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Doing it wrong - full conquest on 120 planets vs 7/7

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AnnoyingOrange:
Eighty conquered planets, ten fully developed Spire cities, and exactly 150 Spire ships: two thirds of the way to total domination, and everything is going smoothly.



Having three Dreadnoughts means I can delete wormhole guardposts (and Eyes) in two main beam firing cycles, which combined with the Spirecraft Jumpship is going to make the final third of my expansion a breeze.
With so few enemy planets left, I have to carefully consider how to approach design backups: I don't want to end up with all of them on a single planet, and no choice besides downloading or corrupting them all in bulk, at least not yet.
Better to try and remove some of the annoying ones ASAP (teleptorting stations, maybe reprocessors given their enormous health), and then conquer some that could help against the AI's final stand (anything high dps or fast enough to build).
As a precaution, I let my AIP fall even lower than usual before starting the raids.



The first round of hacks is mostly a success, even if I lose one of my two hive golems without realizing: no big deal, by now even a full swarm is not really noteworthy.
Next step is to expand into the two clusters near Asimoattune, to get two more Spire cities, gain control over the last civilian leader, and remove one rather uncomfortable front from this war.



By now I've spent around 260 hacking on corruptions and 240 on downloads, with both costing 150+ points next time, and I can expect to gain 700 more HaP this game: a couple more, and it will be time to handle all remaining backups in one final hack.
I decide to try running the superterminal, and I easily manage to deplete over 1600 HaP for almost exactly 200 AIP reduction.



12k attack is barely a challenge, especially if I get the bulk of my fleets in position instead of only bringing the 3 strongest ships I have, the ST itself is easily taken out by a sniper turret salvo, and the post hack response is nothing too crazy either: half a million strenght is an average wave on Iosvu.
Still a colossal waste of hacking and a pointless increase of the AIP floor, but that's why it was a test run: now I know for sure I can hack the ST for far longer than I'll ever want to.

Disappointed by the ST, I noticed I got rid of the last CSG-A and decided to go poking at the homeworld I already cornered.
That was a bad idea.


10 H/Ks, 26 Spirecraft ships, 12 Dire guardians, 12 golems, and one mothership.
Defense is succesful (not too hard when there's ten or so planets to fortify on the way), but I take way too many losses, in part thanks to a peculiar mechanic regarding womrholes and in-flight projectiles: ships going through a wormhole while there are projectiles coming for them will take all the damage of said projectiles as soon as they are through the wormhole.
Time to reload and come up with a plan more elaborate than "go in and shoot".

AnnoyingOrange:
THE END

Taking an AI homeworld at 700 AIP is not a smart idea, but that hasn't stopped me from starting this campaign, has it?

After a few tries I figure out that the AI doesn't bring out the big guns unless I attack the homeworld with spire ships, and the guard post mix means even my golems can't survive for long let alone get close to any valuable target: time to dust off the starships.
They're so weak compared to the superweapons I'm used to by now, but they're disposable and that's all that matters for such a prolonged assault.: the plan is to set up a dock to continuously send decoys into the wormhole, and then move in a blob of MK3+ flagships, neinzul carriers, zeniths, and heavy bombers, in theory the decoys and neinzul spawns should absorb the bulk of the damage while the rest can work on the guardposts.

A few millions metal later, the wormhole is safe enough to bring in a mobile builder and put up a small beachhead, and I add spire, lighting, and plasma starships to the mix now that my docks aren't working so hard.
With a particularly nasty implosion guardpost dealt with, the golems join the fight, the two artillery make short work of the remaining forcefields and the enemy fortress while the cursed provides some much needed long range attrition.

Five hours after the start of  the offensive, the home command station of AI 2 falls.


Amusingly enough, the AI homeworld makes for a pretty good checkpoint to tank waves, even without the bulk of my spire fleet: it can tank normal waves and all kind of exos without issues, and I haven't even brought in the implosion artillery yet!


Shortly after, AIP falls below 600, and I decide to leave the game running AFK overnight given how trustworthy my defenses have been and how time-consuming the civilian leaders are.


The rest of the campaign is kind of disappointing: it's simply a matter of sending the dreadnought jumpship in to wipe a planet clean, then moving the main spire fleet one jump forward, occasionally building one more spire city...
The real time clock is past 100 hours by the time I own 119 planets, and for the second homeworld I just turn all remaining asteroids in the galaxy into Martyrs and then throw them in en masse, followed immediately after by the full spire fleet my 16 cities can sustain, 235 ships including 5 dreadnoughts: AI 1 calls in a Mothership only to see it explode within seconds, and the rest of its resistance is unremarkable.

One last colony ship is built, and the deed is done.

Cyborg:
Awesome story so far!

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