Oil? This is 10/10, buddy. Combustion below the order of a tactical nuclear warhead won't even warm a steak.
A lot of oil? No? Hm.
Maybe there should be an achievement named "The L. Prosser Award" with a couple crossed battle axes for the icon.
I like Hitchiker's as much as the next guy, but wow can you pull some trivia out of the blue.
EMP mines on the probable teleport-to points in the vicinity of your space docks (or whatever battlestations consume for sustenance)? They don't seem to have the immunity, but maybe their nonstandard movement causes them to not trigger them.
Yeah, no joy on Teleporter vs. Mine. Their movement doesn't actually move across a minefield, so they never trigger. They CAN get caught by AoE from others, but never themselves.
My guess is it's the Zenith Descendent's getting +40 effective AIP for the purpose of offensive waves *dodges thing on your foot*. It's listed in the wave calcs but I don't think it's ever been on the wiki *gets nailed by the other thing on your foot*. ZDs also get bigger waves and fewer reinforcements in general, but that's at least already on the wiki.
I need more things on your feet. That's some brutal... and feeds once again into my argument that many MANY of these items were weighted towards early game pain with late game mediocrity. However, this information helps, thanks. If you don't get a chance to pop this on the wiki, I will eventually.
About this time is when I realize INFILTRATORS DONT HAVE CLOAKING.
"Then, Lancelot, Galahad and I jump OUT of the rabbit... er, um..."
... At the time, it felt more like 'in a bikini'...
There is a throttling on how many ships can do the targeting routine per second; more are allowed through if they're close enough to another ship of the exact same type (and controlling player) that's already done the full target check to just piggyback via "aggregate targeting", but it's still finite. Not sure if that's what you're seeing here; I wouldn't expect ships to be able to fly through a system in the time it takes to get a target list.
Oh, they can and do. I witnessed it a few times once I was able to figure out what the problem was. It depends on how tight the wormholes are but even on a 1/4 system distance some leakage was expected when the mob 'freed' from the first entry. The ever-flowing swarm rarely did it but if the youngling's balled up for a second chewing up reinforcements then blasted in about 50 or so would usually clear the far wormhole.
Captured via towel and reprogrammed to be constantly happy. "140 Herring Sandwiches to Earth in 0:42"
But, I wanted to ride the herd and see the King! Someone get me a bird.
In a sane world, a navy refits between campaigns. Here, there's nothing left to fit, so it refleets.
"Admiral, the entire fleet, it sunk due to your orders."
"I know. Build another."
"Wait, what?"
On the threatballs, I'm curious based on something I heard another player talking about months ago about how to short-circuit them: how about parking a relatively high-attack-power chunk of fleet on the enemy side of the wormhole (once it's clear, I know easier said than done in the midst of stuff) under cloaker-starship cover. Or just the whole fleet without cloaking cover as long as it isn't enough to cause the enemy to threatball just one planet further out.
The idea being that the threat will dribble in and get eaten by your stuff as it tries to park, so a large threatball doesn't form.
Naturally if that actually works I'll probably have to fix it to be smarter, but was wondering if it works My guess is that it would rely on the AI still having something fairly high-firepower on the planet you're trying to anti-threatball, as otherwise the presence of your om-nom force would cause at least some minor threatballing on the next planet out.
It might have been me, I've been using this tactic off and on.
First: Threatballs won't form against AI held planets, ever. They come in to support the AI world, under any circumstances. This allows you to do a dribble-kill. Mind you, 1000 ships of dribble = massive fleet action.
Second: You can force a threatball to move if a wave hits and you have forces on the enemy side of the gates. I hadn't thought 140 Vamp Is would be enough to do it, but push enough threat into a system and a threatball will escape to attack just about anything that it was parked waiting for more help for.
Hmm, spider turrets might work well too; particularly if the threatball logic doesn't exclude "ships I have that are engine-dead" from the firepower calculations.
I don't believe ED ships end up in the threatball calculation, because they're not considered 'waiting' at the wormhole, merely 'available' in that system. If you correct it to determine threatballing against AI held systems then they would be part of the overpowered calculation, yes.
When the quantity of rogues behind you have to start lining up to take turns backstabbing you, the element of surprise is somewhat diminished
"Excuse me, Lord Mishmash. The Thieves Guild has a contract on you."
"Well, Senechal, how many are they sending?"
"Well, sir... the entire guild."
"HAH! That should be easy, alert the army! Take positions!"
On a side note: It didn't count as a 10 planet game. Well, ALRIGHTY then.
Ah. Ehm. Well, it wasn't actually a 10 planet map, you see? The grid-based maps have to produce a rectangle (maybe even a square, I forget). Counting is the way to show the AI that you're not reliant on computers.
Sorry about the confusion there, I could have put 2+2 together when you said "and clearing the 10 world achievement" and "Maze A"
So I eventually figured out. Might fire up a 10 planet Tree and just knock it out. Btw, it's square. Minimum planet count is 16. I'm kinda surprised it didn't drop to 9, actually. And I'm knot reliant on komputors. I kin khount!