Here it is (only made it about 8 hours in):
Started the game, sent some scouts out. There's an awful lot of III planets around. Got some ships marauding in my system, so i commisioned a space plane screen and lots of turrets next to my base. Researched laser turrets (for the armoreds) and anti-dark-matter turrets + harvester exo-forcefields. Zenith trader swung by so i grabbed an Ion cannon MkII and Planetary Shield Inhibitor. Researched Graviton turrets, tachyon turrets, and started installing wormhole defenses. Wave of frigates coming; built some additional bombers to supplement the ones i had for defense. This wave included bombers and a bomber starship, i was concerned for a minute there but i destroyed it quickly. Another wave of 9 electric shuttles came, fell like fleas. I built up my forces to 30 of each and sent it in a failed wave to Shumetol for establishing a beachhead. I have a light starship now and i've rebuilt my fleet, plus i plan to send my planes along with them. A wave of microfighters are coming; however i trust my boosted planes to pwn them. Oh, it seems they can't be boosted.
The planes got toasted very quickly, only taking out half of the microfighters. I used my fleet to repel them, but i lost a mass driver i was building. Killed another wave, then sent my fleet in to establish a beachhead. This time, they managed to deal enough damage for long enough to set up some turrets and a power generator. I'm now considering defensive options for my beachhead: i also researched basic turrets MkII and spider turrets.
Some time passes....
I updated to 3.030 because of the shiny riot starship
, so here i go again. Unlocked said riot starship, and did some shuffling to get a decent amount of available power. A bomber starship keeps hitting my beachhead; i gotta fix that. Since my engineers don't seem to survive longer than a couple of minutes, i opted to research MkIIs. Scraped together a medium-small fleet with 2 light starships, then sent it thought to Shumetol. At this point, it's the major raid source, so i clean it out (i also need the energy i can produce there which keeps getting destroyed). Once i get a decent amount of energy online, then i'm installing a forcefield around the stuff on Shumetol to deal with any reinforcements that come as well as removing the warp gate. No point in taking it; low resources and nothing much interesting though there's a Zenith reserve i may crack open (if i'm crazy enough to build power generation for that many ships
). It's starting to feel like a grind, so i think i should do something interesting or take a planet somewhere soon.
Some more time passes...
Updated to 3.038 for balancing patches. Don't want to steamroll planets too easily! So i've been having a little problem with my energy; Somehow, thanks to a massive wave of resistance fighters, Shumetol was cleaned out, and only minimal forces remain there. After i take out the warpgate i'm hauling my dented and battered fleet back home to Parzi, and repairing it. I also took out a couple of raids against my world, one of which was laser gatlings. Ships seem to have an inordinate attraction to that mass driver, which i can't understand! Thankfully, i was able to build some planes to take it out before i lost the mass driver (though it's mostly unbuilt now
). I checked my intel report on Admyae and it looks good, only kink being it has several patrolling starships. Good news is that they are bomber starships though, which means that they are weak to planes *makes sinister laugh*. ARGH!!!! STUPID BOMBER WAVE JUST ABOUT KILLED MY MASS DRIVER!!!! and that was with a lot of planes attacking them... Another bomber starship made a run on my Shumetol beachhead, hopefully the last time he destroys anything of importance. As soon as i finish filling out my fleet, i head to Admyae to conquer! I sent my wave in and, of course, had to deal with the starships. The planes made short work of the bomber starship while my main fleet took care of the leech and flagship. I lost all of my frigates, about half of my bombers and fighters, and a trivial amount of space planes. Not bad for taking down 5 starships! I took out another guard post taking damage to all my space planes (pesky electric frigates!) and lost them all in another. From there, i took out the command station and pulled out my remaining forces (which had also taken a beating). After i regroup i'll clean out the remaining turrets and take that planet as my own. And, it actually DOES seem that planes can be boosted; it's just that they aren't when cloaked. Oh, and yes i just wrote 3 loooong paragraphs for 2 hours of a game. Writing is fun, isn't it?
The next day...
I fire up the game, watch a few ships head through my wormhole from Admyae, and checked on the beachhead at Shumetol. It would appear they nearly destoryed my forcefield and took out my engineer! grr... I built 125 planes, and microed them to victory over most of the remaining turrets in Admyae (it would be suicide to send planes vs a forcefielded lightning turret). I researched and built an MRS to get decent fleet repair speed, as well as a colony ship.
Something happened i don't remember, so i quit at that point. (i think it had something to do with a bug)
Some more time passes...
I deploy my MRS-backed up main fleet through to Admyae, wiping out the remaining turret cluster. I suddenly remember that i'm out of date on the patches; i save my game and update. An armored wave hits me; planes handle it nicely. With the update, the Admyae warpgate was destroyed so i had no reason to keep my fleet there (the couple of ships that reinforced to it are heading to Parzi). Crystal manufactories have been running most of this time, i always seem to get the short end of the crystal stick :/. Two engineers greatly help setup of an Admyae base while planes guard the command station. I've made the risky decision to not use a forcefield; i hope turrets and a few strategically placed tractor beams will hold! Whaddya know, the AI wants to test my new acquisition! this will be interesting... 154 bombers plus the (inevitable) bomber starship. I hope my fleet holds... Argggh! stupid bombers raided the command station! the overflow went to parzi but was handily quashed by the turrets there. It's clear i'm going to need a forcefield, or at least a decent fighter screen/missile turrets. I'll be raiding for the knowledge for said turrets; that's what i need most at this point. I considered MkII fighters but i don't need more fleet right now. The next planet on my list to capture is Anpo; it has a lot of crystal and i need that to help my economy. But for now, i research and rebuild my fleet. Oh, and by the way i've rebuilt Admyae. A firgate wave is incoming (37 of em), i'm confident my bombers can hold out and i've got fighters guarding for the inevitable bomber portion of the wave (one of the AIs is a mad bomber after all). Not much to do without metal (i ran out building the research facilities) so i sped it up for a little while. As soon as my wave o meter detected incoming bombers, i researched missile turrets and rushed as many as i could. Didn't help a bit; a whopping 224 bombers slammed into my command complex and wiped out a ton of stuff. They took off for Parzi as well but thankfully some fighters i built there mopped them up quite handily. That's it; i'm building my cap of fighters! At least, as soon as i get some more crystal. I'm starting to feel like a broken record,
i gotta fix this, but how? GAAAATE RAAAAID!
but seriously, i'll build some planes and stop them from waving admyae. Parzi can handle it; Admyae can't. Built the planes and raided the gate on Anpo, now i don't have to deal with waves from there. Also took out a bomber starship! also, Hooray my mass driver got built! now what else can i build... A wave of cruisers attacked me; but you know that as with any mad bomber wave it included bombers. I lost a lot of frigates but my fighters handled the bombers nicely (not to mention all the defenses i have!). i got a chance to see a strategic view of the Orbital Mass driver in action; very impressive (*watches it fire* *watches bomber starship go poof*)!
To prevent that line from becoming tooooo long, i hereby split it here (same session).
I immediately got another incoming wave, this time of cloaked ships. I built as many ships as i could till the wave came, looks like it was raptors (they were crushed handily).At some point soon, i want a riot starship; i'll be saving up for it after i finish fleet rebuilding efforts. The fleet rebuilding is coming along nicely, but i checked on my beachhead and it seems that they had a couple starships harassing me; they ended up getting taken care of. A couple waves attacked me (fighter/frigate wave and bomber wave) but i dealt with them easily. It was getting boring waiting for my Riot ship, so i sped it up and did some busy work while i waited for it. It finished, and i selected my loadout: a forcefield module, a shotgun module, and 4 machine gun modules. Having added my riot unit to the pile of ships i had (and building a few more fleetships), i deployed them to Anpo. The raid was fairly uneventful; not a ship is in the system and i even took out the train station there. AI progress is 108 at this point, but i'm going to gate/datacenter raid Unmich, shouldn't be hard. I'll need the Anpo energy production first, and i'm knowledge raiding it. There's absolutely no way i can get this done in a reasonable amount of time without speeding the game up; so +1 it is for me. Built some defenses at Anpo, and filled out my harvester exo-shield complement. A couple waves came to Parzi. they seem to be fascinated with my orbital mass driver; no clue why... One wave of bombers, and some raptors. They didn't do (much) any damage, so life goes on. Slowed down to do some gate raiding on Unmich, dropped main fleet in.
THAT raid failed spectacularly, gonna need to pump up my fleet. I'll start with hitting them with as many planes as i can in a suicide run to the gate, then deal with the data center later. Built the planes and used a tachyon drone to take out the hidden cloak sensor so i could sneak it but it turns out it was unnecessary. Somehow, a large marauder wave just cleaned the place out! yay! I accidentally left my factory on so i had a bunch of planes that i used to mop up the couple of remaining stations in Anpo (which i will now knowledge raid). I decided i wanted to do some scouting, so i researched MkII and III drones and built my cap of all scouts. But before that, i had to mop up a rather large fleet that attacked Parzi (didn't do any serious damage). Since i only really need to expect ships (to Parzi) from Shumetol and Doasno, i can shift defenses around to be more secure. A 495 ship CPA is attacking, not too big a deal (they seem to be mainly coming through two channels, which i can deal with).
Splitting again (same session)
Oddly enough, most of this is in low gear. Also, for once, my crystal is fine and i'm having metal problems! Unfortunately i did NOT expect Shumetol to get some ships, so i have to deal with less energy for that. I'm going to fix this after the dust settles and build a *real* beachhead there (maybe with a Riot ship). I flew my fleet home for more fleet building; it's been enough time i spent in the back alleyway of the map. I used my fleet as suppression while i rebuilt my beachhead; i really needed that energy. I scouted some more and found a broken cursed golem (:p) and a MicroParasite Fab. And of course, a LOT of III worlds. Thankfully, i found a string of I/II worlds which i can raid for much-needed knowledge, but it looks like i'll have to capture several of them. Planes are your friend for gate-raiding!
I've selected my victims--er, planets to take, they shall be Ticurdre and Ipret. A few more waves attacked me; they were nothing more than a minor nuisance. It looks like someone turned on progress bombs aka Rebel Colonies *glares at Black*, oh well at least it is an attainable planet. I guess i'm taking Sauo instead of Ipret. I used my fleet to punch through to Ticurdre and take it for my own, and now i'm colonizing it. Ooooo-k, that didn't go so well. They snuck a wave at me and crushed all the structures and engineers on the planet, looks like i'll be rebuilding stuff. Moreover, i got hit by a massive wave that was heading to Ticurdre, and lost most of my fleet. Aaaand i quit now. Hard to believe that was only 3.5 or so hours of gameplay huh?
A lot of time passes....
Ok, i patched to 3.053 for this. The power went out twice when attempting to play before (i gave up after the second time), so i have some knowledge of various things. First off, i did some maintenance (replacing engineers, moving units to safety, etc.) and rebuilt my fleet. I also researched transports and loaded a colony ship, mobile builder, and 3 engineers into it. I deployed my fleet to Sauo, and while they were en route a wave of microfighters were announced (i plan to build fighters and planes to combat it). A fortress was on Sauo so i dispatched my bombers to attack it (*cackles merrily*). The rest of the conquering was uneventful, and i deployed my colony transport to it. I have successfully captured the settlement, as well as completed my homeworld's Ion Cannon
I enabled my Radar Jammer II for construction, and used my rebuilding fleet to prevent marauding bombers from doing too much damage to me. That is, after they took out the fabricators on the planet
. My plan from here is to build defenses at Sauo, gate and knowledge raid the surrounding systems, and take Ticurdre. Also, there was a Train station at Sauo i destroyed (pesky little things...). That crystal and metal income from the colony sure is helpful! The technique i'm using for gate-raiding is this: load bombers into transport, deploy to world, micro to gate, take it out, get out quick. Works remarkably well on not-heavily-defended worlds. Unfortunately, i'll be leaving one fo the worlds due to some tiny little defenses called Mass Drivers, III and Core shields, an Ion cannon, and the fact that it's an IV world
My best hope is to armor that wormhole, and hope they don't wave me too much for it. I've located a data center, but it's deep in enemy territory. I'm going to try a risky tactic: data-raiding it! Bah, that didn't work (it was near an SF guard post which means it was picking my bombers off very quickly). I'll need many more transports if i expect to pull that off... I reinforced Sauo with a lot of turrets (including Lightning ones), then started knowledge raiding (with 3 labs i procured from the other end of my empire). A wave attacked but my combined fleet and defenses held it off. Unfortunately buzz bombs sliced out a good chunk of my cruiser fleet (50 of them).
Anyway, i set up a beachhead at Uznoao, and knowledge raided Ipret. I then built a colony ship and colonized Ticurdre, being careful to not lose it this time. Well ok, or not. Grr. I guess i'll be rebuilding that stuff again. Ok, rebuilt successfully (destroyed an SF guard post that was getting ship patrols :p) Though, due to FF shuffling, i did lose my power generation at Shumetol (which basically removes my need to hold a beachhead there, since i'm not going to rebuild them). Did i mention Resistance frigates are my favorite unit? they have a 269:0 KTL! I'm quitting for now but will be back later. The game stopped another couple hours in.
The next day...
Ok, first thing i'm doing is some strategizing. I'm sittin' pretty with good defenses, 10k knowledge, 2-300k of each resource, and over 50k energy. Time to do some building! Also, i want another special ship so i've decided to go after Roma (the tomato planet
), which has an advanced research station. My new riot rolled off the line (i lost the old one sometime back there), and i outfitted it. I also unsuccessfully knowledge raided Doasno, and defeated a wave coming to Sauo. I'm routing my fleet back to Shumetol so i can clean up the 500-odd units that accumulated there *sigh*. shoot, i lost some energy at a beachhead. I think i'll be researching MkII FFs so i can protect more stuff that needs it. I rebuilt the Shumetol beachhead (and will probably have to do the same for the stuff on Uznoao, which i lost). To give you an idea of the defensive security of my empire, i totally trust that they can fend off a 1k CPA (which they did).
That's it! What do you think, should i continue with this game or go with the next GoTM?
