AI 10/10 Slapfest

[Wanderer]

Alright, since the AI 10/10 discussion has been going for a bit, I figure I'll do a blow by blow AAR.  This will be piecemeal or I'll forget too many things.

100 world map, AI is Vanilla and Mine Enthusiast.  Special ship is Eyebots. 

I'll edit with the seed and options later <Note to self>

First we start up with standard build.  Warp Sensor and grav turrets for research.  Start mass producing all Mk1s (50 fighter/10 bomber/5 frigate/5 eyebot, to balance off the resource drain).  Homeworld is a 5 metal/8 crystal repository, with three wormhole connections.  Excellent for my secondary units.  Also build a second research I, and put up the warp sensor.

I get the full mk1 fleet up when the first enemies start hitting at 8 mins.  Bomber fleet.  Oh skippee.  A scout of the local systems show no cloakers yet.  I've got 2 gravs up near the homebase to cover.  They're coming in from the furthest wormhole so I've got time, but they don't split, they run enmasse.  Well, the raid and leech get out in front so we whack those and then take out the bomber fleet.  I research up Mk II eyebots during this and get them producing as well.

Second fleet arrives, it's fighters.  No problem.  I thought.  They come in a the closest wormhole.  They almost get past the grav well because once again my fleet's chasing down Raid Starships.  The fighters chew up my bomber fleet as expected but we get this stopped.  I rebuild and start light starship and riot I production. 

I begin harassment of the local Mk III system hanging off the furthest wormhole with the eyebots.  I get them in, take out a guardpost, kill the locals, and begin the next one.  Another wave is coming in.  I back off the eyebots and get in position to handle them.  Electric Frigs.  Not really a huge deal since I'm still AIP 10.  Block that off and realize I'm going to need more firepower.  Research up Riot II for tazer defense.  I've got the Riots prebuilt in my save settings but the build is 2xshield, 1x tazer, 4xMGs.  Can only get 3 (so used to multi-homeworld, ugh).  3's not enough to lock a wave but it'll help.

At 22 minutes or so I bring the majority of my fleet, with starships, into the Mk III world (Broken Ridge) and proceed to clear it.  I've dealt with a bit of bleed off from it after killing two guard posts.  Cleared around 26 mins in.  Research Econ II station and build one in the new system, turning off all production to speed the construction (I've had my econ perma-flatlined).

I'm still rebuilding the fleet when a wave announcement pops for the new system.  Bombers, 500 or so.  Slap a FF up on the inbound gate to protect my Riot II tazer fleet.  Get everyone in position.  Wave comes in, and we slow it down, but not enough.  I'm not fully up on my Riot IIs (only had 2) and the FF dropped like a stone.  The wave blows past my defensive ff and gets into the home system.  This is luckily the 'long' run.

I manage to finish killing them as they're pounding on the north side of my ff and blowing up my resource converters.  My engis are able to get very small repairs in off and on for the home FF and that saves me.  I need more fleet power.  Bomber IIs research and begin production.

Rebuild new system, and keep my head down for a few minutes till ~40M.  Begin harassment of Mk II system connected to homeworld and recently taken system.  Take about half the guard posts out and most of the locals when another wave is announced.  Missile Frigates in the homeworld.

That wave wrecked me.  Without tazer power I couldn't stop them.  Save Scum.

Go back to what I was doing, retaking the 2nd core world (Marik), and blow it out in a hurry.  I don't pop the cmd center yet, I want to wait a wave.  I've got 5500 research and I've started using Research IIs for their cloak, I expect the outer systems to fall and need rebuilding, but it's one less headache.

My systems are all running 10 Basics, 5 LRM, 5 Snipers, and 5 Lasers.  Not a lot but its a deterrent.  I block the next wave, about 120 Electric Frigates without an issue on the homeworld.  I take out Marik and build up another Econ II.

~45 minutes now. I start doing a little deeper scouting.  Directly east of me is the first of two worlds for the whipping boy, and it's homeworld connected.  To my west is a Mk III and a Mk IV... and the IV's got a Fact IV on it.  I can't use it yet but what a lovely place to have a Fact IV, buried in the backfield.  I decide to leave that Mk II planet hanging off the homeworld and start working west.

First, a full rebuild of the fleet, and start getting bomber starships and raid starships going.  Also research up Mk II Fighters and Missile Frigs.  I'm going to need the firepower for 3 world wave defenses and to be able to handle the buildup in the first of the two western worlds.  The Mk III world is Storyville and Scooby, the Mk IV, has my factory IV.  Storyville is sitting at around 350 Mk III units, and has 3 Ion Cannons.

I'm fully built up at around 55 mins.  I take EVERYONE into the front gate of Storyville as a distraction and get my raids through right behind them.  Pause, let the raids get loose on direct attacks for the ions.  Once they're clear of the front door war, I pull my ships back out to fight on my own ground instead of getting pounded by ions. 

It works, the threat bait gets about 150 of their ships to pour into Broken Ridge piecemeal and I shatter them as they come in.  A Warp Guardian III came through and it took a while to thump down, but otherwise we're good.  My 3 Raid Starships only got two of the ion cannons, but it's a start.

At 1:10 I'm rebuilding from destroying the brunt of that and losing some Raid Is and Riot Is, as well as 50 or so fleet ships.  I'll wait for a wave and then hit Storyville again, take down the last ion and pop a few of the tach emitters.  Once those are gone I can raid with the eyebots for a while, and deal with spillover on my own territory.  I should take the world ~1:30 or so, and I'll try to get into Scooby and nerf it before it can build up.

My next research will probably be fortresses.  I'm going to need them later for K-Raids and I'm going to start running low on Knowledge steals shortly.  I'd like to get eyebots up to III so the Fact IV can produce something useful and so I have a good, strong raiding party.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, and I've turned on advanced logging so I don't forget who hit what again. :-)

[Wanderer]

2nd Hour:

Seed:1356504120 Simple Conquest 100 world | All ship types | Normal, normal, High, Full Fog | Human Rebellions, Human Resistance Fighters, Dyson Sphere | No special plots | 0 AI Gain every 0.



So, immediately following the rebuilding, I'm forced to savescum twice against a missile frigate wave.  1100 the first time, 950 the second.  With no tazers to balance off the fleet numbers because frigs are immune, (my main fleet is ~650 units, mixed Mk 1 and 2), I can't stop those waves.

Finally get them to stop sending missile frigs and send a mass of armor ships.  750 of them on the homeworld.  Okay, I can deal with that.  Those ships take FOREVER to kill and another wave of bombers (600) hits Marik while I'm still trying to grind my way through all those armor ships.  I've got about 2/3s of my fleet when we're done and I head up to Marik to try to intercept the bomber fleet.

I get there as the bomber fleet is pounding away on the FF protecting the station.  Needless to say, the FF fell in almost no time flat.  I'm able to kill 200 or so before they pour through the gate into the homeworld after wrecking the cmd station.  I follow them through on FRD and finish cleanup.  I'm micro'ing my tazer Riots nearest the largest crowd of ships at all times, and that's now a constant theme in any wave defense.

Finish that, head back to Marik, clean up the stragglers and rebuild the econ II station.

As I start to rebuild the wise guys send 140 fighters at me in a wave.  Bah.  Squish.

That took a lot of my ships so I get my fleet rebuilt turning off starships for a bit.  I send my guys up to Storyville and pull some more enemies through to Broken Ridge to keep them from building heavily.  I also get my raid starships out and they take out the last ion and a guardpost, but die before doing much else.

Another wave is coming in at the homeworld so I retreat my main units and leave my eyebots behind when the 50 or so threat finally decide to visit Broken Ridge.  Just shy of 400 fighters are coming in, so I figure a fleet split won't wreck me.  It's now 1:30 gametime and I'm behind schedule.  Dammit.

Block the wave and most of my primary fleet is built.  Turn back on starships and get moving on Storyville.  I land on the wormhole and clear off about 100 Mk III ships, then turn and realize I hadn't seen a Counter III just sitting there.  Grr.

I pop it, figuring might as well get it out of the way early.  It's one less guardpost for them and I'm going to need to clear it anyway.

457 mixed ships on the homeworld.  Oh joy.

Code: [Select]

Wave total ships: 457
TypesForDirectAdd count by type:
BomberIII => 75
FighterIII => 120
ElectricShuttleIII => 32
ArmorShipIII => 99
Cruiser => 128
LeechStarshipIII => 1
WarbirdStarship => 1
DreadnoughtIII => 1

I pull back and figure a rebuild of the fleet's in order, since I lost half the fleet engaging Storyville.  Besides, with that Mk III wave coming in I don't need to push my luck, even if it's going to push time.

So about 5 minutes before it lands an electric shuttle wave (145 of them) announces for Broken Ridge.  Grr.  Alright, fall back, deal with the wave, head back to homeworld.  Now I'm all sorts of out of position and it's 2.5 to go.  I get in position near the home station and wait.  Mini-wave of 42 electrics are coming into Marik now.  Heck with it, that's not the  important fight anymore.  Either the minor defenses will hold them back or they won't (probably won't).  I've got the starship builder turned off again and I'm just trying to pump my main fleet back into strength.

Counter hits, and I'm able to slow and then stop it.  The siege III in the back actually took out one of my little +1 AI boosters under the home shield.  D'oh!  Most of 'em survived though and I got the main FF back up once I slowed down the lead of the wave.  Fleet's been cut in half but it's semi-viable if a wave comes in.  It's now 1:45.

I'm rebuilding still and a 517 Space tank wave announces for the homeworld.  Well, alright then, we're sitting right here, come get some!  About this time I noticed Marik's mini defenses apparently blocked off the electric mayhem.  My one raid starship I guess dealt with the starships, but he's dead too.

So, at 2:00, I'm rebuilding.  I've got my main fleet back in action, the borders and waves are done for another 15 minutes or so, and I'm getting my starships back online.  I'll go neuter Storyville then start Eyebot/Raid Starship raiding Scooby.  I don't want to alert the Mk IV... ever, really.  Once that's neutered and I deal with the wave spawns I'll speed smack both of them and prepare to get my arse handed to me for a double world boost in AIP.  That'll get me 6k in knowledge, so I'll have 6500.  I'll invest in fortresses and get one up on homeworld, then decide from there.

Once that's done, the next targets are Batman and Bancau, with Bancau becoming the whipping boy.  I'll dig in hard there with Yaradmoor as the warp initiator.  I'll setup for K-Raids into those three systems and do what I can to neuter them.  I'll start looking for jump-targets after I get the defenses in place with my scouts.  I really need to find an ARS and get a stronger fleet up, and 6k in knowledge is a bit heavy right now, though I will do it for the eyebots for Mk IVs once I get the Whipping boy setup.

I expect I'll be in a position to stop consolidating the homeworlds about 4 hours in.

[Hearteater]

I also find Missile Frigates to be one of the more annoying waves.  That AOE immunity let them ignore two types of turrets and they've got a lot of range to reach stuff you don't want them to hit.  I imagine a Speed Boosting Astro Train when a wave of them hits would be a nightmare.

[keith.lamothe]

Great stuff   Seems like the 10/10 wave sizes are working well: you can get off the ground, but you can see it coming that a few planets more worth of AIP will get out of hand

[Wanderer]

I also find Missile Frigates to be one of the more annoying waves.  That AOE immunity let them ignore two types of turrets and they've got a lot of range to reach stuff you don't want them to hit.  I imagine a Speed Boosting Astro Train when a wave of them hits would be a nightmare.

One of the most annoying parts about them is that the only turret besides basic that is artillery specialized is the lightning turret.  That'd be AWESOME... if the damned Frigates didn't ignore AoE!!!  So you've really got 1 turret that's good against them, basics.

[Wanderer]

Great stuff   Seems like the 10/10 wave sizes are working well: you can get off the ground, but you can see it coming that a few planets more worth of AIP will get out of hand

Agreed.  I almost want to whine that it's too tough... but it's 10/10 for crimony's sake, shaddup Dare...

Nah, in all honesty this is solid.  I'm not a fan of being forced to save-scum against a triangle ship but that's just a fact of life.  You literally just don't have the numbers to stop Mk II waves of this size.  It's tazer or die.

I may have to revert to a two homeworld scenario though.  Most of my playthroughs end up getting stalled like this because of the lack of tazers until you can research up Riot IIIs (4500 K), and you can't hold a tazer lock on the inbounds.  Without that tazer lock unless their fleets split you just don't have the sheer numbers to engage anything, especially when a third of your fleet is their chewtoy.  I might go back to schizo as well to avoid the necessary scumming.  On schizo at least you're only dealing with ~1/5 frigates, who you can beat down and then finish the work on the rest, but you don't have to scum waves away before the whipping boy is up.

[Wanderer]

I've stopped this game.  I was making progress but frustrated by a few things, one of which was the necessity of the save scumming to avoid the frigates.  I've started up a 'real' game with multi-homeworld and schizo waves (I went to 'standard' waves thinking it'd be easier, it's not) to avoid the problem, and my back to a wall to assist in early defenses.  New AAR to come.

[Diazo]

Good to see another take on 10/10.

Especially interesting is the different strategy you take. Much more offensively oriented then mine.

One thing I open up quite early are anti-missile turrets. I'm not sure you could make room for them in your strategy but they neuter missile frigates.  They cost 4k knowledge though so they can be hard to justify unlocking.

They also counter Zenith starships and a few of the fleet ship types as well (notably eye bots), but I unlock them to counter missile frigates.

Something for you to think about, you've certainly given me a few things I'm going to try next time I get some more game time.

D.

[Wanderer]

One thing I open up quite early are anti-missile turrets. I'm not sure you could make room for them in your strategy but they neuter missile frigates.  They cost 4k knowledge though so they can be hard to justify unlocking.

They also counter Zenith starships and a few of the fleet ship types as well (notably eye bots), but I unlock them to counter missile frigates.

I'm definately offensively oriented, at least at the beginning.  Nerfing III/IV systems while I'm still AI10/30 is very handy.

I'm ashamed to say I literally never NOTICED the Anti-missile turret.  *facepalm*  I'll be using that shortly, thank you...

My current game is a 3x homeworld game and at 2 hours I just finished slapping down the IV and III in my way to the universe and am getting the whipping boy up.  On schizo I'm getting 3k'ish waves at 78 AIP.  Apparently I really should have went to Low caps, but I was afraid of not having enough Tazer ships again.  Two Homeworlds will give you six Riot IIs, just enough to do a tazer lock.  I was more concerned about map however and had to take 3 for this seed.  The only significant unit is Blade Spawns but Tanks are pretty good against Artillery, which I need for those missile frigs.

With your suggestion I may reopen this game, and use some missile counters instead.  I can handle the rest I just hate having to constantly save scum.  Thanks for that! 

[keith.lamothe]

I remember back when missile frigates were the triangle unit no-one ever unlocked higher tiers of... maybe that hasn't changed, but the AI sure loves them   But yea, counter-missile turrets are pretty effective counters, albeit at a K cost.

Apparently I really should have went to Low caps, but I was afraid of not having enough Tazer ships again.

Cap scale doesn't apply to starships  

[Wanderer]

I remember back when missile frigates were the triangle unit no-one ever unlocked higher tiers of... maybe that hasn't changed, but the AI sure loves them   But yea, counter-missile turrets are pretty effective counters, albeit at a K cost.

Apparently I really should have went to Low caps, but I was afraid of not having enough Tazer ships again.

Cap scale doesn't apply to starships

D'oh!  *facepalm*  You'd think I'd have noticed that...

The Missile Counter doesn't seem to be perfect, at least from my minor testing.  Particularly if the missile dude is INSIDE the radius of the missile counter.  They usually can get off some salvos, the first one in particular.  However, when I made sure there was another counter that they weren't under covering said targets (my bank of basic turrets in particular)  it worked a lot better.  Is that expected behavior?

[keith.lamothe]

The Missile Counter doesn't seem to be perfect, at least from my minor testing.  Particularly if the missile dude is INSIDE the radius of the missile counter.  They usually can get off some salvos, the first one in particular.  However, when I made sure there was another counter that they weren't under covering said targets (my bank of basic turrets in particular)  it worked a lot better.  Is that expected behavior?

I'm not sure I understand.  Basically a counter-missile turret protects friendly units near it from missile fire; having one near the firing ship is irrelevant.  Are you saying that one that's covering the friendly target but also "covering" (in coverage range of, not actually protecting) the enemy firing ship is not working?

[Wanderer]

I'm not sure I understand.  Basically a counter-missile turret protects friendly units near it from missile fire; having one near the firing ship is irrelevant.  Are you saying that one that's covering the friendly target but also "covering" (in coverage range of, not actually protecting) the enemy firing ship is not working?

Ah, that must be the problem. I thought it would stop any missile pathed through it's territory. I covered the firing ship, not the target originally.  D'oh!  I gets it now!

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, that must be the problem. I thought it would stop any missile pathed through it's territory. I covered the firing ship, not the target originally.  D'oh!  I gets it now!

Haha, yea.  Having it do collision checking with all those missiles... melted cpus everywhere.

[Diazo]

I'm ashamed to say I literally never NOTICED the Anti-missile turret.  *facepalm*  I'll be using that shortly, thank you...

\

Glad to return the favor. I'd never noticed that the Mk II riots had an AOE stun until you mentioned it so everything balances out. 

D.