Well, things got interesting.
My first major move was to capture the Botnet, Cursed and Artillery Golems inside the grid on the planets Samuer, Sumottso and Chupan.
This of course also meant grabbing two Fabricators, Spider Bot V and Armo
ur Rotter V (there's a U in that word, no amount of economic language propoganda will convince me otherwise America!) meaning that I would want to defend this area after I had gained the Golems I wanted.
To get the Golems built this side of Christmas I upgraded to MkIII Metal and Crystal Harvesters, along with MRS's to help keep them repaired.
Luckily for me the Dyson Sphere was present on Savlau, allowing to set up a bare minimum effort defence zone that would act as base of operation in both my strike at the AI homeworld on Quje (the names!) and any other operations inside the grid.
Behold! The Dyson Protecterate!
This was followed by the realisation that there was about 120 enemies on my homeworld.....OH CRAP THERE ARE ENEMIES ATTACKING MY HOMEWORLD!
How did I miss something so
vital?
It was probably not as bad as I though but when I realised that I had missed the fact that attack was ongoing I scrambled to deal with it. It left me rather unerved as I had been routinely checking the map to locate the source of the "
bang!" noises that indicate an ongoing fight but had failed to look at the most important spot.
The fact that it happened was bad enough.
This was of course follwed by Murphy laying down the law on my Advanced Factory. I wish I saved a screenshot but that may have cost me too much time. What resulted was a wave that I though in my head that I had responded to, but in fact had done nothing. Naturally the enemy Space Tanks made a B-line for the thing once the wave hit. While I was mashing V and right-clicking everywhere!
This time it was a real clutch save as both shield gens were down far in the red by the end, being manuvered by me to keep what little protection they had left over the factory. Once when I moved the shield too close it jumped over the factory leaving it exposed for a few seconds, that was needlessly scary. Are shield Gens supposed to do that?
At some point the Hybrids built an "abnormally strong" one.......Not much else to say about Hybrids so far in this game.
At this point I got warning of a second Exo-galactic wave building up. With this in mind I decided to begin working on the Super Terminal on Murdooth with my new cursed golem which was all ready to go. Nothing better to do till the wave hit (did not wish to overextend myself) so I took the world and made all the preperations I could make before starting the construction of the CC.
As Luck would have it the planet came with a MkIII Ion Cannon and and A fab for Microparasites (MOAR LEECH!). My AI progress was at about 240 when I started and by the time I had to abandon it I had manged to reduce it to 175. I was sadly however forced to abandon before I wished to (though I still got most of my money's worth) due to certain circumstances.
A feast or a famine eh?
Just as the Exo wave was nearing completion the first CPA was announced. A quick look at how the two timers were lining up made me realise that they would fall at almost the exact same time! Turns out I was on the money to within 30 seconds....wish that had helped.
This was going to be rough and sadly I simply couldn't leave enough forces at the Super Terminal to keep it in check. So I waited as long as I dared just as the Exo-Galactic waves kicked in I turned on my Art Golem and sent one large screaming Picaso (get used to art references with this golem) and Boom!
With that, my orders to everything else was simple; LEG IT!
Now with less the a minute till everything else went to hell I quickly spread my forces out over my most important systems in a very ad-hoc manner. There was no plan per-say. Though I had sent my Botnet Golem back to my Homeworld some time before.
Botnet doing it's admirably, too bad it can't take spirecraft.
Worlds were falling despite my fleets efforts, but still everything was going fine really till I realised that the Dyson Protecterate was falling! By the time the Gatlings arrived the CC was dead on every world, though the Fabs present were spared. But suddenly my energy had a Brownout, while my HWCC was being pounded on!
Pause.
Never has the pause function been more vital. Calmly I turned off most of my fleets who had already secured their respective sectors. All my FFGens burst into life anew!
Unpause.
The enemy was soon driven from my worlds. The reconstruction began and so did the writing of this post.
Now I'm facing the need to draw up the plans for the rest of the game. Worlds to be taken or raided, research to be spent.
Crappy circle breakdown!:
PINK means a Data Center is present, taking these out is my first objective. Golems should make this easy. A quick Bruise Cruise and thats that!
GREEN means an ARS is present along with a A-shield core. These must be taken, this means even if Bala (the cloaked world) has an ARS it won't matter.
BLUE means there is an AI CO-Processor present. Since there is one present on an AI Homeworld I hope to hit them all at about the same time using hidden raid ships that I hope to sneak on beforehand.
CPA's are a real danger to all my high value assets. As such I want to end this game after the next one and before the third strikes. I feel i'm likely to lose assests next time. A third CPA could leave me very impaired. Especially if they decide to tag team with Exo-Galactic waves again!
At a minimum I have 9000k more science points to gain from planets that have to be captured, giving me a total of 15000k points with reasearch still be done. Open to suggestions on what I should use it on.
So far I have:
MkIII Harvesters
MkII Fleet ships
MkIII Parasites
MkIII Scout
MRS
Hardend Shields MkI
MkII Engineers
Golems still to captured:
3 Hive Golems
1 BWG
1ART Golem
1 Regen Golem
I'm not convinced that it is worth taken any more Golems at this point. Maybe is there where several BWG's I would consider it but with only 1 it's effective would be limited. Any dissenting opinions?
Open question to end this sheer wall of a post, is it worth going out of my way to grab high tier asteroids for Spirecraft?
EDIT: It has come my realisation the assertaining of a Regen Golem makes alot of sense when it comes to keep reclaimed ships alive, however taking the regen golem would result in the further dessimnation of the Dyson Gatlings into two more areas, creating a grand total of 5 areas for them to protect.
How much would this further extension of the Dyson Protecterate weaken its abilty to protect my areas? What is everyone's opinions on the operational value of Dyson Gatlings over such a large area?
