Bah, Pitiful Human; or: How to Lose a Game in 18 Minutes!

[kokonut]

I think this is the best game I ever had

So, I started out just doing the basics, building an army of Mark I ships, and scouting to see what would be good targets. I handled the first wave with no problems, so I didn't really pay attention afterwards and defend the second wave with anything extra (after all, a full cap of all 4 mark I ships should be enough right?). I just focused on using transport ships as carriers for my scouts.

But boy, I must have pissed off the AI by scouting it, since at the start of the second wave I saw an all too familiar flash of an EMP Mark II guardian. I could only stare helplessly as my home command shield and all of my army sat either frozen, disabled, and/or blinking red with -50,000 energy as bombers pummeled away at my command center.

Talk about a short game

P.S. What would have helped in this situation, because this is my second or so serious game, and I'm not sure what my options are?

[keith.lamothe]

If the EMP guardian actually came in the wave, hmm, yea, that's be pretty rough.  But I thought guardians didn't come in normal waves, just starships (plus the fleet ships, of course)?  Or am I remembering wrong?

[kokonut]

I didn't really notice, but I think it was extremely bad timing, like one happened to go to my planet just as the waves arrived.

[Commiesalami]

By sending the transport with scouts in you probably alerted the EMP Guardian and caused him to become active threat. He then sat on the other side of one of your wormholes waiting for your ships to leave.  When the wave hit suddenly there was enough of an AI presence vs. Human presence to make an attack worth it.  So all of those ships your riled up with the Transport came pouring through including everybody's friend the EMP Guardian.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, if the EMP guardian came in via normal space you _could_ (in theory) have spotted it on the adjacent planet and assassinated it.  If it had come in the wave itself at 18 minutes in that would have been very, very similar to a roguelike starting you in line-of-sight of a goblin wizard with a wand of death.

So if you keep scouts on all those planets and keep a close eye out for EMP guardians until you've blocked off all wave access to your Homeworld, you should be able to avoid that in the future.

[Cyborg]

The easiest way to do it is to leave a scout on the planet, and then on the galaxy screen mouse over the target planet. It will show you all of the guardians as a row on the top. For example tachyon(guard) x5  would mean the AI has five tachyon guardians.

[Commiesalami]

The easiest way to do it is to leave a scout on the planet, and then on the galaxy screen mouse over the target planet. It will show you all of the guardians as a row on the top. For example tachyon(guard) x5  would mean the AI has five tachyon guardians.

Only Tachyon Guardians are shown in the galaxy screen mouse over.

[Cyborg]

True. Makes a good case for improving the information window when a scout is on a planet.

[Nalgas]

Guardians do not come in with waves.  You pissed him off by sending the transports in, which freed up the guardian and maybe some other ships with it in one of those systems.  This is why when scouting that early in the game I send the scouts in by themselves with nothing else at all, because other stuff tends to make the AI angry, and then it tries to kill you.  Yeah, it's harder to get your scouts through, but that's what sending them in groups is for, or unlocking mk2 if you need them.  Post a mk1 scout on at least each planet bordering you so you can keep an eye on anything threatening you, and then take all the rest of them left over and push them through as a big group, but loose, not in transports, and that should be enough to make it at least a few systems away in any direction even with the them getting decloaked, especially if you don't mind flying them around manually now and then.  Still going to need mk2 scouts fairly early that way, though, but they're cheap enough, and you get a lot.

That's a hilariously awesome way to lose, though.  What could possibly go wrong that early in the game?  Heh.

[laughingman]

I had my first experience with an EMP guardian this morning, and it sounds exactly like this one. It came right in the middle of the first wave, with predictable results. "Wait, it can do that?!!??"

It made me laugh after I stopped expressing myself in a rather colorful manner.