14 Wormholes of Fun

[Diazo]

Alright, time for a report on a game I might actually finish.

Between working on the wiki and games I've been playing with weird options to try stuff out, I wanted to unwind and just play a game. As I wanted to just play, I did not examine the map, I just started. What I mean by that is I setup my options, hit New Map Seed and then start game without looking at the map.

More exactly, diff 7/7, random all, all minor factions and ai modifiers off, except for core shield generators which are on. One of the AIs I am fighting is the experimentalist, decoy drones are all over the place. Have not figured out what the other AI is yet. 80 planet, lattice map type.

I ended up on a homeworld with 14 hostile wormholes and the Autocannon Minipod as my bonus ship.

After pausing the game and considering my position, and the fact that the Minipod has cloaking, I settled on a super-low AIP strategy. With 14 hostile connections, I am not going to be able to prevent waves arriving at my homeworld, even if I only destroy the warp gates, that is 70 aip for no other gain.

The strategy depends on the fact that with the cloaking I can destroy the Tachyon guardians to create highways between worlds that I can use without losing ships.

And then one of the AIs goes and unlocks Sentinel Frigates which have tachyon beams. Oh well, still going to try this.

I've attached my galaxy map from the 5 hour mark. I have only captured 2 systems, but my AIP is only 16.

For reference, the yellow-green circle is my homeworld, the blue circle is the first world I took early, I needed the second system for power generation and resources, it had 7 resource spots.

The purple is the highway I have setup to the central world on the left side of the map, I took that to enable scouting. Note the low ship counts on those worlds, I have actually taken the time to destroy the wormhole guard posts so I can send uncloaked ships back and forth. I then captured the world at the end of the highway to avoid the Deep Strike counter-reaction from the AI.

I then scouted every single world on the map. The red and yellow circles on the left edge of the map are the AI homeworlds.

It has taken me 5 hours to reach this point, there were 3 Data Centers nice and close that were easy to raid with my minipods which is why my AIP is still so low.

I now have to start taking worlds to destroy Core Shield Generators, all 5 networks are still up. Probably going to pause the game and take 10-15 minutes real time to figure out what is next. AIP is going to jump fast, 4 A-network + 4 other networks means 8 planets and 160 AIP minimum. I'm hoping to keep it that low and keep using highways.

On another note, this is the first game I've seriously used Cloaker Starships to pair up with my minipods. Went Mk II Siege Starships and I run the 10 Sieges, 4 Light Starships (for the attack boost) and the 2 cloakers as a strike group. Pair that up with a second strike group of my minipods and that is a lot of cloaked striking power. And because it is cloaked they can raid almost with impunity. It does take a wave per tachyon guardian but with how cheap minipods are throwing away a Mk I/II shipcap of minipods is not a big deal.

The other thing is ship build up is noticeably lower then I'm used to. I assume it's because I've kept AIP so ridiculously low but I have yet to see 300 enemy ships on a single planet.

Once AIP starts rising it will be interesting to see if the highways I setup between worlds give me enough (and secure enough) mobility to defend my planets or if I will be abandoning a lot of worlds once I've destroyed the Shield Generator on them.

D.

[PokerChen]

So, you've alerted a core world at AIP 16. That could be fun.

[zoutzakje]

hehe yeah, I'm curious to see how that works out. Especially without the help of spirecraft or golems. With that coreworld on alert, you really gotta keep AIP extremely low, but you seem to be doing a great job with that so far.

[Diazo]

I will admit to having not expected that to be a core world when I captured the purple circled planet. I had not been able to scout that side of the map before capturing my purple circled colony.

However, I should be able to bypass it, go over it via the mark III world. It is one extra system to do so but may be worth it.

Either way, until I get those core shields down I'm not that worried about it. I don't have the forces present to go after it yet either, no Mk III unlocks at all so far.

At 1 homeworld and 2 systems captured, my total knowledge so far is only 19,000. I've got Mk II Scouts, Fighters, Bombers, Minipods and Plasma Siege SS. The 6,000 K you can see in the Screenshot are what I'm saving to unlock a Mk III fleet ship, just have not decided which one yet. Going to settle on a strategy first.

D.

[zoutzakje]

I'd try to avoid all the high # of wormhole planets. Defending those is gonna be a pain in the butt.
And yeah, you could probably work your way around the alerted coreworld. I just hope you get it all done before the coreworld starts leaking mk V ships into your planets....
I like challenges and reading how other people solve them. Let us know if you found a way =)

[keith.lamothe]

and then start game without looking at the map

That explains why the RNG was salivating.

And then one of the AIs goes and unlocks Sentinel Frigates which have tachyon beams.

It's on a roll!

The other thing is ship build up is noticeably lower then I'm used to. I assume it's because I've kept AIP so ridiculously low but I have yet to see 300 enemy ships on a single planet.

16 AIP on 7 = not many reinforcements.  And the recent big fixes to reinforcements may be playing into it too, dunno.

Once AIP starts rising it will be interesting to see if the highways I setup between worlds give me enough (and secure enough) mobility to defend my planets or if I will be abandoning a lot of worlds once I've destroyed the Shield Generator on them.

Yea; I'm guessing it will depend on how much m+c you need to replace losses in a timely fashion, and how much energy you need to run the fleet.  Other than those, and once you have the knowledge, just writing those planets off may be the better move.  On the other hand, having speedbumps to deal with CPAs and whatnot is nice.  On the third hand, rebuilding speedbumps every 10 minutes is not nice

[Diazo]

I'd try to avoid all the high # of wormhole planets. Defending those is gonna be a pain in the butt.
And yeah, you could probably work your way around the alerted coreworld. I just hope you get it all done before the coreworld starts leaking mk V ships into your planets....
I like challenges and reading how other people solve them. Let us know if you found a way =)

Well, seeing as my homeworld was a 14 wormhole system I did not really have much choice. The 2nd world I captured on the left I deliberately chose one with as many wormholes as possible to make scouting easier.

and then start game without looking at the map

That explains why the RNG was salivating.

And then one of the AIs goes and unlocks Sentinel Frigates which have tachyon beams.

It's on a roll!

Oddly enough, I think the RNG was pretty friendly this game. The shield gens should not be too bad.

The other thing is ship build up is noticeably lower then I'm used to. I assume it's because I've kept AIP so ridiculously low but I have yet to see 300 enemy ships on a single planet.

16 AIP on 7 = not many reinforcements.  And the recent big fixes to reinforcements may be playing into it too, dunno.

Oddly enough, I finding reclaimed ships to be a bigger threat at this low AIP. At least minipods, I've been sending them in solo to take advantage of the cloak and running into a leech starship hurts. As in "How the hell does this planet have 100 MORE ships then before I attacked it?" pain.

Once AIP starts rising it will be interesting to see if the highways I setup between worlds give me enough (and secure enough) mobility to defend my planets or if I will be abandoning a lot of worlds once I've destroyed the Shield Generator on them.

Yea; I'm guessing it will depend on how much m+c you need to replace losses in a timely fashion, and how much energy you need to run the fleet.  Other than those, and once you have the knowledge, just writing those planets off may be the better move.  On the other hand, having speedbumps to deal with CPAs and whatnot is nice.  On the third hand, rebuilding speedbumps every 10 minutes is not nice

Ya, the RNG was not totally evil in laying out the core shields.

And on to my game.

Before I go any further, I've attached _Unmarked.jpg as my galaxy map showing the core shield if you want to take a look and see what you would do. The 'RAID' in the bottom centerish is a system with a raid engine.

As for what I am going to do, see My Strategy.jpg. My current empire is marked in purple with the highway I've got set up between them.

I've actually gotten quite lucky in the shields layout. 3 A-shields are adjacent to my deep strike world and so easy pickings. The placement of the B-shields is kind of annoying, and there is only 2 of them. At least the 4th A-Shield is adjacent to the B-Shield I am going to take.

C,D,E is also adjacent to my deep strike world and so easy pickings.

The D-shield is the only one I was not really sure about, the one I am going to take is marked 8th. 8a and 8b were the possible alternates, 8a being already neutered as it's on my highway and 8b to isolate 3 from waves. But as 3 is an A-shield (ARS) and not a B-Shield (Adv Fac) I'm not as concerned about defending it.

I've marked the order of the planets I'm going to take. 6 of the 8 planets I need to take are adjacent to my deep strike world so it's actually a pretty simple layout.

The planet marked 9 is the Mark III I will use to go around the alerted core world. I was hoping to use that planet to destroy the E Shield but I want to neuter that planet and strike past it so I don't perma-alert the core world I will be going through to reach that home world.

This way, by the time I take planet 4 (B-Shield ADV FAC) I will have enough knowledge to unlock 3 Tier III ships.

The downside is nothing is expendable, I will be holding all these systems.

I have not marked anything past 9 planets from now, but at that point it's blow the center left AI homeworld then steamroll the top homeworld ASAP.

[Wanderer]

Personally I'd take 8a.  Simply obliterating it along the supply run and easing the concern of smaller fleets getting jumped in transit.

Very interesting game, I must say.

[Diazo]

Well, that went pretty well.

Captured planets 1 through 4 and have 5 mostly cleared.

The 3 ARS gave me Zenith Shredders, Microfighters, and Teleport Raiders. One more ARS as soon as I capture 5.

Unlocked Mk III Fighters and Bombers, not sure I'm going to unlock a 3rd fleet ship, not unless the next ARS is a great ship, wanting to unlock Siege Mk III also.

As for taking 8 vs 8a, I went with 8 because my main fleet node is going to be on the left side of the map and I want the waves arriving there if possible.

Also with teleport raiders, they can cross back to my homeworld in about 10 seconds and take no losses so I think I'm okay there.

We will see. AIP is still below 100 so I'm no where near how high it's going to get.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

The 3 ARS gave me Zenith Shredders, Microfighters, and Teleport Raiders. One more ARS as soon as I capture 5.

An interesting variety in your bonus ship types: a cloaker (minipod), a melee, a teleporter, and a "normal".

The combination of the cloaker and the teleporter could be pretty nice for "reach out and hammer someone".

[Diazo]

Only had time for a single shortish session but I was able to capture a few more planets.

5 is cleared and the ARS there gave me Zenith Bombards, unlocked Mk III of those.

8 went down pretty easy also. (oops, went out of order.)

6 and 7 are Mk IV worlds, so the rest of the session was a building cycle to finish off the Mk III and Mk IV ships and build up my defenses.

There have been no serious threats, but Sentinel Frigates are annoying. They are only coming in waves of about 30 but they hit hard and they always spawn at the wormhole the farthest away from my defending fleet. 

The threat count is getting a bit high also, it's been in the 500-600 range for a while. I'm trying to track it down but annoyingly cloaked ships that are loose on threat do not show on the threat counter on the galaxy map while they are cloaked.

Anyways, two Mk IV planet assaults to start off my next game session, those will be interesting.

D.

[Diazo]

And things are still going nicely, keeping the AIP low can be a pain running your fleet around playing defense, I'm used to more K for more turrets and having a more defensive map layout.

In this game every single system I have has a hostile wormhole with an intact warp gate.

In general, waves are in the 250-300 range with the occasional 400-500 wave if it goes a long time between them.

AIP is 113 so I'm still solidly in the Mark I waves range.

I've taken all the systems I plan to, I'm going to neuter my way to both homeworlds then take them out as close together as possible.

I've got 4k knowledge left and that's all I'm going to have for the rest of the game, not sure what to spend it on yet.

Major unlocks so far are Mk III Fighters, Bombers, Zenith Bombards, Plasma Siege Mk II and Fortress Mk I. Only economic unlock is Harverters Mk II and no turrets so far. I'm thinking I may go HBC I & II and Basic Turrets Mk II for the last of my K.

I've actually done quite well on fabricators. I've got my Mk IV of course, but I've captured a Speed Booster, Youngling Tiger, Bomber Starship, Beam Starship, Zenith Mirror as well.

All the core shields are down and it's time to attack the home worlds.

On the map, the purple circle is my fleet node I'll be attacking from. Planet 3 is neutered already. Going to start neutering planet 4 next and neuter planet 5 (the homeworld.)

Then repeat going up to the other homeworld, blow that home command station (planet 6) and come back down and blow the other ai home command station (planet 3).

In theory this will be simple, no Eyes, Raid Engines or other really bad structures in my way, no core raid engines even.

The only catch is that one Core world i've had on alert (yellow circle), it's up to 1800 units, 1500 of which are Mark V units.

But I'm only at AIP 113, not counting the AIP from the AI home command stations, that will put me at the end of the game at 153 aip with the number of core guard posts there are.

Regardless, we'll see how this goes. Going to be using those captured fabricators a lot I expect.

D.

[zoutzakje]

looking good ^^
you dealt with this game pretty quickly. I hope you can beat the game before the alerted coreworld decides it's time to hammer you with all it's mk V ships...

[Diazo]

Yes, that is my major worry at this point.

I've got a cap of Lightning warheads waiting at my fleet node however for emergencies, at this point a few points of AIP is not a major worry.

Anyways, we'll see what happens this weekend.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

The only catch is that one Core world i've had on alert (yellow circle), it's up to 1800 units, 1500 of which are Mark V units.

Yeaaah... all on the wormhole, or just guarding?

Other than that, seems to be well in hand