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=11086I haven't seen 'Hybrids are mobilising' yet this game, though.
State of the union:
