I'm Really Regretting This

[Faulty Logic]

I wanted to do fallen spire again (I haven't since the starship buff).

100 planets, X, 1172876576 Saboteurs.
I'll be able to fit seven cities behind the center system.
7.009, Schizo, comp-vis, 2 champs, ultra-low caps, no swallowers.

10/10  Mad Bomber/Support Corps // Experimentalist/Support Corps
                                  ^ that's what I'm regretting          ^

Marauders 4
Resistance 10
Rebellions 4
Trader
Dyson 4
Golems (non-botnet) 4
Spirecraft 4
Enclaves 4
Fallen Spire 4
Civilians

Avengers
Hybrids 4/4
Astro trains 4/0
Shark B 4/0
Hunter 0/4
And something I forgot about

===Operation Double Time====
I instantly unlock milIII command stations for the economy and defense, along with enclave starships mkII. I conquer the first planet within a few minutes, and trigger the warp counter post on the next world.

First wave: nearly kills me. The addition of ~35 decloakers to a mad bomber wave is nasty. But I have the champs and the x2 boosted dronestream, so it is repelled.

By the second wave I have unlocked and build enclave starships III, and it's much easier.

Counterwave repelled, I have riotIs and the fighters up and running by now.

18 minutes in, I conquer my second planet. It has 3 pysite asteroids, which I quickly use to make jumpships, which kill the two data centers not in deepstrike range. I also unlock and build riotIIs.

I repel another two waves, then conquer my quadrants hub, bringing gametime to 35 minutes.

All mkI turrets placed. Missile turrets II-III unlocked and installed. Now I can jumpship deepstrike with no real worries. So I do, popping another 3 DCs, and killing 5 collaborators. While this is happening, my fleet is besieging an adjacent world with a civilian leader.

By 45 minutes, that world is free.
By the 1 hour mark, another 3 are. All data centers but one are gone, and AIP is 69.

Cleaning the threat and counterwave fallout takes 20 more minutes.
Building the fleet and conquering another planet takes me to 1:38. AIP 89
I get ready to remotely free the last leader. 1:45

At which point a wave from the second AI hits, having, in addition to ridiculous numbers of decloakers, six structures I've never seen before. They appear to be called "Beachheads." Combined with the speed booster drones and heavy bomber starships, they took out a command center.

This triggered the shark.
That triggered the shark again.
Checkmate.

I'll go back to last save (attached) next session.

Observations
Neinzul enclaves are really strong. A lot of that is because enemies target the drones over the ships.
I should not have enabled Support Corps on both AI. Especially the one opposite the Mad Bomber.
Astro trains are really annoying.
Dire infiltration guardians don't look friendly (fortunately, militaryIIIs have tachyons).
I have apparently offended Revelus, god of decloakers. I've had to kill ~350 of his minions so far.

P4: will conquer, P6: will put spire city (and take neighbors) State of empire:

[keith.lamothe]

First wave: nearly kills me.

Sounds like the beginning of a beautiful friendenemyship

At which point a wave from the second AI hits, having, in addition to ridiculous numbers of decloakers, six structures I've never seen before. They appear to be called "Beachheads."

I thought those only come from the beachheads plot... those are murdercheese, generally unused due to the lack of granularity between "off" and "youdienow" (which I hope to rectify at some point).  Combined with shark on high diff I would normally think that unwinnable.

This triggered the shark.
That triggered the shark again.
Checkmate.

Yep, the shark sure is jumpy.

Neinzul enclaves are really strong. A lot of that is because enemies target the drones over the ships.

Interesting, I had amended the autotargeting logic to de-prioritize drones for most stuff (I think railclusters and others particularly well suited to drone swatting continue to consider them a delicacy).

I have apparently offended Revelus, god of decloakers. I've had to kill ~350 of his minions so far.

It's, uh, entirely possible that the experimentalist and/or support corps attributes never got certain memos about appropriate quantities.  Though I thought they had.

[Faulty Logic]

I thought those only come from the beachheads plot

They do, that was the "something I forgot about." Addendum: "until it was too late."

Combined with shark on high diff I would normally think that unwinnable.

*cracks knuckles*

Interesting, I had amended the autotargeting logic to de-prioritize drones for most stuff (I think railclusters and others particularly well suited to drone swatting continue to consider them a delicacy).

Oh, they behave fine in knife-fight ranges, going for the enclave, but they always shoot at a drone before they get in range of the ship. Then the other drones kill it before it reloads. I worded that unclearly, sorry.

[keith.lamothe]

Combined with shark on high diff I would normally think that unwinnable.

*cracks knuckles*

Hence my use of "normally", i.e. the observation has no bearing in your case.

Oh, they behave fine in knife-fight ranges, going for the enclave, but they always shoot at a drone before they get in range of the ship. Then the other drones kill it before it reloads. I worded that unclearly, sorry.

Ah, yea, there is that.  Basically there's no AI mechanism for "hold fire, despite having valid targets in range", since detecting a case where that's clearly a good idea is... tricky, at best.  Particularly given how human player actions might present a "good idea to hold fire" situation and then yoink it back at the last second via cloaking, ffs, etc.  All the while the drones are having an uncontested field day.

Besides, valid targets look too juicy.

[Faulty Logic]

===Operation Consolidation====

I freed the last leader, dealt with the threat and counterwave fallout, and knocked most of the defenders and guard posts off the central planet. Also popped the last data center.

2 waves also happened during this period, with ~70 and ~100 decloakers. One had a beachhead, but I sent in the transport sponge, then the fleet (tazing). I targeted the beachheads, killing them before the wave really got moving. Then the turrets and fleet mopped up the non-beachhead parts of the wave.

The two-hour mark arrives, triggering the civilians, and AIP goes down to 94. I instantly colonize one of the civilian worlds, bringing it to 91.

CPA: 900 ships.
Unlocked saboteurs II-III, fortresses. Placed two forts (half-off thanks to an SF post) on my new planet (the one connecting my quadrant to the center).
Wave: 600 ships, synchronizing.
The CPA resolves into one big carrier. It arrives and deploys exactly when the wave does.
1 second later, the 1500 ships are dead. Go spire warheads.

Conquered center planet, gate-raided so waves must go there.
Repaired the artillery golem that came with the center planet.

It's peaceful for a while. I do two nebulae while I transfer fortifications. Unlock gravity turrets.

===Operation Exogalactic Trouble====

The first exo will arrive soon. I build lots of spirecraft rams, and put my golems on the center planet, to draw golem-targeting exos through there. My mobile fleet is on my quadrant hub.

Exo resolves into golem-led groups. Awesome. Repelled with no irreplaceable losses.

I spend the time between the first and second exos achieving cruiser size, placing the modular forts and other fortifications (OMDs are worth building now), and conquering all but one planet in my quadrant. That planet has 5 warp counter posts, so I just gate-raid it.

Design-hacked for Spire Corvettes.
Unlocked HBCIIis, LaserIIIs, FortIIIs, GravIII, FFIIIs, CorvetteIIIs, FighterIIIs

Second exo resolves to an HKIII+shields and some irrelevant groups. No problem (artillery golem took out the shield bearers, implosions heavily damaged the HK, turrets finished it).

Spend about an hour and a half dealing with that last infuriating planet.

But by the 10-hour mark, AIP is down to 218, I have every planet in my quadrant, and can begin FS.

[keith.lamothe]

But by the 10-hour mark ( ... ) can begin FS.

So much for the Galactic Fricassee recipe saying "prep time 30 min."

That center planet's gotta be wondering by now.  "Why is there a giant bullseye painted on all my major continents?"

[Draco18s]

But by the 10-hour mark ( ... ) can begin FS.

So much for the Galactic Fricassee recipe saying "prep time 30 min."

That center planet's gotta be wondering by now.  "Why is there a giant bullseye painted on all my major continents?"

Those aren't bullseyes, those are transmutation circles.

[Faulty Logic]

===Operation First Contact====

There is a colony rebellion with 60 minutes left on the timer, on a black widow world, six jumps away. I'd like to have a decent spire fleet for that expedition (my actual fleet is kind of pathetic).

Decent means two cities. 4 frigates is nice. A cruiser, 2 destroyers, and 12 frigates is a solid addition to any fleet not focused on speed. But with the second city, you get a fleet that can kill planets on its own.

First shard recovered. Receiver built. Refugees recovered. Outpost built. Second shard recovered. First city built. Second city shard recovered. Second city built. 5-shipyard spire fleet built. No problem.

20 minutes left. I take the spire fleet, the nebula fleet, and the enclave and scout starships.
Jump-pop the command center to minimize deepstrike time.

Pop the fleet into AI space. Oh look. Hybrids. Destroying them caused some casualties. Repaired and set out again, 16 minutes left.

It's quite smooth from there, aside from a close call with a nuclear eye.

Rebels freed. I repair the widow and build the resistance fleet, then decolonize.

It's about 11:30 now.

===Operation Urbanization====

Cities three and four are not an issue. However, I took actual significant damage establishing the fourth hub, so I need to beef up my chokepoint even more before building the fifth city/capitol.

So I conquer the entire upper right quadrant. My quadrants were fairly poor in terms of capturables. In total, I got:
1 artillery golem
2 cursed golems
1 core saboteur fab (lost)
1 ARS (vampires. Bah.)
2 advanced factories
3 turret controllers: missile, lightning, MLRS
1 naturally occuring Zgen (I built another one)
4 civilian leaders
Plentiful R/P/X asteroids, 4 E (attritioners, penetrator), 1 A (attritioner)
On 32 captured planets.
I did get a widow and colony rebellion on the one outlying system, though.

Unlocked: all turrets except lightning, flak, tractors and tachyons.
All forcefields.
All forts.

And I have 19,000 k left.

My resources have gone into trader toys:
radar jammer II
black hole machine
armor inhibitor
2 OMDs (actually good now)
ZPG
Superfort (under construction, at 36%)

For most of the exos and waves, its like shooting fish in a barrel. Robotic, murderous fish in a barrel of projected artificial gravity, but still. RadarII+ gravIIIs is awesome.

14:25.

I do 4 k-hacks and two nebulae while I pour economy after economy into the superfort. I also steal a mkV and mkIV attritioner from AI space.

Even with a four-city fleet, I'm diligently avoiding the special forces. They have 11,000 ships (ultra-low caps) and 70 shadow frigates. Unfortunately, they are in the interesting half of the galaxy.

At 16:10 the superfort completes.

Built fifth city and the galactic capitol. Unlocked battleships, dreadnoughts, RiotIIIs, spire ffs mkIV, spire beam cannon mkIV, and spire colony ship.

New ships built by 16:30

===Operation Dread Naught====

Naught but the special forces, that is.

I go extract an archive in the safe half of the galaxy, jumping past the double CRE core world.
Economies go into spirecraft. By the time the archive finishes, I have full caps of rams I-III, siege towers I-III, shield bearers I-II, martyrs II-III, implosions I-III (+1 mkIV), and attritioners I-V. I also have eight jumpships.

Unlocked flagshipsII-III, siege starshipsII-III, and zenith and spire starships mkI.

For the first time, a timed exo does significant damage on my chokepoint, wiping about half the spire fleet, and a cap of mkI spire shields. But with an economy of ~5000 each of metal and crystal, I don't really have to worry about it. Speaking of econ, I built the armor booster, and some mercs.

It is a reminder to keep moving, though.

Now for those special forces. I take the 5 city spire fleet, the nebula fleet, the rebel fleet, and all my starships. And the twelve martyrs mkII.

I needed every one of them, plus wormhole and jumpship shenanigans, but the special forces are dead by the 18 hour mark. You know you let the AI group too many ships on a planet when you have to kite with the FS capital fleet. Hunter4's single HK was laughable.

Now I've unlocked the interesting half of the galaxy:
Another rebellion I have to save (should be some benefit for the second, somehow)
4 ARSs, contents still unknown.
4 golems (2 arti 1 regen 1 hive).
A starIV constructor to hack.
The other core turret controllers to hack.
A shield bearer five fabricator to hack.
Access to 4 new nebulae.
Another archive.
The rest of the rare asteroids (plentiful ebonite, 5 adamantite, 2 titanite).

Repelled FS exo, then Golem/spirecraft exos. They did not synchronize, despite the golem/spirecraft exo being at 92% when the other launched.

I love it when the AI invests in high-mark H/Ks. They implode at the same rate as everything else, and cost a lot more. The worst exo loadouts are ones with tons of medium-sized stuff.

Refleeted, and it's 18:30.
Built 6th and 7th cities with no issue, and filled out the spire fleet.
19:30
Beachhead waves are no problem now, the FS fleet just vaporizes them.

===Operation Loot the Galaxy====

Took regen golem world to avoid any deepstrike. Repaired it.

Took colony world and an ARS world (hydra).

Achieved battleship size, vastly increasing nebula fleet.

Took two ARS worlds, (Youngling commando, tractor platform).

Returned to repel latest batch of exos.


Took Artillery golem world. That took some doing, including a couple sabotage hacks to remove a raid engine and black hole machine.

Took Hive golem world.

Hacked a fabricator for shield bearer Vs.

Took last ARS (mirrors) which also comes with an artillery golem.

I'm not actually keeping these planets, I just warp in, kill everything, establish a colony, suck out all the k, and decolonize.

Speaking of k:
Unlocked hydras, mirrors, commandos, and spire/zenith starships to mkIII.

The special forces spawn insanely fast and are ridiculously big. Though this might admittedly have something to do with the 45 special forces posts on my/neutral planets.

I hacked an advanced starship constructor before the next exo group.
A cpa comes and coordinates the three nearly-full exos, adding 8000 ships of its own. Then the threatfleet and hybrids pour in. And a wave, because why not. The widow golem was lost in the fray.

Refleeted.

I spend a lot of time preparing. I hacked, flash-colonized a couple core turret controllers, and stole lots of asteroids. The final shard recovery was not an issue. To give you an idea of my economy, I ended up at mercenary caps, running 38 matter converters.

The final matchup:

I have unlocked:
FLEET: Fighters, mirrors, youngling commandos, saboteurs, blade spawners, and hydras to mkIII(IV). I also have caps of bombers and frigates II-III from leeches, and some random mkIs.
STAR: Flagship, Zenith, Spire, Seige, Enclave, Riot, Corvettes to III(IV).
ECON: harvester IIIs, milIIIs, engiIIIs
SUP: All forts, all forcefields, all mines.
Turrets: All turrets but spiders, tractors, tachyons, flak and lightning.

Fast Fleet:
Full rebel caps, full double nebula caps, twenty-five reclaimed gatlings, two shadow battleships.

Spire Fleet: 7 cities.

Golems: 3 artillery, 3 cursed, 1 regen, 1 hive.

Spirecraft:
All possible attritioners.
All possible penetrators.
All possible implosion artilleries.
All possible shield bearers except for 2 mkIVs.
All possible rams except mark V
Siege towers I-III

And from the Zenith trader, everything but ion cannon or counterspies on the chokepoint.

At 25 hours, I push the button. First, the AI has to get through this:

Welcome to computer-hell, AI. The system is, appropriately, called Divide By Zero


Then a milIII with Core Needler/MLRS/Laser/Lightning/Missile/Sniper/Spider turrets and miniforts, mines, gravity turrets, and a spacedock youngling crank.

Then a milIII with all that plus a full spire city (no shipyards) with galactic capital and missile silo.

Two more planets like the first after the choke.

Then another spire city, minus the capital.

Then they're home, which of course also has the per planet defenses, a milIII substation, and the spire refugee outpost.

===Operation Hold the Line====

I press the button, building the transceiver essentially instantly, thanks to distribution nodes and ion cannon.

First few minutes are barely noticeable.
The first ten minutes are no problem.

I replace low-level rams and shields in the lull. I open a distribution node to rebuild the sixteen frigates I lost. I also replace the fleetships back to cap.
The exo at fifteen minutes was nasty. A group of H-KIII and a bunch of golems got through to my auxiliary cluster. A full hive, the six-point city, penetrators, and core turrets kills it before it causes energy problems.

Repaired to about 80% of the original fleet.
Ten minutes to go. Wave declares, will synchronize.
It brought beachheads.
That's why I keep spare penetrators.

But the exo still inflicts severe casualties. Opening the rest of the distribution nodes, I repair to ~60% of the original fleet.

5 minutes left. If this exo doesn't break through, the AI won't have time to get to me.
The twenty H/KIIIs do kill most my fleet, but the choke held.

No additional exos before imperial arrival. Victory at 26 hours. I'll post observations later, but one thing: the subspace pulse should destroy the warp counter posts as well as the core shield generators.

State of Empire:

[Diazo]

A cpa comes and coordinates the three nearly-full exos, adding 8000 ships of its own. Then the threatfleet and hybrids pour in. And a wave, because why not. The widow golem was lost in the fray.

Hehe, nice.

I was giggling through my read of this. I outright laughed  at the quoted part.

An 8000 strong CPA on it's own with nothing else boosting it? That's a serious possibility of losing the game right there for me.

You add it on as a side note to everything else that is going on and essentially laugh it off. You did lose a Golem so it was not without pain, but I still had to laugh.

Just goes to show how this game scales. I play smaller single HW games with the super weapons off.

You probably killed more AI ships in the first 5 hours of your game then the AI spawns total in one of my games.

Good job. 

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Unstoppable, as usual   Goodness, shark, beachheads, 10/10, special forces... and it was probably excited that it managed to bag a single golem in the end.



Exception: Divide By Zero attemp...

Reevaluating...

Continuing With Division By Zero


(boom)

[TechSY730]

Ah, the joys of "super chokepoints" combined with a map geometry that enforces any possible enemy forces through said chokepoint.

In any case, even with the map geometry being completely abused in your favor (to cheese levels IMO ), great job on the victory. It's not easy trying to hold off that amount of stuff that 10/10 throws at you in any case (short of cheats), or even run it.


Having the AI blow up its own warp counter attack posts over the course of the transceiver countdown is a cool idea.

[Faulty Logic]

An 8000 strong CPA on it's own with nothing else boosting it? That's a serious possibility of losing the game right there for me.

You add it on as a side note to everything else that is going on and essentially laugh it off. You did lose a Golem so it was not without pain, but I still had to laugh.

Well, my economy was so strong, and I had so many asteroids, that I look at incoming fleetships, divide by a thousand, and spend that many martyrs.

In any case, even with the map geometry being completely abused in your favor (to cheese levels IMO )

Oh yes. Quite guilty here. In my defense, I don't think 10/10 EXO victory is possible without a single chokepoint.

Having the AI blow up its own warp counter attack posts over the course of the transceiver countdown is a cool idea.

That is not what I meant. I meant that the "subspace pulse" kills the warp counters with no counterwaves.

Having the AI spend its counter posts during the EXO event would just encourage scouring the galaxy of counter posts, which would be hours of tedium.

Observations

Golems have really suffered in comparison to standard stuff.

Spirecraft have too, but they are still so flexible it isn't really a problem in their case.

The human FS fleet could use a bit of a buff relative to standard stuff as well.

Exos should call CPAs, rather than the other way round. The bigger exo should call smaller ones.

Did someone tweak the cargo train spawn rate? I got to 26 hours without a construction project reaching 50%.

The AI will not deliberately attack a neutral planet with an undefended irreplaceable, though if it's ships end up there by chance, it will destroy said irreplaceable.

Fortress remains can be exploited for economic purposes. I think they just shouldn't leave remains, though in that case their price should come down.

Enclave starships need a whack with the nerfbat. A small hit to drone speed, maybe?
Also, the drones shouldn't cost energy. (Nor should their deaths trigger the AI's "you've lost a lot of ships" taunt.)

For spirecraft when an asteroid can produce multiple craft, it is easy to exceed the ship cap.

Trains still have their really annoying 750-range tachyon emission. All this does is increase micro on cloaked missions.

Game crashed 3 times over the course of this campaign, all during big battles. Attached crash logs in case that helps.