(6/7) First game (In ~5 years) Victory

[Ranakastrasz]

Expansions: The Zenith Remnant
AI 1: Diff 6 Random (Technologist Raider)
AI 2: Diff 7 Random (Raid Engine)
Map: Simple
Planets: 40
Seed: ?
Ships: Complex/Everything
Minor Factions:
    Zenith Trader
    Zenith Dyson Sphere 4/10
    Broken Golems Hard 4/10
    Human Resistance Fighters 4/10
Modifiers:
    None
AIP:
    1 aip/30 minutes
Ship Types Disabled:
    Parasites
Plots
    None
   
This was mostly a, I haven't played in 5 years Game, and I didn't have an autoscreenshot thing, so this is from notes and memories.

I didn't have the AI random reveal option enabled, but I knew instantly I had a Technologist, because one AI started at T3. I only learned it was a raider because of the achievement.
After my ?Second? Planet the raid engine caused me to aggressively scout and discover that I was vs a Raid Engine AI.

Overall, neither felt like they hugely dominated my actions, as my difficulty was too low.
I did have to unlock raid starships to deal with the raid engines efficiently. The added immunities were kinda nessesary.

Ship Types
Started with Vampires, Got Snipers, Zenith Beam Frigates, Translocators, Armored. I think there might have been several others, but nothing I noticed as significant.

Vampires were my main Specialists. Mainly used them as as raiders. They were surprisingly effective vs Tachyon Sentinels, and their ability to ignore shields was quite useful. I treated them as very expendable, and used them as diversions.

Snipers were specialists for a short time, but I ended up folding them into the normal fleet since they really didn't need any special behaviour support.
Translocators are to fragile, and I have no idea how to use them at all. Tried using them as a fast response force, but they tended to die too quickly.

The AI got acid sprayers early, and then Beam frigates. Raiders were not concerning, given I had gravity turrets. As soon as Infiltrators came up, I grabbed Tachyon turrets, which also dealt with minipods. And by immediately, I mean after they snuck past and killed two of my Economic HQs.

Unlock wise, Mainly focused on starships. Raid, Zenith primarily. I love raid starships, and zeniths are tough as hell and "Never" die. Considered T2 riots for more shielding, but didn't have the knowledge to burn.

The Raid starships of lower tiers ended up part of my fleet ball, since their lack of missile immunity, and then cloaking made them incapable of surviving the lightning raids I sent them on.

Turrets, Got Spider, gravity, T2 missile, and Tachyon. Mainly the standard snare setup (Tractors, gravity, spiders, to wreck enemy momentum) and to deal with cloakies.

Fleet ships. T2 fighter, T3 bomber, T2 Vampire. Fighters as chaff, Bombers because screw forcefields, and vampires because specialists.


Golems
Ended up capturing like 5 of them. A widow first, and eventually ended up with an armored, two artilleries, and a cursed.

Widow basically murdered any fleet ship, and I used it to clean up threat. Had to escort it with riot starships to absorb the free volly before paralysis. The ability to jump into a planet, grab an enemy threatball, and jump out so the sniper/spider turrets murder them all was pretty helpful.

Artillery is horrifyingly powerful, able to smash a guard post and sunder shields with ease. 4 shots kill an eye even. Two of them was kinda overkill.

Armored is short range-ish. Nothing really notable about it that I saw, although it never required more than repainting.
Cursed is fragile as hell, and almost died. The Sniper ranged rapid fire artillery support is epic if you can protect it though, so again, raid starships.

Didn't bother with a hive or regen golem, since I felt I had enough firepower to take down the homeworlds.

Disasters/Unexpected events

Had a few attacks sweep through planets, but rebuilding wasn't too difficult. Spider turrets wrecked the momentum of pretty much any attack.

Almost lost the widow golem from the Superterminal planet. See, it was on the superterminal planet, and I captured it, but obviously couldn't repair it. So I had already fortified the planet, and placed a military command post. Had my fleet and all there. After like 30 AIP reduction, I scrapped the command center. Which failed, so I had to send in my raid starships. The result was, most of my fleet lost, and widow golem down to like 12% health, so it took longer to get it up than normal.

Almost lost the cursed golem from not paying attention. And an mass driver. Artillery golems took that out. Should have read scout report properly.

First Raid engine scared the crap out of me. Had to start using vampires/raid starships to clear Tachyon Sentries, and was then able to scout and realize that one of the AIs were a Raid Engine class. Panicked a bit, but raid starships were able to generally clear them out. Unfortunately such a job required higher tier Raid starships because missile immunity, then cloaking. The standard model just couldn't take the stress, and ended up as part of my fleetball.

Hacking/Capturables: I hacked a few fabricators, and both T4 factory types. Mainly because I already had enough planets to defend. This is a problem I still don't know how to handle, and I don't want to just make the AI Chivalrous.

The game was overall too easy, but it was kind of a warmup, to see if I could handle the game, and if I could actually, you know, finish a campaign.

[AnnoyingOrange]

I didn't have an autoscreenshot thing

For future reference, pressing f12 in game will create a screenshot and save it to [game install folder]/RuntimeData/Screenshots/

Artillery is horrifyingly powerful, able to smash a guard post and sunder shields with ease. 4 shots kill an eye even. Two of them was kinda overkill.

No kill like overkill.

This is a problem I still don't know how to handle, and I don't want to just make the AI Chivalrous.

Depending on your captured planet, you may get away with placing your military command station next to the structure you want to protect, add a few forcefields and that's usually good enough.
Also, unspent HaP is wasted in the end, so with such a small ST hack there's little reason not to hack the advanced factories at least.

Overall, good game: I'm surprised the Raid AI didn't feel like a massive pain in the neck, guess the additional AIP isn't too bad on smaller maps.

[Ranakastrasz]

For future reference, pressing f12 in game will create a screenshot and save it to [game install folder]/RuntimeData/Screenshots/

I know how to screenshot. I was too busy playing to do so. I was talking about a program that takes screenshots every 10 seconds or w.e, or makes videos. Which I have for my second game once I decide on the settings.

No kill like overkill.

Sort of. The thing was, the firepower didn't seem to actually help much. Artillery golems were heavily use impaired vs the homeworld (Artillery immunity), and they both spent a lot of time with no targets while everything else was fighting. On the other hand, that was because there were no longer any starships to worry about. I would have gotten better milage out of a second cursed golem or another widow.... Or a regen golem.

Depending on your captured planet, you may get away with placing your military command station next to the structure you want to protect, add a few forcefields and that's usually good enough.
Also, unspent HaP is wasted in the end, so with such a small ST hack there's little reason not to hack the advanced factories at least.

True enough. I spent the HaP on hacking the various contructors, and that is how I defend capturables.

Overall, good game: I'm surprised the Raid AI didn't feel like a massive pain in the neck, guess the additional AIP isn't too bad on smaller maps.

Ah yea. The extra AIP cost. I thought I read that Raid AI, Blackhole AI, and so on with those AIP increasing structures on every planet didn't cause AIP increase for said structures.

[Worblehat]

I hacked a few fabricators, and both T4 factory types. Mainly because I already had enough planets to defend. This is a problem I still don't know how to handle

On the contrary, I think that's exactly how to handle it. Though for the Factory and ASC you could certainly try capturing and fortifying, since you can always hack the other copy if you lose yours. There are also a few fabs where you don't really care about keeping them - mk5 Spire Starship comes to mind (if you lose a ship with 1.1 million health, you've probably got bigger problems than whether you've managed to keep the fab alive).

Re: raid starships - totally agree! Raid mk2 are workhorses for me every game (I usually don't have the knowledge to afford mk3+ - I play a very small, minimal AIP style). Raid mk1 though ... the only uses I've found for them are hitting the least-defended coprocessor, or zipping over to tell a Neinzul Roaming Enclave to bugger off.

Nice game! Especially with that 1 AIP/30 min.  That's right up there with Astro-trains on the list of things I will never do in this game. 

[Ranakastrasz]

On the contrary, I think that's exactly how to handle it. Though for the Factory and ASC you could certainly try capturing and fortifying, since you can always hack the other copy if you lose yours. There are also a few fabs where you don't really care about keeping them - mk5 Spire Starship comes to mind (if you lose a ship with 1.1 million health, you've probably got bigger problems than whether you've managed to keep the fab alive).

Yea. I suppose that makes sense. Though you do lose such ships in harsh battles, I suppose it is likely that that means you fleet has been decimated several times over first, so yes, you probably DO have bigger issues.

Re: raid starships - totally agree! Raid mk2 are workhorses for me every game (I usually don't have the knowledge to afford mk3+ - I play a very small, minimal AIP style). Raid mk1 though ... the only uses I've found for them are hitting the least-defended coprocessor, or zipping over to tell a Neinzul Roaming Enclave to bugger off.

Yea. I don't know if the Raid engines would have been a bigger problem later, but you see horror stories about them, so I thought to error on the side of caution, and kept teching my raids up.
Each tier gets a new invulnerability, so you can't really use the lower tier ones later. T2 lets you ignore missile guard posts, and T3 lets you ignore anything that isn't tachyon-emmitting, and T4 lets you ignore gravity BS. Didn't matter this game, but yea.

The T1 and later T2 ended up in my main fleet. Both as a strike force while attacking, and to deal with Special forces Riots and similar. The shield ignore was the general idea though.

Nice game! Especially with that 1 AIP/30 min.  That's right up there with Astro-trains on the list of things I will never do in this game. 

Yea. I feel it is mandatory, if only as a, Don't sit around and do nothing, because the AI will notice you eventually. Its a very soft time limiter.
Honestly, I don't think the game lasted more than 8 hours, so 16 AIP at most came from that.