Heroic Corp (5.086+)

[Arkillion]

So this will be my first AAR, hopefully it will makes me finish my games

My setup is: -60 planets lattice map  224342767
- 7.6 Heroic/8 Support corps
- All ships but no core shields, I got Z bombard
- 5 Aip/60 mins
- Champion enlabled
- Schizo
- Human Marauder/Resistance/Rebellion, Dyson Sphere, Dark Spire and both Hybrids at 6, Advanced Hybrids at 1, Botnet(Hard) at 5 and my friend the Zenith trader
- All expansions and normal ship caps



This is my first lattice map so we'll all see how it goes.

Hour 1:Z bombard are costy so here goes Crystal 3 and Metal 2 to not umbalance everything.
I scout the path to wormholes with my scouts, learned from previous games that champion scouting may lead to some surprise when you hop on a core world  . Lattice maps are fun, lot of path to scout so I'll try to reach the maximum scouting with mark 1 while building some defence on my homeworld, you never know when an Ai begin to throw core ships at you.. ok ok I just like to turtle like a mofo in other strategy game and le tmy oppenents die from attrition but in Ai wars, I'm the one who dies  .

Hmmm 80 waves incoming at 13:30, can't be that rough right ? Wrong, shiny zenith shadow frigate (with mk2 modules already)  + speed boosters = scary wave rushing at your command station. I  never tought the second forcefield I build at the start of the game could save my life... These corrupted champions hit hard so here goes Z bombard 2 for extra chomp chomp.

My mark1 scourting report 2 MIv planets that I should clear before these pesky hybrids become too strong, 2 AdvResearch and 1 Factory which I may plan to use for more Z Bombard. It's ~25 and I send my champion in the first nebula at Ijitol, well it takes a couple of runs to clear the path but he finally makes it ! Crap, it's the super long shattered pillar 3 way..

During this time the threat I made with my champion arrives at my homeworld, shiny armor booster, maybe some leech startship could be usefull.
Another wave is comming fro 32:30, I should be ready this time. Oh, hybrids also spawned.. My first AAR could end quickly... See yourselves



The wave comes in and it's a puny Human shadow ship, my Z Bombard say hi. Now it's time to finish this nebula so  I can focus on clearing these annoying hybrids. 37:33 the minor minor starbases are down, some awesome music play during the attack of the main starbases. My champion dies and on the way back I finally see the hybrids.... they have some lovely spire corvette as escort.... ouch

43:00, Shattered Pillar Zenith Victorious ! I get Zenith ship and fortress and my champion is level 8 ! I decide to build the fortress on my homeworld, his main gun should eat my shadow counterparts with no problem. Now time to eat some Hybrids ! Orios cleared, time to strike them on Ipmar. Ouch, with the targeting messed up and my mark 1 fleet I barely kill the escorts before retreating, these bastard hurt a lot, oh well rinse and repeat and they should be gone for sometime at least.

Hour 2: Well.. another hybrids wave come in before I could clear the first, need to speed up things a little bit before getting swarmed .
State of the Empire: See screenshot one, no progress made xD
Another wave comming at 61:30, my static defences should repel them fairly easily while I continue the Hybrid Purge. The wave is defeated and I even gain two shiny speed boosters! 2/3 planets purged only Ipmar last with 26 hybrids and 350 ships. Surprise surprise it seems the Heroic Ai spawn some champions and release them as threat, there's a zenith shadow frigate next to my wormhole at Orios, wish they were not immune to reclamation =(

I challenged the enemy champion in duel and I can say the Ai have way better stuff than us, even with my two forcefield( he had one) I had to put two shadow field to win, yeah I'm a cheater. The Hybrid Purge isn't going well, they are way too strong for my little army, I need some bigger stuff. During my failed attack on Ipmar some heroic humand resistance showed up but I couldnt help them... they stood no chance... so much blood on my hands..

1:24:00 already and only been fighting Hybrids, not good. I'll send my champion do another nebula and put my overflow on the zenith generator my beloved friend trade just brought me, I also put a Armor inhibitor in bank, for later. Chapion reached the nebula, it's the malfunctionning dysons hopefully it won't take 45 mins to finish it.

1:34:15 16 sneaky Hybrids attack my Homeworld while my champion is away, a little over 300 enemy ships. I URGENTLY build another forcefield as a neinzul shadow frigate pop up next to my Command Station. After a good 2 mins of fighting the results are:



That..was..too close...
I completed the dyson nebula and I am rewarded with 18 Dyson, second champion hull, spire fortress, impulse reaction module and the photon lance module! Now time to rebuild and scouting mark2, hopefully I'll find the dyson soon, or a botnet. Almost 2 hours, my mark2 scouting is done and RNG is too good.. Here's a screeny.



Why u hate me dyson, y ! At least I found it.. BTW P9 are AdvResearch, the AdvFactory I Intend to take and fabricators I may want.
Edit: Well it seems my scouting wasnt done, I was able to sneak up and fid three core worlds. P7 I'm pretty sure Sucoen is an Ai Homeworld now.

More on next post!

This is my first AAR and serious posting on a forum some I'm kinda newb, if you have any suggestions/remarks feel free to share them !
English is not my main langage (it's french) so if there's something you cannot read just tell me and I'll try to change it.

[Diazo]

Ouchies.

The Heroic AI's Shadow Frigates paired with the Support Corps are going to ruin your day.

The Heroic alone is ruining my day in my current game. (Other AI is a Fortress Baron).

How many Shadow Frigates are you getting per wave? (The low AIP portion of my game was on previous patches when the AI only got one per wave regardless of AIP.)

D.

[Arkillion]

I get 1 per wave at 10 AiP, hopefully the Ai will send more over time

[Diazo]

I get 1 per wave at 10 AiP, hopefully the Ai will send more over time

It will.

I'm up to 4 per wave at AIP 126, but I'm on Diff 9.

I think on diff 7 you'll be seeing two Shadow Frigates with the wave at about AIP 40 or 50, but that is a rough guess.

D.

[Arkillion]

Hmmm my Z Bombard don't seem to respect the prefered target ( Hybrids obvisouly), not sure if it's a bug  but after I order them to attack an hybrid they kill escorts instead of the hybrids themselves... kinda annoying on a 30 sec reload =/. If anyone know a way please tell me it would greatly help me ^^, I'll mantis it tonight otherwise.

[Diazo]

Check the immunities on the Hybrid's force field module.

I'm pretty sure it is immune to Antimatter Bombs, which is what I think the Bombards fire, therefore while the forcefield module is alive, the hybrid is immune to the bombards attacks so they attack something else instead of wasting the shot on the forcefield.

Units can not fire on a target they will do 0 damage to.

It is why I found Bombards great until late game where they became almost useless. Almost everything on the AI HW is Antimatter bomb immune.

(I had bombards 4 games ago so my experience is relatively recent.)

Until the homeworld assaults though I was loving my bombards, it is just the Mk V stuff that they really suffer against.

D.

[Arkillion]

Actually the shield modules are not :O, I hope it would be so I could damn myself for not checking that but sadly it seems like a bug =/
I hope it's not hard to fix or my game will be a lot harder than I already made it lol

[Diazo]

Really?

Odd, I thought all Force Fields in the game were Antimatter bomb immune.

When you select the bombards and mouse over the hybrids, what is the expected damage?

If there is a number greater then 0, the bombards should fire and damage them, if it is 0 then there is something with Antimatter bomb immunity that is preventing the bombards from targeting the hybrids.

(Not on my gaming computer so I can't actually check myself.)

D.

edit: Looking at the wiki I can not see any reason the bombards would not target them, so at this point I have to say I don't know why the bombards would not shoot the hybrids.

[Arkillion]

Sorry if I wasn't enough clear, they actually all shoot at the first hybrid I order them to attack, and it dies, but after that the prefer the escort ships instead of the hybrid itself. I am micromanaging my Z bombard to attack the hybrids but it takes some time ;p

[Diazo]

Ohhh.

How big is the fight going on? Thousands of ships?

There is a limitation of the game engine where things like the 'current target' can take several processing cycles to update to account for new targets coming into range when the computer CPU is overloaded.

If the second hybrid is trailing behind the first and only enters range of your bombards a few seconds before they fire, it might be this.

If the two hybrids enter range of your bombards at the same time and 30 seconds later the bombards do not fire at the second hybrid which has been in range this whole time it is something else.

However, I do not know what that 'something else' might be.


Also, if you are micro-ing to that level, you can queue up an attack order by shift-right clicking the hybrids in the order you want the bombards targeting them. Just be aware the bombards will chase a hybrid if it has moved out of range since the attack order was issued.

D.

[Arkillion]

Only "small" skirmishes for now, the max was less than 1k on a planet and they just don't respect the prefered target , actually hybrids are the last one getting killed even with my normal fleet, I think they have secret mind controlling weapon that make them least prefered target.

[Diazo]

Okay, I'm going to have to leave my answer at "I don't know" then.

My only other thought, and it's a long shot, it mess around with the Focus-Fire options in the controls menu. They are not supposed to affect targeting priority though, just how the 'over-kill' logic gets handled, but something might be spilling over?

D.

[orzelek]

From my observations of champion + fleet against.. lots of hybrids (solo champion was getting eaten up ) targeting preference of main champion gun (modules do whatever anyway after few seconds) is not really respecting hybrid priority.

I used the zenith champion with nice big gun and after attacking hybrid by right click and killing it preference seems to be ignored. It will proceed to kill anything else nearby and not attack any other hybrids until they are only thing remaining. I did not check how fleet ships behave in regards to this.

One ship I can get reliably to murder hybrids is heavy bomber starship. It usually has no other targets in area so it targets hybrids nicely (although fire focus toggle also fails but this maybe range related).

[TechSY730]

If there is something odd going on with target priorities, that may be worth some more focused tests and a mantis post.

[Diazo]

Agreed.

Arkillion: Are you able to post a save so we can see what behavior we get with this?

D.