10/10 game(s) where i used the settings to make the game bit easier.
settings:
Resistance fighters 9
Colony rebellions 7 (euh, probably too much)
Golems hard 1
Spirecraft hard 1
Fallen spire 1
dyson- got dropped from the settings after i heard about 2 gatling bug
Scitzophrenic
reveal random
0 aip increase (the most important thing)
10/10 random -non technologist. no plots. Random all got dropped when i just couldn't deal with the first wave.
Map :
100 planets
crosshatch (probably easiest map for low-aip game. i'm serial here!)
I picked any stealth ship from border world, and after failure generated new seed until i could pick such a homeworld again.
The "easy" part didn't affect the game at all for first 30 or so games. I died. Fast. Usually in the first wave. Some of the ai types are pretty tough, spirehammer sending spire destroyer in the first wave probably could've destroyed my whole fleet alone. And sometimes the ai bonus ships just demoralized me. 50 maws in every single planet after the buffer zone? Thats equivelant to 1000 Bombers.... Extremly low cap bonus ships on AI hands will just mess you up. But i got to actually playing around quite a few times. I picked the cloaked ships because i figured (after reading some of the wanderer's aars) that i should not hurry with taking of the planets and rather pick value targets , scout and neuter stuff. A lot of the cloaked stuff weren't really that good at this stuff in 10/10settings. Space planes and Stealth battle ships performed the best by far. Planes would've been superior but with 3-5 ion cannons per world, they get eaten up pretty nasty.
So for the first game that actually got past 1 hour mark:
Bonus ship : stealth battle ship SBS
feeding parasite(vampire claw+ space plane+ cutlass) / attritioner(gravity drain + spider ).
Pretty easy types. It did turn out that attritioner does something like double , triple sized waves compared to parasite but still, not bad.
Bonus ships aren't easiest possible, 2 of the more dangerous stealth types, and hugely annoying gravity drain + spider combo. But no ultra low cap ships so i count myself blessed. With this many bonus ships they aren't all going to be laser gatlings anyway.
Like any 10 game i completly focus on defense for 15minutes, i don't even send scouts out. After that is done i find ARS 2 hops away and Factory on the planet after it, great . Chamelon Yng tiger , Yng vulture. Tigers would be great but chamelons are pretty good enough. ATt1:00 i feel confident enough to take the planet. After some prancing around i pop the command with sbs. And uh, fail to notice EMP guardian... savescum.
This time i take the planet bit better (same as last time but killing emp guardian first. I try to use SBS's and raid ships as much as possible for taking planets, so i can take the ion cannons intact. They are big big big help when every planet is a battlefield). And when i do ,150 resistance fighters spawn. OH yeah. I get overly excited and decide to connect , taking one extra planet. AIP jumps to 50 and effects are drastic. Biggest waves are around 1000 ships . Wave sizes vary a lot. Although i can easily beat the waves its obivious i shouldn't be taking any more planets for a while. So i scout around for DC untill 2:00 . I also unlock MK III SBS(MK II , Harvesters MKI and heavy FF MKI were unlocked earlier).
Then i rememeber that i'm horrible at scouting and i've lost 30 SBS clearing tacchyon guardians. I've also lost all my resistance fighters. They wen't after threat and died. Neutered couple of systems . They got replaced pretty soon so no problems. Time for spire scouts. 2 first level spire scouts scout out alot and 3 things happen.
1) I realise that the map is all mark III/IV worlds. OH 10/10 does this too, neat.
2) I find my next target, cluster of 3 datacenters and Botnet. Yay, i've rarely gotten botnet so this should be nice. 4hops away ... Well close enough.
3) The scouts gather about 600 threat. OH right, spirecraft scouts aren't regular scouts, got it.
Resistance fighters die clearing threat again. But this time... There are no replacements. Ever. Or at least hasn't been since then, almost 6 hours later. Maybe i used up my quota already ,no idea why they aren't spawning.
For next 3 hours i spent getting the botnet and clearing the DCs. AIP drops to 14 and waves to ... below 100 usually. Hah. At 4:40 i get the botnet. And instead of cloaking it back to my home , i just let it sit there like there for hours.
Next up is fallen spire part. First shard was ridiculously easy. I had pretty big army and it was one hop away from friendly territory. After getting the shard i get my first CPA. I eagerly await and am greeted by 200ish MK II ship. Heh, 14aip. Afterwards i build some more spire scouts and some spire jumpshis. I load some raid starships in the jumpships and go around popping datacenters around the world. Black hole generators were the only thing that managed to destroy these raiding parties. AIP reductions is 40 below floor. Jumpshiping DC's was pretty easy & profitable. And if i manage to stay in the game for long , that is the only reason. I also find super terminal 3 jumps from botnet... with another botnet on it.
So now i can easily afford to take couple of planets more. Which is good because human colony rebellion just popped up right next to my HW. Nice. I'm not entirely sure how the rebellions work , but i decide to put off capturing this for a while and concentrate on fallen spire. The colony is in the way for the second shard so i'll go pick that up. No problems getting it back home.
And that brings us up to speed. Botnet golem wins sitting around for 3hours award.
Next i need to decide wheter to connect or not. Zombie defense (and resistance fighters if they ever decide to show up again) would be nice but on the otherhand AIP progress makes some brutal changes.
