10 planets, diff 10 ... what could go wrong

[RockyBst]

So, as I've temporarily put my 9/9 Heroic bouncer / Shield Ninny support corps game on hold until that whole '12 battleships per wave, every wave' issue is resolved somewhat, I felt like a bit of a palette cleanser. Thinking of what I haven't tried for a while, let's go for a 10 planet map. On diff 10. It should be pointed out I have practically no hope of accomplishing this, this is more of a log of my hilarious failures.

To even things up a bit, let's choose a smorgas board of easy AIs ... a Tank/Grav Driller and a Vanilla/Turtle. Kill most of the usual 'fun' options like the hunter plot, hybrid hives, trains and spire civvy leaders. And as a wildcard ... somewhere in this galaxy, there's a 6/10 Dyson sphere.

00.01: Time to science. Initial unlocks:

• Scout 2
• Engy 2
• Zenith Starship Mk 1
• LeechStarship Mk 2
• Heavy Beam cannons
• Mini-Forts
• Hardened Forcefields 1
• Forcefields 2

Fairly standard really. I whack a ton of extra forcefields around the home command station, line place some mines from the one wormhole exit and build half of all my turrets facing that one wormhole.

00.05: Initial scout reports coming in.



So, looks like there's an AI homeworld 3 hops away that is blocking access to the other 5 planets on this map. That's going to be a problem, as I have core shield generators turned on. So I'll have to neuter the AI homeworld and hop over it to take out the shield gens. This is already sounding like an impossible task.

Anyway, let's take a look at the two planet of most immediate interest. Kuer, right next to me:



Not bad for a first planet. That's a black widow golem, ARS, core missile turret controller and impulse emitter fab with just a couple of guard posts. Oh, and that yummy looking spire archive. 9,000 knowledge would be very handy at this point.

Next up, the Mk 3 planet Senow, up the top there.



Mhmm, very nice for a hinterland planet. 2 (!) ARSes, a core needler turret controller, and a Neinzul youngling fab. The cherry on top here is floating around in an unassuming asteroid belt though ... 1 titanite, 1 adamantite and 5 ebonite. Oh, the spire ships we could build...

Finally, that pesky core plant Micvarape:



Another cursed golem, a core sniper turret controller and a core railpod fab. Not quite as tasty as the other two, but that railpod fab is almost guaranteed to be handy at some point.

Initial thoughts then ... well, Kuer is obviously getting taken ASAP. That will leave a core planet on alert though, unless ... I unlock warp jamming command stations. Which, thanks to that handy 9,000 knowledge from the spire archive might just be possible. Use Kuer as a temporary chokepoint until I acquire Senow, then blast on to Micvarape and turn that into a real chokepoint right next to the AI homeworld.

This was a long post, so let's split the rest into another one.

[RockyBst]

00.05: First wave is declared. 144 neinzul younglings. Now, if you look closely at that first scout screenshot up there you might notice a problem. That is, I'm currently running -23,000 metal a second. As per usual I've gone science -> build EVERYTHING, and hence none of my defences are actually in place yet other than the 150 mines leading from the wormhole to my command station.

Younglings are immune to mines.

00.06: Wave hits. Still no actually shooting defences in place. I do, however, have 12 missile frigates.

00.07: Thankfully, my defences start coming online about 30 seconds after the wave hits. One by one turrets pop up to start taking potshots. Takes about 2 minutes from the wave hitting to me clearing the planet. I think I was lucky it was younglings honestly, if it had been bombers or something with more anti-structure grunt I would definitely have lost at this point.

00.08: Second wave declared. 150 cloaked shops. All defences are now online.

00.09: Well, that was anti-climactic. Eyebots come, eyebots run into minefield, bye-bye eyebots.

00.10: Start building fleet ships. Including my secret weapon, the lightning missile frigate. I figure the more things for the AI to shoot at that aren't my ships, the better. It's at this point I realise that energy is going to be a serious issue in this game, as I only have about 30 of each built before I run out of power. Time to break out the matter converters.

00.13: Three matter converters up, enough to start building my starship fleet (2* flagships, 2* leech 1s, 2* leech 2s and a zenith starship for a grand total of 80,000 power) and build the rest of my fleet ships. While I'm waiting for stuff to build, I pop my head into Kuer with 50 bombers/fighters/frigates, figuring I could take out a guardpost or two. It's at this point I realise that the AI has tackle drone launchers, as my ships start flying backwards away from their escape wormhole...

00.20: Fleet is at full capacity, time to take the battle to them. 300 ships jump into Kuer, and start bashing on the MRLS guardpost under a force field. Focus shifts to wiping the tackle launching scum from the face of this planet, then back to the guard post. Then what I assume are the special forces show up, with more tackle drone launchers and some grav drains. Fighting continues in this vein for 10 minutes or so, with various feats of derring do as fighters annihalate the needler guard posts and bombers rip up forcefields and MRLS posts.

00.30: Kuer is mine. As I don't have warp jammers yet, I plonk down a Mil 1 command station next to the core missile turret controller and impulse fab. Both of which are rather far away from the actual main part of the planet. I slap two basic forcefields around the spire archive, a couple around the command station and look at my spoils. Sentinel frigates ... hell, yes. Infinite range snipers with pretty damaging attacks and relatively low energy costs, possibly one of the best ships I could have gotten.

00.35: Fleet rebuilding continues. A wave is announced for Kuer ... 734 fighters!?! I suddenly realise that I haven't actually built any defences. And if that spire archive goes down, I get +80 AIP. Cue panicked build of a hardened forcefield, along with 48 lovely Mk. 5 missile turrets. Which are still 80% built when the wave hits a minute and 30 seconds later.

TBC

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, nothing could go wrong here   Losing that Spire Archive was entirely according to plan!

The 12-battleships-per-wave thing in your other game should be fixed sometime Monday morning.  TLF development is very busy right now, so I decided to forego any mid-week releases unless it was a general crash thing or whatever.

[RockyBst]

Ah now, I never said that I lost the spire archive.

00.36: Wave hits. There was method to my madness in quick building a hardened forcefield generator - fighters aren't strong enough to do much damage to it. That just leaves the plasma, zenith and flagship starcraft to really worry about. As I have spare power from my new generator, I kill two of the matter converters to free up ~400 metal towards my missile turrets, and they slowly come online and start winnowing the fighter horde. The plasma starship ignores the archive and trundles off towards the command station in the distance, so I likewise ignore it and when about half of the missile turrets are online, tell them to focus fire the other two starships. There are about 200 fighters left when suddenly the power goes out...

00.38: That plasma siege starship? Yeah, he went and banged on my command station forcefields. And took out the power generator. Thankfully I noticed and paused the game about a second after it happened. -60,000 power ... well, bye bye starship fleet. Spire archive comes out of it with about 1/3rd health.

00.39: Finally mop up the last of the ships from this wave. The command station went down to the siege's pounding, so remains rebuilders get on the case. Luckily fabs are immune from siege splash. I was left with 87 ships in the end, and I'm fairly sure none of those were the ones I started the battle with.

00.49: Last ten minutes was spent fortifying my position and rebuilding the fleet. So Kuer now has every single turret I can build which wasn't already on the homeworld, so about 50 of each and 80 sniper turrets. Added a couple more temporary forcefields to the spire archive as well. Energy is still a major issue, so I build 3 more matter converters for a total of 4 @ 200,000 energy. First 5,000 knowledge from the spire archive is spent on a metal harvester upgrade, because I can already tell I'm gonna need one heck of an economy with so few planets to actually produce base metal from. Especially given the metal drain from matter converters and the -80 from the warp jamming command station.

00.50: Wave of 940 youngling tigers. This could get interesting.

00.51: Luckily, these guys don't seem to understand forcefields. Prioritise the starships, then the younglings just mill around attacking turrets. Which is painful, but not as painful as losing the archive could have been.

00.55: Spire archive dings 9,000 knowledge and finally disappears. I pop a warp jammer station on Kuer, then realise that there is no actual wave entry point to my empire anymore. In that case the AI just operates with cross-planet waves, right? Anyway, this leaves me with 1,000 knowledge to spare, which I think I'll store so I can buy Mk.3 (and therefore 4) lightning frigates after I cap Senow and Micvarape.

The problem with that plan, of course, is that the nearest advanced factory happens to be on the AI homeworld itself.

00.57: Also just noticed that the design backup on Senow is for tackle drone launchers, score. On balance, I think removing these from the AI's armoury is slightly more pressing that adding them to mine. Building another matter converter, to get me 2 Enclaves for defensive purposes, and a siege and a bomber starship for offence.

00.58: Wave announcement. 380 bombers to . Guess that answers that question. They end up as threat on Micvarape.

1.00: An hour in, one planet down, four waves defeated, one deferred. 30 AIP. Next up, neutering Senow so I can hack that design backup. At the moment I'm not building the black widow golem, as I think 15 AIP and 150,000 energy is too high a price to pay for it at this stage of the game (broken golems medium). I wouldn't mind one of the cursed golems for 10 AIP though...

[keith.lamothe]

Ah now, I never said that I lost the spire archive.

Not for lack of trying

when suddenly the power goes out...

Plasma Siege Starships can rarely be safely ignored.

Definitely one type that is considerably more dangerous to the human than to the AI.

Congrats on winning that fight anyway.

00.50: Wave of 940 youngling tigers. This could get interesting.

00.51: Luckily, these guys don't seem to understand forcefields. Prioritise the starships, then the younglings just mill around attacking turrets. Which is painful, but not as painful as losing the archive could have been.

Well that's disappointing

If you have a save of them just milling around I'd like to take a look and figure out what's going on.  There's actually some fairly specific AI logic for "round up a bunch of anti-FF units and take out juicy stuff under forcefields", and tigers are about as anti-forcefield as they come.

The problem with that plan, of course, is that the nearest advanced factory happens to be on the AI homeworld itself.

Um, Mr.AI, I don't suppose you'd mind if I just borrowed this?


Hacking for mkIV capability on an intact AI HW would be pretty hardcore.

[RockyBst]

Hacking for mkIV capability on an intact AI HW would be pretty hardcore.

Guess what the plan for hour 4 is ...

1.04: Start hit-and-run tactics on Senow, looking to take down guard posts. The one right next to the wormhole happens to be under a forcefield again, wonderful. I also meet my arch-nemesis, the disassembler guardian. Retreat having popped one guard post, lost 250 ships and had two starships swallowed.

1.06: Disassembler guardian finishes his snack. AI reprisal level 1 announced.

1.09: 208 bombers to . Might have to see if I can lure some of the 600+ threat off the core world.

1.11: Moved all my ships off Kuer. Operation rope-a-dope is in progress, I can see all 611 threat fleet ships moving from Micvarape to attack me.

1.12: Well, rope-a-dope was a success. From 611 threat to 2.5 million scrap in one easy move. Amazingly the black widow golem is still there too, albeit at 3% rather than its initial 25.

1.14: Barring a last couple of starships, my entire 470 ship fleet (+ the odd leeched mk. 2 bomber) is now ready to move out. Onwards, to Senow!

1.17: The usual kind of thing ensues. Bombers take on MRLSes, missile frigs to the cloaker post while the sentinal frigates provide long-range fire support against tackle drones and ion cannons. In the end, the AI is 5 guard posts down and I've lost 300 ships. There's also an ion cannon buried under a force field that I couldn't get to ... time to build a raid or two.

1.18: 343 missile frigate waves goes cross-planet. Not sure if this is a normal wave or reprisal

1.19: 296 grav drains as well. That's enough threat to be ... well, threatening. At least while I'm rebuilding the fleet.

1.20: Missile frigs and grav drains both spawn in to Senow. Then decide they don't like the look of the wormhole to Kuer after all. One way to reinforce a planet, I suppose. Time to rebuild the fleet a little then rope-a-dope again.

1.23: Dope roping complete, this time for a cool 3 million salvage. Shame that warp jammer command station is only 10% efficient.

1.29: I love raids. Ion cannon down. This current 'reinforce with a single starship and no fleet ships' bug is obviously in effect, by the way. Total units counts are crawling up but starships are all over the place.

1.35: Took out 2 MRLS, 1 laser and a shield guard post with type-appropriate units. Also had the lightning and sentinal frigates just hanging around doing their thing. Noticeable that the reinfocement spawn was a load of guardians, including implosions (ugh), and 3 spire / 1 raid starship. No fleet ships. Also triggered a reprisal wave or two, so there's 550 threat on Micvarape again.

1.40: Senow is now neutered. Hacking time! Man, hackers are expensive.

1.44: In the middle of the hacking, a wave of 600 armor ships is announced. That gives threat of about 1,200...

1.45: Oh, and a reprisal wave from my hacker defence ships!

1.48: And the hack is done. No longer will I have to deal with the scourge of tackle drone launchers. I quickly pop the command station, clean up residual zombies and move my fleet back to Kuer.

1.49: So, those armor ships showed up. 1,200 threat all pouring into Kuer right now, with another 300 bombers coming in from a reprisal wave in a minute or so.

1.52: Okay, so that was close. At one point I had 400 armored ships hitting the (9) forcefields around my Kuer's command station, with 150 eyebots coming in close behind. Just scraped through, although the forcefield edges were dangerously close to the core missile controller. I did lose the widow golem, but really that isn't a particularly bad thing as it allows me to refocus my defences next to the command station. That will leave a highway to my homeworld, but hey maybe I'll get better scrap efficiency that way?

1.55: Built a basic econ command station on Senow. Only going to bother with one force field, it's a proper hinterland planet that will probably get no enemy contact. So ... core needler turrets, nice. Mk. 5 youngling tigers from the fab, not shabby. And the 2 ARSes gave me ... teleport stations. Twice. Yeah, think that one's a bug.

1.57: 700 Missile frigates? Pfft, just go join the threat fleet like everyone else.

1.58: Ooh, right. I forgot about the change where the ARSes gave you 500 knowledge each. That should come in handy.

2:00: So, two hours in. Scores on the doors are 2 planets down, AIP at 50. I just spent my 5,000 accumulated knowledge for Mk.2 sentinals and lightning frigates, plus the tigers gives me a fleet of just under 700 ships. Running at about 80,000 energy, with 4 matter converters up and before building core needler turrets. Objectives for the next hour are to get the cursed golem up (that thing will be awesome anti-fleet-ship sitting at the edge of the grav well), and try to neuter Micvarape.

Bonus Kuer picture:

[keith.lamothe]

Guess what the plan for hour 4 is ...

A contingency plan.  Specifically, "if main attempt to die failed, die harder"

This current 'reinforce with a single starship and no fleet ships' bug is obviously in effect, by the way.

Yep, got that one on my list right next to the heroic ship costs.

That will leave a highway to my homeworld, but hey maybe I'll get better scrap efficiency that way?

An excellent plan!  What could possibly go wrong?

And the 2 ARSes gave me ... teleport stations. Twice. Yeah, think that one's a bug.

Ah, so that's what it is.  When there's actually 2 on the same planet.

[RockyBst]

2.00: Start building Mk. 5 needlers on Kuer and the homeworld. Best defence is a good defence, and all that.

2.02: So, this is Micvarape:



Plenty of threat built up there, and obviously as a core world it'll get strategic reserve support. I pop the youngling tigers in to see what they can do, they don't last long but at least take out the tachyon. With strategic reserve, there's now 1,700 ships and one Mk. 3 fortress to take care of.

2.03: The threat fleet takes disposing of the last youngling as a trigger to attack Kuer. They also don't last particularly long.

A CPA declared. 2,710 ships, which is twice as many as my defences have coped with before. 10 engineers suddenly find themselves assigned to the cursed golem.

2.06: Aaand a wave of 700 armored ships to go with it.

2.08: Cursed golem comes online. It's costing me another two matter converters and 10 AIP, but I figure 160,000 attack * 20 every 2 seconds is worth it. This thing is essentially a mobile fortress, with more health, infinite range and without that pesky 0.01 to polycrystal hulls. It also has the advantage that it can be turned off to save me 100k energy, like for example if a plasma siege starship gets at Kuer again.

2.10: Fleet is at full capacity, including my shiny new lightning and sentinal Mk. 2s. 5 additional force fields built at Kuer, along with a couple of beam turrets I found lying around unused.

2.11: While waiting for the CPA to hit, let's take a look at that asteroid belt. One titanite, which I don't think I've ever actually found before. Lots of stuff that looks appealing there, from a Mk. 5 attritioner with 1,300 damage a sec to the 70 million damage penetrator. However what really catches my eye is the Mk. 5 jumpship ... transports 25 units, only attritions on AI homeworlds. Now, it costs almost a million metal and 30,000 energy, but it definitely has a place in my 'jump over the AI homeworld' plans.

Mhmm, decisions decisions. Well, for now let's get something to deal with any CPA troubles. 5 ebonite asteroids, one adamantite. Let's use one of the ebonites for a Mk.4 Martyr at a cost of 600,000 and 12,000 energy, while the adamantite goes on a Mk. 4 attritioner with 1,200 damage a second. Engys focus on the attritioner, as it's half the price of the martyr.

2.12: One minute to CPA. The attritioner is up and moving to Kuer. Now, it only does 1,200 damage per second. And even a mark 2 fighter has 330,000 health. Still, when you're facing off against 3,415 ships that 0.3% of total health lost every single second soon adds up. Oh, and I built a missile constructor on Kuer. There's now a lightning 2 warhead sitting under 13(!) forcefields, just in case that CPA is worse than I fear.

2.13: CPA hits, wave is a minute 30 behind. Looks like it uses the difficulty wave timings for that, rather than an actual 2 minute behind the CPA sync like I thought it did. Anyway, it's worse that I thought. Much worse.

707 Mark II ships
327 Mark III ships
321 Mark IV ships
and 1,355 Mark II from the strategic reserve. Looks like the AI just didn't have enough ships in the galaxy to give me a nice easy all Mk. 2 ride.

While I'm waiting, I send the youngling tigers through to Micvarape as a rude jesture to the AI. They take a missile guard post down to 40%, before getting caught by a tractor guardian. They'll rebuild soon enough.

2.14: I scrap the 8 remaining younglings that were about to get an all expenses paid trip to the AI homeworld, courtesy of the tractor guardian. Let's not pop our heads in there quite yet. 600 threat currently sitting on Micvarape. If it wasn't for the 5 ion cannons and single OMD currently on that world, I might be tempted to pre-emptively attack. Oh, and they have a core warhead interceptor, of course.

2.15: 2047 threat on Micvarape. It starts edging towards the wormhole. Time to fight.

2.15.09: When the carriers pop, I get a nasty suprise ... 67 tackle drone launchers. Half of them Mk.4. Well, I guess at least the AI can't make any more after this. Oh, and 260 zenith siege engines. Let's keep those away from the forcefields.

2.15.24: 2,100 attack with 700 threat left to come. Means I must have knocked off 600 ships in the first 15 seconds. Good old line-placed mines. Cursed golem was doing nicely, up until I sent it back through the wormhole to Zarpar because 300 bombers were angling in on it. Escaped at 65% health, I'll move it back into play in about 10 seconds once the ships have cleared away from the wormhole exit.

2.15.45: This is working nicely. Whenever I pop the golem through the wormhole, all the ships refocus on it and move away from the command station. I didn't think of using the golem as bomber bait before. Unfortunately, I also didn't notice the 10 million health, MK. 5 implosion guardian who's rapidly wiping health from it. Focus fire time.

2.16.01: Implosion guardian down. Cursed golem back on planet, with 42% health. 1,600 ships enemy ships on Kuer, my fleet has 400 still standing. Zenith siege engines are currently smacking on the forcefields and ... power goes out. As does the command station. -47,000 power, knew I should have built a couple of spare matter converters. Least useful current ships and defenses get scrapped, so bye-bye plasma siege and bomber starships, as well as a Mk. 2 forcefield and 5 heavy beam cannons on the homeworld.

2.16.05: Lightning warhead is still sitting under the forcefields, but the zenith sieges are going to kill it by pounding on it anyway. Time to see how many I can take with it.

2.16.09: Oh man, that was mishandled. Ships started moving away from the ex-command station to target the golem which just jumped in. So the lightning warhead went out, got caught in one of the grav drains fields and ended up only getting maybe 100 ships. What a waste of 2 AIP.

2.16.24: Arrgh, eyebots. Apparantly they're not attracted to the golem, so 40 of them start smacking on my fabs. Angling the fleet to take them out.

2.16.28: Too close. The core missile turret controller has 3% health as the last of the eyebots go down.

2.17.00: Cursed golem re-enters orbit around Kuer, 1,500 remaining threat ships stop smacking on the forcefields and take the long journey to the Zarpar wormhole.

2.17.21: Exeunt Cursed golem. 1,223 enemy ships remaining on Kuer, 227 fleet ships. Only emplaced defences left are 17 flak turrets, 19 lightning turrets and 76 snipers. Everything else has been wiped. The only thing keeping those fabs alive is this golem cheese and a steady stream of new younglings / core triangle ships from Senow and Zarpar.

2.17.45: Last of the threat jumps in. There are now 1,384 enemy ships remaining of the 3,415 that we started with. Cursed golem is still just out of the red at 35% health.

2.18.00: Exeunt Cursed golem, at 26% health. This is getting hairy.

2.18.30: I give the enemy 30 seconds to smack on the forcefields before sending Lyudmila back into the fray. They're actually holding up pretty well, the golem cheese has stopped them from going under 80% health so far. I'm still more worried about sneaky ships shooting under them than anything. Oh yeah, and the cursed golem is now named Lyudmila.

2.23: Things continue in this vein for a while. Lyudmila jumps in, fleet stops attacking the force fields to go after her, a few hundred ships die, Lyudmila jumps out. Eventually there are just 230 ships are left, Lyudmila is at 11% health, and nobody moves to attack her when she warps in. Instead everyone stays macking on forcefields, presumably because they know they can't kill the sniper. The remaining zenith siege engines are a real problem, one that needs to be solved quickly.

2.24: 95 ships including 27 tackle drone launchers and 8 starships are now all that's left on the planet. However all the forcefields are, at best, 15% health. A contingent of engineers is jumped in in the vague hope of keeping one up, while the lowest health ships are prioritised and focus fired.

2.24.07: Engineers are tackle droned to oblivion. So much for that idea. Oh, for Mk. 3 teleporting engies.

2.24.37: They're retreating! Oh thank the lord, they're retreating!

2.25: And they're gone. In the end, the AI left with just 30 ships still in the threat fleet, which I think was something like a zenith, 2 spire and 2 leech starships along with a solitary tackle drone launcher. Kuer currently looks like this.



Specifically, this:



Looks like the attritioner got taken out sometime in the last 2-3 minutes of the action. Which is a shame, because it was going for a good 10 minutes. 1,200 damage per second * 600 is a solid 780,000 damage for any ship which was there the whole time. It is, of course, Lyudmila who is the real star of the show. She ended up with 6% health and the support of just 122 ships, mostly brand spanking new missile frigates and younglings. A notable mention also for the sentinel frigates, who sat at the edge of the gravity well and poured constant fire into the attacking hordes whether Lyudmila was on the scene or not.

So, 2 hours 25 minutes in game time. 4 hours 38 minutes in persisted time. Now time to get a heck of a lot of rebuilding done.

[RockyBst]

2.25: Rebuilders and engineers en-route to Kuer. Lyudmila is switched off a sent to Zarpar for a well earned vacation, leaving me with 300,000 energy. Yeah, I should probably kill some of those matter converters temporarily.

2.26: Command station is back up. Constructors are paused to get the defences back in place, matter converters are down freeing up -1000 metal a second, and the space vacuums start hoovering up the 6.5 million scrap.

2.27: A wave of 1,422 Mk 2 fighters is announced. Come on, it's like they're trying to kill me!

2.28: 90% of the turrets are back online, constructors unpausing. The martyr, which I forgot I was building on Senow, is at 58%.   

2.29: Wave hits Micvarape. They decide not to attack.

2.31: Well, something changed their mind. 1,400 fighters vs. the 350 ships I'd managed to rebuild.

2.32: Oh heck, another wave hits in 30 seconds. This time 1,624 fighers. Combined, this is essentially another CPA composed purely of fighters less than 10 minutes after I wiped the last one. Lyudmila is bought back from her holidays, as the defences around Kuer's forcefields take on the 9 starships from the original wave.

2.33: Lyudmila didn't get much time to unwind, and she's still at 5% health. However the fighers flee as she warps into orbit. 600 threat on Micvarape to add to the next wave.

2.37: The 1,600 threat wave from Micvarape finally attacks. By this point though, my entire fleet bar a couple of lightning 2s and 40 impulses have been rebuilt. Then I realise I don't have enough power left to turn Lyudmila on. Time to rebuild those matter converters!

2.38: Or, y'know, just wait for the fleet to die under 2,100 fighters and their supporting starships. Lyudmila warps in, and starts focus firing the plasma sieges. She's at 3% health at this point.

2.39: Oooh, 10 of my sentinal frigates have been leeched. That's bad. However thanks to Lyudmila we now have 1,500 fighters left but just the one leech starship. She herself has just 600,000 of her 60 million health left, and so gracefully retreats to Zarpar. All my docks have now been re purposed to pouring out missile frigates or teleport battle stations ASAP.

Oh, I also noticed that my martyr finally came online. Don't think I need to waste it on a bunch of fighters though.

2.41: Leech starship is down, as are all the leeched sentinal frigates. I now have 15 lightning torpedo frigs sitting under the forcefield spamming missiles at the remaining 1,000 fighters. Who seem pre-occupied with sitting next to the Senow wormhole killing the youngling tigers that are coming through.

2.43: The remaining 649 fighters decide they've had enough, and make a run for it. Time to rebuild. Again. Literally 5 seconds after they start moving for the exit, the human resistance show up. Thanks guys.

2.44: Human resistance promptly go to Micvarape and get themselves slaughtered for no good reason. Not like I could have used 40 resistance bombers and fighters on defence or anything.

2.48: Time for some defensive realignment. With the exception of the Mk. 5 needlers and missiles, I scrap all the turrets on the homeworld and move them to Kuer. Just in time to get notification of a 900 ship missile frigate wave. Kuer now has 500 turrets, excluding tractors, with 250 of those being focussed around the Micvarape wormhole exit along with pretty much a full cap of tractor turrets. There's also 100 assorted turrets in front of the 15 forcefields around the command station, and another 70 flak/lightning turrets under the forcefields themselves.

2.49: Oh joy. A wave of 746 bombers too. I get the impression this AI really doesn't like me.

2.51: 2,200 threat. But I don't know where it is. The only things on Micvarape are 600-odd fighters.

2.52: Spoke too soon, missile frigate wave just appeared. Missiles + fighters are now attacking with a strength of 1,500 ships. Bombers must be close behind. Newly emplaced defences are still building, but at least they'll provide cannon fodder. I hope.

2.53: No real sweat, these guys are going down easy enough. Although the starships are more durable that I'd really like.

2.54: Aaand the bombers just showed up. And are beelining for my forcefields right through the debris strewn field that used to be my turrets. I might pop Lyudmila in without turning her on, see if I can distract them away.

2.55: Yup, no worries. Another 2,200 ships killed and more salvage for me.

2.57: That salvage handily paid to rebuild all those turrets. Now to just rebuild the fleet back up from 150 ships. Again. I still haven't managed to rebuild any starships since the CPA.

3.00: So, 3 hours in. The goal for this hour was to neuter Micvarape. I managed to take out one tachyon and get a single guardpost down to 40% health. And actually, it looks like that has now self healed back up to 78%. On the positive side I have annihilated the best part of 9,000 AI ships, met Lyudmila and now have a ridiculous amount of turrets on Kuer, with a Mk. 4 Martyr sitting under the forcefields just in case.

[RockyBst]

3.01: Youngling tigers start dying because I forgot to rebuild a regen chamber. Sent them to take out the core warhead interceptor, as they're kicking the bucket anyway. Still think it's wierd that regen chambers don't auto-rebuild like everything else.

3.07: Fleet is back up to capacity, the leech and flagship crew is slowly being rebuilt and Lyudmila is getting a well earned spa treatment from a bunch on engineers. Seeing as that tachyon is down, I also queue up a cloaker starship and turn one of my ebonite asteroids into 4 ram Mk. 3s, with 120 million attack each. Should handle that Mk. 3 fortress nicely. Oh, and more matter converts. Always more matter converters. Back up to 6 of the things now.

3.08: While waiting for the chunkier things to build, the younglings go after that missile post again. With pretty much the same results. Also, a 1050 ship missile frigate wave is announced.

3.13: Two leech Mk.2 and 2 enclave starships down; a bomber, 2 leech 1s, 2 flagships, a plasma siege and a zenith to go. Also might be an idea to make myself some raids, go take down those 5 ion cannons. Missiles frigs are slowly trundling in to Micvarape, but not really doing anything.

3.14: Lyudmila's spa treatment is done, and she's back on top of her game. 1,100 ship fighter wave announced.

3.18: Fighters hit Micvarape, all 2,100 threat fleet ships move out to attack. Should be able to soak these easily enough with Lyudmila's help. Of course, due to building starships I don't actually have the power to turn her on. MORE MATTER CONVERTERS!

3.18.30: Ouch, an implosion guardian came along for the ride. Lyudmila beats a hasty retreat with 30% of her health missing. Did I mention how much I hate those things?

3.20: No real sweat, after I killed the implosion they went down easy enough. Although 250 ships, including 8 leeches, did retreat in the direction of Senow, where I have no defences. Just sent the fleet after them though.

3.23: To show my displeasure, I send the younglings after the missile post again. They finally kill it, almost an hour and a half after the first attack. Now to just wait for the fleet rebuild.

2.25: Younglings engage in operation 'fling yourself at those ion cannons', taking out one before falling prey to a tractor guardian who promptly pulls them into the the 500 Mk. 5 strategic reserve ships which spawn whenever they enter orbit.

3.26: Rams are done. Just need a cloaker starship, then it's party time.

3.29: Two spire rams against a Mk. 3 fortress, no sweat. That leaves me two to play with as well, although I'm not sure what to use them on. The 1,400 youngling tiger wave that's coming in a minute's time though ... that makes me sweat.

3.30: Younglings vs. OMD, younglings win. Then the tractor guardians wins. Again. Also a nice wave of 350 cloaked ships incoming, probably eyebots. On reflection, I'm thinking the younglings are probably going to self-attrition a fair bit before they're in a position to attack me.

3.31: Ehhh, kinda. They lost 25% health. Which is better than nothing I suppose. Tractor turrets and their short range kept them from doing any particular damage though.

3.33: Two scout starships are coming out for tachyon patrol duties.

3.34: Just in time. First starship caught 200 eyebots about 20 seconds out from the forcefields. Also, this wave has 10 bomber starships in it. Didn't know the AI could spend the entire starship budget on just one type?

3.38: 20 tigers and a cloaker starship make a fairly effective anti-ion-cannon force. Now to take out the one under the spire forcefield guard post with a couple of raids.

3.39: Yeaaaah, 2 raids can't stand up to 500+ Mk 5 ships while they're reloading for the second salvo. Shame I didn't leech any eyebots.

3.40: On the plus side, I just wondered what those leeches were up to. Getting me 40 Mk.3 missile frigate, apparently. Shame that Micvarape has 2k ships when the special forces and strategic reserve both show up. This might be a beach-head situation.

3.47: The last ion cannon finally goes down. I start building Razor class riot starships (1 tractor, 1 shield, 2 lasers 2 machine guns) and 2 plasma sieges, or in other words every starship bar raids. Finish building the fleet, get 100k excess energy for Lyudmila then in about 5 minutes time it'll be time to take the fight to Micvarape.

3.48: 600 bombers. Shouldn't be an issue.

3.50: Okay, here's the plan. There's 2x external invulnerability on Micvarape. One counter attack post, on command station shield. Seeing as how Lyudmila has 3 million attack every 2 seconds, I'm going to pop her in with fleet support to blow those two. Leave, defend against the counter then when we come back just pop the command station.

Oh, and a wave of 1,000 fighters. I swear these are getting smaller.

3.51: Yeah, so my matter converters weren't finished. Not enough power for Lyudmila to work. Aaand there are 11 implosion guardians, so she now has 15% health. Let's not do that again.

3.53: Oh, and extra joy that triggered a reprisal wave. 300 more eyebots, by the looks of it.

3.56: Ouch, so that wave came with 6 zenith ships and 8 raids. Command station and power were down before I knew it, ended up scrapping all the forcefields around the home command system to get stuff back online. Beat them off in the end though.

3.58: Oh joy of joys, the marauders have come out to play. 80 of them.

4.00: Well, that's the four hour mark. Can't say it was a particularly productive hour, but at least the fort and all the ion cannons are down now.

4.02: Send the younglings to take on a needler guard post. They fail miserably.

4.05: Okay, I'm tired of mucking around and there's no way I can kill 2k ships. Send in the rams to take out the counter attack and shield posts, regardless of their low health.

4.06: Just as I say that, both a wave and a CPA are announced. 5,421 ships + 800 missile frigates. This, I believe, is the point where I lose.

[keith.lamothe]

Impressive work getting this far, particularly with that first CPA. 

Btw, the 90-second-after-the-CPA timing for the wave is constant rather than diff-based, or at least the code tries for that.  Possibly it doesn't work that way in practice.

Clever with the Golem Bait.  I'm probably going to change the AI to not do that sort of "immediate priority target switch" more often than, say, 30 seconds (or 60, not sure) on a specific planet.

And yea, one of the recent changes to wave composition was giving it a random chance of going "non-schizo" on its starship picks.  The idea being to let it gradually work through all its options to see if any of them can get through.

4.06: Just as I say that, both a wave and a CPA are announced. 5,421 ships + 800 missile frigates. This, I believe, is the point where I lose.

It does sound like some serious Limburger would be necessary to survive.

[RockyBst]

Never doubt the power of warheads.

4.13.29: 1 second before the CPA hits. All 16 lightning torpedo frigates are beneath the forcefields surrounding Kuer's command station. 38 sentinal frigates are at the very edge of the planet's gravity well, while 570 mixed fleet ships and starships wait on FRD in the middle of the map. Scout starships are carefully positioned to provide vital tachyon coverage. Lyudmila has 95% health, and is ready to jump in and assist. And under 2 cloaker starships, flanking the wormhole to Micvarape, sit 3 lightning Mk. 2 missiles and one Mk. 4 martyr.

I'm as ready as I can be. I'm going to die.

4.13.30:

• 2,355 Mk II ships
• 540 Mk IV ships
• 60 Mark V ships
• and 2466 Mk II from the strategic reserve.

Talk about everything and the kitchen sink. Oh and add in the 800 missile frigates and 1,200 fighters that are also on their way, combine with existing threat for a grand total of ... 6,800 ships.

4.16.20: 3,500 ships on Micvarape. Here comes the first wave.

4.16.43: 2,993 attack. Martyr is vectoring in on the wormhole opening, let's hope we can take a lot of them with us.

4.16.44: That heroic Martyr just took out 2,500 ships. Two thousand, five hundred ships. Unfortunately an 800 ship carrier which hadn't dumped its cargo then did so, and we're back up to 1,415 attack with 3,497 threat. The fleet is told to prioritise the zenith siege engines, while Lyudmila prepares to warp in.

4.16.48: I've spotted a clump of 800 ships. First lightning missile away.

4.16.49: Flipping grav drains again. Luckily this time I've managed to keep the missiles cloaked.

4.16.52: First lightning missile is detonated. 700 ships go down, including all the grav drains. 600 ships remaining on planet.

4.17.00: After the initial devestation, Lyudmila warps in to help clean up the remaining 600 ships.

4.17.14: Which of course includes 9(!) implosion guardians, so she's down to 33% health in a matter of seconds and retreats.

4.17.24: 280 attack. 3,200 threat. Lyudmila health: 8%

4.18.02: Initial wave has been beaten back. Not one enemy ship remains on the planet, while we still have a fleet of 500. The rest of the threat hasn't yet reached Micvarape from whatever planet it started off on, so we've got a bit of a breather to rebuild defences. Constructors are rapidly paused and 10 new rebuilders recruited to add to the normal contingent of 5.

4.18.26: Scouts report 780 threat entering Micvarape orbit. I don't think they'll attack yet.

4.18.49: I was wrong. Carrier pops, fleet starts popping back.

4.19.05: 1,246 attack. Time for another missile.

4.19.15: Grav drains slow me enough that I can't get a clean shot on the group. I'm not going to pop another 2 AIP for nothing, so leave it cloaked and tell the fleet to focus fire on the 241 Zenith sieges. No implosion guardians left, so Lyudmila is coming back for an encore.

4.19.45: Dammit, a lightning warhead just popped. Cloaker must have wandered away from it. One left. 564 attack, 1763 threat.

4.19.51: Command station goes down. I'm going to assume a combination of plasma splash and eyebots, as there are 7 left on the planet.

4.20.19: 190 enemy ships left on the planet. All angling in on Lyudmila, who's at 10% health, so she legs it. At least we wiped all the sieges.

4.20.40: 1,820 threat, but it's all sitting on Micvarape. Vectoring in rebuilders and engineers from the home planet.

4.20.44: Spoke too soon. 600 missile frigs and 200 assorted other ships jump in. No use pointing a warhead at missile frigates.

4.20.47: And there's the other 1,000 units. Kuer now has 377 ships to hold off the final wave of 1,800. All the central defences are down, but at least we still have turrets up near the command station. And every single sniper turret is up ... if only they were spiders!

4.20.53: Wait, 1,200 of these are fighters. These must be the waves hitting. Final missile flies, 1000+ fighters die.

4.21.30: 6 plasma sieges approaching the station. Fleet vectors in on them. Only 640 ships left.

4.21.40: Power goes out. Only -6,000 this time though, so just scrap a mini-fort. Lyudmila pops her head back in to help with the mopup.

4.22.10: 540 threat flees. Time to send the rebuilder fleet back in to deal with the 365 remains.

4.23: Turns out that the power outage wasn't from Kuer. Some AI ship had snuck into Senow, but luckily the younglings spawning from the docks had taken him before he did any other damage. I should really get around to building some defences there.

4.25: Rebuilding is under way. Amazingly, I actually managed to survive that. Although I was hoping I wouldn't have to use all the missiles, as 6 AIP is a major issue on diff 10. Also a shame that I managed to get Lyudmila crippled again, and especially that I lost a missile for no good reason. Turns out I had brave cloaker starships on, which means when you give an order to all ships on the planet to attack something they just go and sit next to your target.

Oh, and a wave incoming. 800 bombers.

4.27: Wave just hangs around with the escaped CPA ships on Micvarape. Not that I'm complaining, as my defences are still rebuilding.

4.32: Defences are all back online. I'm also building 15 Mk. 5 missile turrets on Senow to prevent a repeat of that little power incident. Not a bad investment for 3,000 energy.

4.34: Fleet rebuilding underway. This might take a while. Especially seeing as the only starships which survived were 3 leeches and for some reason both plasma sieges. Presumably because they were too slow to get themselves into danger.

4.36: The rams are back in town. I send them after the command station shield and counter-attack post. Unfortunately I forgot that they don't have a very good bonus against command grade, so the one sent against the command station shield was kind of a waste.

The counter-attack is 650 cloaked ships to the homeworld. Looks like it's time to build some more scout starships. Kinda tempted by a tachyon warhead, but the 1 AIP isn't worth it.

4.38: Oh, and just to make my day brighter 1,478 missile frigates in a wave. So 2,500 ships when combined with the threat currently sitting on Micvarape.

4.41: Missile frigate wave still hasn't arrived on Micvarape. Gonna have to rope-a-dope the existing threat, the counter will hit in 4 minutes time.

4.43: Well, the rope-a-dope worked. Then turned into a full attack, when the 1,400 missile frigates showed up. 2 minutes 'til counter attack.

4.44: Oh and as a follow up, 800 armor ships in 1 1/2 minutes! I'm feeling the love, guys.

4.45: Best part of 700 missile frigates just ran off. Suppose that's lucky, in the circumstances. Counter hits in 18 seconds, time to get those scout starships spread out properly.

4.45.25: They're heeeeeere. 6 Mk. 5 plasma sieges show up on the edge of the gravity well. Scout starships immediately go out on that vector to decloak the eyebots.

4.46.15: I haven't found a single cloaked ship yet. I'm getting rather worried.

4.46.49: Here they are. Bad news, I entirely missed their approach and they're in range of the command station. Good news, they're shooting at the forcefields themselves. Y'know, rather than the chewy Cryo pods or anything.

4.47: Four forcefields dead, 500 eyebots left.

You Have Lost

Well, that was somewhat stupid. Both for popping the counter-attack post while still rebuilding the fleet, and not managing to tachyon the eyebots in time. Luckily I have this magical time rewinding button called 'A save taken 18 seconds before the counter-attack wave hit'...

[keith.lamothe]

And the AI shakes its fist "waaarrrrrrrheaaaaads!".  An impressive defense, though the AIP cost is ominous.

And then it shakes the other fist "saaaaaaave gaaaaames!"


Eyebots and plasma sieges in a counter-wave straight to the HW is remarkably mean.  There's nothing specifically inclining wave composition in that direction, so I think it's just a token of the RNG's esteem.

[RockyBst]

4.45:10: Time magically rewinds itself. A rush order goes to the missile silo on Kuer ... get us a tachyon warhead, stat.

4.45.16: Tachyon warhead is completed. Those engies work fast.

4.45.21: Wave hits again. This time it's coming in from a different vector, one which aligns it with the Mk. 5 needler turrets better. Already things are looking up. Scout starships go out to meet it.

4.45.45: Scouts decloak the first 200 eyebots. Milliseconds later, the tachyon warhead arrives on the scene. New order - charge straight for centre mass.

4.45.53: Tachyon warhead hits home. It is extremely ineffective. 50,000 damage to a single eyebot, and 2/3rds of them are still cloaked due to cloaking super boost. In fact, it's so ineffective that I seriously considered save scumming at this point to claw back that 1 AIP.

4.46.10: Eyebots run straight into the Mk. 5 needler turrets and the odd few tractors that I didn't put on Kuer. Things are looking up.

4.46.56: Last of the eyebots is shredded. But not before they get off some shots at the home command station - home command is now at 27% health. And there's still 5 Mk. 5 plasma sieges left. Oh yeah, and to add to the fun there are currently 1,200 mixed ships attacking Kuer.

4.47.17: Last of the plasma sieges are killed. All ships are immediately redirected to Kuer, where most of the 1,200 ships are still stuck in the tractor fields.

4.47.40: As the fleet warps in, a group of 700 armored ships breaks away from the tractors and heads towards the home command station. 250 ships plunge desperately after them, with Lyudmila providing fire support from the wormhole exit.

4.47.42: Oh, and at this point I'm get +20k metal a second from the 4+ million salvage at Zarpar. Much nicer than the usual 10% efficiency, given how normally my economy is bottomed out.

4.48.05: 500 armored ships are the only things left on the planet. Forcefields are averaging ~ 60%.

4.48.43: Last enemy ship goes down. Forcefields took a beating, but 15 of them can hold off quite a lot of fire. My bank balance is currently at 1.5 million, which is the highest I think it's ever been in this game. Time to rebuild.

4.49: Scrap one scout starship, one was killed which leaves me with three for 6k energy. Two to provide tachyon support on Kuer, and I'll leave one on the homeworld in case something slips through. As for the homeworld, every single production facility got blown up. Presumably by the plasma sieges. So rebuild 3 space docks and a starship constructor. Of course, they didn't take the matter converters off my hands.

4.52: Refleeting is rapidly chewing through my capital. On the plus side however, the Martyr Mk. IV I started building on Senow after the last attack is up. Let's start another one, leaving us with one Titanite and one ebonite asteroid.

5.00: 5 hours in. Refleeting is complete, including every combat capable starship. And I also have two Mk. 4 Martyrs sitting on Kuer in anticipation of the next CPA, and 800k in the bank that I'm not quite sure what to do with. Next step I believe is to wipe that last external invulnerability provider off Micvarape.

5.01: 500 cloaked ships and a 739 bomber wave declared simultaneously. Not too worried about this, I've got sufficient tachyon coverage.

5.02: Operation 'Sneaky Blighter' is in effect. 40 hand-picked ships, comprising 2 bomber starships, two plasma sieges, 1 flagship, 3 raids, 22 ordinary bombers and 9 leeched zenith siege engines are put into low power mode and quietly make their way to Micvarape under cover of two cloaker starships.

5.02.40: Carefully avoiding the two remaining tachyon sentinels, even the one stuck in the middle of nowhere (probably for a nebula) the ships are ready to strike the command station shield command post.

1,400 threat in the form of 2 waves warps into the Micvarape system behind them.

5.02.59: The command station shield guard post goes down. 1,000+ enemy ships are in range of them. The task force goes dark.

5.03.12: By the time the cloaking kicks back in, there is only one survivor. A badly damaged raid starship limps home under cover of both cloakers, escaping 2,600 ships.

5.03.50: On the way home, the cloakers mistakenly pass too close to the Mk. 5 tachyon sentinal guarding the way to the AI homeworld. There are no survivors.

5.04: We now have one AI command station, 3 million health with a command grade hull, sitting under both a Mk. 3 and core (Mk 5) forcefield. Considering that we've already seen that 2,600 or so ships can be called in for defence, taking this down may require some thought.

5.05: I have 49 HaP. But do I really want to waste 12 of them on taking down 2 forcefields - especially given that later worlds are going to be even more heavily defended. Now, apparently spirecraft penetrators are immune to forcefields - but I don't think that means they can shoot through them.

5.06: Aw hell, let's test that theory. The last ebonite goes not on one, but two penetrators. Primarily because the cost of a single Mk. 3 is an astronomical 780,000 metal and 18k energy.

5.07: Penetrators comes online, and with that and healing Lyudmila my bank balance is wiped out again. There's still 1,400 theat on Micvarape, so I send the younglings in to see if I can stir them up. They don't take the bait.

5.08 Rope-a-doping

5.09: Man these guys are predicatable. Whatever happened to taking into account strength on adjacent planets in their attack calculations, or was that just for when they attack? Anyway, 1,400 threat truncated. The eyebots gave me some concerns, but scout starships and riots with tractors are a good combo.

5.10: Uh, somehow I ended up with 200 ships more than I started with. Good job leeches? Anyway, penetrator number 1 to Micvarape.

5.10.10: Get in there and shoot that command station. Escape plan? Well, you could try running very fast.

5.10.11: He didn't run fast enough. Command station down though, at the cost of 25 (!) AIP. Dual warp gates, nasty. But at least this should stop the strategic reserve spawning in.

5.11: The fleet go to commiserate with the AI about their loss. Then the special forces arrive, and suddenly 300 ships are missing. At least I killed 2 guard posts in exchange.

5.12: So, no guard posts near the wormhole exit. No strategic reserve to worry about, just threat and special forces. Sounds to me like it's beach-heading time.

5.15: 1 partially reconstructed fleet of 650 ships. 1 mobile builder. 30 engineers and 10 remains rebuilders. 270k in the bank. Party time!

5.15.55: Fleet jumps in to Micvarape. Mobile builder immediately starts constructing 48 Mk. 5 missile turrets. Only 100 ships on the planet at the moment.

5.16.17: All 48 missile turrets are up. Next up would be 48 needlers, but my engineers and mobile builders appear to have been wiped out. 68 ships on planet.

5.16.28: Hastily constructed mobile builder # 2 flies out of the wormhole, along with the engineering posse. Needler turrets going up.

5.17.02: Needler turrets online, two mini-forts coming up for repair purposes. Engies are dead again. The sentinal frigates, neinzul drones and lightning torpedoes are having a significant long-range impact on guard posts and guardians though. 37 ships on planet.

5.18.39: Huh, maybe the special forces aren't coming. That's anti-climactic, I made them all these turrets and everything. 21 ships on planet, all under 2 remaining forcefields. Starting to split the fleet for type-specific guard post search and destroy.

5.23: 1,400 space tanks to . I'm scared.

5.24: Colony ship jumps in to Micvarape. Now, I could put this command station next to the fabs at the edge of the gravity well. But, honestly, plain chokepointing is more important to me than a core sniper controller and a railpod fab. So, warp jammer command station goes up right next to the wormhole to Kuer.

5.24.30: Warp jammer command station goes up, last guard post goes down. Micvarape is now mine. ARSes from Kuer and Senow warp in to start gathering that sweet, sweet knowledge, while I scrap 13 of the 15 forcefields around Kuer's command station and replace it with an econ 1.

5.25: 10 forcefields go up around Micvarape's command center, including 3 Mk. 2s. I also spare one of each to put around the fabs.

5.25.30: Core shield generator, network C goes down. All ship production gets redirect to Micvarape. Mines implode, and Martyrs move.

5.26: 1,500 ship wave of fighters. Combined with those 1,400 armor ships that are presumably currently hanging out on the AI homeworld, this could be a problem.

5.27: First forcefields start coming online. 300 mines are line-placed between the exit from the AI homeworld to the warp jammer command station. Neinzul regen chamber goes up.

5.29: The 17 scouts which have been sitting on Micvarape for the past 3 hours move to the AI homeworld. They are near instantly killed, but provide invaluable intel. Only 1,400 threat there at the moment. ARSes finish their knowlege gathering. Not sure what to spend it on yet, although to be honest area mines are sounding good right now.



5.30: All forcefields are online. The ad-hoc placed needler turrets turn out to be well positioned, but the missiles are all under the forcefields. Need to shift those and the mini-forts. The armor ships and fighters arrive, for 2,000 attack against a planet with minimal emplaced defences. The minefield, however, is fully online.

5.30.16: It's a waste, but I think I need one of the Martrys for this. One steps up.

5.30.19: 1,100 attackers die.

5.31.15: Command station goes down, presumably to plasma spam.

5.31.37: The second cursed golem goes down. I wasn't planning to revive it anyway, as another 10 AIP is excessive, but it still limits options.

5.32.10: Lyudmila warps in. Enough fleet ships have died that I can afford the energy to run her, despite losing the new collector.

5.32.25: 2 plasmas, 3 spire starships and 7 zentiths are going after the fabs. Lyudmila and the remaining 220 fleet ships try to stop them.

5.33: All attacker eliminated. Command station is coming back online in 40 seconds. We're safe ... for now.

So, 2 1/2 hours after originally planned Micvarape is finally mine. Plans for the next hour: shift all defensive emplacements from Kuer to here, stick them right between the AI homeworld wormhole and the line to my other planets. Scout past the AI homeworld, probably using a jumpship to get scouts across. Build Mk5 sniper turrets on Kuer and the homeworld, so that even if the controller goes down  I'll still have defence in depth.

As for that AI homeworld ... whoo boy. You may notice, if you carefully inspect the scout info up there, that it has three (!) grav reactors on it. Three. Grav. Reactors. Thankfully, unlike most of the rest of the core guard posts they can be taken down without taking out the shield networks. Oh yeah, and the normal 4 ions + OMD, although the rest don't really concern me overly much. I haven't managed to find any AI progress reducers yet, so the +30 AIP floor shouldn't affect me too much. I'm not liking the thought of a diff 10 CPA at 94 AIP though...

[TechSY730]

Just as a heads up. Earlier you mentioned having to scrap stuff because you were at -6000 energy. IIRC, that is not enough to shut off forcefields and stuff. It would just to stop you from building more. Only after the power goes below some negative value (around -50000 power I think, but I don't remember the exact amount, only that is was < -10000 (that is, absolute value of it is > 10000)) will you get a real brownout and your forcefields go down.