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

[RockyBst]

As an experiment I just tried warping in the golem and a cap of fleet ships, without any starships, in to the AI homeworld. The golem made it all the way across the gravity well and took out the unshielded grav reactor on the far side. Unfortunately though doing so took it down to 40%, and when the special forces showed up it rapidly died.

So as long as I let the golem close within radar damapening range, and so long as I'm okay with this being a suicide mission, I can take down the two unshielded grav reactors. That just leaves the one sitting under the Mk. 5 forcefield. That Titanite can get me a penetrator - if I run it quietly under two cloaker starships superboosts while the fleet ships perform distraction duties I may just be able to manually navigate it to within firing range.

There's a plan then. But at what cost...

[Aklyon]

I think its the CSGs that are making things harder than they need to be. Theres not enough space in this map to really find them before the homeworlds.

[RockyBst]

I think its the CSGs that are making things harder than they need to be. Theres not enough space in this map to really find them before the homeworlds.

Oh, undoubtedly. That's part of the !!fun!! of playing on 10 planet maps, an AI homeworld almost always cuts the graph and forces you to hop across it to get the CSGs on the other side. I just count myself lucky that one of those grav reactors wasn't replaced by a core raid engine...

I've managed this on diff 8 before, but never diff 10. Actually, I don't think I've even tried diff 10 since back in the 4.x something days. 9 is my sweet spot.

On reflection, suiciding the golem and using that Titanite on a penetrator would leave me in too bad of a position. I need the capability to shuttle ships across the rest of the AI worlds quickly and easily, which means I need a jumpship. As such this AAR is going on temporary hiatus until 7.019 'Help me cheese the grav reactors' gets released.

[keith.lamothe]

As such this AAR is going on temporary hiatus until 7.019 'Help me cheese the grav reactors' gets released.

The MkV-jumpship's immunity to blackholes is already in for 7.019   If there's some big crash thing that comes up I'll fix that and do a mid-week release.  Otherwise I'm planning on next Monday, as TLF's schedule isn't really amenable to me doing multiple AIW releases per week during this stage.

[RockyBst]

6.36.21: Everybody's favourite surfer dude says 'Whoa, deja vu'. Something has changed in the Matrix.

6.38: Railpod bombardment of the AI homeworld begins again - if we're going to have any chance of wiping the first grav reactor, we need to get rid of those pesky starships first. And I'd rather not throw away the entire fleet - including star ships - to do it. I believe the only reason I was able to get Lyudmila to take down the reactors before is that the AI were bugged, and hence not prioritising her.

6.41.13: Jumpships are up. Just look at these little beauties:



25 ship capacity, and only attrition on AI homeworlds. That means I can sit them on a core world indefinitely, if I wanted. They do, however, cost an extortionate 30,000 energy each.

6.41.15: Jumpships arrive on Micvarape. One eager bomber starship and 24 scouts board the first one.

6.41.36: Jumpship arrives on Murdoch. It appears to have taken no attrition damage at all on its trip over the homeworld - maybe because it was there less than a second. This is better than I hoped.

6.41.38: Cloaker explodes. Scouts, minus the bomber, hop back into the jumpship. Let's see what we really have here:



ARS and armored golem, as we already knew, plus a railcluster fab and a core lightning turret controller. Nice enough place, I suppose. Onwards!

6.41.42: Jumpship arrives on Rakalurn. Scouts pop out to take in the evening air.



Holy. Mother. Lode. Batman. This is by far the tastiest planet I've ever seen. Let's count this up. 2 (!) artillery golems. One black widow golem. The obligatory ARS. 2 backup servers, a core flak turret controller, a core MRLS controller. Five different fabs - Plasma starship, leech starship, decoy, maws and zenith re-processors. An advanced factory. A spire archive. A selection of tasty asteroids. And a cuddly toy...

Sorry, make that 'and the first AIP reducing structure I've encountered to date'.

Decoys, fantastic for obvious reasons. The re-processors, well I do have a major economy problem. The archive is vital with the limited number of planets. And the artillery golems. Hang on a second...

6.41.43: Yup, grav reactors are immune to artillery ammo.

F@*#

Also, that Data centre is currently under the combined forcefields of the 53 special forces riot control ships.

6.41.46: Scouts pack up, and we move on to Roadlinl. Huh, that's strange. My jumpship is now moving at a snails pace...

6.41.52: Oh hey, remember that 'Grav Driller' sub-type on the first AI? Looks like I just met my first one. And it disables teleportation. Right then, let's see how juicy this place is:



Hive golem, core laser controller, 3 fabs this time (engineer, grav ripper and protector starship). No ARS, and a dire guardian lair. Ah. Not as nice as the last place then, that guardian lair in particular could cause some serious issues.

6.41.55: Rather than crawl across the entire system at 28 speed, let's back-track through Murdoch.

6.42.06: Well whaddya know. Another grav driller on Zupreape. Joy. This one also has a translocator command station, which just seems mean.



On the plus side, a regen golem (as if I'm ever gonna be able to afford the 250,000 energy for that), core spider turret controller, starship fab and zenith siege engine fab. This one gets low priority, I think.

6.42.37: I run into another problem. The jumpships aren't immune to forcefields, and there's one covering the wormhole entrance to the last AI homeworld. Backtracking time.

6.43.05: Oh for the love of pete. There's also a spire shield guardpost covering the exit back to Murdoch. I'm stuck. The jumpship starts wending its slow way to the extremities of the grav well.

6.43.34: In protest of the cruel and unusual punishment meted out to its exploring brother, the second jumpship loads 2 raid starships and goes to take out the only data centre in the entire universe.

6.43.38: One raid survives, which is better than I expected. Back down to 84 AIP.

6.45.47: Apparently the scouts were still de-cloaked from their earlier tachyon encounter. Luckily they recloak quickly enough for two to survive the Ion cannon bombardment, otherwise the trapped jumpship would have been left cold and alone, in the dark, on the edge of a hostile AI system.

6.47: The railpod bombardment has attracted the special forces, but not really done much else. It may actually be easier to just sacrifice the entire fleet to take out that first grav reactor.

6.48: 1,300 bombers to Micvarape. Moving all mobile ships elsewhere, in the hopes it might encourage the now-threat starships to join the attack once it hits.

6.49: Just noticed that the AI is alerted on the planet the jumpship is on. Which means the second AI homeworld is alerted.

F@*#

6.50: Starship threat on Desenan didn't take the bait unfortunately. Still, 5 million salvage is better than a kick in the teeth I suppose. Swapping the military station back out with the warp jammer to take the homeworld off alert.

So in conclusion, I still can't take any of the grav reactors out yet but at least I can teleport 25 ships at a time right up next to them. I can also shuttle 25 ships at a time across to the newly scouted planets. That would be 50, except for aggravating shield positioning. Rakalurn looks immensely tempting, and what I'm probably going to do is take that next. It also won't put the AI homeworlds on alert (any more than the one already is), so I can use it to attract waves. Plus it has a ridiculous number of goodies on it.

I'm a little disappointed that the Dyson sphere appears to have gone MIA, I was kinda hoping the gatlings might be helpful. Unless it's on the AI homeworld, of course...

State of the union:




EDIT:

OOoohh, did you know that hackers are transportable? And that as I've only done a single hack so far, to remove those pesky tackle drone launchers, I'm still on hacking response 10 (very low)? Looks like it's time to do a stealthy hacker insertion to get 2 of those data backups at once, seeing as the AI won't start dropping tachyon explosions on me for a while yet.

Might give me a potential solution to the force field issue too ... are spire shield guard posts a valid target for sabotage hacks, and if not why not

[keith.lamothe]

ARS and armored golem, as we already knew, plus a railcluster fab and a core lightning turret controller. Nice enough place, I suppose. Onwards!

Railclusters are insanely good combatants (kind of like a starship that focused on dps rather than tankiness), and are excellent at killing fast-moving drones (like the grav drones) fairly far out from the group, diminishing the aoe effect.

2 (!) artillery golems. One black widow golem. The obligatory ARS. 2 backup servers, a core flak turret controller, a core MRLS controller. Five different fabs - Plasma starship, leech starship, decoy, maws and zenith re-processors. An advanced factory. A spire archive. A selection of tasty asteroids. And a cuddly toy...

And a partridge in a pear tree.

Hive golem, core laser controller, 3 fabs this time (engineer, grav ripper and protector starship).

Protector Starships are one of those "ok, I know these are overpowered to a borderline-absurd degree, but I haven't the heart to nerf them" units.  They won't kill much for you, but if you can get your hands on some I guaruntee you'll be pleased with what they do for fleet survivability.  Especially if you can keep your fleet from getting too badly swarmed.  Of course, with grav reactors and a massive SF blob that may not be avoidable.  Still, I think they could make the difference between successfully getting the majority of your fleet into range of a grav reactor and having a "dude, where's my fleet?" moment.

6.42.37: I run into another problem. The jumpships aren't immune to forcefields, and there's one covering the wormhole entrance to the last AI homeworld. Backtracking time.

6.43.05: Oh for the love of pete. There's also a spire shield guardpost covering the exit back to Murdoch. I'm stuck. The jumpship starts wending its slow way to the extremities of the grav well.

Man, that RNG's playing for keeps... literally.

I'm a little disappointed that the Dyson sphere appears to have gone MIA, I was kinda hoping the gatlings might be helpful. Unless it's on the AI homeworld, of course...

Oh, sorry, I should have noticed and mentioned it: the dyson doesn't happen on maps that small.  Same with some of the other factions, just because there's not enough room to keep them from being right next to a homeworld or something crazy like that.

[RockyBst]

6.53: Operation hack the planet is go. Jumpship takes a hacker to the extremities of Rakalurn's grav well, if all goes to plan in roughly 5 minutes time I'll be up a set of armor ships and a set of grav drains.

6.54: 25 youngling tigers are teleported to Murdoch and told to get rid of the counter-spy - it doesn't work, as they need 10 seconds to reload after getting out of the transport.

6.56: The pair of heavy bomber starships get wiped too. Maybe I should have gone after that OMD first.

6.57: I make what should have been the obvious choice all along. 25 railpods to the edge of the grav well. Counter-spy is down, now I can get scout coverage up on murdoch. I'll repeat this trick for the ion cannons and OMDs.

6.58: Plenty of zombies milling about on Murdoch thanks to the hacking. I'm sure they'll throw themselves at my defences soon enough. All ion cannons on Rakalurn down, and all but one (covered by a FF) on Murdoch. Both now have scout coverage.

6.59: So, let's start considering options for Rakalurn. It has a threatening eye, which is nasty. 3 MRLS posts, 3 needlers, 2 cloakers, 1 missile and 1 command station shield. Even with the best multipliers in the world, all of those are going to require a fair bit of micro to take down. Having said that everything except the MRLS there is weak to my zenith starship, so let's see what an attack squad of 24 railpods and that baby can do.

7.00: Despite the 1,900 ships currently milling around on Rakalurn, 2 cloaker and 1 needler post are down. The zenith starship did get eaten along the way though ... DISASSEMBLERRRR! *shakes fist*

Also, my hacks finished. -51 HaP, but I have grav drains and armor ships now. Neither are particularly essential, but bulking up the fleet is always good. The anti-light on the armors might be handy too for guard post cleanup duties.

7.01: 708 cloaked ship wave - scout starships are in a position to tachyon it. But then it's going into threat anyway, as I put up a warp command station again.

7.03: All needlers are down, but the missile is under a Mk. 3 forcefield. MRLSes are not susceptible to railpods and the station shield is command grade, so no luck there.

7.04: A cloaker starship, plasma siege starship and 19 bombers walk into a bar. The command station shield generator explodes. That's one way to get around the out-of-transport reload times.  Although the 64 riot control ships buffeting everyone with shields makes for an interesting experience, especially given they also have an extremely aggravating habit of flying over the guardpost just as the bombers are about to fire.

7.06: Mk. 1 bombers aren't going to do it for the MRLS posts, not enough firepower. Time to bring out the cloaked Mk. 5 Youngling Tigers.

7.11: It takes roughly 3 trips per MRLS, but 2 go down soon enough. The last is slap-bang next to a tachyon, so that tactic won't work. Jumpships really do inspire super-micro.

7.12: Say, so here's an interesting tactic you may not have encountered before. Jump a spirecraft builder, a cloaker starship and 19 Mk. 2 engineers next to an asteroid field deep in enemy space. Jump 25 grav drains into orbit at the exact opposite extremity of the grav well, to absorb sniper alpha and draw off all ~2,000 ships on the planet (including special forces). While they're distracted, start speed building Mk. 3 rams on an ebonite asteroid - this will take about 8 seconds. Of course rams aren't transportable, but still...

7.13: Missile guard post under the shield explodes. Tachyon protected MRLS guard post explodes. Just the command station left. Oh hey, what d'you know, with the help of some friendly younglings that explodes too. Rakalurn status: Cleansed.

7.14: Just before the command station explodes, reprisal level one. Which then disappears, as I've boosted AIP by 20. Considering I just completely annihilated every fixed structure on a planet while the entire special forces fleet was sitting on it, I'm suprised it took this long.

7.17: Let's give things a few minutes to settle down. Looks like the special forces have left, so that's taken a huge chunk of ships off planet. Scouts indicate they've gone to Zupreape. Unfortunately we've still got 800-odd ships milling about on Rakalurn, presumably the remaining two rams count as threat enough to keep them there.

7.18: Railpods undertake a tachyon extermination mission across the known universe. Murdoch and Rakalurn are quickly divested of any sentinels, although I leave the AI homeworlds and Zupreape alone, for obvious reasons. 1,300 missile frigate wave announced.

7.19: Railpods go to take tachyons out on Roadlinl. Oh lord. Oh dear lord. 2 core raid engine attacks are announced. 2,800 combined Mk. 4 ships.

Well, now I know what the brutal picks for the second AI homeworld are ... why, why couldn't it be a Core CPA post! Damn you RNG!

Even worse, my supposedly perma-cloaked jumpship takes damage on the way out. It's now down to 21% health. Maybe a beam winged it?

7.20: Under cover of friendly cloaker starship, the rams move to Murdoch. Hopefully that should get the remaining ships on Rakalurn to move on.

So, scores on the doors:

AIP: 104
Threat: 5,200. Half of this is Mk. 4.
Time: 7.20
Elapsed Time: 16.55

There's enough threat now for them to make an attack on the chokepoint at Micvarape, so I'm expecting that in the next 10 minutes or so. After that I should be able to jump a colony ship over to Rakalurn and get my hands on 6(!) new types of ship, an advanced factory and 2 new types of core turrets. Where I'm going to get the energy to run all these from, of course, is another question.

[keith.lamothe]

7.04: A cloaker starship, plasma siege starship and 19 bombers walk into a bar.

*Thunk*

7.12: Say, so here's an interesting tactic you may not have encountered before. Jump a spirecraft builder, a cloaker starship and 19 Mk. 2 engineers next to an asteroid field deep in enemy space. Jump 25 grav drains into orbit at the exact opposite extremity of the grav well, to absorb sniper alpha and draw off all ~2,000 ships on the planet (including special forces). While they're distracted, start speed building Mk. 3 rams on an ebonite asteroid - this will take about 8 seconds. Of course rams aren't transportable, but still...

That deserves theme music of some kind.

2 core raid engine attacks are announced. 2,800 combined Mk. 4 ships.

Putting military ships on a core world without first scouting the homeworld.  On 10/10.  Now THAT is a recipe for surprise pain

Well, now I know what the brutal picks for the second AI homeworld are ... why, why couldn't it be a Core CPA post! Damn you RNG!

You know what 2 of them are.  And you know what 1 of them isn't (core raid or core CPA).  That last pick still has potential.  And the RNG truly is in rare form here.

Even worse, my supposedly perma-cloaked jumpship takes damage on the way out. It's now down to 21% health. Maybe a beam winged it?

Probably from banging its head on the desk after finding out what the RNG did this time.

There's enough threat now for them to make an attack on the chokepoint at Micvarape, so I'm expecting that in the next 10 minutes or so. After that I should be able to jump a colony ship over to Rakalurn and get my hands on 6(!) new types of ship, an advanced factory and 2 new types of core turrets. Where I'm going to get the energy to run all these from, of course, is another question.

I honestly don't know how you're going to keep all those juicy irreplaceables on Rakalurn alive, unless it's to put a normal command station back up on your main chokepoint and put a warp jammer on Rak.  Even then, whatever free threat it does manage to accumulate...

[RockyBst]

7.20: The AI decides that even with my new friends, I might be getting a bit lonely. And sends 2,150 bombers ships to comfort me. Threat is now bigger than the third CPA, and with considerably more Mk. 4 ships.

7.20.30: Well, I don't have anything else to spend my money on while waiting except mercs. Did I mention I currently have 9 matter converters, only 45,000 energy and a total economy of 4,500 metal/s - almost half of which is going towards matter converters? I'm sure I turned the trader on in this game, where's my zenith power generator!

7.21.40: 200-odd youngling tigers warp in to Micvarape. Must have come from the raid engines.

7.22.02: 7,397 threat.

7.22.11: First serious threat warps in. Around 3,000. Scouts indicate ~1,500 is still on Murdoch though, everything else is off the radar which means at Desenan. 61 mercenary etherjet tractors and 6 parasistes stand with my forces - I literally don't have the energy for any more.

7.22.30: Here come the missile frigates. 1,000 of them pop out of a carrier, and are immune to my minefield.

7.22.50: Command station goes down. 5,300 threat left. I'm going to lose Micvarape.

7.23: All forces ordered to retreat to Kuer. The turrets, mines and engineers desperately cranking out railpods will be left behind.

7.23.35: Raids take out the core sniper turret controller.

7.23.43: Mk. 5 railpod fab goes down.

7.24.30: 3,000 threat. 2,000 of that on Micvarape.

7.25.35: Last of the turrets go down. 2,762 threat remaining. 30 Mk. 2 engineers are desperately building defences on Kuer, while refleeting in still in progress.

7.25.45: Constructors are paused, with only 340 fleet ships remaining / rebuilt on Kuer.

7.26.20: They attack faster than I though they would. The defences aren't in place yet, minefields only half built and most of the new turrets are only 90% complete. The engineer blob is manually ordered to quick-build individual turrets, while Lyudmila is sent to the opposite side of the grav well in hope of drawing off some of the attack.

7.26.52: A single lightning warhead is used to decimate the Zenith siege engines - roughly 500 casualties, although a lot of them are bombers. I can't many of those closing on the command station forcefields at once, especially given the massive amounts of starships in this attack.

7.27.31: The human resistance show up, just in the nick of time. 160(!) ships are likely to make a big difference at this stage.

7.27.17: 296 attack. 636 threat remaining. Fighting is desperately clustered around the command station on Kuer, but I've broken the back of this.

7.27.54: Command station goes down. 170 ships enemy ships remaining on the planet, a large proportion of them starships. Hopefully they'll go start chasing Lyudmila around the grav well rather than focus on the irreplacables.

7.28.30: Last of the command station attackers are down. 8 zenith starships are still chasing after Lyudmila, who has now made two entire laps of the gravity well.

7.29.52: Last of the Mk. 4 Zenith starships goes down. Man those things are tough. I swap Kuer for a warp jammer command station, purely to take better advantage of the 11 million scrap still sitting on the planet. Time to recoup, and rebuild.

The loss of the sniper turrets and the railpods was a big blow. On the kinda bright side though, it means I now have an irreplacable free planet to act as a wave stopper. Even if it means sitting right next to the AI homeworld without a warp jammer command station.

I seriously wouldn't have been able to keep the core missile controller and impulse reactor fab on Kuer up without the human resistance showing up when they did ... maybe the RNG is mellowing out?

[keith.lamothe]

7.23.35: Raids take out the core sniper turret controller.

7.23.43: Mk. 5 railpod fab goes down.

Oh man.  That's painful.

Still, good job bending without breaking.  With the goodies on the other side of the homeworld you may still be able to stay in the game.

But Railpods are hard to live without once you get used to them, I think.

I seriously wouldn't have been able to keep the core missile controller and impulse reactor fab on Kuer up without the human resistance showing up when they did ... maybe the RNG is mellowing out?

Maybe it likes to make the AI headdesk sometimes too

It is very satisfying when an ally faction bails you out.  I've seen the Roaming Enclaves pull off some pretty incredible saves.

[RockyBst]

7.31: Rebuilding is going well. Between Micvarape and Kuer there is roughly 25 million scrap, which is a cool 2.5 mil retrievable @ 10% warp jammer efficiency. Moving all the defences back to Micvarape - except, obviously, the remaining core snipers on Kuer and the homeworld.

7.32: Scouts sent to Desenan indicate there's still 300-odd threat there - including far too many starships for me to get through to that grav reactor. The human resistance are, obviously, throwing their lives away uselessly at this point by filtering into the AI homeworld in ones and twos.

7.33: I just realised that while I was waiting for the raid engine threat blob I could have snuck one of those two rams onto Zupreape and taken down the spire shield guardpost trapping the second jumpship. Too late now though, the raids will have recharged. Interestingly, there are 2,100 ships on Murdoch at the moment all clustered around my rams. Including, gulp, tachyon micro-fighters.

7.35: 941 bombers to Micvarape. 941 ... seems a bit anaemic for a wave. However, my defences are still rebuilding.

7.37: Half the area mines were up by the time they came in - not a problem. The 13 bomber starships was a bit rude though.

7.38: So, Rakalurn. This place still has 800 odd ship milling around it, and it's well out of supply so I can't beach head. I send in 25 younglings as part of Operation Jumpernickle, to see if I can't persuade them to leave. The younglings die, at they are wont to do, but the ships don't want to budge. Why they're hanging around there I don't know, but it looks like I'll need a fleet to clear them out.

7.41: 1,250 bombers to Micvarape. That's more like it.

7.43: Bombers and area mines go together like Caesium and water. I.e, things explode violently.

7.44.30: Operation Jumpernickle resumes. First 23 sentinel frigates and 2 scout starships (for counter-sniper coverage) are jumped as far away from any enemy ships as possible. 3 seconds later 16 lightning torpedo frigates join them, along with more sentinels. 3 seconds later, 2 enclave, 4 leeches, 2 bombers, 1 spire, 1 zenith and 2 flagship starships join them along with a few grav drains. 3 seconds later, 25 more grav drains. Then the youngling tigers start coming ... you get the picture.

7.45: 30 seconds later, 200 enemy ships are down and a fleet of 260 is on the planet. Admittedly, about 100 of those are drones and missiles. It's the 41 riot control starships that are the real issue here, so bombers and younglings are the highest shipment priority. With a few missile frigs to take out the fighters that have just started arriving from the centre of the planet.

7.46: 381 friendly ships on planet. 150 remaining enemy ships. Jumpernickle is a roaring success.

7.47.21: The last enemy sniper guardian goes down. The 600 fleet ships on the planet are told to FRD next to the spire archive, we'll wait it out a minute or two to see if any more ships want to trickle through from other planets. In the mean time, they get to work taking out the special forces guard post.

7.50: My economy is still in the dumps, and I don't really want to start on that spire archive until I know I can defend it. However getting this command station up ASAP will mean more metal and the ability to warp ships in directly using gates, so I might just do it in the next minute or two.

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: Okay, warp jammer command station going up next to the advanced factory and 7 (!) irreplaceables at the bottom of the grav well. Constructors are paused so defences can be speed built.

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.

7.51.30: 4 forcefields surrounding my home command explode. They're better used on Rakalurn. 10 total shields go up, including 2 Mk. 2s. That means 10 on Rakalurn, 9 on Micvarape, 3 on Kuer, 1 on Senow and 4 on my homeworld.

7.53: Time to think about turrets. With the sad loss of the sniper controller, but the gain of two news ones, I now have Mk. 5 needlers, MRLSes, missiles and flak. A full cap of each goes up on Micvarape and Rakalurn. I think Kuer also warrants a full cap, as my second line defence. However due to energy constraints I think I'm going to have to blow up all the turrets on the homeworld, save the now irreplacable sniper mk. 5s and maybe a dozen missile turrets. Of the remaining Mk. 1 turrets, snipers, beams, tractors and gravs are split equally between Micvarape and Rakalurn. Everything else, like lasers and lightnings, stays on Micvarape.

7.56: First 4,000 knowledge from the spire archive. After careful consideration I think it's going on Mil 2 command stations. 20,000 tachyon range will go well with the eyebots. 144 metal is more than econ 1 stations give me, and when you take the foldout into account 3 stations will mean +250 metal/s. 8% salvage, which is close to the 10% from warp jammers. And a 50% attack boost - which, given the last attack, is now vital.

7.57: Minefields are re-aligned to adjust for the fact that Micvarape no longer has irreplacables, and half move to Rakalurn. They all go around the Roadlinl wormhole - after careful consideration, Murdoch is my next target. Primarily because I don't want to piss off the raid engines.

7.58: Golems. This one's easy, I'm not going to bother with them. +15 AIP isn't worth it for the artillery, which I can't use on the AI homeworlds anyway. The black widow is tempting, but essentially not worth a planet's AIP on its own. If it were 10, I might consider it.

7.59: Let's talk fabs.

Decoy drones - nice, these will be really useful for survivability.

Leech Starship Mk. 5 - <3 reclamation. Especially as starship energy costs don't scale, so this costs me the same as a Mk. 1.

Plasma Starship Mk. 5 - 4 million attack, this could be a handy little anti-guardpost ship.

Spire Maw Mk.5 - Can swallow up to 250 ships. And I have 5 of them, so these little beauties can essentially swallow an entire wave on their own. These will be fantastic on defence.

Core Zenith Reprocessors - 224,000 attack. 10 million health. Massive bonuses to starship hulls (8x!). Even better, they give you money for killing stuff! Again, these will be fantastic on defence. Heck, I'm almost tempted to jumpship them next to the grav reactors and have them take a bite out of that - 8 core reprocessors, that's 2 million damage. x8 for the hull type, that's 16. 4 second reload time, the grav reactor goes down in 4 shots or 16 seconds.

8.00: 8 hours in. I've got some very juicy new toys - I didn't realise quite what a difference some of those fabs could make. My economy is still in the toilet, and will be for a while, so the next 15-20 minutes will be building defences then starting to bring the fleet up. The remaining 5,500 knowledge will probably go on lightning torpedo frigate 3s, to make use of my advanced factory. That'll leave me 1,500 - not sure what to spent it on. Might save it, then get Mk. 3 sentinels later.

Strategic goals - Now that I have taken Rakalurn, I've just realised that the A network shield generators have blown up. Only Murdoch has an ARS left. Zupreape has the last remaining core shield generator (network B), but I need to go through Murdoch to get to it anyway. And I can't just jump through it, as my second jumpship is still stuck behing the blasted shield guardpost. Of course, that means I need to work out some way of taking down the core raid engines...

Oh, and I'm sure I'm due for another CPA sometime soon. Here's Rakalurn:

[keith.lamothe]

An excellent and daring colony hop, and you're more than back in the game  

Though I do not envy you the task of holding Rak in the midst of that next CPA.

Though I also wonder just how many ships the AI will even be able to muster for it.  Even the Strategic Reserve has a bottom, as iirc you found last time.

[RockyBst]

As you predicted, the CPA budget wasn't the largest. Still a touch hairy though. Turns out Mk. 4 lightning frigates are even more awesome than I expected.

8.02: Dire guardian spawning in 10 minutes on Roadlinl. Oh yeah, I forgot about that guy. And 2,792 tachyon micro-fighters to Micvarape, which could be interesting depending on whether the mines finish building.

8.04: Mines aren't up. Tachyons pretty much wipe my fleet, then 1,000 run away to join the threat fleet. On the plus side, 4 million salvage nicely speeds up my defence building on Rakalurn.

8.06.30: Thanks to that generous scrap donation, defences are now up again. Time to refleet. As I'm expecting Rakalurn to bear the brunt of any CPA, warp gates go up there to receive all the fleet ships. Maw, reprocessor and decoy drone fabs are started up.

8.15: 2,512 missile frigates to Micvarape. All fleet ships, bar 2 maws and the Mk.3 and 4 lightning are up. Jumpship starts the bus service to get the heavy hitter back to take on the wave.

8.18: No problem, the maws did a bang-up job of eating everyone. Fun fact: You can transport maws who are transporting ships. Second fun fact: ARSes are immune to transport. Did someone once hatch a cunning plan involving maws stealing all the ARSes in the galaxy?

8.19: Out of energy again, and I haven't even built any of my fancy new starships yet. 2 more matter converters please, Jeeves!

8.21: Wow Mk. 4 lightning torpedo frigates take a long time to build.

8.22: 11,110 ships for a CPA. 11,110 ships. Here's hoping that the AI doesn't actually have close to that many ships to free up. Plasma siege and leech Mk. 5 starships begin building, and I'll use one of the remaining ebonites on a Martyr I think.

8.23: About time I moved those rams off Murdoch and took it off alert, huh?

8.25: 172 space planes go low power and pop their heads in to Murdoch, then start moving towards the Desenan wormhole.

8.25.15: Yeah, they made it about 1/10th of the way to the grav reactor. Well, at least they were cheap.

8.30: I notice two cloaker guardposts on Murdoch. The jumpship puts 1 reprocessor next to each. The guardposts die in a single shot - right before the reprocessor gets sniped.

8.31: CPA hits. As I suspected, the AI doesn't actually have enough ships to make good on it's threat.

• 1,507 Mk. II ships,
• 773 Mk. 4 ships,
• and 4,336 Mk II ships from the strategic reserve.

Huh, apparently there still aren't any mark V ships left in the entire galaxy, despite it being 2 hours since the last CPA. Combined with accumulated threat, this is 6,435 ships. So, considerably less dangerous than the attack that wiped out Micvarape.

Oh and I just found the dire guardian who disappeared. Dire sniper on Murdoch, that explains why the reprocessors popped so easy.

8.31.28: Well, that was kinda dumb. 400 ships on murdoch obviously assess the strength of the threat on the planets next to them, and hop into Rakalurn. Including the dire sniper.

8.31.57: The sniper dies.

8.32.30: 1,000 attack on Rakalurn. Over 500 lightning torpedos are in the air. 4,600 threat not yet committed.

8.32.45: The last of the broken golems dies. At least they distracted them a bit, I suppose.

8.32.50: Oh joy, 78 marauders just showed up to join in the fun. And of course, they spawn right behind my command station.

8.34: The maws eat some grav drains. I like these guys. 3,130 threat on Murdoch - I'm expecting the second wave in the next minute or so. 11 million scrap on Rakalurn, and I've already got a million in the bank. 20 new Mk. 2 engineers are created to help speed build the leech Mk. 5, and they still can't keep up with the positive income rate.

8.35.02: 1,000 attack on Micvarape - looks like the remaining threat is beelining to the homeworld. Jumpship starts shipping lightning torpedo frigates, starships, maws, reprocessors etc.

8.36: 3,000 attack on Micvarape - this place is going down again.

8.36.42: Decoy drones, that's what we need.

8.36.47: Oh come on. 3,566(!) ship fighter frigate wave announced for Micvarape. That's ... excessive. Warps gates are paused, production on that side of the homeworld is redirected to Kuer. Of course that doesn't really help if you haven't lost many ships.

8.36.48: Oh hey, Lyudmila is on Micvarape. Better turn her on.

8.37.05: 1,000 attack left. All ships told to retreat to the edge of the grav well - no point in getting the lightning frigates blown up.

8.37.14: Command station pops. Energy brownout. Lyudmila goes offline to compensate.

8.38: Only threat left on Micvarape is 100-odd eyebots. Scout starships start to search and destroy. Command station can be rebuilt in 17 seconds.

8.37.17: Wave hits. Rebuilders from Kuer are en-route to put the command station back up.

8.37.26: Military command back up. 20 rebuilders and 25 engineers are told to FRD those turrets.

8.38.41: Command station goes down again. The lightning torpedoes, though, are doing a real number on the fighters.

8.40: It's over. And I have So. Much. Money. 542 threat remaining in the Galaxy that decided not to join in.

8.43: 1,700 bombers to Micvarape. I think I can let the mines and turrets catch these.

8.44: So, 8 zenith reprocessors leave a Mk. 5 MRLS guard post with just 600,000 health. The four on Murdoch are going down pretty soon then. Although on reflection, younglings are probably cheaper.

8.45: Caesium, mines, bombers. I reckon that took about 8 seconds.

8.55: MRLSes down. That leaves us with two command station shield, 4 missiles, 1 needler and 2 spire command station shields to take down before the threatening eye disappears. Gotta love core worlds.

8.56: Hmm, space planes have a bonus against light. Turns out they can do about 20% damage per volley to a Mk. 5 missile turret. It'll take a few caps of them to actually take a missile guard post down, but hey they're cheap. Only 50,000 metal for a cap. The fact the AI loves leeching them, on the other hand, is a tad more worrying.

Oh, I forgot about the Mk. 3 fortress. A pair of rams to the face takes care of that, and I might as well get 4 more from another ebonite asteroid.

8.57: Oh, I forgot rams are expensive. Reprisal level 1. Wait, 1,000 fighters? Really? That ain't much of a reprisal.

9.00: Well, that wasn't too bad. CPA was dealt with handily, and I now have a full fleet of new toys. Guard posts are starting to explode on Murdoch, and I reckon within 20 minutes I'll cap it. That'll net me an ARS, Railcluster fab and enough knowledge for Mk 3 and 4 sentinal frigates. The planet itself, I'm not sure whether to just slap a mil 2 on it and get used to the idea of waves taking it out, or put another warp jammer on.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, the AI just doesn't have the population for that kind of CPA anymore. and at only ~100 AIP even a 10/10 strategic reserve can't account for 10k ships.  Higher AIP would change that, of course.

[RockyBst]

9.01: Rams take out a missile guard post under a forcefield, and smack up the two shield posts. Unfortunately, both are left with 20 million health. I think I'll hold on to the last ram in case of a particularly nasty dire guardian or something.

9.03: Reprocessors screened by decoy drones take out the two shield posts. Interestingly enough, I don't think a cloaked decoy actually acts as a decoy.

9.06: 1,600 bombers. Ignorable.

9.09: 1 missile left, planes will get that in the next few minutes. 2 command station shields - command grade, sounds like it's time to get the bombers out. Although one is under a forcefield, which is a bit of a pain. Might use that last ram to take the shield out. Other than that, planet is clean. No OMDs, no ions.

9.10: Oh hey, I just remembered those Mk. 5 plasma siege starships. Just the ticket.

9.19: The AI sure does love its bomber waves.

9.20: The last guard post on Murdoch goes down. Now, how to take out the command station under the dual forcefields...

Y'know, this would be a good job for that penetrator, if it wasn't sitting on the other side of the AI homeworld.

9.21: Blow it. Only 1,600 ships on the planet, and the special forces next door of course. Time for some fleet-on-fleet action.

9.22: Reprisal level one. I lost ~400 ships there, too many for the 500ish I managed to kill.

9.26: 3 raid starships makes a 10% dent - that's not going to be good enough.

9.27: Oh, what the heck. One of the adamantite asteroids goes on a penentrator IV. Command station is close enough to the wormhole exit that I should be able to shoot from there and run, so I'll screen it with younglings and other disposable ships.

9.31: Command station pops. +25 AIP, seeing as it has dual warp gates as per all core worlds. The penentrator escapes intact. Problem is, I'm not really sure that's incited any of the ships on the planet to move. At least the special forces shouldn't be interested any more.

Dire guardian spawning in 10 minutes.

9.34: 1,450 ships on the planet. I jump 25 grav drains in at the top, to draw all of them away from their initial positions. Then the beach heading crew rolls into town with missile turrets and MRLSes.

9.37: By the time the fleet retreated (with 400 ships left) only 200 enemies were left. Time to refleet a little, let the maws chew their food, then come back and take over.

9.38: 3,400 fighters. Might ship the lightning torpedo frigates back.

9.40: No problem. Even leeched 200 of them.

9.41: Another dire sniper guardian. Nasty, but not the worst.

9.43: Fleet back up to 900 ships. Extermination time. With the tractor guardians trying to pull my ship through into core raid engine territory obviously being the priority.

9.46: And done. No trace of artificial life remains on Murdoch. Warp jammer command station goes up next to the Core lightning controller and railcluster fab. The main point of this assult though was to open up the road to Zupreape - where both my trapped jumpship and the last shield generator reside.

9.47: ARS gives us ... attractor drones. Not bad, very cheap energy cost. And anything that diverts lasers work well for me.

9.48: 3,000 missile frigates hit Micvarape. Uh, I don't remember seeing the wave declaration. Anyway, I think my defences will hold. Just. Lyudmila spamming from the distance is, as always, very helpful.

9.53: Attack dealt with. 4,000 knowledge spent on Mk. 3 sentinal frigates, the useful little snipers. That leaves me 1,000, which I think will go to Mk. 2 flagships for the attack boost. A full cap of core turrets is going up on Murdoch, and Mk. 5 lightnings are being incorporated into the defences elsewhere.

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.

So, it looks like the core raids can't be taken down before the shield generators. When the shield generator is on a planet right next to the AI homeworld ... that becomes a problem. I'm going to have to trigger a wave, do as much damage as possible within 4 minutes, then retreat rapidly before the second spawn.



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.