Author Topic: All Creatures Great and Small  (Read 16797 times)

Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #15 on: May 03, 2014, 08:06:48 am »
09.01: The most easily accessible advanced factory is on Jicidis. And my scouts have just found the botnet golem on a planet right next to it. Looks like the tasks for the next hour are set.

09.10: As ever it's rebuilding fortresses and repairing the golems which takes the majority of the time. While we're waiting though another civvy leader goes down, and the golems go clean up 100 or so hybrids on Therkilldor.

09.14: The second attempt at clearing out Hybrids, this time of Goriusip, doesn't go quite for well. Fleet wipe, a couple of retaliation waves. Nothing the distributed defences can't handle.

09.20: Refleeted, hybrids on Goriusip down and command station back up (for all the good it'll do on a nuked world - a mil III won't even fire). Dislaju is really getting hammered by roaming enclaves, 3/4 at a time. So viral shredders take up residence there.

Raids in assault transports are sent after the nearest known data centre ... of course, there's a trader bought black hole machine in the way. Assault transports can't get through, the raiders could but they all die first.

09.25: 3,200 attractor drones to Aosrinamar. That's one heck of a reprisal. Parasites and leech starships start licking their lips in anticipation.

Hmm, I think some of this 3,500 knowledge can go towards leech starships Mk II. The rest to Mk II hydras.

09.30: Not quite as effective as I'd hoped. Martyr wiped 1,500 to start with, the leeches clean up the rest. But I only actually end up with about 350.

In the meantime, shredders have been doing some tachyon clearing. Botnet golem world has a normal fort and a super-fort, but they're both a fair way from the wormhole exit. And the asteroid fields. So, fleet will go in under cover of assault transports then quick-build some rams.

09.33: Nuke train nearly 'Oh Yeah!'s Poan. By which I mean of course it did 'Oh Yeah!' Poan and I save scummed, seeing as I had the penetrator sitting just right there and only missed the scout warning by a few seconds. That message is certainly one way to fix a null pointer exception Keith ;)

09.40: Power goes out, Poan command station explodes, the usual golem battlegroup is on the scene.
 
6 hops away Operation Death-Leap, after having waited far too long for a tachyon astro train to move on, is now starting. 1,600 ships in assault transports enter the botnet world.
 
09.41.26: Ships out
 
09.41.30: Rams up

09.41.49: Wait for that blasted tachyon train to clear off

09.42.28: Boom. FRD weapons free, gents.

09.44: H/Ks show up. I have 1,400 ships left but the transports are deep into the red. They might just make it back to Jicidis, where I'll have to deal with 100+ hybrids. Eh, better than guaranteed death. I also quick build a Martyr, might help a little.

09.45: Even with the Martyr and the armored golem to pull off their attention, only about 200 ships escaped the hybrid gauntlet. Reprisal level one. They'll rebuild fast enough and I managed to pop the command station, so it should be a case of just transporting back and mopping up.

It's at this point that I notice the 2 golem battle group of Dislaju. Who thankfully appear to be ignoring that juicy core MRLS controller and just passing through. I suppose they set out with a target of the homeworlds, and anything off course gets ignored?

09.48: Oh hey, that battle group is now attacking Poan. I'm sure they'll be dealt with soon enough.

Good news! I've found the first AI homeworld. Bad news - It has five armored and five artillery golems on it. And 8 black widow golems. And 9 H/Ks. And a core raid engine. And the only core world next to it also has a raid engine.  Guess I know where all those massive ships are now.



09.51: 2,800 fighters on Aosrinmar. Cute. Not even worth spending a Martyr on, I'll just let them destroy it then rebuild later.

Oh, and an 1,800 ship CPA.

09.54: There appears to be a beachhead on Goriusip. Which is acting as a black hole machine. Wave must have hit and taken out the defenceless command station while I wasn't looking.

09.57: 1,200 ships FRD clearing guardposts on Deramic. The 1,500 remaining fighters and 14 spire starships on Aosrinmar don't seem to want to move on - possibly because they can sense the rebel colony despite it's cloak? Anyway, that'll make them a prime target for the botty.

Oh, and another rebellion. This time on Melshuafr, which is annoyingly far away from my territory (5/6 hops) and of no strategic value whatsoever.

09.59: The special forces appear to be attacking Deramic. Broken botnet golem down to 9% before I can get shield cover up - doesn't help that it's sitting on the wormhole they're coming from. Hopefully the hunters don't show up.

10.00: Hey, guess what. The hunters showed up. Fortunately it doesn't seem like they were interested in attacking anything, just moving through the planet to somewhere else.

Anyway, botnet is going up in the next five minutes. CPA hits in four. Considering that'll give me a combined 5,000+ threat, he may have his work cut out for him.

After soaking the CPA I'm going to put warp gates up on Deramic to bring all new ships in here - meaning I have a solid base for hacking the advanced factory next door. Then it'll be time to clear a path to the superterminal world and shed some of this AIP, incidentally passing through the planet where a dyson antagoniser is being built along the way.

State of the union. Note the guesstimated location of the second AI homeworld in the top right.


Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #16 on: May 03, 2014, 02:27:55 pm »
10.03: Botnet golem - Online. Let's take this bad boy out for a spin by taking him into Jicidis and letting him loose on the 700-odd hybrid drones.

10.04: Yeah, that wasn't really as effective as I hoped. I forgot that hybrids are faster than their drones. Anyway, CPA hits. Half and half Mk I /II, total threat is now 5,248.

10.06: Oh joy, mining golem time. And this time they've chosen an assortment of new targets: Jicidis, Raedhung, Dorvil, Deramic, Sezon, Etgin and Cenurin. The first five shouldn't be a problem, the other two are low priority worlds off the botnet world. I may just let them burn.

10.09: 2,200 ships on Jicidis, including half the CPA. Black widow, armored and botnet golems stand by to warp in supported by 1,400 fleet ships.

10.13: Jicidis status - neutered. After the last fleet ship dies we've even got 600 zombies left over, although the botnet did drop to 25% health due to a concerted attack effort by 600+ bombers. That thing sure is slow.

A couple of minutes to repair it and refleet, then we'll start hacking.

10.17: Right then, hacking time. Get ready for 15 minutes of fun.

10.19: Hoo boy, that's ... is that an exo attacking Poan? Or just an amalgamation of threat? Sure is a whole lot of guardians.

I think it might be both actually. There's 21 carriers but most of them have < 10 ships in them, so I'm assuming it is opportunistic support. But really, 80+ Mk V guardians at a 'low' hacking level is rather nasty. 1,200 attacking, 900 ships are taken from the hack and assault transported to Poan before the fixed defences can be completely wiped out.

10.20: The most annoying part is that after destroying the command station they then run away juuust before my mobile ships arrive. I'm not sure it could have been an exo then if they didn't just arrow for the homeworlds. So I have no idea at all what that was about.

10.21: Whoops, 1,400 bomber reprisal to Sezon. I missed that one. Engineers are told to quick-build a Martyr, but the command station goes down before it wiped out the bomber forces. Looks like the fleet is going back there again.

10.22: Oh hey, the sort-of-exo has shown up again. Attacking Murderlanceras this time. Thinking about it, maybe it's something from the astro trains?

10.23: Hunter squad is on Jicidis. All ships are told to temporarily leg it, especially the golems. There's 60 Mk V missile guardians now, and 60 * 4 million damage every 12 seconds will ruin even an armored golem's day.

10.25: Exo is beaten back with the help of my mobile response force. Defending three different planets, each a couple of hops apart, within three minutes. Not bad. 7 minutes left on the hack timer, 11 on the four mining golems I've yet to kill.

10.29: When golems attack, 1,300 fleet ships are stuck into transports again. To be honest the hacker has been fine sitting there for the last couple of minutes under a cloak, so I should be fine with just popping the golems in every now and again.

10.32: Hack successful. I can now build ... uh ... Mk IV scouts? I should really unlock some Mk. III ships.

Next up then is to neuter Panyae (a fairly intensely built up co-processor world off Murderlanceras) and then Miccacau (which has the dyson antagoniser on it). After that pop the superterminal world, Geoasi. There's some other good stuff to get out that way as well, an ARS world right next to it and another two 3/4 hops away. And three data centres within striking distance puts the icing on the cake.

I've also located all the co-processors now, but seeing as one of them is nine hops away from my nearest planet I'm going to have to wait until I take an ARS world out in that direction.

10.35: The two low priority planets die to mining golems. Can't say I'm particularly bothered.

10.38: Golems have been repatriated back to safe territory. A carrier pops on Dislaju and 600 threat ships come pouring out - the fixed defences can probably handle them.

Okay, I'm sending a three golem battering ram to clean up the threat on Aosrinmar and put the shield back up around that rebel colony. In the meantime, the fleet can be thinking about taking down Panyae and it's 3,000 ship shield.

10.43: Golems are a touch worse for wear, but Aosrinmar is back up online and I now have 400 friendly fighter zombies. Fleet has just carried out a spirecraft ram raid, and now has a spare Martyr and pair of rams for the super-fort / hybrids on Panyae.

10.46: Fort dead, all the hybrids clustered around the command station (~140) dead. Time for my fleet ships to make merry with the entrails of their defences, or at least it would be if they weren't fending off a few hundred hybrids on Deramic.

10.52: Despite the 50 remaining hybrids and constant stream of dyson gatlings, Golems and fleet jump in to Panyae together. Time to rip things up.

10.55: Planet is cleaned of all guardposts, hybrid spawners, ships etc. Tachyons on the other side of the Miccacau wormhole exit are removed. Reprisal 1. Then the hunters show up.

10.55.30: A fair few ships die, but the golems are far enough away to escape the missile barrage. That reprisal wave? 5,280 attractor drones. Somewhat excessive, I may have to send the botnet to deal with that.

Oh, and there's a nuke train on Panza. Probably headed for Aelurn -> Poan.

10.55.30: What a guess. Penetrator makes it with literally half a second to spare - the astro train disintegrates as it is passing through the wormhole to Poan.

10.57: Annd reprisal again from the 600 fleet ships that widow trains managed to grab when they went to try and take out the EMP accompanying the nuke train.

10.58: Well, no way I can get the botty over to Dislaju to save it from that swarm of attractor drones. So, time to build 70 engineers, a Martyr, 6 translocators and as much of the rebel fleet as we can manage.

11.00: And that worked nicely. Okay then, push on to (and through) Miccacau.

Oh, by the way what on earth is this about:



I mean, I've seen some trains routing to places that I didn't think they had any right to be. Like occasionally passing through Aosrinmar in the bottom left when there isn't a train station within three hops. But a nuke train just sitting next to the command station, chilling, really takes the biscuit. Eventually it moves on all on its lonesome, but it looks almost like the train spawning logic will spawn a train wherever there used to be a train station, rather than only where there currently is one.

The guy also seems to be able to teleport. See the attached save where he's suddenly at Kela (only sometimes! Sometimes he disappears off goodness knows where), where to get there he would have needed to path through one of my worlds...




Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #17 on: May 03, 2014, 05:31:04 pm »
Busy busy.  Been following quietly to some extent.  At least whenever I saw a stack trace I looked into it ;)

Currently 120,000 metal/s, with about 30 million scrap.
Shoulda seen the expression on that H/K's face, when it popped through the wormhole and heard the air wrenches popping its tires off.  It didn't realize that the initials stood for Human Home Chop Shop.


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By the way, when did tractors start dragging away mobile rally points to other planets? That is really irritating.
That's a remarkably good troll on the AI's part.  Fixed in 7.021, regrettably.


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Problem: 240 hybrids on Poan will obliterate my fleet before I can intercept it. Solution: Lightning warhead, of course.
The solution is always warheads.


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I say sneak peak by the way because I caught some unhandled exceptions and had to load from an auto-save.
Thanks for letting me know about the warp-guardians-on-human-HWs, fixed in 7.021.


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A strange device somewhere in the galaxy is antagonising the 10/10 dyson sphere. Joyous. At least I might be able to back-track the stream of gatlings attacking my worlds and work out where it is.
A twist on Hansel and Gretel I had not anticipated.


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Did I mention that I've started putting forcefields over all the wormhole exits from my worlds, just so widow trains don't steal half the fleet every time they pass through? And I do mean literally half, they steal about 350 ships each time.
Humans didn't invent the chop-shop.


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here's what my warning box normally looks like:
I guess it could just abbreviate with "It's hitting the fan. Everywhere."


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Nuke train just detonated on Therkilldor
Chalk up another one for the Dynamic Entry Specialist.


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The combination of dyson gatlings always giving me low 'attack' numbers and there only being a few vessels in the golem battlegroups makes noticing these attacks somewhat hit and miss.
Is that "ambient" attack hitting your homeworlds?  If not you could set planet-level alerts on your homeworlds themselves so it'd tell you about it in the... the alert box that's already overflowing, I suppose ;)


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The forcefield inhibitor astro train with it is painful though, as it means the widows will once again successfully steal half my fleet.
Combi-Troll.


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40 engineers get the black widow golem up in absolute record time. It only took about 50 seconds.
Science Advisor: "Well, sir, this is very ancient technology in very bad shape.  It could take months to... %&@#$!  You couldn't even let me finish the sentence?  I hate engineers."


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murderedlanceras.png
Indeed.  "Whipping Boy" doesn't even begin to describe what that planet's been through.


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I've literally just remembered that I can hack the fabs now. That was kind of a major oversight.
Forgetting hugely important things is part of the fun.  Like when I forgot about that Avenger...


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Wow, uhmm. I now have 700 attractor drones.
Must be your magnetic personality.


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So of course I do the only sensible thing - send all of my ships three hops away to incite them to attack my homeworlds.
There is no stopping this insanity, apparently ;)


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Oh. Man. When the rams take out the superfort, all hell breaks loose. I make that the best part of 70 dark spire ships, from the death of one fort.
Probably not too much to worry about.  Those guys used to be able to wipe galaxies on high intensity, but are tamer now.  I hope to make them less tame (at least that high), though, once I can find a way of doing so that doesn't involve melting everyone's CPU under eleven billionty spawns.


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Also every time a planet gets astro-train nuked I seem to get a null pointer exception:
Thanks for letting me know, fixed in 7.022.


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Uh ... -20AIP for the death of a data centre? I think the dark spire just took out a data centre for me - one on the other side of galaxy I hadn't even found yet. Thanks guys!
(Sounds of massive bar fight in the background) "No problem!" (sound of bottle smashing)


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Out of interest, do the hybrids actually construct anything any more? Obviously there aren't any AI turrets now, and they don't seem to be recolonising any systems. Was that entire aspect essentially removed?
Basically, for now.  Though it sounds like they might be building more spawners if you found 23 on one planet.


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It fails. The regenerator train next to it respawns the nuker...
Combi-Troll-tastic.


That message is certainly one way to fix a null pointer exception Keith ;)
Haha.  Actually, previously it was trying to generate that message but in the process caused a null pointer exception.  Now its Brother-Koolaidius imitation is restored.


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It's at this point that I notice the 2 golem battle group of Dislaju. Who thankfully appear to be ignoring that juicy core MRLS controller and just passing through. I suppose they set out with a target of the homeworlds, and anything off course gets ignored?
Yea, exos are extraordinarily single minded until either their leader or their target dies.  They stop for nothing (except BHMs, iirc).  But if one chose that MLRS fab as its initial target they'd get it.  They don't always pick a command station.


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Good news! I've found the first AI homeworld. Bad news - It has five armored and five artillery golems on it. And 8 black widow golems. And 9 H/Ks. And a core raid engine.
The RNG has not forgotten.


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10.22: Oh hey, the sort-of-exo has shown up again. Attacking Murderlanceras this time. Thinking about it, maybe it's something from the astro trains?
If you're curious you can toggle debug info with F3 and mouseover a ship to see if its Threatfleet, Special Forces, or part of an exo (has a "GWC" for galaxy-wide-chase somewhere in the tooltip).  If it doesn't say any of those things and it's attacking you then it's generally just normal threat.


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Hack successful. I can now build ... uh ... Mk IV scouts?
(Suddenly everyone stares at the Science Advisor)


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Oh, by the way what on earth is this about:
Uh... it was on leave? ;)

No idea what those trains are up to sometimes, really.  Though I'll make a note to take a look at your save when I have time.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #18 on: May 03, 2014, 05:36:41 pm »
Also: Good Grief That's A Lot of Golems.
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Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #19 on: May 03, 2014, 09:26:27 pm »
Yeah, I'd noticed a few sneaky fixes going in the last version or two. Thanks for that.

I've been staying well clear of dark spire planets for now, as on 10/10 I'm thinking that they'd cream me pretty quick. I think one of the ARS worlds I need to take has a vengeance generator though, so we'll see how that goes.

I think the 23 spawners is just standard at this hybrid difficulty, every Mk. IV planet I've seen so far has 23. I've never actually ever seen any respawning or spawning new ones, even though there are 'Admiral' class hybrids running around and hence I'd assume equivalent class builders. Overall though a lot of the nuances of the hybrids get lost because they're so behind the scenes.

Scouting is a right pain at the moment, and the major problem is EMPs. Even tachyon immune units get disabled by EMPs, so spirecraft scouts and Mk IV scouts aren't quite as much use as you'd expect.

And as you say, far too many golems. Thankfully most of them are sitting on the AI homeworld at the moment rather than coming towards me, as I don't think even I'd be able to stop 22 golems and 11 H/Ks if they decided to go on a rampage. Funnily enough the combined strength of 33 massive ships is only 108,000, which is somewhat less than that all powerful youngling tiger wave I managed to cheese in the 10/10 game.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #20 on: May 03, 2014, 09:31:27 pm »
as I don't think even I'd be able to stop 22 golems and 11 H/Ks if they decided to go on a rampage
Yea, that'd be pretty rough.

... wait.

Um, y'know, there's this fix in 7.023:

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Fixed a bug from the last month or so where threat/threatfleet/special-forces units controlled by the second AI player on a planet with no significant human presence would basically get stuck and not do their normal "which planet do I go to next?" logic.


Those golems and H/Ks just chilling wouldn't happen to belong to the second AI player, would they?
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Offline Aklyon

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #21 on: May 03, 2014, 10:45:29 pm »
That pic with the orange AI units confused me the first time I saw it, I was wondering how I'd gotten all those buildings :P

Other than that, you seem to be on a roll with ridiculous add everything/ensure apocalypse starts that are interesting to read, rocky.

Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #22 on: May 04, 2014, 08:27:17 am »
Just took a look at the objectives log, and it does indeed appear that it's the second AI homeworld with all the golems on it. So I'm expecting a massive assault when this next patch goes in. I'm already thinking up cheeses...

11.01: Unfortunately my Mk IV scouts don't seem able to actually get anywhere before being destroyed, even though they are supposedly immune to tachyon beams. I just watched it happen. Brand new Mk IV scout ran into a tachyon astro train - instantly decloaked. It's immune to tachyon beams, but apparently not whatever kind of planetary tachyon coverage that train provides. The same goes for spirecraft scouts, I think.

That solo wandering nuke train is heading straight for Deramic. Engineers are told to rapidly build a penetrator, and it goes down just outside the wormhole.

11.04: Whoops, that Dyson antagoniser is now a dyson converter. Get in the cars lads. Oh, the engineers are still building them?

11.06: Wow, 44 raid starships in a reprisal wave is all sorts of nasty when you have a MRLS controller. Luckily the six translocators still do their job fairly effectively.

11.07: Fleet on Miccacau. They're sitting right next to the super hybrid, let's see if we can kill this guy this time.

11.09: Super hybrid, dyson converter and trader bought black hole machine go down in a blaze of glory. And we take out the train station too, because why not.

Oh, 351 AIP? That might be why not. Ah well, the superterminal is right next door.

MRLS controller on Dislaju gets down to 4,236 health thanks to a passing supply interdictor train and a spire starship. Yes, that's right: 0.1% of its normal 4 million health.

11.13: Geoasi command station down, along with the sentry eye that I initially failed to notice. However there's now zombies, just, everywhere. 500 remaining ships back into the transports, let's give it a few minutes to see if the hunters turn up.

Oh, and the cookie monster is on Jakidic.

11.15: Alright, everyone seems to have moved on. Colonisation time.

Of course, seconds after the command station starts building there's 700 ships on the planet again. Hybrids have shown up to ruin my day. Eh, at least I might be able to preserve one of the two ion cannons.

11.16: Hybrids down, intergalactic warp gates and basic defensive infrastructure up. I started this hack at 374 AIP (thanks civvy leaders / train stations!), I'm hoping to chew off at least 100.

11.18: To help things along, raids take out two nearby data centres which are nicely laid out one planet after the other. 321 AIP.

Interestingly, a lot of these wormholes are missing tachyon sentinals. I'm assuming that must be the dark spire / hostile to all enclaves doing. Nice feedback mechanism there by the way, when hostile to all enclaves die it charges the dark spire just the same as player or AI ships dying.

11.20: 2,000 fighter reprisal to Sezon. Going to have to see if I can get the botty down there. Oh, and it looks like we've got hundreds of super hybrids again. What fun. Maybe I should have just left the other one in peace.



11.21: Oh bugger. Devourer golem at Geoasi, chowing down on my fleet. Luckily it seems he's just passing through, and only kills a few hundred ships.

11.23: Fighter reprisal hits Sezon while the patented three golem battering ram is still two hops away. Will the hardened forcefields hold out?

11.24: Nope, spire starships make sure of that. Although there are 1,200 juicy fighters left when the botty eventually gets there...

11.26: After the other golems are told to stand down, I make that 1,087 zombified fighters. Fly, my pretties!

And let's get some rebuilders in here, huh.

11.30: AIP 276. 4k knowledge goes on Mk III (and hence IV) tackle drone launchers - taking two more planets will let me do the same for Hydras and bombers.

I suppose I have to start thinking about that blasted rebel colony now, as the shield drops in 40 minutes. However I really can't be bothered to carve out a 5 hop deep route over there. So, I'm going to cheat.

11.33: EMP train explodes on Sezon. Again the closest train station is three hops away, and it's not on any sensible train route. Why on earth are they showing up down there.

11.34: One Xampite gets you two Mk II spirecraft jumpship. One gets 4 bomber and 2 spire starships, the other a colony ship and 9 engineers. Ten hops later, the spirecraft are barely atrophied when the enemy command station explodes.

I'm going to keep this planet just long enough to suck all the knowledge out of it. Once that's done I'll self-implode my command station to stop any pesky nuker astro train from getting in at it. Then all I need to do is remember to come back in two hours just before the shield drops again. I'm not even going to bother getting rid of the guardposts / eye.

11.35: Oh hey, cool, my scouts finally found the dyson sphere. Not so cool: Gravitic command station with every other guard post on the planet being a command station shield. Won't be able to jumpship kill this command station then.

Knowledge from Melshuafr goes on Mk III (and IV) hydras. Because I love their EMP immunity.

11.37: Sounds like the dark spire barfight is continuing. AI just bust out a 500 unit carrier and 200 unit barracks on a planet I've never even scouted.

Raids take out a third data centre, might as well offset the AIP from Melshuafr. Oh, and apparently the AI has unlocked spire corvettes now, as I can see hordes of the things flying around. Those'll be fun.

11.38: Oh. Hell. So, uh, turns out I wrong about where the second AI homeworld was. I just slapped a couple of raids into one of the jumpships, figuring I could cap this epic AIP reduction session by taking out the co-processors. On their way to the furthest away world, they stop one hop short. Why? Oh, y'know, just an AI homeworld. Jumpship explodes. Raids fall out. Core CPA post triggers.

2,800 ships en-route.

11.39: 67 HaP left, each super terminal tick has been taking 5 for a little while now. I think I'll stop before the response goes much further / I wipe my HaP stash altogether. AIP: 234.

11.43: Melshuafr command station is doing a bang-up job of repelling 700+ ships with just a Mil III command station and ~20 core turrets. It'd be a shame to explode it at this point, let's see how long it can last.

Meanwhile, refleeting after unwisely clustering my units around the wormhole to Charcuza (the ARS world next door to Geoasi with the munitions boosting command station). Not so nice being on the receiving end of those lightning warheads :(

11.45: Couple of golems passing through Dislaju, and they cheekily take out my translocators. Melshuafr went down to a supply interdictor train in the end, but no great loss so long as I remember to rebuild it at some point within the next two hours.

11.49: Raids go on a bit of a rampage and take down the first two co-processors, the last remaining (currently known) data centre and a civvy leader. Fleet ships take care of the other two co-processors: AIP 154. So that would be 220 less than half an hour ago then, and pretty close to the floor.

Somehow the instant I kill the last co-processors I get reprisal level 2 from both AIs. I have no idea where that's from, as I don't think I've lost many ships lately. Unless possiby the spirecraft jumpships / raids are expensive enough to trigger it.

11.51: Oh hey, I just worked it out. With the loss of AIP (in this case a massive -120), the salvage wave threshold got lowered tremendously. Anyway, 3,500 fighters coming in to give a total threat/wave of ~9,000 ships. I should really take the botty out for a spin.

11.52: Botty and 600 mixed fleet ships are taking care of 1,500 threat on Goriusip - Lots of lovely bombers to zombify. Meanwhile, a 4 golem / 2 H/K battlegroup has taken this opportunity to hit Poan. Two arty golems, so I can't risk sending my own black widow / armored in to counter them.
 
Oh yeah, and the fighters are here. So we're currently on 4,000+ attack.
 
11.52: Haha, and just to add to the insanity the devourer golem has now shown up on Poan. Along with 90 hybrids. Maybe that's what scared them into attacking in the first place.

Botty has finished up and I now have 1,100 new zombies.

11.55: Poan went down, fairly obviously, but it managed to take a fair amount of the attack with it. Both H/Ks and an armored go down to fixed defences, then my golems take out another arty during the cleanup after the first one flees. Fighter waves are beaten off without too much hassle - back down to 3,500 threat now.
 
11.57: Jumpshipping raids take out three more civvy leaders just before they would have AIP increased. They even make it back to friendly territory this time. All known AI progress reducers in the galaxy are now down, although to be fair I still have another 28 planets to scout.

11.59: I've sent a couple of cloaked rams to take out the superfort on Charcuza, but they keep on getting killed even while cloaked. Which is weird, as I can't see anything that cause them to decloak. Fleet prepares to jump in anyway, I'm sure we can focus fire the fort down without too many losses. That ARS will be mine soon enough, leaving only three more to capture.

Then suddenly, mining golems! Poan, Derimic, Jakidic, Dorvil, Jubuvi, Boatsuc and Melshuafr. Those last two might be a problem, as they're both five hops away from my planets.


So, 12 hours in. This was a very effective hour AIP reduction wise, even if not quite as game breaking as the super terminal used to be. From here on it's pretty much a case of capping ARSes and taking out shield generators. Oh and there's still four civvy leaders left out there, so AIP: 158.

I actually just counted, and there's currently 15 super-hybrids running around. Making as many dyson antagonisers, which might be a pain to clean up. It also gives me an insane amount of notifications, I think I'm up to 3/4 entire pages now. Anyway, see: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,12954.0.html and http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11086

I haven't seen 'Hybrids are mobilising' yet this game, though.

State of the union:


Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #23 on: May 04, 2014, 11:00:13 am »
Just took a look at the objectives log, and it does indeed appear that it's the second AI homeworld with all the golems on it. So I'm expecting a massive assault when this next patch goes in. I'm already thinking up cheeses...
It's common for players to be nervous about the impact of an upcoming patch on their ongoing game.

Here I'm observing the very uncommon case of the AI getting nervous about the impact of an upcoming patch on an ongoing game.

What next?  Jinking a couple dozen golems into a black hole by some creatively micro'd scouts?


Quote
It's immune to tachyon beams, but apparently not whatever kind of planetary tachyon coverage that train provides. The same goes for spirecraft scouts, I think.
Odd, I thought the immunity still applied.


Quote
Interestingly, a lot of these wormholes are missing tachyon sentinals. I'm assuming that must be the dark spire / hostile to all enclaves doing.
The broken glass and splinters of bar stools are a dead giveaway.


Quote
Oh, and it looks like we've got hundreds of super hybrids again.
That bug's still kicking around in there?  Hmm, maybe sterner measures are needed to prevent it exceeding the 1 super hybrid (of that type, and there's just the one for now) cap.  Made a note of that mantis you linked about this.

In other news: if you have so many alerts that the alert box has a scrollbar, start considering alternate possible habitable galaxies.


Quote
I'm going to keep this planet just long enough to suck all the knowledge out of it. Once that's done I'll self-implode my command station to stop any pesky nuker astro train from getting in at it. Then all I need to do is remember to come back in two hours just before the shield drops again. I'm not even going to bother getting rid of the guardposts / eye.
I had forgotten that you'd set "Human Decency 0/10" in the lobby.


Quote
11.35: Oh hey, cool, my scouts finally found the dyson sphere. Not so cool: Gravitic command station with every other guard post on the planet being a command station shield. Won't be able to jumpship kill this command station then.
Ah yes, the paranoid subcommander, with the cs-shield posts scattered around the grav well ring.  The RNG was in good form to pick a grav station on top of all that.


Quote
11.38: Oh. Hell. So, uh, turns out I wrong about where the second AI homeworld was. I just slapped a couple of raids into one of the jumpships, figuring I could cap this epic AIP reduction session by taking out the co-processors. On their way to the furthest away world, they stop one hop short. Why? Oh, y'know, just an AI homeworld. Jumpship explodes. Raids fall out. Core CPA post triggers.
Hahahahaha.

With this difficulty level that's not such a big deal, but still classic AIW.


Quote
Not so nice being on the receiving end of those lightning warheads :(
Speaking of upcoming patches...


Quote
11.52: Haha, and just to add to the insanity the devourer golem has now shown up on Poan. Along with 90 hybrids. Maybe that's what scared them into attacking in the first place.
Cookie fed well that night, I'm sure.
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Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #24 on: May 04, 2014, 12:30:33 pm »
Quote
In other news: if you have so many alerts that the alert box has a scrollbar, start considering alternate possible habitable galaxies.

*cough*



And I don't even have the nofications for seven mining golems yet...

EDIT:

12.01: Throwing the entire fleet into the grinder may not have been the best of ideas, but hey it worked. 800 ships left, reprisal one, and a cleansed planet. Except for the two train stations, but I don't think it's worth the 6 AIP to remove them.

Looks like Deramic has gone down to a wave in the meantime, I'm going to have to go clean that up.

12.04: Widow trains steal the best part of 600 ships. 1,200 missile frigates hit Geoasi.

12.08: 800 ship rescue fleet on its way to Deramic. Cookie monster on Poan, not doing very much. Command station going up on Charcuza.

ARS gives me protector starships. HELL YES.

12.10: 4,000 knowledge could buy me Mk IV bombers. But instead it goes on Mk III forcefields, because you can never have too many forcefields. Honestly though I think the main reason I'm running out of them is due to the 15 low level ones on each homeworld, so seeing as I haven't actually had a golem hit in a while let's rationalise things a bit with just two of every mark. It's at this point I notice that neither homeworld actually has a home command forcefield - did I accidentally delete that at some point in the past?

12.14: Armored golem takes out a few dozen hybrids and the mining golem on Dorvil, 'rescue' (probably a bit late in the day to be calling it that) fleet to Deramic does the same.

12.17: Supply interdictor on Poan presages yet another golem attack. That thing must suppress the total firepower on the planet. Also, cheeky bleeders stole my trick! They have an implosion guardian this time, which rapidly decimates my black widow's health as it is running away.

Ten minutes to deal with the golem on Melshuafr. I'm going to send a jumpship over there over there with some rebuilders and engineers, see if I can't just get the rebel fleet to take it out.

12.20: After the fourth EMP train goes off on Melshuafr, bringing the total paralysis time for the rebel colony up to 3 minutes 50, it starts to dawn on me that this may not work.

Even better, while paralysed the cloaks drops and the AI can apparently see and fire on it. Joyous.

12.22: Poan is fairly well destroyed by this point, so the arty and armored golem are just sitting there looking smug with themselves. Until 800 fleet ships and my own armored golem warp in to wipe that smirk off their faces. Shame I don't have any implosions left, I really need to build some more.

By the way, that same radar dampening issue that affects penetrators seems to affect armored golems too. They have to be manually moved within range.

12.25: This ion eye shooting all my ships on Melshuafr is really aggravating. Especially as it triggers when there's more than about 50 ... including engineers and turrets.

12.26: After a real comedy of errors, including but not limited to:

- The spirecraft asteroid field being within range of the remaining shielded guardpost
- The penetrator built to take out the shielded guardpost getting astro train tachyoned and hence dying to it
- The Spirecraft siege tower repeatedly auto-kiting itself to a range where it can't fire on the mining golem. (I've seen this with the armored golem as well - they're just not getting close enough to fire, and when they are close enough they move out of range. I've got auto-kite set to 1,000 normally, with it turned off they work properly. So some inconsistency there)
- Human colony gets repeatedly EMPed, the EMP immune translocator I built to help protect it then that getting wiped out by the mining golem
- Constant supply interdictor astro-trains taking out my turrets and ability to build ships at the colony

The eye is finally down, and the colony safe (at 50k health, i.e 1%). I can't get rams close to the golem without them getting wiped, so back so back to the colony rebels.

2 minutes 42 seconds remaining. Then a wave of youngling fireflies shows up.

12.28: With about 30 seconds on the clock the golem goes down. Seeing as the colony isn't currently EMPed, time to quickly wipe out the command station and every sign of life so that the next time a train passes through there's no enemy units floating around to attack the colony.

12.30: As an experiment I send the spirecraft to my closest world to see how far they get. The answer is, not very. On the plus side I'm sure that the death of the best part of 800,000 metal should cause a nice dark spire spawn.

Okay then, now that's all been dealt with. Next high priority target is likely Rollikill, an ARS world 3 hops away.

12.38: Let's start things off with some light tachyon shredding on Revurloc. I say light because it has a vengeance generator, so I don't really want to destroy the whole planet.

12.42: All tachyons along that route have been shredded, so bar tachyon astro-trains the assault transports should be able to get through now. Standard tactics apply - jump the fleet in, mine the planet for the rams we're going to use to destroy the superfort, blow the command station then wait to see if the hunters show up.

12.44: As my 1,300 ship fleets enters the planet I see the bar fight in progress. But this time to AI has bought out the big boys - hunters vs. dark spire. Hunters win, of course. It's at this point I realise that I left the cloaker starships at home.

12.46.42: So, uhm, I'm sitting here with 10 cloaked transports. And the hunters are right next to me. And they're not moving. Blow it, everyone out the cars anyway.

12.46.59: Rams up. Everyone is back in the transports. Only lost about 50 units, mainly because the H/Ks were just far enough away.

12.49: Problem - Translocator eye under four heavy forcefield, and every other guard post also under the same four forcefield along with a troop accelerator command station. Solution: Suicide the fleet and hope they take it out before the hunters take them out. And on the positive side, even if they fail the complete obliteration of the fleet will likely spawn in a large number of dark spire to help finish the job.

12.50: The suicide thing alllmost worked, there was very little shield remaining when the hunter H/Ks finally obliterated the last of the fleet. Sadly the dark spire were useless, they just got shredded by the H/Ks. Certainly not the all conquering brawlers I remember them being. One x Resprisal 2, one x Reprisal 3.

12.52: Oh for the love of pete. Dark spire take down four Mk IV counter-attack guardposts, for 1,500 total attack to my homeworld. YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HELPING, GUYS.

12.52.30: 2,000+ youngling tigers attacking Poan. Black widow and armored golem are on the scene. Elsewhere, Benny Hill's yakety sax plays as the devourer golem chases two spirecraft translocators around Senow.

12.53: Younglings go down no problems, thanks to the enclaves. What I'm slighly more concerned about, even with the full rebel fleet there, is the 2,000 bombers which are about to smack Dislaju and possibly take out the MRLS controller. Let's see if I can punch the botnet through to there.

12.54: Oh, uhmm, about those younglings. Yeah, 900 just showed up on Dislaju. Man, those things can really cream shield bearers.

12.55: Sorry boys, you're on your own. Now way I can push these golems through 200+ hybrids and a super-fort. But say, what are those shiny rocks you got there?

1,000 ships go to finish the job and pop Rolikkill command station.

12.57: Bombers go boom, command station goes boom, when the dark spire gets involved barracks and distribution nodes go boom ... just a whole lotta exploding.

Right, 13 hours. Two new ARS planets, or at least it will be once I get a colony ship over there. Target then will be Quzi, an ARS world right next to the dyson sphere.

Another colony rebellion has shown up, this time it's Boatark. Which is once again miles from anywhere.

Oh, and I've got 1,500 Mk IV ships hitting my homeworld in about two minutes. Eh, couple of golems and a few hundred fleet ships. Should be fine.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2014, 01:34:29 pm by RockyBst »

Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #25 on: May 05, 2014, 05:40:10 pm »
The name for the next hour and a half is going to be 'Operation: Oh F#@!, Golems!'.

Incoming exo-galactic patch in 00:59.59. When the patch hits I imagine the 36 massive ships and their entourages currently sitting on the second AIs world are suddenly going to wake up and attack us. So, before that happens:

- Get full caps of implosion artillery
- See if we can hack that core missile turret controller
- Do two shard chases to get the fallen spire frigates

Oh, and build Martys. Lots and lots of Martyrs.

I mean, technically I could just build a missile silo and set an FRD rally point on the AI homeworld for the armored missiles. But let's try not to exploit that too hard, huh.

13.03: Well, that counter-attack went down fairly easy. And now I have ~500 Mk IV zombies to go cause mischief for me.

ARS gives me raiders. Oh, and there's also a Mk V etherjet tractor fab on this planet, so that's nice. Knowledge goes for Mk IV bombers.

13.04: 1,100 ship CPA announced. Seeing as a I currently have 4.8 million metal in stock and have a +40,000/s surplus from homeworld scrap, I decide it's time to replenish my implosion artillery stock. So a full cap of Mk II and III, with a half cap of Is (as I don't have any more reptite)

13.09: Huh, that's wierd. Over the past ten minutes my 15 super hybrids and associated devices have been whittled down to just two. Maybe the dark spire's doing?

13.14: I'm in the process of repatriating all my ships from Geoasi and the other planets in that section of the galaxy. Implosions are wending their slow, cloaked way back to the homeworlds. The main problem, of course, is astro trains. Need to be careful of both the full tachyon varieties and also passing right over one, due to the 500 range tachyon beams they all have.

13.19: CPA just hit, so back up to ~5,000 threat now. Transports just arrived on Murderlanceras, taking my current total fleet ships up to ~2,600. That many ships, combined with three golems ... I might just survive the first shard chase.

13.28: Well, that wasn't quite so bad as I was led to believe it might be. Although that probably has something to do with the 60 tackle drone launchers playing keep away, and best part of 2,000 enclave drones. Actually between the botty, leeches and viral spawners I think I may have ended up net positive on ships.

13.31: While we're waiting for the survey to complete, let's consider the other two seconday objectives for now: Hacking the core missile controller, and getting rid of the dyson antagoniser.

First up the 2,400 strong fleet and three golems destroys the hybrids on Shoal then wipes out every trace of life on a planet called Orerlu, which gives me an entry point to the core missile controller world. Hunter plot shows up at one point, but it looks like they're just passing through. Not that they don't leave a wicked scar on the botnet as they do, taking it down to 3%.

13.36: Scouts indicate the Dyson antagoniser is on Yembslow, a planet two hops from Deramic which I haven't blasted a tachyon path to yet. So viral shredders do their normal thing.

13.38: Then 2,000 ships follow up and take the antagoniser down. In fact take down two antagonisers. Unfortunately a badly timed tachyon astro train and the 200+ hybrids on the planet means that the transports pop and the fleet has to trail back across two hostile planets. Only about 200 make it. Reprisal level 4.

13.40: 8,000 neinzul youngling tigers hitting Charcuza in a minute's time. Something tells me it's not going to survive that, especially given the vast number of supply interdictor trains which pass through there. Oh, and all the super-hybrids seem to be back in my notifications window, lovely. Looks like they were all just dormant while the dyson antagoniser was in place. Now they're all flying around the galaxy again looking to build a new one.

13.44: As predicted, a supply interdictor train showed up and Charcuza command went down. Ah well. Golems and ~1,000 ships are clearing out Dorvil in preparation for the second shard chase.

13.45: About 600 (presumably CPA) ships hitting Rolikill, along with a 700 ship teleport wave. However I've just realised it doesn't have its etherjet tractor fab anymore. Dark spire must have taken it out. And the entire cap of ships wiped earlier, so I had etherjets for all of thirty minutes :(

Anyway, second shard chase underway. Within the first spawn there's two dire guardians, so this is a little more aggressive than the last one.

13.45 (again): Okay, so it's practically impossible to keep the 25 million health refugee ship alive on 10/10. Between the few dozen starships, dire guardians, implosion guardians etc it gets focus fired down no matter how much firepower you have. Even in ideal circumstances all of those mentioned above can slip past the black widow golem. Or survive nuking the planet, come to that.

However, there is one thing ... the refugee ship is not immune to transport. So what would happen if, say, 8 assault transports were placed equidistantly around the planet's perimeter?

13.45.30: Gotta hand it to those assault transports. They sure are fast. 8 spire frigates with their 4 million damage will be very useful against mostly imploded golems. Next up, that missile controller.

13.46: Geoasi command has gone down to the younglings, but Rolikkil is still just about up. Tigers are now attacking Dislaju, of all places.

Hybrids appear to have gotten another dyson antagoniser up already, this time on Eliuan. Which is 3 hops from my territory, and right next to a core world.

13.51: Fab hacking begins, with 1,000 cloaked ship in support. For some reason the AI's hacking response is 26 (Very low), despite the fact I've spent well over 400 HaP so far. Not that I'm going to complain, if it keeps my forces in the cars and away from the ion eye and Mk IV spirecraft corvettes. And the hunters, who are passing through as I enter.

A particularly funny moment during the last three minutes was the transports passing through Shoal, causing a 500 unit carrier to pop. When the devourer golem was right next to it. Thanks for the free threat removal! Really though, that guy should be able to eat stuff in carriers anyway. Or can he, with the latest patch ...?

13.52: Cookie monster on Dislaju, and it looks like he's here to stay. And eat my entire rebel fleet. This is going to be a problem because I've never taken care of the ~150 hybrids and superfort on Jubuvi, so they can't escape. Ships start kiting around the edge of the grav well, while three cloakers are rapidly transported in from Murderlanceras.

13.53: Cloakers have arrived at Dislaju. The existing translocator and siege tower are put into stand-down and hidden under one. The other two take up position next to the Jubuvi wormhole ... along with a Martyr and 2 rams.

13.53.30: Hahah, the remaining 1,800 youngling tigers are attacking Dislaju. While the cookie monster is roaming around hungry. This should be interesting.

13.54: About a thousand die, before the other 800 leg it. Speaking of which, might be an idea for the rebel fleet to that too...

13.55: Exo-galactic patch hitting in 00:05:00.

13.56: Most of the hybrids explode to the Martyr (although possibly not so many as would have to the new ones). Rams take out the super-fort. Rebel fleet legs it to safety across two hostile worlds. Fabricator hack finishes successfully on Darkyeul, missile turrets being springing up everywhere.

I now have to figure a way of getting those hacking support ships home, seeing as the transports are going to die the second they hop through their next wormhole.

Oh, and mining golems! Geoasi, Ulgin, Charcuza, Zinglikjer, Jubuvi, Melshuafr and Revurlock. Charcuza, Melshuafr and Geoasi I'll probably try to save. The rest I don't really care if they die. And in fact it might make it easier for me if those planets don't get super-forts again.

13.58: About half the rebel fleet makes it through the gauntlet of remaining hybrids. The wisdom of completely clearing Orerlu becomes clear, as all but 100 of the fab hacking fleet ships make it back. The economy is groaning under the strain of Mk V missile turret construction, but it'll be done soon enough.

Did you know you can get 24 Mk II Martyrs, given enough Pysite? I don't have enough, but I can afford about 12. Sezon is now completely free of asteroids, I'll have to send a cloaker down there to escort them up my homeworlds.

13.59.59: Missile turrets are up everywhere, including on Geoasi which was apparently sneakily rebuilt by cloaked remains rebuilders while I wasn't watching. The mini-forts there are currently pummeling the mining golem. All but handful of ships are rebuilt, defences are about as good as they're gonna be (and let's be honest, I have 15 minutes before the golems get near me anyway), so let's do this thing.

Exo-galactic patch in 00:00:01.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #26 on: May 05, 2014, 07:27:04 pm »
13.09: Huh, that's wierd. Over the past ten minutes my 15 super hybrids and associated devices have been whittled down to just two. Maybe the dark spire's doing?
It would appear there was a falling out in the Evil Villians Society.

Or maybe the Dyson Sphere paid off the Dark Spire.

... Or maybe, since they all popped up again later, they just decided they didn't like the local decor.


Quote
13.28: Well, that wasn't quite so bad as I was led to believe it might be. Although that probably has something to do with the 60 tackle drone launchers playing keep away, and best part of 2,000 enclave drones. Actually between the botty, leeches and viral spawners I think I may have ended up net positive on ships.
Grand Theft Starfleet.


Quote
Only about 200 make it. Reprisal level 4.
Be very thankful for the difficulty level.


Quote
A particularly funny moment during the last three minutes was the transports passing through Shoal, causing a 500 unit carrier to pop. When the devourer golem was right next to it. Thanks for the free threat removal!
Counter-troll!


Quote
Really though, that guy should be able to eat stuff in carriers anyway. Or can he, with the latest patch ...?
The list of ships that _can_ hit the carrier hasn't changed.  They're just a lot more willing to do it, and the damage is handled differently.


Quote
Exo-galactic patch in 00:00:01.
Boom.

Problem solved?
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Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #27 on: May 05, 2014, 08:07:42 pm »
14.00: The patch hits. '36 massive AI ships (118,000 strength) are en-route to your planets' takes on a terrifying new meaning. Armored golem flexes as he realises his new physique, then the smile fades as he remembers his six brothers.

14.01: Little bits of threat are attacking all over. 300 ships on the previously peacefully rebuilding Charcuza, 200 taking advantage of Dislaju's supply interdicted state. Still, it's funny seeing the devourer golem two-shot a bunch of Mk IV spire corvettes. And profitable, those things are worth a fair bit.

Forwards scouts with over-active imaginations are reporting something about 'A heinous swarm of locusts, descending upon us to tear asunder all we hold dear'. A brief check of the threat fleet log indicates... yeah, they might be right:

Quote
totalExistingThreatFleetStrengthNotOnTarget:221,657.33
humanStrengthMustBeThisLowToBeAttackable:110,828.66
Priority override: targeting accessible human homeworld Murdke

14.02: That whole 'build random turrets within range to fill up the target list, then throw mini-forts at it' thing worked pretty well to take out the mining golem on Geoasi. Might have to try that again in the future. Charcuza goes down to about 30 Mk IV spire corvettes.

14.03: Three black widow, three armored golems are moving through Etgin. They'll hit Deramic in about a minute's time. Let's see what a lighting missile can do.

14.04: Uh, there's a Mk III lighting warhead here from the neinzul rocketry corps. It's just kinda ... sitting on the planet next to the Cenurin wormhole, doing nothing.

Anway, the golems don't want this planet. They just want to move through Cenurin -> Miccacau -> Probably Panza, then hit Muderlanceras. But if I was to hold off the lightning warhead until they're close to the wormhole that this neinzul one is sitting on, and catch them in both blasts at once...

14.04.45: Before



14.04.49: And after.



Yup, that's six dead golems alright. With the 2-warheads-for-the-price-of-one offer, that was a good 10 billion damage. Now, I could just sit here and take care of them all this way. Especially seeing as I have Mk III armored warheads on special offer at 1 metal each. But where's the fun in that.

Oh, scouts report that in addition to the two artillery golems still on Deramic there's three more arties, 3 armored, 6 black widows and 10 H/Ks on Etgin heading this way.

14.06: I currently count 12 golems and 10 H/Ks on Deramic. Wonder where there other eight are. Cloaker is doing the rounds of Aosrinmar and Sezon, picking up Martyrs and the last few implosion artillery. Amazing what you can build even at a 12% salvage rate when insta-killing 6 golems gets you 36 million scrap.

Oh, hello! Zenith traders are on Poan, although sadly leaving my planets to go elsewhere.

14.07: Cloaker starship has finished his school run. So that's 26 implosion artilley and 10 Martyrs on Murderlanceras, along with an armored golem, black widow, and 2,500 assorted fleet ships. Bring it.

14.09: Ah, looks like I misjudged them slightly. They're moving through Aelurn to Poan instead, possibly because the fleet scared them off Murderlanceras. Martyrs are shifting to cover, fleet pulled back to Murdke.

14.10: Now THAT's what I call an attack. Note, this is after three Martyrs detonated already taking out four golems who were encroaching a little to close to the command station. There's also not a single massive ship outstanding.



14.11: After the Maytrs had their play, the only thing left was the cleanup.



14.11.30: Then the enclaves showed up and ... well, that was that.



14.11.40: The very last armored golem just managed to get a shot off at the command station and took it out. It'll be rebuilt in 30 seconds.

'Why do you throw your lives away'


Okay, so I had far too much fun doing that. And I now have to get up for work in 7 hours. So it'll be left there for now.

Tomorrow: Somewhere in the region of 150 million salvage to spend! I may hold off on rebuild Poan command until the trader swings around again...

These neinzul rocketry warheads are definitely bugged by the way, they're all just sitting next to wormhole exits not doing anything. On some planets I've now got 2/3 by each wormhole. Target acquisition problems? Anyway, it certainly makes dealing with waves a darn sight easier...

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #28 on: May 05, 2014, 08:51:57 pm »
Forwards scouts with over-active imaginations are reporting something about 'A heinous swarm of locusts, descending upon us to tear asunder all we hold dear'
Nuke it.

Or, rather, use the warheads that now have far more tactical utility than any of the in-game nukes ;)


One bug to cancel another, you might say.


Quote
These neinzul rocketry warheads are definitely bugged by the way, they're all just sitting next to wormhole exits not doing anything. On some planets I've now got 2/3 by each wormhole. Target acquisition problems? Anyway, it certainly makes dealing with waves a darn sight easier...
Do you happen to have a save?

Goodness, though, the Neinzul Rocketry Corps has had more "defeats the entire purpose of the faction" bugs than just about any other feature.  Incredibly buggy... wait, I see what it did there.
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Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #29 on: May 07, 2014, 05:42:38 pm »
Save attached. After examining this behaviour it seems like the very instant a lightning warhead enters a planet with a human command station it stops moving. If you destroy the command station, it starts moving again.

Take a look at Deramic in particular, near the centre of the map. That has 9 missiles stacked up on two wormholes.


14.12: Right then, what was I doing before the apocalypse of the golems? I suppose I need to start thinking about winning this thing.

Showdown devices are on - so far I've found 3/4. None of them are on planets I own, and all of them are on planets of low strategic importance. Not really worth pursuing.
Fallen Spire - Ahaha, not on 10/10
That leaves taking on the homeworld the traditional way. A, B and D shield generator networks are still up.

D network - A couple of uninteresting planets, one in the middle on nowhere with a regen golem on it, one on a core world and one on the world next to the core world with a spire archive on it.

Target ... Eliuan, with its lovely spire archive. If I remember rightly this is also the location of the new dyson antagoniser, which although it appears to have dropped off my notification list is still sending a steady stream of Gatlings at me. Oh, and it's next to the core world with the raid engine on it.

14.13: One jumpship, one hacker, 5 HaP and one minute later the raid engine is no longer an issue. Without triggering either it, or the CRE on the homeworld next to it.

B class shield network then. There's Jubuvi, which I've already mostly cleared but is going to get eaten by a mining golem in 12 minutes. And Jicidis, where I've already hacked the advanced factory. The other six are far enough away from my worlds not to be worth it.

Probably Jubuvi then. Suppose I should get rid of that mining golem after all.

14.14: Speaking of mining golems, I forgot about Melshuafr. One jumpship packing a colony ship, 8 engineers and a cloaker are sent out that way.

Command station goes up, engineers quick-build a pair of rams, rams take out mining golem, command station goes back down again and the rebel cloak is reset to two hours. Piece of cake.

A class shield network. I believe, although I might be incorrect, that I only need one more ARS world to pop this. That honour will go to Quzi, primarily because the dyson sphere is right next to it and I'd feel sad having a 10/10 dyson sphere that I never liberated.

14.16: Dark spire attacking Rolikill, and a dual wave hitting it in one minute. Devourer golem is there to meet them. I am feeding this guy well.

Blob of all 64+ speed ships en-route to Jubuvi. The remainder are slapped into assault transports and sent to Charcuza to deal with the mining golem there.

14.20: 50 hybrids / 1,400 ships on Jubuvi aren't too much of a problem ... then the hunter fleet passes through. They seem to be up to 10 H/Ks now. Oh, then special forces show up along 130 riot starships. I may have to rethink this a little.

14.24: Good thing I had an Xampite left for rams, huh, Jubuvi. Even if that was somewhat of a pain due to four different tachyon astro trains passing through the system.

Thanks to an EMP astro-train stalling the transports the mining golem on Charcuza goes down with 19 seconds remaining on the countdown. Too close. Revurlock, Ulgin and Zinglikjer all explode.

14.27: Charzua and Geoasi are fully back online. Special forces and hunters are moving through Poan (where I still haven't rebuilt the command station). That means they're not so likely to come to Jubuvi's aid...

Black widow golem, a siege tower and 90-odd rebel frigates (pretty much the only surivors from that little special forces run-in) jump in. Then straight back out again, as surprise surprise there's sudddenly a super-fort there.

14.28: There now also appears to be a strike force of 29 Mk IV spire corvettes moving through Poan to my homeworld. Presumably the offensive component of the superfort. Rebuilt fixed defences and armored golem should handle them fine.

14.30: Wow, okay, those things are absolutely lethal. They chew through two forts, a half cap of normal turrets, 3 caps of Mk V turrets and half an armored golem before the fleet finally arrives and stops them. Looks like it's time to rebuild the Poan command station distribution node.

14.35: Devourer on one of my homeworlds, as is a supply interdictor taking me down to -900,000 energy. So of course the best part of 3,000 fighters decide to go after two of my planets.

14.39: Right well after beating off multiple waves and a couple of golems, I suppose I can now get back to Jubuv... oh, rebel colony decloaks in 14 minutes. Kinda forgot about that one.

14.40: 2 bomber starships, one colony ship and 7 engineers. Command station down, up, then blown up again within 20 seconds. 2 hour of lovely cloaking back again.

Of course, a supply interdictor train takes this opportunity to pass through Murderlanceras. And incite 150 hybrids to attack and level the place.

14.47: Superfort and command station on Jubuvi finally go down to the simple expedient of 'throw 2,000 ships at it'. Now I have an advanced starship constructor, and nothing to build at it. Then again, I do have 6k knowledge... spire starships II, III and IV along with protectors II I think.

14.51: Refleeting is taking such a long time, I've actually just gone and popped a distribution node. Oh, and the dyson antagoniser appears to be up to 'converter' now, should probably take care of that...

14.55: Even with 20-30 dyson gatlings on-planet at a time the armored golem is doing a bang-up job of killing two every two seconds. And barely getting scratched in the process. Still, 1,000 ships go to attempt to take out the converter.

Scout info from Eliuan indicates ... 100+ hybrids, a gravitic command station with four counter-attack posts, covered by two shields, with a super-fort and two different Mk II forts right next to it. Well, 1,000 ships aren't going to cut it then. And I can't use armored warheads, partially because they'll probably take out the spire archive and partially because I just don't have the cash.

14.58: Tachyon path to Eliaun has been cleared. I'm just going to ram the converter for now, then come back later. Problem is, the closest asteroids are two hops away in the middle of a hostile planet.

Wait, problem? Sorry, tactical opportunity. 50 engineers and two cloakers and dumped into an assault transport, and a couple of ships send to find another distribution node.

15.00: Engineering mission successful. 8 Rams up. Then the power goes out, and so does the cloaking...

EDIT: Oh hey, I found the super hybrids.



This is ... somewhat absurd. It wasn't until I was looking to crash a ram in the super-hybrid putting up the converter that I realised they were ALL super hybrids.

Kinda makes sense of the disappearing notifications actually ... you only get one notification per planet, regardless of the number of super-hybrids. And there's a kind of race condition going on, where the only valid dyson anatagoniser is the one that goes up first, and once it goes up all the super-hybrids cluster around to defend it. Which would explain why my fleet got melted so fast the last time I sent them to take one out.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2014, 06:32:58 pm by RockyBst »

 

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