Author Topic: Easing Back In  (Read 2954 times)

Offline Faulty Logic

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Easing Back In
« on: October 22, 2013, 03:58:32 pm »
I want I nice, simple game with minimal time pressure.

70 planets Spokes 915303239 Teleraids

Ultra low caps, Schizophrenic, complete visibility, 2 champions

Marauders 4
Resistance 10
Rebellions 4
Dyson 4
Enclaves 4

10/10  Sledge Hammer / Mine Enthusiast  //  Fortress Baron/ The Tank

Hunter 0/10
Shark B 4/0
Both Avengers

===Operation How Do I Play This Game, Again?====
Update to 7.009 from 7.000, granting the hacking revolution.

And a map detangler, which is awesome.
And new music, which is even better.

I begin by unlocking harvester IIIs and Enclave starship IIs.
These, riotIs, and caps of missile and sniper turrets deal with the first two waves.

What are all these superterminals doing?
Oh, they're "Design backup servers." They look almost identical, maybe color the ST's W-thing blue?
And I can hack them to get new ships? Excellent, especially given that one of them has shield bearers.

I move pretty quickly, to get myself ready for the free-threat champions.
In the first two hours, I conquer 3 hubs (one with a ZPG) and two spokes (Core Missile and Sniper), respectively. I also hack for shield bearers. I'm happy to realize that I also get the ability to research higher marks of them.

I'm really liking the core turret controllers. I have the missile and sniper at the moment.

Unlocks are HarvesterIIIs, Enclaves and Riots to mkIII (excellent combo), and warp jammers, leaving me with 1000 k

With three planets with four resources and two with eight, I'm rolling in money, and have the merc enlave up and running.

AIP is at the floor of 36, but there are no data centers left.

CPA declares at 2:03(!) with 677 ships.
Threat back down to 0 by 2:23

I need to be careful about the final hub; trapping the huntercloud in an AI HW spoke would make the endgame even harder, and trapping it in a valuable spoke means I would have to deal with 15 mks of HKs and a bunch of missile guardians with base-game stuff.

So I send out a transport with my non-merc enclaves and a champion under cloak to the end of a three-planet spoke with a core shield C on it. Once they arrive, I quickly conquer and colonize the hub, which should trap them for the rest of the game.

I unlock and build the cap of mkI forts, all on the future chokepoint, with the special forces post offering them for half-off.

By now it's nearly 3 hours in anyway, so I do the first two nebulae (gatlings and humans), reaching level 17 and getting 22 gatlings. Resources go into two spire mod forts.

I'm taking all waves at home, and it hasn't been a problem with riots and enclaves, though those potshots the eyebots take at Home Command sound scary, at least.

I take my shiny new destroyers and turn them into cruisers, getting mourners, free for all, and 3v2. Level 29, and 3 mod forts up.

I take two ARS worlds (railpod and zombard), one coming with a spider turret controller. I also pop the Co-processors (glad that they are actually superior to DCs in at least one way now), bring AIP to the floor at 76.

CPA round two (1300 ships) declares at 4:20, resolves into a ~300 ship carrier off home, a ~200 ship off the far hub, and ~700 against the choke. They all just wait. Routine mop-up with shadow cruisers, riots, and enclaves.

I take the FactIV+IRE fab world, hack a miniramV fabricator, and begin the siege of the MLRS turret controller.

I unlock shield bearers II-III, bombers II, Zenith starship II, FlagshipII, Spire starship I.

I'm 5 hours in, and things are looking good.

Observations
It's really nice not having exos or whiny civilian leaders to deal with.

Backup servers look too much like the ST.

Enclave starships need a nerf. Again, their power scales beyond linearly.

Hacking:
1) Some of the prices seem really off: only 20 HaP for a permanent mkV ship? Changing the mkI you get from an ARS costs the same as getting an entirely new mkI from the AIs backup thingies? You can save 20 AIP (Interplanetary booster) or 5(raid engine or Z reserve V) for 2 HaP?
2) What you get isn't quite clear for each hack. For example, I expected the design download to only give mkI, with no further research option.
3)The hacking substations should disappear once the hack is over.
4)The fab hacker first line of text makes it sound like if you (for some reason) subsequently capture the planet and lose the fab, the design will disappear.
5) The substations should have how long their hack will take in their descriptions.
6)In experiment, the covert knowledge extractor works for a second before the 15 countdown kicks in. It is also free, and hacking response takes a second to start up. What this means is that you can pause, put down 500 of the things, unpause-repause, and you get 3000 k before the AI can blink, no matter how negative your HaP. Hypothetically.

This has been going suspiciously well...


State of Empire
If warheads can't solve it, use more warheads.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Easing Back In
« Reply #1 on: October 22, 2013, 04:52:24 pm »
Welcome back :)

On the cost of fab hacking, just to be clear: 20 is the cost the first time you do that.  Goes up pretty fast on repetition of the same hack type.  Also, iirc, getting 20 HaP involves getting, well, 20 AIP.  Granted, it's in addition to whatever you got with that 20 AIP, but it's not cheap either.

And interesting on the bug with the k-hacking giving you free points in the first second.  Someone would build 500 of the things to do exactly that, too.

Quote
This has been going suspiciously well...
Sometimes the AI takes the long view.
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Offline Bognor

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Re: Easing Back In
« Reply #2 on: October 26, 2013, 03:18:37 am »
Glad you're back, Faulty  :)

I want I nice, simple game
...
10/10
...
Hunter 0/10
ROFL!

Enclave starships need a nerf. Again, their power scales beyond linearly.
Relative DPS for mark I / II / III / IV / V is 1 / 3.3 / 7.5 / 14.3 / 25.  I don't necessarily have a problem with non-linear scaling, just thought I'd crunch the numbers.  At first I thought these were crazily overpowered, but on re-consideration, they're countered hard by most eyes, and you need a lot of spare energy to run their drones.  So for me they're not quite always-unlocks (but pretty close).  Perhaps Hybrids and other ships should more strongly prioritize attacking the Enclaves over the drones.

Hacking:
Agree that hacking-related text needs clarification as a matter of priority.
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Offline Faulty Logic

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Re: Easing Back In
« Reply #3 on: November 04, 2013, 09:27:41 pm »
===Operation Midgame====

Things go ridiculously smoothly for a while.

I get rid of the five warp gates around home, channeling all waves to the chokepoint.
Then I conquer the rest of the P4 planets, getting me:

A StarIV constructor.
MLRS and Needler turret contoller.
3 ARSs: Hydra, Saboteur, and devastator
Fabricators for core protector starship, exp engies, armor boostV, nanoswarmV, and polarizerV
Dyson coverage
Lots of K (including a double archive).
AIP 310.
HaP ~400.

I spend the hacking on fabricator hacks for laser gatlings, scapegoats, and core saboteurs, a sabotage to get rid of a black hole machine, and 9500 K.

I did lose the needler turret controller in a 3000-ship cpa, but other than that the AI might as well have been asleep.

All 8 accessible nebulae complete.

Unlocks going into the end:
Starships:
flag, zenith, spire, leech, siege, bomber, enclave, and riot starships at mkIII-IV.
Fleetships:
Shield bearers, bombers, saboteurs, teleraids and zombards up to mkIII-IV.

Gravity turret IIIs, fortressIs and forcefield IIs/ hardened ffs I are my only defensive unlocks: the rest is taken care of by the fleet, 6 mod forts, and the 5 varieties of core turrets.

Colony rebellion declared on [world with 15 freaking marks of H/Ks]. Of course. Alright, that's a pretty definite time limit.

A look at the AI homeworlds:

The northern one has a pinwheel, shredder post, and CPA post.
The southern one has a CRE, a CPA, and a shredder.

So I should clearly take out the north CPA, then the rest of the north, then kill the south all at once. I stomp the northern core world, repair, and send in the teleraids to kill the OMD, and the champs to take out the post proper.

The last normal CPA had 3000 ships, so I assume it will be around that number.

When I trigger the post, I got this:
27,000 ships massing for a CPA in 10 seconds

WHAT!?!

===Operation We Have A Problem====
Fortunately, there are only 8,200 ships in the galaxy. Once it adds its strategic reserve, I'm only facing 10,000 ultra-low cap ships.

Of course, they don't all come politely to my chokepoint. Oh, and the mini-exo from killing the cpa post had an H/K. That combined with ~600 ships took out one of my spoke worlds. And that's when I remember: I have shark on.

The shark wave targeted my farthest hub, with a ZPG. I rush the champion fleet over to stomp it, and succeed, but now the hammers from the AI homeworlds (~2000 each) hit my planets between the choke and the AI homes. My normal fleet is busy defending the actual choke from the ~4000 ships headed there.

I lose the two outlyling planets, and then things really start going wrong.
Though the choke is holding against the staggered waves, most of my fleet is pinned there.

Two shark-waves attack my home (bringing another H/K) and the hub between home and the choke. I defend home (barely), but the other wave (which has another H/K) knocks out it's hub, triggering a brownout and another shark attack, and moves on toward home, joined by about 1000 ships that had been hanging out in small groups.

Experimental engineers quickly sort out the energy problem, but a new sharkwave targets home. At least it didn't bring an H/K. It brought an artillery golem instead.

I recall the fleet from the choke back home, and repel the attacks, taking many casualties.

2500-ship WAVE??

Heavily damaged fleet goes back onto the heavily damaged chokepoint.

Wave repelled, crisis over.

I lost my advanced starship constructor, and my nanoswarm and polarizer fabs. I also came really, really close to dying.

Rebuilt by 9:50, time to finish off the first homeworld.

===Operation Seige of the North====
Ah, teleport raiders. Just the right mix of expendable, fast, and expendable. They quickly wear down the unshielded core posts, with the rest of the fleet easily mopping up the mini-exos.

The north HW is now down to two core posts under glass, and of course the double ff/fortIII arrangement around the home station. I send in the entire base game fleet, leaving the champs and minions to repel the exos.

I take some casualties, but nothing terrible, and now the first AI home station is exposed. I rebuild, repel a wave (starting to get expensive), and now I only have half an hour until the rebel colony declares right next to fifteen marks of H/K. Real smart, guys.

===Operation Out of Time====
I don't have the time for another extended siege. So I do it the fun way. A whole bunch of warheads, the Neinzul enclave fleet, and the gravity network will defend home, and I'll just take the entire fleet to smash through the south core world, and onto the south HW. This will trigger a core wave and another super-cpa, but I should be able to kill the home station before they kill mine.

First, teleraids up to pop the north station. Oh, hello, avenger. Too bad you're too slow to make a difference.

Time to go:

Loaded every transportable ship into transports, then just group-moved to the south HW.

A bunch of them popped on the core world, and one of the champs died, but most got through.

The fortresses (mkIII, mkII, super) begin to shred the fleet, along with the twenty frigates, and of course the core posts and strategic reserve.

But it isn't enough. The remaining champion and minions destroy the far posts, while everything else is just swarmed. My planets are falling, but the gravity network is keeping the invading 5000 or so ships off my homeworld. One of the mini-exos gets there, but the neinzuls/warheads champion kills it before it does anything.

Victory at 10:46.

If warheads can't solve it, use more warheads.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Easing Back In
« Reply #4 on: November 05, 2013, 10:35:14 am »
Colony rebellion declared on [world with 15 freaking marks of H/Ks]. Of course. Alright, that's a pretty definite time limit.
They must be working on Bothan spy intel.  All those HKs are down for refit, really.


Quote
27,000 ships massing for a CPA in 10 seconds
Engage Alternate Underwear Protocol.


Quote
And that's when I remember: I have shark on.
You forgot a shark and survived?


Quote
I lost my advanced starship constructor, and my nanoswarm and polarizer fabs. I also came really, really close to dying.
Well, glad the AI could give a decent account of itself at least once this game.  Albeit I'm not sure it would have without shark.


Quote
My planets are falling, but the gravity network is keeping the invading 5000 or so ships off my homeworld. One of the mini-exos gets there, but the neinzuls/warheads champion kills it before it does anything.
Endgames are always better when the sky is literally falling.


Quote
Victory at 10:46.
Congratulations! :)
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Offline alocritani

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Re: Easing Back In
« Reply #5 on: November 05, 2013, 10:38:42 am »
And interesting on the bug with the k-hacking giving you free points in the first second.  Someone would build 500 of the things to do exactly that, too.

just to say it has been (partially) reported on mantis, too

 

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