I'm not sure if this is particularly interesting, I started a game on Friday and thought it would be interesting if I wrote an after action report. What I ended up doing is on a second computer wrote down the majority of my actions and took a whole bunch of screenshots. I was going to compile the after action report in a more readable format, but I thought the play by play of the game might be interesting too.
The match was intended to be difficult. It's a Grid style galaxy, with no wave warnings, cross planet waves, and hide unexplored worlds. The AI types were both set to aggressive archetypes, the Mad Bomber and Sledge Hammer, difficulty 7. The Sledge Hammer AI was set to Avenger plot. Because all of these settings together tend to spell an absurdly difficult game, I added a -10% handicap to the AIs.
I took a huge number of screenshots, but haven't had a chance to mess around with them. I'll update the post later. Edit: Added some screenshots.
# Planets: 80 planets
Map Style: Grid
Map Seed: 306649625_
Expansion: The Zenith Remnant
Ships: Complex, all ship types enabled.
Combat Style: Fast & Dangerous
Visibility: Full Fog of War
Cheats: Off
Unexplored: Hide Unexplored Planets
Minor Factions: All Enabled
AI Modifiers: No Wave Warnings, Cross Planet Waves
Auto AI Progress: 2 every 15 minutes
AI Plots: Avenger on AI 2
AI 1: Difficulty 7 Mad Bomber, -10% handicap
AI 2: Difficulty 7 Sledge Hammer, -10% handicap
Starting System: Zenith Mirror, 2x adjacent
0:00
Home is metal rich, so mirror start might not have been the best. Unlock fighters, start building a crapload of them.
Starting scouting, unlock fighter 2, tractor 2, laser 1 and 2, engineer 2
All systems are looking really bad. Adjacent systems are 0/0 and 0/1. I found a zenith power on a Mk 3 world, as well as a co processor and research. Research is on a Mk 4 world though, which is pretty rough.
I got bugged out, couldn't search one system, but managed to come around to scout from the other side. This system, Neicen, seems really nice, although its adjacent to a Mk IV world.
About 10 minutes in. I've hit 400 ships, and used all the energy I have available. I have some tractors on my two portals, so I think I'm safe enough to go out.
First system I attack is Tiouvdor. It's a 0/1, but it has a starship fabricator, which is nice. While I'm building a colony ship, I set up some control nodes. Auto FDR engineers and military, auto build engineer 1 and remains rebuilder.
Trader is in my system, looking to the future, I start a planetary shield booster, and put it on pause.
A wave attack of fighters appears, it destroys Tiouvdor station.
AI seems to constantly be attacking through the Rewdely portal, so I start to camp it.
I send 250 ships to Centi, a 0/0 but adjascent to my home system. A flagship and raid starship wreck me though because apparantly I have no fighters with me.
I send the fleet from Tiovdor to Centi, and clear it out, losing only 30/250 ships. Not bad.
I notice I'm at 300 threat, oh oh! I sent my fleet back to Tiovdor, the most likely location for an attack. Apparently my liberal placement of turrets has delayed the construction of most of my defenses due to lack of resources. The wave consists of mostly frigates and cutlass. Luckily the cutlasses are bugged and just sit on the portal without fighting. After firing on them they decide they actually want to fight, but it's too late, for a melee ship cutlass cannot keep up even with a frigate. So pathetic.
30 minutes
I have two systems, my home system of Chamond, and Tiouvdor. Centi is cleared but I don't have a colony ship there. AI progress is 54. I have horrible resources at this point, but hopefully my next moves can resolve this problem.
I unlock scout 2, because I have serious scouting problems. I also build a bunch of metal to crystal converters to address my 120k mass and 0 crystal problem.
I send some mark 1 scouts out to keep an eye in case threat jumps up again.
Midis is a weakly defended 3/1 resource system. I send about 200 ships out to rough the place up. I destroy the command, the ships rush to Tiouvdor into 200 more waiting ships. Good stuff. Desperate for resources, I destroy a distro node in Midis.
Because of metal surplus, I decide to unlock bomber II.
Another zenith power adjacent to the first zenith power, what the heck! That's all kinds of crazy. It's a hugely defended Mk IV system though with 600 ships. Won't be getting there for a while.
I realized midis has a special forces hidden beneath a Mk II shield. That's going to suck, I hold off for a minute on attacking Midis.
I found the Dyson sphere... going to be really hard to get to though.
A big wave of 150 bombers appears in midis Tiouvdor with no warning. Gotta watch out for that! Another 150 threat pops up, looks like its 120 fighters and some special forces guys. They go to Centi and destroy the station there. Not like centi is very useful, so I'm not too concerned of its loss.
I build a disable auto manufactory management. The crystal converters need to be on all the time, not just when building ships.
1 hour. I have control of 3 systems. Resources are a big issue, but I have midis being colonized soon, which is 3/1. I have to kind of make a plan of attack, on where I want to go, who I want to piss off, and what ultimately I need to take control of. I want to take the research station on Deburnudon, a Mk IV system, but it's really scary, so I prefer to make a move on securing more resources. I have my eye on Sovil for the gravity drill and Neicen, a 4/3 world.
150 bombers again in Tiouvdor, blow up the command station. It's beginning to become predictable, I need to do more to stop it.
216 threat... infiltrators going to Midis. Caught it in time to send ships and save the command. I have so much engine damage on my fleet though it isn't funny.
My love of fighters (and his love of bombers) has inspired me to unlock fighter Mk 3.
1h 30m into the game. I control 5 systems. Resources aren't good but that'll change soon. Exploring a lot of systems, which is good on this game mode.
Control over Neicen was almost certain till he reinforced 200 ships to two guard posts. Pretty lame he can do that! But none the less, I have control.
By now its apparent he's using spiders. Ugg, not happy.
280 threat, takes a bit before I can find out where its going to, since none of my scouts can spot the attacking force. They're heading to Midis, all infiltrators. Yippie. Threat jumps to 446. Oh oh. But it turns out they're all going through the gravity drill planet, that makes it a little easier to cope with, 250 fighters and 169 frigates. They'll arrive at different times to make it even easier.
They take huge casualties, but destroy the Hatchver command station, and then make a run for Tiouvdor. They destroy Tiouvdor, but thats where it ends.
Neicen is colonized, resource output skyrockets. I want the Gravity Drill though... even though there are 200 Mk IV ships and a ion cannon.
Crystal situation evened out... so I unlocked missile frigate II.
I attack with 450 ships to Sovil. Ion cannon is hard to stop with a gravity drill. I take out the ion cannon next to the gravity drill, but my ships aren't doing so hot. 250 left. He's down to 90 though, so I take out the command. Just before that happens, like 100 more reinforcements. To make it worse, they ignore the effects of the gravity drill for some reason for the first few seconds. I bring more ships to block them from my homeworld, and fight on Sovil. The battle is slow because of the drill, but I take out all the ships.
The drill is important because it means I can use it as a roadblock against attack from that corner.
Neicen got destroyed by a random wave of 80 bombers. Oops.
I discovered a core world, this is interesting. I wonder which AI it is. I can't destroy the sledge hammer at this point because he's set up with the AI plot.
So I decided to take out Rewdely. It's a hub world that links to a lot of places, but it buffers my systems really well so I decided to take it out. It has two distribution nodes... both of them trojan. Lame
Trader is back to my home system. My planetary shield booster is almost done now. I decide to start a zenith power.
Holy crap 800 threat, I don't even have that many ships. They destroy an undefended Neicen and then enter Sovil. The gravity drill will slow them down but it will also keep me from getting reinforcements. I stop 400 ships in Sovil, although I lost my station there. The rest are heading to Midis it seems. I might have enough to stop it.
Broke through the Mk III world with a fleet of 500 ships and freed the dyson. Hopefully it will be doing some work behind the scenes to help me out from this point on.
400 bombers in at Midis... was able to hold them off with a quick response of 500 ships. Helps that I built a force field there.
The fleet that liberated the dyson sphere is rampaging through systems discovering new places. It's irrelevant right now that they can't act as scouts, I just need to go through a warp for it to show on the system map.
Unlocking bomber Mk III. Huge fleet is growing at home, looks like I can probably make a move on the research station.
Found a research station in a system called Covold. It's a long way away though and it has a special forces alarm post. Not a friendly place.
I'm attacking Deburnudon. The ion cannon is under a Mk III shield WITH the special forces post. Ouch. It takes 600 ships to break it, and when I do, I decide I'd rather have the Ion Cannon alive for when I capture the planet.
I found a connection between the top and bottom of the map along the left side. That makes the end game potentially easier for me.
It's now 3 hours in, doing pretty good. Planetary shield booster in the homeworld is complete. I unlock Flagship.
A comple attacks on Deburnudon failed, but I'm making progress, 200 ships remaining. Almost moving to the point where I am willing to break the orbital. Orbital dies, and I hold off the 100 ships released.
450 threat, coming into Rewdely. Looks half bombers, half cutlas. No major losses.
Captured the adv research... I unlock... spider. Interesting, I've never really used them before. Engine damage is cool but perhaps not hugely useful when your goal is just to kill. We'll have to see!
I got a broken botnet golem, but I'm just going to use it as a big target for the AI to kill, there's little reason to consider repairing it.
So now I'm not sure what I want to do. I think I want the pair of zenith power... with those two, if I can hold them, I will have no need to spend resources on energy. They're also decent resource planets to boot.
I plow through the MK III world Witolio. It's got a zenith power, but its on a warp facing a hostile system. I'll decide what to do about that after I take the second system. It's a IV system with 450 ships though, it won't be easy. First hit of 600 ships gets the hostiles down to about 220. That's almost safe breaking. I haven't had any attacks in a bit, so I don't want to go too overboard.
In order to protect the zeniths, I unlock force field II. It probably won't be enough, I might want to go bigger, but for now it'll do.
Haszar falls. It took heavy losses but it also nets me not just a zenith but an Ion II.
600 Threat. 200 Chameleons to Sovil, where the drill is, and 400 bombers to Deburnudon. Scary as all hell. AI progress is 275 now, so all attacks are Mk II. Sovil survives, but loses the force field I placed there. On Deburnudon, lucky for me the bombers are all going after the golem. Just as planned. If it didn't I could have been in serious trouble.
The dyson is wrecking everything in proximity of it, which will help me in the long run.
4 hours in, suddenly 1372 threat. This is the big one. I'm not sure what to do... I don't want to lose the zenith, but it's an attack that I could easily lose to.
100 ships appear in Midis, easily dispatched. 300 appear in Deburnudon, outnumbering me 3 to 1. With the Ion cannon I should be ok. But I need to find out where the last 1000 ships are going. Another 100 appear in Deburnudon. I send another 200 ships to help, hopefully they'll arrive in time. Now there's 400 ships in the system. The ion cannon is taking damage. There's some dyson gatlings here that will help though.
100 ships appear in Rewdely, but that's my rally point so I think I'm safe. 150 appear in Haszar, where my zenith power is. Even though I only have 60 ships there, the zenith is under a mk II force field and there's an ion II, it should be able to handle that much.
200 more now in Sovil. The turrets and grav drill are rocking the infiltrators, they're not meant to be slow targets. More ships appear in Rewdely, and are quickly taken care of.
Threat is back down to 85. Thank goodness.
Core world spotted, bottom left. I'm not surprised, its the farthest point away from me.
I unlock zenith mirror II, I need more ship types. Also, I unlock scout III. I need to start using scouts on worlds so I can see where attacks will be coming from.
I don't want AI progress to get too high, so planning on doing some data center raids, and doing some knowledge raiding while I'm at it. I start with Verilmik to the south.
433 threat. Thanks to scouts I have placed, I can see 160 frigates and 200 bombers in Puhas. Shouldn't be a big issue knowing where its coming from. Holy crap 200 resistance fighters. That is probably more than I need.
Mining golem announcement in Haszar, great. To make it worse my FDR guys are chasing after it. After building an FDR 80k limit control node its good. I'll worry about the golem when he's close enough to do something about.
My data raiding is encountering an issue, which is a raid engine. Forgot it was there! I do find it kind of ironic that the raid engine is in a system named Raid. It's a quick fix to get rid of it though.
I finally have sight of everything, and one Mk III scount is sitting on the last AI homeworld. A bit of busywork shows the location now of all adv research, factories, and coprocessors. My goal first I think is to take out as many co processors and data centers through raids as possible, then I'll try to secure an advanced factory and maybe some of the better fabs while collecting research and the advanced researches, then hit the two AI worlds.
Step one is taking out those coprocessors. They're all fairly accessible except for one on an AI core world far away from home space. A big enough fleet though I think can make it.
200 Zenith chameleons attack Sovil, destroying the gravity drill. Well damn
Rampaging through AI worlds with a fleet of 600 ships, destroying 5 data centers. I progress is down to 198 now. Sweet.
I have a fleet of 800 ships to take on the Mining golem. It's still 45 minutes out, but I'd rather take it out early. The golem goes down, only 75 ships are lost in the battle.
Rebel colony appears in Pusuo. That's a ways away but not hugely out of the way for what I may be planning. Still, it means I'll have to take action earlier than intended.
In order to work my way to the colony, I take Parsev, a mark III world in the way. Capturing it costs the better part of 800 ships, but its a fair trade. Another 50 resistance ships came to help, which is nice.
Auto FDR mobile military and Devourer golems are fully incompatible. They really need to fix the whole your ships rushing the golem issue.
While its off the beaten path, I take Linurn. It's a 4/4 resource system with a core bomber fabricator. A tasty target.
The zenith I started at the start of the game in my base finished. Yay. That's two zeniths... I disable all my normal power reactors, and enjoy not spending resources on energy.
Attempting to do some knowledge raiding, I enter Veraja with 500 ships. It's a dead end, so it wouldn't be much to take research from there. Well, I thought anyways. Permamines on the portal instantly killed the entire fleet. Oops.
Turns out Vilk, another system I was hoping to attack, is also protected by permamines. Just great. Luckily I have transports unlocked. I haven't used transports since they were buffed, but oh man are they strong now. I take Vilk easily, it only has 5-10 ships defending due to dyson interference.
In fact, like more than half of the AI's systems are wrecked by the dyson. It kind of makes things easy...
45 minutes left, I have a fleet in Pusuo to liberate the rebel colony.
7 hours in, 320 AI progress. I have max resources and at ship cap. To resolve this... issue, I'm going to focus on capturing the remaining advanced research stations.
I capture an advanced research on Ipkinori. I unlocked Sniper.
500 ships attack, wreaking havoc on my newly captured systems.
Captured another adv research. Parasite, sweet.
8:17 - 2125 threat. Thaaaats bad. Luckily I'm pretty heavily defended, with about 200-400 ships at every major access point into my systems. Most everything holds, and nothing important is lost. It is scary though, being threatened by that many ships with no warning. I unlock force field III to prepare better in case of further attacks.
Finally, I capture Oorxuna, which is home of a Mk IV factory. I put up a mkIII force field and start building. Even with two zenith powers my energy is running low, so I make a detour to take a 3rd zenith power. I take Loenansi, and set up a defensive perimeter around the zenith power. It also has an experimental engineer fab, which I haven't used before.
9:08, a raid engine somehow causes 1400 threat. Or maybe it was a lot of attacks at the same time. Not sure how or what happened, but they are not happy. They're also coming right at my IV factory. Luckily I got enough shops there in time to prevent the loss of the factory.
The AI has a munitions booster right where I need to be going, right next to the raid engine. I have 800 ships gathered from the attack on my factory, I sent them out to attack. I take out the munitions booster, but 1400 ships are sent from the raid engine again. Wtf. But! The ships all rush the devourer in Vegen. That's definitely lucky for me, because otherwise I might have lost the factory.
The raid engine itself is on a world with only 8 ships, but blocked from access by defended Mk III ships. Those raid engine waves are going to kill me if I let it happen again, so I load up 600 ships into three transports and blitz past to the raid engine and destroy it. Mission accomplished.
I take the ships that I used to destroy the raid engine and move them to Nucalu, a core world. I destroy a data center on the world as well as a co processor. The move however generates a large amount of AI threat.
