10/10 Fallen Spire

[Faulty Logic]

I heard 10/10 was buffed again. Time to find out.

Map 80 X 109270564 Spire Blade Spawner

AI Vanilla 10x2

Helpful settings:
Resistance 4
Golems hard 4
Spirecraft hard 4 (no martyrs)
Dyson Sphere 5
Colony rebellions 6
Fallen Spire 4

Unhelpful settings:
Schizophrenic
Marauders 4
Roaming Enclaves 4
Preservation Wardens 4
Hybrid Hives 4 (for both AI) (first time w/hybrids ever)
Advanced Hybrids 7 (for the first AI) (I heard bad things happen at 7)

The report:

The first thing I notice is that my home command station is practically on top of the wormhole. I decide not to build any turrets on the HW, defending with mk1 triangles, blade spawners, and of course, Riot Control Starships.
 
Scout immediate environs. Nothing much, bottled by a mkIII. Not a big deal. Bordering that are two planets with the full 8 resource spots. Unlock Harvester IIIs and SBS IIs.

First wave repelled with 4 riots, 98 fighters, and 10 blade spawners. Riots+blade spawners=awesome.

I decide to play fallen spire this game, which I have not done on 10/10 before. The map is just begging me to. First subspace signal on Bulralo.

I conquer Crossroads, and begin heavy duty turreting, all on the No Way Out wormhole. When waves come from a different spot, I just use the riot tractors to transport the AI ships to their doom. Once again, Riots are awesome.

Conquer the 8 resource worlds, and use their pysite to scout the entire map (X is worse than most for SC jumpship scouting, with systems you have to visit many times). Whoever made data centers only give ten negative AIP is a soulless moster. Raid all the Co-ps, only to find they have been nerfed as well. Damn the devs oily hides. Raid a bunch of DCs as well. 5 are left, and I only have on SC jumpship remaining. I am saving it for now.

It has now been about two hours, and there is only one hostile wormhole. Unlocked Basic, Missile, Laser, and MLRS IIs, and HBC mkIs. All turrets in place. 3250 k left. Also build all mkI starships, a merc enclave, 14 mkI rams, 8 mkI Implosion Artilleries, 8 mkI Seige towers, 5 mkI ion blasters, and two mkII ion blasters.

Recovered first shard (easy) and refugee ship (which for some reason spawned on my HW, see save).

Now I discover why I haven't seen any of the hybrids yet. They are all on No Way Out. All 80 of them.
This is a problem. Also, it took about 10 seconds from me seeing one hybrid for me to decide that I hate their guts.

Moved entire replaceable fleet into No Way out. An epic 5-way battle between the AI, Hybrids, me, marauders, and the resistance saw essentially everyone dead. Refleeted, subspace signal 3 hops out.

Drones are fun.

State of Empire:
P4: will take
P6: will put Spire city on
P5: ARS+Black Widow, will take
P9: Hive Golem, will take
P7: ARS, Dyson Sphere, will take and place spire city
P1: golem, from the top it is cursed, arti, armored
P3: ARS+golem, near is cursed, far is armored
P8: regen golem

[keith.lamothe]

I heard 10/10 was buffed again. Time to find out.

If you mean since before 5.046, yea, it should be nastier now.  Playing Fallen Spire gives a totally different balance experiences, of course, but if you're even able to take your marked territory that will be interesting to see given the AIP-reduction, AIP-driven-exo, and schizo changes.

Whoever made data centers only give ten negative AIP is a soulless moster.

  That's only on Diff 9+.  Diff 8+ get 75% of the old numbers, and below that gets the same as before.

Anyway, yea, trying to stop the AI getting murdered in its sleep for two thirds of the game.  Not that AIP matters all that much once you have a spire fleet going strong, but the AIP-driven-exo-sources may make that more painful.

Recovered first shard (easy) and refugee ship (which for some reason spawned on my HW, see save).

It'll do that for the first two rescues if all the bordering AI planets are mkIV to prevent forcing you to fight through a mkIV that early in the game (without some extra bonus).  After the refugee ship it takes the kid gloves off though.

Now I discover why I haven't seen any of the hybrids yet. They are all on No Way Out. All 80 of them.

How neighborly of them   They love chokepointing the player, but they've never been as good at it since we took away their ability to build turrets, forcefields, etc.  That added variety, but they would create these ridiculous fortress planets (something human players never do, obviously) that were a bit much. Want to bring some of that back on some setting like 5 or 6 on advanced hybrids.

Moved entire replaceable fleet into No Way out. An epic 5-way battle between the AI, Hybrids, me, marauders, and the resistance saw essentially everyone dead.

Sounds satisfying

Weatherman's forecast: High Chance of Ridiculous Space Carnage.

[Cinth]

 they would create these ridiculous fortress planets (something human players never do, obviously)

Ummmm... does that make me an inhuman player?

[Faulty Logic]

Death narrowly avoided...so far.

I carve through to the hive golem, 4 hops away, zapping the intervening planets. The golem comes with a free Vulture V fab. I hate younglings as a rule, but the vultures go very well with implosion artillery. Using the hive golem and spirecraft to augment my rather pathetic basic fleet, I recover the first city shard.

Having a fortress world (basic, missile, MLRS, laser mkI+II with sniper/tractors mkI) is very helpful when recovering a shard.

Hive golems are made of awesome, especially since I figured out how to release a partial load.

Conquer No Way Out so the city can grow.
Conquer Van Helsing and Frontier to link up.
Fortify the Terminus wormhole on Van Helsing.
Gate raid the rest of the branch, so waves and exos must come through the fortified wh.
Free the Dyson Sphere (comes with a SBS ARS).

First Golem/Spirecraft exo < 500 wasps+all the turrets

Conquer the rest of the branch, except for Terminus and No Retreat.
Repair regen golem (bah).

Raid the rest of the AIP reducers.

Max time wave, all bombers destroys the Van Helsing CS.
A max-time wave from the other AI hits during the interim, adding its 3000 or so ships to Terminus as threat. This is combined with a few batches of Hybrids (~40).

An abnormally strong Hybrid is somewhere in the galaxy. Argh.

Attritioning Terminus down to conquerable levels takes almost an hour, and some lightning warheads.

A strange Hybrid-like signal is somewhere in the galaxy.
Another batch of SC jumpships finds it three hops away.
Jump in with a Cruiser, two destroyers, and two frigates to kill the blasted super hybrid. None return, but mission accomplished.

Conquer Terminus and No Retreat.

Unlock Basic, Laser, MLRS, and Missile turrets mkIII.
Unlock HBCs up to mkIV.
Unlock Neinzul Enclave mkIII.
Unlock FF mkIII.

All turrets deployed on the Segfault wormhole, with enough (3mkIII, 3mkII, 4mkI) forcefields to prevent escape. Toggle on carrier auto-target.

Recover second shard (only one hop away by this point). No Retreat can handle pursuit exos just fine. However, when combined with the second Golem/Spirecraft exo, and a double over-max time wave, a huge swarm of wasps was called for. My still somewhat pathetic FS fleet helped as well.

Second city up and running. 5 total Spire Shipyards.

Single max-waves are ignorable.

New shard 4 hops away. Rebellion on the same world. Which also has an ARS and Cursed golem. I guess it's my lucky day.

Comments:

Riots are still awesome.
Hive golems are amazing.
Regen golems are of limited utility.
A swarm of mkI-III drones is a significant force.
Hybrids are annoying.

Questions:

If I take the planet (Total Conversion, or the nearer P3), would shards just not spawn down in that branch anymore?

In other words, how does shard spawning work, exactly? It seems like it is a set distance (4 atm) from any human worlds. Going by that, the shards would simply avoid the SE branch if I took the (incredibly juicy) planet.

Also, do the CSGs need to be down for the final assault, or can the Spire just blast through them?

State of Empire:

[Toranth]

Questions:

If I take the planet (Total Conversion, or the nearer P3), would shards just not spawn down in that branch anymore?

In other words, how does shard spawning work, exactly? It seems like it is a set distance (4 atm) from any human worlds. Going by that, the shards would simply avoid the SE branch if I took the (incredibly juicy) planet.

Also, do the CSGs need to be down for the final assault, or can the Spire just blast through them?

State of Empire:

A useful resource for your Fallen Spire questions:
The AI War wiki
This page explains shard spawning rules, etc.  IIRC, the Exogalactic Spire fleet will automagically destroy all CSGs as soon as they arrive, since they page doesn't say.

[keith.lamothe]

You folks sure love breaking this game   On the FS questions, Toranth's answers are correct.

[Faulty Logic]

I meant that exos were buffed. I played most of the Core/Tech Raider game past 5.046
We have a wiki? Huh, so we do. I like it.

Took the central hub world (Segfault) and repaired the Widow there. Also received Vultures from the ARS.

Conquered the rebelling colony world, built the resistance fleet, and repaired the cursed golem there. ARS yeild autobombs, which would normally elicit a groan, but are nice given that I already have Enclaves up and running.

Excess resources are constantly building new defences on No Retreat.

Assemble shard recovery fleet:

Hive golem
Cursed golem
Spire fleet (2 Cruisers, 5 Destroyers, 24 frigates)
Resistance fleet
Neinzul SS mkI-III (all drones I-III and autobombs I-II)

Recovered third shard with no issue.

Continue fortifying.

Recover fourth shard with no issue.

Normal fortifications complete.

Recover fifth shard, a couple lightning warhead Is required, and the full wasp swarm, and almost lost the hive and cursed golem, but no lasting damage.

Built fifth city on the fortified wormhole, with 1 hab center and 5 shard reactors, all fully equiped with mkIII ffs, 4 laser IIIs, and 2HBCIIs.

Built Galactic Capital and researched Battleships.

Last shard 5 hops out, on a mkIV but not a HW or Core World.

I could probably have recovered it, and defended the exogalactic transceiver, but I am paranoid playing on 10/10.

Recover all remaining golems.
One comes with grenades.

Perform 4 knowledge hacks.

Steal high-level asteroids.

Research additional defences.

Fortify No Retreat far beyond sane levels:
See first screenshot.

I have nuke Is and all EMPs two worlds away, just in case.

A triple exo is declared, at the same time as a double max-wave, and cpa. More than 10k ships, with enemy golems and HKs. Ouch.

Lost an armored golem, five fortresses, and most of the turrets, but the citadel held. With the help of some warheads.

Refortified.

Assembled final shard recovery fleet:
Same as above, except with an armored and widow, and more spire ships.

I built full cap of merc fighters, and about half a cap of bombers while I wait for the shard to arrive. Also popped Zenith reserves all around my empire, collecting them at the fortress world using jumpships. I also add a ZR IV to the shard recovery fleet, as it was on the same planet as the subspace signal.

Final shard recovered with no issue.

Build exogalactic transceiver with full resource caps and 4 distribution nodes (one was a trojan).

30 minutes left.

Implosion artillery is great against HKs.
SC Rams are good against enemy golems, as is the friendly arti.
Warheads are good against enemy fleetships and starships.
15 attritioners make a big difference for huge battles, mainly due to the cumulative feedback effect.
The fallen spire fleet is good against pretty much everything.

At S minus ten minutes, an HK mkIV comes in and wreaks havoc, destroying most of the turrets and three of the shard reactors.

One thousand wasps cover for me while I rebuild. And by "cover for me" I mean "die en masse because the AI decided to bring in a gravity guardian under SC sheilds." Warhead time.

Another HK IV punches through, killed one world away from my HW with the FS fleet in jumpships.

And the Imperial Fleet arrives. About ten minutes later, I win.

The ridiculous fortress, and the IS fleet at a HW after victory: