! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
*blink* What?
-
Just another comment on 'max-time is god', AIP 51, ~1000 ships:
3/24/2012 8:27:40 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Starting CreateMixedWaveToPlanet at Game Time: 6:55:10 ; Player.AIType: Mine_Enthusiast ; Player.AIDifficulty: 9.8 ; AIProgressionLevel: 51 ; AITechLevel: 2 ; WaveSize: 2.48
aiTypeBasedAIPIncrement : 0
workingShips = ( AIProgressionLevel * player.AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - player.AIDifficulty ) : 156.17
workingShips *= FInt.FromParts( 0, AILoop.Instance.AIRandom.Next( 800, 1100 ) ) : 163.5
workingShips = Min(workingShips,34 * handicap_multiplier) :163.5
numberShips = workingShips.IntValue :163
Inside AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType, multiplier: 1
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType call, numberShips :163
numberTech123 = numberShips - numberDefensive - numberExplosive - numberCore :163
3/24/2012 8:27:40 PM (5.031)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 2.48 on wave at Game Time: 6:55:11
CheckWave: populating count of MissileShipII with base magnitude of 28
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 69.55
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 34.77
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 41.73
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 37.55
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 37.55
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 142.68
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 142
CheckWave: populating count of VorticularCutlassII with base magnitude of 23
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 57.13
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 57.13
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 57.13
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 51.41
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 51.41
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 195.35
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 195
CheckWave: populating count of BomberII with base magnitude of 25
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 62.1
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 31.05
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 24.83
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 22.35
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 22.35
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 84.91
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 84
skipping at-least-effective-ship-cap-rule due to multiple non-starship types
CheckWave: populating count of SpacePlaneII with base magnitude of 34
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 84.45
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 73.9
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 73.9
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 66.5
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 66.5
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 252.68
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 252
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 28
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 69.55
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 34.77
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 41.73
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 37.55
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 37.55
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 142.68
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 142
CheckWave: populating count of ZenithPolarizerII with base magnitude of 25
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 62.1
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 31.05
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 31.05
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 27.94
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 27.94
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 106.17
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 106
CheckWave: populating count of LeechStarshipII with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 2.48
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 2.48
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.48
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.24
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 2.24
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 8.49
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 8
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of AIRaidStarship with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 2.48
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 2.48
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.48
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 3.73
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 3.73
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 14.16
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 14
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
CheckWave: populating count of DreadnoughtII with base magnitude of 1
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 2.48
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 2.48
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.48
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 2.24
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 2.24
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 8.49
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 8
it's a starship so only adding one rule : 1 (had you going there, didn't we)
Wave total ships: 924
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
MissileShipII => 142
VorticularCutlassII => 195
BomberII => 84
SpacePlaneII => 252
FighterII => 142
ZenithPolarizerII => 106
LeechStarshipII => 1
AIRaidStarship => 1
DreadnoughtII => 1
TypesForCarrierAdd count by type:
That's gonna hurt. 1/4 of them are space planes, but still. They've gotten a bit more bite if memory serves.
-
Well, I retreated a save before Kerensky and tried to goof around with getting the Dyson Gatlings near the Coreworld, and it works, so so. The friendly dysons also don't set off Raid Engines. However, I can't seem to get a solid understanding of their pathing mechanics. Sometimes they'll all go berserk chasing neighboring threat. Sometimes they ignore a small threatball. I don't get it.
Friendly Dysons also seem to like patrolling large swaths of neutral territory. So, instead of just using that to path to the friendly worlds, they'll continue to patrol Dyson/Llama, even though they're neutral, instead of condensing in the Confederation/Eridani area.
Of an interesting note, since the new ARS hack mechanics came into play, I went for Eridani's ARS during this trying to get Dysons to do what I wanted. I got a spider. This is not one of the standard ships I always picked up, so apparently it did a full re-roll when it rebuilt the map. Neat.
There's a Raid Engine out on Tau (along the run to Riker), so I guess I figured out where it went. I'm thinking I'm going to need to approach this a hair differently. Part of my problem is the price of deep strikes, part of it is knocking over CSGs. The CSG map is a bit off, but there's a C class CSG along the Riker Run that I can use as a stepping stone, which will be handy. The two Ds on my map are kinda useless, but that's the point I guess. Both ARS's in the SW are heavily camped by Eyes, so I need a stepping stone. The D-Class world will let me do that, it's Pai Gow, and should let me play a little with hacking them as well once I can drop the eyes.
So, I'll stop screwing around now and go play the game. ;)
So, the 6 pt 5 hour map, with CSG markers:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI986pt5hrmap.png)
I've got 4 Datacenters located, from SW to East: Argyle, Green Lantern, Llama, and Blackstone. That's 3 planets worth of AIP roughly once you include warp gates. Whipping boy is still on Sushi, the homeworld. PaiGow, with the D-Class CSG, has already had its Counterstrike removed in preparation.
SolarMoon and Argyle are both AI Eye planets. Eridani's easy enough to take but I'm loathe to power up its reinforcements quite yet. I will need to hammer it eventually while I've got low AIP, but I can get two ARS's worth of troops before I head in there. Besides, even after I take Solar Moon, the closest I can get without Deep Strike threat is Eridani. This limits my options.
So, with the taking of Pai Gow and the two ARSs, I use up my 'free AIP' planets. Not what I want to hear. Choices...
Well, if I free Dyson with a deepstrike, I can deal with all the resultant mess in Macross. That also means I can stop worrying about the Dyson eventually eating my face, but it won't continue to harass the entire eastern star-arm, nor necessarily scour its two alert worlds. The big thing that does is let me into Kirk at 4 worlds off a neutral without deepstrike. It'll be bad enough trying to wreck the joint with the Raid Engine on my head in the first place. I can't do a thing to the AI HW yet but it's worth getting Kirk out of the picture with my AIP as low as possible.
If that goes anything remotely successfully, I can then bring my troops into Earth and piss it off. Once it's pissed, I can drag out the defenders for later. Back off to Confederation or so and deal with fallout, then rebuild. If I can nerf Kirk/de-populate Earth in one go, maybe two, I should be alright. I could hit Pai Gow and the two data centers as well before I do this, but the floor would increase and I want to keep it tight during the early offense.
Once I've done that, I've got another deep-strike that needs to happen before I continue. I need to nerf the Riker arm and take the Raid Engine out on Tau so I can get Krupp later. Pop Krupp on my way in and if the assault fails I've got a permanently pissed Raid Engine, that won't end well. So, it'll have to be a deep strike. Scouting FTW, I guess. Saved me from a bad situation later after the AIP went up.
So, that's the plan. Let's play. :)
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So far, so meh.
Got dyson freed up, and decided I wanted the research off it. While I got a colony ship down to me I built off 11 Research 2s so they could soak the K quickly. Dyson's BHG made me not want to bring my fleet up there, but I'd forgotten it would change hands. Didn't really matter, the 65 Dysons or so were able to shut down the Dyson spawn. Though, I got a bit of a surprise when it was doing 5x enemy spawns...
That took some time, as did getting the AI Eye off Llama. It's got 4 Ions on it (1xIV, 1xIII, 2x II) so I kept those intact, but 4xBomber SS I + 3x Raid SS I take forever to get the job done, particularly against a Spire Shield Post IV. Gyeah. Finally got there.
So at around 7:00 I look to Kirk, and hit it with my wee fleet, trying to drain off defenders into Eridani. This had mixed results, and then my nice little 150 ship Raid landed on me with MK IVs. THUD, slam, pop, ow.
No joy, savescum. Send in the armor ships, annoy the locals, pull them out and engage in Eridani. Works somewhat better, we are able to dent most of the starships that pour out, and the raid hits again. Thump slam bye bye.
Dangit. Alright. Wait for research, open up Missile Frigs II, Fighter II, and HBC I and Basic IIs for good measure. My Power's on the floor even with double generators on my 3 planets, so I shut down a few scout starships and only bring two along with the main fleet. I can just BARELY keep everything powered.
Well, Send in the armor troops and do an immediate back out with the fleet at a distance. Grav Guardian comes through, shuts down the blade spawners, and we take on the starships. After about a minute of this, I back off to Confederation and position to intercept the wave and let the rest of whatever stream to me. It works. My 750 ships are down to around 500. I've only gotten 22 ships off of Kirk, but they were all high end starships. Beams, Bombers, A spire fleet, etc.
Now after trucking home and trucking back to ERidani (a trip that takes roughly 20 minutes), I've refilled my fleet and Confederation bought itself an Ion IV. Buggers. Raids will deal with that shortly, they just got deployed from Sushi.
Did I mention the EMP I missile I brought along? No? Well, everyone's right, it was worthless in pissing off the enemy. I know they're MK Vs and immune to EMP, but I'd hoped it'd fire them up. Of course, said worthless missile STILL set off the Raid Engine... Mutter.
Well, I was able to handle the raid easily enough, particularly once they got a bit spaced out and my Maws could eat them piecemeal. A few starships apparently like to spawn in the raid but I can deal with that. The invasion of Kirk immediately following ate half my fleet to almost no dang purpose. There's 3 Ions + Bombardment cannon on the thing and they chewed me up. I didn't bring my raids in with me and the next attack will have to have them. I tried sending in the Raids alone afterwards and they can't survive the orbital.
I've not done a heck of a lot against Kirk yet except clear the opening wormhole. I apparently don't have the necessary firepower to 'wake' it. There's a miniature CPA coming up shortly though that I'll need to deal with, so the fleet's heading for home to help cover my planets from the eventual brownout.
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Just realized two things.
1) Warhead interceptor stopped my EMP I from igniting. I still don't know if it'll work to annoy a MK V world. Heh. However, the interceptor states it'll kill a warhead without igniting AIP gain, but my message log shows a +2 increase. I'm not quite sure what happened.
2)
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI987pt5CPA.png)
I'd hoped it'd help clear out some of that MK V trash. Oh well.
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Hahah! I've finally found a good use for Armor Ships. Pissing off Coreworlds. :)
So, slightly frustrated by my previous attempts, and not really draining any coreships off Kirk (started at 192, now at 170) it was time to do something a little different. Send in the armor ships! I send them in (167 of them) on FRD to go piss off as many things as they can. Being armor ships, they actually survive long enough to dink a few things.
Meanwhile, my Raids go on an Ion hunt. First ion's next to the Orbital Mass Driver. That'll work, sic 'em on that. Take down one ion and half the orbital.
Meanwhile, raid + ~40 core ships are coming. Woot, by the time that's done, we're down to 120 ship on the planet.
Next stop, send in the raids + rebuild armors + friends while the rest of the fleet plays a game of 'whack-a-wormhole' in Confederation. I get bored so I send one of my scout SS off to the Dyson's alerts to get all the cloakers to come out and play. When the armors and reinforcements come down, I repeat the process. The Raids get one more Ion and fully aggravate another guardpost, while I sic the entire armor unit on the orbital cannon. They take that out but aren't quite able to finish off the warhead destroyer. Meanwhile, due to lovely power issues (and my econ being a mere 535/s out of ~1000/s each) I decide that even though the Radar Jammer II's at 93%, I need to get the ZPG started. Well, that chewed up a huge piece of my econ to get it to 18%, so now I've got it off again and am build the third wave.
Kirk's at around 105 troops, +/- a few zombies from a guardian I can't get to leave the system. This is working, albeit slowly. I don't have a lot of fleet to work with, nor are they of significant strength, so that's part of the problem. As long as I can wear it down without getting wasted by the Raid Engine, it'll be enough.
I'm curious to see what kind of Raids I get off the MK IV world. The MK V homeworld gives me MK IV raids, I haven't fought a non-HW Raid Engine in a while. I think it'll Raid me with MK IIIs, but I'm not sure. Time is 8:12, should be ready around 8:20 or so for third raid. If that goes as planned and I can drop the final Ion III in the system, I'll bring the armada in for a good thwacking of the Coreworld. Then suicide the Armors on Earth to go piss everyone off. :)
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Third raid went well, left Kirk with around 40 units on it. I got too ambitious after that. With the refilled fleet, I went into Kirk and started trying to lay waste to it. I also sent the armors into Earth to go annoy it and hopefully drain some units for later.
Well, that ended about as well as you can expect with the Raid Engine dropping on my head too. I can't keep a scout on Earth yet, they keep blowing them up on me. They've got roughly 140 ships on there.
Well, 120 MK IVs from the Raid + making a massive nuisance of myself on the coreworld vs. the guardposts + getting backwash from Earth = bad idea. Particularly when a MK IV is worth 2 and a half my best ships.
Save scummed from the 8:20 raid. At 8:30 went in again, with the primary fleet, with the sole goal of taking down as many guardposts on Kirk as I could. I got four before I had to retreat the 200 or so ships that were left after soaking 2 raids. If I hadn't they'd pop my very fat Maws for over 300 ships or so. My Blade Spawners are being highly annoying, attacking FFs instead of the guardposts and things under them. It's like it's an addiction.
So while I was retreating to homeworld for reinforcements, the remnants of the last raid were chasing me down. About 80 Missile Frigs and a MK V Spire Fleetship. They were plinking too hard to make the entire run without them popping a maw, so I waited just inside the Craps wormhole for them, maneuvering my maws to around the edge of their grab range. We sucked up the remains and beat down a locally reinforced Blade Spawner. I've headed for home.
At 8:45 a Rebel Colony went up. It's on... Janeway?! Well, I hadn't decided what E CSG I was going to pop, that's as good as any I guess. It'll help with the econ too. The rebel fighters will probably nearly double my fleet strength, as well. They're tough little sons of guns. I've got 3 data centers left, and AIP is 179/140, with a floor of 35, so I was gonna tag one anyway.
Only one problem. Janeway's only connection is to Shawshank. Shawshank is where the whipping boy feeds from into Sushi.
*facepalm*
Son of a...
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nice ^^
I can only dream of being able to succesfully play high lvl games. So far I can handle 9/9 games fairly well (not counting crosshatch maps), but with anything above that I have to deal with mk II waves right from the start -.- I can handle that for a while, but not through the entire game.
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However, I can't seem to get a solid understanding of their pathing mechanics. Sometimes they'll all go berserk chasing neighboring threat. Sometimes they ignore a small threatball. I don't get it.
Yea, I haven't much clue how they make those decisions either :)
Of an interesting note, since the new ARS hack mechanics came into play, I went for Eridani's ARS during this trying to get Dysons to do what I wanted. I got a spider. This is not one of the standard ships I always picked up, so apparently it did a full re-roll when it rebuilt the map. Neat.
Yea, to make the new thing possible I had to make it generate all the bonus picks in advance, rather than just picking the "next" one whenever you captured an ARS. Which means you can capture one ARS instead of another and get a different ship type, unlike before.
I could hit Pai Gow and the two data centers as well before I do this, but the floor would increase and I want to keep it tight during the early offense.
I'm not sure I understand; taking out a datacenter only causes AIP reduction, not AIP increase (superterminal does both), and AIP Floor is based entirely off total AIP increase (what the AIP would be if there were no reduction).
Pop Krupp on my way in and if the assault fails I've got a permanently pissed Raid Engine, that won't end well. So, it'll have to be a deep strike. Scouting FTW, I guess. Saved me from a bad situation later after the AIP went up.
Meddlesome kidsscouts! If they hadn't been so nosy...
Got dyson freed up, and decided I wanted the research off it.
Ha. Hahaha. That's getting knowledge from the school of hard knocks, alright ;)
That took some time, as did getting the AI Eye off Llama. It's got 4 Ions on it (1xIV, 1xIII, 2x II)
Wow, that's some serious "no fleet ships allowed" right there.
Did I mention the EMP I missile I brought along? No? Well, everyone's right, it was worthless in pissing off the enemy. I know they're MK Vs and immune to EMP, but I'd hoped it'd fire them up. Of course, said worthless missile STILL set off the Raid Engine... Mutter.
You mentioned later that the interceptor got it. I may be wrong, but I think if you pause the game the instant the warhead starts to fade in you can trigger it via scrapping it and get the effect. That said, I dunno if it will actually anger anything that's immune to EMP.
Hahah! I've finally found a good use for Armor Ships. Pissing off Coreworlds. :)
With all that durability I guess they have learned how to shout "Your mother was a Mac and your father smelt of cheap solder!" ;)
I need to get the ZPG started. Well, that chewed up a huge piece of my econ to get it to 18%, so now I've got it off again and am build the third wave.
ZPG's + engies are excellent for money laundering: the money disappears like cotton candy in a blast furnace.
I can't keep a scout on Earth yet, they keep blowing them up on me.
Odd, armors couldn't kill the tachyon guardian? Or were they too busy hurling insults and getting out of dodge?
Particularly when a MK IV is worth 2 and a half my best ships.
2.5x a mkII? Factoring in the health increase?
My Blade Spawners are being highly annoying, attacking FFs instead of the guardposts and things under them. It's like it's an addiction.
Hmm, I wonder why they do that.
Only one problem. Janeway's only connection is to Shawshank. Shawshank is where the whipping boy feeds from into Sushi.
The random number generator shoots and scores! ;)
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yeah I got the same annoyance with blade spawners in the Keith's Challenge game. Since they're immune to forcefields, they shouldn't even be attacking them in the first place, in my opinion. They really do keep attacking the forcefield(s) most of the time and often ignore the already active ships and guard post underneath it. Intended behaviour or not?
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Blade spawners shouldn't specifically prefer forcefields, and I wonder very much why they seem to do so.
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Well, The AI blade spawners in my game have no issue with shreading my command station, power generators, and engineers under a forcefield, so I have no idea why that behavior is occuring, unless the blades get a larger damage bonus when attacking the forcefield, or have it as their target priority override.
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Yea, to make the new thing possible I had to make it generate all the bonus picks in advance, rather than just picking the "next" one whenever you captured an ARS. Which means you can capture one ARS instead of another and get a different ship type, unlike before.
So I figured, but my previous unlocks for this game were bulletproof, autobomb, and Shield Bearers. None of those options are even in this ARS. :) Just a happy surprise I got some variety again. :)
I'm not sure I understand; taking out a datacenter only causes AIP reduction, not AIP increase (superterminal does both), and AIP Floor is based entirely off total AIP increase (what the AIP would be if there were no reduction).
Sorry, hitting Pai Gow would raise the floor. The Data Centers would just let me get back to the newly raised floor.
Wow, that's some serious "no fleet ships allowed" right there.
Yeah, will make a nice Whipping Boy if I decide to use it with Dyson support. It's way out of 'good position' for most things I want to do though.
You mentioned later that the interceptor got it. I may be wrong, but I think if you pause the game the instant the warhead starts to fade in you can trigger it via scrapping it and get the effect. That said, I dunno if it will actually anger anything that's immune to EMP.
I'm actually not sure if it did or not. I tried to race the interceptor but I dunno. *shrugs*
ZPG's + engies are excellent for money laundering: the money disappears like cotton candy in a blast furnace.
The Radar Jammer II was about the same. After all that work to get it up on homeworld I'm going to lose the Whipping Boy. ARGH.
Odd, armors couldn't kill the tachyon guardian? Or were they too busy hurling insults and getting out of dodge?
They pretty much flash-fried on entry from what I could tell. I was busy in Kirk so I didn't micro them, but they weren't there for long.
Particularly when a MK IV is worth 2 and a half my best ships.
2.5x a mkII? Factoring in the health increase?
No. Linear damage: MK I 500/MK II 1000/..../MK V 2500. 2500 is worth 2.5x my 1000. If I'd considered health boosts they're worth 4x-5x or so. I did misquote a bit, though, I meant MK V, but close enough if you average off my MK Is and IIs... :)
My Blade Spawners are being highly annoying, attacking FFs instead of the guardposts and things under them. It's like it's an addiction.
Hmm, I wonder why they do that.
I don't know. It's not the first time I've seen them get stubborn. They'll try to flood a grav guardian when there's perfectly viable targets in other directions they ignore. They pound on FFs instead of the targets beneath. They'll keep sending blades at a target that's powered down and is for some reason ignoring blades. I think you'd have to have the code cracked and be playing them to really nail down their oddities.
The random number generator shoots and scores! ;)
Yeah, little bugger!
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nice ^^
I can only dream of being able to succesfully play high lvl games. So far I can handle 9/9 games fairly well (not counting crosshatch maps), but with anything above that I have to deal with mk II waves right from the start -.- I can handle that for a while, but not through the entire game.
2 items of note:
1) A 9/9 game is considered the top end of the "I'm not out to screw the player" levels, as per the creator. You're at the top end of what the design expects good/great players to handle. Do not, ever, feel bad about that being where you can play at. I've played far too many of this style of game, and can see the patterns very easily. Don't compare yourself against someone who's had too much time on their hands for far longer.
2) Realize I'm a cheesy SOB. I've so far advocated the removal of four different forms of utter cheese that let me progress far too easily at this level. Only two have been implemented (Tazer and ... crap, it's late... errr... damn, I'll remember when I'm not TRYING to remember) but that's besides the point. If you'll notice, I screwed around for FOUR HOURS letting the Dyson clean up systems for me. It's taken me an hour and a half to clean up a coreworld. There's a difference between what most people enjoy and me being a subborn PITA to the AI. :)
Don't look at these AARs as something to strive for, unless that's fun to you. I'm purposely taking on the inane, because that's fun to *me*. Win, lose, or draw, I enjoy tackling things that are at the edge of my ability. If that was 7/7, I'd have fun with that. I only hope for a few things from these AARs.
- It points out tactics and methodology that may help other players.
- It lets me strut a bit and discuss wicked high-end tactics with the designers of the game (Keith in particular) to review where flaws/proper adjustments may lie to improve the general gameplay.
- I like to write, and non-fictional descriptions are easier to do so with.
- People can point out to me sub-optimal tactics so I can improve my own game.
Past that, remember. 9/9 IS a high-level game. Most people can't play at that level, without resorting to serious investment into the game and knowledge of the individual units and tactics. Relax, enjoy yourself. I played numerous games at 5/5 before I even posted on this board, and lost nearly all of them. :) I've got easy AIs, no significant AI Plots that work against me activated, and am using patience as a weapon.
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haha yeah, when you look at it that way... :P
well, I haven't actually been able to clear a 9/9 game yet, but I'm getting there (I haven't lost a 9/9 game yet either). I play with random AI types in all my regular games so that might be the issue lol.
and well, my eventual objective in this game is to get all achievements. Which means I eventually have to beat 10/10 with no handicap. I try to get all my achievements by playing 'normal' games (80-120 planets, random AI types, extra fog of war, hide unexplored wormholes, a various amount of minor factions and always at least 1 AI plot for each AI(I want a randomize option for those)), and so far I got exactly 88. But I have no hope of beating 10/10 in a 'regular' game so i probably have no choice but to play cheesy as well :P I might pick up a few new tactics from this AAR
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1) A 9/9 game is considered the top end of the "I'm not out to screw the player" levels, as per the creator.
Yea, that's basically it. 9.3 should still be possible to someone who's gotten good at 9, but that "AI Tech Level Starts At 2" rule is supposed to be translated "We're just messing with you now".
2) Realize I'm a cheesy SOB.
That's also true ;)
I've so far advocated the removal of four different forms of utter cheese that let me progress far too easily at this level. Only two have been implemented (Tazer and ... crap, it's late... errr... damn, I'll remember when I'm not TRYING to remember)
There was also:
- The thing where a single shard reactor could support a ton of hab centers and shipyards on 8HW games.
- Riding the Superterminal to the AI floor.
- Knowledge raiding like 10 planets in a game.
And you've also pointed out how broken a Dyson Ball can be, and I've considered some ideas for moderating that, but haven't gotten around to picking one and implementing it yet. Were there other exploits you had in mind?
If you'll notice, I screwed around for FOUR HOURS letting the Dyson clean up systems for me.
Yea, the AI wasn't very happy about that.
I've got easy AIs, no significant AI Plots that work against me activated
Yea, I figure Hybrids would have added enough friction at various points to frustrate your plans or possibly let the AI get the kill, and a well-timed Beachhead on your whipping boy would have been all kinds of fun. Avenger probably wouldn't make a big difference, but it would be amusing to see how badly you cheesed it (probably just double-kill the AI). Neinzul Roaming Enclaves and/or Preservation Wardens would be a significant pain, and anything exo certainly makes for a different game.
and am using patience as a weapon.
Who'da thought one could beat a computer in a staring match?
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Which means I eventually have to beat 10/10 with no handicap. I try to get all my achievements by playing 'normal' games (80-120 planets, random AI types, extra fog of war, hide unexplored wormholes, a various amount of minor factions and always at least 1 AI plot for each AI(I want a randomize option for those)), and so far I got exactly 88. But I have no hope of beating 10/10 in a 'regular' game so i probably have no choice but to play cheesy as well :P I might pick up a few new tactics from this AAR
Do it NOW, before Harvesters get capped. 8xHW, Fallen Spire, Zenith Traders, Favorable Human Rebellions (colonies are a +/-). Use Shield Ninnies so you don't have to handle waves. Build out your FS fleet for the first hub and wreck some stuff. Use a Tree map or something else where you can camp out in a corner. Might as well get the 8xHW one done too.
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Do it NOW, before Harvesters get capped. 8xHW, Fallen Spire, Zenith Traders, Favorable Human Rebellions (colonies are a +/-). Use Shield Ninnies so you don't have to handle waves. Build out your FS fleet for the first hub and wreck some stuff. Use a Tree map or something else where you can camp out in a corner. Might as well get the 8xHW one done too.
This is how the profession of Cheesemaster is handed down from generation to generation ;)
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Yea, that's basically it. 9.3 should still be possible to someone who's gotten good at 9, but that "AI Tech Level Starts At 2" rule is supposed to be translated "We're just messing with you now".
Of course, I'm currently returning the favor... ;)
There was also:
- The thing where a single shard reactor could support a ton of hab centers and shipyards on 8HW games.
- Riding the Superterminal to the AI floor.
- Knowledge raiding like 10 planets in a game.
And you've also pointed out how broken a Dyson Ball can be, and I've considered some ideas for moderating that, but haven't gotten around to picking one and implementing it yet. Were there other exploits you had in mind?
Nope, those were it, though I didn't advocate the nerfing of continuous K-Raids. While it wasn't in flavor of the reason for the mechanic, I kinda liked having 50000 K and 80 AIP. ;) I was thinking of the SuperTerminal. The Hub was just a bug and that needed to simply be fixed. Dyson Ball was one of the other advocacies and... errr... hm. Okay, 3 things. :)
Yea, the AI wasn't very happy about that.
Well, I inflated its waves to make up for it while that happened, so we're even.
Yea, I figure Hybrids would have added enough friction at various points to frustrate your plans or possibly let the AI get the kill, and a well-timed Beachhead on your whipping boy would have been all kinds of fun.
Hybrids definately would be complicating matters, particularly since I've only got 3 homeworlds worth of econ at the moment. I'm not really a fan of the beach-heading option, because my playstyle is dependent on the whipping boy being able to stand on its own without fleet intervention once it's up. One beach-head would wreck me utterly, unless I didn't whipping boy a choke planet, which seems counter-optimal to me.
Avenger probably wouldn't make a big difference, but it would be amusing to see how badly you cheesed it (probably just double-kill the AI).
Yeah, I'd just double-pop. I basically do that anyway after I nerf the first AI HW at this point so I'm not arguing with +100 AIP.
Neinzul Roaming Enclaves and/or Preservation Wardens would be a significant pain, and anything exo certainly makes for a different game.
Roaming Enclaves would definately drive me batty, but I don't have the econ (I don't think) to actually trigger the preservation wardens yet, and I never use nukes. Exos would be a different story all-together, but FS/Golems would allow me easy access to a raid engine homeworld, which would defeat half the point of this exercise to me.
Who'da thought one could beat a computer in a staring match?
I can't. The Dyson can. :)
One of the primary things that is easing this game on me is the Dyson chewing up the actual reinforcements that are occurring, and that's going to get heavier and heavier. As the Dyson builds, it'll continuously get more ships, which according to our recent discussions should cause permanent over-whelming #s bonuses during the reinforcement phase on its two neighbors. That's 4 reinforcements I'll basically never have to deal with as the Dyson scours its own borders. I don't think I'll exhaust the alert list though because of the satellite nature of my planet conquering.
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This is how the profession of Cheesemaster is handed down from generation to generation ;)
Well, someone has to make up for the WhineMaster... ;) I'm really hoping to get a chance to play with those really juicy Harvesters before they get themselves nerfed back to reasonability by K cost or reductions. If you do have to make that choice, please make it reductions. K-Cost was too high period before, unless it was god-mode resources.
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Man, talk about some wild time differences in raids. At the same AIP I go from 892 ship raids to 105 ship raids. It's just wild.
I've managed to clear most of Kirk. There's a Stealth I need to go annoy and I've given up on the spire shield post while the Raid Engine still lives. I finally got scouts on Earth and there were 160 units on there. After the last assault where I took down a MK III FF, its guardpost, and a few other outliers, I got the armor units into Earth.
Well, I let them harass briefly and then self-destructed them because they're deep-striking. D'oh. Well, Earth is down to 128, but I'm not done here yet.
Went home and refilled the fleet. It's about 9:20 when we struck out for Confederation again.
I've got the Raids currently trying to work down spire shields for an AI Eye that's off Llama on Batman. I need to get through there eventually but Raid Is vs. Spire Shield = death by sandpaper. However, I'm only going to let them get one. Because of Janeway's positioning I need to move a few things around.
First, I need to get the rest of the Data Centers, causing deepstrike, from the SW. Next, I need to take Llama, and make sure Batman is the only warp entry (Remember the Raid Engine in Tau). After that, we're moving the whipping boy. This could be dangerous but it's really my only significant chance. Once I have control of Tau and the fleet's there, I'll drop the Warp Gate on Shawshank, take Janeway with the Raids, and build that off. Once I'm confident everything's going to Llama, I'll start moving the turretball/whipping boy over to Llama. Between the Dyson support and the turrets, they should do just fine. It'll also block off anything coming out of the Riker arm once I move in that direction, and give me a build point for new ships that isn't in the Ozarks.
I'll have to bring the Rebels out manually but I can live with that. Following all that, we move on Earth to empty it. I can't harm the blessed thing yet but I want as little left as possible before I build signficant AIP taking down the CSGs and have to deal with a full-force Raid Engine on Earth. This game's going to come down to a race for the finals. I can already see the ending in my head. Bomber SS + cloakers hiding on Riker waiting to final blow the Riker AI Cmd while the fleet races past the Raid spawn on Kirk and heads right into Earth for a 4 minute countdown to oblivion. One shot, winner take all. I want Earth EMPTY. :)
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At 9:25 or so I had started to work my way into the SW to get the Datacenters when I was getting stuffed in Solar Moon and needed to cloak the raid ships in. Problem was the Raid SSs couldn't take down anything in there, including the tachyon guardian. Sending my entire fleet in cleared that up plenty enough but royally woke the local AI Eye up and started massing threat in volume. I also sent it down to PaiGow to clear the way to Argyle for the cloakers, and massive more threat occurred. Great. I send the fleet back and leave the bomber starships local to pop the remaining tach posts in Pai Gow. once they're done they're trapped on the wrong side of a grav guardian so I blow them.
About a minute later I realize *1* missile frigate missed the command to head for home and has been continuing the deepstrike. Joy. A minute of deepstrike threat, for those who haven't fought it much, is a LARGE volume of ships.
Well, at 9:30 my fleet heads back into the Cyborg-Macross run and starts chewing on ships enmasse, but they were too late getting themselves into the choke run. Ships had already slipped into Sox and were heavy enough to overwhelm the light turreting that's there.
Remember a while ago I mentioned EVERY one of my planets is currently running double reactors to power my fleet? Yeah, brownouts galore. Luckily, my fleet made it to Macross and was able to hold the line there while my short-guard turrets were able to just barely stop the rest of the line-slippers who got to Sushi (about 50, including ~15 Blade Spawners). Go go grav turrets.
My Raids were barely able to slip into Green Lantern with 2 left due to a Fortress/tach post on the GL wormhole in Solar moon. They pop the DC there and pound a few Ion Cannons out of spite. Then they die. I'm still at -88k in power or so.
Once the fleet's been positioned for semi-macro usage, I build off a quickie colony in Sushi and ship it to Sox to rebuild after Sushi finishes off the remaining attackers. I send 5 engi Is over to help with the process, knowing my planet settings will rebuild Sushi back to 20 Engi Is for ship construction. I head to Macross and finish helping to clean up inbounds with concentrated fire on starships and maw micro.
Once the Econ III is back up on Sox, I build off five rebuilders to help get my power problems back online. About this time the threat drift is done except for a decent volume of Eye Zombies still patrolling the general Solar Moon sector. They'll drift in eventually and die in small volume, so no biggie. The fleet pulls back to Sushi for refills.
At 9:40 the fleet's semi-operational and I've got my 3 Raid SSs again. Power them down and attach them to a cloaking starship and ship them out to Argyle for the last of the Data Centers. They're enroute in deepstrike now. The fleet's moving back to Macross to deal with inbounds.
Busy dang 20 minutes, lemme tell ya. :)
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Around 10:00 I have to deal with a mini-CPA of around 400 ships. No big deal, it was easily dealt with. It did drain some MK Vs from somewhere but I'm not sure where yet, I think it was the Riker area.
By 10:15 (and one savescum later because I popped the Shawshank Warp Gate waaaay too early) I control Llama, 4 Ions, and have taken Janeway and its Rebel Colony. I setup a bit different on Llama, making a mining run from the Batman to Blackstone run and a pile of mines on the wormhole, and a token amount of tractors. Just off of that I drop a FF with the AoE turrets and a Grav/Tach Turret. I setup a small web of gravs heading out to the SW towards all of my Ions, and I built my Econ III on top of the Ion II/IV. All Ions get one FF each.
I proceed to clear out all but 20 of the single-shot turrets and all my AoE turrets from Sushi and drop them on Llama. While the Dyson Ball is fun I won't abuse it again for the moment.
A couple of things have started to occur. Earth got itself a reinforcement, as did Kirk, during all this. Dyson no longer scours Davion, the rearward system that it was keeping clean along with Llama. I'll have to manually head up and set that off now and then. I've left it with all guard posts for a higher pop cap, but it's got an AI Eye and a few ions on it. Not entirely sure how I plan to do that yet. With 9 posts + cmd center, maybe I'll just let it sit and get fat. I dare it to annoy Dyson.
It took a bit to dig through the AI Eye /Spire Shield on Batman. I eventually just suicided my entire Fleet Bomber I/II and Bomber Starships into it, with the maws dropping in briefly to collect up some threat, leaving once the bombers arrived at the spire shield. That got it to 20% and I fled with three bomber SS left. After repairs I simply sent in the bombers + Raid SS guys and they finished cleaning up. That meant I still needed to clean up HotStar, the next system down, which has two forts, about 10 posts, and another AI Eye. Greaaaat.
Well, my Raids were just going nowhere fast in there. I send in the Blade Spawners. I realize they're going to antagonize an Emp III Guardian I was ignoring, so I plop the rest of the fleet against the Batman wormhole in Llama.
The Blade Spawners do their thing, annoying a FLOCK of guardians. Perfect, run away with 8 left. They're obliterating the guardposts nicely so this will work fine. EMP hits Batman, my fleet pours in immediately following the announcement, and the fleet heads down to deal with the inbounds while the Blade Spawners head for home for repairs.
Pick up replacement spawners and send the 10 spawners back into HotStar, with Raid support to go play hunt the Ion Cannon for later. The Blade Spawners chew up all the guard posts easily now and we're out of there, AI Eye dead. Took a bit to get here though, it's 10:53 now.
I blew up the nearly complete (86%) Radar Jammer II on Sushi for the resources along the way here, I needed it for the turret ball build. I have gotten a hair done on the ZPG but my econ's a lot stronger now with the additional generators and Econ IIIs. I'm 1350/s roughly gained, maintenance costs me ~320/s of that. When the ZPG comes online that'll drop further. The Rebel Fleet is nearly done building in the back and I'll bring them forward shortly. Once I do, I'm going hunting Earth again. Then to the west.
That wasn't one of my better plans. I got the stealth guardpost and a bunch of mines, but I got hammered to pieces by the Raid Wave I tried to ignore. Frustratingly my nearly empty maws wouldn't EAT anything! That pretty much fried me. I did use my shiny new 6000 K in research for Bomber IIIs though, and those had come with me.
Highly amusingly my riot I mgs (Tractor/shield as center modules) engine killed a bunch of ships before they went down, so there's a fleet of ~80 ships floating at me at speed 1. If they ever get off Kirk I'll be surprised. Just firepower sitting there waiting for me to come back. One of the reasons I just don't like generic ED. It messes me up more than it helps. If I remember I'll put in a mantis request for a Riot SS gun that doesn't ED.
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So by 12:00 in I've managed to pop the Raid Engine on Tau and clear out a chunk of the inbound run. I've also whacked Earth one with the Rebel Fleet. Next time I think I'll send them in with the armor fleet as cover. The rest of the fleet is parked in Confederation (AI Planet, doesn't check to wormhole threat) to eat the inbound raid engine, which is ~270 ships at AIP 53.
The Rebel Ships are able to dent, but not wreck, Earth. I'm timing things so that right after Confederation gets its 2x reinforcements, I head in for Earth. That gives me ~3 minutes to work on Earth before it'll get another reinforcement. Rebel Ships take time to rebuild but dang they're powerful. They performed the run against the Tau Raid Engine solo, taking out a few other choice items on the way, like the tachyon guardian so I could get scouts in.
I'm also using the Rebels as my response force when Shawshank gets reinforcements. Since they're so fast I just send whatever's left of the Rebels back to Janeway to pick up reinforcements, so they scour my neighbors for me on their way through. At one point they were running like mad BACK to Sox because as they passed through they woke up a few Blade Spawners and the minor turrets on Sox couldn't handle it. Was rather funny.
With some armor ships to help cover and the Rebels able to pound some damage into Earth, I should be able to 'wake it up' here shortly, getting it to dump most of its troops. I already got it to free ~100 ships, so it's down to 259. My ZPG is also nearly done, woot woot. Traders came through on Llama so the 4-pack is sitting there waiting for building. Probably overkill with the Dyson Support Brigade so maybe I'll start building up a Merc Force instead on homeworld.
Anyway, with the game in theory at ~8 hours, I'm about on schedule.
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By 12:30 I've rebuilt and done another run against Earth, emptying it of anything not under glass. My Blade Spawners will help with that. There's 4 heavy beam posts on the planet that just tore through my Rebel Ships. They did, however, take down the two Ion Cannons, the Orbital Mass driver, and most of the warhead stopper.
The armor ships in front as fodder worked quite well, as did 'buzzing the tower' with the rebel ships to free up all sorts of ugly MK V nastiness. The fleet 3 systems out at the choke catching the 'swarm' worked quite nicely with them spread out.
While the Rebels were rebuilding, however, the fleet's been busy. First it went down and we cleaned up Krupp of its dual Ion Cannons and Orbital Mass Driver, which was pounding my little Raid I SSs to pieces. That took out a good half the fleet as we pounded our way through, partially because I was lazy and FRD'd them after the Ions and then let them finish the work.
Dual waves are averaging about 600 ships right now. I should be prepped for the CSG hunt and to go get my ARSs shortly.
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By 12:40 I'd made it back down to Tau with the fleet and we cleaned that up, and I pushed through to Three Kings briefly to pop the Tach post and whittle down some buildup while I was there. Threat got a little hairy so the fleet headed home while the Rebel Fleet flew for the Macross Cutoff. Realizing the threat from Earth was building on the Llama Wormhole I FRD'd my minor rebuilt fleet into the Confederation system and set the space dock to continue doing that. The entire point was simply to buy time with harassers.
The main fleet got to Confederation about 30 seconds ahead of the Rebels, mostly because the Rebels stopped off to deal with some Blade Spawners and other assorted nasties near Sox that they'd awoken.
At 12:45 I setup a 3 Transport runner to head for Earth, loaded up with 167 Armor Ships and 10 Blade Spawners. Because the system is exactly four out, I don't have to worry about unloads. When the Transports Self destruct everyone will be good to go.
This doesn't go exactly as planned. Oh, everyone arrives on time, and I setup the Armor ships as a screening force. The problems are:
1) A Bomber IV I can't get to leave the system utterly wrecks the Blade Spawners.
2) The Blade Spawners are happy go lucky on FFs again.
3) When they're NOT happy for FFs, they're targetting powered down units, so the blades don't actually HIT anything, they just sit there, idling and dying.
The armor ships meet the raid that spawns in system and promptly die.
My fleets out in Confederation waiting for the Raid to hit. I think I've done literally all I can for the moment against Earth. It's time to take out the CSGs and get my hands on the galaxy. Off to Pai Gow!!!... after I rebuild a bit... :)
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I kinda liked having 50000 K and 80 AIP. ;)
I'm sure you did ;)
I'm not really a fan of the beach-heading option, because my playstyle is dependent on the whipping boy being able to stand on its own without fleet intervention once it's up. One beach-head would wreck me utterly, unless I didn't whipping boy a choke planet, which seems counter-optimal to me.
Yea, I've noticed that tendency of yours ;) And ultimately the single-defensive-path thing is fun as long as it doesn't encapsulate all challenges. But I've been giving serious thought to an idea inspired by one of Hearteater's suggestions in the energy discussion. Not actually involving energy at all, but:
1) Assign each command station type a "Provides Defense Control" value.
2) Assign each "defensive" unit (so all turrets, forcefields, fortresses, etc) a "Consumes Defense Control" value.
3) If the total defense control consumption on a planet exceeds the provided defense control on that planet, all units that consume defense control act as if out-of-supply.
And that's it for the basic idea; there's other things that would need addressing like:
- how to handle balance in multiplayer (probably a planet with X control can support X control worth of units per player, rather than X total, since the incoming attacks are generally scaled up to match the number of players)
- the interface has to show these values on tooltips and probably the totals on the planet in the alert window
- the construction interface needs to not let you place stuff that would go beyond local defense control
- this would put more pressure on to balance the turrets amongst themselves, relative to their control-cost, as otherwise the "less desirable" turrets quickly get a backseat rather than being obvious "sure, throw that one in too" (which has its own issues, but I think is better than totally ignoring a unit)
- need to give mobile builders and/or new variant(s) of mobile builder provides-defense-control values (but probably there would be no stacking, the planet just has the highest value provided)
-- and with this, we could actually remove the restriction on human turrets, fortresses, forcefields, etc that they can only be used while in supply; you wouldn't be able to drop a lot of them "in the field" as presumably a mobile builder doesn't have much control.
Also thinking:
- A human home command station would provide effectively infinite control, so that if you absolutely positively must have a single planet with all the firepower, you can. It's just gotta be the one planet in the galaxy the AI wants to be on ;) Not that whipping-boy'ing the HW is non-viable (you've done it here to great effect), I just think it's probably a more interesting/tense situation than something safely separated.
- Logistics stations would have more control than Economic stations (econ stations may need a buff to energy production or something like that).
- Military stations would have more control than Logistics stations.
- With this, turrets could be buffed a bit (higher power, lower cost, etc). The result likely being a total increase in how effective a human defense can be across multiple planets, but without being able to always stop nearly any AI attack in the same 25 square foot area ;)
- As this would make planet-loss more common, it would be polite for me to provide some kind of ability to simply rebuild command stations without going through the manual process of building a colony ship, selecting the colony ship, ordering it to the target planet, waiting, selecting the colony ship, picking the station type, and placing the station.
Anyway, not dead-set on the idea, but it does seem like it would help keep things more dynamic and reduce complacency-in-defense (unless, of course, you have a Dyson Ball), as "complacent" is not typically a feeling associated by our players with "fun" :)
... er, sorry, derailed there :) If folks want to talk about that at length probably a new thread is desirable, lest it compete with the tale of the 4th Vogon Conquest of Earth.
Who'da thought one could beat a computer in a staring match?
I can't. The Dyson can. :)
Touche ;)
As the Dyson builds, it'll continuously get more ships, which according to our recent discussions should cause permanent over-whelming #s bonuses during the reinforcement phase on its two neighbors.
Hmm, I don't know off-hand if the (minor faction) dysons count for that. But they probably do. Anyway, you'll be able to tell in 5.032 by turning on the reinforcement logging for a few minutes :)
That's 4 reinforcements I'll basically never have to deal with as the Dyson scours its own borders. I don't think I'll exhaust the alert list though because of the satellite nature of my planet conquering.
And if you wanted to exploit things a bit more you could plant a fortress on one of the neutered backworld AI planets next to yours.
Well, someone has to make up for the WhineMaster... ;)
Ho ho. I'm pretty sure the Hybrids took care of him for complaining about their Rose vintage.
I'm really hoping to get a chance to play with those really juicy Harvesters before they get themselves nerfed back to reasonability by K cost or reductions. If you do have to make that choice, please make it reductions. K-Cost was too high period before, unless it was god-mode resources.
Yea, basically I just want the total m+c gain of spending 9000 K on harvesters to equal the m+c gain of spending 9000 K on econ stations at the number of resource spots one normally has at 13 planets. Then you know that if you want a really-early game boost harvesters are best because of the homeworld, and if you want an early-mid game boost econ stations are the better bet (but take up the station slot) and if you plan to have more than 13 planets (or cherry-pick for resource-spots) harvesters are the better mid-late game choice. I think the current numbers reflect a math error on my part when I switched down to the lower K-costs, and/or an error in computing average resource spot density.
Man, talk about some wild time differences in raids. At the same AIP I go from 892 ship raids to 105 ship raids. It's just wild.
The AI loves that roulette wheel. I could tighten up the time range a bit, but it seems this gives a bit more variety. The lower end of the timescale seems a little pointless on standard waves, though; it would make sense with cross-planet-waves because they'd probably just join a threatball instead of attacking, but that's just a lobby option off in a corner.
After that, we're moving the whipping boy. This could be dangerous but it's really my only significant chance.
Ooh, danger, an actual chance for the AI to win! ;)
and give me a build point for new ships that isn't in the Ozarks.
But the new ships need a shakedown cruise on the way to the front. A scenic tour. A last glimpse of clear vacuum before death in an atmospheric density of firepower. Ah well, nevermind that.
About a minute later I realize *1* missile frigate missed the command to head for home and has been continuing the deepstrike. Joy. A minute of deepstrike threat, for those who haven't fought it much, is a LARGE volume of ships.
You wouldn't believe how much bribe that stupid frigate demanded before it agreed to do that...
Remember a while ago I mentioned EVERY one of my planets is currently running double reactors to power my fleet? Yeah, brownouts galore.
That's basically the entire point of the energy system: to pull the rug out from under you just as things start to go bad ;)
An exciting defense :) Nothing gets the blood moving quite like the realization that it might not be moving much longer.
They pop the DC there and pound a few Ion Cannons out of spite.
Yea, Ions get that a lot.
the next system down, which has two forts, about 10 posts, and another AI Eye. Greaaaat.
They aim to please!
Frustratingly my nearly empty maws wouldn't EAT anything!
Odd, if you have a save where that's reproducible, I can take a look.
Highly amusingly my riot I mgs (Tractor/shield as center modules) engine killed a bunch of ships before they went down, so there's a fleet of ~80 ships floating at me at speed 1. If they ever get off Kirk I'll be surprised. Just firepower sitting there waiting for me to come back. One of the reasons I just don't like generic ED. It messes me up more than it helps. If I remember I'll put in a mantis request for a Riot SS gun that doesn't ED.
Well, could you move around them and/or pick them off from maximum range? Anyway, yea, I don't mind coming up with some other utility option for the light hardpoints. Possibly single-target paralyze (for fun may just use the zenith paralyzer graphic or part thereof: just nailing them to the hull!)
I'm timing things so that right after Confederation gets its 2x reinforcements, I head in for Earth. That gives me ~3 minutes to work on Earth before it'll get another reinforcement.
I feel like an enabler ;)
2) The Blade Spawners are happy go lucky on FFs again.
3) When they're NOT happy for FFs, they're targetting powered down units, so the blades don't actually HIT anything, they just sit there, idling and dying.
Ack. Save?
But not sure, if I fix the maw bug and the blade spawner bugs, how will the AI stand a chance? ;)
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Frustratingly my nearly empty maws wouldn't EAT anything!
Odd, if you have a save where that's reproducible, I can take a look.
I already have a save up for the Maws issues on the bug tracker here: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=6779
Also, on the Dyson, I have noticed that in my own 10/10 game, it can't clean up it own system after a full 20 hours of trying to do so. Granted it only 3 hops away from the AI homeworld I have not gone near yet and I am now on the last city shard so the Exo waves might have something to do with that, but I think if you go and cap the limit of how far the Dyson can go, you likely fix it issues the most. Say, Limit neutral to only the home Dyson System and Player friendly can only travel to Human Player supplied planets and the Dyson System itself. Then if you want the Dyson to clear the galaxy for you, you need to take the Galaxy first.
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I'm not really a fan of the beach-heading option, because my playstyle is dependent on the whipping boy being able to stand on its own without fleet intervention once it's up. One beach-head would wreck me utterly, unless I didn't whipping boy a choke planet, which seems counter-optimal to me.
Yea, I've noticed that tendency of yours ;) And ultimately the single-defensive-path thing is fun as long as it doesn't encapsulate all challenges. But I've been giving serious thought to an idea inspired by one of Hearteater's suggestions in the energy discussion. Not actually involving energy at all, but:
1) Assign each command station type a "Provides Defense Control" value.
2) Assign each "defensive" unit (so all turrets, forcefields, fortresses, etc) a "Consumes Defense Control" value.
3) If the total defense control consumption on a planet exceeds the provided defense control on that planet, all units that consume defense control act as if out-of-supply.
And that's it for the basic idea; there's other things that would need addressing like:
- how to handle balance in multiplayer (probably a planet with X control can support X control worth of units per player, rather than X total, since the incoming attacks are generally scaled up to match the number of players)
- the interface has to show these values on tooltips and probably the totals on the planet in the alert window
- the construction interface needs to not let you place stuff that would go beyond local defense control
- this would put more pressure on to balance the turrets amongst themselves, relative to their control-cost, as otherwise the "less desirable" turrets quickly get a backseat rather than being obvious "sure, throw that one in too" (which has its own issues, but I think is better than totally ignoring a unit)
- need to give mobile builders and/or new variant(s) of mobile builder provides-defense-control values (but probably there would be no stacking, the planet just has the highest value provided)
-- and with this, we could actually remove the restriction on human turrets, fortresses, forcefields, etc that they can only be used while in supply; you wouldn't be able to drop a lot of them "in the field" as presumably a mobile builder doesn't have much control.
Also thinking:
- A human home command station would provide effectively infinite control, so that if you absolutely positively must have a single planet with all the firepower, you can. It's just gotta be the one planet in the galaxy the AI wants to be on ;) Not that whipping-boy'ing the HW is non-viable (you've done it here to great effect), I just think it's probably a more interesting/tense situation than something safely separated.
- Logistics stations would have more control than Economic stations (econ stations may need a buff to energy production or something like that).
- Military stations would have more control than Logistics stations.
- With this, turrets could be buffed a bit (higher power, lower cost, etc). The result likely being a total increase in how effective a human defense can be across multiple planets, but without being able to always stop nearly any AI attack in the same 25 square foot area ;)
- As this would make planet-loss more common, it would be polite for me to provide some kind of ability to simply rebuild command stations without going through the manual process of building a colony ship, selecting the colony ship, ordering it to the target planet, waiting, selecting the colony ship, picking the station type, and placing the station.
Anyway, not dead-set on the idea, but it does seem like it would help keep things more dynamic and reduce complacency-in-defense (unless, of course, you have a Dyson Ball), as "complacent" is not typically a feeling associated by our players with "fun" :)
... er, sorry, derailed there :) If folks want to talk about that at length probably a new thread is desirable, lest it compete with the tale of the 4th Vogon Conquest of Earth.
This would likely make the game easier - at least for me. Stealthed ships flying around in my backfield are the bane of my existance. Being able to put "a little" defense on all planets and using the fleetball to deal with waves/exo-galactics would dramatically reduce the distraction level.
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You had me at "ability to simply rebuild command stations without going through the manual process." Just make it include rebuilding Force Fields and I'm sold!
@GUDare: Sorry!
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Honestly I would love to see one of the command station types get a built in force field.
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Honestly I would love to see one of the command station types get a built in force field.
We tried that once. This was the first idea for the logistics command station.
Turned out to make the command station less durable, as its forcefield prevented it from being protected by other forcefields, and when its forcefield took damage, the command station took damage.
For this to work like you would expect, the command station would need a separate forcefield module attachment.
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Hmmm, good point.
Maybe the best way then is to have command stations and force fields leave debris, like other turrets.
Then make remains rebuilders able to build outside of supply, but only if the thing they want to rebuild can also be built outside of supply (aka, command stations)
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I actually really like your idea Keith. Would be interesting to see at it's final, perfectly balanced stage. I figure it's something for an expansion though? since it sounds like quite a lot of work. On the other hand, it does concern base game objects, and I know you guys try to avoid updates for base game / existing expansion stuff to require another expansion.
and I'm defenitely up for the rebuilding command stations without the manual process. Having the command station spawn again once all enemy units have vanished from that particular planet for example.
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I actually really like your idea Keith. Would be interesting to see at it's final, perfectly balanced stage. I figure it's something for an expansion though? since it sounds like quite a lot of work.
Implementation would probably only take about 2 hours, including testing. Balancing would take several release iterations, I imagine.
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I actually really like your idea Keith. Would be interesting to see at it's final, perfectly balanced stage. I figure it's something for an expansion though? since it sounds like quite a lot of work.
Implementation would probably only take about 2 hours, including testing. Balancing would take several release iterations, I imagine.
You are a god among programmers.
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Not at all, it's just adding 2 typedata fields (control-produced, control-consumed) assigning values for one of those to maybe 80 unit types, and adding a few lines to the "is unit X in-supply?" logic (well, and a bit extra on the planet datatype for tracking control in a cpu-efficient way). Add the ability-text for the tooltips, add a few lines to the alert logic so you can see how much you're using out of how much you have on that planet. Then just fire up a gamestate and try to build any turret and see if it works, and see if the control values on the screen change, then try to build more turrets than control would allow and see if it lets me. Then replace the command station with one that gives lower control and see if it puts the turrets out-of-supply.
Then there's stuff like letting the turrets be built out-of-supply via mobile builders that provide control, which would be a bit extra. All told I would probably spend more than 2 hours with the refinements included :)
But this is nothing compared to some of the stuff I've seen other programmers do.
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And ultimately the single-defensive-path thing is fun as long as it doesn't encapsulate all challenges. But I've been giving serious thought to an idea inspired by one of Hearteater's suggestions in the energy discussion. Not actually involving energy at all, but:
1) Assign each command station type a "Provides Defense Control" value.
2) Assign each "defensive" unit (so all turrets, forcefields, fortresses, etc) a "Consumes Defense Control" value.
3) If the total defense control consumption on a planet exceeds the provided defense control on that planet, all units that consume defense control act as if out-of-supply.
And that's it for the basic idea; there's other things that would need addressing like:
- how to handle balance in multiplayer (probably a planet with X control can support X control worth of units per player, rather than X total, since the incoming attacks are generally scaled up to match the number of players)
- the interface has to show these values on tooltips and probably the totals on the planet in the alert window
- the construction interface needs to not let you place stuff that would go beyond local defense control
- this would put more pressure on to balance the turrets amongst themselves, relative to their control-cost, as otherwise the "less desirable" turrets quickly get a backseat rather than being obvious "sure, throw that one in too" (which has its own issues, but I think is better than totally ignoring a unit)
- need to give mobile builders and/or new variant(s) of mobile builder provides-defense-control values (but probably there would be no stacking, the planet just has the highest value provided)
-- and with this, we could actually remove the restriction on human turrets, fortresses, forcefields, etc that they can only be used while in supply; you wouldn't be able to drop a lot of them "in the field" as presumably a mobile builder doesn't have much control.
Also thinking:
- A human home command station would provide effectively infinite control, so that if you absolutely positively must have a single planet with all the firepower, you can. It's just gotta be the one planet in the galaxy the AI wants to be on ;) Not that whipping-boy'ing the HW is non-viable (you've done it here to great effect), I just think it's probably a more interesting/tense situation than something safely separated.
- Logistics stations would have more control than Economic stations (econ stations may need a buff to energy production or something like that).
- Military stations would have more control than Logistics stations.
- With this, turrets could be buffed a bit (higher power, lower cost, etc). The result likely being a total increase in how effective a human defense can be across multiple planets, but without being able to always stop nearly any AI attack in the same 25 square foot area ;)
- As this would make planet-loss more common, it would be polite for me to provide some kind of ability to simply rebuild command stations without going through the manual process of building a colony ship, selecting the colony ship, ordering it to the target planet, waiting, selecting the colony ship, picking the station type, and placing the station.
Anyway, not dead-set on the idea, but it does seem like it would help keep things more dynamic and reduce complacency-in-defense (unless, of course, you have a Dyson Ball), as "complacent" is not typically a feeling associated by our players with "fun" :)
... er, sorry, derailed there :) If folks want to talk about that at length probably a new thread is desirable, lest it compete with the tale of the 4th Vogon Conquest of Earth.
Ok.. where do I go to vote for this one?
(It's quite similar to idea behind my proposal that got many bad votes on mantis about local and global turret caps :D )
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*wonders if they simply didn't believe that "If folks want to talk about that at length probably a new thread is desirable" wasn't sarcasm
;)
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And if you wanted to exploit things a bit more you could plant a fortress on one of the neutered backworld AI planets next to yours.
I've thought about that but first I'd have to open them up. K's at a bit of premium at the moment.
Yea, basically I just want the total m+c gain of spending 9000 K on harvesters to equal the m+c gain of spending 9000 K on econ stations at the number of resource spots one normally has at 13 planets. Then you know that if you want a really-early game boost harvesters are best because of the homeworld, and if you want an early-mid game boost econ stations are the better bet (but take up the station slot) and if you plan to have more than 13 planets (or cherry-pick for resource-spots) harvesters are the better mid-late game choice. I think the current numbers reflect a math error on my part when I switched down to the lower K-costs, and/or an error in computing average resource spot density.
At a guess it's in computing average resource spot density. However, I understand and that's being hammered to death in other threads, no reason to dilute the discussion here. :)
The AI loves that roulette wheel. I could tighten up the time range a bit, but it seems this gives a bit more variety. The lower end of the timescale seems a little pointless on standard waves, though; it would make sense with cross-planet-waves because they'd probably just join a threatball instead of attacking, but that's just a lobby option off in a corner.
I may start turning that on but not during this iteration. It does change the mechanism pretty heavily however. It also makes wave gates useless, afaik, so that's an AIP saver.
You wouldn't believe how much bribe that stupid frigate demanded before it agreed to do that...
Snort, laugh... :) Niiiiice. ;)
Frustratingly my nearly empty maws wouldn't EAT anything!
Odd, if you have a save where that's reproducible, I can take a look.
2) The Blade Spawners are happy go lucky on FFs again.
3) When they're NOT happy for FFs, they're targetting powered down units, so the blades don't actually HIT anything, they just sit there, idling and dying.
Ack. Save?
But not sure, if I fix the maw bug and the blade spawner bugs, how will the AI stand a chance? ;)[/quote]
Unfortunately, in both cases, I neglected to pause and save as I was too busy mentally with other things.
Well, could you move around them and/or pick them off from maximum range?
Sure, with a Raid Engine coming in 1 minute and me wasting time goofing around with 80 ships or so, that should go well. ;)
Anyway, yea, I don't mind coming up with some other utility option for the light hardpoints. Possibly single-target paralyze (for fun may just use the zenith paralyzer graphic or part thereof: just nailing them to the hull!)
I want to just nail paralyzers to the hull now and watch them spin in the slots. That would amuse my inner evil child. :)
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*wonders if they simply didn't believe that "If folks want to talk about that at length probably a new thread is desirable" wasn't sarcasm
;)
New topic here:
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10143.0.html (http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10143.0.html)
This discussion will take *pages* of involvement, I fear.
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I already have a save up for the Maws issues on the bug tracker here: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=6779
Ah, thanks Lost. Makes my life easier that.
Also, on the Dyson, I have noticed that in my own 10/10 game, it can't clean up it own system after a full 20 hours of trying to do so. Granted it only 3 hops away from the AI homeworld I have not gone near yet and I am now on the last city shard so the Exo waves might have something to do with that, but I think if you go and cap the limit of how far the Dyson can go, you likely fix it issues the most.
Odd that it can't clean its own system, but you're also pushing AIP a lot higher than I am so those reinforcements are a lot heavier in volume. How would a cap of Dyson units help fix its issues? That just means there's less of them, not more.
Say, Limit neutral to only the home Dyson System and Player friendly can only travel to Human Player supplied planets and the Dyson System itself. Then if you want the Dyson to clear the galaxy for you, you need to take the Galaxy first.
Sorry, have to heavily disagree with this idea for two reasons.
1) You've removed the threat of the Dyson Gatlings not being friendly. Sure, you've made an insurmountable fortress of the place, but that's no good either, particularly since I can control spawn rate/volume simply by blowing up my own scouts.
2) I LIKE the Neutral Dyson antagonizing the neighborhood. It's like the neighborhood bully who picks on everyone until you give him your candy bar.
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"I give him this candy bar, he gives me the galaxy.", thought the ambassador.
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Ask and Receive. I'm having Blade Spawner problems in Pai Gow.
There's a Spider Guardian under FF near the right hand Fortress in the system. They're both next to a guard post.
If you watch, the blades go after the FF and the spider. The spider takes no hits and the blades idle on top of it. The post is being ignored for the FF.
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Just to be annoying, immediately after the save they behaved themselves and popped the guard post. Once the post was popped the guardian was detonated about a second later.
Something else I just noted. Space plans vs. Lightning turrets = damned dampening fields. No wonder this setup on Llama was having issues. Moved the FF to barely cover the lightnings so the space planes that ride up on it will actually get fried by lightning.
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So, two hours later and I'm doing the Riker Run.
It's hasn't been horrible but it's not pretty.
So, I take the fleet west and using primarily the Rebel Fleet as my vanguard, we knock down the warp gates surrounding Solar Moon and clear the Eyes off Solar Moon and Argyle. Not a huge deal but took a pretty good bite out of my Rebels, so they went home while the main fleet moved in with a colony ship and research vessel onto Solar Moon and started building while the fleet went off and nerfed Green Lantern and Camel. Options were Zenith Bombers, Autobombers, or Eyebots. 2/3 ain't bad and I roll the dice, get Zenith Bombers.
Well, I saw a raid warning pop up and having killed all the gates I didn't pay much attention to it. Then I see 500 ships on Solar moon.. Wait, wut? Dammit, Gate Guardian on Blackjack.
Fleet heads back, and we defend. Take about half the wave out before the rest escapes to Blackjack. That actually helped me some. As soon as we finished with the half that stayed the fleet goes after the other half and mops up. Continue local cleanup after popping said gate guardian.
There's a Warbird factory here that I pick up as well. I steal some Engis from all over the place to help them build and drop warp gates for fabs and Fact IVs on Llama as my staging area.
We head west and I use the Rebel Fleet to completely clear Argyle and Pai Gow in preparation of arrival. Once I get there and setup in Pai Gow, the spur system, I head to Argyle for my ARS and remember I'm a dunce. I blew the cmd station. Well, crap, this one was ick and I really didn't want these space planes. Ah well. Well, at least I've got a bit of hacking at 0 I could play with. I haven't mapped the last system yet and haven't seen my SuperTerminal, so that could be very handy.
Well, after abusing Ceasar and it's Fact IV with the Rebels and the main fleet coming in, I steal a bunch of turrets off the Whipping Boy / Dyson Ball (Yes, it's now a Dyson Ball, call it what it is, there's no other name for 600+ dysons) and pound my way into the corner and... no SuperTerminal. Rats. K Raids? eh, maybe. I'm really spread out and don't want to deal with the offworld spawns right now. Not for a few thousand K.
So I finally get all of that cleaned up and the resultant threat it ensues, along with two backtracks to clean up after I leave systems and mini-threatballs show up to harass my new colonies.
Map looks like this:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI98Pre-RikerRun.png)
Waves are wildly disproportionate. I'm very glad I'm Dyson supported right now:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI98WaveVariance.png)
I head for Llama and get the fleet fully built. I step Blade Spawners and Maws up to MK III so I can build IVs as well. Bomber IVs have been producing for a bit too.
My previously excess currency has been invested in a small Mercenary fleet on the homeworld. I have a full cap of Merc Fighters and they're building out Beam Frigates and bombers depending on what I'm heavy of when one hits 1 mill in the bank. I haven't built any Econ IIs, instead choosing to protect the ZPG on Pai Gow (2 ZPGs, woot!) and the Fact IV with Mil I stations. There's also a Fighter V and Translocator fab on Argyle behind Pai Gow, but I'm not really worried about either of those.
I head down the Riker arm and take down Krupp, the last CSG I need to pop. AIP is now at 221 after all warp gate pops and the like are completed. Krupp had an Armor Rotter V factory that I produced some out of before I lost it later. I hammer my way into Three Kings with the Rebels on vanguard again and the fleet coming in behind after the orbital mass and 2x ions go down. We clean that up but Krupp falls while we're in the final stages. I've gotten eyes on Riker, though.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI98RikerIntel.png)
Nothing extravagant, shouldn't be too hard to take out on my next pass. I forgot to get my K from Krupp though, so at 15:00 I'm on Llama and rebuilding, and I'll bring down some Science IIs and another colony ship so I can get my 3000 K, and then head in for Riker. Intent is to blow up everything except the Command Station, leaving it for later, as I mentioned about ... 3 pages ago? :)
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Just to be annoying, immediately after the save they behaved themselves and popped the guard post. Once the post was popped the guardian was detonated about a second later.
Given your MSSQL experience I assume you're familiar with the phenomenon where a technical problem's reproducibility is inversely proportional to the proximity of a technician who can do something about it.
Something else I just noted. Space plans vs. Lightning turrets = damned dampening fields. No wonder this setup on Llama was having issues. Moved the FF to barely cover the lightnings so the space planes that ride up on it will actually get fried by lightning.
Isn't that because space planes are (as of recently) immune to aoe, rather than radar dampening?
pound my way into the corner and... no SuperTerminal.
It does that sometimes. Probably defeating my desire to see it in proper action in the same scenario as most recently provoked the changes ;)
K Raids? eh, maybe. I'm really spread out and don't want to deal with the offworld spawns right now. Not for a few thousand K.
Hmm. Bear in mind that the offworld spawn happens on a PickNeighboringAIPlanet roll, and each such roll only moves the spawn one planet, and it can only move to an AI planet (maybe I'll add a hop-to-any planet variant roll later). Considering the, uh, nature of Llama's defenses I'd figure that you could k-raid Blackstone, Liao, Batman, and Davion without concern about where the stuff was spawning, only what and how much. And I'm confident at least the first raid's quantity wouldn't hurt. For that matter, thanks to the positioning of the dyson ball you might be able to get away with murder.
Whether you even need additional K at this point is another matter, but I figured I'd clarify :)
Reading the rest...
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So, while my fleet gets itself rebuilt after the first attempt at smacking Riker and failing utterly miserably, I decide I've got Space Planes and Warbirds, I'm going to USE Space Planes and Warbirds. Cloak 'em up, power 'em down, and ship them 8 worlds away to Riker from Llama.
And one stinking little MicroTachyon nearly gets them all killed. Of course, as they arrive, a 1700 ship CPA announces. I'm still waiting on the Rebels to rebuild so I take the fleet to the west and start cleaning up the reinforced worlds off the colonies, to make sure that anything that comes at me is a homeworld dump. I'll get the fleet over to Blackjack and make sure that I don't lose the fact IV if I run out of time. Getting down into the corners to sweep them is annoying.
Meanwhile, since the Cloakers are already on Riker, time to do something with them. I get the space planes turned on, pop the micro fighter, and then turn them off and RUN. Meanwhile, I had stalled out my Warbirds for just such an annoyance. They come in afterwards and circle the entire system, turning them back on to go after one of the Ion Cannons and a Neinzul Spawner. The Space Planes almost finished their guardpost so the last of the Warbirds (under fire from orbital mass drivers) goes for the kill, and we pop two posts with a nice simple raid. It also dumps about 80 ships off of Riker, dropping it down to a reasonable 130 again.
While those rebuild, I'm sweeping up for the CPA.
I've realized that if people are looking for my tactics and not strategy, I'm going to have to post more often and in more detail, because I forget the thousand little things that are habit by now.
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Just to be annoying, immediately after the save they behaved themselves and popped the guard post. Once the post was popped the guardian was detonated about a second later.
Given your MSSQL experience I assume you're familiar with the phenomenon where a technical problem's reproducibility is inversely proportional to the proximity of a technician who can do something about it.
You mean my mostly black candles and rubber chicken I sacrafice to the bug gods? I don't know what you're talking about. Please note, the rubber chicken has worked... ???
Isn't that because space planes are (as of recently) immune to aoe, rather than radar dampening?
Yeaaaah, that would be it, I'd missed that earlier and noticed later when 600 of the things are just staring at me.
Hmm. Bear in mind that the offworld spawn happens on a PickNeighboringAIPlanet roll, and each such roll only moves the spawn one planet, and it can only move to an AI planet (maybe I'll add a hop-to-any planet variant roll later). Considering the, uh, nature of Llama's defenses I'd figure that you could k-raid Blackstone, Liao, Batman, and Davion without concern about where the stuff was spawning, only what and how much. And I'm confident at least the first raid's quantity wouldn't hurt. For that matter, thanks to the positioning of the dyson ball you might be able to get away with murder.
Can't raid Davion, no supply. Can't raid Liao, same problem. Blackstone and Batman are an easy two, though I thought to raid the west first with them trapped behind Ceasar at Arrakkis and Solaris VII, making the spawn on random AI a moot point and protecting the exit wormhole instead of trying to fight all over the place in the system.
Whether you even need additional K at this point is another matter, but I figured I'd clarify :)
I seriously miss my Raid SS upgrades, but so far I'm alright, and making due with what I have, primarily the Rebel Colony fleet.
Reading the rest...
[/quote]
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And one stinking little MicroTachyon nearly gets them all killed.
Space Plane pilots live for that kind of moment... Or is it cease to live?
Please note, the rubber chicken has worked... ???
Sometimes an otherwise implacable Machine Spirit will relent if given a genuine laugh. I found the database software eminently reasonable, for the most part, so long as we did nothing to offend it.
ColdFusion, on the other hand... I only encountered the words "Branch Offset Too Long For Short" maybe four times, but they still send a chill through my spine.
Thank God for C#.
Can't raid Davion, no supply. Can't raid Liao, same problem.
Oh, duh, sorry. For some reason I thought I'd changed the mkIII labs to not require supply with the hacking changes. I still may, but I'll probably add some wilder rolls for unsupplied hacks like being able to hop to any world, etc.
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16:10: I've done four Space Plane Raids now. They've cleared all but 1 of the non-FF shielded posts, and have killed off both roach Spawners and the Orbital Mass Driver. With that gone, my raid ss's snuck in with a cloaker starship and popped the remaining Ion Cannon. I've kept the Warbirds in the back with the main fleet.
Meanwhile, my 'sweep and clean' system worked rather nicely to remove threat from the satellite worlds. Only Ceasar had any threat left, and I purposely left those two wormholes close. While I moved in to clean up one CPA's worth of threat the other filled in behind me. Backtrack immediately and cleaned up both relatively easily.
Only one significant problem came up and that was the drifters from the Earth area heading for Sox. My Rebel Fleet was racing to help out already because a warp guardian had spawned on Macross again, so that worked nicely. They got there, helped out Sox, then cleaned up Macross for good measure. They'd already cleaned out the backyard systems when they last refilled so that went nicely. The spawns from Davion were hysterically obliterated.
It's time to go for Riker.
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16:25.
With the Space Planes leading the way as the cannon fodder vanguard, the fleet arrives after the Space Planes have led the few defenders still around on a merry chase. With the arrival of the blade spawners, the heavy beam post under glass eventually goes down while the fleet concentrates on the two spire shield guardposts.
With those cleared and the blade spawners having done a significant amount of damage to the cmd station campers, the polycrystals head in for anti-fortress/anti 2x FF V work on the cmd center defenses. My forgotten SS Is are sent down to help find mines on this world, as Riker is defended by the Mine Enthusiast. They find a ton of them on the cmd station and the blades clear those out in between whacking the slowly waking defenders.
With those cleared, the fleet, still mostly intact and suffering few casualties, heads back to LLama. A transport group brings a colony ship back down to Krupp for re-establishment of the transport way-area. A cloaking starship also heads down to Krupp. AIP is 245. Dyson Ball is the ONLY reason Llama has held. The waves are massive, averaging at 2000-2500 ships a piece. Speed waves are ~1000 ships. I could, in theory, have held it if I'd paid any attention to it and used certain elements of the fleet for backup, as well as opening up Riot IIs. I have 3000 K I haven't used yet, and 0 hacking done. With Riot II + Counter missile, and having spent resources on Zenith toys instead of Merc Units, I could have changed that outcome.
However, could I handle the volume of waves I'm getting? I'm going to go with no. Not with just that. I'd also have to bring my Maws in, another FF set to stack the wormhole (1000 K for HFF), EMP AoE Mines to assist with the Tazering (1500 K) since they've been meh-effective for my opponent, and probably leave the Mk I Blade Spawners behind. Include a Mil I station instead of the Econ III for boosting.
Now, with all THAT, I could probably handle the chokepoint without the Dyson. Luckily, I don't have to. :)
About the EMP Mines: Whoever I told previously to just scout beforehand? I was wrong and working on limited data at the time. Your ships WILL STILL hit visible mines on exit of a wormhole. They'll just also be able to shoot at them. Engaging any of the Mine Enthusiast's locations without first blasting teh mines (and sometimes your ships will sail right into one to get at one further back) will usually end up with 20-30 ships EMP'd for 1-2 minutes.
I usually scrap these lazy carcasses on my way out of the system just to drop the threat level when my real fleet's not there. Yes, it hurt when I had to scrap two Warbirds with 0% Engines left, I do it to my ED dead units from hitting Siege units too. Nothing for it, I don't have Engi IIIs.
At 16:30 I'm debating on what units to load into transports to leave behind on Krupp under Cloak to send into Riker for the kill-switch. I think, actually, I'm just going to leave my Space Planes there with Bomber SS in the transport and they can cloak themselves in for additional support to make sure I don't get sucker-punched by a reinforcement while they're in there.
Everything else I'm going to need for the Anti-Raid Engine Run... including two systems. Confederation and Eridani are next on my list to take, for one simple reason: It'll get the Dyson Ball involved in blocking the Raid attack. It'll dilute the heck out of the Llama system but this is end-game baby.
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Round 1: Dyson vs. Raid Engine.
This worked to a point. I popped confederation and dropped an Econ II on it, and then popped all the warp gates connecting to force Llama as the whipping boy still. On my way through Eridani I merely blew up the cmd station and didn't take the sector.
The fleet gets through Kirk in around 50 seconds, and then my bombers are pounding on the FF/Fortress combo protecting the sole Raid Engine. I kill it 5 seconds after it retriggers.
Grrr.
Well, I try to fight it out, but my 1000+ gatlings are rode hard and put up wet, so half of them are half dead anyway. The raid spawned in Earth, so it chewed up my fleet who were busy doing other things far too easily. I needed to space them out before at 200-300 ships. At 2000?! Yeaaaahhh. No.
So I let the Dyson vs. Raid Engine double spawn try to figure themselves out. The Raid Engine's second spawn wins.
Savescum.
Round 2:
Well, I take on Confed like last time. I also send for Rebel Fleet reinforcements and get them shipped back up. Once everyone's together, I send the troops into Eridani and pop the cmd center, then Speed-move into Earth instead of group-move. As things arrive I assign them their tasks. Rebel Bombers and Fleet Bombers all head for the Raid Engine. Dead with 1:20 to spare this time, beautiful. It takes me repositioning the blade spawners a few times but they finally get under all the FFs and beat down the local guardposts. The bombers have dealt with both fortresses by this point (10 minutes or so) and that's done, we blow the command station.
On the east, the cloak team heads for Riker and gets rudely interrupted by a tachyon microfighter. I lose the bomber SSs but get the Space Planes in, and they get a whole 80% off the cmd center before getting blown to pieces.
Meanwhile, back on defense, the Dyson ball has lost 700 or so gatlings and there's still 1000 or so of the Raid Left parked on the Kirk Wormhole just eating the gatlings as they head out to fight. My fleet stalks in from behind and they're torn to pieces.
Dyson ball is at 300 gatlings and is still able, with heavy turret support, to hold the line at Llama against the Tech III wave. Excellent.
The fleet's back at Llama at 16:52. AIP is a hair over 400. Time to finish this up and head to Riker. Organize the fleet and send them down.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI98WinScreen.png)
*claps hands together to clear the dust* That takes care of that. +/- four hours for goofing around with wave testing, that's about right. Figure 13.5/14 hours for dealing with what the Neutral Dyson eventually smacked around, considering how long it was stymied, and I can live with that for a 9.8.
So, things learned:
1) Never, EVER, try to deal with a HW Raid Engine at 200+ AIP (at rediculous AI DIFF) without cataclismic level backup.
2) I miss my Raid SS.
3) Remember: Check the ARS first, THEN blow the command center. Dingbat.
4) Space Planes are useful!
5) Armor Ships make TASTY fodder.
6) There might as well be a sign on the AI Command Station: Bombers only. All others declined service. Seriously, take a look at that list of immunities...
7) If your enemy has anti-cloaker ships, don't expect to 'float' a cloak brigade in for final kills. Send in a cleaning service first.
8) Bring the ZPG online earlier ya nut, whatever the price.
9) Rebel Fleets were yet more powerful then I'd expected. Part of their power is their punch + speed. They make an amazing reaction force to all but wave-attacks.
10) Dyson Ball pwns allcomers. Come get some.
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I believe congratulations are very much in order...
Bravo.
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AI 10 Opening:
This is already VERY different. For starters, and my first hint, the starting system. The orange circle is rougly where I always started with the home command station. You'll notice I'm in a different sector now.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI10Opening.png)
Next is the AI's opening units.
Mine Enthusiast (Red) Opens with MLRS, Teleport Raiders.
Vanilla (Blue) Opens with Cutlasses and Teleport Leeches.
Ergh.
There's two fortresses already scouted. One in Twycross (first system leading to the galaxy), next in Macross (next system leading to the galaxy). CoP on Twycross.
ARS on Fraggle Rock, unknown value yet.
There's a SuperTerminal hiding back on what used to be Roulette (Two west from homeworld, leads to the 2-system arm with Huge behind it).
Dyson's on Sox, the one that hangs off Macross and I used to create the Dyson Ball in 9.6.
Alright, that pretty much answers what I need to know here. Keith, do you see any value in continuing this until the Dyson Ball gets itself beaten with a nice fat nerfbat? I'm not sure there is. It won't change much. The Dyson Ball CAN handle dang near anything. It would basically mean I'm just testing anti-RaidEngine tactics and reinforcement levels.
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I believe congratulations are very much in order...
Bravo.
Thank you. :)
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So I let the Dyson vs. Raid Engine double spawn try to figure themselves out. The Raid Engine's second spawn wins.
*gasp* The Dyson has limits!
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI98WinScreen.png)
Indeed, bravo! The Vogon-Rebel-Dyson Alliance slays the dragon and... uh, well, paves Earth under with a hyperspace bypass. Can't have everything.
Beating 9.8 in a fair fight (well, with Mike Dyson standing there to bite an ear where necessary) is quite a stiff challenge. Very informative too; this game seemed to be much more on-balance in terms of the AIP/K ratio, and in terms of how much AIP reduction you were able to achieve (indeed, the fact that you were able to win without any hacking, having been denied an ST, is pretty impressive and I think somewhat counterbalances the fact that the Dyson did so much of the work for you). With those factors more balanced, we got to see 9.8 performing under basically normal AIP conditions, and the result seems right: waves that require serious attention. Not all waves, but when the max-time ones kick in (and particularly when they double-up) it's painful.
1) Never, EVER, try to deal with a HW Raid Engine at 200+ AIP (at rediculous AI DIFF) without cataclismic level backup.
Glad to know that refused to be ignored ;)
2) I miss my Raid SS.
Glad to have toys in there that the player really wants to have, but they can't generally have them all at once (kinda reminds me of Master of Magic; there were spells in every color I wanted in every game, but which ones I tried for and which ones I got added so much variety)
3) Remember: Check the ARS first, THEN blow the command center. Dingbat.
FYI, you can still check the ARS tab of the tech menu on the ARS planet after capturing it. The concrete's already dry, of course, but it can help you see if you really want to savescum (not normally a kosher thing, but if you're playing at 9.8 then it's just payback for the AI messing with you).
4) Space Planes are useful!
I think they just put that on their refrigerator. Can't tell for sure. It's cloaked.
5) Armor Ships make TASTY fodder.
All that armor is actually layers of fried batter! Took rather a lot of trips through the peanut oil...
6) There might as well be a sign on the AI Command Station: Bombers only. All others declined service. Seriously, take a look at that list of immunities...
That would work as a paraphrase of something from the tutorial, I believe :) An alternative involves something roughly moon-sized with an absurdly powerful continuous beam weapon. And friends.
7) If your enemy has anti-cloaker ships, don't expect to 'float' a cloak brigade in for final kills. Send in a cleaning service first.
You think it's hard on your end, imagine what the other guy feels like when six trillion space planes suddenly appear on sensors. Approximately 63% of the internal volume of a Tachyon Microfighter is storage for spare pilot jumpsuits. Not for when they fail, but for when they succeed.
9) Rebel Fleets were yet more powerful then I'd expected. Part of their power is their punch + speed. They make an amazing reaction force to all but wave-attacks.
I was rather impressed with the Rebels this time, yes. And they actually seemed fairly balanced in terms of how much pain they did cause you, would have caused you if you had not saved the colony, and could have caused you if placed in an even less convenient location.
10) Dyson Ball pwns allcomers. Come get some.
Oh yea. When AI met Dyson, Dyson used AI to redecorate. I think I've got an idea on how to bring that down to a point where the end no longer needs to say "DYSON WIN!" instead of the current message, but still have the potential for dysonic hilarity. The good part is that this idea doesn't involve the destruction of the galaxy.
This is already VERY different. For starters, and my first hint, the starting system. The orange circle is rougly where I always started with the home command station. You'll notice I'm in a different sector now.
Next is the AI's opening units.
Mine Enthusiast (Red) Opens with MLRS, Teleport Raiders.
Vanilla (Blue) Opens with Cutlasses and Teleport Leeches.
Ergh.
Hmm; refresh my lazy memory: has the station moved between previous cases, and have the AI opening types been changing? I didn't think I'd changed anything that would affect that stage of mapgen, as the planet "what is unlockable here?" initialization happens later.
Alright, that pretty much answers what I need to know here. Keith, do you see any value in continuing this until the Dyson Ball gets itself beaten with a nice fat nerfbat? I'm not sure there is. It won't change much. The Dyson Ball CAN handle dang near anything. It would basically mean I'm just testing anti-RaidEngine tactics and reinforcement levels.
Hmm, I think you have a point there. I have a plan for the dyson but I dunno if it's gonna get in for the next release, as 5.032 is pretty much on the "whenenver Chris gets a chance to kick it out the door" schedule and I don't want to toss in ripe bugs right at the end (not like it doesn't happen anyway).
Perhaps an intermission of disposable heroes or something like that?
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*gasp* The Dyson has limits!
I know, shocked me too.
Indeed, bravo! The Vogon-Rebel-Dyson Alliance slays the dragon and... uh, well, paves Earth under with a hyperspace bypass. Can't have everything.
Vrrrrrmmmm!!!!
Beating 9.8 in a fair fight (well, with Mike Dyson standing there to bite an ear where necessary) is quite a stiff challenge. Very informative too; this game seemed to be much more on-balance in terms of the AIP/K ratio, and in terms of how much AIP reduction you were able to achieve (indeed, the fact that you were able to win without any hacking, having been denied an ST, is pretty impressive and I think somewhat counterbalances the fact that the Dyson did so much of the work for you). With those factors more balanced, we got to see 9.8 performing under basically normal AIP conditions, and the result seems right: waves that require serious attention. Not all waves, but when the max-time ones kick in (and particularly when they double-up) it's painful.
Quite true, all of it. Even the lack of hacking ARS's probably contributed partially to the 'validity' of the test. I tried to be as honest as I could about the waves. Lacking the Dyson Ball, my 'spare' 3000 K and two K-Raids would probably have been necessary to keep the chokepoint alive.
2) I miss my Raid SS.
Glad to have toys in there that the player really wants to have, but they can't generally have them all at once (kinda reminds me of Master of Magic; there were spells in every color I wanted in every game, but which ones I tried for and which ones I got added so much variety)
Yeah, I had to make due with other units to perform the tasks I usually reserved for Raid SS. The Rebels performed very nicely as a 'make-up'.
FYI, you can still check the ARS tab of the tech menu on the ARS planet after capturing it. The concrete's already dry, of course, but it can help you see if you really want to savescum (not normally a kosher thing, but if you're playing at 9.8 then it's just payback for the AI messing with you).
Throughout this game I tried to avoid savescums except for two reasons. 1) Experimentation and testing, which was known going in and 2) Game-ending screwups. Anything that I could reasonably recover from my own stupidity for without going into it knowing I was purposely just screwing around I did. :)
7) If your enemy has anti-cloaker ships, don't expect to 'float' a cloak brigade in for final kills. Send in a cleaning service first.
You think it's hard on your end, imagine what the other guy feels like when six trillion space planes suddenly appear on sensors. Approximately 63% of the internal volume of a Tachyon Microfighter is storage for spare pilot jumpsuits. Not for when they fail, but for when they succeed.
Thank you for that. There is now beer all over my PC screen and coming out my nose...
I was rather impressed with the Rebels this time, yes. And they actually seemed fairly balanced in terms of how much pain they did cause you, would have caused you if you had not saved the colony, and could have caused you if placed in an even less convenient location.
Gods, +100 AIP for no benefit in this game would have been ruinous. Would have been as bad as the earlier Co-P testing. It was relatively convenient except for forcing me to move the whipping boy and the most logical place being the one that the Dyson was soaking my reinforcements off of. On a side note, the Dysons did appear to continue to force Davion to reinforce, though we'll confirm that in .032. They just never scoured it again.
Oh yea. When AI met Dyson, Dyson used AI to redecorate. I think I've got an idea on how to bring that down to a point where the end no longer needs to say "DYSON WIN!" instead of the current message, but still have the potential for dysonic hilarity. The good part is that this idea doesn't involve the destruction of the galaxy.
I actually still like your idea of # of Friendly Dysons = AIP. Maybe AIP *2. It's enough to give support but it can't pwn the universe.
Hmm; refresh my lazy memory: has the station moved between previous cases, and have the AI opening types been changing? I didn't think I'd changed anything that would affect that stage of mapgen, as the planet "what is unlockable here?" initialization happens later.
I think it's the switch from a non-integer 9 to a 10. Command Station to this point had not moved, nor had opening ships. This is an utter change from the 4 previous incarnations of this challenge.
Seed is 1445559743, Tree Map, 40 planet. First AI is Mines, Second is Vanilla. Choose the Maw planet that shows in the upper left of the screen. I can test the 9.x again and see what startup looks like. I'm pretty sure it's due to the integer change of the AI Diff.
Hmm, I think you have a point there. I have a plan for the dyson but I dunno if it's gonna get in for the next release, as 5.032 is pretty much on the "whenenver Chris gets a chance to kick it out the door" schedule and I don't want to toss in ripe bugs right at the end (not like it doesn't happen anyway).
Perhaps an intermission of disposable heroes or something like that?
Sounds like a delicious option, I think I'll take it. :)
-
Confirmed. All changes are due to the AI 10 vs. 9.x difference. Just spawned up a new 9.6 and everything seems to match up.
-
Maestro! Drumroll please!
The moment you've all been waiting for. The Battle Royale. The unfathomable vs. the unbreakable! AI 10/10 vs. the Vogons Humans!
I fired up a brand new game due to all the changes since the last time I took the save for the game. I'm going in as blind as I usually am with the same settings. Fire in the hole.
Opening moves: Harvesters II/III, Grav Turret Is, Adv Warp Sensor for research. Fire up scouts for rebuilds and get the primary fleet going. Maws are once again the starting unit. I do love my Maw. Space station is 'offset' again, same as described above. It's off against an edge of the system. It's not TOO far from the Shawshank wormhole but it's nearly a full planet away from Twycross. I can probably leverage this eventually.
Build a Science II, Adv Warp Sensor, and 10x Engi Is and 2x Rebuilders on the homeworld via autosettings. Send out the starter Scout IIs to see what they can see.
CoP on Twycross. Great. Fort I there too. Dist Node and nothing special on Shawshank (first planet towards the backyard). Janeway (backyard system) has nothing of import. However, I do get some knowledge. I'm facing MLRS, Teleport Raiders, Teleport Leeches, and something cloaked. Why 'something cloaked'? Because the planets I've looked at so far are all pushing the full set of cloaked enemies off the bottom of the screen due to stealth guard posts. I'll find out what they are soon enough.
Fraggle Rock, another backyard system, is packing an ARS. There's a SuperTerminal in the backyard, too. Whoa. That's on what usually is called Roulette in this AAR. It's not overly heavily defended, either, merely a MK III world with a triplet of Ions on it.
That's the first set of Scouts dead. my econ is currently trying to build the next set out at 2 mins in... and there they are! All to Huge, the 2-system away planet in the backyard. Go boys go! They get into Huge with a single scout left and find... another ARS. That's some beauty. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but it's pretty!
So, the front door is jammed up, but lets see if my scouts can find out if I've got a local Dyson. I start working the front path with scouts while the fleet continues to build to deflect the opening waves. 3 minutes in. I setup the Fighter cap I've built on a hotkey. It's time to hunt down that distribution node.
Found the fourth ship, it's cutlasses. So, two teleporters, a ff ignoring melee, and a Missile Frigate wanna-be with stronger firepower. Oh, THIS will be fun! Logistics stations anyone?
Oh, that's frickin' HYSTERICAL. Thanks RNG. The Node was a Trojan. 4:10 and I've sacrificed a small bit of my fighter fleet (who are heading home now) to pop a trojan and blow away any slight buildup I used to have of econ. Mutter mutter mutter. 10% AIP increase for nothing gained.
Found the Dyson. It's sitting at a nice little location just off Macross on the front door. Macross is a MK III world packing a Fort II and other assundry annoyances. Nothing's got a counterstrike on it though, at least not yet.
So, what is Wanderer looking at for the opening options:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI10Opening-1.png)
The two Yellow dots are the ARSs in the backfield. Macross is going to be the whipping boy, with Sox (eventually to be renamed Dyson) having the Dyson Sphere. Dyson Ball Backup on the whipping boy, even with the nerf, will be a great help, albeit limited.
So, intentions. Twycross, Janeway, and Shawshank will indefinately remain AI held worlds. Shawshank will get its warp-gate popped as soon as is reasonable, with turreting on the homeworld aimed towards defending from both wormholes, to help deal with future possible aggression while I work the backfield.
The homeworld looks like so:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI10HomeworldLayout.png)
The green lines will be the generic approach vectors of the enemy fleet. By putting the majority of the homeworld defenses in the yellow region, I'll be able to cover both approaches with reasonable effectiveness until I get the whipping boy moved forward.
Still at 4:10 (Pause is my friend) and looking over the map further, I should be able to get one last set of scouts into Craps and then I'll post up the Scout Is locally.
The fighter fleet meanwhile tries to get back out of Shawshank with minimal losses. They did some reasonable damage while they visited, though. They get home at 5:00 or so. Fresh scouts are built so they head out on a suicide to Craps. Not too shabby, it's got a Data Center on it. That'll help. In the 9 worlds I can immediately scout I've only got two MK III worlds and a single AI Eye on Janeway which won't become a significant issue. Neutering Superterminal will become annoying but it's handleable. I'll want to keep command stations/power stations up on both Huge and Fraggle to help me support my energy needs eventually, so they'll have to get knocked down for population concerns. I'll also have to blow the warp gates on Shawshank and ST eventually.
The decision is how long do I wait before I try to tackle the Macross/Dyson combo to move the whipping boy. Do I take Fraggle early and get myself a second bonus ship before heading east or do I go for it immediately and get the whipping boy off the homeworld ASAP? Earlier experimentation showed that at 9.8 I could hold on the homeworld till ~70-80 AIP without significant issues on a reasonable entry length.
I can't really 'wake' the Dyson until I hit the tachyon guardian on Macross and can get a scout into Dyson to keep it awake. Dyson's also got an AI Eye on it so really, I'd rather Dyson argued with it. So, Fraggle's the first target. I'll whipping boy the Homeworld once primary fleet is operational.
At 6:43 the first wave announces. 100 ships. It's coming from Shawshank, the short-range wormhole. Grav Turrets immediately start building, a small cluster in front of the station for now just to slow down any fast-movers. I setup the key-commands for the primary fleet and the Maws (extra-hotkey for those due to micro). The maws pull back behind the grav well and the main fleet moves to an intercept position. Remember these are MK II waves. The main fleet is done building about wave-arrival so I start up 10 Sniper Turrets to keep econ pushed.
The maws nicely handle the teleporting problem that arrives and the main fleet intercepts the first Raid Starship and Bomber starship. I move the maws out to handle the slowed troops while the main fleet goes on FRD.
First wave is fully defeated at 9:32 and the second one hasn't announced. Minimal losses allow me to fire up a few more turret banks. I want some more close range defenders to deal with the teleporters. Drop down 20 Basic Is and 20 MLRS for now.
Did I say 20? I meant 40. Held the wrong button down. XD Either way, we're not going anywhere until after the second wave and I start pushing out the Scout Is to the picket points.
10:02 second wave announces, 82 ships, again from Shawshank.
The turrets build out at about 10:45. I should be good to go here. I slap another 20 snipers into play. I've got 3000 in K built up that I've not determined where it's going yet but I'm pretty sure it'll end up in bombers. However, I want a hair of versatility here.
11:30 the wave arrives. No teleporters in this batch (well, 1 T-Leech) but otherwise cutlasses. With the maws happily VERY fat (I'd say they were munching on ~100 units at this point) we've stopped both waves with minimal losses. Time to make our way towards Fraggle. Meanwhile, starting construction on Raid SSs.
However, annoyingly, I'd really like to see the factories be able to be repaired without having to be online. Stupid Siege Starship.
Fraggle's pretty decently defended against an early fleet. Fort I under FF II, Carrier Guardian, an Ion Cannon, and ~100 assorted ships of MK II. This should get interesting. The Ion is a MK IV under FF (Spire Shield post II) with 112 mill in HP. not an easy kill for an early fleet, but it's WAY out of range of the Fortress. Alright, as expected, Bomber-Time baby!
I fire up Bomber IIs and the dock to build them. We're busy in Shawshank still though, it's only 14:09 and we're donig some nerf/clean-up. I need the time to fire up the bomber fleet anyway. No reason to waste my time in there.
For giggles, I've decided to fire up reinforcement logging. Let's see what's really happening out there. 16:08 I go in and clear the logs so it's just this game being logged without a ton of clutter.
I bring the main fleet back home for repairs after clearing most of Shawshank, leaving 2 SF posts behind. 17:50: 74 ship wave announces for homeworld. I could ignore it but might as well show up and hang out for a minute or two. I just finished building the Raid SSs about a minute ago and am still waiting on the Bomber II fleet. No reason to push too hard right now.
The enemy comes in the Twycross gate and immediately makes a run for it. Oh, nice... Lousy so and sos. Only about half the wave sticks around. Threat's at 27. Alright, I'm not really worried about that, I've got a small but useful turret wall up at the homeworld. Time to bump that up with some laser turrets while the fleet heads to Fraggle.
The Raids hit first and do a drive at the Ion to take it out before it can harm the fleet. They nearly bought it on the inbound wormhole but complete their mission. Meanwhile the fleet fights the carrier guardian and loosed threat from the raid entry in Shawshank, killing it without having to deal with significant reinforcements. The fleet pops the Tachyon guardian and the Science II from homeworld makes its way to Fraggle for an investigation while the fleet works the planet. In the meanwhile the Raids head home for repairs and we work on the shieldpost with FF protection.
ARS options: Grenade Launcher with Y.Commandos or Shield Bearers as secondary options. Hm. There's something to be said for a commando steaming attack force, though mostly it's "AAAAAAGGGGHHH STOP KILLING MEEEE!!!!!". The shield bearers are right out as an early open for me. I need firepower right now. I'm wicked metal heavy already with the maws and the grenade launchers are only going to make that worse, and this planet's a 1/3, with Huge no better as a 1/1. Hrmph. Macross is another 1/3 with Dyson being a 3/3 (oh, that's helpful... sigh). I'm VERY crystal heavy... which will help out my Raid SS builds later but for now...
That's a crap assed decision. Hack for younglings or eat metal-issues. Grenade Launchers it is, I don't want to hack this early and they're roughly equivalent to me in firepower. Send the Science II off to a corner for now.
At about 25 minutes during this fight I realize I've got ~180k each in material. Time to build something. light Starships it is. I begin having power problems and double up generators on homeworld. Still waiting for the traders to come through, could really use a Z-Gennie. I power down the Raid SSs for now.
The fortress on Fraggle has a Stealth post next to it so there's not much I can do but sacrifice the bomber fleet into trying to take down enough ff for the first pass. With the Light Starships completed I start up Scout Starship Is (SS Is) for future tachyon concerns... stupid mine enthusiasts... ;) The Bombers take down the fortress without much issue, happily. The rest of the fleet is on the other side of the system during a reinforcement and eventually recombine.
29:30 88 ship wave announced for homeworld. I ignore it for now. Let the turrets and rebuilds handle it. The fleet however does start heading home for repairs and resupply before we take fraggle for real. They should arrive to help if things go south.
Having seen a reinforcement, let's see what's been going on under the hood.
First reinforcement since logging was 19:13, next was 22:25. So, approximately 3 minute between reinforcements. This is actually easier to see in Mainthread.txt:
5/29/2012 10:43:22 PM (5.035) 0:19:13 ReinforcementCounter reached > 2400 for player 9 (since game was loaded, took 192 checks of (10+rand(2 or 3))
AIProgressionLevelEffective = 11
AITechLevel = 2
numberOfReinforcements = (number of planets not controlled by the AI / 2) = 0
numberOfReinforcements must be at least 1 and at most 15; = 1
since AIDifficulty >= 10, numberOfReinforcements += 2 = 3
AICommandType.SendReinforcements sent to AI thread
5/29/2012 10:43:23 PM (5.035) 0:19:14 ReinforcementCounter reached > 2400 for player 8 (since game was loaded, took 193 checks of (10+rand(2 or 3))
AIProgressionLevelEffective = 11
AITechLevel = 2
numberOfReinforcements = (number of planets not controlled by the AI / 2) = 0
numberOfReinforcements must be at least 1 and at most 15; = 1
since AIDifficulty >= 10, numberOfReinforcements += 2 = 3
AICommandType.SendReinforcements sent to AI thread
5/29/2012 10:47:57 PM (5.035) 0:22:26 ReinforcementCounter reached > 2400 for player 9 (since game was loaded, took 193 checks of (10+rand(2 or 3))
AIProgressionLevelEffective = 11
AITechLevel = 2
numberOfReinforcements = (number of planets not controlled by the AI / 2) = 0
numberOfReinforcements must be at least 1 and at most 15; = 1
since AIDifficulty >= 10, numberOfReinforcements += 2 = 3
AICommandType.SendReinforcements sent to AI thread
5/29/2012 10:47:58 PM (5.035) 0:22:27 ReinforcementCounter reached > 2400 for player 8 (since game was loaded, took 193 checks of (10+rand(2 or 3))
AIProgressionLevelEffective = 11
AITechLevel = 2
numberOfReinforcements = (number of planets not controlled by the AI / 2) = 0
numberOfReinforcements must be at least 1 and at most 15; = 1
since AIDifficulty >= 10, numberOfReinforcements += 2 = 3
AICommandType.SendReinforcements sent to AI thread
5/29/2012 10:57:28 PM (5.035) 0:25:39 ReinforcementCounter reached > 2400 for player 8 (since game was loaded, took 192 checks of (10+rand(2 or 3))
AIProgressionLevelEffective = 11
AITechLevel = 2
numberOfReinforcements = (number of planets not controlled by the AI / 2) = 0
numberOfReinforcements must be at least 1 and at most 15; = 1
since AIDifficulty >= 10, numberOfReinforcements += 2 = 3
AICommandType.SendReinforcements sent to AI thread
5/29/2012 10:57:28 PM (5.035) 0:25:39 ReinforcementCounter reached > 2400 for player 9 (since game was loaded, took 193 checks of (10+rand(2 or 3))
AIProgressionLevelEffective = 11
AITechLevel = 2
numberOfReinforcements = (number of planets not controlled by the AI / 2) = 0
numberOfReinforcements must be at least 1 and at most 15; = 1
since AIDifficulty >= 10, numberOfReinforcements += 2 = 3
AICommandType.SendReinforcements sent to AI thread
AI 10 is apparently a bit more intense on that... XD.. anyway.
5/29/2012 10:43:22 PM (5.035) 0:19:12 calling SendReinforcements
PlayerNumber = 9
AIProgressionLevel = 11
AITechLevel = 2
NumberOfReinforcements = 3
Planets in order of planned reinforcement attempt (note: alerted planets will get two lines, and a line with priority >= 2000 will get tried twice) :
17 (Shawshank) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
42 (Twycross) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
29 (Riker) (homeworld, +500) reinforce priority = 500
27 (Earth) (homeworld, +500) reinforce priority = 500
26 (Kirk) (core, +300) reinforce priority = 300
12 (Three Kings) (core, +300) reinforce priority = 300
17 (Shawshank) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
42 (Twycross) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
(33 more reinforceable planets that are not alerted and have reinforcement priority = 0
so, besides missing a parentheses at the end there, what are we looking at. AIP is 11. # of Reinforcements are 3. Erm? I own *1* planet. Alright, that's not what I expected but sure, whatever.
The two obvious reinforcements are Shawshank and Twycross, the ones I've alerted. Well, looks like that Dyson alert fix is going just fine, Macross isn't even on the list.
However, later, when I'm attacking Fraggle:
5/29/2012 11:01:18 PM (5.035) 0:28:51 calling SendReinforcements
PlayerNumber = 9
AIProgressionLevel = 12
AITechLevel = 2
NumberOfReinforcements = 3
Planets in order of planned reinforcement attempt (note: alerted planets will get two lines, and a line with priority >= 2000 will get tried twice) :
18 (Fraggle Rock) (alerted) (outnumbered, +2000) reinforce priority = 2000
17 (Shawshank) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
42 (Twycross) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
18 (Fraggle Rock) (alerted) (outnumbered, +2000) reinforce priority = 2000
27 (Earth) (homeworld, +500) reinforce priority = 500
29 (Riker) (homeworld, +500) reinforce priority = 500
26 (Kirk) (core, +300) reinforce priority = 300
12 (Three Kings) (core, +300) reinforce priority = 300
42 (Twycross) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
17 (Shawshank) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
(32 more reinforceable planets that are not alerted and have reinforcement priority = 0
That looks right. Cool. Alright, let's see what other nuggets of joy we can yank out of this. Starting at the 19:12 one again...
Well now, THAT'S odd. It sent reinforcements to Shawshank, Twycross, and then Shawshank again... ignoring Riker heading up the list in third place.
******calling SendReinforcementsToPlanet on planet 17 (Shawshank), StrengthBudget = 0
Number of this player's units on this planet = 54
reinforcement population cap = (GuardPostsNonWormhole + CommandStations) * UnitCapScale.AIShipCapPerPost = (3 * 100) (must be at least 200 and at most 700) = 300
Number of this player's units on this planet does not exceed reinforcement population cap, continuing reinforcement attempt
guardPostReinforcementPulses = (AIProgressionLevel / 10) = 1; (must be at least 3 and at most 11) = 3
guardPostReinforcementPulsesShiftedToCentralPulse = guardPostReinforcementPulses - ( GuardPostsAll + CommandStations ) (cannot go below 0) = max(0,3-(10+1)) = 0
***Doing central reinforcement pulse (this will go to the command station if there is one, and pick another spot if not)
AITechLevel = at least planet's AIOriginalTechLevel = 1
aiTypeBasedAIPIncrement : 0
reinforcementStrength = 1.5 * AIDiff * handicapMultiplier = 15
reinforcementStrength += 4 + random(0,AIDifficulty) = 26
reinforcementStrength += ((AIP/10) * (AIDiff/10)) = 27.1
reinforcementStrength *= (tech level multiplier) = 27.1
reinforcementStrength *= 0.07 = 1.89
reinforcementStrength must be at most 35; = 1.89
reinforcementStrength *= (1 + guardPostReinforcementPulsesShiftedToCentralPulse) = 1.89
Inside AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType, multiplier: 1
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType call, reinforcementStrength = 1.89
numberShips = Floor(reinforcementStrength) = 1
StrengthBudget += 3 = 3
--- AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 3
bought 1 EngineerDrone for 5
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 5, remaining = -2
***Doing guard-post reinforcement pulses:
reinforcementStrengthPerPulse = AIP/270 = 0.04
reinforcementStrengthPerPulse *= (tech level multiplier) = 0.04
reinforcementStrengthPerPulse must be at least 1 and at most 7; = 1
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType, reinforcementStrengthPerPulse = 1
---doing pulse for SpecialForcesCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 3 = 1
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 1
bought 1 MissileShipII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1
---doing pulse for SpecialForcesCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 3 = 2
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 2
bought 1 FighterII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = 0
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 1
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 1
bought 1 MissileShipII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 0
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 0
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = 0
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 1
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 1
bought 1 FighterII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 0
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 0
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = 0
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 1
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 1
bought 1 MissileShipII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 0
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 0
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = 0
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 1
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 1
bought 1 BomberII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 0
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 0
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = 0
***checking for additional (no-strength-cost) guardian spawn
not buying guardian due to adjacent to human homeworld
SendReinforcementsToPlanet result: happened, remainingReinforcements = 2, StrengthBudget = 0
******calling SendReinforcementsToPlanet on planet 42 (Twycross), StrengthBudget = 0
Number of this player's units on this planet = 29
reinforcement population cap = (GuardPostsNonWormhole + CommandStations) * UnitCapScale.AIShipCapPerPost = (4 * 100) (must be at least 200 and at most 700) = 400
Number of this player's units on this planet does not exceed reinforcement population cap, continuing reinforcement attempt
guardPostReinforcementPulses = (AIProgressionLevel / 10) = 1; (must be at least 3 and at most 11) = 3
guardPostReinforcementPulsesShiftedToCentralPulse = guardPostReinforcementPulses - ( GuardPostsAll + CommandStations ) (cannot go below 0) = max(0,3-(7+1)) = 0
***Doing central reinforcement pulse (this will go to the command station if there is one, and pick another spot if not)
AITechLevel = at least planet's AIOriginalTechLevel = 1
aiTypeBasedAIPIncrement : 0
reinforcementStrength = 1.5 * AIDiff * handicapMultiplier = 15
reinforcementStrength += 4 + random(0,AIDifficulty) = 21
reinforcementStrength += ((AIP/10) * (AIDiff/10)) = 22.1
reinforcementStrength *= (tech level multiplier) = 22.1
reinforcementStrength *= 0.07 = 1.54
reinforcementStrength must be at most 35; = 1.54
reinforcementStrength *= (1 + guardPostReinforcementPulsesShiftedToCentralPulse) = 1.54
Inside AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType, multiplier: 1
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType call, reinforcementStrength = 1.54
numberShips = Floor(reinforcementStrength) = 1
StrengthBudget += 2 = 2
--- AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 2
bought 1 MineLayer for 3.34
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 3.34, remaining = -1.34
***Doing guard-post reinforcement pulses:
reinforcementStrengthPerPulse = AIP/270 = 0.04
reinforcementStrengthPerPulse *= (tech level multiplier) = 0.04
reinforcementStrengthPerPulse must be at least 1 and at most 7; = 1
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType, reinforcementStrengthPerPulse = 1
---doing pulse for SpecialForcesCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 3 = 1.66
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 1.66
bought 1 SpireTeleportingLeechII for 4
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 4, remaining = -2.34
---doing pulse for AIShortRangeGuardPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = -1.34
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = -1.34
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = -1.34
---doing pulse for AISpireShieldSphereGuardPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = -0.34
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = -0.34
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = -0.34
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 0.66
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 0.66
bought 1 MissileShipII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1.34
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = -0.34
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = -0.34
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = -0.34
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 0.66
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 0.66
bought 1 FighterII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1.34
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = -0.34
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = -0.34
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = -0.34
***checking for additional (no-strength-cost) guardian spawn
not buying guardian due to planet not owned by this player
SendReinforcementsToPlanet result: happened, remainingReinforcements = 1, StrengthBudget = -0.34
******calling SendReinforcementsToPlanet on planet 17 (Shawshank), StrengthBudget = -0.34
Number of this player's units on this planet = 54
reinforcement population cap = (GuardPostsNonWormhole + CommandStations) * UnitCapScale.AIShipCapPerPost = (3 * 100) (must be at least 200 and at most 700) = 300
Number of this player's units on this planet does not exceed reinforcement population cap, continuing reinforcement attempt
guardPostReinforcementPulses = (AIProgressionLevel / 10) = 1; (must be at least 3 and at most 11) = 3
guardPostReinforcementPulsesShiftedToCentralPulse = guardPostReinforcementPulses - ( GuardPostsAll + CommandStations ) (cannot go below 0) = max(0,3-(10+1)) = 0
***Doing central reinforcement pulse (this will go to the command station if there is one, and pick another spot if not)
AITechLevel = at least planet's AIOriginalTechLevel = 1
aiTypeBasedAIPIncrement : 0
reinforcementStrength = 1.5 * AIDiff * handicapMultiplier = 15
reinforcementStrength += 4 + random(0,AIDifficulty) = 26
reinforcementStrength += ((AIP/10) * (AIDiff/10)) = 27.1
reinforcementStrength *= (tech level multiplier) = 27.1
reinforcementStrength *= 0.07 = 1.89
reinforcementStrength must be at most 35; = 1.89
reinforcementStrength *= (1 + guardPostReinforcementPulsesShiftedToCentralPulse) = 1.89
Inside AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType, multiplier: 1
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType call, reinforcementStrength = 1.89
numberShips = Floor(reinforcementStrength) = 1
StrengthBudget += 3 = 2.66
--- AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 2.66
bought 1 MineLayer for 3.34
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 3.34, remaining = -0.67
***Doing guard-post reinforcement pulses:
reinforcementStrengthPerPulse = AIP/270 = 0.04
reinforcementStrengthPerPulse *= (tech level multiplier) = 0.04
reinforcementStrengthPerPulse must be at least 1 and at most 7; = 1
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType, reinforcementStrengthPerPulse = 1
---doing pulse for SpecialForcesCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 3 = 2.33
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 2.33
bought 1 BomberII for 2
bought 1 FighterII for 2
total count bought: 2, total strength spent: 4, remaining = -1.67
---doing pulse for SpecialForcesCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 3 = 1.33
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 1.33
bought 1 BomberII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -0.67
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 0.33
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 0.33
bought 1 BomberII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1.67
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = -0.67
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = -0.67
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = -0.67
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 0.33
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 0.33
bought 1 BomberII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1.67
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = -0.67
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = -0.67
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = -0.67
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 0.33
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 0.33
bought 1 BomberII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1.67
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = -0.67
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = -0.67
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = -0.67
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = 0.33
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 0.33
bought 1 BomberII for 2
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 2, remaining = -1.67
---doing pulse for WormholeCommandPost
StrengthBudget += 1 = -0.67
AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = -0.67
total count bought: 0, total strength spent: 0, remaining = -0.67
***checking for additional (no-strength-cost) guardian spawn
not buying guardian due to adjacent to human homeworld
SendReinforcementsToPlanet result: happened, remainingReinforcements = 0, StrengthBudget = -0.67
totals for planet 17 (Shawshank); count: 15, strength: 34.34
totals for planet 42 (Twycross); count: 4, strength: 11.34
totals for EngineerDrone; count: 1, strength: 5
totals for MissileShipII; count: 4, strength: 8
totals for FighterII; count: 4, strength: 8
totals for BomberII; count: 7, strength: 14
totals for MineLayer; count: 2, strength: 6.67
totals for SpireTeleportingLeechII; count: 1, strength: 4
*grand totals; count: 19, strength: 45.67
I'd expect that, but not from the listing I saw above in the order of reinforcement attempts. I'd have expected the coreworld to get a beefing. I'm glad it didn't, but still.
I'm going to examine Twycross's reinforcements first, since that's unadjusted since game start (I haven't done anything but scout it).
With four guardposts it maxes off at 400 units maximum for popcap (per AI). However, this says it maxes off at 700 ships. I'd thought it was 1000 (10 posts = max cap). It's obviously not. At 6 posts + Cmd you're max-capped at a single world. Because AIP is so low (110 or less) it's not at max pulses to reinforce. In this case, it wants to bottom out at a single pulse but the minimum is 3 for the guardposts and no extra pulses will go to the command center.
The command center decided to buy a... minelayer. What the hell is that?
Now it starts up the guard-post pulses. You'll notice that pulse goes through ALL the guardposts, it's not simply refilling a single post. Eventually it buys a Teleport Leech, a Missile Frigate, and a fighter. Notice the strength of the pulse above it though. AIP/270 and it minimums at strength 1. That means until AIP 270 while you'll reinforce more planets (because of the # you've taken), you won't see more reinforcements PER reinforcement until you've pushed AIP above 270. I think.
However, I'm reviewing the initial strength calculation for the command center. That's based on AIP/10 with AIDiff modifiers. However, there's a few lines in here I'm not quite sure I understand.
Reinforcement strength = 1.54, which floors to 1. Then it gets a += of 2 which SHOULD bring it to 3 but leaves it at 2. Not quite sure how that works.
Either way, the command center is getting a lot more boost from AIP then the rest of the guardposts are.
Now, we go into the first pulse, where in theory the pulse is at least 1. Then for some reason, the strength budget gets itself a += 3 for 1.66 (remove the leftovers from the command center and this makes some sense) but I'm not sure what that entire calculation above was for in regards to the 1 for the reinforcementStrengthPerPulse.
Maybe I can make more sense of it from the next pulse?
Ah hah! That '3 pulses' from earlier was actually just the base strength of the single pulse? Wut? This makes as much sense as dating.
I... don't get it. Maybe that's the point though. I have a feeling to really understand this log I'd have to tear it apart with Keith standing over my shoulder. I thought I understood it, but yeah, no, I don't.
Well, it's doing no harm, we'll leave it running in the background. Where the heck was I? Ah, right, Fraggle Rock, here we come! I build off a colony ship and send it over with the full fleet to Fraggle Rock. enroute, a 161 ship wave announces at 33:30 for Homeworld. Well, here's hopin. I have a ton (200k+ of each material) stockpiled right now due to NOT losing a mass of ships so I slap up some more turrets on homeworld. 30 LRMs and 20 more snipers. Homeworld Turret Defenses now at: 5 Gravs, 20 Lasers, 40 Basic, 40 MLRS, 30 LRM, 50 Sniper. CSG-A goes down, AIP is at 33, and I need to Warp-Gate pop Shawshank ASAP.
During the raid the main fleet heads back towards Homeworld, and we pop the WarpGate enroute. Excellent timing. 35:48 another wave announces while the turrets are still fending off the first wave. The Econ I and ARS are captured easily enough on Fraggle but the turrets are dying and 58 enemy ships are still attacking on Sushi (Homeworld), including a Bomber SS that is just pounding its way in. The fleet won't get there in time but the maws are high-tailing it. Grenade Launcher production is started.
In the end, the turrets are able to stop the wave, but I'd be lying if I said it was 'without concern'. With the fleet back at home I feel a little safer. Time to reposition a few turrets, too, since I've pushed the waves to the 'longer run'. I want the AoEs heavy on that inbound.
Most of the second wave makes a run for it. Bastages. Alright, we'll hold off on the secondary defenses for now. I don't even bother putting up a single turret on Fraggle for now. It's as safe as it'll get, but it does get a FF and a grav to delay randoms for now. I also set the planet to alert on a single enemy ship entering, and they get a single Engi I on auto-build.
I wait for the grenade launchers to build up before heading out for Macross to try to 'wake' the Dyson. I bring homeworld up to 15 engineers since we're starting to spike/save on economy.
Holy crap, seriously? Another 277 ship wave at 39:29 for homeworld. 10 minutes, 3 waves. Yeesh. Oh, did I mention it's a double wave? 101 coming in right behind it. AIP is 38. I drop 4 FF Is on the Twycross WH and 30 Lightning Is. Here, have a facesmack on entry you fegs.
In the meanwhile, I drop the main fleet out to Shawshank to try to get the ARS and Science II home safely.
The waves hit Sushi, and the forcefield 'trap' holds a ton of them at bay while some of the leakage gets through and dies to the LRMs and Snipers. The Lightning Turrets do a decent amount of work. We clear the wave by 43:00 with fleet support and I start resupply.
And another wave, 100 ships, announced at 43:27.
C'mon, seriously? I bring homeworld's rebuilders up to 5 on auto-build. I include a half-cap of flak turrets at the wormhole this time as well. Of note: Rebuilders are a confused bunch. They keep trying to run off then come back to repair things. If you just shove them under the entry FF they repair things about 2x as fast since they stop trying to 'run home' after each repair.
3500 K available and I'm torn on my research. I really love my Raid SSs but I want to bring Maws up to MK II due to my recent reliance on them in these games. However, I'm horribly disparate in metal to crystal and Raids would utilize the overwhelmance better. At the same time, I need fleet.
Maws it is. Add them to the docks. Slap up 20 Tractors at the inbound WH as well just to annoy the enemy... and burn off a bit of Crystal.
46:00. The fleet really didn't get involved in that defense, I can probably start moving again once the fleet finalizes. I'm not waiting on the Maw IIs, they'll take a bit. They're ready about 47:30 and move towards Twycross. The intention here is merely to make sure I can get scouts to Dyson (Sox in the above) and get the Dyson awoken. Let it deal with its own problems from there until I'm ready to come back for it.
The fleet took a BEATING in Macross from triple Ion Is, but I was able to pop both Tachyons and the local wh defenders without taking horrendous losses. The fleet retreated to homeworld immediately following, with the Z-Traders right behind 'em. Wicked. z-Gennie time!
Finally able to land a Scout I on Dyson it starts its job at 49:50. Let's see how long it takes to get itself sorted out.
When the Z-Traders arrive I buy a few toys for the homeworld. Armor Booster/Inhibitor, Radar Jammer II, and Z-Gennie. I would normally buy a Black Hole Generator as well for a whipping boy but in this case I'll pass. I WANT them to leave the homeworld instead of attacking if they choose for now. The Macross whipping boy will be another story. The only thing I'll build for now is the Z-Gennie, everything else is a materials dump for later just for self defense.
We're now going to fight a war of patience. Z-Gennie build + Dyson going to work. In the meanwhile... we'll deal with the never-ending waves. 251 ships at 50:39. I've got 7-10 minute interludes to do 'anything' then make sure I'm back here to deal with them right now. I plan to start nerfing Superterminal soon, as I eventually need access to Huge. While the Dyson works the east it's as good a time as any.
I'm reporting every wave not to be annoying but to show their volume. 176 ships announced at 51:16. Double wave, 400+ ships MK II. I need to let the fleet rebuild so the ZGen is deactivated at 1% build.
While waiting for the wave I check on Dyson. He's moving FAST. I may have to get in there sooner than I expected. Waves hitting Homeworld are trying to run from the fleet. This was expected, though not desired. However, it will create a 'wall' with the threatball from the Dyson if I wait too long.
A couple of cutlasses wandered over and started harassing Fraggle rock. I gave them 10 Basic Is and a grav as a deterrent. It was too little too late. I'm now in a MASSIVE brownout. Crap.
I'm barely able to get above water and keep the homeworld safe. The Fleet heads out to support Fraggle since I'm an idiot. the basics do eventually come back online and i've had to deactivate the AoE turrets and one of the homeworld FFs as well as the Raid SSs while those reactors rebuild.
Another wave of 86 ships announces at 54:11.
In the meanwhile, Dyson vs. Macross is now at the Dyson vs. EMP Guardian + Fortress II stage. Go Dyson! Please?
Econ's on the floor. To help out the Maws park under the inbound FFs and the fleet heads up to support. If I can't keep the turrets repaired they're just going to suck me dry on resources.
Dyson's not faring well against the FF at the moment, but they're trying. That's okay, I've got my own problems. I decide to drop another grav and 10 snipers on Fraggle as a little more insurance.
1:00:00. Status report, Ensign!
Sir, we're screwed!
Roger that, Carry on!
Alright, seriously, 1 hour point. Dyson's started being freed. Waves are some value of nasty. I'm not happy with my whipping boy setup but I don't really have the econ to relocate half of it. I also don't necessarily WANT to relocate half of it because of the secondary wormhole. What I want to do is move the blessed thing off to Macross... Pronto.
In the meanwhile I'm trying to build a Z-Generator that costs 3.6 mill of each component on the homeworld. That's not exactly screaming with speed. However, dyson's all choked up on the flank due to the fortress and the 1/5 second spawn just tearing them down. So, do I fight with patience? I think so.
Status is econ is hammered and I don't have a ton of options right now. I'm going to let Dyson work the main road while I work the backfield a bit. If Dyson gets ugly, I simply kill the scout.
-
Alright, first off, we need appropriate theme music. Tartanic it is.
Second off, no, we don't need beer. :) No matter HOW well it goes with Tartanic.
Fleet's rebuilt at 1:00:30. It's time to go to work on the western front. The Maws are staying behind for now to help with defenses.
First step, clear the entry for the Raids into SuperTerminal so they can clear the ions and the fleet can come back and do some work. Only having Raid SS Is I need to be a bit protective of them. I've decided I'm only going to activate the Z-Gennie build when I've got over 200k in materials and try to time it so I never have less than 50k.
Eventually I'll leave the Grenades behind on defense but right now I want the fodder.
Over 100 of my ships hit EMP mines on entry to SuperTerminal and they're lost to war, another 100 dying in the wh clearance. However, objective one completed at 1:02 (skipping seconds now). Raids can enter cleanly. The main fleet is heading home for resupply while my econ takes a dive again.
There's an EMP Guardian on SuperTerminal that I need to be careful about waking. However we're about to force abunch of threat to move off the planet with the Raids. It was a suicide mission, but a successful one. 38 ships freed on Superterminal as threat... which means they may travel to Fraggle. That's no good. Main fleet heads to Shawshank. Hopefully we can catch 'em on exit and not have to deal with the full MK III fleet. It works reasonably, but that's some heavy duty guardian.
1:04: 387 ship wave to Homeworld announced.
Main fleet finishes MK III threat cleanup and heads home before the wave arrives, however, most of the fleet is wrecked. Also massive engine damage has me scrap 40+ ships.
My Maws finally did a non-swallow again and this time I remembered to catch a save. Check the technical section. It also hosed me up pretty solid. Fleet is rebuilding. Raid SS replacement is really chewing into the available materials but that's just life on the farm.
Finally a bit of peace. Nothing announced, nothing attacking me, the Dyson is still doing a headbang against the fortress. Gods they're LEMMINGS! Look, it can kill me in one shot! I'll go in solo! WOOOHAAAA!!! Dumbass.
1:12: 345 ship wave for Homeworld announced. Let's hope the Maws work this time. Yep, they're chowin' down like hungry hippos. Very good. Heavy bomber wave, too, almost 250 of them were bombers.
Still waiting for my fleet to rebuild at 1:18, primarily the bombers, they got eradicated on the last assault. I think the Ions hunted the Bombers down in particular. Dyson's a moron. I'm going to have to go save it from itself eventually.
Okay, seriously, over two minutes of paralyzation from the EMP mines on some of my ships. That's inane. I need some of those... I need a LOT of those.
1:27: 457 ship wave to Homeworld. The Fleet's gotten 3 posts and 2 FF IIIs down on SuperTerminal. The Last Major obstacle there is the shieldpost with an EMP Guardian underneath it. AIP is now 40. Z-Gennie is at 10%.
That wave went down like butter with the Maws working. Excellent.
My entire fleet can't wake up a 45 ship planet... it's 571 ships. I really don't grok Firepower calculations.
1:32: 548 ship wave announced. The fleet, repaired and resupplied, is in SuperTerminal taking care of EMP issues. The Dyson is still playing lemmings. The wave arrives and is pretty well mixed, but it's 280 Tele Raiders. the numbers are basically perma-skewed in this fight.
In the meanwhile, ST has finally been nerfed and the fleet heads to open a hole into Huge for the Raids to pop the Ions... and I screw it up and get the raids in there FIRST... dumbass. I lost one and the raids head home for resupply. However, they did get the Huge wormhole guards to pop into ST and hit the main fleet.
I send the main fleet into huge and just soak the Ions while the fleet races to kill them. It works with huge losses, but almost all the ships in Huge are gone. I send the main fleet home. We've cleaned up the backfield but I want macross up before I take Huge. It's time to help out the Dyson.
1:38: 314 ship wave announced for homeworld.
I've let Twycross build up to 200 ships in the meanwhile, I'll have to pound through that to get at Macross and Dyson to help them out. There's 4 Ion Is on Macross. Utterly useless for the whipping boy when the AI starts at Tech II. I'll have to pop those.
I head east after cleaning up that wave and take the Maws along. First, we clean up Twycross a bit.
1:42: 310 ships to Homeworld announced. The fleet ignores it and the homeworld holds on its own.
At roughly 1:45 we've cleaned up Twycross and the fleet heads home for R&R. The Raid SSs head for Macross to clean up the ions. I end up micro'ing them around avoiding the threat I'm awakening in system. I'm hoping they'll play with the Dysons. They really seem to like my raids though.
It kind of works. The EMP at least got hung up on dysons but some of the threat chased me into Twycross. The fleet is hanging in Sushi waiting for the EMP to come to Twycross so they can meet on even ground...
The EMP wouldn't come out to play. YEESH! The Dysons do finally hunt it down though.
It's time to take a risk. It's 1:50 and I'm going to early-pop the Dyson so that I'm not fighting both it and the AI (particularly the fortress) in Macross. Then we go after Macross with the fleet once I see a wave come in and know what I'm dealing with. The only problem is there's a Command Station Shield Post on site. I'm able to pop them both before the neutrals kill the raids, but it's tough. I need to clean out the local posts to clear the eye but I decide to let the friendlies win first.
1:52: 547 ships to homeworld announced. AIP 61
Once again the Maws jammed. Heavy fleet involvement was required to stop the wave. Mind you, it never got near the real turret banks, but this is homeworld and I'm not in the mood to lose right now.
Meanwhile, Dyson has not one but TWO Stealth Guardposts. Oh skippee... Well, those were easy to find for once, both were on mineral deposits.
1:57: 577 ships to Homeworld.
This time the maws worked. It appears to have something to do with the last time they were moved and if you've been on screen a while. It's the best I've been able to troubleshoot from this side.
The fleet's in Macross harassing the locals and taking out the fortress. Once that's gone Dyson will eventually finish cleanup for me for anything but the guardposts. Since they're free, I send the fleet home once the Fortress is dead, with the bombers sticking around to deal with a spire shieldpost.
2:00:00: Macross is about done being taken. Need to pop the Cmd Post. AIP 64. Dyson's freed. Econ is strong but will be erased on whipping boy movement. Eye and other problems cleared off Dyson. Prepare to move the Whipping Boy.
In general, I haven't really done anything but use my smaller fleet to harass and abuse rearward systems. I'd hoped to have the Z-Gen higher than 15% by now but with waves and a lack of economy... meh. The Dyson was supposed to have done more work but it just got hung up on that fortress. However, I've got the backfield weeded of problems and can move forward for the moment. Once Macross is up, I can pop the DC in Craps, pick up the ARS in Huge, and then look into expanding outward with a solid and effective whipping boy, pulling the majority of turrets off of homeworld. Once I get down to the main Axis, Cyborg, I'll have a better idea of what I'm dealing with for the rest of the galaxy.
-
With econ approaching 400k/900k, I decide it's time to move to Macross. Also, a Science II has been moved to Huge. ARS choices: Autobomb as default, Space Tank and Gravity Drain as alternates.
Errr. Hrm. Not that Grav Drains aren't useful against cutlasses but the Space Tank seems like the best choice here.
That said, Defense is going to get NASTY. Autobombs could be VERY useful. I'm going to leave the Huge ARS for much later when I decide what I need from it.
2:07: 912 ship wave announced for Homeworld. I just BARELY popped the Macross station for that too. AIP 84.
Mil I station going up on Macross. Fleet is running like hell to protect homeworld in the meanwhile. They do get there in time and a bit of micro is needed to get the maws under FF. The wave is massive and half my fleet dies trying to block it. In the meanwhile I have to double up generators on Fraggle to keep up with power demands trying to get the whipping boy operational.
Basic setup on Macross: 10 Flaks/Lightnings inside the double FF protecting the Mil I station. This is to deter/smack teleporters. Everything else will be setup against the entry wormhole for now. Once I can get a BHG up I'll move the turrets back and use a minefield since they won't be able to leave.
2:10: 708 ships to Homeworld.
Ask and you shall receive. The Traders were kind enough to visit Macross while I was busy trying to get the whipping boy going. Fourpack in place.
With the whipping boy partially built and just deflecting a back to back, I head for Twycross to pop the Warp Gate.
AIP is now 89. Macross is now the front door. Production facilities are also moved forward to Macross, shutting down construction on homeworld. I strip homeworld of all but two additional FFs for the homeworld station, and 20 each of LRM, MLRM, Basic, Laser, and Sniper, and a few gravs, for self defense.
I've ruined my econ getting the whipping boy operational but that's acceptable. Now I need to show a bit of patience, which I don't have so we'll be heading to craps soon, once things get to a reasonable position in the whipping boy and my fleet's refilled.
2:17: 500 ships to Macross. Here we go. The whipping boy won't be fully built by the time they land but the majority of it is up. The fleet is hanging around, available, as backup just in case. However, the FFs weren't up and a ton of the wave escaped as threat once they took out the only one active. The Dysons chased into craps though to get 'em, and did some cleanup for me.
Well, as long as they were going to distract, my raids went in and got the DC and Ion Cannons. While they were there it didn't seem to do any harm to knock out a few guardposts too... like, all of them. My science vessels were happily draining the research away from Dyson about this time, and I was finally feeling a little safer. AIP 70 with a good strong whipping boy. 2:23. It's time to go play.
You've seen the rate of waves at this point. Unless something changes significantly or one comes in of significant difference I'm going to avoid mentioning them at this point. They're fast, 2/10 minutes roughly, and hit like hammers.
I was running low on scouts. Very low. It was time to open Scout IIs. 500 K down, 20 scout IIs up.
Another ARS at Kerensky. Well, I guess a new map is reasonable.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI102_30Map.png)
The yellow dots are currently known ARSs. Kerensky was going to end up being a major blockage though. It had a Youngling Weasel V Fab on it, which is of iffy value to me, but its packing an AI Eye, a Fort II, a spire shieldpost III, and 9 other guardposts. This was going to be a major hassle to get past.
Part of the price of playing the tree map though is that you end up with blockades like this you can't avoid. I will have to whittle this down somehow.
On a positive note, I was sitting on a ton of research. It was time to bring Raid SS IIs into play. They would help significantly here. I could get the fort if I could get rid of the eye.
Cyborg, the axle planet, was packing Bombard Vs and microParasite Fabs. They're not really worth the planetary AIP at the moment, but it does have a CSG-C... and that's as far as my Scout IIs can get at the moment without help.
Well, alright, transports to the rescue! Besides, I wanted to piss off some of my neighbors and get them to release a few guard dogs. Build out 5 transports, load 'em with 2/20 scout I/IIs, and ship 'em to confederation... on the off chance they'd survive I tried for Eridani. They got hosed up by a few grav guardians and didn't even make it through Cyborg, but they did deliver the load of scouts into a safe zone. Setting up a Scout I as a picket I move the rest off to their targets.
Well, found a second Co-P at Confederation, along with a PAIR of Counterstrike IIs and a Fortress... and a CSG-D. Eridani, breaking from form, doesn't have an ARS or anything else of note this round.
I did, however, manage to start building myself up a beautiful little threatball over in Craps. *rolls eyes* I build off a pair of cloaking SSs for the next run... though I'm still waiting on my Raid IIs. They finish by 2:30. I figure my neighboring threatball will invade with the next wave, shouldn't have too long to wait.
Econ's still on the floor... but I'd really like to get eyes on Kirk and Earth. We all know why. I still can't quite get them through though. I'm going to have to pop some Tach posts to get them down there... 2:36 and no wave. It's like it KNOWS....
I wait. Econ could use it anyway. Operating econ is 628m/848c / second. Gonna take a while to get that Z-Gennie up, nevermind the Whipping Boy Toys. Kerensky is a 4/3 planet with the ARS but I can't hold it if I want to whipping boy Macross from Craps, as I'd end up splitting the waves. Cyborg's a 3/2 but I'm not really happy about taking that. Confed's a 2/2. Depending on what's in Blackjack I'll have to take one of those 3 as a stepping stone... though I might just deepstrike.
I know I said I'd stop announcing waves but the #'s moved hard:
2:38 1156 ships to Macross announced. My word. I pull the fleet back to Twycross, I want to see what the Whipping Boy can handle. I also save in self defense.
190 bombers, 423 cutlasses, 190 fighters, 81 frigs, 116 T-Leeches, and a carrier with 153 units. Oh skippee!!! *facepalm* 71 Gatlings to help out. Held without an issue. Excellent.
However, the threatball did NOT move. The Dysons however are taking a towtruck over to Craps and getting them out of their parking spot.
2:44 1200 ships to Macross
Meanwhile, my Raids are working over Kerensky's spireshieldpost III. That'll take a while. My fleet in Twycross, however, gets jammed up by a Black Hole generator! Lousy evil... 10 AIP to clear the way home for the fleet or I self-destruct 570 ships. Oh, you lousy lousy SO AND SO!
I could pop it and take the system but that's no better. ARGH. dangit. Lousy son...
Fine. BOOM, +10 AIP. I am NOT happy about that. Trader re-buys should not be AIP causing.
I prep a cloaked repair team with transport to head to Kerensky to support the Raid SSs. However, for some reason my cloakers insta-pop on entry to Kerensky. I poke around at the system trying to figure out why. The Tach post on entry is gone. It's almost acting like there's a cloak-cannon on the planet, but I can't see it if it is.
Part of the problem is the non-scrolling 'cloaked' screen. See attached screenshot for what I'm talking about.
Well, whatever it is it's pissing me off. It might be the minefield however.
At around 2:58 I lost my remaining Raid SSs to the Fortress on Kerensky taking down a post and most of an Ion Cannon. Meh. almost done in there though. One post to go. Z-gennie is turned off construction at 40% to allow for the rebuild of the Raid SSs. I'm not dripping in alternatives to deal with the AI Eye in my way right now. Waves seemed to have settled down a bit though, even though AIP is now at 82.
3:00:00 status:
Whipping boy up. Kerensky nearly cleared. Fleet is healthy, other than the Raid SSs. Z-Gennie is at 40% and other Trader toys are weak and ignored. Research has 2500 K available to it in case I need a quick boost of something.
Bedtime for Bonzo.
-
Well, with a quick Raid SS I run against the last post Kerensky lost its AI Eye. With that completed it was time to move forward with the fleet and see if I could open some holes into the galaxy. I got a look at Blackjack and it's a 0/1 planet with nothing special on it. Skippee. SolarMoon's no better but it's a 4/1. Still not finding anything of significant interest.
The first run didn't go so great, too many guardians peeled off after the bomber squad trying to take down the fortress and chewed up my bomber fleet. The rest of the fleet headed home for R&R.
The whipping boy is holding but I'm constantly having to rebuild the entry FFs. I'm going to need to do something about this... and there's a carrier that escaped into the wild to boot, 579 ships just hanging around out there now... Not good. Waiting on the Raids to rebuild who are acing my econonmy to boot. Only one left luckily.
Llama, the Axle for the east, has a CSG-D and a pair of Counterstrike IVs on it. Well, that's probably not my best choice. Ceasar, over on the west, has an ARS and a Data Center. It's also got A Mass Driver and a Fort III. Man this galaxy's nasty.
CPA Just announced at 3:16 for 663 ships. The fleet's going to do some cleanup in the rear to make sure that nothing comes from behind for now. Shawshank has built up to 270 ships and Twycross is at 127. Time for cleanup. There's not much I can do about the 75 on Janeway as the Eye still lives. The Raids are enroute to deal with that.
With 5 minutes to spare Janeway is emptied and the rear-ward systems are brought down to reasonable reinforcements. That'll force everything to come in from the front. I pulled the Raid SSs back to Fraggle to help defend the CC for now from drifters.
At 3:24 with the CPA still inbound my fleet went out for Kerensky again. Re thinking it, the main fleet stayed home and the bombers alone went out to Kerensky. To make sure I wasn't bored, another 1200 ship wave (average is ~850) decides to land about the same time the CPA frees up.
The bombers finished theri mission in Kerensky and dragged almost a full cpa back with 'em running for Macross. Strangely the CPA release isn't in the message log. The Dyson's troops went out to meet the CPA over in Craps and are currently trying to towtruck the enemy off the wormhole.
3:30: The CPA and waves are cleared, and the fleet's rebuilt. It's time to push forward while the galaxy's a little more empty since the CPA was kind enough to empty huge swaths of it for me.
3:43: After taking the fleet down and punching holes through the enemy to Confederation, I finally managed to get scouts down onto Earth. YEAH!
Posts: Core Booster x1, Electric x3, Leech x1, Missile x1, Neinzul Melee x1, Neinzul Spawner x1, SpireShield x1, ZBombard x1. Woots! For extra ships he's got paralyzers. I've never seen a Melee before and i can't seem to find it on the unit list screen when I'm in the system, either. Eventually I found it, it's not in the 'post listing' at the bottom. What's this puppy do... Tachyon, Seeking, Radar Dampening, Mobile guard post?! Daaaang. It's a viscious little ram but nothing rediculous... immune to a ton of stuff tho'.
BUT NO RAID OR CPA! WOOOOOHAAAAAAA!!!!! (Better check Riker and soon, 'eh?)
However, over half the fleet was wrecked so they went home for R&R. I can't get scouts down into Desperado (the other arm near Earth) as Kirk is apparently pretty beefy, so I'm not sure what's in there.
Blackjack's a MK IV world. Having resupplied at Macross, the fleet moves back out to try to pound Blackjack down so the scouts can get deep enough to scrounge around. I could take Kerensky and its ARS but I'm holding off for now. However, the Science II goes to investigate. IREs with EyeBots and Acid Sprayers as alternates. Not having Exos or the like IREs are a bit underwhelming for this fleet, I'll be hacking Kerensky it looks like. Hm, Raiders or Bomber Killers?
Enroute to Blackjack, my fleet has to tackle a 550 unit carrier. Minimal losses with Gatling backup coming through to help in Craps. MK IVs are worse than 500 MK IIs, joy. I can only clear about half of Blackjack before the fleet has to make a run for it or get wiped. One thing about Maws. Once you start losing badly you end up reinforcing the enemy, and I lost most of them. The fleet didn't make it home, but two of 10 fully loaded maws did. yay?
Doing a fleet rebuild now at 3:57. Z Gennie is at 58%. I did however completely empty out Blackjack of defenders. :)
4:00 status:
Admiral! We've established the chokepoint and are currently doing diplomatic work with the Dyson! The fleet was ruined but we've gotten deep into a number of regions and paved the way for future assaults and scouting! We've defended a CPA and are well established defensively.
Very good. Carry on.
-
Scouting continues while the fleet rebuilds. Another Data Center is found as well as a Factory IV down in one of the Southwest arms. I haven't posted a map recently because I'm kind of waiting until I've got most of it scouted before I go through the trouble to mark up an in-line map. Reviewing Ceasar there's a fortress guarding the inbound wormhole and 166 MK III ships in there that can make me a little crazy. I'll have to bait the WH clear so I can get the bombers in to clear the entryway if I want to get into the deep west.
On the east, I've found two side by side Z-Gennies at Liao and Blackstone. They're not heavily entrenched but getting past the Mk IV world Llama right now would be difficult, but something I'll have to do soonish to get near Riker. I've still only found two of the Co-Ps though.
At 4:15 the fleet's rebuilt. Kerensky has to fall for both the ARS and the stepping stone it'll create for 2 worlds deeper worth of fighting. I've found another ARS on the NE sector off Llama, this one with Spiver Vs and Speed Boosters up at Hacker. I'm not exactly impressed with the fabs but meh.
It's time to hack Kerensky, I feel. Acid Sprayers with their new upgrades are now quite viable in combat and particularly useful against the Bomber IVs that usually hose me up since I don't tend to upgrade Fighters, and the additional critical mass will help with later assaults on the blockade worlds of Ceasar and Llama. I've got 3 Science IIs waiting to help absorb the research off the planet once we're ready. I prepare a ship design hacker for transport to Kerensky.
AIP is 85. Waves are averaging 800 ships or so, with extremes of 200-1400. Time to see what a hack-job does.
I park the defenders on the wormhole heading back to safe space. The fight's not TOO bad, but they are MK III spawns. I eventually move the fleet down towards the command center to try to keep the guardians from getting significant range on me. This being the first hack not too much in rediculous is occurring.
However, the tachyon pulse + reinforcements made me 'move' the ship-hacker... resetting the timer. I reload the hacker into the transport and bring the troops home for R&R. New plan is needed.
I start building off 4 Riot Is with 2xFFs. That'll help protect the hacker when I bring it in closer to the fleet for protection. Well, that only kind of works, I'm having power problems again. Bring Macross up to 2x Reactors as well. I really need to get the Z-Gennie up. With the Riots built I head for Kerensky again with the fleet and hacker in transport.
During the second assault about 250 escaped cutlasses from a recent wave get themselves involved. They don't lay into the fleet TOO badly, but the maws required some decent micro to stay out of the way. By five minutes left half the fleet was dead. I grabbed rebuilds from Macross and shipped them to Kerensky. Those reinforcements ran into an EMP guardian and had to deal with that in Craps before continuing on. I'm going to have to Neuter Craps and clear those WH guardians soon. Particularly since a spider guardian keeps hosing up some of my fleet.
With the reinforcements heavily distracted playing chase the spider and engine problems, the main fleet had to handle the hack with whatever it had left. Micro'ing the maws was a necessity. Watching a Raid SS hare off as an Exo-attack was priceless. XD It wasn't too bad though, really, we were able to hold our own once we had established and the Maws were in position to immedately eat any cmd center builds.
Hack completed at 4:39. Fleet heads home for R&R... and to WH kill Craps, grrr.
On their way home I saw a neat little independent fleet that might be useful for general cleanups. Riot Is (with perhaps backup from IIs) and a heavy Missile Frigate upgraded fleet could hold MANY things at range while pounding through an area. It's worth a try sometime. I'm not usually a fan of ED but with that kind of range... maybe.
With the fleet pounding out WH Posts on Craps, I prep a small team to take over Macross. 5 Engi Is, Colony Ship, and the RAid SSs to pop the cmd center. I wait for a wave to pop before I unload and build out the new colony, but the Cmd station's dead. AIP is 106.
I'm looking at Craps and realizing it's alerted no matter what I do. I'm tempted to drop in a minefield in the Kerensky - Macross run, but realize I'd have to figure out a way to keep a permanent rebuilder presense in the system. I'll think on that while I screw around with other things. A simple minefield through that system would be helpful.
4:49 and it looks like the AI is waiting to do max-time waves. Bugger all. 2 WHGPs down though.
I wonder if I setup a cloaked Constructor and auto-built on the enemy planet if that would work. Well, worth a shot... hm, that'd be a no, the auto-builds for a planet only work on friendly planets. Meh.
Is it bad that not seeing a wave for 3 minutes longer than I'd expected is actually making me nervous?! XD
4:54 and 3 WHGPs down, last one to go... still waiting... Z-Gen's up to 84% though.
4:57 and a wave finally announces. 1887 ships to Macross. That's one of them. The fleet heads home as a just in case as they finish up the last WHGP... where's the doublewave? Hm.
At 5:00 the other wave finally announces, 2045 ships. I'm currently chasing down the escaped Carrier of 800+ ships in Craps while I try to get the endless minefield (that took FOREVER to setup in a straight line) up and running in Craps. With the second wave announced I can finally build out in Kerensky once I get some defenders to it.
When the second wave hits I see just how much 400+ Teleport Raiders can do to a pair of low-end FFs. Hrm. Luckily they don't last long enough to do any lasting damage. We're dealing with a massive fleet rebuild again though, however with Kerensky under control and Acid Sprayers being built (as well as research coming in) I should be alright. Pair of max-timers indeed... :P!
I'm going to send back a cap of MK V weasels to help defend Macross. Needless to say with my economy floored again this will take a bit.
Having gotten research, ARS, and a full squad of Weasels out of Kerensky by 5:08, I blow the cmd station to remove wave-confusion. It's a shame about the fab but nothing I can do about it. In the meanwhile the mines are rebuilding in Craps for the Kerensky-Macross run...
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI10MacrossMining.png)
You don't want to know how long that took.
Now, what to do with 5500 K. I wanted 6000 K but I needed those scout IIs. I've got 2.5k to play with. I'd wanted to immediately head for bomber III but perhaps Frigate MK II would be a worthy upgrade. While waiting on the fleet to rebuild I contemplate. I decide more defense is needed.
I purchase Basic IIs, HBC Is, and HFF Is, and drop them mostly on the Whipping Boy with a smattering on Homeworld. In the meanwhile, to show off, Craps has reinforced an EMP Guardian. *rolls eyes*. Nice.
5:16 and still waiting on fleet rebuild. 3250 in K left, I'll MK III my bombers after the next planet, and AIP is 107. (97 without that damnable BHG purchase by the AI!)
Meanwhile, a single frigate is killing the weasel fab. Oh, shucks. More reasonable waves are announced at 1332 ships at 5:18. However, it's double-waving now, 1332 and 1232. Niiiice... However, wathing 160 rebel ships + 107 Dyson Gatlings race to eat the inbounds is always pretty, and the minefield worked like a charm. Just need to not leave the rebuilders on auto-rebuild and wait. However, apparently Carriers are immune to mines. That's cute.
5:30 and STILL waiting to rebuild the fleet. Gyeah. A Massive buildup of troops has started to form in Shawshank and Twycross. I'm going to scour the backfield before moving forward once we're fully built. Power problems are also hassling me, I'm blowing up un-needed transports and ship hackers and the like to conserve power. With the Z-Gennie at 89% I decide it's time to finally finish the poor thing.
The two planets are cleared with minimal losses and we proceed back to the east for R&R and to continue clearing pathways for the scouts.
I screwed up and had to savescum and repeat this because instead of trying to build FFIs I accidentally unlocked FF IIs in the wrong screen. ::) This time a double wave of 2500 ships announces for Macross. That should be nice and ugly.
5:39: 871 ship CPA announced. Cleaning out the back is a lot more important now. Had to turn off the Z-Gennie briefly at 97% to allow the fleet rebuild to finish.
At 5:43 the Z-Gen is finally completed. Next up is the BHG on Macross so I can research and then build EMP Mines on the wormhole.
The fleet cleaned up the mess in Craps that was keeping my rebuilders and engis from rebuilding the minefield. Then the fleet hid in Macross. 421 MK II, 13 MK I, 437 MK III freed. Yep, we're hiding.
I hit Ceasar about 6:00'ish, and my Raids went in first to take down the local Ions and popped the local Data Center while visiting. They died to the Mass Driver but succeeded in knocking out the three Ions. My bomber fleet went in next to take out the camping fortress, and over half of them suffered a 2.5 minute paralysis due to the minefield on the wormhole. Ow.
The main fleet dealt with backwash and then went home. Bombers vs. Fort III is Ceasar, and the rest can't even get in the WH without losing half the fleet. I'm going to need to start sending in Fighters as fodder for the minefields on Red planets.
Mistakenly I try to take the remaining bombers on that planet and get out of the wh guardian shots... and hit another minefield. Those 50 bombers are squish. At least a good chunk of the local minefield problems and guardian protectors are moved out at this point.
Refilled with bombers at 6:06, the fleet heads back out for Ceasar, round 2.
By 6:15 the fleet had finally cut away enough of the firepower in Ceasar to get scouts through to the deep corners of the southwestern arms. And found nothing for their troubles. It was time to work our way east a bit more and see into all the dark corners other then the final bit of the Riker arm.
I snuck my Raids into one of the back corners and took out another Data Center that had been located, bringing AIP to 70 again. It was a bit of a suicide run and the raids died returning to Macross, but worth it. 3/4 CoPs located.
235 MK IV ships + 4 Ion cannons on Llama. Just great.
Finally found the fourth CoP, it's down in Desperado. They also have Plave Vs, StarBomb IVs, and Blade Spaner V Fabs... and a Raid Engine (non-core). Planet is a MK III. Mutter. If I want the CoPs I'll have to take on both the coreworld to get through to Desperado as well as dealing with the Raid Spawns. I knew I was getting off too easy. Scout map shortly, just want to dig into the east a bit more.
Well, at 6:35 ish the fleet punched a hole into LLama, but it cost me over 500 ships to do so. Two of the ions went down as well, however. The Fleet's heading home for R&R while the Raid SSs which should be about rebuilt prepare for a run. MK IV guardians enmasse are painful.
However, ALERT ALERT... 700 ships heading to HOMEWORLD on a wave. WTF?! A gate guardian must have spawned. Oh, CRAP. It's in twycross. Next stop: Blow away all the wormhole posts to remove # of guardians in backfield against homeworld. Joy.
The main fleet's running for homeworld (what's left of it, but there ain't much to discuss there. Everything I had built up at Macross ran for homeworld to help the defenses hold. Luckily a large chunk of them were Teleport Raiders, which died enmasse easily enough.
It was a desperate defense until the maws got there to save the day... and it's not a gate guardian, the damned AI bought a new warp gate off the traders. Son of a gun! AIP 76 (that's 15 AIP that Twycross has cost me in rebuilds now from the traders).
At 6:45 ish the Raids finished Ion removal on Llama and a number of guardians came out to play... and died in the minefield in Craps. It was a beautiful thing.
My gods, flak guardians under glass are NASTY to a light fleet. When I took the half-fleet that was left near the cmd center to clean off some of the enemies, I woke half the planet. The Maws took off running while the rest of the fleet did a moving rear-action to protect the maws from dumping thier cargos. There was nothing left of the fleet after trying to slow down the enemy chasing the maws.
The maws made it mostly safely to the mining run, and hauled for Macross, hoping to not dump out 100+ MK IV ships on the doorstep. On a positive note, there's only 36 ships left in Llama! ;D
At a little after 7 hours I'm still only owning three planets, though I've popped 5. As promised, here's where I'm at right now:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI107HrMap.png)
The yellow dots are untaken ARSs, the blue ones are the Fact IVs. The purple circles are the CoP locations. Desperado is the Raid Engine. I'll have to deal with that one way or another before I go after Earth. At least it's not CSG protected, just need to get down there.
Blackstone has one last Data Center I can pop.
So, the CSG map:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI107HRCSGmap.png)
Here's where things could get tricky. The CSG-E in the Riker arm (that's HotStar, btw) is a great jump-point to slam into Riker at exactly four worlds out. Alright, that's the CSG-E. Of the D's... well, i'm not sure yet. It might be Llama (the MK IV that feeds the Riker arm) simply because that's a 3/4 world for resources. However, I'm at 7 hours, I may just wait for the rebel colony. Of the two Fact IVs, Argyle in the Southwest is the better bet being a 3/1 planet instead of a 3/0 planet and NOT being a MK IV world. It's also in the middle of BFE, whereas Davion would be MUCH easier to hold from the viewpoint of working the Riker arm.
In regards to the ARSs, I'll get back to you after I get science scouts on them as to which of those two I'm going to take. If I end up taking the one up at Hacker, however, I'll definately be simply whacking that entire arm from Llama up, and using Davion as my Fact IV. That leaves me just the CSG-C, which is going to most likely be Desperado once I clean things up down there. Those fabricators are quite tasty and I want 'em.
However, all of this can pretty much wait until the Rebel Colony spawns at this point. I'll do cleanup with the fleet for now and finish up the brawls I've been doing but I want to wait for the rebels, as that may allow me to overlap something or make a better decision.
-
The Main Event!
Been slammed with getting AVWW 1.1 ready, but good to see this going again now that the Dyson has been (theoretically) educated that this game is not actually all about it.
First reinforcement since logging was 19:13, next was 22:25. So, approximately 3 minute between reinforcements. This is actually easier to see in Mainthread.txt:
5/29/2012 10:43:22 PM (5.035) 0:19:13 ReinforcementCounter reached > 2400 for player 9 (since game was loaded, took 192 checks of (10+rand(2 or 3))[/quote]Yea, that "192 checks" really means 192 seconds since it is checked once a second. The random is basically just to eventually created a degree of staggering between the players, because 192 flips of a coin where heads is 2 and tails is 3 produces an average [i]rather[/i] close to 2.5.
[quote]so, besides missing a parentheses at the end there, what are we looking at. AIP is 11. # of Reinforcements are 3. Erm? I own *1* planet. Alright, that's not what I expected but sure, whatever.[/quote]Normally it'd be 1, but since you're playing on "10 Kill Me Please" it adds 2.
[quote][code]Planets in order of planned reinforcement attempt (note: alerted planets will get two lines, and a line with priority >= 2000 will get tried twice) :
17 (Shawshank) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
42 (Twycross) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
29 (Riker) (homeworld, +500) reinforce priority = 500
27 (Earth) (homeworld, +500) reinforce priority = 500
26 (Kirk) (core, +300) reinforce priority = 300
12 (Three Kings) (core, +300) reinforce priority = 300
17 (Shawshank) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
42 (Twycross) (alerted) reinforce priority = 0
(33 more reinforceable planets that are not alerted and have reinforcement priority = 0
Well now, THAT'S odd. It sent reinforcements to Shawshank, Twycross, and then Shawshank again... ignoring Riker heading up the list in third place.
That is odd. It should have reinforced Riker on the third one.
(sounds of code rummaging, piercing screams, etc)
Ah, that is an important discovery, then. It keeps looping over the alerted planets until it either runs out of reinforcements or fails to reinforce any of them in the most recent loop. So basically if you have any alerted planets (which is basically always unless there's an accident with a warp jammer and a time machine) with room for more reinforcements it's just going to dump everything on them and ignore the rest of the galaxy. Including, quite notably, the homeworlds and coreworlds.
I've amended the logging in my working copy to put a line after the alerted planets in that list saying that it will keep trying them if they're reinforceable.
******calling SendReinforcementsToPlanet on planet 17 (Shawshank), StrengthBudget = 0
(snip)
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType call, reinforcementStrength = 1.89
numberShips = Floor(reinforcementStrength) = 1
StrengthBudget += 3 = 3
Quite the non-sequitur. What was happening is that numberShips is fed into a variety of logical gymnastics that results in an objectsToBuild list that's generally been padded with some stuff, and the length of that list (3 in this case) is interpreted as the overall strength. I've amended the logging to make that a little clearer
--- AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 3
bought 1 EngineerDrone for 5
total count bought: 1, total strength spent: 5, remaining = -2
This is one case where that doesn't work out so well ;) Sure, an engineers normal cap is something like 5x lower than the standard, and normally that means strength is proportionately higher. But it's an engineer. Got a fix in my working copy for that now. Not a big deal in the current game, though, because it'll hit the per-planet max of 6 engineer drone (mkI) pretty fast and stop trying to seed them, iirc.
--- AIBuyShipsFromList StrengthBudget = 2
bought 1 MineLayer for 3.34
MineLayer is the internal name for Remains Rebuilder, fyi. Back in the day it was really just for rebuilding mines.
With four guardposts it maxes off at 400 units maximum for popcap (per AI). However, this says it maxes off at 700 ships. I'd thought it was 1000 (10 posts = max cap). It's obviously not.
It varies with unit scale. The thing where 10 guard posts is important is that once you're at or over 110 AIP a planet with fewer than 10 guard posts is getting extra spawns on its command station. The corrolary is that you can always reduce reinforcement size by killing guard posts in excess of 10 on a planet.
AIP/270 and it minimums at strength 1. That means until AIP 270 while you'll reinforce more planets (because of the # you've taken), you won't see more reinforcements PER reinforcement until you've pushed AIP above 270. I think.
However, I'm reviewing the initial strength calculation for the command center. That's based on AIP/10 with AIDiff modifiers. However, there's a few lines in here I'm not quite sure I understand.
Right: the guard post reinforcements don't start getting heavier until AIP 271. The command station reinforcements start getting heavier with every point in AIP (in your game it would cap at around 4800 AIP, so no cap really). And once AIP gets high enough or guard post population gets low enough that can get fairly significant.
Reinforcement strength = 1.54, which floors to 1. Then it gets a += of 2 which SHOULD bring it to 3 but leaves it at 2. Not quite sure how that works.
That's the non-sequitur I was talking about: the 1 for numberShips feeds into the creation of the objectsToBuild list (for the command station pulse, not the guard post ones, totally different function actually) and the size of that determines how much "strength" is contributed to the pool. No, it doesn't really make a lot of sense, but it was the best merger I could think of between the old way and supporting the "carry over" math I needed to properly police how it picked low-cap ships (blade spawners, etc).
Now, we go into the first pulse, where in theory the pulse is at least 1. Then for some reason, the strength budget gets itself a += 3
SpecialForcesCommandPost pulses are larger; notice the rest of the posts get += 1.
I... don't get it. Maybe that's the point though.
Security through obscurity!
1:00:00. Status report, Ensign!
Sir, we're screwed!
Roger that, Carry on!
:D
Now to actually read the rest...
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The Main Event!
Been slammed with getting AVWW 1.1 ready, but good to see this going again now that the Dyson has been (theoretically) educated that this game is not actually all about it.
The dyson is currently sending me hate mail about your lies... and I'd figured you were kinda slammed, haven't really seen you posting anywhere.
Yea, that "192 checks" really means 192 seconds since it is checked once a second. The random is basically just to eventually created a degree of staggering between the players, because 192 flips of a coin where heads is 2 and tails is 3 produces an average rather close to 2.5.
Yep, makes sense, was just pointing out how it worked out in reality. :)
Normally it'd be 1, but since you're playing on "10 Kill Me Please" it adds 2.
8)
That is odd. It should have reinforced Riker on the third one.
(sounds of code rummaging, piercing screams, etc)
Ah, that is an important discovery, then. It keeps looping over the alerted planets until it either runs out of reinforcements or fails to reinforce any of them in the most recent loop. So basically if you have any alerted planets (which is basically always unless there's an accident with a warp jammer and a time machine) with room for more reinforcements it's just going to dump everything on them and ignore the rest of the galaxy. Including, quite notably, the homeworlds and coreworlds.
I've amended the logging in my working copy to put a line after the alerted planets in that list saying that it will keep trying them if they're reinforceable.
Cool. I'd figured it was something of that nature but couldn't really puzzle out the result.
Quite the non-sequitur. What was happening is that numberShips is fed into a variety of logical gymnastics that results in an objectsToBuild list that's generally been padded with some stuff, and the length of that list (3 in this case) is interpreted as the overall strength. I've amended the logging to make that a little clearer.
Cool. I appreciate you going through this but I've a feeling it can sincerely wait until after 1.1 AVWW, or even 1.2. I have a feeling turning this into something that it can communicate for itself without having all of the internal functions exposed will be difficult at best.
This is one case where that doesn't work out so well ;) Sure, an engineers normal cap is something like 5x lower than the standard, and normally that means strength is proportionately higher. But it's an engineer. Got a fix in my working copy for that now. Not a big deal in the current game, though, because it'll hit the per-planet max of 6 engineer drone (mkI) pretty fast and stop trying to seed them, iirc.
Heh, I'd missed that one. Sounds like costing for both Engis and Minelayers should be significantly reduced.
With four guardposts it maxes off at 400 units maximum for popcap (per AI). However, this says it maxes off at 700 ships. I'd thought it was 1000 (10 posts = max cap). It's obviously not.
It varies with unit scale. The thing where 10 guard posts is important is that once you're at or over 110 AIP a planet with fewer than 10 guard posts is getting extra spawns on its command station. The corrolary is that you can always reduce reinforcement size by killing guard posts in excess of 10 on a planet.
Aye, but check this out from the wiki:
http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Border_Aggression (http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Border_Aggression)
In theory aggression will occur at 3300 - AIP (let's average it at 200 for sanity). So at 3100 units CBA will start occurring. I'm at Normal caps, which is 1/2 caps from High, which I believe is where all calculations are based against. So, even at 1400/AI cap, that's 2800 ships it'll max off at in a system. Even at AI 10/10 you're not going to see CBA until you've hit 500 AIP. That just doesn't sound right.
Right: the guard post reinforcements don't start getting heavier until AIP 271. The command station reinforcements start getting heavier with every point in AIP (in your game it would cap at around 4800 AIP, so no cap really). And once AIP gets high enough or guard post population gets low enough that can get fairly significant.
That's particularly important for early game strategies. I play late game at low AIP but everyone plays low AIP early game. This thing needs sun-shine and sparkles on it for emphasis. ;D
That's the non-sequitur I was talking about: the 1 for numberShips feeds into the creation of the objectsToBuild list (for the command station pulse, not the guard post ones, totally different function actually) and the size of that determines how much "strength" is contributed to the pool. No, it doesn't really make a lot of sense, but it was the best merger I could think of between the old way and supporting the "carry over" math I needed to properly police how it picked low-cap ships (blade spawners, etc).
Yeaaaah, um, I'm gonna just nod my head at that for now. I'm not even sure where ObjectsToBuild comes from. :P
SpecialForcesCommandPost pulses are larger; notice the rest of the posts get += 1.
AH! That helps!
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Many thanks for the save with the maws getting lockjaw. It dutifully occurred for me too; I didn't actually debug to find out exactly why it wasn't eating, but I made a change in my working copy that makes it fall back on trying to eat whatever it's shooting at if the normal logic fails. Retested with your save, result: happy meals for everyone.
On the cloaked ships description flowing over the end... yea, it's a mess. Really it's not even supposed to tell you what's there, but we've let it go on doing that because it's helpful to know if someone's cloaking-stalked planet has a mess of raptors or rebuiders. But one of the side effects is trying to pack way too much info into that box when there's a bunch of distinct types.
Meanwhile, a single frigate is killing the weasel fab.
Missile Frigate? Weasel Fab? Now that's downright poetic. "You want missiles? I got missiles!".
However, apparently Carriers are immune to mines. That's cute.
Instead of 3rd fingers, this game has immunities. Well, I guess the RNG really takes that place. Just be glad we don't have anything with randomized immunities. Very glad.
and it's not a gate guardian, the damned AI bought a new warp gate off the traders
I didn't even remember it could do that.
Here I was thinking that was pretty much a gimme-faction for the players.
Zenith TradersTraitors.
Cool. I appreciate you going through this but I've a feeling it can sincerely wait until after 1.1 AVWW, or even 1.2. I have a feeling turning this into something that it can communicate for itself without having all of the internal functions exposed will be difficult at best.
I'm ok with it not being crystal-clear to non-developers; what I'm concentrating on is bits of the logging that I don't understand ;) Reading that bit where it went from numberShips = 1 to strength += 3 was a head-scratcher for me and I had to look it up.
More important is stuff like the "it never actually reinforces a non-alerted planet until all the alerted planets are full" logic, which isn't a bug but is a vital bit of info, and the "engineers are costing as much as 5 high-cap-scale fighters", which is a bug.
This is working out a lot like when we added wave logging, actually: there was about a metric ton or two of really screwy bugs with wave calculations, but after a month or two of distributed scrutiny of the actual math and logic, it got real clean.
Aye, but check this out from the wiki:
http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Border_Aggression
In theory aggression will occur at 3300 - AIP (let's average it at 200 for sanity). So at 3100 units CBA will start occurring. I'm at Normal caps, which is 1/2 caps from High, which I believe is where all calculations are based against. So, even at 1400/AI cap, that's 2800 ships it'll max off at in a system. Even at AI 10/10 you're not going to see CBA until you've hit 500 AIP. That just doesn't sound right.
I don't even know if that wiki article is remotely correct anymore, it's basically two years old. But I didn't write the mechanic, so I don't know one way or the other right now. Will make a note to look when I have a moment, though.
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On the cloaked ships description flowing over the end... yea, it's a mess. Really it's not even supposed to tell you what's there, but we've let it go on doing that because it's helpful to know if someone's cloaking-stalked planet has a mess of raptors or rebuiders. But one of the side effects is trying to pack way too much info into that box when there's a bunch of distinct types.
If the bug that reveals cloaked unit types is made an official feature, I have proposed something that will make this sort of display much more compact and friendly.
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=6422#c20391
Also see Hearteater's proposed revision to make it even more compact and nice at http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=6422#c20595
which I endorse (iff this bug becomes a feature)
Also, if this bug becomes a feature, my tip of the day (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2454) will have to be updated.
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Awesome news on the Maws, thanks Keith.
Alright, where was I... right, 2000 ship wave inbound... fleet smashed but Raids ready, AIP 78, a little buildup in the backfield, mines on Craps were rebuilding... and me figuring out how to smash a Raid Engine since I've beaten Llama down.
Two ARSs to examine with the Science IIs (which I blew up for power, need a new one) so I need to punch cloaker holes into Hacker. Ceasar is actually cloak-open. Build and ship time...
Anything else? Nah, that should cover immediate goals. Alright, Operation What's My (Construction) Line? to commence. Let's see what's in the ARSs while determining a course of action to hammer Desperado open and get a scout to Riker. That should pretty much cover the time till Rebels.
BHG on Macross is at 78%. When that finishes I intend to save the game and try repositioning the turrets/FFs on the Craps WH and test out EMP Mines.
Massive amounts of ships (400+) escaped the Macross wave and ran into the field in Craps. The Rebel Random Support Fleets + Dysons are just wailing away on them.
ARS in Ceasar has Infiltrators as primary (errr, no, they don't really work for me), with Electric Shuttles and Zenith E-Bombers as secondaries. You know, if raider type units wouldn't set off Raid Engines and the like, maybe that would help bring back 'guerilla warfare' mentalities to smaller unit operations. Daydreaming again.
Anyway, E-shuttles aren't bad but I consider them more an AI attrition unit then I care about having them in the player arsenal. Zenith E-Bombers are concentrated fire magnets, but I already have a few of those in the Maws so that's not a horrible thing. If I go for Ceasar's ARS, it'll be a hack-job for E-Bombers. Best of the litter, really. Those Autobombers on Huge look better and better...
Around 7:17 the fleet's fully rebuilt from nearly scratch and I take them on a tour of the backfield to clean up reinforcement litter of about 300 ships on Shawshank and Twycross. Might as well broom them now before we head out. That takes about 4 minutes total round trip and the fleet heads back to Macross, R&Rs, and heads out for Llama again. Need to break the cloak-block on Hacker and finish breaking Llama open.
(Sings along with Alanis Morisette a bit while waiting for the fleet to travel...)
Half tempted to deepstrike the Riker arm to force scouts all the way to Riker... I'll think about it.
About 7:28 I finish breaking Llama and getting the Ion off Hacker. Science II drops by for a visit and finds Armor Boosters as the primary with Munitions Boosters and Sentinel Frigates as the secondaries.
Hm, Sentinel Frigates. Munitions Boosters. These are a few of my favorite things. Armor Boosters can go rot until armor is re-evaluated usually, however. Remember, the Huge ARS has Space Tanks as an alternate. Space Tanks + Armor Boosters?! Hmmmmmmmmm......
The only problem with THAT grand plan is armor boosters have the lifespans of mayflies with half a mill in hp and a ship cap of 17. Even at 1 mill/15 for the MK IIs, it's just not enough to boost *1* ship type.
So, ARS choices (I've hacked one already remember):
Huge: Autobomber (Space Tank/Grav Drain)
Ceasar: Infiltrator (Electric Shuttle/Zenith Electric Bomber)
Hacker: Armor Booster (Munitions Booster/Zenith Sentinel)
Hm. I'll get back to you on that.
The fleet leaves Hacker and heads to Blackstone to clean up the locals and grab a Data Center. Might as well clean that up before I head down to the Riker arm.
At around 7:30 I'm nearing 1 mill in Crystal so I pop the BHG back to building. I've got a serious mis-distribution of 500k/900k. Ah well. BHG comes online. I'm not ready to screw around with re-organizing the defensive area yet, so I start up on the Radar Jammer II, priority #2 for the Whipping boy. It shuts down the Missile Frigs from laying waste to the mid-range turrets (Basics, lasers, and MLRS) while stuck at the entry. It's also the most expensive of the bunch at 5 mill. Getting that to 5% wiped out the metals again.
The fleet in Blackstone makes sure it pops the local EMP and all posts before leaving. It heads back to Macross for R&R before starting the Riker arm deepstrike at 7:37 or so.
AIP 62 has a max-time (ish, I don't watch heavily nor check the logs) coming in at a little over 1000 ships. Double wave of ~1.1k each announces at 7:37. Not bad. On a side note, I hate traveling through Llama, always have this entire time. It's a HUGE system with the wormholes about 2 minutes apart at Frigate speed.
Watching this fight shows that the Dyson/Rebels, while still VERY powerful in support roles, could not Dyson Ball the system against the numbers I'm facing for waves. Oh, they make sure rebuilds don't destroy me in cost, but they couldn't do it alone anymore.
Watching the trader leave the homeworld arm I doublecheck that noone bought new Warp Gates on me in the back. They haven't.
Taking down Batman cost me a decent number of bombers to take out the Fortress hiding in there. It had a lot of Laser Guardian coverage that chewed up my bombers pretty good. Lost about 100 ships, 60 of which were bombers. I still have fighters left, though, which is unusual.
Hitting HotStar and popping the Ions there lost me two Raid Is, so they head home for R&R while the dwindling fleet pushes forward in the Riker arm, after dealing with the loosed threat from HotStar... which was the intent, but the fleet ended up chasing a runaway Starship Disassembler all the way back to Llama.
Upon arriving in Llama and only having 550 ships, I send them home for R&R. We'll be back. Threat's at 177 or so from the Raid SS deepstrike which lasted about a minute. I pull the fleet over in Cyborg on the way home to eat the inbounds at a wormhole entry, instead of having a running attrition war all the way home.
It's 8:00, do you know where your Rebels are? And I do still get tickled as I watch streamers come into Craps and die in the minefield line.
I've gotten a look at Tau and Krupp on the Riker Road, and they're nothing special. Some Ions, metric half-ton of guardposts, but nothing to make me concerned. I do my best to keep the Craps minefield rebuilt anytime the fleet's passing by and it's been working within reason.
At 8:02 the fleet moves out again for the Road to Riker. I really want that look at Riker.
At 8:06 A 511 ship CPA announces. There's Roughly 130 ships in the backfield that could try to take on the homeworld or Fraggle. I debate on being concerned and decide it's not worth the concern.
49 ships lost on entry into HotStar due to mines. Joy.
Here's why Deepstrikes can be deadly as heck:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI10HugeThreat.png)
WATCH YOUR DEPTH! Luckily I wasn't horribly concerned, I had a minefield, a Whipping Boy choke, and Dyson/Rebel backup. But still. It's only gonna get worse, I ain't done. the double deepstrike was caused by emp'd units that I scrapped to lower the impact. The DeepStrike Threat was spawning as MK III, as well.
With only 250 fleet left they popped the Tach Guard in Tau from Krupp and then ran like hell for home... they didn't make it. The entire fleet was almost a loss. The only thing I could do was try to keep the maws safe enough to not end up dumping their load of almost 500 MK III ships. It failed.
Luckily my distraction in the deepstrike allowed me to build up a large economy bankroll for fleet rebuilds and they were rebuilding during the entire time.
I've gotten a look at Three Kings, the coreworld for Riker. It's ugly. BHG, AI Eye, 3 Ion Is, 11 Guardposts, and 5 forcefields. That's gonna be TOUGH to punch through.
The Dyson and Rebels had moved into Craps and engaged most of the threat, taking the rest of the losses for me.
It's 8:14, 2 minutes to CPA. I've got about 1/4th of the fleet rebuilt. I'm going to have to defend the homeworld here shortly, but luckily it's not huge numbers. With some Micro on the scouts, I'm able to get my first look at Riker.
The last 30 minutes have been worth it. It's pretty clean. Beam 1, electric 3, leech 2, missile 1, Neinzul Melee 1, Neinzul Spawner 1, Z Fort 1 and Spec 1. Nothing horrible like an AI Eye or any other rediculous.
Very nice.
The two Spire Archives are on Earth/Kirk, and that's some worthy K right there.
So, true game-ending threats: Raid Engine on Desperado. Priority Target before AIP increases. Once I can get into Desperado the two primary targets are the Raid Engine then the CoP, allowing me to pop the other 3.
Second priority: ARSs. Need to pop two. Autobombers and Sentinels it is.
Where's my rebels?!
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I debated on hitting the sack but I'm not really tired yet, so another hour or so of game.
CPA:
MK I: 19
MK II: 122
MK III: 258
MK IV: 112
Erg.
All of Shawshank and SuperTerminal in the back went active on me, as did all of Twycross.
Go fleet go... 289 ships of the main fleet (maxes at 750 or so) and 6 maws. Need to protect Fraggle and homeworld. Luckily all the inbounds from the backfield went for Homeworld... though Shawshank decided to go buy an Ion Cannon that I strolled right into. Cute.
Of course on the back of this the AIs double wave me with medium sized waves who apparently did some decent damage to the front door of the whipping boy. That's primarily because I've let the inbound FFs fall. The minefield was pretty chewed up when I finally got a chance to check on it so I assume the majority of the CPA died in that as well as to a few dyson/rebels who seem to think Craps is the local vacation spot.
With my huge disparity in resources I really wish I could perma-activate Metal Manufactories instead of having them auto-deactivate. I'd like to enforce the balance, if not an overwhelm on metal. I currently have 15k/600k. That's a HAIR off.
So, inspecting Kirk, my next assault point to try to get near the Raid Engine, the Mass Driver and an Ion I are on top of a Stealth Station. Why do I know? I can't see the guardpost near it. If I can pop those then the next raid SS visitation can get the second two Ion Cannons. Well, it's a suicide dive, in particular due to the wh guardians on inbound, might as well do it now while we're rebuidling and let the Raid Engine's troops hit the whipping boy.
Raid Engine is spawning MK III ships (it's a MK III world) at 802 of them at 67 AIP. Yep, definately gonna kill this puppy early.
The Raids are able to clear the Mass Driver and all three Ions, but aren't able to reach the Desperado wormhole to try to make a run on the raid engine. However, of the 177 ships that WERE in Kirk, most of them are leaving.
You. Are. KIDDING. ME.
"Rebel Colony on Craps will lose invisibility protection in 119:55".
Screw you RNG. ANY planet but that one, please. Savescum... which was from right before the announcement, by about 40 seconds. Nice. Yeah, it's a wuss move, but that's just uncalled for.
Most of the MK Vs ended up getting slaughtered in the Craps minefield, even the guardian fleet. over 70 ships from Kirk left due to the Raid SSs and came up with the Raid Engine. Interestingly, I don't immediately get another Rebel Colony announcement though.
The fleet's rebuilt but I'm not sure I want to send them to Kirk yet. I'm going to wait on another Raid SS set to try to get at the Raid Engine. I do however send a flock of scouts in to make sure I can see what's going on before they get there. Desperado's a deepstrike but I'll live with it.
Over half the minefield in Craps was wrecked during the wave inhale before the rebel/dyson crew got involved and chewed up what was left inbound at the entry gate.
Desperado only has 39 units in it, mostly guardians (20 of them). Poking around I get lucky, there isn't a Grav Guardian between the WH and the Raid Engine.
The FF-less entry WH in Macross allows the locals to just eradicate the AoE turrets on the wormhole. I'll have to do something about that shortly. At 8:36 the Raids head for Desperado. Raid SS vs. Raid Engine. Go Team Go!
The Raid fleet was half dead but they manage to cold-clock the Raid Engine in one strike. A quick trip around the system to pop the Ion Cannons and whatever is left will head home. I set them on Shift Rt-Click and left them to their own devices. I need to re-organize the Macross entry.
None of the Raids made it home. They ended up overlapping the Raid Engine's final death throe.
8:40... Ooookay, where'd those Rebels get themselves off to?
Hmph. Well, need to do SOMETHING with the fleet... Hrm... Well, I guess I could go clean off Davion in anticipation of taking the Fact IV up there... it's a deepstrike but meh. It's also got 4 ion Cannons on it that I haven't cleansed. Oh well. Three of 'em are packed pretty tight so I shouldn't take attrition for too long, once I clear the entry way of the grav guardian.
8:47 Really?! Where the bleep are my rebels?!
8:48 There they are... on Twycross. That's a mixed blessing. It's REALLY going to dilute the impact of the Dyson support. It does, however, cover the CSG-E I need to get and lends Dyson support to the homeworld. It'll have to do. I'll go get 'em when I get the CoP off Desperado and the other planets. I forgot to ping it when the Raids were last visiting. It's also an 0/2 world... yay, more crystal! (facepalm)
Looking for other CSG options as part of the Riker arm approach, there's only E-Class CSGs on the Riker Road. So, no cheap shots there. So looking at my CSG map... I'll take Hacker and Davion (ARS and Fact IV). For the D-Class I've got a few options. There's Pox Aurelia down in the Southwest all by its lonesome being useless (and 0/3 harvesters), Confederation which nets me... well, nothing really, a 2/2 position with 3 Warp Gates to pop, or Llama a 3/4 with 3 warp gates to pop which gets me one more world deeper into Riker Road before I'm deepstriking.
Llama's only real problem: 2 Counterstrike IVs. Well, we know what the fleet will be doing for a bit, Hacker/Davion will have to wait.
First Counterstrike: 821 MK IVs to Fraggle Rock. Cripes. Run for home fleet. I'm actually half tempted to let it fall and defend from the result on Homeworld, I can soak the powerloss at the moment. I'll see what damage we can do from the wormhole and prepare to run for the homeworld with its stronger defenses (and strung out MK IV troops).
In the meanwhile, the Raid SSs are rebuilt and head out to do some CoP hunting... starting with Desperado. Lost 3 of the Raid SSs working a tach guardian down in Kirk, hitting the CoP, then retreating, but hopefully worth it if I can land a permanent scout picket on Earth. The Mines didn't help any, either. Fired up around 100 units worth of threat from deepstrike, as well.
The fleet gets to Fraggle Rock with 8 and a half minutes to spare. Errr, hm, apparently my internal timer's off. Well, they can park.
I get a ship design hacker ready for transport to Hacker next. I figure might as well tackle the Hack soon-ish.
Raids go out hunting more CoPs. This time the one deep in the southwest on Pai Gow. I'm trying to work from the deepest to the shallowest so I deal with the inflated AIP for as little amount of time as possible. That went a lot better, almost nothing's down there. Confederation next and that goes very simply and they head for the last one on Twycross with no hands lost. Success. AIP 42. The Raids get a repair and head to pop the second Counterstrike on LLama. I should have enough time gap now (5 minutes left on the Counterstrike timer).
The only AIP reducer left is now the SuperTerminal in the backfield. I don't think I'll need it.
The second Counterstrike ALSO heads for Fraggle Rock. That planet is really on the AI's hitlist. Well, considering I only HAVE three planets I'm very happy it didn't go for homeworld, however Macross would have been a nice change of pace. With the reduced AIP only 420 MK IVs for Fraggle on the second wave.
9:00 Status:
Admiral?!
He's dead, son, what is it?
Errr, Captain, a massive amount of the enemy are detected warping into the backfield! However, Raid Engine is dead, paths to the CSGs have been cleared, and we're prepared to retake more of our lost technology. The front line is holding and hacking on the AI has been successful, we've negated a lot of its notice of us and a few of its sensors think we're dead when we're alive.
Very good, send the fleet to attempt to protect the Fraggle Rock assets but make sure they don't die defending the station. Evacuate everyone and set the station on remote control from the Human Housing Structures. Fraggle Rock is not to be defended to the last man, let it fall if it must. We must defend the homeworld and a dead fleet can't defend anything.
Aye aye, Captain! Oh, Captain?
Yes?
When you die too, who takes over?
Why, Ensign... that'd be you. Try not to die, alright?
Yes, sir!
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9:00 and the Radar Jammer II is at 35%. Not too bad.
Twiddle. Here little counterstrike. The re-positioning on the inbound gate for Macross is working nicely. I've got 5 FFs protecting the short-range AoE cannons just off the wormhole, leaving them enough room to spawn without automatically being at point blank range. Eventually I plan to fill some of that area with EMP Mines. But not yet, it's an experiment and I want a quiet save to work with for that.
When the Counterstrike hit, the majority of the enemy went for the fleet, not the command post. The 200 or so ships that did head for the cmd center (including 75 T-Leeches) are going to be plenty enough for the light defenses there.
The Raid SS escaped the fleet, unfortunately. The Leeches alone were enough to take down the command center.
A rebel fleet belatedly came to help Fraggle Rock from the invaders. With the fall of fraggle, however, the main fleet headed for Homeworld, trying to get there before 250+ cutlasses could do significant damage. They arrived before the cutlasses did any serious damage but I lost the unbuilt Trader-Toys. The Z-Gennie was saved, however.
My maws, having 400 or more MK IV ships in their holds are sent to protective custody for the moment. We'll defend from wave two on Homeworld as well... that was too close with the cutlasses. Even at half volume that was WAY too close.
However, the rebel dudes are annoying me. I purposely ignored a few SF posts in the backfield to allow them to drain into the turrets on homeworld... and they just upped me two AIP to 43 by popping two of them on Shawshank. Thanks guys.
5:25 till wave 2. With the Raid SS's ready to go I look for a likely target... cranking the posts/ions off Davion looks like a plan to me. Off you go, boys! Oof, almost really screwed up, there's an EMP IV in there. It can wait until the main fleet gets there. Threat's at 1200 by the time I'm done with the deepstrike on Davion, but most of the MK IV guardians are cleared off and the fourpack of Ions are dead. The threat can play with the minefield/whipping boy while I deal with the counterstrike... in 15 seconds from now.
The AI has crossed the 200 total progress threshhold and I finally see what it's going to open. Anti-Armor ships. Glad I decided against the tank/booster combo.
Defenses have gone well, over 500 ships are left in the main fleet at the end. I move to rebuild Fraggle.
At 9:16 defenses are successful. The fleet heads back to Macross for R&R while Fraggle gets itself rebuilt.
9:20 the fleet's in place. I want to see how well EMP Mines will work. I save the game and unlock them. Simple experiment to follow:
I setup a small stack of them on the inbound wormhole. I'm not quite sure how far to spread them but a wave announces while they're building so I can simply watch here shortly.
OMG, sooo BRUTAL. That's ... wow.
I need to set them to a depth of about 7 layers deep off the wormhole (I only used 4 at first), but the AoE EMP hits even Missile Frigates, who are only immune to Area Damage (which doesn't exactly explain them ignoring Tazers but that's another story). With very minor hits in the minefield a lot of ships ended up in 2.5 minute or higher paralysis. Couple that with nearby AoEs under glass and the 450 ships inbound didn't even stand a chance.
I don't think I'm going to scum this. As a matter of fact, I'm going to embrace the new mines. They are my new friend.
With no reason to hold back on AIP gains now that the AIP reactant strategical targets were down, it was time to get to work. First up, I want my Rebels. Take Twycross out and then move with ship hacker towards Hacker.
AI is responding to me hacking on Craps while I'm moving the Ship Hacker. Seriously? I thought this got fixed... back everyone up...
Apparently a mobile builder can build me a ship-hacker when I'm there. This sounds like a better plan then hacking my way across the blasted universe, since the transports will die before we get there.
Okay, that's just not frickin' cool. The Mobile Builder can't construct the hacker without supply. Actually, it can't do jack shinola without supply.
Meh, I'll deal with this tomorrow. Tired now and was on 'just one more thing' mode. Well, one more thing is annoying me. Savescummed to before I wasted a few minutes traveling the galaxy uselessly via autosave and saved off the game.
See ya tomorrow or over the weekend.
Addendum: At 9:30 a 930 ship wave announced (that's a little convenient in numbers, heh). I hung out to see how well the EMP mines would perform against a more serious wave volume.
Because of the way the wave spawns coming out of the wormhole only the leading edge really gets EMP'd. The rest mill around in the destroyed mines area and pound on the FF's for the local AoE's. They're useful, but they're not overkill, unfortunately. I did realize however I need to drop some UNDER the FF for cutlasses on the assault.
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With my huge disparity in resources I really wish I could perma-activate Metal Manufactories instead of having them auto-deactivate. I'd like to enforce the balance, if not an overwhelm on metal. I currently have 15k/600k. That's a HAIR off.
You can turn off auto-manufacturer management in the settings and that would let you leave them on permanently.
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On infiltrators, do not underestimate the ability to fire through forcefields. But yea, they're not ships, they're guns in space. They strike, you cheer; enemy sneezes, you rebuild.
Zelecs could be interesting. I've seen a lot of players turning their noses up at them and I'm not sure if it's because of an actual deficiency or a misunderstanding. Back in the "AI no get talky man. Bomber is bomber, right?" days zelecs were greatly feared: think 1000 bombers are threatening? Try 1000 zelecs. They also wound up needing some nerfs for player usage, iirc.
But you may really want to save that hacking for the superterminal as a hole card against AIP. Dunno.
Watching this fight shows that the Dyson/Rebels, while still VERY powerful in support roles, could not Dyson Ball the system against the numbers I'm facing for waves. Oh, they make sure rebuilds don't destroy me in cost, but they couldn't do it alone anymore.
Ah, good to know it's a step in the right direction at least :) And now a player can choose how powerful they want them. I'm assuming you did 4/10 on all variable stuff present?
Great to get that look at Riker. Sounds like the RNG took the day off or something ;) Maybe your spies successfully convinced the Core Raid Engines to unionize and it's all tied up in contract negotiations..
Without homeworlds full of punishators and playnihilators, sounds like you've got a genuine shot at victory :) Which sounds like a bug ;)
a few dyson/rebels who seem to think Craps is the local vacation spot
See the world! Bring the kids! Shoot the locals!
"Rebel Colony on Craps will lose invisibility protection in 119:55"
RNG not so on vacation after all ;) An understandable savescum; there are going to be some moments on 10/10 where it's either that or "do I really want to see what happens?". I guess you could move the whipping boy to Kerensky since you've already taken it, but I'm not sure what implications that would have had (beyond the cost of new trader toys and the actual bulk move).
Interestingly, I don't immediately get another Rebel Colony announcement though.
There's a bit of randomization in the threshold. You probably rolled really low on one of the checks and that's how you got it "early" the first time.
Very interesting how you're getting such a crystal-heavy distribution; the seeding is fairly crystal-heavy on human homeworlds a lot of the time, and deliberately metal-heavy just about everywhere else. But randomization being what it is...
However, the rebel dudes are annoying me. I purposely ignored a few SF posts in the backfield to allow them to drain into the turrets on homeworld... and they just upped me two AIP to 43 by popping two of them on Shawshank. Thanks guys.
"Stickin' it to the man!" "Could you please stick it to that other man?" "Oh, um, sure."
AI is responding to me hacking on Craps while I'm moving the Ship Hacker. Seriously? I thought this got fixed... back everyone up...
I think of it more as a feature ;) AI sees one of those, it goes bonkers. Stick it in a transport... ah, right, too far. Or build it locally, as you say... ah, right, no supply. Yea, that's a pretty s-o-l situation. Maybe I really do need to make it not cause hack response while it's moving ;)
Glad to hear the EMP mines were effective in a way that was hilarious but not "can stop any threat while you sip lemonade under a beach umbrella". Thanks for giving those a real-world test. Interesting interaction on the missile frigates being immune to aoe but not to mines (though if you ever face mkVs they also have mine immunity, not sure if that prevents the EMP splash but I think it does).
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On infiltrators, do not underestimate the ability to fire through forcefields. But yea, they're not ships, they're guns in space. They strike, you cheer; enemy sneezes, you rebuild.
I don't, not in particular, and something that could whack guardians under glass would be very useful. However, with the maws vacuuming up smaller ships and the Raid SSs available to pick off the guardians when necessary, they're not a toy I consider highly important. I also haven't really found powerful ways to use them than the obvious and they're just not powerful enough in my hands.
Zelecs could be interesting. I've seen a lot of players turning their noses up at them and I'm not sure if it's because of an actual deficiency or a misunderstanding. Back in the "AI no get talky man. Bomber is bomber, right?" days zelecs were greatly feared: think 1000 bombers are threatening? Try 1000 zelecs. They also wound up needing some nerfs for player usage, iirc.
It's not that I don't like them, I just don't find them powerful enough except on defense because of the AI unit spreads. I particularly don't find them powerful enough to hack for.
But you may really want to save that hacking for the superterminal as a hole card against AIP. Dunno.
It's a double-edged sword, that. The SuperTerminal is far too close to homeworld for my liking. After the second hack for Z Sentinels, that Hack-value is going to be pretty high. I don't want to triple hack though in case I decide I want to K-Raid or hit the ST, you're right though. At 120k in hacking after Ship Hack #2 I'm not sure I can afford to hack again, honestly.
Ah, good to know it's a step in the right direction at least :) And now a player can choose how powerful they want them. I'm assuming you did 4/10 on all variable stuff present?
Yep, everything is 4/10 default. The Dysons at AIP actually could possibly hold a whipping boy at 7/7 still. At 10/10 however the waves will overwhelm them not due to numbers but by simply having the critical mass to bypass them if they chose. They could probably kill the Dysons too in large mass but they can't defeat them as a stream (think CPA attacks).
Great to get that look at Riker. Sounds like the RNG took the day off or something ;) Maybe your spies successfully convinced the Core Raid Engines to unionize and it's all tied up in contract negotiations..
Without homeworlds full of punishators and playnihilators, sounds like you've got a genuine shot at victory :) Which sounds like a bug ;)
Someone beat 10/10! Bug report! But you're right, I'm seeing a game I can win here.
"Rebel Colony on Craps will lose invisibility protection in 119:55"
RNG not so on vacation after all ;) An understandable savescum; there are going to be some moments on 10/10 where it's either that or "do I really want to see what happens?". I guess you could move the whipping boy to Kerensky since you've already taken it, but I'm not sure what implications that would have had (beyond the cost of new trader toys and the actual bulk move).
The biggest deal with moving the primary whipping boy is the loss of the Dyson support. While they can't Dyson Ball the enemy to death, one thing they are doing is keeping repair costs lower between waves and providing a significant amount of firepower to make sure back to backs and dual-waves can't overwhelm it by simple volume. Eventually I'm sure they will but with me adding little things here and there (like the EMPs) I hope to stay ahead of the curve.
Very interesting how you're getting such a crystal-heavy distribution; the seeding is fairly crystal-heavy on human homeworlds a lot of the time, and deliberately metal-heavy just about everywhere else. But randomization being what it is...
Yeah, just slightly annoying. It's a matter of my ships also being heavily metal hungry (Bombers to II, Maws, Grenade Launchers) also skewing things horribly to the right.
"Stickin' it to the man!" "Could you please stick it to that other man?" "Oh, um, sure."
LOL, yep! Sounds just about right!
I think of it more as a feature ;) AI sees one of those, it goes bonkers. Stick it in a transport... ah, right, too far. Or build it locally, as you say... ah, right, no supply. Yea, that's a pretty s-o-l situation. Maybe I really do need to make it not cause hack response while it's moving ;)
That would be preferable, or let us power it down or something. I was planning on taking Llama eventually anyway so I'll just have to tag it early as a support for the hack, but that was a frustrating moment (particularly when I was tired) to realize I would HAVE to do that.
Glad to hear the EMP mines were effective in a way that was hilarious but not "can stop any threat while you sip lemonade under a beach umbrella". Thanks for giving those a real-world test. Interesting interaction on the missile frigates being immune to aoe but not to mines (though if you ever face mkVs they also have mine immunity, not sure if that prevents the EMP splash but I think it does).
They'll continue getting tested so I'll have a pretty solid idea of the results here eventually. However, the value of EMP vs. the value of AoE Damage mines is inverted in the K costs. I'd recommend, at the least, bringing AoE Damage mines down to the same K cost as EMP.
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With my huge disparity in resources I really wish I could perma-activate Metal Manufactories instead of having them auto-deactivate. I'd like to enforce the balance, if not an overwhelm on metal. I currently have 15k/600k. That's a HAIR off.
You can turn off auto-manufacturer management in the settings and that would let you leave them on permanently.
True, but that could hose me up in other ways. Guess I'm looking for best of both worlds.
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With my huge disparity in resources I really wish I could perma-activate Metal Manufactories instead of having them auto-deactivate. I'd like to enforce the balance, if not an overwhelm on metal. I currently have 15k/600k. That's a HAIR off.
You can turn off auto-manufacturer management in the settings and that would let you leave them on permanently.
True, but that could hose me up in other ways. Guess I'm looking for best of both worlds.
Maybe a new control option, aggresive manufactories? When checked, the manufactories management algorithm tries to keep metal and crystal even, not merely try to avoid handle shortages and overflow.
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So with plans in the northeast stalled out until I take Llama, I decided I was going to invade Huge and get the Autobombers going on Macross for further defenses before I begin a campaign in the northeast.
I also decided I was going to gut the WHGPs in Shawshank and SuperTerminal while I was at it... that lasted 1 whole minute before I tossed that out the window.
The Warp Gate was popped on SuperTerminal to help with wave issues and the new Econ I was put up at 9:38. A new Space Dock was brought online on Macross dedicated to AutoBombers, with them set to FRD near the entry wormhole from under the forcefields. AIP at 59. Radar Jammer's up to 52% and the Rebel Response Fleet is about 50% built. I've built one HBC on Huge to help deal with minor drifting along with a FF and a pair of gravs.
Hm, that's interesting. Mines + Autobombers are almost counter-productive. The Leading Edge hits the mines and EMPs. The Autobombers select their targets from amongst the leading edge and go barreling in to suicide... into the EMP'd targets and then the rest of the non-EMP'd milling around get a free ride. Hm. I'll try posting the AutoBombers at a longer distance, hoping they'll pick more valid targets.
At 9:49 the Fleet escorts a Colony ship towards Llama. It's time to start fighting the northeast campaign.
That worked better with the auto-bombers at range and letting the turrets handle the leading edge emp'ers.
Mr AI wiseguy bought himself an Ion II for Cyborg from the traders. He's just having a good time for himself today. I dispatch the Raid SS unit to go help deal with that while the fleet continues on.
I choose to drop a Logistics I into Llama since it's a major crossroads. however, I just realized I haven't dealt with the neighboring warpgates yet. The Raid SSs make a high-speed run for Llama to help protect it. Worst case scenario I have to escort another Colony ship down. I power down the station for the moment at 67% built so I can get a chance to pop the warp gates without getting flattened.
With the four attached warp gates down, AIP is at 100. One of the newfangled Anti-Warp stations probably would have been an excellent choice here, but my research is at 4750 and I want to get up to MK III on a few ships soonish so the MK IV Factory isn't simply a paperweight.
I move fleet construction facilities out to Llama as well, shutting down the ones on Macross. The couple of fleet ships there I simply scrap for rebuild. The Rebel Response fleet is fully built and the rest of the fleet ships (Scout Starships, 1 Cloaker, etc) head for Llama as the new staging area. I also prepare a ship design hacker on Llama. Double duty, it can also get the local research.
I modify auto builds on Engi Is, 10 for Macross now and 15 on Llama. See where I end up with that, might need to move a few around. I also scrap the 3 hiding on Huge.
AIP 100 904 ship wave for Macross. Excellent.
I only get 13 to build on Llama. That'll be good enough. Lower that to 10 so I have a few spares.
Heh, whoops, Ship-Hacker doesn't get research, that's the K-Raider. Science II it is.
I position the fleet against the wormhole to Llama from Hacker and get the Ship Hacker into position under the 4 Riots. The Rebel Response fleet is hanging back on Llama to help protect the station.
Okay, that's annoying. When I'm moving my Riots around, if they collide with the ship hacker, IT moves instead of the Riot moving off the collision.
Using the fact that Llama had a repair bay sitting next door, I was able to be a lot more aggressive with the Maws, retreating them for repairs and then coming back in with pretty much impunity. By pushing forward and falling back with the fleet, I was able to engage the main force as they came out without getting over extended. When it fired off a Tachyon Burst the fleet went minefield hunting. :)
The volume of troops being sent at us, particularly with mine-field kill losses (even though they could see them, they drove right over them to kill other ones behind them) forced me to bring about 200 ships of reinforcements in from Llama. The Riot shields also saved the Hacker by giving me a little response time when one of the random-location spawns got behind me.
AT 10:12 the ARS hack is complete. The Rebels head for Davion to deal with the EMP and warpgate and we prepare to take control of Hacker. The main fleet heads for Davion and pops that, too.
The Speed Booster and Spider V fabs on Hacker are set to send their troops to Llama and 2 Engi Is go to help out.
AIP is 136.
Only CSG-Cs are left... and Desperado is the target of choice for that for its fabricators... and I realize I never did pop the CSG-E back on twycross so the Rebel Responders head for that...
10:20: 3388 enemy ships to Macross. AIP 136. Ow. Here we go. The Radar Jammer II is only up to 82%.
3 Carriers (1000, 1000, 328) come in with the invasion force, only 930 are actually loosed early, and they're mostly Missile Frigs. The EMP minefield isn't anywhere near as powerful as I'd hoped, particularly when Carriers can escape and unload their payload.
I've attached a screenshot below of how the minefield actually plays out against the enemy. I'll definately have to re-distribute the minefield.
Another 2750 ship wave lands at 10:23, 1700 ships in carriers. The minefield is nowhere near rebuilt yet either, but the edges are tagging enough of them.
Watching this wave hit there's a secondary area I need to mine out for carrier drops. That can be done pretty easily, actually, and will give me a secondary EMP area. That will work rather nicely, actually. I'm >< close to opening up harvester cloakers just to keep all of the enemy on the 'straight and narrow' path of destruction.
Next step: The assault on Kirk and Desperado, with the final target of Earth in mind... along with those tasty looking Spire Archives.
However, I'm now packing a ton of Research, ending up at ~13,750 K. NOM NOM NOM NOM!
So, Bomber III and ... hm... Maw IIIs to be researched... and IV'd at the shiny new factory on Davion! If anyone is familiar with Battletech, the Factory IV on Davion is kinda amusing. It would only be more amusing if it had picked one of the construction world names I'd used in the world files.
Problem though is I'm VERY low on Engineers. Hrm. With the Rebel Colony Fleet built, I don't need 5 engis on Twycross anymore... I leave them one. I don't want less than 5 Engis on homeworld for security reasons. Macross needs the 10 its got to speed after-wave repairs. Llama needs its 10 for fleet rebuilds.
So thats 5..6...26... cap of 39.... 28 for the 2 there... Where the heck are these engis hiding at?
Oh, right! The minefield rebuilders. Leave 2 there and drop 3 more at the Fact IV.
I create another main-fleet sub-group for the SpeedBoosters and Sentinels. They'll be hanging at system edge as much as possible.
At 10:30, I'm merely waiting for the MK III/IV troops to build. I decide to go see what kind of havoc I can cause with the Rebel Response fleet... they head for Kirk alone.
That plan gets changed when I am merely screwing around in Confederation with them (MK II) and they start losing troops to a mere 80 ships. Also, another wave announces, 1,133 ships this time. Those two waves earlier were max-timers. HAH!
The Rebels do clean out some of the mess in Confederation though, including a few random posts and a fort I. I leave the two Counterstrike IIs behind, I just don't want to deal with that anymore.
The Rebels head back to Macross to pick up some R&R for the lost ships while the fleet continues to wait.
The map right now:
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI1010_30Map.png)
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10:42: 1,103 ship CPA announced. I have around 500 ships reinforcing Shawshank and SuperTerminal that will need to be cleared before arrival. Rebels are shipped to Homeworld to start backfield clearance.
The only other piece of import will be Llama holding so I don't lose the Hacker/Davion arm. The main fleet will stay positioned there until this CPA is over, same way the Rebels will remain at Homeworld until I'm sure it's safe.
The main fleet:
186 Acid Sprayers (I/II)
332 Bombers (I/II/III/IV)
98 Fighters (I)
186 Grenade Launchers (I/II)
98 Missile Frigates (I)
49 SpiderBots (V)
Maw micro:
18 Maws (I/II/III/IV)
Standoff unit:
36 Zenith Sentinels (I/II)
78 Speed Boosters (V)
Rebel Response:
41 Resistance Fighter/Bombers
41 Resistance Frigates
Raid Squad:
6 Raid SSs (I/II)
The Rebel Responders hit and cleared Shawshank, lighting up the planet on entry of 260 units. The locals instead of staying to fight ran to attack the homeworld, but were chewed up pretty good by the Rebels. The rebels were parked on homeworld to deal with inbounds and get repairs before heading for SuperTerminal.
Hitting ST however cost me some Rebel ships, primarily from the minefield and then the guarding Guardians. Hitting the rest of the ships required them to do some heavy kiting instead of standing and brawling. By the time they were done the rebels were down to 66 ships after clearing out 500+ mixed MK II/III ships and were pretty badly banged up. Unfortunately, some of the freed threat from ST decided to go after Huge. Time to see how well one HBC can really hold up. Which ended up with the result of: Not too shabby, stopped 17 MK III ships that were only fleet ships.
CPA:
MK I:5
MK II: 718
MK III: 44
MK IV: 99
MK V: 87
It's draining some of the coreworld. YES.
A massive threatball is starting to form against Llama in Batman on the Riker Road. Another one in Blackstone, another arm spinning off from Llama. Meanwhile, I land a perma-scout on Earth finally.
Some of that freed CPA went for Huge. It appears to be holding its own against the 15 or so ships.
847 threat is built up, and it's against the 3 ways into Llama. Great.
I stole the Engineers from Macross briefly to rebuild the Rebel Resistance fleet. I want to use them to bait the inbounds off the Confederation wormhole while the fleet handles the rest.
Basically setting up a 3 way war. The Rebels will handle the attack currently in Confederation. Once they've got the attention of the threat there, the main fleet and maws will move to Blackstone and wipe out the parked threatball.
That SHOULd get the threatball in Batman to invade Llama and get stalled up on the grav turrets in place, allowing the Sentinels to hammer on them until the main fleet and maws can come back and help out. Should end up flanking right into the side of the forces from Batman going after the station.
With the Rebels on Shift-Click kiting the fleet hits Blackstone... and Batman won't engage. Dangit. However, they clear Blackstone with little trouble and get repairs for Batman.
I retreat the Rebels out for repairs, since the majority of the Core Ships were in Confederation. The main fleet prepares to smack Batman and heads in. There's a lot of MK V in here, too.
With reasonable losses (20% or so) the fleet erases the 350 threat parked in Batman with the Maws absorbing about 250 ships or so. They just need to soak Confed and we're good to go.
At 11:00 we've cleared the threatballs, Radar Jammer II is up on Macross, and I'm preparing for a run at Desperado. Kirk nearly cleaned itself out FOR me in that CPA and I plan to take advantage of it. There's still 217 units on Earth but there's not much I can do about that quite yet.
Construction has started on the armor inhibitor on Macross. Fleet is just waiting for refills of the MK Is that were the cannon fodder.
When the main fleet hit Kirk, the Rebels went on FRD, hunting starships and guardians while the support team pulled back and simply hammered away at random things.
The main fleet went guardpost hunting in Kirk, cleaning the system up. A lot of FFs in here but I wanted it emptied. In particular SpireShieldPost Vs are rather HUGE.
Blowing the two warpgates off Kirk to protect Desperado, the fleet heads for Desperado to finish pounding the world into pieces. A colony ship in a transport is shipped from Llama.
I don't build out the command station yet as I don't want to lose the fabs yet. The fleet needs R&R before I'm ready to do that and after cleanup in Desperado (sans CSG but having blown the command center) they head back to Llama to get replacements and repairs.
A pair of Suicide Guardians did some pretty heavy pounding on the Rebels on their way back to Macross so they'll be out of the game for a bit. Besides, I need to rebuild my metal back up before I can use those fabs on Desperado. Only 34 F/Bs and 21 Frigates made it home from the Rebels, and they dragged a small threatball onto the WH from Craps' Cmd Center. We'll deal with them eventually.
The Main Fleet with auxiliaries being fully R&R'd, they head back down to Desperado. It's time to finish this.
Side note: Be careful when using Speed Boosters, you can spread your fleet out more than you expect.
I decide to Build a Mil I station on top of one of the Fabs most likely to be attacked in Desperado.
With the capture of Desperado and the removal of the CSG-C, the AI HWs are now open game. AIP is 172.
I set the local Space Plane Vs to be defenders for Desperado, FFs on the station and the fabs, and a few gravs on the inbound gate. The Blade Spawner MK Vs will end up in the Support Auxiliaries and the Bomber MK IV SSs, if they even get built, will be part of the main fleet.
To be spiteful, Kirk is a 0/0 resources planet. Fuuuuunnyyyyy... Desperado is a mere 1/1.
Debating on options, I decide Engi IIs probably would be a good investment at this point. I'm literally out of Engi Is to position anywhere.
11:20. Wave of 1,667 heads for Macross with AIP 172. At this point, I'm thinkin' that a short-timer. Max-Time waves will be BRUTAL.
Next stop: Earth. Time to neuter it.
The entire fleet heads into Earth, trying to 'awaken' it and drain off some of the defenders. I don't want to argue with the 4 Ions and the rest of the heavy artillery on the planet wholesale yet but I need to be able to get the Raids in.
I'm able to drain off 50 ships or so, heavy on the Guardian. The fleet however isn't in so good a shape so they head home to LLama... which without speed boosters takes a while.
Out of curiousity I check to see if the fleet was able to pop the Tach Guardian on the inbound to Earth, and they were. Ooooooooohhhh... What can be eaten by Space Plan in there...
I decide to help the Raids survive I'm going to use the Space Planes and cloak-assault the Mass Driver before it gets the Raids into trouble. My concern though is that awoken ships from Earth will go for Desperado. Fortunately, I have something that can deal with that. The Rebels are rebuilt and they head to protect Desperado from fallout.
I power down the Space Planes so there's no 'accidents' and they head for Earth to go do some headthumping. 85 MK V Space Planes are barely able to kill the Mass Driver before they're erased from the universe, but they did their job. Also emptied more off of Earth, got them to 121.
Waves are looking to be about 3,400 ships on average. Those EMP mines (I've built out the field) are working very nicely as we pop carriers who have moved further off the initial build point and another 400-500 get EMP'd on that burst (unless they're teleporters).
Next attack on Earth was the Raid SS assault. Four Ions, 6 Raids, GO! they're also going to try to pop the Core Booster hiding under glass but we'll see what happens.
Two Raid SS's were lost as they hit the first two Ions just from core-post fire. The Bomber IV up their tailpipes wasn't helping so I abandoned the Core Booster hit and ran the 4 left for LLama for resupply. The Ions are down however.
Those Infiltrators are suddely looking useful.
With the main fleet rebuilt, it's time. They head for Desperado to stage for Earth... with a minor detour to whack an EMP Guardian chilling out in Eridani. No reason to tempt fate.
In one shot, however, all my speed boosters were taken out by a flak guardian (I think). GYEAH!
While waiting for the fleet to repair in Desperado, I'm reviewing my options for the Spire Archives and deciding I don't want to try to defend them from the AI waves. Free K or not, it's just not worth it, particularly for the price of losing them. It was a nice dream but no way Jose.
1000 ships fly for Earth. It's time.
Initial contact including triggering the Neinzul Spawner loses 200 ships out of the gate. Ranged Auxiliaries are mostly intact. The Rebels are hunting the problem children down while the main force deals with the firepower. We really need to take that core booster down.
I call the Raid SSs down from LLama to deal with the booster under glass.
Kirk must have respawned an EMP that I didn't see. One just went off on Desperado. I'm in trouble. Luckily Space Planes are EMP immune. I send the Rebels for support anyway. I didn't have to, though. The few drifters were easily dealt with by space planes and a bomber SS IV.
The Raids easily dealt with the Core Booster under glass once the local starship defenders were dealt with by the main fleet. Only significant problem left will be the fortress/ff combo over the command station and popping a core spire shieldpost. the Fortress is positioned so it can't really protect anything, so the fleet goes to work on the rest of the system.
750 ships left and only the command station and fortress defenses are left. 69 ships left too.
I tried to do a Maw run against the underlying fleet at the fortress. Apparently I've soaked a lot of parasites as my fleet is turning against me. I have the fleet fall back to LLama for both R&R and to clear the parasite nanites. AIP is 194.
Tech III happens at 200, and that's when things get UGLY.
I haven't had a serious wave in a while, bunch of short timers hitting over and over, but nothing worthy of discussion. Of course, when I say a small wave I mean ~1500 units. Then there's the I laugh at you waves of 420 or so.
Fleet's rebuilt but there's a 300+ ship threatball forming on Batman. Clear that before we head back south for Earth... and Speed Boosters, with a health of a whopping 8800, die to a sneeze. Yeesh.
The fleet took a massive beatdown of the polycrystals getting that Fortress out from under two FFs with all the Guardian support, but finally, we cleared the cmd center of protection. Lost one of my Bomber IV SSs too.
Remember my last whoops, I start clearing the 5 WHGPs before i leave, shipping replacement bombers (about a 1/2 fleet) back down from Llama to help.
At 12:11, Earth is completely Neutered. The only thing standing is the Command Station and some token guards on the cmd.
Waves are looking healthier again, 2500 to Macross.
Having some spare research (3750 K available) and the defenses holding nicely, I decide to bring MK II Missile Frigs online.
AH! Finally, a REAL wave, 4200 ships to Macross. Come get some!
... Have I mentioned the EMP mines once you've got an intelligent layout for them to pop carriers in are a TAD overpowered? Mind you, either they're slightly overpowered or not worth buying, though. What's really the killshot on them is the Carriers are expected to get the ships out of the defenses. By having another minefield at the next deployment area not only are the mines 'reset' for the next 1000 ships, but they're not free yet.
That wave, however, blasted through all the FFs covering the AoE net and blew apart almost all the midrange turrets too (Basics and Lasers). AoEs need more Cowbell! errr, forcefields!
Back to backs of 4k each would have escaped the front net. Hrm. Needs more firepower... what to do? Well, I could send the Grenade launchers home. That might not be a bad idea. We'll see if it comes to that with the additional firepower.
Also, with 4k in research on the next planet (I'll need one for the Riker Road) I can pop open Riot IIs and Tazers.
Alright, Riker Road...
Batman's nerfed, HotStar and Krupp are pretty banged up too. Krupp's a 4/2 planet and will be a good staging area that won't keep the coreworld alerted and is as close as I can get.
Tau needs the 5 (5?!) Ion cannons on it still popped but otherwise is nerfed. That leaves me Three Kings (coreworld) and finally Riker.
Three Kings is a nasty nasty little planet. BHG, AI Eye, 3 Ions, and 11 guard posts, 2 of which are SpireShield Vs. Toss in 5 more regular FFs and it's a right mess.
But, *I* have rebels! Who, amongst other things, ignore BHGs.
So, push down to Krupp, and move the construction units. I'll even drop off a fab and Fact IV warpgate there.
Pop the two warp gates next door and have the AI move to Tech III. That should get frickin' ugly.
I can't seem to keep a permanent scout presense on Riker yet. Seems to have about 200 ships at the moment. 3Kings has 58, including all those WHGPs and the like.
I may need to do a K-Raid for more defenses at Macross. I'd like to bring Lightning IIs online, and with the extra K I could bring Basic IIIs online too for 3000 k.
The real question is where do I dare pop a K-Raid at?
Alternative would be to go take out Earth and Kirk, Raid off Eridani's warpgate, and setup shop in Kirk and soak the 9000k off Kirk since the Exo-Gate only warp-gates Earth. If I REALLY wanted to be a schmuck I could go to Earth and savescum away any wave that came at Earth, too, and soak the hell out of the K... but I could get 3k for free from Earth with supply from Kirk.
That'll throw AIP to the moon though, which is counter productive to me doing this to increase defenses.
What could I do with that 12,000 K though... hrm.
Let's dream a little dream.
Lightning IIs: 1500
Basic IIIs: 1500
FF IIs: 2000
Fort Is: 3000... Fortresses, hrm...
Lightning IIIs: 2000
2000 left gets me... Hrm....
MLRS IIs: 2000
That's a LOT of firepower uppage, and I'm going to need to do something about the Tech III upgrade. A couple of fortresses would go a LONG way towards equalizing the balance of power though in Macross.
Alright, with that dream over, if I wanted to K-Raid I'd have to K-Raid at... Blackstone. The 'off-planet' spawns would spawn in Liao and have to come through the Blackstone gate defenders. It'll be a wild ride though with having done a double ARS hack. Dammit, now I'm curious. Savescummable experiment sounds like a plan to me. First a little prep work, clear the WHGPs, which is never a horrible thing, also any minefields.
12:32: WHGPs are clear as is the minefields. Save game.
Okay, turn off the Armor Inhibitor on Macross (48%) and get a constructor built for some gravs to help the fleet defend and get a MK III Research up and running. Get the fleet repaired and rebuilt.. and we're good to go.
Wow is he TESTY.
72 K in and already 127 ships spawned on the planet. Wowsas. My sentinels are doing what they can to pick off the enemy. They're spawning as MK IIIs at the moment.
It's a veritable flood of enemies being dumped at me constantly. I've got 5 Engi IIs doing work to try to keep the fleet repaired, in particular the maws, the 'ace in the hole' that I'm abusing to hell and back here.
For some reason my hacker got moved around, not entirely sure how the hell that happened but it cost me some time, both because it moved and to get it back off the front line and under Riot I shield protection.
By 2000 K I'd started to get into a Rhythm. The Main Fleet basically held the front door from the primary forces coming in from the cmd center. The Rebels were on reaction, immediately responding to any starship level threat (zombies and raids) or any large spawn near the K-Raider. The Maws were my 'busy time' build, retreating to keep at 100% health and then immediately moving off to gobble up whatever else may have spawned or helping to alleviate the weight on the front line.
The Sentinels were pounding away at anything and everything so anything at range I let sit at range and get itself beaten on.
At 12:44 the K-Raid was completed. I'd lost minimal ships (maybe 100, at most) and had no issues in the backfield due to the cutoff I'd prepared with the grav-field for Raids and the fact that the enemy couldn't get past the fleet.
Any time a blob started to build up the Maws were there to inhale the mass and then we moved on. With them and the Rebels as reaction fleets no significant inroads were ever made towards the K-Raider.
However, there's one thing I DO want to mention. THAT WAS FUN! Reacting all over the place to the wild mage positionings and the randomness of the guardian assaults was a lot of fun.
I've sent the Rebels home for R&R (they lost a ship) and to do a backfield cleanup before a CPA hits (it's due).
I have 4,250 K now. Fortresses or Riot IIs...
I'm thinking fortresses. The EMPs are doing a decent to reasonable job of stalling up the enemy and the Tazers can't stunlock, but Fortresses are a significant weight of firepower. I think it's definately fortress time.
To make sure my econ bites the dust I drop three right behind the Basic turret lines, hopefully the fortresses will be able to repair them fast enough to keep firepower up and happy.
12:53 The backfield is finally cleared and the Rebels head to Macross to celebrate and honor the fallen... 3 Fortresses are now online on Macross. A fourth begins construction. The Main Fleet starts to move for Krupp.
13:00 Krupp falls. Warp Gates go down on HotStar and Tau. AIP is 228. Tech III.
Docks are disabled on LLama. Krupp is now the factory planet once it's built up. The Rebels are still rebuilding from the last backfield clear.
The Rebels will have to clear the way home to not release threat against Llama, which is basically defenseless now.
The AI just got Eyebots. I need Tachyon Turrets.
13:07: 1,823 ship CPA. Oh boy.
Krupp is completely abandonable, and I believe I shall do so, and fall back the entire fleet to Llama. Bring the Llama construction back online for now. This is gonna get ugly and I need to deflect this before anything else significant occurs.
Backfield has about 180 units. Rebels will be busy.
Even as I leave Krupp, the enemy is already attacking it. How nice.
I blow the local cmd station hoping they'll leave some of the infrastructure intact, and they do. I only got 1000 in K off Krupp before I abandoned it, I'll deal with the rest after the CPA. I decide to drop a Fortress on LLama to help out.
At 13:13, 4 minutes to the CPA... I'm hungry and this will take a bit. I'm gonna go find myself some dinner. :)
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Looking over the CPA available deployments, I'm a little afraid for Desperado. It's going to soak roughly 200 core ships. It can't hold to that.
Add that to the backfield having roughly 200 ships to deploy and I've got a bit of a problem. I've got 4 minutes to clear the backfield and get the Rebels to Desperado. VERY Tight timeline, but I might save the fabs with the gravs.
At 2:45 left they're done in SuperTerminal and running for Desperado, all the way across the galaxy.
To complement the CPA, 2500 ships are waved about 6 seconds off the CPA release. Amusingly, getting the Rebels to Desperado woke most of Kirk ANYWAY... *rolls eyes* and for some unknown reason they went and visited... Earth. Well, alright, if it floats yer boat.
CPA:
MK I: 6
MK II: 221
MK III: 57
MK IV: 75
MK V: 60
Not too bad. I was able to bait a bunch of the hate in Kirk into Desperado to deal with on my own time. I'm having to do hit and run attack against Kirk with the Rebels but the rest is holding. With hit and run + kiting I clear Kirk and most of the threat against me. Rebels head to Macross for R&R, peeling the hate off the LLama gate in Confed while they're at it.
With that done, time to rebuild at Krupp. With the Armor Inhibitor on Macross at 90%, I let it ruin my econ to complete for a bit.
I finally land a permanent scout presense on Riker. We're gettin' there. Now, for the Rebels to go start punching a hole into 3Kings.
First stop, the Mass Driver and the EMP Guardian.... right after I get a few starships off their butts. The Rebels do their job and they do it WELL. They tear through the guardians and local posts, taking out all but two of the Ions and 3 guardposts. They head back to Macross for R&R while it's the Raid's turn. They go after the remaining ions, guardposts under glass (ignoring the two spireshieldposts) and the guardians under the ffs for when the Rebels get back... well, that was the plan. What happened was they got hung up on a Passive Post V and died to the guardians... but that's one less post for the Eye.
I've got to ground down two SpireShield Guardposts who each have some guardians underneath. One in particular has a STarship dissassembler which means I need to Raid that to death for the Bomber SSs to come into play.
Waiting on the rebuild, I explore Riker, looking at my options for attack. Oddly, the enemy put the Mass Driver on the entry wormhole. That's in my favor. There's a parking lot of guardians at the entryway though. One thing in my favor is the Fortress is off to the side, and not covering the entryway. Good, I can fight my way in evetnaully. There's 3 Ions in here, they'll need to be Raided once I can clear the entryway.
Well, the Rebels are finished and are simply waiting for a wave to die so they can move out. They'd taken a pretty bad beating but it was worth it. They'll have to fight their way home, I don't want to create threat for Llama if I can help it so they'll scour the systems along the way... well, that's the theory. They beeline for Llama for repairs. XD
The Raids clear out the starship eater and 8 Bomber Starships (I/IV) and the Rebels start working over the Spireshieldposts while the fleet camps out in Tau to eat whatever might show up. Using the same trick, the Raids come in, clean out the under-shield guardians, and leave, with the bombers/rebels pounding on the second shield, I'm taking 3Kings with little losses at this point. Oh, everyone pretty much needs repairs, but no losses yet.
With econ filling up I turn on the last trader toy in Macross, and start the Armor Booster going. The Bombers however are locked into 3 Kings until I pop the BHG. With the Eye down, the fleet heads into Three Kings. Time to eat a BHG.
After taking down everything but the Command Center and warp gates, the fleet is waiting for a ton of Mine based EMP to wear off before heading back to Krupp for R&R before starting on Riker. I scrap off 20 ships instead of waiting... and I let the booster go too long, ate my econ.
14:00 update:
Riker's open, Earth's just waiting for the final blow, Macross is holding. I've got this...
It's kind of fun watching 3000 ship waves die on inbound into Macross. Between the EMPs, 4 Fortresses helping to prop up the turrets with health, hidden rebuilders under heavy ffs, and then watching the Dyson ships sail in to do cleanup on anything that's having trouble with is just a thing of beauty.
Hm, got at least 5 minutes worth of rebuild still, let's see what's going on in Riker.
See attached screen shot to see what I see.
The entryway is a mess. There's about 100 MK V ships/guardians/posts right on entry. There's a good 10 free-floating battleship level starships, and once I clear THAT, then I can get some work done. I could flash the entry (send in the fleet and immediately back out after say 5 seconds of fighting) and hope to bait out a huge chunk of that, which I'll do. Once I've gotten that done I'll send in the Rebels for Mass Driver Removal and popping any Ions/posts that are reasonable with the fleet camped in 3 Kings. From there I'll have to figure it out, but primary is to clear that entryway.
Still rebuilding... 3500 ships to Macross. I laugh at you! *Beach-head hits* WHAT?! I didn't turn that on?!!!!! (J/K).
Of course, just to make a liar of me! BAH! They tore down all the FFs on the AoE cannons this round. Must have been a heavy bomber wave.
4k in research just sitting there quietly. Hrm... Missile Counters or Riot IIs? Missile Counters or Riot IIs... HRM HRM HRM. Shutting down the entry wave and supporting the EMPs or shutting down the Eyebots?
Death to the Eyebot! Research Missile Counter-Turret... forgot I'd had more research! ROFL.
Now THAT'S an endgame chokepoint! AIP 241.
So, Riker. With the auxiliaries holding back in Three Kings the Main Fleet alone heads in to 'flash' Riker, hoping to pull a bunch of targets out and not let them threatball against an AI system (they don't evaluate threat-balling when it's an AI friendly system).
Got nailed by a tractor guardian but it DID work. Lost over half the main fleet though. With the entryway clear, the Rebels attack, taking out the Mass Driver, a nearby guardpost, and attracting the attention of half of the starship guardians. With those engaged, the Raids ready for an anti-Ion run while the fleet stays posted up in Three Kings waiting for inbounds.
You know what counters Rebels? Cockroaches. GYEAH! Whoops! Let the Raids run RIGHT over the Cockroach spawner.
Raids and Rebels succeeded in their primary missions however, they engaged the Ions and cleared out the heavy hitting Bomber IVs. The fleet after Cockroach cleanup will be retreating to Krupp for R&R while we rebuild the Auxiliary fleets.
Buggers stole all my speed boosters! ARGH. They really need a health boost. Riker's down to 171 troops... that's an improvement from the nearly 300 they had earlier.
Only 5 Rebels made it home to Macross for R&R. Full rebuild on the Rebel fleet it is. Won't be able to count on them for a bit.
For some reason, a massive attack wave went after Desperado. I have NO idea what set off an attack wave into that other than the Rebels passing through, which would usually go after Llama. About 80 ships. The HBC and the Space Planes ate them but I don't know why they dropped by.
Ah, now, THAT'S handy. The Spawner post is immune to Sniper Shots, but NOT Energy Waves. Oh, how I suddenly love my sentinels. Just have to leave the blade spawners behind until we pop that.
14:30 soon. It'll be CPA time in about an hour. Need to keep that in mind, the backfield is getting pretty full, it's already at 500 ships. I'm getting some really random incursions into Desperado too. Guardian II just shows up with a little backup for no reason. The AI is getting its circuits crossed. Must be feeling its impending doom.
14:35: A 1500 ship wave that I thought would be pretty ignorable simply due to volume landed 1000 bombers on me and erased the 7 FFs covering the AoE turrets VERY quickly. They didn't last much longer after that but the heavy fortress defense doesn't exactly work well against Polycrystal. The rest of the turrets made short work of the wave, barely giving the allies time to arrive and help out, but something to keep in mind. I'm not exactly sure WHAT to do about that, though I have some ideas... including pushing the AoE line back and letting the EMP'd enemies die to longer range turrets and having the 'passthroughs' run into the AoE line.
Meanwhile, the main fleet's rebuilt, but the Rebels are far from ready. Time to go engage Riker.
So much for the Sentinel vs. Cockroach theory, I can't target the bloody thing. It's not on its list of immunities unless it's under Artillery Ammo as a generic. Well, I lost over half my speed boosters but the Neinzul Spawner's now DEAD. Noticing a post under glass I call for the raiders while the rest of the team works the other posts. The ranged squad gets itself off in a corner and start beating on the Cmd Center ffs.
Realizing most of my troops have relcamation damage, I pop them in and out of the wormhole before doing that, though... :)
I seriously need more FF power on Macross but we're holding.
Found a bug, but not a critical one. When your scouts have displayed a minefield underneath a forcefield, the sentinels are able to shoot at the mines. Also the blade spawners are still shooting at powered down units and not doing damage to them.
The assault on Riker goes well in spite of a few muck-ups, with the polycrystal boys finally taking out the fortress around 14:45. Only about 1/3 of the fleet lost for the final assault.
KABOOM AI Riker.
Now, no reason to get silly, I let the fleet regroup at Krupp and resupply. then start shutting things down, and regroup again in Llama, reactivating that world as the construction world. There's around 260 Core Ships that have moved into position to protect Earth between Kirk (alerted from Desperado) and the 64 on the homeworld.
Well, I also want to savor this... :)
RUN LITTLE AI!!!! RUN YOU LITTLE TART!!!! HUMANITY HAS DECIDED TO END YOUR WORLD! BOY, I PUT YOU TOGETHER, I'M ABOUT TO TAKE. YOU. A. PART!!!!
Heh, Earth went to 154 when I wasn't looking. Niiiiice... wow, he's reinforcing EVERY turn right now, LOL.
Punching through 250+ Core ships at Kirk hurt. Now for the final blow.
(http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/GUDare/AI10Victory.png)
The mad rush for the enemy worked nicely, as the fleet ran over the defenders and the maws mopped up the distracted defenders enroute. FOOM.
Bye Bye, 10/10.
I'll discuss my opinions, thoughts, evaluation of the run, etc in another post.
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So, 9/9 through 10/10. I do hope you all enjoyed me documenting my travails in far too much detail for most people to actually enjoy thoroughly. Some of it was stream of consciousness, some of it was tactical and strategical thoughts, some of it was simply ADD daydreaming. Some of it might even have been useful!
I will admit: No chokepoint, no win. It's that simple.
Alright, enough of that. Let's get to the meat.
First up, let's talk about pacing. The pacing difference and ramp-up felt horribly wrong. 9.0 to 9.3 was a LOT harder of a 'bump' than 9.8 to 10. Tech II is a brutal starting point for your enemy. The 9.3-9.6-9.8 ramp up was reasonable.
What needs to happen, in my opinion, is for the 9.x's to MIX wave techs until it hardens to Tech II. This isn't a bad idea in general, in my opinion, allowing for a smoother ramp in difficulty as AIP pushes the AI up in technology.
Let's head back to 7/7. I believe at 240 or so it jumps to Tech II. Instead of this being a hard jump on waves, make it a percentage of units. At 240 say 10% goes to Tech II on an inbound wave. Increment this by 10% for every 2-5% increase towards the next tech level, having them be 'hardened' into Tech II only about halfway through the increase to Tech III.
Apply this same structure to the 9.x with 0 being the 'crossover' point and pacing will make more sense, even pushing the 'start' point to negatives if you like as you go up the slope. For 10, make the Tech II hardened right out of the gates.
Next, wave mass pacing. Gah, no. This is working but the min-max time wave differentials are inane. Seriously, I'm looking at wave differences of 400 ships to 4000 ships. At the same AIP. If you can handle mid-max waves the smaller waves are literally ignorable. Mid to Min waves are also at least half, if not more, of the waves presented. Now, this might make more sense on a multi-front scenario, where sometimes you have to bring your fleet over to help defend and sometimes not. However, let's look at this with perspective: At 9/9 you have a 2 minute warning for a wave. Your fleet being able to respond to multi-front warfare in two minutes is improbable.
That means your entry points, one or all, must be hardened and you need to keep it down to a small number of normal wave entries. I'm not discussing CPAs or CrossBorder or Threat or Special Forces here. That's a different form of defense, as you've seen me do. I'm talking straight waves. Under 95% of circumstances, even in multi-front warfare, you'll have one, perhaps two, whipping boys to soak waves. Even on Standard Maps I usually have a single wave point (higher AIP, of course, for warp gate whacks, but still). This means 80-90% of your defenses are in a single place, so you can go out there and do something besides constantly come home to defend the base.
Wave variety is good. Wave density is bad. Massive Bomber choice waves (even on Schizo) really hosed me up until I rethought some of my defense. Massive Frigate waves inhaled the mid-range turrets and made me get Fortresses as a damage soak and a frigate killer. Things like this invite variety and strategy. 400 ships running into a defense built for 4000 (x2 for doublewave) doesn't do anything but give me salvage rights.
Now, the other side of wave pacing that seems a little weak is the wave volume in general. Early waves are tight, solid, and are significant threats while you're building up. We're good there. It's once the pace starts to build that it falls off. In 10/10, even with single chokepoint, I should have been relying on the Dyson and Rebels to keep me alive, not just keep my economy solvent. Part of this was the miniature waves really not doing anything. Part of it was max-time waves left the whipping boy alone for 10-15 minutes at a clip then came in like hammers.
So, my recommendations on this:
- Up minimum time to half-wave and lower maximum time to 3/4s. This gives you variety without the underwhelming feeling the smaller waves give you.
- Alternative to the above: Adjust wave density for number of entry points. What I mean by this: If the AI only has a single player planet gated, make it go to full wave. If it's got 2 planets, 1/2-2/3 time waves. At 4 planets, 1/3-2/3 waves. At 6 planets, 1/5 - 1/2 waves. ETC... Planets, not gates, to make sure we can't cheese a massive wormhole system with minimal defenses.
In lore, think of it this way: If the AI has that many points of entry, it'll try to keep the pressure up all over, but not be able to bring it's full resources to bear on any one target, because it's pushing at them all so it has to split the resources. If it knows it's only got one point of entry, it's going to wait to bring the sledgehammers.
- Waves need a higher generic multiplier.
2.5 should be for 8/8, not 9/9. Start 9/9 at 3.0. If the sloping tech increase above doesn't get any traction, start 9.3 at 2.75, and then increment exponentially towards 5.5x at 10/10.
- AIP needs to have more affect on the multiplier than a simple multiplier. It needs to get exponential. There's no "race" feeling as you get further into the game. A 2x multiplier on the waves as you go from AIP 20-40 is HUGE. A miniscule multiplier of the same effect as you go from 200-220 is.. well... miniscule.
WorkingShips in AIThreadWaveComputationLog.txt is based on (AIP * Diff) / DiffMod. I'd rather see something like: Diff*(AIP/2)^1.1 / Diff mod or something equivalent. Taking a later planet is negligible right now. The math there is wrong for the right curve but you get the idea. Early moves need to come 'down' in price, later moves need to be equivalently expensive.
Okay, that's the wave pacings and the differences I see there. Next topic that's near and dear to my heart: Core Raid Engines and Core CPAs.
YOU CANNOT PLAY A 'NORMAL' GAME WITH THE THREAT OF MULTIPLE RAID/CPA ENGINES ON A HOMEWORLD AT HIGH DIFFICULTIES. There, it's been said.
A normal game, with the intent of bring AIP up to the 250-300 levels at the time you're attacking the homeworlds, is unfeasible at higher difficulties until after you've scouted out the homeworlds and confirmed these aren't an issue. If CSGs are on they can actually just wreck the game outright, causing it to be a loss to the RNG and not the strategy, tactics, or methods used.
What solutions exist? Well, honestly, I'm not sure. I have my personal preference but Napalming the code probably isn't a good idea. However, I did have some less invasive ideas I'd like to offer as alternatives.
First, if CSGs are on do NOT protect Core Raid Engines and CPA Engines with the shield generators. Allow us the chance (and pain) of assaulting a coreworld early to get these things down before we blow out AIP to try to take down the CSGs.
Second, no more AI Eyes + CPA/REs, please. At least not on Homeworlds, unless they're included as part of 3...
Third, Limit the # of Raid Producing guardposts to 1 at 7+, 2 at 9+, 3 at 10. If you like include the AI Eye in this list of 'unit producing posts' as part of the maximum.
Yes yes, proper scouting, I know. If you're properly picketing and what not on normal maps you won't see homeworlds until you've got your MK IV scout out. That's a bit of a difference than in the early game realizing you've got a problem.
The existance of a Raid Engine on the homeworld shouldn't force an entirely different style of play to survive and win, particularly if the expectation on an 80 planet map is you won't even see these planets until over halfway through the game. They should be a puzzle to defeat, not a defeat if you didn't even know the puzzle was coming.
Reinforcements. I scour planets a lot but until 10 I didn't really feel the reinforcements as much more than a nuisance to get rid of in the backfield before a CPA would hit. I know you're working on getting the logging down and to help clean it up and I'll try to get more involved in this (as I did earlier in the game) but reinforcements feel... off. I know, I used to end up stagnated at 7/7 too and have learned how to deal with it, but it needs a cleaner slope from 8 through 10. 10 felt... right. I had to fight anywhere I wasn't on the ball and taking care of. 9.8 I sneezed at. That doesn't feel like a clean progession.
Dyson WIN!
Well, alright, not exactly. I'd worried about Gatling = AIP being too weak but it's not, at least not if you don't let them dilute. However, for people who play Connect the Empire the Dyson's practically useless. What would be nice is a way to put a flare down for your allies asking them nicely to "Gather here" instead of free-floating the universe aimlessly. They could of course decline but the utter randomness of them means that you have to be very selective in making sure the AI has cutoff planets if you don't want your allies wandering the boonies for hours.
That said, 250 gatlings at 250 AIP is still a VERY powerful force... en masse. Toss in Rebel Resistance Fighters and you've got a MEAN set of backup on any defensive point. Their friendly density in a galaxy should probably be affected by difficulty levels as well as the scenario settings. The scenario settings affecting both spawn rate and density should still be considered, however. Bit torn on this, now that I can adjust them down to 2/10 or 1/10 to lower their effect on my defenses but still be able to play with them. On the flipside, I don't necessarily want to lower the pop count on the ENEMY dysons, just the friendly ones. Not quite sure of the best way to achieve that.
ARS Hacking...
... This is debateable and it depends on your vision for it. Early hacks before you've been able to take an ARS or two and/or K up your main fleet are difficult and very costly. If the idea is that hack #1 should be survivable for an early fleet, well, it's not... not if you consider that said early fleet is needed for a lot of defensive actions. If the idea is that it's meant to force a choice early to bypass until later, it's working as advertised.
Trader Toys:
Alright, seriously. 5 and a half hours to bring the Z-Gennie online on average. These things are too expensive. If they were unlimited I could see the price tags being there to restrict the # of purchases. As it stands they're inane. Yes, they are powerful. I'm honestly not sure I ever got my econ back from just building as many tertiary reactors as it would take to make up for the 400000 power I got from it for 3 million in econ. Halve the prices on the trader toys, please. My power problems stem from my limited planet taking, I live with that.
While we're at it, I'm all for the AI using the trader against you. I just don't like it costing AIP when it does. Double the amount of 'money' the AI has for the trader but remove any AIP costs for removing what it buys, or at least halve the AIP cost. Random BHGs and Warp Gates are painful enough as they stand, they don't need to get a higher price tag when you've scouted properly to avoid those costs.
Minefields:
Personal annoyance. I'd REALLY like to be able to string a line of mines between two wormholes without having to Place a unit on one wormhole, pause, set it to travel to another wormhole, and then swapping back and forth between Shift-Click with mines and Alt to see it's path place them 1... by 1... by 1... by 1... by 1... by 1.... by 1... by 1... by 1....
The Craps Mine-path took me 30 minutes to place. Yes, it was highly effective and worth my time. Yes, I think Click-Shift-Drag-Release to drop a line of mines that are TIGHTLY placed would have been a LOT more pleasurable. So would Ctrl-Click and Alt-Click being a LOT tighter in dropping mines. I can pack mines placed by hand into an area at twice the density of a mass-click. Mines need to be tight, not loose.
Carriers:
Carriers DILUTE the enemy forces too much. Because those forces are not in the fight, it's more like fighting four 1000 ship waves back to back instead of a single 4000 ship wave. I believe the general design and purpose of them should be re-considered. If nothing else give half the ships in the carriers gunports.
Carriers were actually making my defenses easier once I was able to abuse their mechanic by placing EMP minefields at their pop points.
Satellite worlds:
These matches taught me a LOT about how to keep satellites better protected. It will also lead into the next comment about the Rebel Colonists. That said, it requires a LOT of micro.
One of the mainstays, as I understand it, of the game design is world position and decision. Of course, sometimes you take an abandonable world. However, many worlds aren't meant to be abandoned. It's a constant tug-o-war between AIP and world control. With that, Satellites in the far flung empire that's part of the decisions of the game are very hard to defend from even transient traffic, nevermind concerted assaults such as a single world freed by CPA. I know, I'm beating the dead dog trying to get him to stand up and run, it's just a frustration that the amount of micro required to even keep these worlds reasonably safe from drifter traffic (20 ships should NOT threaten a system) requires a significant investment in turrets or a response fleet capable of being anywhere quickly.
As an example, to hold off 25 drifter ships entering Desperado it required an HBC (1/12 of that turret's cap), 10 Grav turrets, and 85 Space Plane Vs (1/3 died). They had came in from 3 planets away when my Rebels breezed through Confederation and Cyborg, skipping two nearby planets where I'd expected them to go (Llama or Macross). Mind you, two of those ships were guardians which is why the stakes were raised, but that's simply drifter traffic, and a lot of firepower to shut them down.
Rebel Colonist Units:
Holy mother of... these things are the BOMB. No seriously. They're overpowered. Don't believe me? At 110 speed and instakill immunity, you can kite an entire MK V planet until the Missile Frigates blow apart anything chasing them and the bombers blow away anything that's faster that gets close (like cutlasses). They trash MK V Guardians. They walk up to 200 ships and ask them for a light while holding a gun to their head. Any mark.
Add to that the risk of losing a colony is pretty minimal. Since the 2 hour cloak kicks back in if you lose the local command station, they're near impossible to remove. They're like tics. Pretty much the only way to lose one is if you end up EMP Guardianed.
They need a balance point. Get rid of the re-cloak if the system falls. You want 'em, protect 'em. Or god help you. Make it 150 AIP on loss, too. They should be worth more than some random human prison camp that gives you a pittance of resources (which I really don't know why they're worth 100 AIP on loss anyway).
Turret upgrade pricing in K:
Nonono. The entire K cost of turret upgrades needs to be reviewed and rebalanced. C'mon, MK II Flaks costing 2500 k while HBC I's only costing 500? Houston, we have a problem, this does not compute. For the record, HBC Is at 500 is where I see the balance point, not the Flak IIs.
EMP Mines:
I hate to say it because these were a joy to use once I got a handle on them, but they're too powerful. Drop 'em to 1000 K and halve the effect. I've got a save against a major wave you can see that I'll send to you if you want it, I'm not sure you want a 10/10 endgame at 30 minutes to complete posted publically.
While we're discussing mines, K cost for AoE damage is really high, but I haven't really used them yet to decide if it's the right value. However, price to price, I'll take EMP every time. Dilution because of the way the waves attack of Dmg and Emp isn't really an option, you'll basically pick one or the other.
Random Wild-Mage crap on later Raids:
MOAR PLZ! Just, keep it interesting, instead of cruel. That was FUN though.
Maws:
Alright, let's be brutal. A large portion of why I beat 10/10 is because of Maws. I didn't defeat the AI HWs because of Maws, I didn't lay waste to the coreworlds with them...
I beat the early game because of them. The power of Maws is in the vacuum. However, MK I maws vacuum just as well as MK IV maws. The only difference in them is the volume of the hold and their HP to not drop the marbles. 5 MK I maws can literally EAT a 100 ship wave in about 40 seconds... and have room to spare in the hold. Distract with fleet and Maws are gods.
Apply this suction to later waves/attacks of a 1000 ships and it's not quite as overpowering. Here's where I think the MK ramp needs to be modified. A MK IV Maw merely gave me four more vacuums. I think it should affect vacuum RATE as well.
I believe currently a Maw takes 2 seconds to vacuum a ship. ~1 second to acquire the target, another second to tractor it in. This vacuum rate should be modified to be a linear 1 second drop for each mark, starting at 4 seconds to vacuum at MK I. This makes higher MK Maws both more effective as well as having a larger hold, and lowers the impact early game maws have, but late game maws are still making as large an impact.
Finally...
Thanks for the game. I know this is a long and lengthy criticism, some of which are core mechanics. I've tried to be as objective as I can be about where I feel the imbalances are and why. If any of this comes off as obnoxious or nasty it's more tiredness and text than anything else and I've tried to clean up anywhere I realized I was coming off as an ass.
I had a LOT of fun doing this and working out the different slopes and the like. So, again...
Thank you, and thanks for listening.
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congratz on the win ^^
It was a long story indeed, but I don't mind. I often write text walls myself.
what's your next game going to be?
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Congrats on the win! Taking on 10/10 is no small feet.
I would like to echo some of the things in your analysis "wall of text" post I agree with.
I agree that wave multipliers should be increased across the board. I also agree that the random variation among wave sizes is too large (aka. min due to randomness and max due to randomness is too large). And finally, about the 9.6 to 10 jump not being that noticeable, I voiced my concern about that effect when the 10 difficulty lost its insane multiplier to wave sizes a few dozen versions back. Good to see that someone else has noticed that as well.
For the mixed Mk. thing in waves, that would be cool, and it would aid greatly to the granularity of wave difficulty, giving more ways to increase difficulty, but I'm not sure it is necessary to change such a core design choice to achieve a large but not unreasonable jump from 9 to 9.3.
It sounds like you may be interested in a new AI modifier to use an exo-wave like fleet composition in waves (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=6291), and more ways that schizophrenic waves can vary (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=7211).
As to turrets, yes I agree that their knowledge costs could use a balance pass.
And for the satellite world defense problem, given the scenario you described, I think it is pretty clear that most turret lines are still underpowered for what they are supposed to do, making defending satellite worlds from even small amounts of wandering threat take an unreasonable amount of investment (it should require an investment to hold it, but not that much...)
Anyways, I know that none of these are really small issues, and will require quite a bit of work to get right, and thus probably have to wait until AI war becomes the focus again.
EDIT: Oh yea, I would like to also voice my support to half the price of the trader toys. The existing caps on those should be enough to keep them from being abusable.
Also, mine unlock costs could also use a second look.
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Woooo, congratulations! The Dyson-Rebel-Vogon alliance crushes Earth once and for all. http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=8373
Okay, that's annoying. When I'm moving my Riots around, if they collide with the ship hacker, IT moves instead of the Riot moving off the collision.
Ah, yep, collision priority. Will bump up both hackers on that stat.
But, *I* have rebels! Who, amongst other things, ignore BHGs.
Stickin' it to the man! Disregarding the rules!
However, there's one thing I DO want to mention. THAT WAS FUN!
What, K-Raiding was fun? Gotta nerf it... ;)
A little surprised you went for K-Raiding rather than ST-hacking, in general the latter is way more efficient. But I suppose also potentially way more dangerous, and you have far less choice of battlefield, so to speak.
One in particular has a STarship dissassembler which means I need to Raid that to death for the Bomber SSs to come into play.
Y'know, swallowing a starship-sized enemy doesn't seem particularly safe.
"Sir! The enemy starship has been towed inside."
"Tell me something I don't know."
"There was a strange inscription on the port nacelle, you'd better take a look."
"What the... 'I prepared explosive runes this m-
(end recording)
*Beach-head hits* WHAT?! I didn't turn that on?!!!!! (J/K).
Yea, I bet a randomizing & hiding lobby script with that as a possibility could lead to some tension ;) We all know how kind the RNG is, after all.
So much for the Sentinel vs. Cockroach theory, I can't target the bloody thing. It's not on its list of immunities unless it's under Artillery Ammo as a generic.
Sniper immunity includes immunity to anything with truly infinite range (Ions actually have a finite range, for this reason).
Also the blade spawners are still shooting at powered down units and not doing damage to them.
Oh right, and I've got that save you gave me right here, will take a look :)
I will admit: No chokepoint, no win. It's that simple.
Yea, the recent batch of crosshatches showed that 9/9 without a chokepoint is quite doable. 10/10 without a chokepoint is not. And I think that's fine. 10/10 should kill you anyway ;)
Let's head back to 7/7. I believe at 240 or so it jumps to Tech II. Instead of this being a hard jump on waves, make it a percentage of units. At 240 say 10% goes to Tech II on an inbound wave. Increment this by 10% for every 2-5% increase towards the next tech level, having them be 'hardened' into Tech II only about halfway through the increase to Tech III.
Apply this same structure to the 9.x with 0 being the 'crossover' point and pacing will make more sense, even pushing the 'start' point to negatives if you like as you go up the slope. For 10, make the Tech II hardened right out of the gates.
That... that could work. Thanks, I really hadn't thought of that option at all. Code-wise it won't be simple (possibly fairly painful), but I think that's finally a solution to the fact that we want it to start at tech II on the really high difficulties but we don't want a "difficulty cliff" between any two adjacent difficulty settings.
This is working but the min-max time wave differentials are inane.
Yea, it does need tightening up. I really like your idea of making the "range" dependent on the number of available entry points: if the AI detects a single chokepoint, it should realize that it needs to take time to build a bigger sledgehammer and get a nice running start; if it sees that you're wide open, then hitting you all over (with the occasional long-time sledgehammer) makes a lot more sense.
Now, the other side of wave pacing that seems a little weak is the wave volume in general.
Yea, all those nerfs a few months ago added up, so time to do some old-fashioned ratcheting-up to put some meat back on the bones. Trying to make the main changes in response to this more clever than "throw moar ships!" but that has a place too.
AIP needs to have more affect on the multiplier than a simple multiplier. It needs to get exponential. There's no "race" feeling as you get further into the game. A 2x multiplier on the waves as you go from AIP 20-40 is HUGE. A miniscule multiplier of the same effect as you go from 200-220 is.. well... miniscule.
Hmm. the absolute increase is still similar, though, which seems fine. But I think it's worth trying changing step 1 from "( AIProgress * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty )" to "( ((AIProgress*0.8 )^1.1) * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty )". I'm not sure we even have a pow function on our FInt type but I think this calculation is done only on the host in an area where we already do some float math (because it can't cause desyncs: only one process computes it).
That naturally will result in an increase across the board from the current state (except for the very beginning of the game, but I think that can simply be a big part of the "moar" component of the balance adjustment. Potentially it needs to be made difficulty-dependent (not hitting them with exponents below 8, then phasing it in). Some test points:
| AIP | Feels Like |
| 10 | 9.85 |
| 30 | 32.98 |
| 50 | 57.85 |
| 70 | 83.75 |
| 90 | 110.42 |
| 100 | 123.99 |
| 200 | 265.79 |
| 220 | 295.16 |
| 300 | 415.18 |
| 400 | 569.72 |
| 500 | 728.23 |
Seems like it's wroth a shot, anyhow. And it could make some of those ultra-high-AIP Fallen-Spire games a little spicier.
But does it really deal with your original concern? Sure, capturing a planet at 200 AIP increases the wave size like a 30 AIP increase instead of a 20 AIP increase, but is that going to feel any less like a miniscule change?
Third, Limit the # of Raid Producing guardposts to 1 at 7+, 2 at 9+, 3 at 10. If you like include the AI Eye in this list of 'unit producing posts' as part of the maximum.
Interesting, I'd already come to almost exactly that idea myself :) A bit different, but yea: those three structures on an AI HW can't simply be left purely to the RNG, or the RNG will randomly do this (http://dilbert.com/2012-05-23/). So treating it as a different "set" of seeding and hopefully later adding some different options to that set to make it a bit more varied (without exponentially increasing the cruelty), I think will help a lot.
Reinforcements.
Will take that under advisement; bear in mind that most of the games in this series (iirc) came before the fairly-signficant rework of reinforcements that happened when I added the logging (and discovered a pile of ancient twisted skeletons in the closet).
Dyson WIN!
Haha. Glad it was more reasonable this time. Though I agree that the normal level of diffusion would reduce their effectiveness significantly. Will think about that. A command-flare approach would be doable, but it might swing it right on into overpowered (imagine being able to throw 200 gatlings at a HW at will).
And yes, combined with resistance fighters on the chokepoint planet... if you pick two "help me out here!" factions, don't counterbalance them with negative factions, and use them efficiently you've effectively lowered the difficulty a bit. Which is great, and helps temper stuff like 10/10 to be a bit less "this universe hates me".
If the idea is that hack #1 should be survivable for an early fleet, well, it's not... not if you consider that said early fleet is needed for a lot of defensive actions.
Bear in mind that AI difficulty factors into the hack response, and impacts the level which the early fleet is needed for defense. On Diff 10, early hack? Nuh-uh. Diff 7? Probably not too hard.
Trader Toys
Not sure about lowering the cost on the ZPG; it's pretty much a game-changer particularly for low-planet-capture games. Some of the other toys, perhaps.
On the AI buying AIP-increasing stuff from it... yea, not so great. It just means I have to make new unit defs for the no-AIP versions. Effort ;)
The Craps Mine-path took me 30 minutes to place.
Now that's dedication. Yea, I don't think I'll have time for it soon, but the underlying construction template code from the 3.x days is still there and even if fixing the old problems with that is out of scope for a while I can probably get it to let you build a fairly-tightly-packed line of mines.
Carriers DILUTE the enemy forces too much.
That's a really good point. We can't just let the ships inside shoot out for a ton of reasons (the biggest one being that they _don't exist_, the carrier just has a list of types of contained ships; it's not like transports), but my current thought is to make the carrier's attack more substantial and to have it gain an extra shot-per-salvo per 16 (on high caps, 8 on normal, etc) contained ships. And make it so it can still fly through forcefields but its shots don't ignore them (another new mechanic, but ah well).
That way they may not have the same firepower as the contained ships, but it'll be enough that it won't be astronomically less dangerous in carrier-form.
Satellite worlds
Hmm, not sure what to do there, other than maybe the new line of structures that "triple turret firepower, but stop working completely if more than 20 turrets-with-guns on the planet" (or something like that) which we discussed before.
Rebel Colonist Units... They walk up to 200 ships and ask them for a light while holding a gun to their head.
Stickin' it to the man.
My thought is to remove the re-cloak as you suggested, and halve their ship caps but make the ship cap scale with the Human Colony Rebellions faction intensity (4 = half what it is now, 8 = what it is now, or maybe non-linear instead). That might be too severe, dunno.
Turret upgrade pricing in K
I dunno. It could stand a little adjustment, but reducing it too much just makes impenetrable defense way easier to achieve. Turrets generally are 3x as potent as equivalent fleet ships, and they don't even get smaller caps at higher marks. Sure, the mkII flak is 2500 and the mkI HBC is 500. The mkI flak is the more appropriate comparison point, and that's free :)
In general I think it's mainly a matter of you playing at a high enough difficulty that if a knowledge unlock doesn't give you more offensive power it's just not on the table (mostly). I generally see folks at saner levels getting a fairly large amount of turret unlo...
I have an idea. Dunno when I'l get to it, but I think it will help ;)
EMP Mines
Yea, I've been expecting them to be found OP since the rebalance; as you say halving the effect and dropping the K cost is in order.
Random Wild-Mage crap on later Raids
Glad you like :) As you say, more interesting (not so much more cruel) stuff would be great here.
Maws
Yea, scaling the vacuum rate by mark sounds like a great idea. Possibly reducing capacity too, dunno.
Thank you, and thanks for listening.
My pleasure, and thank you very much as well, this feedback is very valuable. I didn't agree with all of it, but didn't think any of it was obnoxious at all. The game's already gotten substantially better in response to this series in terms of putting some bounds around k-raiding, st-hacking, the dyson, and who knows what else that I'm forgetting. Without in-depth play experimentation and feedback, these kinds of improvements just aren't likely to happen.
Most of all, glad to hear you had fun :)
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Trader Toys
Not sure about lowering the cost on the ZPG; it's pretty much a game-changer particularly for low-planet-capture games. Some of the other toys, perhaps.
On the AI buying AIP-increasing stuff from it... yea, not so great. It just means I have to make new unit defs for the no-AIP versions. Effort ;)
If you are going to make some no-AIP offshoots of some stuff, maybe you can add no AIP offshoots of command stations? That would allow for that recolonization hybrid plot you had mentioned toying around with when hybrids were reintroduced without the AIP problems.
Carriers DILUTE the enemy forces too much.
That's a really good point. We can't just let the ships inside shoot out for a ton of reasons (the biggest one being that they _don't exist_, the carrier just has a list of types of contained ships; it's not like transports), but my current thought is to make the carrier's attack more substantial and to have it gain an extra shot-per-salvo per 16 (on high caps, 8 on normal, etc) contained ships. And make it so it can still fly through forcefields but its shots don't ignore them (another new mechanic, but ah well).
That way they may not have the same firepower as the contained ships, but it'll be enough that it won't be astronomically less dangerous in carrier-form.
Actually, isn't the move through forcefields but not shoot through them an already existing attribute a ship can have? I'm pretty sure I remember some ships having them back in the 3.0 days, even if no ships currently use it.
And the dynamic scaling of firepower thing, hmm, that may not of worked so well for when you were trying to use H/Ks as threat consolidation, but that might work pretty well here, as the original ships (or rather, ship counts) are not lost forever.
The Craps Mine-path took me 30 minutes to place.
Now that's dedication. Yea, I don't think I'll have time for it soon, but the underlying construction template code from the 3.x days is still there and even if fixing the old problems with that is out of scope for a while I can probably get it to let you build a fairly-tightly-packed line of mines.
Also, http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=7840 might be worth looking at about this
Dyson WIN!
Haha. Glad it was more reasonable this time. Though I agree that the normal level of diffusion would reduce their effectiveness significantly. Will think about that. A command-flare approach would be doable, but it might swing it right on into overpowered (imagine being able to throw 200 gatlings at a HW at will).
Couldn't that also be fixed by smarter planet choosing logic for wandering ships? Like be more likely to choose a planet to head to next that has more non-ally in-points, or something like that?
Reinforcements.
Will take that under advisement; bear in mind that most of the games in this series (iirc) came before the fairly-signficant rework of reinforcements that happened when I added the logging (and discovered a pile of ancient twisted skeletons in the closet).
(emphasis added)
Yea, I know that feeling. At my job, I was digging through some old code made by some of our offshore developers, and found some pretty ugly stuff.
Granted, you guys are very competent and I'm sure you didn't commit code atrocities regularly, but I know even when reviewing my own code I can discover the "WTH was I thinking?!" stuff.
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Woooo, congratulations! The Dyson-Rebel-Vogon alliance crushes Earth once and for all. http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=8373
BWAHAHAHAHAHA. How'd I know that was coming? ;D
[quoet]But, *I* have rebels! Who, amongst other things, ignore BHGs.
Stickin' it to the man! Disregarding the rules![/quote]
Go go mighty rebels!
A little surprised you went for K-Raiding rather than ST-hacking, in general the latter is way more efficient. But I suppose also potentially way more dangerous, and you have far less choice of battlefield, so to speak.
ST in mathmatics is more efficient. However, due to the ST position vs. my control of the battlefield, the K-Raid was actually much more efficient. It wasn't as effective, but definately more efficient. I just really needed a 'bump' for security, it was starting to get a little hairy on Macross. If I was in fear for my life I'd probably have went after the ST and damned the torpedos.
So much for the Sentinel vs. Cockroach theory, I can't target the bloody thing. It's not on its list of immunities unless it's under Artillery Ammo as a generic.
Sniper immunity includes immunity to anything with truly infinite range (Ions actually have a finite range, for this reason).
Ah! It would be nice if that was more obvious.
Also the blade spawners are still shooting at powered down units and not doing damage to them.
Oh right, and I've got that save you gave me right here, will take a look :)
Gracias Senor. At least when they're smoking their forcefield fetish they're doing damage and not spinning wheels.
Yea, the recent batch of crosshatches showed that 9/9 without a chokepoint is quite doable. 10/10 without a chokepoint is not. And I think that's fine. 10/10 should kill you anyway ;)
Agreed. The reason that chokepoint saved me so much wasn't because of waves, though. It was because I could assault and release threat (deepstrike, whatever) without fear of the repurcussions in a game-loss scenario.
Let's head back to 7/7. I believe at 240 or so it jumps to Tech II. Instead of this being a hard jump on waves, make it a percentage of units. At 240 say 10% goes to Tech II on an inbound wave. Increment this by 10% for every 2-5% increase towards the next tech level, having them be 'hardened' into Tech II only about halfway through the increase to Tech III.
Apply this same structure to the 9.x with 0 being the 'crossover' point and pacing will make more sense, even pushing the 'start' point to negatives if you like as you go up the slope. For 10, make the Tech II hardened right out of the gates.
That... that could work. Thanks, I really hadn't thought of that option at all. Code-wise it won't be simple (possibly fairly painful), but I think that's finally a solution to the fact that we want it to start at tech II on the really high difficulties but we don't want a "difficulty cliff" between any two adjacent difficulty settings.
Sweet (loud woot on my side!). One of the things it also does is soften the swap later. The TII to TIII cliff is also pretty painful, making it instead of an increase in difficulty it's like swapping from Nightmare to Hell mode on the fly. A tamer slope I believe will make that crossover point in all games more reasonable. TI to II used to beat me to pieces in lower level games when I was still getting my bearings, and that's really a worse upgrade than II to III.
Yea, it does need tightening up. I really like your idea of making the "range" dependent on the number of available entry points: if the AI detects a single chokepoint, it should realize that it needs to take time to build a bigger sledgehammer and get a nice running start; if it sees that you're wide open, then hitting you all over (with the occasional long-time sledgehammer) makes a lot more sense.
The really nice part about adjusting the wave timers only for that is that you're not really affecting the difficulty of the waves or anything like that, you're simply affecting the number of them vs. the volume included. So, it's not a nerf or a hammer against either style of play, it just varies the approach depending on what it finds itself dealing with, which in my mind goes well with the emergent behavior of the game.
Hmm. the absolute increase is still similar, though, which seems fine.
One of the other threads around here shows that I have a difficult time keeping up with some of the finer points of higher math on the fly (particularly in my head, I can do most of it on paper eventually). My personal imagining of the balance point would be around 160 - 200 AIP. Earlier wave increases wouldn't be as painful and later ones would be worse.
But I think it's worth trying changing step 1 from "( AIProgress * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty )" to "( ((AIProgress*0.8 )^1.1) * AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - AIDifficulty )". ...
That naturally will result in an increase across the board from the current state (except for the very beginning of the game, but I think that can simply be a big part of the "moar" component of the balance adjustment. Potentially it needs to be made difficulty-dependent (not hitting them with exponents below 8, then phasing it in). Some test points:
...
But does it really deal with your original concern? Sure, capturing a planet at 200 AIP increases the wave size like a 30 AIP increase instead of a 20 AIP increase, but is that going to feel any less like a miniscule change?
Not directly. If anything, I'd personally like to see the earlier waves lowered in impact a little more. Something like AIP 30 being 20ish right now, 100 being 100, and 200 being 250ish. I could see including the MOAR desire into this and that might balance off my feelings on it, but a slower approach to the incrementation would probably be wiser. :) I'm not sure that too small an adjustment though would really be noticed, though.
Third, Limit the # of Raid Producing guardposts to 1 at 7+, 2 at 9+, 3 at 10. If you like include the AI Eye in this list of 'unit producing posts' as part of the maximum.
Interesting, I'd already come to almost exactly that idea myself :) A bit different, but yea: those three structures on an AI HW can't simply be left purely to the RNG, or the RNG will randomly do this (http://dilbert.com/2012-05-23/). So treating it as a different "set" of seeding and hopefully later adding some different options to that set to make it a bit more varied (without exponentially increasing the cruelty), I think will help a lot.
I should probably have mentioned those values, in my mind anyway, were for a total across both homeworlds, not just one, so the mid-game scouting doesn't end your game due to RNG.
Reinforcements.
Will take that under advisement; bear in mind that most of the games in this series (iirc) came before the fairly-signficant rework of reinforcements that happened when I added the logging (and discovered a pile of ancient twisted skeletons in the closet).
More than fair and I haven't played that heavily since the changes. Was simply something I noticed through the series and from what I remember a few of the skeleton cleanups were removing some of the nastiness of heavy-hitters from overwhelming the reinforcements.
And lord do I know what those skeletons look like. I'm currently weaving my code at work through the rib cages of a few of them because I can't fix a vendor's app.
Glad it was more reasonable this time. Though I agree that the normal level of diffusion would reduce their effectiveness significantly. Will think about that. A command-flare approach would be doable, but it might swing it right on into overpowered (imagine being able to throw 200 gatlings at a HW at will).
Just make it player owned planets only.
Bear in mind that AI difficulty factors into the hack response, and impacts the level which the early fleet is needed for defense. On Diff 10, early hack? Nuh-uh. Diff 7? Probably not too hard.
Ah! Good point. I'd not realized the differential for the lower difficulties. My bad. :-X
Not sure about lowering the cost on the ZPG; it's pretty much a game-changer particularly for low-planet-capture games. Some of the other toys, perhaps.
On the AI buying AIP-increasing stuff from it... yea, not so great. It just means I have to make new unit defs for the no-AIP versions. Effort ;)
Straight math time:
ZPG Price: 7.2mill in mats. Produces: 400,000 Power for 20 mats.
Reactor levels 1/2/3: ~40,000 mats. Produces: 125,000 Power for 114 mats. 80% of drain for each additional reactor.
Second rectors of this type only produce 100,000 power. The third set produces 80,000 power.
Assuming 3 planets, you need a full build of secondary reactors and one set of third to approximate what you get off the single Z-Gennie.
This costs you an initial purchase price of 150,000 mats, and will cost you ~500 mats/second in upkeep.
This means the cost of the Z-Generator for simply building it will not be recovered for four hours. It also has a 10 AIP price tag if it's lost, requiring resources to defend it, particularly if it's a captured building, which is why that component is in there.
The price tag, to me, is exorbinant, simply because the price of using tertiary reactors is more effective in the short term. It's more a convenience than a game changer, but that my simply be my perspective. This last run I did the math and I probably won't pick one up again until late game at its current pricing.
The Craps Mine-path took me 30 minutes to place.
Now that's dedication. Yea, I don't think I'll have time for it soon, but the underlying construction template code from the 3.x days is still there and even if fixing the old problems with that is out of scope for a while I can probably get it to let you build a fairly-tightly-packed line of mines.
Woot!
Carriers DILUTE the enemy forces too much.
That's a really good point. We can't just let the ships inside shoot out for a ton of reasons (the biggest one being that they _don't exist_, the carrier just has a list of types of contained ships;
Ah, that makes sense.
, but my current thought is to make the carrier's attack more substantial and to have it gain an extra shot-per-salvo per 16 (on high caps, 8 on normal, etc) contained ships. And make it so it can still fly through forcefields but its shots don't ignore them (another new mechanic, but ah well).
Yeah, honestly, I just tossed the first idea that came to mind out into the wild, but they definately need to be reviewed. You guys built this game and I'm sure you'll have some ideas. :)
That way they may not have the same firepower as the contained ships, but it'll be enough that it won't be astronomically less dangerous in carrier-form.
That sounds like a reasonable balance.
Rebel Colonist Units... They walk up to 200 ships and ask them for a light while holding a gun to their head.
Stickin' it to the man.
My thought is to remove the re-cloak as you suggested, and halve their ship caps but make the ship cap scale with the Human Colony Rebellions faction intensity (4 = half what it is now, 8 = what it is now, or maybe non-linear instead). That might be too severe, dunno.
I'm not sure if half is too much or not, particularly with the increased risk of loss. Maybe start at 2/3s so they're not quite as effective as a one-stop shop for a second fleet.
Turret upgrade pricing in K
I dunno. It could stand a little adjustment, but reducing it too much just makes impenetrable defense way easier to achieve. Turrets generally are 3x as potent as equivalent fleet ships, and they don't even get smaller caps at higher marks. Sure, the mkII flak is 2500 and the mkI HBC is 500. The mkI flak is the more appropriate comparison point, and that's free :)
Part of the issue I see with the K costs for turrets and the unbalance is the survivability vs. cost. The reason I used Flaks in particular is because Flak Turrets (and any short range AoE turret) tend to get pounded into oblivion the more you need the AoE! XD Long Range turrets have survivability due to range more than HP so things like LRMs and Spider turrets aren't really where I feel the pain point in K cost. It's more on the shorter range side. As an example, I consider Basic Turrets to be more effective and more powerful than Flak turrets, for a number of reasons (one of which is anti-artillery hull). These are cheap to upgrade. The Flak has a shorter range and is a priority target to everything. Unless you're FF-Banking them they're just cannon fodder pretty quickly, and cost twice as much to upgrade.
[/quote]In general I think it's mainly a matter of you playing at a high enough difficulty that if a knowledge unlock doesn't give you more offensive power it's just not on the table (mostly). I generally see folks at saner levels getting a fairly large amount of turret unlo...
I have an idea. Dunno when I'l get to it, but I think it will help ;)
[/quote]
Cool, I look forward to seeing that. :)
Maws
Yea, scaling the vacuum rate by mark sounds like a great idea. Possibly reducing capacity too, dunno.
I don't think a capacity removal is in order, here's why:
At about 15 ships inhaled, the MK I Maw starts having to make a decision: Run or possibly loose all the eaten ships. With adjustments to the vacuum rate allowing for hold space is more a survivability question to the player than it will be to the effect on the battle. The only time I would 'fill' the Maws is during heavy fleet actions with repair crews nearby or during desperate maneuvers over a long standing fight (like that CPA of core ships in one of the games). With the vacuum adjustment, I doubt I'd get near the caps even now without significantly pushing the maws to the edge of their survivability.
Larger holds means more decisions. When your fleet's on the run and someone pops a hold of 60 ships one of the maws was eating, it starts a domino effect. I like the choice, but the mechanic's a little too powerful at the moment.
On the flipside, the vacuum rate adjustment will also nerf the Maws in the AI's hands a bit, and Maws are a significant threat to the player in AI hands.
Thank you, and thanks for listening.
My pleasure, and thank you very much as well, this feedback is very valuable. I didn't agree with all of it,[/quote]
Well, I'm pretty sure noone will agree with all of these, some of them are pretty polarizing and will make the game harder instead of easier, others are personal whines and frustrations. :) All in all, you agreed with a LOT more than I'd expected!
The game's already gotten substantially better in response to this series in terms of putting some bounds around k-raiding, st-hacking, the dyson, and who knows what else that I'm forgetting. Without in-depth play experimentation and feedback, these kinds of improvements just aren't likely to happen.
That's great to hear, thanks.
Most of all, glad to hear you had fun :)
Ayup!!! Now, 10/10 Crosshatch? ::) Alright, that's a joke, but I'm sure I'll do another of these here in the near future.
Thanks again!
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Now, 10/10 Crosshatch? ::) Alright, that's a joke, but I'm sure I'll do another of these here in the near future.
If anyone ever beats a fair game of 10/10 Crosshatch... I just don't see how, without a very odd definition of "fair" :)
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Now, 10/10 Crosshatch? ::) Alright, that's a joke, but I'm sure I'll do another of these here in the near future.
If anyone ever beats a fair game of 10/10 Crosshatch... I just don't see how, without a very odd definition of "fair" :)
Well, someone managed to figure out a way to TAS PC games.
Might be interesting to see what an AI War player with "perfect reflexes" could do. ;)
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Well, someone managed to figure out a way to TAS PC games.
Might be interesting to see what an AI War player with "perfect reflexes" could do. ;)
You've already got pause and savescumming :)
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Rebel Colonist Units... They walk up to 200 ships and ask them for a light while holding a gun to their head.
Stickin' it to the man.
My thought is to remove the re-cloak as you suggested, and halve their ship caps but make the ship cap scale with the Human Colony Rebellions faction intensity (4 = half what it is now, 8 = what it is now, or maybe non-linear instead). That might be too severe, dunno.
One thing to keep in mind about the Rebel colonies - In very long games (120 planet, for example) you can have 2, 3, or even 4 Rebel Colonies appear. However, each one past the first gives you no benefit, but still has the same extreme risks as the first. I think something should be done about that. If the benefits are going to be nerfed, I think something definitely needs to be done on the risks side.
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Actually crosshatch 10/10 is suprisingly easy , i managed to first the first one of those where i survived first 2hours. You get relatively easy acess to every planet , can blow up all the DC's and lurk at low aip for long time. With jumpships you can clear the galaxy from DC's as soon as you get your second planet. And once you lurk enough to get a colony rebellion you no longer need to use rest of your fleet offensively at all. The op Rebel units clear all the stuff up for you with ease. Also cherrypicking your planets in crosshatch is very easy. You'll gain plenty of golems /shields/ars easily . If there is ST or botnet you can probably even connect your planets without too much hassle.
Sure the border agression is pure murder and 90% of your fleet will be in defense for most of the game but crosshatch still isn't much more difficult for 10/10 than any other map
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Actually crosshatch 10/10 is suprisingly easy , i managed to first the first one of those where i survived first 2hours. You get relatively easy acess to every planet , can blow up all the DC's and lurk at low aip for long time. With jumpships you can clear the galaxy from DC's as soon as you get your second planet. And once you lurk enough to get a colony rebellion you no longer need to use rest of your fleet offensively at all. The op Rebel units clear all the stuff up for you with ease. Also cherrypicking your planets in crosshatch is very easy. You'll gain plenty of golems /shields/ars easily . If there is ST or botnet you can probably even connect your planets without too much hassle.
Sure the border agression is pure murder and 90% of your fleet will be in defense for most of the game but crosshatch still isn't much more difficult for 10/10 than any other map
Underlining a few things there:
If you're playing Golems Hard, you get exos, which can be very painful on 10/10. If you're playing Golems Medium there's AIP costs (and lots of energy, typically requiring more territory). If you're playing Golems Easy and not counterbalancing it with something else then it's not quite in the fair category ;)
Somewhat similar situation with Spirecraft.
The rebels, as you say, are OP. This won't stand ;)
My question is: how do you deal with a 4000 MkII ship double-max-time wave if you have such a large surface area to defend? Martyr? Botnet?
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heh, now that you mention it i forgot that that game has both options toned to 1/10 :) And they were ofcourse a complete joke.
Not entirely sure how big a threat exos are, AIP is so low for vast majority of the game that they don't really get to build up. And when they come you can easily concentrate the defenses on spots you absoulutely must defend (home, and factory if you have one). Whelp, i need to play this again with proper settings.
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For the multiple rebel colony thing, maybe something like reduce their base ship cap in half or to 2/3rds or something (in addition to making lose their cloaking much, much faster if their planet is lost again), but have each additional colony past the first add an extra half or quarter or something to their ship cap.
The Fallen spire has shown that dynamic ship caps are supported by the game, so something like that could work here. It would also have that greater risk, greater reward mechanic that is usually fun.
Also, was the fact that rebel colonies are not immune to tachyon beams intentional?
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This set of after action reports are great!
Thanks for all the effort, especially in recording what happened in your games.
Maybe I'll post a couple of (Significantly less impresssive) aar of my games, after I'm done with my refresher game.
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In general I think it's mainly a matter of you playing at a high enough difficulty that if a knowledge unlock doesn't give you more offensive power it's just not on the table (mostly). I generally see folks at saner levels getting a fairly large amount of turret unlo...
I have an idea. Dunno when I'l get to it, but I think it will help ;)
Cool, I look forward to seeing that. :)
Here's the relevant part of the release notes (as seen here (http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-5.000_Beta#Prerelease_5.036), there's a few other things in there that we discussed here. It's not out yet, hopefully will be this week, gotta get that AVWW official out the door) :
* Didn't want to let the AI have _all_ the fun, so: Added 4 new drone ship types that only the Neinzul Enclave Starship can build:
** Neinzul Laser Drone I-IV
*** MkI and II require Laser Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Laser Turret III technology.
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Laser Turrets have a bonus against.
** Neinzul Needler Drone I-IV
*** MkI and II require Basic Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Basic Turret III technology.
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Basic Turrets have a bonus against.
** Neinzul MLRS Drone I-IV
*** MkI and II require MLRS Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require MLRS Turret III technology.
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that MLRS Turrets have a bonus against.
** Neinzul Missile Drone I-IV
*** MkI and II require Missile Turret II technology. MkIII and IV require Missile Turret III technology.
*** Has 5x bonuses against the hull types that Missile Turrets have a bonus against.
** A Neinzul Enclave Starship can build any of these up to its own mark level once you have the corresponding turret technology, just select an enclave and click the "DRONE" tab on the buy menu (similar to how the Starship Constructor has a "RIOT" tab for the Riot Control Starships).
** Stat wise:
*** Each drone only lives 30 seconds; no repair, no attrition-stops-on-low-power, no regeneration chambers, nada. It's got 30 seconds to hurt something.
*** Drones do not have the lightning speed of the normal Youngling types (not wanting these to horn in on what makes the younglings special). One consequence is that the "mothership" has to be within a certain range of the stuff you want hurt.
*** Drones are pretty flimsy, but dying from enemy fire isn't much of an event for these.
*** Ship cap is about 25% of normal because these aren't supposed to be like a whole new ship unlock, they're just a bonus on top of what you already get for turret (and enclave starship) research.
*** Drones cannot traverse wormholes.
*** Drones are super, super cheap in both metal/crystal and energy.
*** Attack-power-wise n an individual basis they're about as strong as a normal fleet ship with 5x bonuses, making them fairly effective against the stuff with those hull types.
** The motivation behind these:
*** High-difficulty play can make it feel very painful to spend knowledge unlocking something that doesn't give an offensive boost. That's fine, but turrets in particular could get very little love due to their... very limited offensive use, shall we say. So having turret research provide a modest amount of offensive boost (if you have CoN and thus the Neinzul Enclave Starship, anyhow) seemed like a fun way to do things. And we've already done the cross-tech thing with having turret research unlock spire capital ship modules in LotS, so doing a bit more of it seemed fine.
*** Despite the fairly massive buffs Neinzul Enclave Starships received not long ago there's still been a lot of feedback that they're underwhelming and that they don't have a lot of point. Well, now they can build lots of little sharp points that will really annoy the AI for you, and they're the only way to build them.
*** But this is also not so powerful that you have to do turret research or even use the enclaves at all, it's just making it nicer if you do.
Anyway, hopefully it will make those choices more interesting :)
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In general I think it's mainly a matter of you playing at a high enough difficulty that if a knowledge unlock doesn't give you more offensive power it's just not on the table (mostly). I generally see folks at saner levels getting a fairly large amount of turret unlo...
I have an idea. Dunno when I'l get to it, but I think it will help ;)
Cool, I look forward to seeing that. :)
Here's the relevant part of the release notes (as seen here (http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-5.000_Beta#Prerelease_5.036), there's a few other things in there that we discussed here. It's not out yet, hopefully will be this week, gotta get that AVWW official out the door) :
...
Anyway, hopefully it will make those choices more interesting :)
Right, well I'm seeing the potential for some universal low-mark usage - being of the camp that rarely unlocks any turrets costing 1000+ knowledge (except for Fallen Spire). We shall have to see how strong these drones are and whether they interfere with reinforcement rates for a deep-strike fleet.
There will likely be some intermittent background micro switching between in-battle drone building and out-of-battle fleet-building.
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In general I think it's mainly a matter of you playing at a high enough difficulty that if a knowledge unlock doesn't give you more offensive power it's just not on the table (mostly). I generally see folks at saner levels getting a fairly large amount of turret unlo...
I have an idea. Dunno when I'l get to it, but I think it will help ;)
Cool, I look forward to seeing that. :)
Here's the relevant part of the release notes (as seen here (http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Current_Post-5.000_Beta#Prerelease_5.036), there's a few other things in there that we discussed here. It's not out yet, hopefully will be this week, gotta get that AVWW official out the door) :
Those look very interesting! Depending on how the low-end ones work out I'll have to test out the larger ones. Considering I almost always have Basic IIs unlocked the Needlers will probably get an extensive review by my fleet. The idea of these almost reminds me of Protoss Carriers. I hadn't had a chance to play with the improved versions yet but now I'll definately have to drag a few out.
You flipped the direction of the upgrade for the Tech improvements I'd had in mind, but this still looks like it could be interesting. In particular that's going to get NASTY going through Tech II to Tech III... errr, wait, no not really, the Tech III boost is WAY the heck out further. That should be fun. I assume 10/10 still has the 300/800 III/IV limits. Out of curiousity, did you plan on dropping that kind of granularity down to the 7.x spread as well, or do you not forsee a need?
Those carriers look MEAN.
To understand the change for the wave-sizes, I'm not sure I see where you're going with that. I'd expected it to be affecting the size-factor due to time and how often they landed, not the wave size themselves (also I'd expected a bit more of a cap on the multi-planet, but I can see why it's not there).
Which from this is what I think you mean but I'm not entirely sure where/how:
On Diff 7+ the randomization of wave intervals (which feeds directly into step 5 of the wave size formula) has been changed to consider the number of planets that the AI can send waves against (and thus the probable defensive power of those worlds, i.e. chokepoints, and the viability or lack thereof of smaller waves):
Looking through both AIThreadWaveComputationLog, step 5:
3/5/2012 7:54:14 PM (5.029)
-----------------------------------
Starting CreateMixedWaveToPlanet at Game Time: 0:46:00 ; Player.AIType: Sledge_Hammer ; Player.AIDifficulty: 7 ; AIProgressionLevel: 71 ; AITechLevel: 1 ; WaveSize: 1.63
aiTypeBasedAIPIncrement : 30
workingShips = ( AIProgressionLevel * player.AIDifficulty ) / ( 13 - player.AIDifficulty ) : 117.83
workingShips *= FInt.FromParts( 0, AILoop.Instance.AIRandom.Next( 800, 1100 ) ) : 104.25
workingShips = Min(workingShips,34 * handicap_multiplier) :104.25
numberShips = workingShips.IntValue :104
Inside AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType, multiplier: 1
after AdjustNumberShipsFromAIType call, numberShips :104
numberTech123 = numberShips - numberDefensive - numberExplosive - numberCore :104
Well, no, that can't be right... Alright, MainThreadComputationLog...
6/1/2012 5:38:24 PM (5.035)
-----------------------------------
Performing first CheckWave with size factor of 1.44 on wave at Game Time: 11:04:58
CheckWave: populating count of FighterII with base magnitude of 72
numberUnits = kv.Value * this.WaveSize : 103.99
after applying the ship-type-specific cap multiplier (which includes the unit-cap-scale multiplier), numberUnits : 52
after applying UsefulnessInAIWaveMultiplier if any, numberUnits : 62.39
after applying Mark-based multiplier if any, numberUnits : 56.15
after applying at-least-one rule, numberUnits : 56.15
after applying difficulty-based multiplier (if <= 3 then 1, <= 4 : 1.5, <= 5 : 1.75, <= 6 : 2, <= 7 : 2.25, <= 9 : 2.5, <= 9.3 : 2.75, <= 9.6 : 3, <= 9.8 : 3.8, 10 : 4.5), numberUnits : 252.66
numberUnitsInt = numberUnits.IntValue : 252
Um, I don't get it.
Core CPA Guard Posts now trigger in response to >= 1 enemy human military ship being present, rather than > 1. So that Artillery Golem won't get by on the ol' "But I'm just *one* ship!" excuse anymore.
LOL. that's cute. "That's no moon..."
MK V Maws... Nom nom nom nom nom... heeeeere little fabricator...
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what's your next game going to be?
Sorry, got caught up in the discussion on my opinions, heh.
My next game? A nice fat 8 homeworld Battle Royale. I haven't enjoyed one of those in a while.
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Actually crosshatch 10/10 is suprisingly easy , i managed to first the first one of those where i survived first 2hours.
That's primarily because I conned Keith into lowering the opening smackdown that 10/10 used to provide so you could get your feet under you before the waves overwhelmed you. The opening moves used to have to be perfectly timed simply to survive the opening waves at 7 minutes. Now that it's been gentled, the early game is survivable. It's mid-late game that's supposed to simply eat you. ;)
You get relatively easy acess to every planet , can blow up all the DC's and lurk at low aip for long time.
I'll agree with this, it was one of the ways I was beating the 9/9 I AAR'd.
With jumpships you can clear the galaxy from DC's as soon as you get your second planet.
Hm, Spirecraft aren't a ship type I usually look at for significant tactics, but this does make a good point. You do need to scout pretty heavily though to do this.
And once you lurk enough to get a colony rebellion you no longer need to use rest of your fleet offensively at all. The op Rebel units clear all the stuff up for you with ease. Also cherrypicking your planets in crosshatch is very easy. You'll gain plenty of golems /shields/ars easily . If there is ST or botnet you can probably even connect your planets without too much hassle.
The problem with this is that the AI also has pretty much unlimited access to all of your worlds. This isn't a significant problem in the early game. It becomes disasterous later.
Sure the border agression is pure murder and 90% of your fleet will be in defense for most of the game but crosshatch still isn't much more difficult for 10/10 than any other map
Hm. You've got me curious about trying that out now.
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For the multiple rebel colony thing, maybe something like reduce their base ship cap in half or to 2/3rds or something (in addition to making lose their cloaking much, much faster if their planet is lost again), but have each additional colony past the first add an extra half or quarter or something to their ship cap.
The Fallen spire has shown that dynamic ship caps are supported by the game, so something like that could work here. It would also have that greater risk, greater reward mechanic that is usually fun.
This makes sense to me, actually, due to the fact that each colony is a point of possible serious loss. However, how often do you really expect to see two (or more) colonies when they average spawning at 8 to 9 hours in?
Also, was the fact that rebel colonies are not immune to tachyon beams intentional?
I'm pretty sure that's a yes.
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This set of after action reports are great!
Thanks for all the effort, especially in recording what happened in your games.
Maybe I'll post a couple of (Significantly less impresssive) aar of my games, after I'm done with my refresher game.
Thanks for that. If there's something in particular you found helpful in these please let me know, I'll try to make sure those are included in future AARs.
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You flipped the direction of the upgrade for the Tech improvements I'd had in mind, but this still looks like it could be interesting. In particular that's going to get NASTY going through Tech II to Tech III... errr, wait, no not really, the Tech III boost is WAY the heck out further. That should be fun. I assume 10/10 still has the 300/800 III/IV limits. Out of curiousity, did you plan on dropping that kind of granularity down to the 7.x spread as well, or do you not forsee a need?
Not sure if this type of mechanic would be appropriate for 7.0, but maybe for >=7.3 or >=8.0 or >=8.3
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You flipped the direction of the upgrade for the Tech improvements I'd had in mind, but this still looks like it could be interesting. In particular that's going to get NASTY going through Tech II to Tech III... errr, wait, no not really, the Tech III boost is WAY the heck out further. That should be fun. I assume 10/10 still has the 300/800 III/IV limits.
No, 10/10 will also be working off the base of 300/800/1200 for II/III/IV, but the actual thresholds on 10 will be 0/500/900 or something like that (haven't checked in-game). So avoiding a full transition to MkIII should be quite possible (if you hit 500 AIP on 10/10 then either you're playing FS or you're going to lose). But at 300 AIP you're getting waves that are "spending" about 60% of their strength on MkIII ships. So it's a bit nicer to you in some respects, but that's fine considering the other changes. Particularly the carrier change; I expect that's going to cause some serious brown-trousers moments. Which is also fine, because the difference between 1000 ships and 1000 ships + 1 carrier carrying another 1000 ships should be suitably frightening :)
Out of curiousity, did you plan on dropping that kind of granularity down to the 7.x spread as well, or do you not forsee a need?
I considered it, and I would like to, but I wanted to try this out on the higher difficulties first. 7.0 is still fair game for new players, really, and I wasn't sure if doing this would complicate things too much.
Those carriers look MEAN.
Oh, they are. I expect heated complaints ;) They're also a lot less dangerous than the contained ships, so I expect said complaints to settle down after the culture shock, too.
To understand the change for the wave-sizes, I'm not sure I see where you're going with that. I'd expected it to be affecting the size-factor due to time and how often they landed, not the wave size themselves (also I'd expected a bit more of a cap on the multi-planet, but I can see why it's not there).
Sorry, I should have included a link in the notes to this: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Why_Do_Enemy_Waves_Get_So_Large%3F#How_Wave_Sizes_Are_Calculated . That's the "official" formula when I'm giving step numbers. If I'm trying to talk about lines from the log I'll probably just quote an example line or something like that.
But yea, that bit about wave intervals shouldn't impact the total ships thrown at you in waves across a given period of time, it just concentrates them more if the AI sees a limited number of entry points. Combined with the carriers, I expect real lethality on 10/10 :)
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On Diff 9+ it always gets two picks from this new set. So you could get an Eye + a Core Raid, or two CPAs, or two Eyes (which is actually kind of nice to you since they don't really stack), or whatever. But not 3 Core Raids. And not none of the above.
Why wouldn't two AI Eyes spawn twice as much? Or at least have half the threshold (so 1:1 instead of 2:1)?
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On Diff 9+ it always gets two picks from this new set. So you could get an Eye + a Core Raid, or two CPAs, or two Eyes (which is actually kind of nice to you since they don't really stack), or whatever. But not 3 Core Raids. And not none of the above.
Why wouldn't two AI Eyes spawn twice as much? Or at least have half the threshold (so 1:1 instead of 2:1)?
Their logic doesn't tell them so :) An eye, on its "turn", simply checks friendly vs enemy and if it's worse than 1:2 it spawns enough to even the difference, all at once (iirc), so doubling them doesn't really even increase the rate.
I may do something to prevent it from doubling those, or make a new separate "Core Eye" type or something like that is more dangerous as a pair, etc. For now I think it's fine.
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You know, you are going to have to put Wanderer's name into your game credits as someone who can beat 10/10 in a fair fight. Or at least reference his achievement in the title of the next release.
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You know, you are going to have to put Wanderer's name into your game credits as someone who can beat 10/10 in a fair fight.
We probably do need a list like that but I'd probably miss some names. Darke did it in the 2.x days I think (it was a pretty specific setup, two Teleporter Turtles, iirc, so doesn't really count but it was possibly the first such victory recorded). Fruden did it in the 3.x days (http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,6100.0.html , and
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,7280.0.html against two technologist AIs, for goodness sake; that was when waves were hard-capped at 2000 each, iirc).
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Man, seeing those 3.x screenshots made me realize how much I miss the minimap and the score/player list display.
I can sort of understand why the minimap was removed though. It turned out to be a major performance hog, right?
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You know, you are going to have to put Wanderer's name into your game credits as someone who can beat 10/10 in a fair fight. Or at least reference his achievement in the title of the next release.
I appreciate the compliment, and thank you. However, I'm not sure that's warranted until I beat 10/10 after these balance changes.
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However, I'm not sure that's warranted until I beat 10/10 after these balance changes.
Nah, 10/10 even in its semi-nerfed state was quite a deed. I'm sure the AI would like to throw a commemorative party.
With Cake.
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However, I'm not sure that's warranted until I beat 10/10 after these balance changes.
Nah, 10/10 even in its semi-nerfed state was quite a deed. I'm sure the AI would like to throw a commemorative party.
With Cake.
... and there's science to be done for the people who are.. still alive....