Battle Report - DIF 5 Medium Random AI- 40 Planets

[eRe4s3r]

Day - 0 | First 5 Hours

Difficulty was 5/5 = Medium/Easy Random , 1/2 waves , no Progression gain over time. (in fact, if i could i would select negative progression gain over time = No contact with AI = No threat assessment) - No handicap for nobody.

Due to attachment constraints i have to split this up into several posts And i haven't yet actually won. But i am close

Tactical outlook
My start location (see attachment) was carefully selected - I had 5 planets planned to capture, which i fully achieved after 5 hours.

First showstopper was a III world at Backyard -1 it took me over 3 hours to assemble a fleet to take this one down (mk2 forcefields everywhere ~.~) and there were serious forces positioned at backyard -2 and -3 - which made the invasion, lets say.. fluffy ,)

After some skirmishes here and there i went for a raiding strategy and killed off all wave gates that connect to me, i would rather have large cross planet raids than waves. This worked out well, and would be of benefit in day1, unexpected even.

My homeworld defenses were a different kind of beast entirely, i encountered large amounts of teleport raiders who would go for my backyard -0 / -1 / -2 / -3 so i put a forcefield in front of the outgoing wormhole and made the homeworld defense like in the attachment, this defense position has a thought in it which is not apparent.

I had large waves of shuttles in the waves before - and these were HIGHLY annoying - in the end i decided to put 3 forcefields as you can see to defend the wormhole - things under a shield don't take damage from shuttles, important detail

I also captured a ADV Research lab and a starship constructor on Backyard -1 (yeah, got lucky ;p)

- The units i selected were Gattling lasers (much more efficient than you'd guess) and raiders (super effective in defense)

After 5 hours my fleet was finally assembled - i research raided a bit more (actually quite a lot more) and my excursion to the adv factory and the expected homeworld regions was prepared and ready.

Next up - Day 1

Stats
I built 8000 ships/buildings in the first 5 hours, and lost half of them.. the battles over these 5 planets were prolonged.
Final assault fleet on adv factory was 2680 ships
I built 2 Repair Stations and had them fly a star course through my parked ships = Way faster repair than building useless tugs or doing it with engineers. After use, i scrapped them again. They are too slow.

My research Raids
Consisted of all MK1 and MK2 ships i could field. I built 12 research labs and ran through the entire right loop - all in all i collected a lot of research

Economy
Economy was no problem at all - the planets i captured where all worthless in terms of resources so i had to go for the MK3 Command stations right from the start. Those are very useful

Strategy
The strategy was to solidify the front to 1 wormhole that has no enemy ships in it, an entirely clean sector, to prevent some cross planet raids i actually moved my raid fleets in a nearby sector and waited for the attack, then moved ships from both homeworld and nearby sector to squash it.

My strategy also involves doing a spearhead assault, and beachhead at the adv factory position. The Invasion Fleet screenshot is exactly 30 minutes before the end-game phase starts.

[eRe4s3r]

Day 1 (Thats today)

The next 30 minutes where a combat exercise with a lot of fun i literally rolled through till i hit the ADV factory world, cleansed it and build up a foward post.

In the additional attachments you can see my planning so far - (Sorry, my scouting happened 5 minutes after i made that screenshot and i forgot to update it for the annotations ;p)

Those 3 locations are potential homeworlds - But the most left planets are definite core worlds. Everything around the grey circles is a IV or III world - scouting in either of these 3 planets would be impossible until i can clean the planets next to it.. i start with the left 4 worlds, at this point i no longer care about progression and wipe every planet i pass through - i need free supply routes for the assaults anyway

Attacks on my forward adv factory where of course heavy - i destroyed the adjacent IV world in a fell swoop as well - And those IV/Core ships were not all too happy about it

But due to close resupply point i repaired and well - day 2 is going to be the final steps to victory i think.

(I am cutting this apart to manage attachments ,p)

Stuff that was really annoying

Well - As it turns out my decision to destroy the warpgates very early on had the side effect that the III world where the adv factory was - was literally EMPTY - mere 100 ships (compared to about 1400 all around the empty nexus frontline world.

Apparantly the AI didn't think i don't care what it throws at me in between my goal and my homeworld, i just marched straight through to the adv factory, and captured it ;p That way the ai had shot itself in the foot with its resupply tactic - all the worlds around me had 550 enemy ships by now (Another reason i don't play at dif 7 is that it gets really laggy in late-game ;p) But nothing could pass through my homeworld defense (which is supported by 1 zenith and 1 spire ship) and about 300 other ships.

My tactic on the adv factory involved MK2 shields - which unlocked from the 2000 knowledge i got there - I put 3 around my adv factory, MK2 short range and 90 missile turrets with a spire ship in the center (they each get 2x boost) from then one, my adv factory defense was impenetrable

Edit. Attached Stats for 6 Hours | Map Update after 6 hours

Edit 2: Feedback welcome (I know its not the super difficulty or challenge setup, but it is nice to play like this to get a feeling for how the economy flows and what way to expand is the best/safest)

Also something else - i was attacked by a lot of raid starships ... very annoying things .. so it wasn't actually that easy to capture that backyard - The ai gave me a good run for my money to capture those worlds... before i captured the backyards i was resource starved the entire time.

[Terroric]

How did you make text notes on all of the planets? Did you edit those in with a photo editor (ie, photoshop?)



What starting ship/ability did you pick? Or was your starting location determined by the number of wormholes to allow easy defending at the start?

[liq3]

4,000 and 2,000 ships for the AI? ONLY 6,000 ships? Wow... Most games I play on (diff 8 80 planets) START with 20,000. :p

Also, I don't think playing against diff 5s is a good way to learn much, except maybe what units are effective against other units. I don't see how'd you learn turn much about the economy, since you aren't being strained by the constant pressure of a diff 7 or 8. Same with expanding. Expanding on diff 7/8 is a lot harder then diff 5. :p

[Ashery]

I'm sitting on 600k crystal in my 80 planet game with two 7.6 random moderates four hours into the game :x Hell, only reason I don't have 300k+ metal is because I burned 200k on ten mkII science labs as my mkI's died far too quickly on my knowledge raids ;p

Then again, I haven't had the need to expand beyond where I was at the two hour mark (Six planets in a corner, three protected, one with a single wormhole, and two with three) and I've taken out three data centers during my knowledge raiding so I'm sitting comfortably with <90 AI progress.

[eRe4s3r]

How did you make text notes on all of the planets? Did you edit those in with a photo editor (ie, photoshop?)

Photoshop yeah - I choose 1 Planet in position to defend and capture easily - usually aim for 5 planets. (So i don't really care what i choose to get that planet ,p)

Liq3 = The game would last way too long on DIF 7 / And i would hit one of the dreaded blockaded wormholes with no decent weapon to clean it

Also - Technically the difficulty 5 is medium - Which is exactly how it feels More DIF only gives the ai more ships, not new tactics. (And i don't want more ships.. its already pretty laggy)

[darke]

Also - Technically the difficulty 5 is medium - Which is exactly how it feels More DIF only gives the ai more ships, not new tactics. (And i don't want more ships.. its already pretty laggy)

Actually I believe AI8 is the last to give the AI new tactics, though AI7 has something like 99% of them though.

[eRe4s3r]

Well cross planet raids and such are in DIF 5 as well ;P

I mean, 40 planets probably makes it clear i am taking a relaxation drive here ,p (I do have a sots campaign going on as well, so no time for uber long attrition wars

[liq3]

Liq3 = The game would last way too long on DIF 7 / And i would hit one of the dreaded blockaded wormholes with no decent weapon to clean it

Also - Technically the difficulty 5 is medium - Which is exactly how it feels More DIF only gives the ai more ships, not new tactics. (And i don't want more ships.. its already pretty laggy)

What kinda PC specs you got then? Because I can play 80 planet with 40,000 ships and it doesn't even start laggin (need like 4,000 on one planet for lag).

[eRe4s3r]

Mhh i have a quad core q6600 - But when i say laggy i mean with 2600 ships in one sector + enemies the game becomes noticeable slower, slow enough to annoy me. Also in one particularly large core world i also had a case of targeting lag - (with tractor turrets) with 4000 ships all together around.

You got to remember, when it says total units that is divided through the planet count not much, but if you have 2500 enemy ships and yourself 3000 ships the game slows down very very heavily..... (in one sector, that is)

Maybe its because i have photoshop open in the background and my 3d-app (i am rendering at IDLE cpu usage sometimes) can't waste cpu cycles after all ;p

I just won my Sots campaign after 980 turns - Yay me

Edit. Also doesn't help that i have several gattling units and those kind of units with a cap of 470 - so when my fleet shoots it becomes nearly a slideshow nowadays...

Edit 2: if you look a bit above you will notice my fleet was 2680 before my MKIV's joined the fun - with them i was close to 3000 units - vs 1000 or 1500 it becomes very .. slow.. but the thing thats worst is the homeworlds - those have a lot of ships and turrets and when i come in there with a lot of ships the game grinds nearly to a halt , thats also why i haven't yet posted day 2 ,)

Edit 3: And this is also why i demand/suggested the wormhole clearing weapon, targeting lag is a pita