Author Topic: Need help taking down final command stations  (Read 2766 times)

Offline pierre dupon

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Need help taking down final command stations
« on: November 27, 2009, 05:46:55 pm »
Hi all. I've been playing this game for about twenty hours and I'm loving every second! The AI is as good as you say it is, you did a good job.
I'm doing a 40 planet map on AI diff 7 and 6, and I've just found both home worlds. Problem is they're both at the end of chains of level IV planets with 1000-2000 ships (progress 400ish) and upwards of 5 core starships on each. How do people here deal with that type of planet?

Thanks

Offline x4000

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #1 on: November 28, 2009, 01:58:57 am »
Glad you're enjoying the game!

With that many IV planets in your way, that is certainly a challenge -- you can try sneaking transports past, but you may need to pair that with some lightning warheads to clear wormholes on the nearer IV planets.  If you can create a safe path through, and can then keep that path clear, your job will be much easier.  Dreadnoughts might work well to clear those Core Starships, if need be.

If worse comes to worst, you may be able to nuke those Mark IV planets.  It will bump your AI Progress by 50 to use a nuclear warhead, and it won't kill starships or core ships of any sort, but if they are predominantly Mark IVs and you don't have any better options, that can be something to consider.  Just bear in mind that if you clear a planet next to the AI home planet, or park your fleet there, you'll alert the AI of your approach and have a much harder time of it.  So if you can find a nondestructive way to sneak past and do your deed, that will help.

With something like this, you may well find yourself making multiple raiding runs at each home planet, and killing off a few guard posts in each go.  That will slowly whittle them down until you can fully take them out.

Hope that helps!
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Offline pierre dupon

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #2 on: November 28, 2009, 07:49:31 am »
Thanks for the advice, I'll give the lightning warheads/transporter idea a go. I don't really want to use nukes yet because I'd need two or three to clear the way and 550 progress scares me  :)
Quick question: what should I use to attack the home station with? I have 5 raid starships that have been amazing against force fields but given the strength they have there it'd probably be a kamikaze mission, even with my whole fleet in support.

Offline x4000

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #3 on: November 28, 2009, 09:05:53 am »
Raid starships should be good against the forcefield on the home ai planet, too, but they will need fleet support -- the best ships to attack with of course depend on what is waiting on that home planet.  One thing you will definitely want, however is high level bombers. Mkiii and mkiv will do best at taking out the fortress that is waiting there, along with the home command station itself, which will require a sustained attack to kill. A quick raid won't have much effect on the home command station itself because it has something like 23m health. So even if you bring many high level bombers, once you crack the force field and fortress do be prepared to support your bombers for a few minutes while they do their thing. Meanwhile, the ai will definitely react to that, so having reinforcements of your own on the way as they work is often wise.

Finally, do note that killing ai home command stations ups the ai progress by 100. So when you kill the first, the second one gets that much harder (and, as with human players in co-op, no ai player is ever "out" early -- both sides win or lose as a team). So, what that means is, the closer together you can kill them in succession, if that is possible in your current map situation, the easier it will be. Generally that is quite hard to orchestrate, but I thought I would put it out there. Just don't expect it to get easier after you kill the first home command station; it only gets harder as you go, unlike other rts games.  When the first ai loses it's home planet, watch out for core ships released from that planet as threat -- I have seen that end games when they slip through to YOUR home command station without the player noticing. And then just be steady for an even more epic battle with that second ai home planet. If you resort to nukes for some other non-core planets, you be looking at ai progress of 650 or more by then.

Good luck!
« Last Edit: November 29, 2009, 11:01:17 am by x4000 »
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Offline RCIX

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #4 on: November 29, 2009, 02:17:30 am »
uh, don't you mean one thing?
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Offline x4000

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #5 on: November 29, 2009, 11:03:08 am »
uh, don't you mean one thing?

Yep, fixed. :)

I write so much text every day that it's hard to catch every little proofing error, and wards that are fast-typing spelling errors but which are still real words aren't caught by a quick glance at the spell checker. :)
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Offline raptor331

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #6 on: November 29, 2009, 11:07:36 am »
This problem can be easily solved by producing a fleet so large it would completely devour the enemy planets, lol I've done this before, I've had 6000 ships fireing down on a command station though and it took around 2 hours to finaly destroy it lol

Offline pierre dupon

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #7 on: November 30, 2009, 12:29:47 pm »
6000??! How did you get 6000 ships? Even if I max the ship cap on all types I'd only get like 2000 tops.

Offline x4000

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #8 on: November 30, 2009, 01:09:56 pm »
6000??! How did you get 6000 ships? Even if I max the ship cap on all types I'd only get like 2000 tops.

Some ship types have more than others.  With Infiltrators, for instance, you can build something like 3000 of them in all.  I typically have around 4000 ships at most near the end of my games, but 6000-8000 is not unheard-of depending on the units you have. :)
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Offline raptor331

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #9 on: November 30, 2009, 09:37:07 pm »
yup its possible but you need to unlock some ships and unlock alot of ship types.

Offline Haagenti

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #10 on: December 02, 2009, 10:51:40 am »
Or use multiple starting planets
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Offline raptor331

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Re: Need help taking down final command stations
« Reply #11 on: December 02, 2009, 08:58:19 pm »
umm this i sort of embarassing, i opened the old save file and lol it had 3000, lol  :o

 

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