Those scouts don't even get past the second system out from Homeworld. Triple Ion Cannons and a Fort III made short work of them on Mantis (1/2), that's going to get ugly.
At about 0:03:40 the Dual Minis come online, and fleet production re-activates. Scouts find yet another MK IV right off the port bow on Isheis(2/4), Sentry Eye, couple of Ion cannons, already loaded for bear with units... and ANOTHER MK IV next to that at Tolyo... errr, changing that to Tokyo(1/2)... That's a square of MK IV worlds with a MK III mixed in just for amusement. Yikes.
Lessee, MK III with PAralyzer V down at Xumir... and a counter, great. Another MK IV two hops out at Pirafenori(3/0), also packing an Ion Eye. C'mon, seriously? I'm literally ringed by MK III+ worlds except for two crappy locals.
First wave announces. 69 ships 3 starships to homeworld in 1:39. Fleet's still constructing... but I'm curious to see how the mini-forts hold the line alone. Scouting continues, and another MK III is found at 3 out with 3x Counter-strikes.
Well, mini-forts alone are nice, but not enough to stuff the wave... though my poor grav turret positioning didn't help... and here I realize one of my mistakes, waiting for the docks to produce 98/98/98 instead of 96/96/96. Whooops.
First targets are the MK IVs right off the entrance, and I might as well start with Afrzi that has the Fortress. Get the entire mess out of the way early. Confusion point arose here though... the mini-fortress when hi-lighted reads as 2 out of 1 in Service and Ship Cap 1. It's... very non-intuitive.
At 10:45 ish I move to start the first assault and allow Raid Is to start construction. A 93 + 3 wave announces for 1:40 out about 11:00 so I don't heavily commit the fleet in Afrzi, I just visit and clear the entryway and start working on a local FF3, and pull back at 30 secs out.
For the next 8 minutes or so I greet a single Railcluster, a single Mini-siege, and have only removed 50% of a MK III FF with my entire fleet... though we are building Fleet SS and Leech SS back at home. I need more firepower. Fire up Bomber II... and Harvester Metal III.
Scouts finally have found my first ARS in the starter cluster back at Dora. Another MK III world with a Fort II on it and a counterstrike, but at least I know where one is now. Scout Is aren't doing it anymore. I'll use them to picket and upgrade to Scout IIs.
My first run after the Fortress itself on Afrzi goes poorly. I lose over half my bombers to a MK IV shredder replication that I BARELY get back under control when the bombers get abck to the main fleet. It'd almost hit critical mass for my current firepower.
At about 33:00 I finally have the fleet fully built, those Bomber IIs really chewed up my available materials, and I'm running into power concerns. It's time to take a target, and I've been working Afrzi for a while, and have just been getting hung up on the FFs. Railclusters still list cap as 5, btw, instead of 8/4... and DAMN they're brutal to MK Is as MK IIs.
JUST as I pop Afrzi, a wave announces for 333 ships against homeworld. Dammit.
And i get 253+3 as a back to back. I do get 99 Spider bots from my leeches though...
Afrzi is now sporting a mil I with dual minis and dual FFs building over the Mil I and my energy is back off the floor. I'm not going to bother with it beyond that as it's really out of the way of just about everything... and I left a SF post alive on it. AIP is currently 31.
this wave has nearly 200 Beam Frigates in it, must have homogenized on me. The majority of 'em made a run for Boatcini to become threat, which is now at 81. Got 45 Beam Frigates for my trouble though. So far, so good. Gonna go whap that threat tho'... which isn't hanging around there. not quite sure where they got off to yet.
At 50:00 or so econ has hit 500k/500k, so I start building off Siege/Bomber/Cloaker SSs. Battling on Suolik has taken a masive toll on my fleet, so they've retreated with only maybe half the fleet left and getting hunted down by a massive group of railcannons and reclaimers, with some mini-siege mixxed in. My guess is this is the new SF group. I'm going to need some more firepower.
I'd forgotten to bring another 10 Econ Is online on the homeworld for new construction after initial builds, so I've been twiddling a little too long here. I use a bunch of K on Raid SS IIs, figuring I'm going to need them here eventually.
At 59:00 A 16... 16? ship wave announces for Afrzi. Errr, oookay.
Damn those spire railclusters are nasty. I got a chance to jump the SF conga line at one point when they responded to my assault at Geswo. They tore the fleet to pieces. Wow.
The 16 ships were Railclusters, and they trashed the mini-forts on entrance. They got 4 of them down though. So much for that... the fleet responds.
1 hour update: One MK IV world destroyed and conquered, one MK IV world hurting, SF forces are becoming a problem, and minor upgrades to units have occurred. Primary cluster almost fully scouted.
An 88 Zombard assault hits homeworld. Niiice... not. I do recover 25 of them for defensive fleet though before they take the leech ss's out. I'm stuck doing a famine econ refleet so I start doing Raid SS work with 3/2 I/II of them. You know, I'd SWEAR F3 used to turn on the debug system... Oh, only visible in galaxy view now? And it's under the P0-9 control. Interesting.
wow, I'm getting seriously stifled by the SF group. NICE. It's about time they were a power in the 'verse. Hm, what to DO about it though... beach-head maybe, force a cleanup of them constantly. That could work. Btw, the reclaimers... not so joyful.
1:20:00 Suolik (another MK IV border world) falls to the fleet. AIP 52. 1:30 we're refleeting due to a massive brawl and wave hitting homeworld while also trying to cover the initial buildup on Suolik. A 607 ship wave announces for Afrzi. I'm starting to see the beginning of the stagnation, as my econ is nearly pure famine at the moment.
There's the humans! Wahoo, saved from economic destruction. Afrzi was going to hold, barely, but the Humans coming in for cleanup saved me complete fleet wipe... though it's pretty close anyway.
So, time to really look over SF changes in detail.
Special Forces made more interesting
AI Special Forces: Now get periodic extra spawns (in addition to the usual trickle from reinforcements) if under a "special forces population cap" determined by difficulty, AIP, etc. The spawns are spread out among all special forces posts (and special forces guardians) in the galaxy, except those in non-AI territory. Each post in non-AI territory instead increases the special-forces-population-cap by about 5%. So there's a reason to kill them, in tension with the +1 AIP from killing them.
If you're curious about the math, etc, turn on Advanced Logging and check SpecialForcesLogicLog.txt in your RuntimeData directory after the game has run for a bit. There's some minor spoilers in there about what ships each AI has, but nothing you probably won't find out looking at a few AI planets anyway.
Will now rally to defend an AI planet that is under significant attack and at least mildly important (AI Homeworld, core world, or a planet with a CSG, ARS, Advanced Factory, Super Terminal, or Broken Golem on it, giving priority to HWs/core-worlds).
Now keep the special-forces flag even when they have encountered the enemy, so that rallying to a planet does not just dump all the special forces there as normal threat.
When not rallying to defend a planet, will select a staging planet about 3 hops deep into AI territory and rally there until an eligible AI planet is attacked.
To prevent a player's first attack from running into several hundred AI ships out for blood, as entertaining as it was during testing, special forces ships are no longer seeded during the initial map seeding.
Thanks to Hearteater, Faulty Logic, Martyn van Buren, Diazo, TechSY730, Lancefighter, Sunshine!, Bossman, Draco18s, Ozymandiaz, Wingflier, and chemical_art for feedback inspiring these changes.
Ah, so that CSG-E I was fussing around with on Suolik was what was triggering the SF assault team to come a-knocking. Good to know. Also I've left two SF posts alive so that's around 10% increase to the cap with them on my planets.
Knocking them out however seems pointless on other planets unles they're "behind the wall", just mine. Let's see what else is in the notes...
When a special forces alarm post is triggered it converts all special forces in the galaxy directly into threat-fleet, and then blows up the alarm post (not causing AIP, unless it was triggered because it was shot to death).
Hm, good to know.
Alright, simple enough. I need to go beach-head a CSG world for a while and clean out the damn Special Forces. Preferably OFF the beaten path. As are ARSs, Bs are Fact IVs, Cs are Fabricators and Ds are Counterstrikes... sounds like a D is my best choice for that, as long as I don't eventually take a counterstrike world.... which I will at Tusan when I put up the real whipping boys... dammit.
Map as it stands:
The two yellow arrows point at the two MK IV borderworlds I had to take out before AIP got too high. Also, decent resources. Boatcini, one of the borderworlds, will end up as the eastern whipping boy. Eventually I'll also get down and take Tusan and make a southern-facing whipping boy as well, with the two blue lines indicating the entries to my cluster.
Over at Superman, there is a single Datacenter that I found, that's it. I haven't popped it yet. Over in the cluster, on Dora, is the ARS (P9). Please note the mass of MK III/IV worlds between me and it. I still can't get scouts onto Suoverjo.
I'm debating on really fracking with the SF's head. Go through the cluster and wipe out all local SF posts. Then, invest Dora with a beachhead forcing the SF troops to constantly come through the two whipping boy gates. Should be fun if I pull it off.
Time is 1:37... and my head cold is demanding some down time. I'll come back to this later.
