110 Planets. On a non-forced Chokepoint map

[Nodor]

Objective: Steam Achievements: "Control 110 planets" & "Kicking in the Front Door"

Settings:
Simple Map
Complex Ships
Human Resistance Fighters
Zenith Traders
Zenith Dyson Sphere
Zenith Devourer
Neinzul Rocketry Corps
Fallen Spire
Broken Golems (Easy)
Spirecraft (Easy)
AI Plots: Avenger (2x)

Combat Style & Cap Scale: Normal

AI#1:Crafty Spire - 7.3
AI#2: Golemite - 7.6

Starting Ship: Blade Spawner

Ok, taking all of the (mostly) positive options here with the plan to control large swaths of the Galaxy and use the Fallen Spire for firepower to manage the eventual Mark 4 waves.   

Opening Map:
 

Game start - March 23rd. Harvester's had just been buffed and ARS are scoutable.

Opening Moves:
Unlock Crystal & Metal Harvester Mark 3's.  Start the Survey Ship. Send out Scouts.

It turns out Hutt has a Raid Engine.
First ARS is on Malorne.
Bladefist has a Broken Hive Golem

7 minutes in - unlock Blade Spawner MK 2.

Around 10 minutes, First Shard is traced to Malorne.

Dax and Malorne are scrubbed of non-wormhole guardposts and the warp gates are destroyed.
Survey ship is dropped in transport and hauled to Malorne.
Shard found and escorted back to Homeworld.

Homeworld is built up with mines and turrets during survey time, a second mark 2 energy reactor becomes required for these defenses.
Second signal is again on Malorne.

Built extra transports, send fleet back to Malorne.  Once Fleet ship spawns, put in transport, head to homeworld.   - Barely manage to defend, but hold on and start the rebuilding process.

Screenshot time above is now reached.

[Nodor]

6 hours in:


Raid Engine Killed, Shards retrieved from Big Aggie, and Bladefist?
Spire Hub dropped on Malorne & Big Aggie.
Dyson Sphere freed on Sunwell
Grenade Launcher 5 fabricator at Big Aggie.
Munitions boosters acquired from first ARS.
Black Hole Machine & Superterminal found at KES.
Superterminal Hacking underway.

[Nodor]

8 Hours later:


This is where the mistakes start to pour in.

Superterminal hacking was cut short when I overspent on building mercenary ships - and turrets stopped being rebuilt on Kes.  While I pulled 180 AIP out of it, it could have been more.

I continued to aggressively pursue the Fallen Spire Campaign, pulling in three more shards, the last two from Archancellor and Ashbringer.
Spire Hubs are built out at Amy, Alysrazor, with plans to place the 5th at Archchancellor.

Whipping boy has been set up at Kes, with a Bot-net Golem backing up the 2 forts and the turrets from the superterminal hack.
I have a Hive Golem at my homeworld, 2 Black widow Golems and a Hive Golem at Amy, and a Hive Golem at Archchancellor. 
Fleet unlocks have been limited to bomber 3 and Blade Spawner 3.   At about hour 8 I noticed I had a shot at the Steam Achivement "Extreme Knowledge saver" and went for it here.
I'm using almost nothing but logistic command stations as dealing with waves one side of the map can mean a 5 minute trip.
I start having problems with etherjet tractors slipping through and killing command stations - Hastur in this screen shot.

Impulse Reaction emitter was the ship from the ARS at Cho'Gall.

The remaining ARS are at Cobb, Skarloc & Ankh-Morpork.   Factory 4 at Margolotta and the unreadable planet above Chewbacca.

[Nodor]

16 hours:



Spire Hub 5 is built at Another Dimension.
While building the Spire Capitol at Amy I lost the Hive Golem at Archchancellor.
After the Capitol is up, I spend 52,000 knowledge on various and sundry - mostly Spire tech, and support items.
I add a Spire hub at Archchancellor - and take Yog-Sothoth to stop etherjet incursions.
This seems to worsen the wandering forces from The Dreamlands, Tam, and Vetinari.   At the time of this screenshot I'm down 8 planets from Stealthers.   Warp gate guardians start wreaking havoc as well, as they keep redirecting waves away from the whipping boy.

[Nodor]

Last Solid Point @ 20.5 hours:



Referencing notes:
P0 = Spire Hub
P2 = Planned Hub Spot
P7 = Hazard (Nienzul Rockets Usually0
P8 = Factory 4
P9 = ARS.

During this period I lose the Botnet golem at Kes.
Having installed a Spire hub at Neelix, I move my spire ship production there.
I build a hub at mom corp and start to move east.
I start setting up to move the Whipping boy to Skarloc as I intend to lock off the AI at Skarlock and Bloodaxe while I work toward the other side of the map.   I'm at about 22 Spire Shipyards at this point.
The right side of the map keeps taking heavy damage from exo-waves, and hundreds of stealth ships pouring in makes keeping up logistic stations difficult.
I unlock mark 3 Command stations and start putting them down.  - I then discover that teleportation and beam cannons are a very very bad combo.     

[zoutzakje]

looking nice so far ^^ to bad you lost that botnet golem
are you planning to take over the entire east side first? Or are you going for the smaller northern area? I don't know if you have CSG's enabled or not, but if you haven't, I would go for the upper part first and completely destroy it. Then you can focus all your attention to the east, instead of having to deal with threat and reinforcements from multiple different directions.

[keith.lamothe]

Awesome stuff   Now that's frontal warfare.

[Nodor]

26 Hours 50 Minutes:


Things went pearshaped.

The continued push east to C'thun started well.   Planets fell easily, and with an installation of a spire hub and fortresses 3 on C'thun,  Tiny Tim and Ashenvale taken and everything in the middle captured except for Yoda, things were going as planned.

Then the CPA and the Exo-strike hit.  Stuff got kicked around, Detrius, Nac Mac and further east had been lost, but with some Decloakers clearing out Etherjet tractors, they were slowly being retaken.

The problem quickly became the word "quickly".   Between the warp gate guardian spawns, the constant flow of new stealthed ships into the area (being out of force fields and tachyon turrets is BAD) and Exo waves landing about every 30 minutes, the build back rate was the same as the capture rate.  With the Exo-spanws now almost exclusively spawning around Data, and heading straight through the undefended middle, 8-10 planets would be ripped to pieces and while the resources to rebuild wasn't an issue, cleaning out the "stealther spawns" became a real challenge.

Time to relocate the spawns.  -The decision was made to smash the planets below Stibbons, create a new defense point, and clear out the backfield instead of spending a lot of time micromanging the clearing of systems that would never be defended by more than logistics command stations.

This pushed the envelope into mark 4 ships.  Suddenly, splitting the fleet into two locations for whipping boys wasn't viable.  When Kes fell in an exo-wave, it didn't make sense to rebuild it.  Defense Point fell back to Malorne in the SE.

Smashing Counterattack guardposts in the push to take Stibbons, lead to waves heading for the Dreamlands and Another Dimension.   The waves were easily handled.... except for the Warbirds and 500 or so Etherjet tractors.  Unable to locate my built deflector drones, I watched systems fall when I moved my fleet back to Skarloc to deal with waves. 

Landing in 7 minutes is a 7,000 man CPA, and the Spire Exo-wave is at 97%.   Survive the next 20 minutes has become the primary objective.

Also, no savescumming.

[_K_]

With so many systems to defend, i was really just waiting for that to happen. The reason i try not to take over 30 planets - not enough shields and defences to cover all of them, so if a small bunch of stray AI ships makes it through your defence, you can end up wasting an hour catching them and rebuilding. Or some bad event might happen in the meantime, like an exo or CPA, and force you back to homeworld.

I wonder what the reinforcements are like for the AI systems. I really expected the systems to get flooded with defence ships extremely quickly at this AIP level. Yet from the screenshots i see only 700-800 ships in the more defended systems.

[Nodor]

With so many systems to defend, i was really just waiting for that to happen. The reason i try not to take over 30 planets - not enough shields and defences to cover all of them, so if a small bunch of stray AI ships makes it through your defence, you can end up wasting an hour catching them and rebuilding. Or some bad event might happen in the meantime, like an exo or CPA, and force you back to homeworld.

I wonder what the reinforcements are like for the AI systems. I really expected the systems to get flooded with defence ships extremely quickly at this AIP level. Yet from the screenshots i see only 700-800 ships in the more defended systems.

What's really funny is after a CPA, when the "really defended" systems have 50-60 ships.

[Wanderer]

With so many systems to defend, i was really just waiting for that to happen. The reason i try not to take over 30 planets - not enough shields and defences to cover all of them, so if a small bunch of stray AI ships makes it through your defence, you can end up wasting an hour catching them and rebuilding. Or some bad event might happen in the meantime, like an exo or CPA, and force you back to homeworld.

I wonder what the reinforcements are like for the AI systems. I really expected the systems to get flooded with defence ships extremely quickly at this AIP level. Yet from the screenshots i see only 700-800 ships in the more defended systems.

What's really funny is after a CPA, when the "really defended" systems have 50-60 ships.

Yeah, I'm finding CPAs are great for emptying out systems that have heavily reinforced.  If you can weather the CPA, it's smash and grab time.

[keith.lamothe]

Wow, pretty wild   Sounds like a lot of fun, though I'm not the one staring down the barrel of the gun (or, rather, staring into space not knowing if I'm staring down the barrel of 1000 invisible guns).  You mentioned running out of tachyons/ffs.  Do you have all the ff techs unlocked?  All tachyon techs?  Tried using Military III stations for revealing stealthers in the backfield?

In general I imagine the defensive strategy is to pick those planets you really want to hold (frontline edge, ones most likely to be on the path to your HW, edge around your HW, HW itself) and put all the defenses on those, and just use your other systems to slow enemies down (if that).

That still leaves you spread really thin, though I guess it depends on how much turret research you've done.

[Nodor]

Wow, pretty wild   Sounds like a lot of fun, though I'm not the one staring down the barrel of the gun (or, rather, staring into space not knowing if I'm staring down the barrel of 1000 invisible guns).  You mentioned running out of tachyons/ffs.  Do you have all the ff techs unlocked?  All tachyon techs?  Tried using Military III stations for revealing stealthers in the backfield?

In general I imagine the defensive strategy is to pick those planets you really want to hold (frontline edge, ones most likely to be on the path to your HW, edge around your HW, HW itself) and put all the defenses on those, and just use your other systems to slow enemies down (if that).

That still leaves you spread really thin, though I guess it depends on how much turret research you've done.

At 50 Planets (map above) I'd unlocked all Turrets except for the Mark 2 and 3 MLRS, Lightning, Flack & Grav. 
At 73 planets, (Yes I need to update) I may have them all.  - I may not, I unlocked Nienzul Starship 4 for the MK IV Ships - and that 18K limited my "other available options".  But 8 Caps of MK 4 Ships .. is worth a lot.   
All 44 forcefields are unlocked - and were placed before I hit 25 planets.
Because Exo-waves smash basic Tachyon turrets, the stealth turrets are placed based on Exo-wave expectations.   

I tend to "show" having normal tachyon turrets available..  but that's because I've run out of remains rebuilders so I have some remains to rebuild/replace.

I did unlock Miliitary 3 command stations and I am using them on the front lines for both the stealther detection and the boost to defenders.   I have also tried to place Mark 2 Military command stations where possible as  tachyon turrets, but this tends to A) get them killed instantly by exo-waves and B) sends bunches of exo ships all over the place, making them take longer to kills with the fleetball... and since usually the ships sent flying are Zenith Bombards it increases the amount of damage my fleet takes.

Basically, what it says to me is "this game is not designed with taking all of the planets in mind". 

But referencing back to the discussion about turret defenses being based off of points from a command station.  - It would literally take all of the challenge out of this.    Every planet would have enough force to deal with the 3-5 Etherjet tractors that have been taking out my command stations.

[keith.lamothe]

All 44 forcefields are unlocked - and were placed before I hit 25 planets.

Yep, never enough FFs   Thankfully the spire cities come with their own, though particularly with the lower-tech ones they tend to need supplementary human FFs to serve as full-on chokepoint defense.

Because Exo-waves smash basic Tachyon turrets, the stealth turrets are placed based on Exo-wave expectations.

Do scout starships work ok for providing tachyon coverage on a specific wormhole?

Basically, what it says to me is "this game is not designed with taking all of the planets in mind".

To an extent, yes, but the key isn't how many you take, it's how many you actively defend.  Looking at your map it seems like most of the time you could get away with 5-6 frontline systems, significant defenses on each of the three wormholes leading to your HW, and a few metric tons on your HW.  The other planets would be basically on their own, and simply provide space in which to catch and harass any attacks that penetrated the outer shell before they hit the "castle gates", so to speak.

But referencing back to the discussion about turret defenses being based off of points from a command station.  - It would literally take all of the challenge out of this.    Every planet would have enough force to deal with the 3-5 Etherjet tractors that have been taking out my command stations.

Can a Military I command station not handle 5 etherjet tractors?  And how would the turret defenses being based off the command station make it easier to defend these, if you already need all your turret cap on other defensive duty (presumably if you could spare them from primary defensive roles you'd have some on these planets that keep dying)?

And is the challenge really the losing of undefended command stations?  I'd think that only costs you m+c (harvesters) and a little energy hassle.  With engies, mobile builders, transports, and pausing I figure you could re-colonize a pretty big swath of empty planets very quickly.  The main hassle would seem to be the time it takes to unload, start construction of the colony ship, speedbuild, start construction of the command station, speedbuild, load back up, and move to the next planet.  If command stations left remains that you could rebuild with patrolling rebuilders I imagine that would take most of the sting out.  Or no? 

I would think that the main challenge is trying to maintain a sufficiently strong outer shell when it's 5+ planets "wide" and also having enough "core" defense to not die to whatever slips through.  But perhaps not

[Nodor]

Because Exo-waves smash basic Tachyon turrets, the stealth turrets are placed based on Exo-wave expectations.

Do scout starships work ok for providing tachyon coverage on a specific wormhole?

I need them as scouts - so I haven't been using them as Tachyon coverage.   To be fair, this is the first time I've run out of scouts.

Basically, what it says to me is "this game is not designed with taking all of the planets in mind".

To an extent, yes, but the key isn't how many you take, it's how many you actively defend.  Looking at your map it seems like most of the time you could get away with 5-6 frontline systems, significant defenses on each of the three wormholes leading to your HW, and a few metric tons on your HW.  The other planets would be basically on their own, and simply provide space in which to catch and harass any attacks that penetrated the outer shell before they hit the "castle gates", so to speak.

But referencing back to the discussion about turret defenses being based off of points from a command station.  - It would literally take all of the challenge out of this.    Every planet would have enough force to deal with the 3-5 Etherjet tractors that have been taking out my command stations.

Can a Military I command station not handle 5 etherjet tractors?  And how would the turret defenses being based off the command station make it easier to defend these, if you already need all your turret cap on other defensive duty (presumably if you could spare them from primary defensive roles you'd have some on these planets that keep dying)?

And is the challenge really the losing of undefended command stations?  I'd think that only costs you m+c (harvesters) and a little energy hassle.  With engies, mobile builders, transports, and pausing I figure you could re-colonize a pretty big swath of empty planets very quickly.  The main hassle would seem to be the time it takes to unload, start construction of the colony ship, speedbuild, start construction of the command station, speedbuild, load back up, and move to the next planet.  If command stations left remains that you could rebuild with patrolling rebuilders I imagine that would take most of the sting out.  Or no? 

I would think that the main challenge is trying to maintain a sufficiently strong outer shell when it's 5+ planets "wide" and also having enough "core" defense to not die to whatever slips through.  But perhaps not

I have been using logistic command stations.  Getting the fleet from Point A to Point B AND doubling the the time it takes for the AI to get from Point C to Point B seems to be a greater benefit.  The Etherjet tractors annoy - and are dangerous because they can slow the fleet relocation speed.

I am hopeful that resources and energy will be more of an issue going forward.. but the current harvester 3's have made resources a non-issue this game. At 73 planets, I have around 26K income/second for total M&C.  It's hard to spend that fast - but, I can probably plan to build the mark 5 Ion cannon.