Galactic Conquest, Must Assimilate All 120 Planets

[Spikey00]

Hey!  Even though this game isn't done yet, I would like to share some of my chronicles about it--I'm having quite blast with it, as it was my original idea to start this game with the goal of capturing all of the AI planets (which I usually do anyway), but this game would be of greater success and progress than my others due to some factors:

1) space planes as starter (this was critical),
2) economic stations maxed early on, then harvesters,
3) slightly intelligent playing overall,
4) moderate web browsing and communique (thank goodness).

Starting conditions
- single planet,
- 120 planets simple style,
- random easier 7 (identified as mine enthusiast),
- random moderate 7 (identified as tag teamer).
- 2x waves,
- schizophrenic,
- 0 AIP time increments (so I can relax and web browse/idle too!)
- ZR.

The story is usual, take planets early on, expand, and so on, but moreso with space planes because even though they are massacred by essentially everything after prolonged exposure to enemy forces, they still deal a great deal of damage to all structures, and hold their own against enemy fleets.  They are also inexpensive to replace.

I have taken twenty planets so far, have an overall fleet of 10 000 ships (mufufu), and am in the phase of "massive blob with flanks covered, massive offensive enabled" so I expect I will have a few more planets by the hour, where I currently average around two planets per hour.  Currently I am near nine hours of gameplay.  Uh though ten thousand ships are starting to lag my computer, and I believe it's going to get worse as I capture more planets, but perhaps I can sustain as this game is getting pretty epic.

Haven't the fortune to discover anything but a Zenith power generator (makes two in total after the one I bought), but that free 400K energy definitely helps maintain such a large fleet and lower constant resource cost for normal power plants (because I am an efficient-ist).

I've developed a very effective strategy during the late game which consists of:
- send blob of death to enemy planet with mobile builders,
- deploy [currently mark I and II] fortresses, one of each tier within blob which will serve as long-distant mauler while simultaneously a MRS while main blob protects the local area,
- send spy planes to destroy command station and relevant interests,
- deploy a tactical command station,
by now a lot of the local forces should have been dealt with, and so here is where I just FRD the ships in hope that not too many will be destroyed, as the extra speed should help them focus fire a bit more, eliminating the need for travel time.

Ohoho, but a recent ongoing project is that I've been farming ZShredders, which to my surprise, is working out well!  I've so far accumulated more than two thousand of these units around the place namely because of my sneaky strategy of using one of the AI planets which connect to my home world (could have been anywhere though) which I did not take as of yet.  Not only do I gain free units, but this also helps to waste AI reinforcements because I have a fortress and turrets to deal with the other units and defenses that spawn, while the ZShredders deal with the ships which spawn near the command station (I neutered the warp gate).  I check in every moment or so to remove some of the ZShredders so they replicate more efficiently.

[Spikey00]

Check the save here if you are that curious.

I should be able to update this after a few gameplay hours with additional results, and whether or not I can survive the lag anymore. 

[Spikey00]

Still playing, carving a massive trench through AI territory before they can reinforce.  Trying to relieve border planets by quickly overtaking AI planets with my ~3K ship blob.

27 planets at close to 11 hours.

[Spikey00]

Nearing 13 hours, in control of 36 planets.

Making some strong progress here, but suffered great casualties along the way, though my kill-to-loss ratio is at 1.25 oddly enough.  I thought I would have lost far more units than I did in destroying.

69 591 kills
53 658 deaths
71 509 built
24% surviving

Around 14 000 ships scattered at the moment with a current main fleet of 4 500 ships earning upwards at best of about 1 756 metal and 1 660 crystal.

Discovered Dyson Sphere location, heading there now after having for the first time in a long while reloading a save after having my entire 3K ship fleet being destroyed on an IV planet with 1 000 ships.  My plan was to wrap around the planet and destroying the command station to disarm all the defenses, but I did not expect that the AI suddenly had shield boosters, which made it incredibly difficult to destroy the command station; I sent 600 II/III/IV bombers and 800 space planes to destroy the station, but they barely dented it to 80% after a minute because the shields were boosted 5x, and by this time my main fleet was decimated.

Next reload I remembered that fleet starships fired through shields, in which case I sent three flagships, so I micromanaged them to attack those shield boosters; it worked quite well, and though I still lost a lot of my fleet and a flagship, I managed to overrun the IV planet with no remorse. 

Let's see how the next hour plays, I should have the Dyson Sphere under my control soon, and then I shall move to take the rest of the planet pocket in the lower left (of course leaving my Zenith Shredders farm planet alone!).  How is that ZShredder farming going?  I say very well, it's been draining the AI reinforcements throughout the game, and I managed to build a shield booster and inhibitor on the planet, along with a counter spy and radar jammer.  I have around maybe 2K of those shredders around the galaxy; they sure do help with defensive operations with logistics!

[Spikey00]

Actually does anyone have a good strategy against shield boosters--they're kind of messing up my strategy right now, causing some havoc for my fleets.  I'm trying starships and a mix of suicide Zenith Shredders, but the shredders are being maimed by defenses and AI forces, and my starships can only handle so many ships at once (and they don't always prioritize shield boosters automatically)...

Here's an interesting picture, ironically that achievement popped up:

[Spikey00]

How am I doing for today?  I'm at the 15.5 hour mark, and with 45 planets.  My territory is expanding rapidly on the front, rather than the flank because I decided I needed to have fewer outside worlds to defend before I move into clearing that back cluster of planets.  I predict I will have reached this goal by the next half hour or less, since I've already destroyed the command stations on some of them.

The dyson spawns are helping, and I've been able to sneak in a group of 600 space planes to help clear some of the planets that the spawn have decimated. 

P3 in the screenshot denotes where I want my front end to be, and all the P0s are where I don't have a logistics at.  P9 contains Zenith power generators, and P8 is where my main production line is.

[Spikey00]

17 hours, 15 minutes, 54 planets.  Fleet size of almost 19 000 ships, and the AI used to be around the usual 40 000 ships; I believe they're just packing it into those barracks.

I have yet to tackle the bottom area, and sadly my Zenith farm is failing ever since the AI reached III; I'm going to have to capture that planet I'm afraid (*tearful*).  I have complete access to a superterminal, but I'm planning on using that later after I have secured the flanks.

A lot of my shredders have been losing efficiency ever since the AI attained III, but throughout the game they have played a great part in my mobile defense.  I'm going to miss having thousands of them around!  ;(

Oh, I forgot to mention that a few hours ago I faced a CPA of about 5 000 ships, and I pretty much absorbed that everywhere.  Wasn't too bad as I thought it would be!

--

...and LOL, I haven't seen a single resistance fighters for many hours now!  Game doesn't think I need some help... how rude!   

[Spikey00]

19th hour, 62 planets, 20 000 ship strong fleet.  AI is now at IV.  Main fleet is roughly 5 000 ships.

I recently fended off a CPA of roughly 7 000 ships mainly from my flank which was mostly IV/III ships; I lost some slight grounding but gained it back, mainly because the AI had sneaked in a few starships (mainly raids and warbirds) along with a few hundred raptors, which I was able to contain in a short amount of time after their outbreak because of my garrisons of mercenary fighters.  From that, I finally was successful at reaching my P5 border area largely with the assistance of raid starships and having my main fleet standby on the friendly side.

Unfortunately at this time my Zenith shredders numbers are diminishing largely due to continuous attacks consisting of electric shuttles and well, everything else.  Dysons have been somewhat helpful, but they haven't really been attacking AI planets ever since there was a clearance of two planets between AI planets and the dyson sphere; I'm assuming it's their behavior to "check for enemy units on nearby enemy planets", if there are then "move to engage", if not "attack next enemy planet" and thus suffering attrition death.

Anyhow I am in the process of fortifying the newly made front, and I'm looking to take the flank planets finally, which have received an abundant amount of reinforcements, even after the CPA.  One planet has eight barracks with 300 ships each, so that's going to be trouble.  There's a botnet golem nearby, so we'll see how that plays out, heh.

[Spikey00]

22nd hour, 65 planets, 22 000 ships.

A lot of nothing has changed in my game, namely because I've been taking the flank by destroying all the command stations and structures before actually taking them, so as to draw the AI into running into my defensive setups for the last time.  

I've decided not to use the botnet golem because it absolutely drained my economy to an end while repairing it after its short skirmishes.  This was unacceptable, as I had a fleet of 22K ships, and my whole economy was stalling just because of one bloody ship!  I decided to place it on the neutral dyson sphere planet, for fear a random counterwave would mean disaster if I were to place it elsewhere due to that 3X wave multiplier, even with my garrisons of fighters around my territory.  

Speaking of raiding, it has been very helpful because I've been going through the AI territory systematically destroying and disrupting the supply of the AI before I deal with the remnants (and surfing the web while I wait), and at this time I don't care too much about casualties because my economy is now vast enough to counteract any of these losses, and with four space docks with my engineers assisting, they can replace most of them very rapidly.

Those counterwave guard posts are ANNOYING, the AI kept raiding my unprotected command stations for little effect than to annoy the crap out of me, and I lost a few planets everywhere because there were a few counterwave guard posts that I destroyed in a short while during my rampage.  Anyhow, that didn't really result in much damage, so I'm pushing forward in my crusade for great justice.  Silly AI taunts!


Why have I not captured the planets yet in my flank?  Again, I want to coax the AI in attacking my defended planets so I don't need to worry about all the other unprotected ones; that would be extremely unnecessary suffer on my part.  Brute force still requires strategy and tactics!

[Spikey00]

This would be the first time I've heard this, but the AI did a taunt for "player fleet lost", though of course not that it mattered to me that I suicided my space planes to clear the planets around that bloody IV planet that's depicted in the screenshot.

There's 11 barracks with roughly 300 ships contained within them, along with another 1 400 ships, so that's already more than 4 500 ships... this isn't going to be good.  I'm going to have to rely that the AI diffuse its forces across multiple of my planets rather than just unto a single one...

CPA was also announced at this moment, 8 000 ships!?  How the bloody am I going to defend against THAT!?  Great, I was hoping this would come after that I conquer said planet... maybe I should wait until that wave is over before I take it over.


Also... can we really get more storage in the game, please?  My resource graphs look like lying polygraph tests!

Oh, and I'm using the dyson spawn as a sort of defense auxiliary on one of my border planets, ohoho.

[Spikey00]

Surprisingly, here I am again--alive and well--to report that I have successfully fended that wave off.  The AI essentially did what I thought it would:  attack my well-defended fronts, though one of them did nearly collapse, but as I calculated the dysons were able to handle that while my spider turrets were able to immobilize the enemy fleets, and gravity turrets were able to stall their advance early on.  I also had a large fighter force to deal with specifically bombers and any AI ships heading toward my other planets, and so it worked out well.  In all, the AI essentially suicided thousands of their ships to no avail in penetrating any of my inner worlds.

Unfortunately, the AI was able to penetrate one world when I was attempting to assemble my final push against the IV planet; I first milked it for about 900 ships before I destroyed the command station which released the other few thousand ships.  It ran about on my planet which I wasn't too focused on defending, and I had to bring my fleet back to defend the position.  Needless to say I was able to save it, but I lost quite a lot of ships in that debacle. 

Here's a graph for the number of total ships (I have no idea where that dip in 5 000 ships occurred).

[Foogsert]

Geez, some serious dedication to go for a full conquest at 120. Seems like you're making decent progress, but still a ways to go. I don't think I've ever even broke 10k ships before, and generally not more than 1k in a fleet prior to a homeworld invasion.

[Spikey00]

Yes, it seriously is when your computer is near-explosion at the seams and you're running the game at a lower timescale than it should be.  The reason why I have such a large fleet is because mercenary fighters probably contribute to 10 000 ships of my total 20 000 which would explain that!  Thanks for the reply, Foog, and welcome to the community!

--

Well, last night I was able to capture all the planets (finally) and so that brought me up to 73 planets, with a decent spike to my economy.  I also acquired teleport raiders as a new, final ship, and that is definitely going to be helpful to my mobile defense since the AI loves to sneak in those raiders everywhere to annoy me.  Also, as a major benefit I have also acquired an experimental fabricator for speed boosters (oho, 150 speed is going to be useful throughout the remainder of the game) along with a core bomber fabricator.

I believe it's safe to say that this is now my last phase of the game, which is to seek and conquer the rest of the AI planets with great justice, but that's going to be relatively difficult because most of the remaining AI planets are III/IV, but at least I don't need to be concerned with defending my flank and attacking at the same time, which means I have more defenses and forces to spare.

That said, I am certainly not going to leave my flanks free of forces, I am to garrison it with mercenary fighters like I do with the rest of my general territories.

[Spikey00]

I'm actually going to mess around with that super terminally actually, and I've been fortifying the planet heavily with immobile defenses while I do stuff elsewhere, though usually it's "talk to friend" mode, heh. 


I think it's safe to say that for the moment


Let's hope my empire doesn't blow up spontaneously as soon as I activate this thing while it's spewing core ships.

[Spikey00]

Actually, I had just recalled that I should have researched for III military station during the super terminal operation, and so I had stopped that.  Ironically I need 1 000 more knowledge for said station when I have already maxed out the knowledge I can from all of my planets, so I need to capture another planet so I can max out that damage multiplier for all the turrets defending against the super terminal spawns.

Unfortunately, something had to occur during this time, and it was all my fault for doing so.  I popped a command station on one of my fronts, and that resulted in over 2K IV ships pouring over to one of my weak front, of which I cursed myself for doing so.  Spider turrets definitely helped here, as it was my intention to handle planetary defense this was because of my dyson backup that often streams through the planet.  It was a good thing I had a blackhole machine and a mass driver, or else this could have ended a bit differently (I would have certainly not raided the adjacent planet otherwise), as the AI was intent on destroying my mass driver, allowing my spider turrets to disable many of their vessels.  At this moment the dysons are finishing the job, and my mass driver still has around 35% HP.

Unfortunately it is at this moment that I discovered that I cannot use my low HP fleet ships anymore in raids, such as space planes, because anything with AOE will completely obliterate them, resulting in my jaw dropping in astonishment at my stupidity.  I shall leave that to the raids, which I say, should receive an increase in ship cap as nine ships often isn't enough.