Author Topic: All Creatures Great and Small  (Read 16779 times)

Offline RockyBst

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All Creatures Great and Small
« on: April 26, 2014, 07:26:02 am »
Omnipotent AI getting you down? Tired of getting beaten into a bloody pulp by your robotic overlords? Then it's time to give someone else a chance.

120 planet realistic map
Human Marauders: 10/10
Human Resistance: 10/10
Colony Rebellions: 10/10
Zenith Trader
Zenith Miners: 10/10
Dyson Sphere: 10/10
Zenith Cookie Monster
Broken Golems: Easy
Botnet Golem: Easy
Neinzul Rocketry Corps: 10/10
Neinzul Preservation Wardens: 10/10
Neinzul Roaming Enclaves: 10/10
Fallen Spire: 10/10
Spire Civilian Leaders
Spirecraft: Easy
Darkspire: 10/10

AI One: Diff 7 Fortress Baron, with a Train Master sub-type
AI Two: Diff 7 Teleporter Turtle with a Counter-Spy sub-type

AI plots, for both:

Avenger
Hybrid Hives: 10/10
Advanced Hybrids: 10/10
Astro Trains: 10/10
Hunter: 10/10
Beachheads
Shark A/B: Disabled. I mean come on, I wouldn't last 10 minutes otherwise.

As for me:

2 homeworlds: Zenith Hyrdas and Tackle Drone launchers. Not sure I've ever actually played with either.
200% Resource boost - I'm going to need it for the hybrids alone.
Likelihood of semi-hilarious death: 97%

I think I've got just enough counter-cheese here to let me live. Possibly. Will I regret choosing double 10/10 astro trains for one AI? Regret the 10/10 dyson sphere with dyson antagonisers springing up everywhere, and counter-spies on half the planets? Regret ... y'know what, let's just assume I'll regret everything.

00.00: Okay, so I've backed myself into a fairly small corner on this map. My homeworlds are exposed to only two other planets, and taking them will be an instant priority.

Initial tech unlocks:
  • Scout II,
  • Engineer II,
  • Metal Harvesters II,
  • Area Mines,
  • Hardened Forcefields,
  • Mini-forts
  • Heavy Beam Cannons.

Another 6k knowledge trickling in from the homeworlds over the next 10 minutes or so, not yet decided what to do with it.

For now, blow turrets. 6 forcefields and 4 mini-forts on both homeworlds, then start churning out mobile ships.

P.S my economy is already 50% better than I had at the end of that 10/10 game.

00.02: Scout the immediate neighbours. Murderlance has a counter-spy, train station, 5 metal harvesters and 6 (4 hostile) entry points. Sounds like a good whipping boy.

Poan has a fort 1, train station and 3 hostile entry points. No metal harvesters, which is annoying. Still, it's next to the homeworlds so has to be taken.

00.05: Alright, +200% economy is slightly ridiculous. I currently have 24 Mk. 2 engineers building ships and my metal income is just slightly negative.

00.06: Nuclear train on Poan. Nuclear train on Poan. Oh man, what have I let myself in for. It's covered by 2 shields, a couple of widows, and 2 regens. Even worse, it's just routing through ... meaning that even if I kill the train station on Poan, I may well get another one.

00.07: Scout auto-explore doesn't really find anything good, although they do see the cookie monster on a planet 3 hops away. Oh, and one of the co-processors.

Two waves announced, both to Murdke ... both 31 bombers. I've been playing higher diffs way too long, these are absolutely petty waves. And declared 3 minutes out? Man.

00.09: Scout auto-explore hits a few more planets. They find another co-processor right next to one of my whipping boy planets, a core needler controller and a starship constructor on a planet with a super fortress. How does the AI have a super fortress nine minutes into the game?

6,000 knowledge. 4,000 to get a Mil 2 command station, 2,000 for Mk. II forcefields.

00.10: Waves hit Murdke. Seeing as at this point I have a fleet of 800 ships, including a full cap of leech, flagship and bomber starships this doesn't really faze me.

Okay then, let's talk strategy. First up, yep, I'm regretting those astro-trains. I think the first order of business is going to be staying on the homeworlds and wiping out every single train station within deep-strikiing distance. And taking out tachyons / counter-spies at the same time of course. Until that's done it isn't worth the risk of colonising any other planets. And besides, I have a perfectly healthy economy from just the homeworlds.

State of the union:





Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #1 on: April 26, 2014, 10:08:03 am »
00.11: Oh hey, my first roaming enclave showed up. Thanks fella, your protection will make my homeworlds invulnerable. And preservation wardens are starting to aimlessly throw themselves at my planets too.

Well, turret time then. Seeing as I have 192 of each variety, and that would destroy my power grid when combined with the fleet, let's leave it at a sedate 60 of each per homeworlds. Also, looks like it's matter converter time once again!

00.14: Oh F@*$. Hey, guess who just decided to pop his head into one of my homeworlds for no apparent reason? That's right, the nuclear astro-train! Everything explodes. Planet loses supply.

On further reflection, looks like he might have come from Muderlanceras and been routing towards Poan. Honestly there's no way I can continue this game while one homeworld contributes no metal or energy and is completely incapable of building turrets, soo...

00.11: With a sickening pop, time rewinds by four minutes. Plans to murder train stations are stepped up significantly.

00.14: Train stations on Poan and Murderlanceras are taken out. I also destroy the counter-spy on Murderlanceras, so I can picquet a scout and have advanced warning next time something happens. Like, say, the neinzul rocketry corps decide to lob a nuke at one of my homeworlds.

00.15: Marauders decided to turn up on Poan and are now taking care of the guardposts and ships for me. Nice of them. Especially when they disperse to go wreak havoc on other AI worlds as well. Maybe they'll take out a tachyon or two for me.

00.17: Warp gate guardians. Why did it have to be warp gate guardians. I only have 16 AIP, for crying out loud! I thought these guys didn't spawn in until diff 8+, anyway?

00.20: The anti-train station campaign continues. At least I'm also taking out hybrid equipment factories, tachyons and special forces guard posts at the same time.

Nuclear train on Poan - again. Routing towards my homeworld - again. This time I can move the fleet to intercept it though. It dies about 3mm from the wormhole. Okay, popping Poan command station and setting up an anti-train turret beach-head here. I just wish I knew how or why they were routing the way they are.

00.25: 600 turrets on Poan, 5 forcefields over the wormhole to Murdke. All aimed at blowing away any nuke trains before they make it to the homeworld.

00.30: Yay, super-hybrid time. Also, holy hell. Just took the fleet through Murderlanceras on the way back from wiping another train station - there were 92 hybrid hives waiting for them. I think about 3 starships is all that survived. Well over 1,000 ships on planet.

00.31: Hybrids passing through Poan, hopefully the beachhead can winnow some. Also, nuke train passing through. With no shields. Snipers!

00.32: Wow, 12% damage. Guess I should have had the missile turrets in better range. At least I'm taking out a few hybrids, and the resistance have showed up to assist.

00.35: Oh god. Just took another look at Murderlanceras. There are over 400 hybrids there at the moment. More than 5k ships. And they're nuke immune. And tractor immune. Looks like the best thing I have against them at the moment is bombers, so Mk. II bombers and a spire starship are unlocked with the 3,000 knowledge from Poan.

00.36: Scouts report a nuke train on Shoal, moving towards Poan. Looks like this one is aiming for the homeworld again.

...

There's a supply interdictor train with it. And 3 shields, and 2 widows. This is bad.

00.36.30: Time to pull out my secret weapon: a Mk. III lightning warhead. Without this bad-boy, my fleet just can't provide enough damage to take out the nuke train before it hits the homeworld (I may have save scummed once or twice to prove this). With it, 4.8 million damage is done in an instant and the fleet can juuust kill the nuke train before it hits home. +3 AIP. The turret ball defence obviously isn't going to work if supply interdictor trains are around, so I need to get myself a good supply of spirecraft rams and penetrators - stat.

00.36.45: What do you get when you put a supply interdictor astro train on a player homeworld? -360,000 energy. Thankfully the hybrids don't seem to be taking this as a cue to attack, but they're sure as hell going to chew my (widowed) fleet to pieces once the trains move on.

00.37: Fleet down. All but 36 ships. Reprisal level 1, although let's be honest with these wave sizes I'm not too concered about that.

00.41: 421 Enclaves + 5,000-odd drone ships, + one Mk. 3 lightning warhead = 4,100 deaths. Only 8 enclaves remain. I should probably have done that with a Martyr, on reflection.

50% astro train secret project completion.

00.45: Oh, you have EMP astro trains now? That's ... that's real nice.

00.50: Fleet sent to clear up the few dozen enclaves and 1,000-odd missile frigates on Murderlanceras. At which point, of course, both the super hybrid and an unshielded nuke train show up on Poan. Both out of range of the turrets.

00.54: Y'know what, I haven't actually seen any trains go through Murderlanceras since I took out that train station early on. I think it might be safe to take.

00.57: Okay then. Mil 2 in the centre of the system, 8 forcefields. Beat off the inevitable counter-attack of 150-odd enclaves. 3k knowledge, Mk. II tackle drone launchers and grav turrets sounds like a good bet. Take half the turrets from each homeworld and mine up all five entry points with those lovely area mines. Whipping boy (sorta) in place.

Poan I'm going to leave uncolonised, because honestly all I'm losing there is the energy. And as so many dangerous astro trains go through it I'd rather have a command station free planet than a nuked one where I can't build turrets. Plus uncolonised means that enclaves pass through all the time, which means I can shoot them all the time and at least keep the numbers down somewhat.

1.00: Well, that was a rather ... nuclear first hour. However I've got my basic defences in place and I've started re-routing trains. The ever increasing number of enclaves is going to be a real problem going forward, especially with raiding. But as soon as I go make a spirecraft raid on some world, probably Harmoat, I'll be a lot more secure against nuke trains.

AIP: 78
Defences on Murderlanceras:



A fairly average day on Poan - at times there's two train groups and upwards of 500 ships here:



And state of the union:




Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #2 on: April 26, 2014, 11:04:23 am »
Omnipotent AI getting you down? Tired of getting beaten into a bloody pulp by your robotic overlords? Then it's time to give someone else a chance.
Arcen Games: How Do You Want To Die Today?


Quote
(lobby setup)
It's.. it's full of tens.


Quote
2 homeworlds: Zenith Hyrdas and Tackle Drone launchers. Not sure I've ever actually played with either.
Hydras I don't have much experience with, but TDLs I heartily recommend.  Don't do much about tractor immune stuff, but combined with Riots you basically have the ultimate in "trolling fleet ships".


Quote
y'know what, let's just assume I'll regret everything.
That is probably simplest, yes.


Quote
00.06: Nuclear train on Poan. Nuclear train on Poan.
The RNG's just trying to be up-front about what you've signed up for.


Quote
How does the AI have a super fortress nine minutes into the game?
Fortress Barons start with some.


00.14: Oh F@*$. Hey, guess who just decided to pop his head into one of my homeworlds for no apparent reason? That's right, the nuclear astro-train! Everything explodes.
You're welcome.


Quote
00.35: Oh god. Just took another look at Murderlanceras. There are over 400 hybrids there at the moment. More than 5k ships.
That... could pose performance issues.  Particularly since I think that 5k doesn't even count the hybrid modules.

Generally speaking, the game gets pretty nervous about a planet when the AI has 5000 ships there.  Stops spawning stuff there, etc.

Anyway, seems like thus far they've concentrated on murdering you, not your CPU.


Quote
00.41: 421 Enclaves + 5,000-odd drone ships, + one Mk. 3 lightning warhead = 4,100 deaths. Only 8 enclaves remain.
Perhaps their clustering behavior is suboptimal ;)


Quote
50% astro train secret project completion.
I... hope you have some defenses up by then.  There's a few different things it can do, but iirc there's always an offensive component.


In any event, an excellent way of actually increasing the insanity-quotient following the Cage Match of Doom.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games? Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #3 on: April 26, 2014, 05:29:38 pm »
So, looks like the theme of this game is going to be 'Golems, golems everywhere'. Seeing as I don't have any of my own at this point, I'm kinda glad those buffs aren't in yet.

01.01: So, uh, 32 Mk. 5 missile guardians just showed up on Poan for some reason. Why? Who knows.

01.02.30: Oh, guess who else just showed up. A Mk. V H/K, with his Mk. IV buddy. That would be the hunter plot, then. This guy has 500 million health, and 2.6 million attack * 25. Slightly absurd, and a real reason for me to go find an artillery golem fairly sharpish.

Oh, and of course right after he warps in a supply interdictor train shows up.

01.03: First AI construction complete. 3 massive AI ships en-route to my planets. Uh-oh.

01.04: A wild cookie monster appears! Seems like he's just passing through though, and eating some of the constant stream of enclave drones while he does so.

01.04: So, my entire 900 ship strong fleet just got eaten by the Mk. V H/K and his buddies. I got him down to 31%. On reflection, I should probably have just let him have Poan.

01.12.30: So uh, those three massive ships. That wouldn't happen be the black widow golem, armored golem and H/K currently proceeding through the ruins of Poan's turret beachhead, would it? The ones heading right for my homeworld?

I'm almost refleeted, not sure whether to let them in the homeworld and hence get the scrap and turret support, or take the fleet to them and keep them on Poan.

01.13: What is life without risk. They warp in to the homeworld. Black widow goes down in about 10 seconds.

01.13.32: H/K down. Armored golem and core starships / warp / zombie guardians are still up though.

01.14.26: Last enemy dies. Currently 120,000 metal/s, with about 30 million scrap. That's one way to cut refleeting times, just a shame I don't have anywhere to dump the excess into as the trader hasn't been to see me yet.

01.16: Still some 200 enclaves and supporting vessels on Poan, but with sufficient remains rebuilders I may have a way to soak some of the excess metal.

01.18: What's worse than a Mk. V and Mk IV H/Ks? Four H/Ks, Mk. II and upwards! These guys really like Poan. Eh, at least I killed the Mk. 5 this time.

01.20: An strange hybrid-like signal, you say? Why, I never!

01.30: Scouts finally find the first ARS. Sitting three hops away, next to a world with an advanced factory and a rocketry silo. Aaand the world next door has a regen golem, rocketry silo and dark spire generator.

Looks like I'm heading out that way, but they will likely be throw away worlds for now.

01.30: Both AI cargo train projects just finished. 6 massive ships this time, so, uh, 4 golems and 2 H/Ks I assume. I may have to see about getting the Poan defence grid back up before they get here.

01.34: Six raids take out a data centre 3 hops away. It's nice to get -20 for a change.

Seeing as there are 200 enclaves and about 2,000 ship on Poan, that beachhead isn't going up again any time soon. Looks like turrets are going back up on Murdke, the Poan accessible homeworld.

By the way, when did tractors start dragging away mobile rally points to other planets? That is really irritating.

01.40: Nuke train on Shoal. Looks like it's routing for my homeworld again. Problem: 240 hybrids on Poan will obliterate my fleet before I can intercept it. Solution: Lightning warhead, of course.

01.41: Oh come on. I was ignoring the seven concurrent waves to Murderlanceras because they were tiny, about 100 ships each. So of course one of the waves was a beachhead, and all my defences are useless. Including forcefields. Anyway, 240 hybrids explode (they probably shouldn't cluster right on the wormhole), fleet kills the unshielded nuke, then flies to the rescue.

01.41.30: Of course by this point Murderlanceras command station is down and 120 enclaves are enjoying themselves with the helpless turrets.

01.43: Scouts indicate cookie monster moving towards Murderlanceras. Retreat the fleet.

Oh, and he's decided to stay here. At least he'll eat some of the enclave drones I suppose. Need to see if I can sneak a rebuilder past him to get the command station back up.

01.44: Supply interdiction astro train takes out all the turrets and forcefields on Murderlanceras just as the command station goes back up. Of course.

Poan has an artilley golem, black widow and H/K. Must be the first astro-train battlefleet. Man, I much preferred it when they just put super-forts everywhere.

01.46: On the plus side, the golems seem too afraid to attack. On the negative side, I now have four golems rambling around and no scrap.

01.48: Oh hey, the golems have decided to play after all. Artillery golem, black widow, H/K, 5 core starships and 7 warp gate guardians move to Muderlanceras. And as the cookie monster is still there, I can't really move the fleet in to take care of them.

01.50: Command station goes down. Enclaves come in. Chaos and screaming ensues. At least the turrets managed to get the H/K down to half health I suppose.

Boy I'm glad I didn't enable Shark 10/10.

01.52: Golems give some thought to the Murdke wormhole, then decide it's too scary because of the fleet next door to it. Can't say I'm a huge fan of the anti-rope-a-dope changes, even if they do make the AI more intelligent. Makes it a pain to clean up threat like this.

01.54: Oh joy, now we're up to 9 massive ships en-route. Thankfully, golems are slow beasties.

But hallelujah, the devourer has moved on. Time to throw 800 ships against 2 golems, a H/K and a load of warp guardians / core starships. After the first wave takes out the enclaves and their 500-odd supporting ships.

02.00: Fleet pretty much wipes taking out the black widow golem. About 5 minutes to refleet and take back Murderlanceras.

Like I said, golems everywhere. Especially as I just got a sneak peak of what is waiting for me down line: Seven mining golems. Seven. My need for an artillery golem is becoming overwhelming.

I say sneak peak by the way because I caught some unhandled exceptions and had to load from an auto-save. The mining golems haven't shown up again since, 6 minutes later. But I'm sure they'll be here soon.

Quote
4/26/2014 10:09:23 PM (7.020) Mem: 212,701,184 Plat:WindowsPlayer
-----------------------------------UnhandledErrors-----------------------------------
4/26/2014 10:09:23 PM (7.020)
-----------------------------------Error-----------------------------------Log String: FixedUpdate: System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
  at ReinforcementLogic.Helper_PickUnitsForReinforcement (.Player player, Int32 AITechLevel, .Planet ToPlanet, .Buy[] buyCategories, FInt StrengthToSpend, .BuyCategory[] CatsByTech) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at ReinforcementLogic.DoReinforcementsLogic (.Player player) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Player.DoResourceEvent () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunOneCycleOfSimulation () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunNextCycle (Boolean DoRendering) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunFrame () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at MainCameraLogic.UsedToBeFixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
Stack Trace:   at ReinforcementLogic.Helper_PickUnitsForReinforcement (.Player player, Int32 AITechLevel, .Planet ToPlanet, .Buy[] buyCategories, FInt StrengthToSpend, .BuyCategory[] CatsByTech) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at ReinforcementLogic.DoReinforcementsLogic (.Player player) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Player.DoResourceEvent () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunOneCycleOfSimulation () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunNextCycle (Boolean DoRendering) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunFrame () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at MainCameraLogic.UsedToBeFixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

I think I've gone backwards over the last hour. I've gone from three planets and a beachhead with minimal threat, to two planets with 5 outstanding golems, 3 H/Ks, and I'm going to assume about 3 Mk V H/Ks in the hunter fleet by now. On the plus side I have 7 AIP less than an hour ago. So yay?

EDIT: Okay, these unhandled errors are getting a touch ridiculous now. See attached save, with a few core starships and 2 armored golems pounding on my homeworld. Any clues?

EDIT EDIT: Oooh, is it possibly because there's a reinforcement warp gate (warp guardian) on a player homeworld?
« Last Edit: April 26, 2014, 05:54:27 pm by RockyBst »

Offline Aeson

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #4 on: April 26, 2014, 08:05:28 pm »
Good luck doing FS 10/10. Those exos hurt, and I don't really think that anything else you've turned on will help much with it, unless you really delay FS or don't go far up the campaign.

Offline Toranth

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #5 on: April 26, 2014, 08:55:51 pm »
01.02.30: Oh, guess who else just showed up. A Mk. V H/K, with his Mk. IV buddy. That would be the hunter plot, then. This guy has 500 million health, and 2.6 million attack * 25. Slightly absurd, and a real reason for me to go find an artillery golem fairly sharpish.
It won't help:  H/Ks are immune to Artillery ammo  :(

Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #6 on: April 27, 2014, 08:52:41 am »
It won't help:  H/Ks are immune to Artillery ammo  :(

But not implosions. Beautiful, beautiful spirecraft implosions.

I'll probably only do fallen spire far enough to get the first lot of frigates. Uh, I do get an extra large number of frigates on 10/10 right?

02.03: Heeeey, there are those mining golems. All seven of them. Most of them on planets I haven't been to yet, and I have 30 minutes to kill every one of them.

02.04: H/K on Murderlanceras goes down. Still leaves a painful load of warp gate guardians, with their 80 million health, core starships, a half health arty golem, hybrids etc...

02.07: Oh, hi two armored golems and a H/K. Are you going to just sit on Murderlanceras as well? Sure, it's not like I wanted that planet back or anything...

02.08: Whoo, they're not just sitting there. They're attacking my barely defended second homeworld! Wait, that's a bad thing.

The 47 engineers on Ijip are told to build every single remaining turret. And forcefields. Lots more forcefields.

02.09: So hey, did you know that a dozen Mk. V core starships can make absolute mincemeat out of even 24 forcefields? By the time I kill the last one most of them are at 20%. Thankfully the three golems keep their distance though.

02.10: Artillery golem and H/K down. That just leaves 10 warp gate guardians and 2 armored golems, for a total of 1.3 billion health.

02.12: 223,000m/s from scrap. Those armored golems sure pay nice, shame that I have literally nothing to pour it all into. Plenty of unhandled errors from the warp gate guardians, but no crash this time. Entire docks output is redirected to Murderlanceras, let's see if we can take it back while there's still absurd amounts of money sloshing about.

02.13: Fleet is terminating the 50 hybrids and supporting ships on the planet. Turrets on Ijep are scrapped so that 40 remains rebuilders and 25 engineers can put them back up on Murderlanceras. I still have absurd amounts coming in from scrap.

Oh, and the warp gate guardians left me the present of three waves to Ijep before they died.

02.17: Murderlanceras de-hybridising and rebuilding complete. Including getting rid of the pesky mining golem sitting on it. That means I now have 17 minutes to remove the other six.

Therkilldoor is easily accessible from Murderlanceras, has a mining golem, and has previously been somewhat cleaned. Unfortunately there are currently 240 hybrids there. So, lightning warhead it is then.

02.18: Tackledrone launchers keep the riff-raff away from the fleet, golem goes down. Only five left, and Poan seems like a decent next move.

02.22: 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.

02.24: Thanks to the hunter crew the fleet wipes on Poan. So, 4 miners left. Oh and the AI sends out another pair of golems from astro train construction.

Two of the remaining miners are on Harmoat and Shoal, both of which I've cleaned before but both of which are fairly low priority. And I'd have to go through the hunter fleet on Poan to get there. I might just let those get eaten.

And the last two are both low priority worlds hanging off Murderlanceras: Solyhung, with 8 metal extractors, and Panyae which is a co-processor world with 10 Xampite. Neither is particularly interesting, but let's see if I can't get the fleet to Panyae anyway. At least I might be able to take out some hybrid spawners on the way.

02.26: Looks like Panyae is where the dysons are coming through. About 16 at a time. It also has the usual 150-odd hybrids. This could be 'fun'.

02.27: Well, I take out the counter-spy so I can at least get consistent scout date off Panyae. Then an artillery golem, armored golem and H/K with the usual supporting fleet attack my homeworld via Poan. Hey, free salvage!

You know what's really annoying though? Dyson gatlings don't give any salvage, as they cost 1 metal.

02.29: 280 hybrids decide to join the battle-group attacking my homeworld, which is now down to just the last few warp guardians and the armored golem. Engineers fast-build a lightning warhead.

02.31: I missed with the warhead. Still, they're all dead now. 3 minutes remain until four planets die to miners.

02.33: One minute left. 450 ships, against over 2,000 on Panyae. What the heck, I'm still raking it in on salvage so they'll be rebuilt soon enough.

02.34: I got the miner down to 91%. Then four planets died. AI reprisal level 3, which it turns out is a paltry 1,300 fighters.

02.39: I've decided to take Therkilldor, for knowledge and because it has a nice selection of asteroids. The first attempt doesn't go so well when when the hunter fleet shows up.

My plan for that knowledge? Assault transports. Never unlocked them before, but with the number of hybrids around they seem like a mighty fine choice at the moment.

02.44: Therkilldor command station pops. The hybrids are not amused.

Also, I now have 12 massive ships en-route to my planets. So that would be 9 golems and 3 H/Ks, then.

02.47: Uh, I just completely missed the two artillery golems on my homeworld. And I'm assuming, at one point, a H/K as well. Ah well, the turrets seem to be taking care of them okay. It is nice that artilley golems tend to fire on the sniper turrets at the edge of the grav well.

02.50: Mil 2 command station up on Therkilldor. Fleet ships taking out the inevitable hybrid counter-assault, then I'll start pouring some of this 4 million-and-change metal into asteroids.

2 Reptite = 1 shield, 1 implosion artillery
10 Pysite = 6 implosion artillery (perfect anti-golem weapons), 4 Mk. II Martyrs.
4 Xampite = 1 set of Mk. II scouts, one Mk. III Martyr, one penetrator, and one double sized set of Mk. II rams.

02.53: 40 engineers make quick work of that lot. Cookie monster on Panyae, apparently en-route for Murderlanceras again. Spirecraft are told to dash for the homeworld so they don't get cut off and cut to pieces.

02.54: Oh dear. Devourer is going to Ijep. Luckily there's no ships there, but it looks like he's going to stay for a while. So no ship production from that homeworld for 10 minutes or so.

Implosions and Maytrs are put to sleep under a cloaker, to be woken the next time there's a golem or hybrid incursion. The penetrator should be able to quite handily take out a nuke or EMP train if one is nearby. As for Therkilldor itself, it's pretty much throwaway. Set of mini-forts and 2 forcefields around the mil 2 are the only defences it's getting.

02.57: Oh hey, look at that. H/Ks are attacking one of my homeworlds. Implosion time! Need the fleet to take out the sniper guardians first though, don't want to lose these guys. And keeping them away from the 30,000 range warp guardians who can insta-kill them would also be a good idea.

03.00: Well, we're back up to 12 massive ships again. But at this stage I'm fairly confident I can handle any two or three golems who peek their heads into a homeworld. Just a tad concerned what might happen if, say, 9 golems get it into their heads to join the threat fleet...

For now, my priorities are:

Send some raids to take out the two date centres my spirecraft scouts just found

Capture Jadikic, the priority 8 world next to Therkilldoor, which has a black widow golem and Mk. V viral shredder fab on it. Hey, even if I lose the fab as long as I have some shredders in cold storage I can rebuild them.

After that take Gorisuip, which has an ARS. It also has two rocketry silos next door, so I'll probably not defend it. Combined, those two will get me 19 more Pysite. Implosions for everyone!

Oh, and track down the dyson sphere / where that antagoniser is. Although even on 10/10 the base defences are handling the gatlings okay. At the moment I've traced them back to at least Dekal.

EDIT: State of the union



 
« Last Edit: April 27, 2014, 08:57:58 am by RockyBst »

Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #7 on: April 27, 2014, 06:14:39 pm »
03.01: Armored golem, arty golem and a H/K come to call on the homeworld. They get relatively quickly imploded, but are of course instantly replaced by another cargo train.

03.03: An assault transport full of raids completely fails to take out a date centre. Devourer golem is moving on, which means the fleet desperately flees as it enters Murderlanceras.

Subspace signal on Harmoat, one of the planets I let get exploded.

03.05: Ooh, auto-picqueting scouts finally found the Dyson antagonisers. It's on Panza, which is two hops away through Solyhung. Guess where I'm neutering next.

They also found the super hybrid itself and ... a nuke train. Which appears to be heading straight for Murderlanceras. Penentrator, you're up!

03.05.20: Another nuke train, this time on Poan. And an EMP train. I'm gonna need more penetrators to cover all the approaches.

I've debated putting a command station up on Poan just to absorb nuke trains, but then I noticed that they don't explode on planets which have already been destroyed. So it would only soak a single train anyway.

03.06: Looks like we're safe for now. Nuke train goes past Murderlanceras and is last seen exiting Aelurn. Still, I need to take these two down as a priority in case they come back.

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.

03.09: Assault transport data centre raid, take two. This time I send five and they make it.

03.10: Penetrator manages to catch one of the nuke trains as it passes through Poan again. Escapes with about 15% health after the hybrids once more display their displeasure. Even with scouts dropping like flies due to counter-spies and tachyon trains, here's what my warning box normally looks like:



Maybe add a few waves in there as well.

03.10: Fleet wipes, hard, trying to take out hybrids on Solyhung so I can get to Panza. Should just sent a missile. Or a Martyr. Hey, I have Martyrs now.

03.12: We're now up to 15 massive ships apparently en-route to my planets. Still at least one more nuke train roaming around somewhere, marauders attacking Therkilldor. On the plus side, a Mk. II Martyr just made quite a mess of 100 hybrids and 1,600 other assorted ships.

03.13: Dammit. Nuke train just detonated on Therkilldor. My entire fleet was there fighting off the marauders as well. Fleet wiped, no more metal or energy from there. No more turrets or forcefields, either. I can still stick a mil 2 up to retain control though. At least I know that we're clear of nuke trains for another hour or so until more spawn in I suppose.

I also just noticed that I never capped the mercenary space docks I had churning out parasites, so my entire metal stock is gone.

03.14: Ah. Argggh. Arty and armored golem making mincemeat of one of my homeworlds again. How long have they been there? Implosions, to your positions.

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.

03.22: CPA declared. 522 ships. That's ... that's like 40 hybrids worth. I won't even notice that in the threat fleet.

03.22: EMP astro-train hits Murderlanceras. EMP immune units hit it. That's one way to take one down, I suppose...

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

03.24: Solyhung is, of course, back up to 150 hybrids by the point. I'm going to need more Martys.

Uh ... dyson converter? That ... that doesn't sound good.

03.26: 14 assault transports, 3 cloakers, one martyr. Let's take this converter down.

It is, of course, sitting under a Mk. II shield. But my forces blast it soon enough, along with a selection of the 26 hybrid hive spawners on the planet. And the train station, for good measure.

03.27: Oh, hello two black widow golems and a H/K on my homeworld. I'm kind of getting used to this now. Implosions!

Somewhat surprisingly my assault transports are still alive and manage to evac a good 300 ships from that raid. Impressive, considering I was expecting a full fleet wipe just on the antagoniser let alone the train station and 15-odd hybrid spawners as well.

03.30: 1,000 missile frigate reprisal to a homeworld. Apparently the AI are upset with me. Ah well, at least I got rid of the golem infestation. Y'know, except for the 9 still en-route to my planets.

Also, that super hybrid is already off an building another antagoniser. On Raedhung this time, which has the core needler turret controller. Well, at least I know where it is for a change.

03.31: Nuke train on Jubuvi, at least that's a way off. However scouts also report a super-fort on Jakidic, i.e. the planet I wanted to take next. Blasted astro trains.

So, uh, bad news. Spirecraft asteroids aren't nuke immune. So when those four planets got blown up earlier, so did their asteroids. Meaning I can't raid them for rams to take out the superfort.

03.36: Fleet removes the tachyon on Jakidic, then retreats from the 3,500 ships there. Looks like my best bet for rams might be Dorvil, just off Murderlanceras. It of course has the usual 100 enclaves / 2,000 ships that all the worlds next to mine do. So Martyr, cleanup, quick-build some rams and more Martyrs.

03.42: While the fleet wipes the remaining ships and another train station, engineers build me a half dozen Mk II rams, a trio of Martyrs and another penetrator. All the rest of the asteroids go to implosion artilley, giving me a fleet of 14 anti-golem lovelies now.

Of course while this is going on I completely fail to notice that the CPA, 2 black widows and a H/K have hit Murderlanceras. And 100 or so hybrids are trying their luck with my homeworld's fixed defences. While the player fleet is engaged, the threat fleet will play.

03.45: Annoyingly the command station went down before the black widows, so no scrap. Still, I have the comfort of knowing that with 18 more massive ships incoming I'm sure to get some soon.

03.47: Two Mk II rams is just enough to take out a superfort. Now follow up with a Martyr to take out the enclaves, and the fleet to clean house...

03.52: Turns out this is more of a 2 Martys and a fleet wipe job. Especially as the hunter plot with it's variety of H/Ks appears to be sitting next door. Reprisal level 3, and of course the golems have taken this opportunity to waltz in to my homeworld.

03.55: Two EMP trains hit Murderlanceras at once. EMP immune units (i.e hydras) hit back. Of course, the 3 minute paralysis is timed perfectly for the 800 bomber reprisal wave to take out the command station.

03.59: 3,000 attack on my homeworld? Dratted hybrids. Martyr takes out 220 of them.

04.00: Defences back up, coffers overflowing, fleet up in about 2 minutes. Then time to take 10 assault transports and quickly capture Jakidic along with its Mk. 4 ion cannon, black widow golem and core shredder fab. Plan is to insta-cap for 40-odd engineers, hopefully preventing the hunter fleet from coming. The take care of the remaining 500-odd ships before they take out the broken golem.

P.S. this really is a lot of golems. I'm becoming uncomfortably blase about them waltzing in to my homeworlds. Thank goodness for implosion artillery.

Offline Aeson

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #8 on: April 28, 2014, 11:42:24 am »
I'll probably only do fallen spire far enough to get the first lot of frigates. Uh, I do get an extra large number of frigates on 10/10 right?
No, the scaling only affects the magnitude of the AI response. I don't know if the balance has changed recently, but a while back even the first shard recovery exo was a serious threat on FS 10/10.

Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #9 on: April 28, 2014, 04:08:05 pm »
Blast, I was hoping for a horde of 50+ frigates to help me take down golems. Ah well.

04.02: Uh, there's also a translocator eye here. How did I not see that before? Guess I've always been out-numbered on my assaults.

04.04: Popped the command station and eye, retreating for now until I can come back with the colony ship. Uh, reprisal wave is 1,440 attractor drones. Interesting choice.

04.05: Oh hey, it's mining golem time again!

The hit list this time is:

  • Dorvil - Which I have already raided for all its asteroids so don't really care about
  • Murderlanceras - On planet defences will handily take care of that
  • Poan - Eh, I'll probably clean it
  • Jakidic - AKA the planet I'm in the middle of capturing. That one is obviously going down.
  • Goriusip - ARS planet I'm aiming for next. Also need to get this one.
  • Aelurn - Another co-processor world. Nothing majorly interesting, probably gonna let this one burn.
  • Dicgendle - Low priority world next to Murderlanceras. Might clean this one, given sufficient time, for the eight Xampite asteroids if nothing else.

04.07: Jakidic is mine. Train station and mining golem explode rather quickly, and 40 engineers get the black widow golem up in absolute record time. It only took about 50 seconds.

Human colony rebellion on is announced on Aosrinmar. I don't even know where that is. In fact I've never even played with colony rebellions enabled before. Looks like I've got two hours to get over there though.

04.09: I nick 5 forcefields and most of the turrets from the homeworld that hasn't been breached in an hour or two. I don't expect Jakidic to last forever, but I can at least give it a fair shot at holding off waves and time to get the fleet there. Also, there's apparently an interplanetary munitions booster there which didn't disappear on ownership change. Seems like a good target for sabotage hacking.

I've worked out where Aosrinmar is ... it's the planet five hops away with the dire guardian lair and rocketry silo. Joy.

04.12: 3k knowledge. Seeing as my economy is strong, often to overflowing, and I can always build matter converters for energy then fortresses seem like a good idea. They will, of course, discourage golems from attacking. But I can live with that.

Standard load of 100-odd hybrids on Goriusip. Kill the tachyon, then send them a Martyr from my new asteroid stocks on Jakidic. Oh, and put 20 of the Mk. V shredders into cold storage on my homeworld, just in case I ever lose the fab.

04.14: Once again, I'm reminded that you can't sabotage hack on your own planets. Looks like the only way to get rid of this munitions booster is to blow it up and take the 5 AIP hit.

04.15: Uh, at some point in the last minute Goriusip seems to have acquired a super fortress. Blasted astro-trains. Ramming time.

04.18: Super fortress down. Mining golem down. Train station down. Aren't assult transports lovely. I'll come back and clean up / cap the ARS later. For now I have 17 minutes to decide if I want to save any of the other mined worlds.

Oh, and the rocketry corps just sent me their first present. In the form of two Mk III lightning warheads. How lovely. The black widow manages to take them out from well beyond range though.

04.19: Oh, I thought I hadn't seen a golem in a while. And now I have four. Three black widows, that's just mean. Especially when combined with a 1,000 ship youngling tiger reprisal hitting in one minute.

04.21: 2 fortresses for every planet, I think. Ooh, and hey the trader is on Murderlanceras. Let's have two OMDs to help take care of those nasty little golems. And a planetary armor inhibitor, because why not. Well, now I've got something to soak up my next 200,000m/s surplus.

04.26: Nuke train on Shoal, heading towards Poan. Penetrator in place on Poan to intercept it. Assault transports have taken out mining golems on Poan and Dorvil, that just leaves Aelurn and Dicgendi to clear.

Oh, and apparently there's four golems and a H/K moving through Harmoat to Poan. Looks like I'm going to be having some visitors to the homeworld in a moment.

04.27: Nuke train is heading straight for my homeworld. Good job I noticed it. That would be one heck of a one-two punch from the AI, nuke your homeworld then follow up with four golems to take out the now unshielded command station. Unfortunately the golems take out the brave penetrator pilot, then turn around and run away. C'mon, I need the scrap!

04.30: I'm now a touch worried that I appear to have six golems waiting outside my worlds. At least they're on two different planets ... for now.

Ah good sending my fleet to take out the miner on Dicgende, and hence engaging the hybrid horde, made two of them attack. For a certain definition of good. Implosions followed up by a fortresses to the face are, at least, fairly effective. And will be even more so now that I have enough metal to get an OMDs up.

04.35: Never did take out the last mining golem on Aelurn, so that planet explodes. That makes for a total of 6 devastated planet so far then, or 5% of the entire map.

04.40: OMD is up, as is most of the fleet. Assault transports are sent to drill a tachyon path to a data centre, and run slap bang into two armored golems. Then an EMP train hits the planet. With the exception of four starships the entire fleet wipes, either to the golems themselves or the 2,000 hybrids and drones on the escape route. Reprisal level 3, * 2.

Oh, and four golems take the opportunity to jump into Murderlanceras. The sight of implosions and OMD slugs taking them out is glorious.

04.41.30: By the time I've taken out 3 golems and a H/K and there's still 4 golems and 2 H/Ks left on the planet, it's fairly obviously the command station is going down. Especially with 2,000 wave ships hitting in 30 seconds or so. Implosions, enclaves etc. retreat in reasonably good order.

04.45: 3 golems, 2 H/Ks and about 25 mixed core starships / warp guardians on my homeworld. That is, the undefended one without any turrets. Luckily I have a secret weapon - 4 spirecraft rams. If the implosions can deal enough damage, I should be able to wipe the golems.

04.46: One H/K dealt with and all ten core starships. Those are what I was really worried about, they can absolutely power through forcefields.

Implosions focus the black widow, then a ram takes it out. Another for the H/K. That leaves 2 armored golems and change.
 
04.47: Implosions and the last two rams make short work of the last two golems, while a 900 bombers wave to Jakidic is blunted by 150 viral shredders and an angry black widow golem.

Looks like the dyson antagoniser is online now, too. And they're streaming in to my second homeworld.

04.47: Capped out on metal again, with a +240,000m/s excess. And of course, Murderlanceras is offline so I don't have any trader toys to pour it into. Always from famine to feast. Oh, and I now have Mk. V 370 viral shredders. I love those guys.

04.50: 230 hybrids attacking my (turreted up) homeworld. And no martyr this time to stop them. Erp. At least I've managed to quick build two forts on each of my remaining planets and not even make a dent in the metal income.

Hey, what happens when you get 50 Mk. II engineers to build a missile silo? Six seconds later you have a lightning III warhead. The hard part is watching it inch from the wormhole across the planet until it finally impacts on and kills the 180 hybrids chewing on my home command station shields.

04.50: Only 250 ships on Murderlanceras after that little display of petulence. Time to use space docks and fleet ships like you'd normally use railpods. And send the black widow golem and a few hundred shredders in to help as well, why not.

04.53: 50 remains rebuilders and 50 Mk. I engineers make quick work of rebuilding, even while the battle rages around them. Then I get the best news yet - Zenith trader on my homeworlds. Time for 2 zenith power generators with their 1.2 million energy goodness.

04.55: Oh look. Another two black widow golems on Murderlanceras, where I've only just got the command station back up. So that would be my black widow, backed up with implosions, v.s. 2 black widows, a H/K and change. Guess who I'm betting on.

05.00: My black widow wins the grudge match, and also does an admirable job of intercepting dyson gatlings for a while. However the command station went down before I got the golems so I got absolutely no scrap for that. Meaning that my economy is once more floored, this time with only about 300 ships built. The fleetship dock cannon stops, all ships retreat from Murderlanceras. Refleet a bit, then in five minutes I should be fine taking it back.

AIP: 150
Devourer Golem: On Poan, eating hybrid drones.

EDIT: State of Murderlanceras



That would be 'crispy', then.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2014, 04:11:53 pm by RockyBst »

Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #10 on: April 28, 2014, 06:58:43 pm »
05.05: The black widow is back up to 33%, so is sent in to clear up the three core starships and various other pieces on Murderlanceras. It does so successfully, albeit getting down to 4% health in the process.

Then, just as the command station goes back up and the remains rebuilders go to work, an artillery and armored golem enter the world. So much for that.

05.08: Ah good, they're attacking one of my homeworlds. Well, kind of good seeing as my fleet in currently a grand total of 100 ships. Eh, at least I get scrap.

05.10: They're dead, I'm back in black, fleet ships start pouring out and 50 engineers are told to soak up excess money by healing the black widow golem. Who would have thought inviting golems in to your homeworld could be so rewarding.

05.13: Ahhh, much more like it. Battle engineering group gets Muderlanceras back up with all turrets plus two forts in record time. At the same time I complete one of the zenith power generators (bye-bye 12 matter converters) and an ion cannon on the homeworld. And still have enough money left over for a pretty much complete refleet. In fact, I'll start building a trio of Martyrs, 2 new penetrators and 8 implosion artillery I think, and I'll probably still be positive.

Yeah, reducing the golem salvage value may have been a good move. Not sure on 10% myself though, I would have gone for more like 20/25.

05.17: Dual EMP trains on my homeworld. Ouch. Black widow is immune though, so they swiftly die.

05.23: Okay then, fully refleeted and the completed spirecraft are on their way to my homeworlds under cloaker cover. Seems like a good time to take out this dyson antagoniser on Raedhung. Especially as it's right next door to the planet which is currently undergoing a colony rebellion.

First step - colonise Poan again. One fort + mini-forts, nothing serious, but enough to soak a nuke train and get us one step closer to Raedhung.

05.24: Ahh. Arghhh. Two artillery golems on Poan. This is why you always make sure your scout cover hasn't been taken out by astro trains before jumping the entire fleet into a system.

05.27: The second time around I remember to bring implosions. The two arties and the H/K go down at the cost of an almost total fleet wipe. Hey, at least I doubled the number of shredders! Mil II command station going up.

An AI leech starship and ten marauders have been slugging it out on Jakidic for the last couple of minutes. I kinda don't want to interrupt them.

05.32: The two routes to Raelurn are through Harmoat and Aelurn. Seeing as I already pretty much neutered Harmoat earlier, that seems like the sensible choice. 900 ships in assault transports ready to rock.

05.34: Parasite eye, and I have 400 too many ships. Better make this quick.

Hybrid facility down, although the super hybrid itself makes a quick get away. 600 ships get back into the assault transports.

05.35: Then get back out to take down the train station. I also forgot how effective viral spawners are at taking out tachyons, so 50 or so are told to roam the planet taking them out. And some sent through the wormhole to Aosrinmar to clean the one on that side too.

33 minutes until the colony invisibility drops. Transports take the fleet home to recoup. The viral spawners discover that the hunter fleet is sitting on Aosrinmar right next to the human colony. Because of course it is.

Man, seriously, +100 AIP if this thing blows up? I didn't realise that colony rebellions were THAT bad.

05.42: The strange hybrid facility is on Orerlu this time, a relatively tame and easy to get to planet. No need to take it down for another hour or two yet.

Let's see if we can get the Hunter fleet to move on by blowing up the command station on Aosrinmar. 6 assaults transports with 50 bombers each should be sufficient.

05.44: One assault transport manages to slip past the five H/Ks camped out on the wormhole. 50-odd bombers pop the command station shield guardpost, then the command station itself. Let's hope this makes the hunters pick another staging planet.

05.45: Yup, it worked. Hunters have moved on. As have the two lightning warheads spawned by the rocketry corps, which have gone ... somewhere.

05.48: Whoops, EMP train just burnt Murderlanceras then two golems warped in. Should probably have my fleet go deal with that.

Of course, as the command station was unshielded it went down early on - so no scrap to rebuild with.

05.55: Fifteen minutes before the cloaker drops. Seems like a good time to cap this planet. 7 assault transports take 1,000 ships plus the colony crew. Mil II goes up on the opposite side of the grav well, on the hope that anything which pops the command station will then at least have to move to attack it.

Also, apparently it isn't immune to cloaking. So I may just sit a cloaker starship next to it for the rest of the game.

05.57: Command station and a fortress up, and everything that's not mine on the planet is dead except for the rocket silo and dire guardian lair. Let's take a look at what I've won for myself.

116 Fighter/Bombers - 2.4 million health 200k attack every 12 seconds. 1.9 million DPS for a full cap, with a slight bonus against ultra-heavy.
116 Frigates - 2.2 million health, 96k attack every 7 seconds. 1.5 million DPS for a full cap, with a 2.4x bonus to ultra-heavy.

Against golems then you're talking 3.8 + 2.7 million DPS, or a full cap of both should be able to kill a 250 million health golem in about 40 seconds.

All of these are EMP and Nuke immune, non-reclaimable, black hole and tractor immune. These are niiiice. And their first job will be to take down the dire guardian lair.

06.00: 2,000 knowledge to hardened forcefields Mk. II. You can never have too many forcefields. Save the other 1,000 so that I can buy mil 3 command stations next time I take a planet.

Right, objectives from here are to pop the dire guardians lair then go take the ARS world Goriusup. After that I might spend a little time with my new toys cleaning up train stations in this area of the galaxy, see if I can't get them to stop routing through my homeworld.



So, so many train stations at +3AIP a pop. I figure if I kill the eight remaining in the bottom left-hand part of the galaxy, they'll stop routing through my worlds.

There's also a spire civvy leader that I've just noticed, sitting right off Aosrinmar. After 6 hours of AIP increases, it would be nice to take one of the bleeders out.

Offline Aeson

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #11 on: April 28, 2014, 09:07:47 pm »
Man, seriously, +100 AIP if this thing blows up? I didn't realise that colony rebellions were THAT bad.

...

05.57: Command station and a fortress up, and everything that's not mine on the planet is dead except for the rocket silo and dire guardian lair. Let's take a look at what I've won for myself.

116 Fighter/Bombers - 2.4 million health 200k attack every 12 seconds. 1.9 million DPS for a full cap, with a slight bonus against ultra-heavy.
116 Frigates - 2.2 million health, 96k attack every 7 seconds. 1.5 million DPS for a full cap, with a 2.4x bonus to ultra-heavy.
I myself have a love-hate relationship with Human Colony Rebellions. On the one hand, the first one you get gives you a very nice set of ships that you can build at any Rebel Colony, and the Rebel Colony itself is cloaked and will remain so for up to two hours after you lose control of the planet. On the other hand, the rebellions keep spawning, the ships you get don't scale in cap with the number of secured rebel colonies, and they all have that little AIP issue you noticed. I also once lost a Rebel Colony on a world I controlled, and I think the reason was that it got in the way of an AOE attack aimed at my command station, but I'm not certain and it was a fairly long time ago so things might have changed.

Just saying, be prepared to have to take all sorts of out of the way planets you'd never have taken otherwise when you have Human Colony Rebellions active, and be prepared to defend or rebuild or something. I have no idea if your cloaker starship idea will work, but I'm also not sure that I'd really want to sacrifice a cloaker starship on colony babysitting duties, especially since I doubt it will do anything if a Mining Golem shows up (although I don't recall if rebel colonies are nuke-immune, so that might not be so much of an issue).

Offline RockyBst

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Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #12 on: April 29, 2014, 03:28:03 pm »
So with the recent update priorities have shifted slightly - without golems as a steady source of metal, I should probably unlock metal harvesters Mk. III rather than Mil III command stations.

Also I've been putting off capturing core turret worlds since about the first hour because I didn't want to lose them to golems. I've literally just remembered that I can hack the fabs now. That was kind of a major oversight.

06.01: Nuke train on Murdoch, heading towards Raedhung. This is too good a chance to safely dispose of it to pass up.

The fleet hops into the assault transports then lies in wait. They burn the train down in a few seconds, before the hybrids and their 2,000 or so supporting ships can even respond, and then are back in the transports. Except for the 250 poor suckers who got tractored by the rest of the trains, of course.

06.05: Oh, and a nuke train sitting at the station on Solyhung. Penetrator terminates it before it gets any bright ideas about routing through Murderlanceras. Then a ram takes out the station for good meaure.

06.08: Mining time. Golems on:

Murderlanceras
Poan
Jakidic
Goriusip
Aosrinimar
Dorvil
and Kela.

You may notice that I already own four of those planets, so these should be relatively easy to take down. Oh, and two armored golems and a H/K attacking Murderlanceras.

06.10: Golem battlegroup and the first three mining golems go down easy as pie. I send the two forts on Jakidic to take care of the mining golem there, but they quickly retreat when it becomes obvious they don't have enough health to do it. I'll need to send something else in to do that job.

06.14: Fleet pretty much wipes taking out the train station and mining golem on Kela. A munition boosting command station and Mk. II fortress are a terrible combination.

Oh, and 180 hybrids and 2,000 or so supporting ships attack Jakidic. Luckily there's a bit of a "Here's one I made earlier" situation, and a Martyr blasts all but 300 of them.

06.16: Ah joy, my first encounter with the new golems. Artillery, x2.

06.22: With no fleet to get in the way they happily carve their way through Murderlanceras and on my homeworld. Where implosions and roaming enclaves stop them. Getting about 3 million scrap per golem now, which isn't too bad I suppose. Not quite the firehose I had previously though, obviously.

On the plus side my new 5.25 million DPS black widow golem is now a handy little hybrid / starship cleanup tool. And probably wouldn't be too awful against mining golems, at that.

06.30: Mining golems on Dorvil and Jakidic down, so it's about time to take down the golem, super-fort and command station on Goriusip.

06.33: Super-fort down. Martyr is taking out the hybrids. Uh, 500 attack on Poan? Is that the much vaunted threat fleet, that has previously been too confused to enter my planets? I doubt they'll last long against the roaming enclave defence force.

I can however see an armored and artilley golem just waiting to jump into Murderlanceras once my fleet is engaged with the mining golem.

06.35: Oh come on, really? In the space between me ramming the super-fort and sending in the fleet another superfort goes up. I'm gonna need more rams.

Still, fleet takes down the mining golem with 3 minutes remaining on the clock. All seven planets secured.

06.37: CPA incoming. 1,100 ships. They can just go join the rest of the threat fleet, honestly. The 900 youngling reprisal is a bit more annoying, because it's going to force me to pause my ram ram-raiding of Dicgende.

06.40: Viral spawners take out the tachyon and counter-spy on Dicgende, then escape with twice the number of ships they came in with. Did I mention that I like these guys?

06.42: Black widow and viral spawners eat youngling tigers for breakfast. Quite literally, in the viral spawner's case.

06.45: 8 more rams (I picked Mk I by mistake, so only 40 million damage each) and a Martyr from engineer heavy spire asteroid raiding. Enough to deal with the superfort and 100 odd hybrids that have already built back up on Goriusip.

06.49: -800,000 energy. Don't you love it when a supply interdictor astro train passes through your homeworld. Four golems sense weakness and jump into Murderlanceras. Looks like Goriusip will have to wait a little longer, again.

06.51: 4 golems, 2 H/Ks on a homeworld without any turrets you say? Pfft, a trifling matter. And even with the salvage debuff, 23 million scrap. Of which I'll retrieve half. Mainly I'm just annoyed that they took out half my implosion artillery.

There's never a Zenith trader around when you need one.

06.56: All defences back online, fleet is getting there. 1,700 attractor drone reprisal to Murderlanceras? Okay then. Oh, and dire guardian spawning in five minutes on Aosrinmar, a.k.a the human colony rebellion planet.

Oh, what's this? A full fleet of rebel fighter/bombers and frigates? You shouldn't have.

06.58: 232 Rebel ships explosively decommission the dire guardian lair and the dire widow, implosion and spider guardians which spawn from it. And I only lose about 80 of them in the process.

Meanwhile, the fleet is occupied with rather a lot of attractor drones.

06.59: Wow, uhmm. I now have 700 attractor drones. And 400 viral spawners on Murderlanceras alone. Which is pretty impressive for four Mk I leech starships and a few dozen mercenary parasites.

Anyway, fleet blob to Goriusip.

07.00: Rams take out the superfort, fleet ships pop the command station before the AI can purchase another. There are 1,000 ships on planet again thanks to the hybrids, but this time I'm just going to have my fleet slug it out with them I think. Soon Goriusp will be mine.

Next targets: Train station cleanup, core turret controller hacks, maybe capturing that armored golem down in the bottom part of the map.

Offline RockyBst

  • Full Member Mark III
  • ***
  • Posts: 219
Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #13 on: April 30, 2014, 03:11:43 pm »
07.04: And so it came to pass. My favourite part was when a widow train passed through and stole all by bombers. So I put all the riots back in the transports, stealing 200 of their ships, and unloaded them right next to my base defences. Payback.

ARS gives me ... electric bombers. Actually, not too bad at all. 3.2x bonus against ultra-heavy, a.k.a golems. It's at this point of course I realise that I have 4,500 knowledge, and need 5,000 for metal harvesters. Oh well, time to spend some of my 262 accrued HaP on knowledge raids.

I'm expecting this place to get nuked sooner or later, as it's a bit of a train crossroads. So no defences put up beyond a mini-fort and a hundred viral shredders to take out the riff-raff.

07.07: Best part of 1,000 ships hitting Aosrinmar in 3 minutes. Rebel fleet can deal with them, I'm sure.

Oh joy, another colony rebellion. This time it's Dislaju, 3 hops away from Poan up at the top of the map. Now this one does have a core MRLS controller and a Mk. V grenadier fab, so it's probably not going to be too much of a hardship to capture it. To hold it, on the other hand...

07.12: 30 massive ships en-route to my planets. Viral shredders doing their normal tachyon clearing thing. Scouts find the super-terminal - and a planet with two(!) train stations.

Simultaneous knowledge hacks finish on Harmoat and Xuta. 10,500 knowledge, 4.5k threat. 189 HaP left.

Knowledge goes on:
Mil III command stations (-5k)
Metal Extractors III (-5k)
Zenith Starships (-500)

After replacing all Mil IIs with Mil IIIs, my economy goes from 12,430 metal/s to 19,000 - Not as massive an improvement as I was hoping for, but still a nice boost to refleeting.

07.16: Before Goriusip gets nuked I should probably use up these asteroids. 5 implosions from reptite, 6 implosions and an translocator from the Pysite. Xampite goes on two sets of rams, another implosion and a Martyr.

07.17: Hmm, 100 hybrids attacking Aosrinmar. Let's see how the 180-odd rebel ships handle it before firing up a Martyr.

07.17.15: Yeah, hybrids just outran them. Good thing I keep a Martry under the shields of every command station now.

07.19: When about 600 threat ships join in, the command station eventually goes down. But on the plus side I find out that the colony does get another two hour shield if I lose the planet, which is a heck of a lot. Anyway, rebels clean up the rest of the mess and rebuilders port in.

07.19: Looks like the dyson antagoniser is back up. And this time it's on Vovergor - a planet right next to my recently taken Goriusip. It also has a design backup for youngling nanoswarms, a regen golem, the obligatory super-fort, and !WARNING! A dark spire vengeance generator.

Nice and gentle does this - ram the fort, wipe the antagoniser ASAP and get out of there before the vengeance generator wakes up.

07.20: When golems attack, Murderlanceras goes down. Things are obviously not helped when yet another supply interdictor astro train runs through my homeworld and puts me on -900,000 energy again. Command stations explode violently, etc.

07.24: Sigh. We now have four golems and 2 H/Ks sitting on Murderlanceras. Cleaning this threat is going to be a chore. So of course I do the only sensible thing - send all of my ships three hops away to incite them to attack my homeworlds.

07.30: Assault transports get back to the homeworld about 20 seconds after the golems hit it. The trick here is to not warp in the implosion artillery until after the arty golems have a large list of chaff targets - and with 19 implosions, the golems soon go down.

Just a shame I fleet wiped to do it - goodbye attractor drones.

07.35: Oh lovely, devourer golem is prancing around on Goriusip. And appears to have eaten my ion blaster. Right lads, remember not to get out of the cars.

Oh, hey, assault transports can be killed the devourer too ... lovely. Although for some reason viral shredders are immune.

07.39: 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. I haven't even taken the fleet out of the ships to go after the dyson antagoniser yet. They also pop a distribution node for me ... thanks guys?

Assault fleet takes out the antagoniser with minimal losses, as the AI is intent on fighting off the dark spire. Then the hunter fleet shows up. I'm almost tempted to suicide the entire fleet just to see what happens.

07.41: Nuke train an Aelurn, heading straight for Poan. While the penetrator takes it out, I notice something ... I've never neutered Aelurn, and it has 23 hybrid hive spawners. Guess where the fleet is going next.

On further investigation, it looks like it's going to be close to impossible to get trains to stop routing through my homeworlds. Here, for example, is a world 10 hops away from my homeworld which will still route a train through it while trying to reach a train station 15 hops away.



I figure I'd have to clear the best part of half the galaxy, around 50-60 worlds, to stop this. I really messed up putting my homeworlds where they are, rather than in the little 'safe' cluster at the bottom left.

07.43: Goriusip got nuked. Well, that happened somewhat faster than I was anticipating. Also every time a planet gets astro-train nuked I seem to get a null pointer exception:

Quote
4/30/2014 7:03:28 PM (7.021) Mem: 187,961,344 Plat:WindowsPlayer
-----------------------------------UnhandledErrors-----------------------------------
4/30/2014 7:03:28 PM (7.021)
-----------------------------------Error-----------------------------------Log String: FixedUpdate: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at ForegroundObject.MovePlayerUnit (Boolean RecalculateFull, Boolean RecalcualteMiddling) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunOneCycleOfSimulation () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunNextCycle (Boolean DoRendering) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunFrame () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at MainCameraLogic.UsedToBeFixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
Stack Trace:   at ForegroundObject.MovePlayerUnit (Boolean RecalculateFull, Boolean RecalcualteMiddling) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunOneCycleOfSimulation () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunNextCycle (Boolean DoRendering) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Game.RunFrame () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at MainCameraLogic.UsedToBeFixedUpdate () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

Attached is a save where Poan is about to get wiped out, if you want to try and replicate.

07.44: Black widow and the fleet waltz into Aelurn. OMD goes down, as do the four Mk. IV guardposts needed to take out the parasite eye. At this point only 350 ships left, so retreat and refleet. Then it's hive culling time.

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!

07.50: Aelurn is cleaned of everything except the command stations. I don't know how much impact killing 23 hybrid hive spawners will have, but it will at least slow them a touch.

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?

Anyway, next fleet target is Raedhung for a good cleansing then a core needler turret hack, followed by Sezon right next to it so I can get an armored golem.

07.53: Ram terminates the train station on Xuta. 900 fleet ships, backed up by all 232 rebels, prepare to go and completely neuter Raedhung. First though, a Martyr to chew through some of the 2,800 ships on planet.

07.54: Martyr takes out roughly 1,900 ships including most of the hybrids. Hacker jumps in and goes to the extremities of the grav well to start a fab hack. Fleet enters and prioritises the guard posts, to get rid of the parasite eye.

08.00: Easy as pie, although six golems are currently attacking my fixed defences while the fleet is engaged elsewhere. The rebel fleet really helped in taking out the guard posts. Needler turrets start going up everywhere.

So, I've just read up and apparently hybrid hive spawners only show up on Mk IV, core and homeworlds. So far I've scouted 40 of the 120 planets and found 8 Mk. IV worlds. So let's put the total at about 30.

30*23 = 690 hybrid hive spawners in the galaxy.

Anyway I've got access to two more Mk. IV planets from Raedhung, so I might clean some of those up. One of them also has a civvy leader that I should really get around to killing. And obviously I want to take Sezon next, with its lovely broken armored golem.

State of the union:


Offline RockyBst

  • Full Member Mark III
  • ***
  • Posts: 219
Re: All Creatures Great and Small
« Reply #14 on: April 30, 2014, 07:25:54 pm »
08.10: Urgh, those golems took an annoyingly long time to bait off Murderlanceras. Ended up having to send the fleet five hops away in the end. Oh, and in the meantime mining golems have appeared again:

Poan, Raedhung, Kela, Murderlanceras, Jakidic, Dicgende and Aosrinmar this time. Should be easy enough to take care of those, the rebel fleet can probably take out 3/4 on their own.

08.17: All miners destroyed within 7 1/2 minutes, that's got to be a new record. Oh, and Panza train station rammed for good measure.

Fleet are now lining up to take out Sezon.

08.18: Nuke train is stationary at Jicidis. Penetrator is suicided to remove it.

08.23: Under the combined might of both normal and rebel fleets, Sezon goes down in under a minute. Turns out there's also another nuke train on Jicidis, so a penetrator is sent to take care of that threat as well.

It fails. The regenerator train next to it respawns the nuker...

08.27: Right then. Although it completely tanks my economy I now have an armed and operational armored golem. And 41 minutes to save a human colony from rebellion. First, though, raids to kill the civvy leader next door.

2,500 knowledge is spent on Mk III scouts and Mk II scout starships. Because really, at 8 1/2 hours in I should have information on more than just 40 planets.

08.28: Ahhh. Arghhhh. The hunters show up to my newly captured planet with 5 H/Ks. They must have started moving here in the five seconds between me entering orbit and blowing the command station up. All ships make for the exit post-haste, including the armored golem.

08.30: Hardly any units on Murdoch. Raids take out the civvy leader, a cap of rebel frigates bombard hive spawners from a distance and a ram takes out the train station. Then the hunter H/Ks show up again.

Well, mission accomplished. There's now little of value remaining down in the bottom left part of the galaxy. So the rebel fleet is no longer going to be left to guard Aosrinmar, instead it can join everyone else in the push to Dislaju. Hey if the command station here goes down I've got two hours to rebuild it, and nobody's gonna nuke it at least.

08.33: Devourer golem at Poan, moving through to Harmoat. Which wouldn't be a problem, if it wasn't for the fact that my entire fleet, including the full load of rebels, is coming through that way. Evasive manoeuvres time.

08.35: Wow, those scouts and scout starships are a real step up. Even on auto-explore they manage to get about 5 planets deeper than before. With targeted exploration I can probably see most anything, even before I capture an advanced factory for a Mk. 4 scout.

08.39: So, 30 minutes to save the colony. First planet on the hit list is Shoal, which currently has a super-fort and a trader bought black hole machine. Something tells me a pair of rams, two golems and a 1,400 ship fleet should be enough to take care of this.

08.40: Hmm, I think the word I'm looking for here is 'disintegrated'. The fleet disintegrated Shoal's defences. Next up Jubuvi, with another super-fort. Good thing I bought spare rams.

08.41: Hunters show up. Not even the fleet blob of doom can stand against 5 H/Ks. Leg it. Armored golem gets down to 40% before managing to escape. Still, frigates got over on to Jubuvi and have drilled a nice tachyon path to Dislaju for the assault transports.

08.48: 800 fleet ships in assault transports pop the command station. Just have to wait to see if the H/K squad turns up now.

08.51: H/Ks haven't shown up yet. I'm going to call it safe (for a certain value of safe) to colonise.

Of course, just as I say that an arty, armored and two black widow golems decide to smack up Poan. Everyone runs for the homeworld, the armored golem only escaping with 21% health. If it wasn't for the arty golem focus firing my guys, I would probably have taken them on.

08.53: Looks like the golems, having destroyed Poan, are looping around to Murderlanceras. That works for me, far more defences there to soak them a bit.

08.56: Command station up on Dislaju. Golems have decided they're too afraid to attack Murderlanceras despite the fleet being on miles away. So the sole effect of their attack has been to clean Poan (it's already mostly rebuilt) and minorly damage my armored golem. Bravo, folks.

08.57: Something has changed the balance of power, possibly the enclaves coming to defend Poan from wardens, and they've decided to attack after all. Excellent, scrap to build my MRLS turrets. Fleet ships are stuffed back into assault transports, and implosions are fired up.

08.59: Artillery golem is focus fired first and goes down in about 30 seconds, from then on it's just a case of getting my armored and black widow golems in on the action and watching the other five massive ships burn. I will be needing more implosion artilley, however.

09.00: The scrap from that attack needs to be used to finish the second zenith power generator, finish an OMD on Muderlanceras, build 8 caps of core MRLS turrets, repair the golems, refleet and destroy all defences on my current heavily defended homeworld and move them to Poan.

Seeing as this will take about 15 million metal in all, safe to say the salvage won't actually cover it all.

I'm in a fairly good place at the moment then, despite the 27 massive ships that are apparently still roaming after me. I do, however, have 303 AIP. So objectives for the next hour are primarily hacking based:

- Hack the core missile turret controller to get me a third cap of turrets. Those should be sufficient for general defence once my fleet switches to homeworld seek-and-destroy mode.
- Hack one of the advanced factories. If nothing else, this will give me Mk. IV scouts to see what all the other planets offer.
- Possibly, hack the super terminal. Depends how much HaP I have after the two above objectives.

After that it'll be time to start drilling out to remote ARS / data centre worlds and aiming to find the AI homeworlds themselves.

State of the union


 

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