---[Operation ...Begins With An Armored Warhead]---Smash Alpha Centauri, then withdraw as the SF with it's just-spawned H/K come running... and they keep going? Right on through Alpha, past Hadar with the Spire Archive, finally settling on Lacaille. Um. That wasn't supposed to happen, they were supposed to thoroughly investigate Alpha Centauri so I could sling this Armored warhead at the H/K and Lightning down the Missile guardians just like the last three times... Not park on a core world with an Attritioner where I can't reach them.
Also they just cut themselves off from the rest of the map -- doesn't the AI get weird when that happens? Will they plow through Alpha Centauri when I colonise it to escape? Will they warp back home somehow? Maybe I can get their attention by trashing Hadar, the SF likes Spire Archives, right?
They didn't take the bait.
Well, hell. At least I have a Spire Archive now, which is nice. But the SF has got to go, I can't have them rushing in when I attack Antares. What to do... surely they'll come out when I poke at Asterope the core world in my way. I mull this over while I drain the K from my two new planets and go on a new starship and bomber building spree (I just unlocked Bombers II and III finally). I do a quick harassing jab at the core world to smash tachyon posts and the OMD and WI, successfully drawing the H/K out. It gets exploded as planned, along with all the Missile guardians.
But before I can finish off the giant cloud of Riots, the Reserves deploy, and wow they are numerous -- not playing against a Reservist, I haven't had a chance to bleed the Reserves at all yet. I bail for the moment as one of my transports just had a critical hull integrity issue and spilled Neinzul carriers all over the floor. The Botnet also just lost a headlight and I am in no mood. At least I got rid of everything but the Riots, damn their AOE immunity, they're like big missile frigates. Suppose I will have to chew those apart with some hit and runs.
Hate.Right about now is when the AI deploys its own Operation Tarbaby and declares a 4.7K CPA. A few minutes later it adds a 700 ship wave. A few minutes after that, it adds another wave of similar size, all synced, for a total of over 6K ships queued up in a pending attack.
Not only is this annoying as hell, it also delays my starting the first homeworld assault AGAIN. The enemy seems to have settled on trying to stall me to death by dragging things out until the auto-AIP eventually kills me. Speaking of AIP, it's 350ish.
I react poorly to this, as you might expect. You can probably guess what form my reaction is going to take.
While I wait, I study Black's homeworld, carefully measuring distances between the cluster of the Shredder post, the Grav post, and one of the lesser posts that are all bunched in a triangle. They're about 11K units apart. I review the ranges on my warheads. The Mk. II Armored has a range of 12K units, and enough damage to obliterate all 3 in one shot. I smile and queue one up.
A bunch of carrier whack a mole goes here as I bomb most of the CPA to ash in various places around the galaxy with all the Mk. I Lightnings I have scattered around in advantageous places, along with an exceptionally large threatball that's positioning was telegraphing that it was going to join the now-destroyed carrier storming of Auva. About 800 ships of the CPA in 2 carriers were unreachable, but the number is reduced enough I no longer care, they'll die on my turret lines whenever they finally poke their heads up.
I also notice while tracking carriers the answer to my question about what happens to the SF if it gets itself cut off from the rest of the map. It turns into threat and the AI begins building a new SF. Huh. It's also grown so large that it is now loading it into carriers, all on Triton. It's already over 1500 ships in carriers and climbing rapidly. That's not good.
A thought. I highlight a carrier.
Carriers can be nuked. If/when it loads its next H/K and billion Riots into one (can it do that?), I can nuke the unnukeable, assuming I can't reach it with a standard warhead.
Valuable data...
Anyway, back to business.
A big chunk of the Threatfleet and former CPA carriers try to sneak onto Alpha Centauri while I'm busy to stab me in the back. (Side note -- my gigantic fleet is parked in cloaked transports only two hops away, yet it feels brave enough to attack -- I suspect since my stuff is parked on a huge hostile planet and has been for several minutes, the AI is assuming that my fleet is occupied and not available to defend, even though no shots are being fired. AI exploitation point detected!) I introduce it to the BNG and a LOT of Mk.V turrets.
Bunch of hit and run nibbling at the SF-turned-Threat on the core world, I do not need 70-odd Riots and other odds and ends biting my arse while I'm trying to murder Black. Some of it involves Assassination Transports, some of it involves very fast pop in/out with the Botnet after my ATs lured reclaimables near the wormhole. It also involves one Lightning warhead Mk.I because I was getting annoyed.
Got it down to about 15 Riots and a few Saboteurs (its most recent unlock, I'm not pleased, these can't be reclaimed in any fashion -- AI has Parasites, Youngling Shrikes (forgot to mention them ages ago), and now Saboteurs, clearly trying to cramp my BNG's style), good enough. My trigger finger is getting itchy and I have a pile of warheads with Black's name on them. I also would prefer to win before the next CPA because that's going to hurt, I'm at the 12 hour mark.
---[Operation Paint It Black!]---Right off the bat I find out something annoying as hell -- Warhead Interceptors seem to be immune to warhead damage, even if you scrap one right on its lap before it can fire.
Hate. So much for picking it off without exposing my fleet to the Grav post, then wiping the Grav and its two neighbors with an Armored warhead, then bringing in the fleet. No plan survives contact with the enemy as they say. Just means I go to Plan B:
OVERKILL.
No, I don't nuke it. I want that ZPG.
Send in the ATs and assassinate the WI, then tell them to haul ass across the grav well away from the Grav post and its drones, dragging the Reserve in its wake. Suits me fine, it keeps all that crap away from the warheads that are now streaking towards the Grav post and the rear of the reserve.
The ATs kite the reserve, firing on the Arachnid post, one of them popping. It was the one mostly full of Teleraiders, which is exactly which one I wanted to go first. The Teleraiders get sicced on the OMD on the far side of the planet while the few other ships inside are tossed into another bus with room. The Lightning I hits the reserve from behind, vaporizing half of it, while the Teleraiders do their thing to the OMD and the Grav post and its neighbors are firmly deleted from existence.
A Reprisal Wave Mk.I queues up and fires, sending about 2.5K ships for Auva (that's about twice as big as it would have been on 7/7 difficulty) from what it managed to fry before I could reload it in another transport (mostly a Mk.I Flagship and a Mk.I Plasma Siege, along with some Infiltrators). No problem, I had a warhead waiting. 8 minutes left on the exo clock.
The Arachnid post goes down but another bus explodes. Ok then, you asked for it Black Knight. I unload the whole fleet and open fire on everything that moves. My armada vastly outguns Black's at this point.
Right around then, the Hacker loaded in a bus emerges from the wormhole. I have no intention of dealing with that stupid Fort III toe to toe -- ain't nobody got time for that. I Sabotage hack it, then turn the fleet loose on the two Core FFs. This is when it is nice to have a cap of Mk.V Infiltrators, Plasma Sieges I-IV, and Spire Corvettes mostly fitted with the Plasma Siege modules. I like big bombs and I cannot lie.
That combo, the Plasmas and Spire Corvette pseudo-Plasmas, obliterates the 5M hitpoints worth of FF in seconds. I
like these. Black's home command gets to admire the stars without the FFs obscuring them for a few frames before it suffers a critical existence failure.
Total time -- about five and a half minutes to level Black's homeworld, and only a Mk.I reprisal tripped, mostly from nonessential ships. I feel good about how today went.
Too bad White won't go down so easy I'm sure. Then again, for White I have Nukes, and a truckload of unopened Zenith Reserves I've been holding for just this moment.
Antares gets speed-colonized and I wallow in the glorious excess of power from having a second ZPG to my name.
Current AIP 407. Waves are still no problem, but hot damn the SF is growing fast at this level. Threat is also skyrocketing seemingly on its own, I assume I'm getting some overflow from planets reinforcing, or else the zombies are frolicking on Mr. Wilson's lawn again. Oh well, I have Mk.V turrets for a reason.
ETA -- Look how insane the SF is now!!! 45 minutes since the last SF "Trouble Brewing" screenshot and it has gone from ~1500 in carriers to 3000 in carriers plus another ~1800 loose ships! I wish I knew what the actual true strength point value of this really was, if it was less than 50K I would have eaten my hat.
---[Best Laid Plans Of AIs And Men]---Time for the final staging, prep, and planning. With how Alioth is within striking distance of Kochab, ideally I'd like to just clear a path through Damasen and Triton rather than bother with capturing one of them. It's a bit of a hike but it would save me time, which I'm placing a premium on at this point, with how the hornet's nest has been authoritatively stirred with Antares's leveling.
First things first, I queue up a pair of Mk.I Armored warheads. I'm going to use one on each Wrath Lance. I would have liked to have gotten a third, but it's taking too long, especially as I have to stop a few times to redirect lesser warheads to protect other planets. I also spool up a couple of regular Lightnings for good measure, party favors for the strategic reserve. And a Mk.I Nuke.
Just kidding, I'm building two Mk.I Nukes.
I unlock Cloaker IIs for more warhead transporting goodness so I can keep the Mk.Is available to shuttle bombs between Iota and Yed, if needed, and Nekkar/Pi Mensae.
I contemplate what to do with my last 3000K. My first impulse is to unlock more starships for MOAR OFFENSE, then I glance at the Threatmeter and contemplate how big the waves and CPAs are getting, and the fact that I will probably have to absorb two Core Raid Engine waves. I unlock Grav. IIIs and Needler IIs, zeroing out the K bank account. I could hack for more, but that will take time, and my fleet and BNG are at opposite ends of the galaxy. I'll have to be content with the warm fuzzy inducing number of Mk.IV starships I already have. I would have liked to have unlocked more Teleraiders, but it's just not in the cards.
I also tell the Rebel Colony to finish cranking out the rest of the caps of their ships. Wish these were transportable (their description needs updating, it doesn't list Immune to Transport). Also, they're Blind, which is strange.
Miscellaneous waves and border aggression happen here while I wait for stuff to build. It all dies. Some of it becomes zombies. I laugh as the "We Can Absorb This" achievement unlocks from zombies chewing on the neighbors, apparently zombies count for it, as I have otherwise lost only a few handfuls of fleetships and disposable Raidstars this entire game. I also roll some empty transports from Vega around the map to Alioth, scooping up two Mk.IV Zenith Reserves, a Mk.III, and a Mk.I, the latter because it was on the way anyway and I still had some seats free on the bus. Quick boost of about 6K to my total fleet strength.
Ok, finally all that prep is done, time to take down the White Knight. It's going to hurt, but I have a fleet worth over 40K strength and enough warheads to create my very own Cuban Missile Crisis, and it's the end of the match so I can throw restraint completely out the window.
I can DO this.
This is right around when everything, absolutely everything, goes completely and utterly to hell.
---[End Transmission 11]---
