Contradictions and Silliness

[keith.lamothe]

Also, the Plasma Guardian description is pretty funny

Occasionally, against my better judgment (see case  Common Decency v. keith.lamothe re: Citadel Ascendant journals) I take a shot at humor.  No pun intended, in this case.

I'm going to ask for advice on where to put the first city, since I haven't actually tried Fallen Spire on an X map before.

Hmm, well, do you want one, or two cities between your HW and every exo to ever launch?  If only one it's probably a slam dunk: first city on Aqua Knight, and then one city on Kobold Knight, one on Flower Knight, one on Wild Wolven Knight, and the fifth on Rabbit Knight.

If you want two cities covering your HW against all comers, then you'd need to do Hammer Knuckle (entire map center node), Grand Chimera (your arm's central node), and then... well, stuff the other 3 in the other arms somehow   If you're planning on taking a whole second arm that's easy.  Otherwise I'd suggest placing them on each of the central nodes (Gargoyle, {something} Horror, and Remiel), though presumably Gargoyle last as that would permanently alert a core world (not that the Spire Capital Ships give a flying youngling weasel's exhaust manifold about reinforcements).

[Aklyon]

Also, the Plasma Guardian description is pretty funny

Occasionally, against my better judgment (see case  Common Decency v. keith.lamothe re: Citadel Ascendant journals) I take a shot at humor.  No pun intended, in this case.

Aren't those the ones with the [maniacal demands for surrender omitted]? Because that, the Plasma Guardian's description, and the FS "... They are also rocks." bit is probably my favorite parts of the journals that I've seen for humor.

[keith.lamothe]

Aren't those the ones with the [maniacal demands for surrender omitted]? Because that, the Plasma Guardian's description, and the FS "... They are also rocks." bit is probably my favorite parts of the journals that I've seen for humor.

Hence the case, I was clearly corrupting people.

[Aklyon]

8:00:52 - Spire Colony Ship constructed. Hopefully I don't have any accountants within shouting distance of Aqua Knight, it would be bad for their health. Well, besides being on the front line anyway.
Also, I just noticed that every system except Orcrot around Hammer Knuckle has a vengeance generator on it. But Bowman has a Spider turret controller! Hmm...
8:07:17 - Everything rebuilt. Black Hole Machine and Mass Driver completed on Aqua Knight.
8:38:13 - Stores prepared. Spire squadron (Railclusters, starships, and frigates) sent to clear Orcrot and Hammer Knuckle to prepare for later necessities and delay the AI's attacks a tad. Special Forces has shifted to Magnius.
8:44:00 - Oh hello, SF. I suppose that means I don't have to bother cleaning up the BHM here then, though I will blow up that station before getting obliterated/eaten. Also some of the SF cannon fodder gets beaten up by the railclusters before they get shot at by everything else. They then retreat withdraw to Gargoyle.

8:52:00 - Have at ye, AI! I shall start with a Spire Hub on Grand Chimera, your move?

...Not bad.

8:53ish note to self: MkV Lightning turrets are rather ineffective against this sort of guardian-heavy attack, although the aoe is nice. Some other form of turret controller would've been more useful here for sure.
8:54:26 - Grand Chimera defeated with 10 seconds left on the build time.
8:55:00 - Problem dealt with by the welcoming committee on Spire Knight. Now to finish the hub as planned, ignore the mess please.

9:01:35 - Reactor built, and the traders are on Aqua Knight but we're a bit busy rebuilding/citybuilding right now. HBC MkII unlocked.
9:09:35 - AI Revolution starts playing just as the next signal is located (in Spiral Knights) and the Exoforce pops up. Perfect timing.

9:20:20 - Exo repelled. Aqua Knight took a bit of a beating, but its alright.

[keith.lamothe]

8:52:00 - Have at ye, AI! I shall start with a Spire Hub on Grand Chimera, your move?

Response: Everybody takes queenGrand Chimera.

Glad to see some of the new guardians making an appearance

[Aklyon]

{earlier post preview eaten by 502/504 errors, rewriting in notepad from last autosave}

10:04:11 - Hammer Knuckle Knight surroundings cleared, except for a Fort III on Man-eater. Dark Spire are being a pain in the arse and popping up in my back area and leaving a mess, then getting cleaned up on Grand Chimera.
+1 minute - Spirecraft siege tower II in the exo? Not the worst thing to have.
10:07:17 - DS 10/10, with a generator on the planet being assaulted by an exo, certainly causes a lot of spawns. But they're sorta utterly outnumbered by the fleet being there. I appear to have gained at least 50 viral shredders in the process as well, or I'm not paying very good attention to how many I had.
10:22:33 - Surprise present of a distribution node from the Dark Spire.

10:27:00 - Dark Spire continue to be irritating. AI continues to be irritable. Shard is still as slow as usual.
10:30:10 - Dark Spire, I know those wraiths are good at being sneaky. But Hammer Knight has a Mil III's planetary tachyon coverage, they're rather pointless to throw into here.
10:32:00 - Agh, brownout! Quickly build matter converters on Spire Knight! Hammer Knight down! Special Forces here? Not good, retreat! withdraw to Grand Chimera.


Clearly I need more defensive power pointed at the Dark Spire shenanigans in my quadrant. Perhaps Hammer Knight won't be the city for this recovered shard.

[keith.lamothe]

{earlier post preview eaten by 502/504 errors, rewriting in notepad from last autosave}

The Devourer Golem often impersonates 502/504 errors.

10:30:10 - Dark Spire, I know those wraiths are good at being sneaky. But Hammer Knight has a Mil III's planetary tachyon coverage, they're rather pointless to throw into here.

They're the Dark Spire.  Not the Smart Spire.  This can become very clear in some circumstances.

retreat! withdraw

Advance in retrograde!

Clearly I need more defensive power pointed at the Dark Spire shenanigans in my quadrant. Perhaps Hammer Knight won't be the city for this recovered shard.

"Dark Spire, meet Imperial Spire.  Play Nice!"

[LordSloth]

If you -do- end up putting the City Hub up on Grand Chimera, a few things you may already know.

The hub itself is invulnerable and not at risk of the Dark Spire. The things you build from the hub are vulnerable, but are armed and 66% modular, and can be fitted with a shield that doesn't reduce damage fired out from under it, similar to the shields carried by Riot Starships but much stronger.
Don't underestimate the laser modules. The colony ship, hub building and shard reactor already cost more than you can store in the bank. The mark 1 laser module only costs 3,000 m/c, takes 13 seconds to build, and does 5000 DPS. During the launch of a new city, lasers are infinitely more valuable than unbuild medium and heavy modules. For comparison, one mk1 railgun costs 45,000 m/c, while the HBC only costs 17,500, and the plasma siege 60,000. Even if you can afford the modules, if your engineers have trouble surviving (which may be the case with exos and a dark spire vengeance generator), the build times are crazy with a small mark 3 railgun turret taking fifteen minutes to build. Once you've got it set up, then replace individual modules. Saving to templates will expedite things further. Mark one Forcefield modules -do- have a reasonable build time of under a minute.

I think the AI has actually been changed with regards to targeting engineers and the like, hough whether that applies to kill everything minor factions is another question. Of course, you could set up on another planet without a vengeance generator, and that might be a smart thing... but would it be the glorious/fun/fantastic thing to do?

If you do actually end up setting up shop on other planets, perhaps you can use a hub to lockdown a vengeance generator elsewhere, or at least chokepoint it if it goes horribly wrong.

[Aklyon]

Current Spire in my quadrant, LordSloth:
Vengeance Generators in:
Origin
Wild Wolven Knight
Spiral Knight(s)
Rabbit Knight
Hammer Knight (and neighbors, except for Orc Knight)

City on Grand Chimera (Reactor x3, Shipyard x2, Hab)

DS in general below.

[keith.lamothe]

DaS a lotta spire.

[LordSloth]

In best-case scenario, I can only see you putting one hub each in the two northern wings.

I could see setting up a city hub at the center of each of the major X-s and getting 5 hubs in fairly defensive positions. If you consider DaS defensive... (well, at least they'll attack the AI too).

If you want to set up without V.Gen hassle, I could see settling in the southeast wing, perhaps taking out one AI early. The AI strength is 1, right?

Dark Spear - next to the Dyson Sphere in Gasp. You need a command station to build the hub, but this raises an interesting question. The wiki says it requires supply to function. Can you build the command station, build the hub, then scrap the command station and revert the dyson sphere to friendly? I'm presuming not, so I recommend Dark Spear. Gasp would give you a bit more flexibility in avoiding the AI homeworld.

Fugitive - to get this city to grow to full size, you'll have to take out an AI homeworld. On difficulty one that may not be an issue. If you can move one system south west to Adulocia, then you could toss up a warp jammer next to the HW instead.

Guardian Wind
Raging Rock

A couple of sub-sub-X center sites, you don't have much choice in where to place them, but no pesky Dark Spire.

Without going near the HW, you should be able to fit three cities in that wing. Move in closer and you have four more, enough for the capitol, if I'm planning this right. Or you could toss one up somewhere else.

[Aklyon]

DaS a lotta spire.

Not sure if I should poke you or just from the terribleness of that one.


AIs are 1/1 Chivalric/Vengeful//Chivalric/Vengeful. Waves are irrelevant (Look at my AIP. It just now is getting into the teens in wave attackers)

The only real problems I might have here is A. Dark Spire (if it continues to knock down my power reserves whenever I get significantly attacked on/near Hammer) B. running out of ships while fighting the strategic reserves (probably only a temporary setback if it happens with the spire fleet on hand and all), or C. Transceiver + Showdown Devices.

[LordSloth]

Speaking of which...
I didn't realize the AI Waves went that low.
Any luck spotting Zenith Power Generators?

[Aklyon]

You know, I probably could've finished this several hours ago. But like 1/1, I'm perfectly fine at just relaxed taking your timeness. (or just plain defensiveness back up around 7, which is similar but with more doing stuff and less just watching things like the dysons spread out slowly because I can)

10:34ish - Armored Golem 2 (From Hammer Knight) gets absolutely destroyed while trying to get away from Hammer. A bad but not unsupportable loss.
10:38:00 - Good to know: Core Mirrors can delay attackers long enough to get things reinforced on Orc Knight and save the fab. Even when those attackers are a line of 12 flagships, 1 spirecraft siege tower and a core plasma siege starship.
10:52:20 - Down to only 3 necessary matter converters on Spire Knight. Econ in the trash still. Exo force 72%. Spire fleet rebuilt.
10:59:00 - Econ recovered, check. Systems recovered except for rabbit arm, check. Colony Ship, check. Actually having the resources to build a hub: not check. Also the Dark Spire need to be cleaned out of the Rabbit arm, theres 25 of them in there. All the threat in the galaxy is DS right now, and most of it is just sitting around sniping off the occasional AI reinforcement ship.

11:07:00 - "16 AI 1 ships [II] OS Raid Eng to in 1:00" Had to pause and go poke the logging to actually figure out where that came from. Apparently the AI bought a one-shot raid engine, is that new or have I just never seen it?
11:13:30 - Apparently I hadn't actually finished knowledge gathering at Hammer Knight and surroundings. Laser Turrets II/III unlocked.

11:36:53 - Everything is ready, just need to let the exo pop in here first to clear that out of the way. Fort IIs unlocked/built, along with Sniper IIIs.
11:47:51 - Defenses built up in the back, city is building!
11:48:42 - City built, Quartet of spirecraft have arrived fashionably late to stop it. Also here: Lots of angry ships from the AI.

11:56:54 - Is it ironic if you find a shard on the planet you just setup a city on?
12:25:00 - Smashed a couple command stations and a Data Center on the way to freeing the dyson sphere, then freed it. The Spire fleet is blowing stuff up plenty fine, everyone else can stay and defend Hammer Knight.
12:46:29 - Theres at least 100 dysons in the map now, and I'm moving on with this third city shard. The Remiel quadrant is basically blockaded by a wall of dyson.

13:25:05 - Found another Armored Golem on Spider Knight.Now I have an anti-DS golem over here (technically two if you count the dyson), since that system also has a vengeance in it. Might go and take Red Roper at some point to dump some of this AIP off in the superterminal. Dyson Sphere is still consistently spewing forth gatlings.

13:11:00 - Bah, Dark Spire. To heck with you, I'm going to claim more land near the dyson instead. (even though there are generators there too ) Less likely to get knocked over at a moments notice if an Exowave is attacking, and theres a Showdown Device over there. Also, are the SD supposed to look the same as Vengeance Generators right now?
13:31:24 - Co-Processors are cleared out. Special Forces is not amused and sends the Hunters to ambush the Spire fleet on the way out of Pumpkin Tree. Unfairness leads to most of it getting eaten by dissasemblers, but they are down 1 H/K, and the guardians are down to 98 artillery and 7 dissasemblers.
13:47:00 - HBC III/IV unlocked along with Needler, MLRS, Missile, and Tractor IIs, since I've run out of turrets. HBC IV goes to Hammer Knight. Remiel taken, but not forthe armored golem. Its going to be the 3rd city. ARS on Devil Frog has TDLs~
14:19:48 - TDLs II/III unlocked, and I found the lone threatship that isn't a Dark Spire ship. Also got another turret controller (MLRS), so sometime later I'll finally have something else I can put back there to ward of Dark Spire while I continue to try and see if the AI wants to respond anytime soon that doesn't involve an exowave. If it doesn't, I'll drag it's attention over here with a bigger set sof shiny spire scitys.