Author Topic: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong  (Read 26597 times)

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #45 on: April 13, 2014, 08:02:37 pm »
9.55: 24 hardy scouts travel through Roadlinl and finally show me what's on the last AI homeworld. It is, unsurprisingly, a grav reactor.
I'd been hoping for a Wrath Lance, but maybe the RNG got a 4-for-3 deal.

Quote
10.00: Defences are online. New toys are building. Now comes the truly hard part - taking down a planet with both a grav drill and a translocator command station, while under constant bombardment by two core raid engines. Zupreape may well be my doom.
2 CRE's, with 25 more AIP behind them now.  And to take down that CSG you're not only going to have to assault that core world, you're going to have to take it.  Meaning 25 more AIP, and almost certainly at least one more CRE spawn after the taking of it.  Though I guess you might possibly bring along enough sheer power to punch straight through and knock out one or both CREs before they reload.

I assume you're certain it's the only CSG of its letter in the galaxy?
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #46 on: April 13, 2014, 10:04:18 pm »
In the meantime, the spire jumpship pops by with an old science station. Which indicates the ARS will give me either space planes, MRLSes or protector starships. Man, I hope it's protector starships.

7.51.07: Space planes. Why did it have to be space planes. On the plus side though ... very cheap, in energy cost and metal. Fast. Bonus against heavy hulls, and they have radar dampening themselves. I may just have to try throwing a cap of these at the grav reactor and see what happens.

You do know that they're listed in order, right?  The one at the far left is ALWAYS what you'll get if you don't hack.  They were random at one point, but it was derandomized to save on the save scumming (and even then it was simply a randomized ordering: the ship you got was fixed at mapgen).

Offline RockyBst

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #47 on: April 14, 2014, 03:33:42 am »
Unfortunately it's quite hard for a core shield generator to hide on a 10 planet map where you already own 6 of the planets ;)

The plan for this evening currently looks like this:

  • Jumpship enters Zupreape, containing 3 raid starships a cloaker and a hacker. Although it can't teleport due to the grav drill, it can still stealthily wend its way over to the command station
  • Hop all the chaff ships in - i.e. attractor drones, space planes, younglings. These should absorb the initial targetting and translocation.
  • 1 minute 30 until 5,000 ships hit Zupreape.
  • Raids to take out one of the warp gates under the forcefields of the home command. +5 AIP, but more importantly HaP should go positive again.
  • Under cover of chaff, 1 Mk. 3 ram and 8 reprocessors to take out the spire shield guardpost covering the exit. Then both jumpships can flee.
  • Whatever chaff is left can take out the tachyon. Then the remaining three rams and the penentrator can take out 4 of the forcefield covered guardposts near the wormholes.
  • Start a sabotage hack to take out the grav drill, and hope like hell that the AI decides to send a wave or something rather than tachyon blasting the planet. Uh, grav drills are susceptible to sabotage hacking right?
  • Brace for CRE impact. Then rebuild, and wait for the CPA


Anything there that sounds obviously off?
« Last Edit: April 14, 2014, 03:36:40 am by RockyBst »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #48 on: April 14, 2014, 10:53:05 am »
Start a sabotage hack to take out the grav drill, and hope like hell that the AI decides to send a wave or something rather than tachyon blasting the planet. Uh, grav drills are susceptible to sabotage hacking right?
Just checked the code, and indeed it has the can-be-sabotaged flag :)

Quote
Anything there that sounds obviously off?
I'm not sure you'll survive the CRE response, and I'm sure there are other various forms of cheese that could be employed in the midst of it, but I think this is as sound a plan as is available to you.
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Offline RockyBst

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #49 on: April 14, 2014, 05:33:32 pm »
Warning: This the best part of 4 hours play.

10.00: Okay, after careful consideration I think I'm going to move the defensive lines again. Murdoch is now essentially cutting the graph, with threat from 3/4 AI worlds having to cross over it to get to Micvarape. It is also right in the path of any anticipated CRE strikes. So a warp jammer goes up on Micvarape, mil 2 on Murdoch. 1/2 of Micvarape's minefield and half of the one on Rakalurn are moved to Murdoch, along with any non-Mk. 5 turrets. This leaves 5 caps of Mk. 5 turrets on Micvarape, along with 4 forcefields - probably enough to hold off 1,000-2,000 ships in threat spawns from the AI homeworld next door.



Here are the defences on Murdoch. Not the greatest as the mines now need to spread across 2 wormholes, with the Zupreape one getting the priority. Not worth popping the warp gates on the AI homeworld though - even if I could get to them.

A couple of heavy beamers and half the gravs / tractors / snipers are still on Rakalurn.

10.05: 2,889 missile frigates to Murdoch. The defences are, of course, still building. Eh, at least maybe I can leech some of them.

10.07: 28 bombers starships. Kinda mean. Ah well, lightning turrets don't discriminate.

10.08: Done. Lost a few hundred fleet ships, but the 4 million scrap will kick start the defences and building my Mk. 3 & 4 sentinal frigates.

10.10: Man, getting a full fleet up is gonna take a while. I'm expecting the next CPA to hit before I'm done. Oh, did I mention that there's also 1,600 threat sitting somewhere and I don't know where? Well, it's got to be on one of the two homeworlds...

10.11: Scouts say it's all on Desenan. And is composed primarily of missile frigates. Hmm, wonder if I can move Lyudmila back to the homeworld and draw the threat in.

10.13: Apparently not. I wonder if the fleet on Murdoch is also counting for 'within three hops' strength, despite being on the far side of the AI homeworld.

10.17: 1,777 bombers. Shouldn't be an issue, and I could use the scrap to churn out the flagship 2s, railclusters and sentinels.

10.19: I do like those Mk. 5 leeches. I now have 200 more bombers than I started with. And Mk.2/3 at that - I never unlocked those. Surprisingly the broken armored golem hasn't died yet.

10.21.12: Let's ask a theoretical question while we're waiting for the fleet to finish building / a CPA to declare. What happens when you take 4 Mk 1/2 flagships, 2 Mk. 5 plasma starships, 8 zenith reprocessors and a couple of decoy drones and have a jumpship park them next to a grav reactor?

10.21.23: Answer - 11 seconds later, it explodes. In order to stop the spirecraft from attritioning I sent it back to Murdoch, time for an exfil.

10.21.27: Full disclosure - My jumpship got blown up. It was only a few seconds later that I realised there was a core Sentinel guard post firing 200,000 damage beams at my 18% of 100,000 health jumpship. At this point I save scummed, because that jumpship is vital to my future plans and I'd rather take 3 million metal worth of losses in starships than lose it.

10.21.57: Turns out you can do the same thing with one less Mk. 5 plasma - just. Even with the best part of 3,000 strategic reserve ships charging down on you. That saved me a cool 770,000 at least. +1 AIP, +10 floor (which is meaningless, as I only ever found 1 -10AIP progress reducer), and a 500 ship exo to presumably Micvarape.

10.22.30: Nope, apparently they come from Zupreape to hit Murdoch. I thought these were supposed to spawn on the same planet now?

10.27: A fleet of 1,600 ships sits on Murdoch. The sentinals and lightnings can probably eat the CRE on their own. Only things outstanding are flagships and that Mk. 5 plasma.

10.28: Flagships are built. Ding ding, round 2.

Also, the expected CPA just declared. 13,954 ships. I'm betting on less than half that showing up.

10.28.47: The second grav reactor goes down. The crowd goes wild. Strategically, was popping them right now the best move? Probably not, but damn if it wasn't cathartic. And I'd rather have them taken out now than possibly lose the plasma 5 fab later. Unfortunately the remaining 2 grav reactors have core shields around them, so this tactic won't work on them. However the one unshielded core raid engine @ only 6 million (1/10th) of the health...

AIP: 132
HaP: Still -2, unfortunately. Still gonna need to pop that warp gate.

10.29: Exo hits Micvarape this time. Lyudmila and the turrets handle it.

10.33: Okay, let's think about spirecraft and raid engines. One is easy to pop; 6 million unshielded health, just get a plasma or a few reprocessors in there. The other is covered with a core shield. So, penentrator time for that guy. One of the two remaining ebonite goes towards making two more Mk. II penentrators - they'll be useful when attacking Zupreape too. The last will go on 4 more Mk. 3 rams. You can never have enough rams.

7.36.30: 2 minutes to CPA. The entire fleet gets moved to Rakalurn - hopefully that'll make Murdoch a juicier target.

7.38.30: CPA hits.

72 Mk II ships,
398 Mk IV ships,
and 4,225 ships from the strategic reserve.

I'm fairly sure I've had waves larger than this. Heck, I'm fairly sure they'll be so frightened they won't even attack me.

7.38.40: Uh ... there's only 2,600 threat. And I started off with 1,400 or so. 

Someone please take a look at this and tell me what I'm missing, as this looks like a normal CPA spawn to me:

Quote
*Computing MaxStrategicReserve for player 8
baseStrengthFactor = 19.8
specialDifficultyFactor = Game.Instance.Options.TotalSpecialDifficultyModifier (based on difficulty, homeworld count, handicap) = 6
aiTypeFactor = 1
effectiveAIP = (since Lazy-AI is not on, this is always 200; if you don't like that take it up with chemical_art) = 200
maxStrategicReserve = baseStrengthFactor * difficultyFactor * aiTypeFactor * effectiveAIP = 23759.77
*Computing MaxStrategicReserve for player 9
baseStrengthFactor = 19.8
specialDifficultyFactor = Game.Instance.Options.TotalSpecialDifficultyModifier (based on difficulty, homeworld count, handicap) = 6
aiTypeFactor = 1
effectiveAIP = (since Lazy-AI is not on, this is always 200; if you don't like that take it up with chemical_art) = 200
maxStrategicReserve = baseStrengthFactor * difficultyFactor * aiTypeFactor * effectiveAIP = 23759.77
**Doing Strategic Reserve Deployment to (Post-filling CPA)
maxAllowedReserveDeploymentPercent = 1
playerMaxStrategicReserve = 47519.53
playerCurrentStoredReserve = 23753.98 (49.99%)
existingStrategicReservesStrengthOnPlanet = 0
strengthToSpawn = Min(playerCurrentStoredReserve,( playerMaxStrategicReserve * maxAllowedReserveDeploymentPercent ) - existingStrategicReservesStrengthOnPlanet) = 23753.98
maxTargetPopulation = 11750
currentPopulation = 0
allocating 0.02 out of 1 (533.54 strength) for role: None , eligible types:MissileShipII, ArmorShipII, EyeBotII
allocating 0.03 out of 1 (800.3 strength) for role: AntiBomber , eligible types:FighterII, MicroFighterII
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: LongRange , eligible types:
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: CopperPlatedBastard , eligible types:
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: Tractor , eligible types:
allocating 0.03 out of 1 (800.3 strength) for role: Gravity , eligible types:SpireGravityDrainII
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: Reclamator , eligible types:
allocating 0.91 out of 1 (21608.24 strength) for role: DefenseCracker , eligible types:BomberII, SpaceTankII, ZenithSiegeEngineII
allocating 0 out of 1 (0 strength) for role: RiotControl , eligible types:
actually bought:
51 ArmorShipII @ 4.36 each, so total for line = 222.53
58 EyeBotII @ 8 each, so total for line = 464
55 MissileShipII @ 4 each, so total for line = 220
213 FighterII @ 4 each, so total for line = 852
190 MicroFighterII @ 2.67 each, so total for line = 506.54
171 SpireGravityDrainII @ 8 each, so total for line = 1368
1172 BomberII @ 4 each, so total for line = 4688
1136 ZenithSiegeEngineII @ 24 each, so total for line = 27264
1179 SpaceTankII @ 4 each, so total for line = 4716
Grand total: 4225 ships, 40301.07 strength
Remaining reserve: 0 out of 47519.53 (0%)

Also: effectiveAIP = (since Lazy-AI is not on, this is always 200; if you don't like that take it up with chemical_art) = 200

10.39: 2,776 bombers to Murdoch. Yep, that's more than the CPA.

10.41.40: Wave handled, now the threat is attacking Rakalurn. Fleet to the rescue.

Oh, hey dire sniper guardian. I forgot about you.

10.43: Well, that was quite possibly the most ineffective CPA ever. I'm now overflowing with money, literally, and I need to add three more matter converters to deal with the amount of ships I leech. At least the spire rams build quickly.

10.43.30: Oh there's still 1,800 threat out there. But it's pretty much just sitting on Desenan like it has been for the last half hour or so. Okay, while I have 600 more ships more than normal and a massive +9,000 metal per second over my cap, time to throw their lives away uselessly. Everyone who's not a starship, maw, lightning torpedo frigate or sentinal moves to attack Zupreape.

10.43.42: 1,588 ships warp in. Objective: Take out the spire shield guardpost and tachyons around the wormhole exit, and any other unshielded guardposts you can get your hands on.

10.43.46: CREs fire. 2,100 ships each coming onto the planet in a minute's time.

10.44.02: Spire shield is down. The four tractor / widow guardposts are doing a number on the fleet though.

10.44.10: 3 penetrators come in and take down a guardpost each. Unfortunately the widows are out of range from the wormhole exit - I may have to ram those later.

10.44.14: 768 remaining fleet ships are told to retreat. Not sure how many of them can.

10.44.20: Reprisal level 1. 2,100 threat. 4,200 wave. 2 million in the bank to refleet with. 4 guardposts, a tachyon and an ion down. Worth it.

10.44.29: Last of the fleet goes down. I don't think any survived the widow posts. I'm waiting 30 seconds to let the ships move away from the exit, them bringing in a jumpship with a raid to take down one of the warp gates and exfiltrating the other jumpship.

10.44.38: CRE hits Zupreape. 6,174 threat. Oh, and the special forces of course.

10.44.43: Murdoch is under attack. Time for those lightning torpedo frigates to shine.

10.44.47: 2,304 space tanks to Murdoch. Now THAT's a reprisal. Martyr is uprooted from Rakalurn and moves to Murdoch.

10.44.57: 4,150 attack on Murdoch. The threat on Desenan has finally showed its hand. Spire jumpship is half way to the warp gates, and 4 rams stand by the hop into Zupreape under cover of cloakers to deal with the widow posts.

10.45.12: The broken armored golem goes down. Finally.

10.45.40: 4,488 attack. 750 outstanding threat and 2,300 wave. Martyr arrives on the scene. Rams jump into Zupreape.

10.45.45: The Martyr came out of the wormhole right behind the main body of the attack. It 'only' took 1,300 with it though, unfortunately, after getting shredded by carriers. The assault is not even halfway to the command station yet, so most of the turrets haven't engaged.

10.46.16: Rams start hitting home. One Mk. 5 tractor, one Mk. 5 widow go down.

10.46.20: Tanks hit Murdoch. 4,930 attack. I'm going to lose the fabs, but that wasn't exactly an unexpected outcome. Especially with 345 zenith siege engines pounding on the forcefield. Executive decision: All 448 mobile ships on the planet retreat to Rakalurn.

Currently 15 million scrap on Murdoch, by the way.

10.46.28: Command station goes down, ooks like I'll be picking up that scrap later. Just hope I didn't leave retreating the lightning frigates too late. 39 Mk. 2 engineers are build on Rakalurn to build ships ASAP, and the warp gates are in full swing.

10.46.39: 2 more widow guardposts go down to the rams. I'm getting worried about the slow pace of the jumpship - I need that warp gate killed and the raid off-planet before the 4 minutes are up.

10.46.46: The original, long trapped spirecraft jump ship escapes. Hugs and tears all round.

10.46.51: 1,088 cloaked ships to ???. Always nice to have more threat.

10.47.07: Area mine fields, beam turrets, snipers, lasers and grav turrets start going up Rakalurn. I still have 1.8 million in the bank, so hopefully they'll get built in time this time. Sadly only 13 lightning torpedo frigates and 18 sentinal frigates escaped, that's going to hurt.

10.47.36: Close defence turrets around the command station are up. Mines, not so much. The attack starts.

10.47.38: Warp jammer command gets swapped out for a Mil 2. Attack boost and tachyon coverage is essential at this point.

10.47.41: Command station is finished. Amazing what 39 engineers can do.

10.47.50: All 39 engineers feed themselves to the attack while trying to build mines. Come on, guys...

10.48.12: Dammit, forgot about the raid. Too late now, he'll have to sit there otherwise another wave will spawn.

10.48.48: 2,000 attack. 2,887 threat. 1,000 wave. Fleet ships focus fire the zenith siege engines.

10.49.01: Oh hell. MICVARAPE command station goes down. Yeah, turns out that 1,400 of that threat wasn't beelining for Rakalurn. Lyudmila makes for the exit with all available speed.

10.49.10: Human resistance show up again on Rakalurn. Hey guys, is this your vacation spot or something? Only 900 attack left there.

10.49.42: Warp gates are disabled. We need a fleet to go help Micvarape. 3,000 threat outstanding, 1,000 of it on Murdoch.

10.49.45: Last attacker on Rakalurn dies. 900 fleet ships still on the planet.

10.50.01: 600 attack on Kuer. I quickly move the lightning missiles out of the way. Lyudmila is on duty, we should be okay here.

10.50.05: Penentrator on Kuer takes a shot at a Mk. 5 core starship. First useful thing its done in about 6 hours.

10.50.25: Rescued jumpship start shipping starships and snipers to Kuer. There are a lot of starships as part of this attack.

10.50.37: 8 reprocessors you say? Yes, I think that'll help with the bomber / warbird starships smacking on the Kuer forcefields.

10.50.54: 59 ships remaining. The forcefield around the impulse fab / core missile controller is at 10%.

10.51: Last bombers starship goes down. Fabs are exposed to open air.

10.51.13: Command station pops, just as a few engineers come online and start repairing the forcefields. 27 attack left, all of it starships. Luckily half of it off chasing Lyudmila around the grav well again.

10.51.27: Forcefield pops. Lyudmila at 32%.

10.52.20: Last ship on Kuer goes down. Lyudmila is at 9%. That was desperately close. There's still 2,200 threat somewhere out there, but for now it's time to start rebuilding Micvarape.

10.56: 800 ships warp into Mudoch to take care of the 300 or so threat there.

11.00: So, that was intense. The loss of the lightning turret controller and railcluster fab is a blow, but not a massive one. Once I get the two command stations back up I estimate I'll have access to a combined 30-40 million salvage, which should ease the rebuilding pain somewhat. I'm going to have to eat another two CREs before I can access the AI homeworld - there's one tractor, one widow, 4 spire shield and one needler guardpost left on Zupreape. So one more fleet wipe to get them, then the sabotage hack, then penentrate the translocator station followed up by a super-quick command station build out and a jumpship / penentrator run to remove the raid engines.

Should be fun.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2014, 05:37:14 pm by RockyBst »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #50 on: April 14, 2014, 05:40:17 pm »
I haven't read the latest post just yet, but I noticed that the place you were hosting the pictures has apparently hired the TF2 Heavy to persuade you to find another provider ;)

You're welcome to attach them to the forum post, if you like; after you put the post up you can:
1) click the image in the attachment area to bring the image (rather than just a thumbnail) up
2) copy that url
3) edit your post to include the image's url via an img tag

That may not be the exact procedure, didn't try it just now, but should work.  Alternatively there's IMGUR or whatever.


Edit: nevermind, it appears the TF2 Heavy has suffered a mischief.  Not that you would have had anything to do with that.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #51 on: April 14, 2014, 07:42:24 pm »
Wow, you just put one of the AI HWs (with all core posts intact, initially at least) inside your defensive perimeter.  I don't think I've ever seen that before.


Neat trick jumping the jumpship back through time to save it ;)


Quote
10.22.30: Nope, apparently they come from Zupreape to hit Murdoch. I thought these were supposed to spawn on the same planet now?
Whoops.  Evidently it had other ideas.  Do you have a save?


Odd on that CPA strategic reserve spawn being so low.  And that was only half of the reserve (the first half is launched earlier in the CPA, if that's what's necessary to make up half of it), so it probably should have pumped out Over 9,000 ships just from the reserve.  A save would be helpful here too :)


Quote
10.46.46: The original, long trapped spirecraft jump ship escapes. Hugs and tears all round.
I suspect that two teleporting things trying to hug are likely to look like a transporter accident.  But I suppose they're used to that.


And those CRE's certainly took you for a wild ride.  Congratulations surviving that with controllable losses.
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Offline RockyBst

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #52 on: April 15, 2014, 03:19:37 am »
Ah yeah, the hotlink protection stuff I set up about 8 years ago. Of course there are probably 100 times as many images in the 'hotlink' folder by now than anywhere else on that domain. Triggered back in 2006, with a considerably more rude image, after someone hotlinked a photo and pulled down close to 200GB of traffic.

Forums were a tad flaky last night, so here's another hour of not-very-much-happening. There'll be another CPA soon, so if I see the same behaviour again I'll upload a save to you.

11.01: Oh, another dire guardian you say? Joyous.

11.03: Both command stations back up. Turret rebuilding is well outpacing the +15,000 metal/s from the scrap.

11.07: All static defences are back online, including a cap of Mk. 1 lightnings on Murdoch. After the attack I'm left with just 517 fleet ships (thankfully including almost all the lightning frigates), and the scrap has run out. This will be a long rebuilding process.

11.09: 1,300 bombers? Kinda anaemic. I'd rather have more for scrap purposes.

11.11: 4,100 tachyon micro-fighters. Now that's more like it.

11.14: Penentrators are armed again. I can't take a CRE wave yet though.

11.36: Yup, still fleet rebuilding. Even at +10 speed it takes a while when you have Mk. 5 maws, and leeches, and expensive sentinel frigates. And an economy of only 4,600 metal/s.

11.38: Done, or close enough. Now to throw all those lives away again!

3,334 fighters ... just after I could have really used the scrap.

11.39: And 1,000 cloaked ships. At least I know these won't declare in the middle of the CRE now.

11.40: Fighters vs. area mines. They don't even last long enough for me to leech any.

11.41: And I can say pretty much the same for eyebots.

11.43: Alrighty then. 1,300 fleet ship and starships. Zupreape has only 900 on planet, about 50 of which are riots. Sounds like it's time for the blob of doom.

11.44.39: Fleet jumps in - including starships and lightnings this time. Again, about 4,200 ships from the CREs hitting in one minute.

11.44.47: Raid takes down the warp gate. +3 HaP.

11.44.57: Tractor guardpost goes down to a penetrator.

11.45.11: All ships retreating. Special forces are murdering me.

11.45.17: Last widow guard post goes down to a penetrator. Which is rapidly squashed itself. I think I lost both of them.

11.45.22: Only 400-odd ships escape. At least none were eaten.

11.45.40: CREs hit. 5,907 threat.

11.45.55: Make that 4,246 attack.

11.46.57: 2,500 attack. Command station is going down again. This time though a jumpship is in position to ferry away the lightning frigates, if required.

11.47.33: Command station pops. Not a problem. Lightning torpedos and sentinals are circling the grav well firing inwards.

11.50.50: Well whaddya know, circle strafing with lightning torpedos and sentinals is extremely effective. By the time they've done a full circle and exited through the Rakalurn wormhole there's only 500 enemy ships on the planet. Unfortunately a fair number of those are spire starships, which prevents me from rescuing my remaining starship screeners for fear of the jumpship getting beamed to death.

11.52: Micvarape command station goes down. Raider guardians. Doesn't seem to the prelude to anything more than a couple of dozen starships though.

11.53: 1,100 fleet ships rebuilt on Rakalurn. Time to take back Murdoch.

11.53.28: Oh right, dire sniper guardian again. Keep forgetting about that guy.

11.56: Sniper down. Murdoch command back up. I can see this becoming a bit of a pattern.

11.58: Yeah, you know what that last Adamantite is going on rams. I can't brute force 4 Mk. 5 spire shield guard posts with the special forces breathing down my neck. Of course, that leaves me no asteroids for the homeworld assaults...

12.00: Okay, well that wasn't the most productive hour ever. However I took care of all the particularly nasty guard posts and my fleet is closing on full capacity again. And I'm fairly sure I can withstand the CRE attacks now, albeit losing Murdoch each time. So, tactics...

Right now a hacker is making its way to the bottom of Zupreape's grav well. Time to knock out that grav drill. After that, several things will happen in quick succession.

1.) A single ram will take out the spire shield guardpost over the wormhole to the AI homeworld. I'm going to ignore the other three.
2.) Another ram will take cloaker cover and remove the translocator command station.
3.) A jumpship with 24 engineers are one colony ship will jump to the edge of the grav well and power build a Mil 2 command station.
4.) In the millisecond before the core spider turret controller is wiped out, I'll build caps across all the worlds.
5.) Fleet warps in and takes out the core shield generator sitting next to the wormhole.
6.) Second jumpship takes a bunch of reprocessors to take out the first raid engine
7.) That last raid engine under a Mk. 5 forcefield, well. The last remaining penetrator, the Mk IV, will make a suicide play to take it out, supported by a load of chaff ships and a cloaker to superboosting it. Hopefully.

And all of this has to happen within four minutes, 'cos I can't deal with two CREs at once.

Why yes, this plan does involve colonising a core world while both the special forces and 4,000 Mk. IV ships are present. What's your point?

Offline Draco18s

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #53 on: April 15, 2014, 10:57:30 am »
Ah yeah, the hotlink protection stuff I set up about 8 years ago.

Aww, I missed it.

Offline RockyBst

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #54 on: April 15, 2014, 05:02:20 pm »
Just for you Draco: http://www.shock-therapy.org/artWork/hotlink.jpg

With a file-size of just 6KB it's considerably easier on the bandwidth cap than a 1-2MB image. It doesn't garner quite the same disgusted / horrified reactions as the initial anti-hotlinking image, though. Ahh, the web in simpler times. When you're still a teenager and not quite so professional.

Now, for the most intense two and a half minutes of AI war I've ever played.


12.01: Sabotage hacking commences.

12.02: Anti-climactic success. Grav drill goes down, for the cost of just 200 odd zombies. I was kind of hoping for a wave to give me more scrap.

12.02.11: Jumpship hops into the Zupreape system and joyously hops around the edges of the grav well - no more 28 speed crawls for me!

12.06: Just waiting for starships to rebuild. Did I mention that leech Mk. 5s are expensive? The fact that I'm still running 10 matter converters, so -2000 metal/s, really doesn't help matters. Oh, for a single zenith power generator...

12.11: 1,300 grav drains? Thanks for the cash infusion.

12.13: 6 million scrap. Tasty, even if 200 of them (including leech starships) did escape because I kept the fleet to one side and let the defences deal with them. Just a smidge under 2,000 threat now.

Aand 1,500 eyebots. With 51 starships. Fleet retreats to Rakalurn, let's see if we can get that threat to attack. I doubt it will though.

12.15: 51 raid starships. Well, I suppose that would fry any normal defences, yes.

12.16: Yeah, threat isn't taking the bait. Oh well, fleet back in to deal with the 500 remaining eyebots.

12.17: Rams are up.

12.28: Note to self, next time exfiltrate starships rather more quickly.

So, fleet is back up. I suppose I should really wait for the next CPA before making my attack.

Nah

There is one slight hitch to the plan though. I forgot that command stations are, believe it or not, command grade. So I'm going to have to penetrate the translocator command station and attempt to use the rams on the raid engine.

12.29: Colony crew are safely stowed. 8 reprocessors nestled in the belly of a jumpship. All non-essential ships (so everything except lightnings, sentinels, maws and starships) are mustered next to the Zupreape wormhole. Rams and penetrator are on standby.

Let's do this thing.

12.29.26: Cloakers enter Zupreape.

12.29.27: Ram and penetrator join them. CREs fire - 4,500 combined ships.

12.29.41: Special forces arrive. 2,500 ships on planet and another 1,500 in carriers. And a huge number of grav drains / gravity guardians are making a mockery of my haste.

12.29.47: Jumpship carrying the reprocessors is rapidly re-purposed - 24 grav drains to the edge of the grav well to draw forces away from the wormhole to the AI homeworld.

12.29:51: Command station - penetrated. +20 AIP. There's no way I'm getting this guy out of here intact, so he gets sent to the grav drains to help them distract from the AI homeworld exit.

12.29.55: Ram is holding just beyond tachyon range of the sentinel next to the Samuockash wormhole. Steady, steady...

10.30.02: I've waited as long as I dare. CRE is hitting Zupreape in 30 seconds, and I need to be gone before it does. 1,076 ships are ordered to warp in to Zupreape.

12.30.05: Second jumpship enters the planet and drops off the colony crew. Mil 2 command station starts building. Fleet ships are ordered to distract the ships around the wormhole exit so that even when the taychon decloaks the ram it will probably survive to take out the shield.

12.30.08: Mil 2 command station up. All capturables on planet are now mine - including 2 ion cannons, an OMD and a regenerator golem. I give the first two 5 seconds to live, the regen should buy me a 20 second or so delay in the CREs hitting Murdoch.

The core spider turret controller and zenith siege engine fab are sitting right next to a Mk. 3 fort at the top of the grav well. As fantastic as core zenith sieges would be for the homeworld assault, they'll only live as long as it takes the fortress to load its guns to live. As such a cap of spider turrets goes up on Kuer, Micvarape, Murdoch, Rakalurn and my home planet Zarpar. A full cap is also put into place around the command station on Zupreape - if I can engine damage the CRE assault that'll be utterly fantastic.

State of play:



Problem: Each cap of turrets costs me 17,200 energy and 206,000 metal. I only have 350,000 metal and 77,000 energy in reserve at the moment. A mini-fort explodes on my homeworld, leaving me with 6 caps of turrets and only 188(!) energy. Still, that energy will be retrieved shortly once ships start dying everywhere.

12.30.21: Ram takes down the spire shield generator - the road to the AI homeworld is clear. My entire metal reserve has been wiped out. Shockingly the fabs are still alive - the fortress apparently can't fire on them. The same cannot be said for the special forces guard post, which is currently chewing away at the advanced starship constructor. In fact, most of the AI ships seem to be going after the advanced starship constructor. I take a risky decision - one of the cloakers peels off from the remaining 3 rams and is sent after the penetrator at the edge of the grav well.

10.30.24: 882 fleet ships remaining. They're all told to make the jump into the AI homeworld. CRE hits in 8 seconds.

10.30.28: Reprocessors are sitting next to the first CRE. Wait, external invulnerability x1? Oh god, what did I miss.

Oh. I didn't kill the core shield generator on the way over here. I do have a habit of doing that, jumping in to AI homeworlds while the shield generators are still up.

Quote
**Time rewinds by 18 seconds**

12.30.11: Fleet annihilates the core shield generator. Homeworld, here we come.

12.30.13: When moving the ram in to attack the spire shield guard post I discover something. It's vanished. In fact, all of them have vanished. Apparently when loading the save the game took one look, said 'what are all these Mk. 5 shield guardposts doing on a player world' and exploded them. Gonna call that one a bug.

To be 'fair' to the AI, I symbolically scrap the ram I would have otherwise used on the guard post.

This is only spire shield guardposts by the way, the remaining needler guard post and forcefields weren't affected.

12.30.30: Slightly behind schedule, the fleet jumps into the AI homeworld. Priority: Tachyon sentinel.

12.30.32: 2 seconds later the three remaining rams and a single cloaker follow them, after just enough time for every enemy ship to have acquired a target. Everyone is sent after the shielded CRE.

The cloaker is vital - despite the planetary tachyon coverage it can still super-boost the rams into invisibility. Sent on a parallell path to rest of the ships, they should stay cloaked for as long as physically possible.

12.30.33: CRE hits. 8,231 attack (a fair portion of that special forces on Zupreape, of course). 2,126 threat otherwise. The first spider turrets on Zupreape start to come online.

12.30.40: Ions cannons, OMD, starship constuctor and fabs are long since dead. Broken regen golem is, somewhat surprisingly, untouched. Jumpship is loaded with 8 reprocessors and ready to ride.

10.30.58: Jumpship delivery system works perfectly. First raid engine goes down in a hail of reprocessor fire.

The jumpship dies. Farewell, dear friend.

Rams are about halfway to the second CRE. Half the remaining 320 fleet ships are told to hold position to cover the ram's rear and engage the strategic reserve spawning in from behind. The rest move forward to absorb incoming fire. Rams are at 67%, 45% and 13% respectively.

12.31.10: Zupreape command goes down. The penetrator appears to be immune to the cloaker starship sitting next to it and is still getting hit (bug or intentional? I'm assuming intentional). 43 Mk. 5 spider turrets remaining, doing 1,000 engine damage to a CRE ship every 8 seconds. 211 ships remaining on the AI homeworld.

12.31.15: Cloaker goes down. The ram's cloaking super boost is going to rapidly run out.

12.31.21: First ram dies. The other two are almost touching the edge of the Mk. 5 forcefield covering the raid engine, so about 5/6s of the way there. 30 ships remaining on the AI homeworld.

12.31.24: Second ram dies. Remaining ram has 32% health, and is well inside the forcefield circumference. Blast that grav reactor for slowing everything down!

12.31.26: The last ram has 7% health as it impacts the core raid engine. It dies. I'm free.

12.31.30: Thanks to some fancy shift-clicking, the penetrator has circled that main body of the enemy threat and escaped through the Murdoch wormhole. With 14% health. It may yet live to fight another day. Save the final spirecraft jumpship, no other ship has survived this assault.

Oh, and yes it did just take an entire minute to move the probably 30,000 distance from wormhole exit to command station. Gotta love grav reactors.

7,951 threat.
10 spider turrets remaining on Zupreape. Those on Murdoch ~80% constructed. All others paused.
AIP: 160
153 ships on Murdoch. All sentinal frigates, lightning torpedos, maws or starships. 200 ships on Rakalurn, and more pouring from the warp gates. Economy is flatlined.
Reprisal level 3.
   

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #55 on: April 15, 2014, 05:33:01 pm »
Why yes, this plan does involve colonising a core world while both the special forces and 4,000 Mk. IV ships are present. What's your point?
Business as usual.


Quote
Now, for the most intense two and a half minutes of AI war I've ever played.
Given various points of this game thus far, that's saying something :)

Noted on the spire-guard-post disappearing-on-load thing.  Probably some overzealous "cleanup" code.

Unsure what the intention is about the penetrator and the super-cloaker.  There's a lot of history with the penetrator and unusual cloaking rules.


A truly epic moment with the last of those three Rams just barely nailing the second CRE, to cap an epic assault overall.  It's amazing what kinds of emergent pain arise from a bunch of circumstances picked (mostly) randomly and (mostly) independent of one another.


Quote
Reprisal level 3.
This could get... interesting.  If it puts the right amount of strength in, at least.  Some of the earlier reprisals seemed strangely low.  Though not all of them.
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Offline RockyBst

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #56 on: April 15, 2014, 05:51:10 pm »
Oh, that reprisal brought the pain alright.

Next time, on insane AI War strategies...

Quote
12.31.52: 12,076 younglings tiger to Murdoch. Allow me to repeat that. 12,076 youngling tigers.

...

16,094 attack on Murdoch.

...

Oh lord. CPA declared. Hitting in 10 minutes, with (supposedly) 16,709 ships. Combined total threat and CPA: 31,000 ships.


Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #57 on: April 15, 2014, 06:04:54 pm »
Hahaha.  You may have been saved by the RNG on that one: just gotta keep those tigers occupied for 4 minutes and they'll die naturally.

And a save before the actual launch of that CPA would be great for debugging the Strategic Reserve's contribution, if that's possible to get :)
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Offline RockyBst

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #58 on: April 15, 2014, 06:07:12 pm »
Not a problem on the save.

Note: Tigers in carriers DO NOT ATTRITION.


Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: 10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong
« Reply #59 on: April 15, 2014, 06:08:16 pm »
Note: Tigers in carriers DO NOT ATTRITION.
... how did you say it?

&%#@!
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