Author Topic: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders  (Read 5178 times)

Offline Fruden

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Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« on: October 04, 2010, 08:49:57 am »
 The universe is such a hostile place...

Setup
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AI War + Zenith 3.1.7.2
120 planets with all player planets towards center, 1 random planet for player
Technologist Vicious Raider AI 10, Technologist Parasite AI 10
Realistic map, Complex ships + all ship types
Normal combat, Full fog of war, Do not show unexplored planets
All minor factions, Schizophrenic, No wave warnings, Cross planet waves, 1 AI Progress per 30 minutes
Avenger on both AI

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2010, 08:52:12 am »
 Alright, done setting up now, i've got a very safe home base for a good little while. I rather like the new engineers, except of course when they jump to their deaths. They're making the reclaiming game possible without costing lots of knowledge or power. Speaking of knowledge, this is going to be a problem with the changes to knowledge gathering. Gonna have to get creative or something.

 Before starting this game i had tried a different map, but the ai had mirrors, snipers and vampires. I couldn't find a way to defeat the 300 mk4 mixed ships wave at 15 minutes. With only one incoming worm hole it may have been possible but i couldnt do it with 3. In other words, i had to restart with a different map. One thing i noticed when i tried that game is that it's possible to know all the ships the ais have unlocked right from the start by looking at the turret/ship strong/weak lines since they only list ships the ai has. Useful!

 Anyway, i found a factory mk4 close enough, so it should be my second planet so i can get the scout mk4. Can't wait to get it and try out the auto-explore feature, wouldnt be wise to do it with the other scouts in this game. Of note so far is that my first unlock was beam turrets since bombers 4 are very difficult for other turrets. With all 12 of them boosted by light starships/munitions boosters stuff blows up.

 Also, my ai progress makes me happy!

02:30 - Planets: 1 AI Progress: 3 Kills: 9,755 Deaths: 835 Reclaimed: 1,567 Scrapped: 757

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2010, 08:53:33 am »
 To clear my second planet i threw 49 mk4 and 10 mk3 bombers at the mk2 command station, crazy how good these things are to have succeeded considering what was in the way. Also got 2 fortresses on the way, used raid ships and a couple bombers. Looks like most planets have fortresses, they are highly inconvenient for my transports.

 After settling, i had to choose between scouts and beams with my limited knowledge. Was really tempted to go for the beams since its gonna be really tough to fight off large bomber waves without them but i need the mk4 scout more. Maybe i'll have to use the mk3 science lab but... even the very few low level planets have starships and have 300+ mk4 waves passing through them, so it might not be such a realistic option.

 Really hoping my second planet has very few trains going through like my homeworld. It's a large part of why i'm doing so well that i havent faced speed trained bomber waves. Yet.

 So the scout mk4 was built and has started auto-exploring. Sadly it seems to sometimes (or maybe even always?) forget to continue to auto-explore on load. I'm also almost done placing scouts within 2 hops of my 2nd planet, but the fact that the transport wont jump into an unexplored planet is really slowing this down.

 The devourer is hanging around my second planet so its helping out quite a bit. I thought it would attack fortresses since they are mobile and have guns but i guess not.

 Right after i finished speed building my second planet, i received 2 waves of 300 ships on each of my 2 planets within a 5 minute period. That's 1200 mk4 ships within 5 minutes at progress 18, so i went hunting for reasonably close data centers as soon as i found them. One was really pretty cool since i had to navigate my raids through a maze a heavy beams. Also bought all the ion cannons from the merchant since they cant be bought anymore after some are captured and they will have to replace the spider turrets since i probably won't have the knowledge to unlock them for some time. Will take a while to build them but once they're done my 2 planets will be very solidly defended.

04:25 - Planets: 2 AI Progress: 7 Kills: 18,310 Deaths: 1,628 Reclaimed: 3,734 Scrapped: 1,895

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2010, 08:55:30 am »
 All immediate planets have had their guard posts and fortresses removed, and many of those 2 hops away as well. Going to try to finish the guard posts next time. Got some reaally large waves considering i have 8 progress, i wonder if there's a minimum size or something, waves seem to be a little less frequent than i'm used to but much larger. Generally one world is hit by 400-600 ships while the other by around 300, and waves are mostly mk4 with ~10% mk3 and ~10% core ships. Two of those large waves were supported by speed trains and everything went well, i'm very satisfied with my current setup. Those ion cannons are worth every resource being spent on them.

 Found both ai homeworlds and most data centers and coprocessors. Got a plan to get all those that will only require that i take 5 more planets. Still waiting to finish scouting to make final plans, and also expecting some unexpected golem or colony or something in the next few hours, hopefully i won't have to take more than 1 planet to deal with whatever surprise comes up.

 While scouting i saw the devourer cross a regen train, the result was pretty funny. Devourer of course killed everything, but they respawned instantly at the train and the train didn't lose any health. For that 1-2 minute meeting the golem was killing probably over 20 ships a second, maybe it will end up with a better score than i! Of note is that i could not see the explosions when the scout left but i had no problem hearing them. Sadly i forgot to take a picture, but i did take one of the poor spawn camped dyson sphere.

 Other weird thing is a world in the top left corner, Dinamazor, has a missile silo but it doesnt show up on the map screen pop up in either the summary line or the details, yet it can still be seen through the fog of war. Also not related to anything really but my whole system lags out terribly if i alt tab without closing the game... except if i open up the map screen before tabbing!

 It's pretty much guaranteed that i'll have to knowledge raid, it's gonna be so boring. So far i expect it's going to cost me roughly 250k of each resource for each 2500 knowledge gain, not looking forward to mooorree resource farming and looonng waits.

 Had a poorly planned mission at one point that ended very badly with my raid ships stranded 2 hops from home with less than 50k health between the 3 of them. Was really fun running around evading baddies while sending a new transport to pick them up!

06:30 - Planets: 2 AI Progress: 8 Kills: 27,555 Deaths: 2,269 Reclaimed: 5,997 Scrapped: 3,174

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2010, 08:57:10 am »
 Finished scouting now, found the last 2 data centers and last coprocessor, will probably need raid ships mk2 to get them though. Also finished my ion cannons, was so long and expensive at this stage of the game but completely worth it for the great amount of engine damage they do.

 Was wondering for a while if i would be able to eventually cleanup my planets of dead engined enemy ships, was even hoping the devourer would come have some snacks, but after capturing a couple vampire claws and testing them out i have no more doubt i'll be able to have clean planets. Ten of them, with no other support, managed to kill a mix of 150 bombers and frigates with no losses. So my first planet is almost clean now, and as soon as it is i'll have them join my new batch on my second planet and get to work there. There are currently 800 enemy ships stranded on that planet but hopefully in another hour none will remain. Just have to tell my snipers and raids to take care of the fighters, munitions, lasers and bulletproofs since those really hurt the vampires, and then it will be feeding time.

 Cleared a path to my third planet, getting troublesome fortresses and heavy beams, and then got the command station there. Still need 1-2 more bomber missions to finish preparing it though, there are some turrets that still have to go. I would have liked to take its neighbour instead since it has an interplanetary munition booster but i would have had to settle 2 planets 4 hops away, and i dont think i can do it this game, so i'll probably have to take down the booster. Booooo, 20 progress is a bunch!

 Got the mining golem a couple minutes before it did its thing. Made a cap of mk1 fighters, bombers and anti armors, accompanied by ~150 captured mk4 ships, 5 light starships, 3 raid ships and 4 mk4 munition boosters, they would have taken it down in 3 minutes, but i stopped before the kill and saved to test out if the regen train really does rez the mining golem and it does. So i reloaded, but the regen train turned around so i had to wait 7-8 minutes to finish the 2 million hp golem. Munitions boosters are so good, i'm amazed at them, i might not replace my 4 lost light starships if i can capture enough of those. It looks like one mk3 munition can boost around 200 turrets. Anyway, after getting the golem i turned the assaulting ships into resources since i needed to turn off my generators to have a reasonable income. Except for the mk4 bombers of course, those still have missions to carry out.

 Finally, neutered a couple more planets 2 hops away from mine but still not done, things don't ever quiet down for long.

08:15 - Planets: 2 AI Progress: 13 Kills: 35,435 Deaths: 2,831 Reclaimed: 7,451 Scrapped: 4,663

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2010, 08:59:28 am »
 I dont understand the reasoning behind such a high speed increase from the speed trains, if they would increase speed by 100% each they would be quite nice but as it is they are the least fun part of the game for me. There is no way to maneuver when they are around so the only strategy becomes brute force. As such, they are the most frustrating part of the level 10 challenges since brute force isnt exactly the best option. When preparing missions, their presence matters more than mk4/core ships, ion cannons, mass drivers, or pretty much anything else since the only way to deal with speed trains is to wait until they are gone. One basically gives all enemy ships teleport on a 20 second cooldown while two lowers that by half.

 Obviously i had to wait a lot because of them so I'm a bit sour right now. But anyway, i finished clearing guard posts within 2 hops of my planets, and had to make another daring rescue since munitions make everything so deadly. I keep losing transports, but at least my raids are safe. (edit: the ships lost stat page doesn't seem to show transports exploding between wormholes from attrition as losses, makes for some funny transport stats this game)

 Using vampires i cleaned up the 800 ships that had accumulated on my second planet. Had to get my snipers to remove their counters first, but once that was done, they got to work, and they are amazing at what they do.

 I kinda wish the ai didn't get 2 of the very few core units that cant be reclaimed but overall i'm very happy with our combined ship mix. My anti armors are inexpensive, numerous and hit pretty hard, their raiders are the best money makers since they are numerous and are inexpensive to repair and sell well, and their munitions and vampires are incredibly useful and allow me to avoid a lot of costs. The electric bombers are extremely nasty on defense however, their lack of group malus when working for the ai combined with the presence of munition boosters makes them very deadly.

 Completed 3 knowledge raids, first one didn't have mk2 beamers yet so was pretty nervous about it but the devourer came into that system and funnily enough it locked on to my raid ships, so i lead it right into the enemy waves and completed my research without trouble.

 Second one i had my beamers but also got the help of rebels, so it was easy enough. Third went alright with no outside help, setup was pretty good. For my next raids i'll have to unlock more mk2 turrets since all remaining planets have ion cannons and they shoot turrets as well as ships. Before the end of the game i'll probably be a little burned out on the new reseach raiding since it takes a lot of time and resources to do now. Good thing the new orbital stations have increased resources on them that helps a bunch in this game.

 Havent gotten rebel colonies in this game yet, and neither did i in my previous level 10 game. I guess it's either mining golems or rebel colonies? (edit: looks like rebel colonies might only spawn on mk1 worlds, and since lv10 games don't have any besides those by the first human planet...)

 Oh, and something unexpected, i saw a single enemy engineer on offense. It was the first time i saw that! (edit: i saw another one later in the game, it warped in with a wave, but just sat there on the wormhole until i killed it)

10:01 - Planets: 2 AI Progress: 14 Kills: 44,648 Deaths: 3,665 Reclaimed: 9,308 Scrapped: 5,869

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2010, 09:01:38 am »
 Took third planet, was very very close, the command station was lost a few times but with the spare colonies and engineers in transport i made it. The goal was to last until the spider turrets would be ready and since the enemy ships kept bouncing between my command stations and my 3 captured ion cannons, i made it, despite very heavy speed train interference. Now my third planet is so filled with enemy ships only the devourer can help, if i throw vampires at the crowds i'll lose them all. If the devourer doesnt come i suppose i'll have to make a fortress since the game is getting to be pretty laggy, every game second takes more than one real second. Sadly fortress knowledge and energy costs are prohibitive for now, but maybe later. Hummmmmm... now that i think about it maybe i could build a couple mk2 beamers at the edge of their range and let them rack up kills. I won't be research raiding for a bit more time so that could thin out the crowd, hopefully enough to let the vampires do their thing. I'll have to think about that...

 Used a couple batches of captured bombers to get rid of a few of the many fortresses surrounding my third planet and cleared a path to my fourth, including getting its command station. It died to my last pair of zenith bombers, the parasites turned their buddies against my fleet, should have tried to recycle them before they died but hadnt thought of it at the time.

 The revenge wave from that planet take down was incredibly nasty. It took ~45 seconds for the 60 vampires boosted by speed trains and the neighbouring interplanetary munitions booster to warp in, eat my command station, and warp out. At least i had a colony ship and lots of engineers ready for my fourth planet so i quickly recovered before the rest of the mob arrived.

 Can't wait to have my fourth planet safely settled. From there i'll be able to liberate the dysons which will hopefully take some pressure off me. Thinking back on it i'm surprised the mk4 scout triggered the awakening of the dyson sphere.

 Realized that vampires will usually run for resources if there isnt a science lab on a planet so i made one on my second planet to keep my resource production up.

 Weird thing, the trader seems stuck on my second planet. Ever since i settled it, the trader only went to my first planet once, and never to my third. Since i normally play 30-60 minutes at a time, i'm thinking the trader resets its destination like the trains on loading a game. I reaally wish it would get to my third planet so i could make a tanking mass driver but i'm not sure if i'll be playing a long session soon enough.

12:08 - Planets: 3 AI Progress: 19 Kills: 56,575 Deaths: 4,453 Reclaimed: 11,002 Scrapped: 6,718

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2010, 09:08:37 am »
 Verified that the trader chooses a new destination on game load. After saving it was heading for my first planet, but after reloading it changed its mind and went back to my second. So i left the game running between sessions, and it eventually made it to my third planet where i built my tanking mass driver. Was a bit unhappy to eat a large wave when it was 2/3 done that almost destroyed it, made me lose a lot of resources, but i eventually completed it and now my third planet's well protected, especially since i added a fortress to help deal with the massed ships there.

 Took my fourth planet, was a big fight, lost too many ships for my taste (my sweeeet vampires!!!), but i'm safely holding it now. With my current income that means i can start keeping captured ships and finally build a real fleet. Also destroyed 2 regen trains that had little health remaining, meaning they had rezzed 100 million hp of enemies each. A third one that's really low is out there but i haven't had a chance to finish it yet. If i can ever clear my third planet i might mine it good since so many trains pass there.

 While clearing my third planet's neighbouring guard posts and fortresses, i found out that fortresses can be boosted by inter planetary munitions booster. Althought they are immune to attack power boost... so yeah, that hurts. Also found there's one by my fourth planet, so both my third and fourth planet eat double damage from waves, and since those boosters cost so much progress i'll have to let them be. Booooooooo.

 Knowledge raided a few planets using a fortress, a couple mk2 beamers and a few other mk2 turrets. Had to tank the initial inhabitants with transports while they were whittled down but that makes for a less expensive setup. Won't be able to deal with a passing wave though, i hope my raids don't meet any. Upgraded my engineers to mk2 after first raid since it was making me completely crazy jumping engineers in and out of transports while building to dodge ion shots.

 Tested a couple scenarios to figure out how to free the dysons. The big problem was to get them to reach critical mass since there was such a large garrison on their planet, they ended getting camped when they would wake up. So when the devourer golem headed that way, we had a nice collaboration going where i sent 3 teams to help free the dysons. One team took care of the neighbour raid engine, one would lead enemy ships into the devourer, and one took down the fortress and orbital station. Now the dysons are being very helpful and with them and the passing devourer i might eventually clear up my fourth planet, although it's quite possible i'll add a fortress there too.

 There's a strong chance i'll upgrade my command stations to mk3 to boost my income and counting it looks like i'll have enough knowledge to afford it. Also got another mining golem pop up in an easy to reach spot.

13:59 - Planets: 4 AI Progress: 26 Kills: 65,376 Deaths: 4,851 Reclaimed: 11,908 Scrapped: 6,761

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #8 on: October 04, 2010, 09:12:03 am »
 Made a couple research raids which allowed me to unlock orbital stations mk3. After upgrading all my stations i can finally say i've got good enough resource income now, things might speed up a bit.

 I also unlocked laser, missiles and mlrs turrets mk2. With those, the dysons and the devourer, it looks like i might bring the disabled ship numbers down to more reasonable numbers on my planets.

 The dysons are turning out to be very useful now that they've reached large enough numbers on both their planet and one of my neighbours. They eat large numbers of reinforcements and large portions of the waves that pass them on their way to my 4th planet. All i have to do now is send a transport of vampires every so often to clean up the cores that pile up in the systems they control.

 To deal with the mining golem, i sent maxed mk1 fighters, bombers and anti armors, mk4 bombers, raid ships, 6 electric bombers, and 3 mk4 munitions boosters. I had completely miscalculated my assault when i expected the planet defenders to all head to my research station on the other side of the planet or thought rebels would spawn. Neither happened and instead everything went at my mk1 ships. Made for a harder and longer fight than should have been but munitions boosters made everything ok anyway. I'm starting to think there might not exist a better bonus ship than those.

 Right after the golem went down i received very large waves from both ais in short succession. Turned out alright in the end since they split roughly evenly across my planets, but yikes almost 2500 mk4+ ships at progress ~30 makes me worried about letting it climb.

 Also took my 5th planet. Again i waited until the devourer passed by and lead lots of ships into it, so i managed to take my newest planet without any casualties. Got teleport raiders from the research station. Started placing scouts on its neighbouring planets and taking down their fortresses too, will finish this and get their guard posts later.

 Otherwise i finished off a third regen train and changed my mind about trying to mine the other trains out of existence. At 1 billion hp each, i'd need something like 25,000 mines to take down any of them, seems quicker to finish the game than destroy one.

 I also had to scrap a bunch of captured electric bombers. Hadn't initially realized just how quickly their performance drops in numbers, makes me wonder what's the use of having a relatively high cap for mk1-mk3 since at that energy use i can't see much use in building more than a few.

 Oh, and it looks like lasers have a minimum hit chance of 80%. I used to think they always had 100%, effectively ignoring shields, but 80% is still incredibly good.

15:46 - Planets: 5 AI Progress: 31 Kills: 74,990 Deaths: 5,269 Reclaimed: 12,247 Scrapped: 7,159

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #9 on: October 04, 2010, 09:16:56 am »
 Lots of little things this time. Finished my second mass driver that had been sitting there forever, got lots of fortresses and guard posts, captured a bunch of ships including some special abduction missions for the more useful ai ships, removed remaining mines and decloakers from my planets, finished cleaning up my dyson allies 2 planets and installed some turrets to get the new cores there, research raided a bunch, almost finished clearing my planets of bad guys so i've been able to build a few more miners, and built my new raid 2 and 3 ships.

 Couple notes:
- evil trains killing all my dyson friends... argg!!! Also speed boosting massive bomber/parasite waves arrrrrggggg!!!! At least nothing else is made out of train material that would be pretty mean.
- radar jammers are a giant pain to deal with on ai worlds!
- did some tests to figure out effective ways to deal with the massed core raiders and vampires on the ai core and homeworlds... still not sure how i'll be taking care of those, they hurt so bad in such great numbers... (edit: gravity turrets and lots of lasers did the trick)
- i though the devourer never went to ai homerworlds but it looks like it does! (edit: in another game, both the devourer and the dysons went to ai homeworlds, i used to think they were locked out of those)
- now that i got the trader to my 5th planet, i might save/load when it tries to leave since i'd like to have it around when i'll push for the ai homeworld, feels a little cheaty though i'll have to think about it. (edit: didn't do it, too boring)
- combo of transport+raids+cloakers+mobile repairs is really great for clearing planets 1-2 hops away. And adding some leeches makes for some very effective abduction teams. Often have to make some pickups with fresh transports near wormhole entrances since the original transports take a large beating but they are really reasonably priced so it's all good.
- speed trains make fortresses faster than transports, and cloakers can cloak fortresses
- munition boosters give 1.2x damage bonus to starships, 1.4x bonus to turrets, and a variable bonus (somewhere between 2x and 3x) depending on mark to fleet ships
- i really like the new snipers and spiders, they are very useful at a good price

18:11 - Planets: 5 AI Progress: 32 Kills: 90,983 Deaths: 5,663 Reclaimed: 12,908 Scrapped: 7,493

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #10 on: October 04, 2010, 09:20:22 am »
When I see games like this I'm convinced that some players win because they refuse to lose ;)

I'd comment more but there's a total avalanche of bug reports I need to get to; anyway, this is really cool, thanks :)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games? Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #11 on: October 04, 2010, 09:22:26 am »
 Ok, so 1.5 month break later, i'm back in this game. I had been burned out on the micro and knowledge raids so had to put the game away for a while but i wanted to try to finish it before the xp comes out, so here i am again!

 I finished off all the guard posts within 2 hops of my planets, took out all inconvenient fortresses, finished all available knowledge raids, unlocked my end game science picks, improved my defenses, rebuilt and recaptured from my expensive losses, and cleared the planets next to the first ai homeworld.

 It was pretty weird when i cleaned up one of the homeworld neighbours of guard posts, the ai ships just stayed there instead of becoming free, and when i saved at the end of that session and reloaded later to continue my game, they did become free and combined with another wave to form a large wave (around 2500 ships, about half core bombers / raiders / vampires). A couple hundred scattered around to my other planets, but close to 2000 ships went for my planet close to the ai homeworld, which had a good portion of my fleet on standby for the coming invasion. That was a good fight, it went really well, my defenses held up very well with the help of the fleet, but i wanted to try again for more fun and to see if i could do better by maneuvering differently. Big mistake. When i reloaded for that fight a speed train rerouted through that system and this time i lost a lot more stuff, good thing i kept a save of the first result! (edit: i think i kept my third try in the end, i reaallyy wanted to capture those core vampires and didn't get any on my first try!)

 I included the save for that fight if you want to try it out, it's pretty fun! Little warning, that save is missing the extra beam mk2 i added in the 2 minutes before the wave hits. With the extra speed train and without the extra beamer the fight really doesnt go as well.

 For the knowledge raids, my setup was to use 10 missiles mk2, 10 lasers mk2, 10 mlrs mk2, 4 beams mk2, 1 fortress mk1, 1 cloaker, 10 engineers mk2, 5 mobile builders, 1 rally post, 5 remains rebuilders and 20 cleanup drones. The remains and cleanups were moved outside of range of the cloaker to make sure the mobile builders got cloaked, but i still had to bring a bunch of them because ion cannons always caught a couple. I used the transport to tank most of the bad guys while building up and once the initial wave was taken care of and the base was built i'd add the science mk3. Total costs were ~200k of each resource and ~40k energy.

 Towards the end another mining golem popped up and this time it's in an inconvenient place. I'll almost certainly have to take a planet to take it down, so the 20 aip seems unavoidable. I should be at the progress floor till the end of the game but it's still gonna bring it up more, and every point matters in this game.

 So, before i play again i'll have to decide on 1 of 2 end game plans. My initial plan is the one i'm currently ready for. All i need to start executing it is wait until i've got 500k+ of each resource. What i would do is settle the neighbour of the first ai homeworld and build a base on the homeworld without taking down it's command station. Then i would do the same for the other homeworld, and then take down both command stations at the same time so i would win the game and not have to fight the avengers. That should take me 3-4 hours of game time (so 4-5h of real time).

 The other option would be to take a planet close to the mining golem with an advanced research on it, beat up the golem, knowledge raid the new area, enslave both ai homeworlds as in the first plan but also knowledge raid their surroundings, build a super massive fleet, and then destroy both stations and face the 2 avengers at once. That really sounds super exciting but my big issue is i estimate it would take me roughly 6 hours of game time, which means ~8 hours of real time.

 There's also the issue on the second option of spreading my defenses thinner than i'd like and increasing the chance of an unexpected bad event, but mostly, the time commitments are really getting to me so while i'd like to go for the super finish i'm just not sure i have it in me to do it.

20:46 - Planets: 5 AI Progress: 34 Kills: 111,142 Deaths: 6,396 Reclaimed: 13,407 Scrapped: 7,925

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #12 on: October 04, 2010, 09:24:32 am »
When I see games like this I'm convinced that some players win because they refuse to lose ;)

I'd comment more but there's a total avalanche of bug reports I need to get to; anyway, this is really cool, thanks :)

 Just had to try it out! Also, taking over 3 months to complete the game... helps with the less exciting parts.

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #13 on: October 04, 2010, 09:27:57 am »
 I guess taking such long breaks means i have the patience for the big things, so i decided to go for the super finish option. Hopefully it will be faster than expected but still work out very well.

 Anyway, i captured my 6th planet on my way to the mining golem and got the space tanks. Those will likely be really useful against the avengers, i think i'm happy about this (edit: they're terrible against the avenger because it fires through shields and they have low health). I lost about 20 bombers taking this planet, but managed to refill my ranks by capturing the released ships when i cleared the surrounding planet's guard posts. I couldn't do my usual 2 system wide scout warning system since i ran out of scouts though.

 I also got the knowledge from my new area before beating up the mining golem. I used anti-armors mk1+mk2, raids mk2+mk3, 3 munitions mk4, and they were covered by a cloaker. Taking the cloaker out while i was getting to the golem to hide my transports was really useful since it meant the ai ships only joined the fight a few seconds before i finished off the golem. Overall, that went really very well. The kill itself took around 3 minutes.

 Got lucky i had some help from the devourer to clear out the hundreds of bombers that were hanging around on my fifth planet. I couldnt divert enough firepower to take care of them, but now that planet might be clear before the game's end. Weird having less than total 250 ai ships on my planets when not so long ago i had over 3500, the early and middle parts of a single planet start are so much harder than multi planet starts with the limited knowledge and power!

 Now i've got 520k of each resource, so next time i'll be going for the ai homeworld neighbour, destroying the warp gates on the isolated ai planets, and making an occupying base on the first ai homeworld.


22:12 - Planets: 6 AI Progress: 39 Kills: 119,274 Deaths: 6,647 Reclaimed: 13.732 Scrapped: 8,687

Offline Fruden

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Re: Vs 10 Techno ParaRaiders
« Reply #14 on: October 04, 2010, 09:30:06 am »
 Alright, so i took my 7th planet with few losses, quickly built it up, then destroyed neighbouring isolated ai world's warp gate and guard posts, and then went to work on the first ai homeworld.

 It was a really fun fight! I started by destroying the guard posts, the co-processor and the fortresses. Then i could build up and i used my transports and force field to tank all the ships that hadnt been freed earlier while my turrets and ships took them down. It took a good while to get everything done but i'm really pleased with the results now. With all the built and captured toys i've got and with enough energy to have a good fleet and a nice income, breaking stuff isnt as complicated as it was some hours ago.

 Just as i was starting to enjoy ai ship free planets i got a combo wave from both ais that numbered over 2500 ships. Planets got quite filled again, but luckily none of them had speed train support and they were scattered across a few planets so it wasnt such a big issue.

23:06 - Planets: 7 AI Progress: 53 Kills: 126,314 Deaths: 6,924 Reclaimed: 13,961 Scrapped: 8,727

 

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