The first thing I noticed was that the Dark Spire hadn't woken after all. They weren't spawning anymore, anyway. It looks like there are a few set pieces on the way from dormancy to full activation.
With this in mind, I am going to return to my old plan. First things first: I need to reestablish stability after a bunch of heavy waves and some hybrid attacks. (I really need to hit the hybrids harder next game. They inevitably have an entourage of lots of mark IV and V ships and are really good at hitting just enough worlds to bring my energy negative.)
I'm gonna need a lot of ships to hold the lines while I get defenses up. I will
not lose the stealth battleship fab. That means I'm capping out my mark I turrets. These defenses are untested, but it allows me to pull some 800 ships down to the Aswig staging area, leaving a paltry 400 or so to defend my 11 (I think?) other planets.
I pull my cursory garrison away from the next wave to see how my defenses do... and it's the first beachhead of the game. Like, before this happened I thought my random easier beachhead AI ended up being a no-wave type. The cursory garrison is recalled, speedily dispatches the beachheads, and together with remains rebuilders is able to repulse the wave.
Honestly, this is my fault for not looking at wave sizes. I should have noticed something weird about the half-size wave.
Anyway, I'm confident of my defenses for now, and when I get another beachhead wave I can just pull my whole defense fleet on top of it. At Aswig, I build four transport ships and load them up with 799 combat ships and a mobile builder. They take a bit of damage on the way, but I don't plan to use them for extraction anyway and they all arrive at Quitheruz with plenty of health for use as bunkers. I manage to subdue the planet with only 50% losses, leaving a still-formidable 400 ships for defense. I'm ready to claim the fabricator...
Right. Mobile builders require supply. *facepalm*
I try building a colony ship at Aswig and sending it through, but of course they're already waiting on the Michto end. I did the tachyon raid ages ago, so a cloaker starship will work, but my economy isn't in top shape. I want to replace the 400 ships I lost as soon as I can, and I need the resources for at least a couple forcefields and I'd really like to put down a modular fortress with forcefields and tractors.
Also, there's the little issue of...
I'm not sure how my 400 ships will fare against these 1000+, and they'll surely all rush in the moment I claim the planet. I don't want to throw away 400 ships engaging them, so... I'm thinking of pausing ship production and hitting them with a lightning warhead. Under a cloak star of course. That should thin them out enough that I can fight them and win.
...except while I'm deliberating, they attack anyway. Somehow -- maybe a combination of mark advantage and tractor beams? Do I even have a mark advantage? -- I manage to kill them all (or maybe some escaped, but I honestly don't care) with
minimal casualties. With that cleared up, I build a colony ship and start production on a cloak star. I'm about ready to take the planet now. Mark I ships on Quitheruz (about 200 of my 400) are ordered into the transports; I don't really want to destroy that ion cannon.
Small raids against Quitheruz keep coming, but resistance fighters come to my aid soon enough. I still have the dysons to contend with, but with resistance fighter aid I'm not very worried. It turns out ion cannons do non-trivial engine damage, and a mark I is not gonna help me much anyway, and would you look at that one of my transport-bunkers was destroyed. I remove the ion cannon from Quitheruz and order the rest of the transports to disgorge. Luckily engine damage self-repairs now, so in a few minutes my ships will stop being helpless again.
Meanwhile, did anyone notice the CPA coming in those previous screenshots? I didn't somehow, but it hits. Combined with the recent wave and hybrid attacks, I lose half of my territory and go deep into energy debt. Since I'm tired of this, I scrap starships on Quitheruz until my forcefields come back online and then go about picking up the pieces. The hybrids have decided to linger in some force near my homeworld (only about 150 ships but my economy is in shambles again and my borders are all on watch). Nevertheless, I eventually regain control of enough territory that I'm willing to return to the fortification of Quitheruz.
I take the planet quickly and cap out my forcefields. (That's five mark I forcefields and one mark II. Remember that for later.) Notice that my crystal supply has bottomed out, and metal is on its way there. Space docks and starship constructors around the galaxy are toggled off while the Quitheruz garrison waits with bated breath.
But finally, the forcefields are finished, ship production resumes, and in time my economy is strong enough to start on the modular fortress.
Aaand it's about time for the exo that has been looming over me since halfway through last session. There are no ships at my homeworld, but the 26 neinzul enclaves there can muster almost twice my galactic strength anyway. Still, it couldn't hurt to watch --
-- oh.
There is an artillery golem.
An artillery golem fires 100 million x 1 every 8 seconds. This is more than enough damage to destroy any force field or command station in one hit.
I had two force fields on the planet, but one of them was guarding my unfinished superfortress. The other, of course, was the first thing the golem destroyed.
Luckily... remember those spirecraft shield bearers I built for the Midem quarantine portion of Operation Michto? I had relocated them to my homeworld for safekeeping before they were deployed to the staging area at Aswig. There were four shieldbearers.
So I held out for five shots, or 40 seconds, before the sixth shot at 48 seconds found my home command station.
...
...
Remember those six force fields at Quitheruz?
If I had guarded my homeworld as jealously as that fabricator, I would have survived for another minute, which would have easily been long enough for the neinzul fleet to destroy the artillery golem.
Lesson learned.
I still have some pictures of the revealed map that I might want to post later. For now, this was a fun game and I'm excited to do the next one -- perhaps with a champion and with an amusing altplanetnames.txt!
