Crosshatch 9/9

[rabican]

crosshatch 80planets  9/9 random-non technologist

Human colony rebellions
resistance fighters
dyson
roaming enclaves
preservation warders
spirecraft - hard
broken golems - medium

schizoprenic
auto AIP at 20 per 240minutes -  I tend to find early game a lot harder than end game, figured this would even it out a bit.

First AI
9 avenger , astro trains. Counter spy. Has vampire claws unlocked.

Second AI
9 avenger, hybrid hives. Neinzul viral enthusiast. Has gravity drains and stealth battleships unlocked.

Personal behaviour rules: Pick first seed where you can pick a corner homeworld and no savescumming.



Couple of things i haven't played around with before in this game. Never seen either AI type, astro trains or used my bonus ship, space plane. Absolutely no idea what N viral clusters do, ignoring them.

I get MK3 version of space plane from the start and send them take out nearby planets and they do this incredibly efficiently, i barely lose a ship taking out first system.  I pop out a distribution node and start rapidly producing leech starships for first wave while space planes go on rampage on systems bordering my home . I have 3 leech starships and 2 raid starships ready for the first wave and uh.. i almost die because vampire claws kill my reactors. After first 2 waves are done i realise i have suprisingly very easy start.

1) I have 4 systems and 5 caps worth of ships in 20ish minutes into the game , usually it takes me ~2hours to get here, fastest start ever.

2) First 2 rings of ai planets around my home are all from AI 2 and all but one of them are level 1 planets.

None of the border planets are worth taking and i still don't even know what the second AI type is so i scout the 3ring of planets around my homeplanet and find a planet with ARS and artillery golem. The 2nd Ai type turning out to be Counter spy is bit annoying because of my already budding spaceplane addiction. But as i remember some of the other ai types i think i got extremly lucky.

Next hour or so i shall use taking out data centers and hybrid factories while saving up enough resources to raise that golem up as soon as i take Voicino system.

[zoutzakje]

It looks like my AAR has given people ideas
First few waves of high difficulties are always easy. That was done on purpose so that people actually get a chance to build up and get ready, instead of getting destroyed right from the start. But since your AIP is above 70 now, you should start to notice waves growing quite strong already.
I kind of laughed when I read your settings. You must have a deathwish
Good luck ^^

[Diazo]

Yikes.

Those settings will be interesting.

However if a dyson spawns in a location where he can protect one of his flanks with it I think that should be doable. Especially if he can activate that golem pretty quick.

D.

[_K_]

Ugh, those settings are pretty brutal, especially the 20 AIP per 4 hours.
This seriously depends on the Dyson's success, but overally i wouldnt give you more than 14 hours to live.

[Wanderer]

That's an intense game.

The neinzul spawners are basically like the roach spawners on the homeworld.  Get close and they spew some younglings.  You'll want to pop those when you get the chance, they don't auto-target for some reason.

Um, luck?

[Nodor]

That's an intense game.

<snip>

Um, luck?

Indeed, may the RNG be with you.

[zoutzakje]

yup, it pretty much all depends on how fast he finds and frees the dyson sphere. Waiting to long will cause what happened in my first failed crosshatch game. Oh and the hybrids of course, they will cause some "fun" stuff.
Though he could be an old-timer and run the whole game like a pro, who knows

[keith.lamothe]

Indeed, may the RNG be with you.

Indeed

I predict a loss, but it may well be a glorious loss

[rabican]

Heh yeah dyson... its on the next planet i scout  

Around 50min mark i scout planets next to that ARS, and dyson is there. 2 planets to get there, and i would've taken those anyway next, nice. I get tied up by waves and border agression for a while and only manage to take one planet and not free dyson. That is until i start seeing neutral dyson gatlings on my planets. Apparently they cleared their own planet and the planet i was going to get by themselves. Thanks! After some raid starship action i am sitting at 6 planets and dyson freed, 1:15 into the game. ARS unlcoked teleporting leech. Probably should've hacked it, not that great unless AI unlcoks some long range units i think.

Thinks are looking up at this point RNG has blessed me. Then i do what i always do when things go well, i start messing things up rather badly.

For a while i try to scout for anything worth taking. I fail miserably and decide to take scout starship 5s and just scout the whole map. Should've used spire scouts but i totally forgot about those. Oh well, 5 750K more or less wasted. I also blast out a lot of astrotrains with artillery golem. Don't know if they respawn or not so might've been wasted effort.

I find an second ARS 2 hops away . On the planet between there is an Armor rotter Fabricator that i had previously ignored because it was on IV planet with CO- Prosessor on it.  Now it is looking pretty tempting so i take it out with suprising ease. AIP is looking pretty hefty 152 after i take  the planet so i decide to take out some Datacenters and hybrid facilities before i move onwards.

Sala(Mark III) has DC and 4 facilities. Since taking out that Mark IV planet was pretty easy i figure i just destroy those and get out. No eye, i'll just send all my troops in. I'm not entirely sure why it takes me 30seconds into the fight to notice cluster of 3 ion cannons. Oh well i send my brand new teleporting leeches to take those out. At this point i notice that there incoming wave coming to a planet i'm attacking from. And that those ion cannons were protected by a fortress. I quickly and deftly move my teleporting leeches in random and manage to realease hundreds of thoes neinzul viral spawners. Things are looking pretty bad and i decide to retreat. Well the enemy bonus ship happens to be gravity drain and somehow i manage to only bring my golem, riot ships and couple of fleet ships out fast, rest get stuck in the gravity drains. Neinzul virals hit and with my riots out.... well rest get massacared pretty fast. I retreat towards my military base when stuff starts pouring out of the wormhole. Apart from my golem all my remaining troops die pretty fast, maybe 30-40 guardians come out of the hole, i had no idea there were that many .The neinzuls take out my Armor rotter FAB. Good thing i managed to produce grand total of 0 of those rotters. Golem is losing health rapidly and i decide to run into a wave that pops out of the wormhole. System is lost and i run with the golem. 3% health left i decide to run to next system with.

About 1200enemy ships left after they destroyed my first system and come into the second. Most of the dysons in that system are chasing Turret astro train around and the horde has straight path to my command station which dies pretty fast.  For the next planet i've built 4 riot starships and those combined with the poor AI on the nenizuls (they just sat there on my energy reactor remains doing nothing because they had no valid targets) they take out the neinzuls, and dyson gatlings mop up the rest pretty fast.

I quickly retake the 2 lost planets. Apart from my golem i lost my whole fleet . That fabricator loss stings quite a bit , and the 150 vampire claws i had reclaimed are going to take some time to recover. At least i killed that datacenter and hybrid facilities yay! Wish i had time for that recovery but the first Exo fleet is at 99% . Oh well, first wave is  easy, right?

[zoutzakje]

depends. If your AIP is 100+, things can get nasty already. Make sure your homeworld is well protected.
good luck.

[keith.lamothe]

A rough introduction to Neinzul Viral's

But good show getting out of there with anything intact.  We'll see how the exo does

[rabican]

First exo turned out to be very easy. Artillery golem popped the lead ship and that was that. I probably had more ships after that fight than before because of the leeches. Learing to love the Artillery golem, its much weaker than just about every golem in most fights but it shines in lot of thing. Takes out fortresses or eyes like nothing else. Haven't really used raid ships this game as i just zap everythin with the golem.

I took the 2nd ARS and ended up with Zenith electric bombers. It was the default ship, others were Cutlasses and Zenith mirrors. Figured cutlasses would be next to uselesss with all those gravity drains around. And as i use a lot more crystal than metal, i dont want to use the mirros. Of course i hack the ARS for 7minutes before realising i can check the ship types beforehand and stopped the hacking.

Taking the next 2 planets takes around 1:30 hours, as i lose a lot of troops in every fight. None of my bonus ships(space plane, teleporting leech, electric bomber) are all that good in prolonged fight, and my triangle ships are still MK I. I've reclaimed a lot of the higher marks but not enough, and they just keep dying. Evem with mark 3 harvesters it takes a bit to gather enough to replace all my stuff. Clearly i need to do something else besides just trying to fleetball enemy systems as fast as possible.

2nd exo is coming in fairly soon after i lose 90% of my fleet in another fiasco. I barely have enough time to reproduce my fleet when it strikes. Turns out i shouldn't have worries, my 5 core planets closest to home all have 60+ gatlings. Rest have nothing but i really do not have to worry about attacks to my home .

Abnormally strong hybrid, after bit of scouting i find it on one of the core worlds.

Shortly after the exo i get my first CPA warning,  1137 ships. Regular waves are between 400-1200 ships, i  laugh and go raid some Data centers. I never use whipping boy so CPAs aren't usually that big a deal for me, every system has better than token defense, should be able to at least delay enough to get mobile fleet in. Turns out this time was bit different, all ships are MKII, i don't know why but i get bit worried and start doing some last second defenses. CPA goes to my gatling free zone and i get to fight pretty sizable force head on. Fight goes suprisingly badly as there is over 30 Stealth battle ships in this crowd and more seems to be appearing. Then i get command station destroyed message and check it out . Another 20ish Stealth BS. I check my 3rd system that is under attack and yes, another 20ish Stealth BS near my command station. I fly them towards gatling zone with a martyr(martyrs on all of my forward bases). I lose a big chunk out of my main fleet but nothing too hard to replace, besides that one martyr.

I start getting lots of alerts from hybrids, perservation wardens and roaming enclaves. My defenses are taking care of them on their own but these have continued non-stop ever since.

I go on offense , decide to take it bit slower and just send Starship fleet with Artillery golem in and take a couple of shots and retreat. This actually turns out to be pretty fast method, especially when i figure i can trick them into coming after me if i remove rest of my fleet from the parent planet. I take 3 planets in a hour or so, new goodies include Advanced Factory, BeamSS FAB and 2nd artillery golem + hive golem. This puts me at 260AIP which is way beyond the MK II limit. Taking that 2nd Artillery golem wasn't that smart, 2nd one doesn't really add that much utility. And they sometimes fire at same thing.

Next to take that ARS and clear all the remaining DC co-processors. Should be able to briefly get back under 210AIP. 

Remaining ARS position is bit tricky. Both are next to 2 core worlds. The bottom right one is even more annyoing. To get there i must alert a core world 2 planets before. In addition to ARS it has a golem(only artillery but still) and 3 FABs. Ugh. Well considering how favorable RNG has been for me otherwise, that sounds about fair.

[zoutzakje]

hahaha you actually marched right across the grid, awesome
Very lucky you managed to find that dyson sphere so early. I wasn't so lucky unfortunately   Good luck trying to survive the antagonizer though.

[keith.lamothe]

Learing to love the Artillery golem, its much weaker than just about every golem in most fights but it shines in lot of thing. Takes out fortresses or eyes like nothing else.

Careful with that thing, you'll put someone's eye out!  (Sauron looks nervous)

Evem with mark 3 harvesters it takes a bit to gather enough to replace all my stuff.

Got Econ 3's unlocked too?  Not that doing both should be at-all common.

Clearly i need to do something else besides just trying to fleetball enemy systems as fast as possible.

What? Tactics proving necessary?  Yep, Econ 3s.  Time to jam the AI's chipper-shredder

Another 20ish Stealth BS.

Yea, they get called that a lot.

I start getting lots of alerts from hybrids, perservation wardens and roaming enclaves. My defenses are taking care of them on their own but these have continued non-stop ever since.

Sounds relatively chaotic, but apparently you contracted out to ACME Invincible Defenses, Inc.

2nd Artillery golem wasn't that smart, 2nd one doesn't really add that much utility. And they sometimes fire at same thing.

If you want you can micro their targets by low-powering them until you're sure you want them to fire, etc.

Looks in general like you're embarassing the game fairly handily

[rabican]

I take the ARS (spider bot). And set out to clear all the AIP reducers in the galaxy. Luckily they are at most 2 hops away from my lines and i get them without much hassle.  At 6:15 i've taken 2 more worlds for armored golem and bombard fab. AIP back at 205, i decide to take it easy till 8th hour when aip will increase by 20.

I prepare couple of planets for takeover. I heal armored golem up to 96% but don't activate yet. K raid a bit and unlock flagship and 3rd level in all of my bonush ships. My bonus ships are such mish-mash-wishy washy pansy group that i keep on building spirecraft and leave defense to my fleetships. I get way too much spirecraft and have to build some extra reactors. At 7:00 i pop a mark IV counterattack guard post couple of seconds after it i get a CPA warning, 1700ish ships at the same time.  If i get waves at the same time things might get ugly. I just need to figure out a way to get those 700 dyson gatlings at my home  to spread a bit. They could guard pretty much entire galaxy by themselves at this point