7/7 ALL Minor factions and AI plots (4/10)

[zoutzakje]

After beating the crosshatch at 9/9, I realized I had enough of both crosshatch and 9/9 games for now. So instead of increasing the overal difficulty with map type and difficulty, I decided to make use of minor factions and AI plots. All of them. The only thing not turned on is Broken Golems hard, which is on moderate instead. More exo's or more energy / AIP cost both makes the game more difficult. But I enjoy the fact that golems cost AIP much more than I enjoy exo's, so I play with moderate.
All factions and plots are 4/10. I will increase everything to 5/10 if I manage to beat this one and so on.

This game will be played on a good old Realistic map, which is probably one of the easiest yet still my favorite.
42079345 is the map seed.
120 planets (this game will take a while)
normal combat style
low caps
AI types are Golemite and Spire Hammer. I might be condemning myself even more with these opponents, but I wanted something slightly more interesting than just Vanilla.
Starting bonus ship type is parasites. Been ages since I played with them and I've been meaning to do so ever since all reclaimers got a buff (quite a while ago already).

I'm actually already more than 2 hours ingame while I'm typing all this and so far things are looking really good. I didn't think I was ever going to say this, but.... I think the RNG is my best friend right now.
At first I thought it was screwing me over again, as both of the bordering worlds were mk IV. But after I took them I did some more scouting and realized the RNG wants me to win. So far I found:

Super Terminal at Soul Army
Co-p's at Cybelle, Salamander and Water Element (just 1 more to find)
Spire Civilian Leaders at Mini-Goblin and The Fugutive
Broken Hive Golem at Harridan
Broken Black Widow Golem at Hare
Broken Cursed Golem at Stone Soldier
Broken Botnet Golem (yay) at Auto Repair Unit
Advanced factories at Evil Sorcerer and Wild Gorilla
ARS at Luna and Forge

Most of these targets are at 5 hops or less from my homeworld. The golems I've discovered so far are all I need to win a regular game (I can finally mess around with a botnet again). However, this is a game of madness so we'll see where this goes.

So far the chaos settings haven't given me to much trouble yet. Hybrids often crash themselves on my defenses, occasionally a bunch of roaming enclaves attack, some marauders came to say hello twice, and I just destroyed my very first NRC missile ever. Last time I played with those on they were broken and wouldn't launch their rockets. Not that it matters much now. A single plasma siege shot took care of that mk III lightning missile.
The most annoying thing so far are SCL. They have given me +30 AIP so far. Thank god I'm only playing at 7/7. They really really shouldn't fire off at 1 minute. It's nasty and makes little sense.

But besides that I'm doing good. I own 5 planets and am just 1 hop away from the botnet. It will soon be time to dominate the galaxy with zombies. The only thing that terrifies me is when I get to see the "an abnormally strong hybrid is somewhere in the galaxy" message. That's when I will start crapping my pants (figuratively of course).

[Wanderer]

I had played a similar game once, and the devourer was the one too many pieces that made it go from 'fun and nasty' to 'OMG'.  Looks like you'll have some fun with it though!

[thelonecarrot]

That is quite the fortunate starting posistion you've gained. I'd be almost suspicious of just how good it is.

I wonder though, won't the botnet Golem make your parasites redudant? Their functions don't compliment one each other very well given the lack of control over zombies contradicts the purpose of other reclaimers (ships you can retain and send where you want)

[zoutzakje]

when I started the game with parasites, I didn't expect I would find a botnet and certainly not one so close by. But no, I don't think this discovery will make my parasites useless. The botnet and my main fleet tends to go seperate ways very often. Zombies will defend my systems while enemy ships I reclaim with parasites will make my attacking fleet stronger.

And oh yeah, I completely forgot about the Devourer. It has already passed through my systems once or twice, but I kept a close eye on it. Luckily, It's terrorizing some other part of the galaxy now though.

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, figured I'd see some games like this   And yea, I think most people have had their fill of crosshatch 9/9 now; it certainly served a purpose of showing that people were quite capable of whupping the AI without extreme chokepointing (as well as a side shot of variety).  Thanks for humoring me on that one

Now to see what faction/plot eats you first...