<Insanity discussion>
Back to the AAR, after being floored by various health problems:
Operation Blind Side (part 1)Before the cpa hits, I have another cap of minirams to abuse. I send them to kill all the AI core guard posts (and the SF post) on the northern AI homeworld. As they destroy the third post, the 500 barracks deploys. According to the barracks text description, that wasn't supposed to happen. According to the AI: "too bad." None of those ships has tachyons, however, so I kill the other posts. Part one of Blind Side accomplished: no more Ion eye or AI home invincibility on that HW. The second half of Blind Side will have to wait until after the CPA.
Operation Last DitchSo, 12,000 enemy ships, out for blood. Most (8,000) gather into one carrier hammer at the northern HW right off the bat. The plan for this cpa is quite simple: warheads. Pop a carrier, detonate a lightning, repeat until threat is manageable.
Anyway, the initial 8,000 ship hammer gets lightning warheaded to death, and the other other 3,500 retreat into irrelevance (or what
should have been irrelevance, if the AI HWs weren't
belgian nightmares). Home command has 6 lighting IIIs, just in case.
Now, to poke that other eye out:
Operation Blind Side (part 2)Hmm, actually, this one is much trickier, due to the spire shield post, and its 200 million hit points. Grumblegrumble. Option list:
Send entire fleet, absorbing parasite losses by sheer numbers.
Launch multiple miriram waves.
Nuke it.
I will go with the boring miniram option. And once I knock out all the invincibility, it will be time to confront the nemeses.
3,500 ships to High Lab in 1:30... Gaaa. And then 2,000 free threat join. Along with 50 mkIV/core guardians. Losses: SRO, Z mod fort, 1 cryopod, most turrets, 6 lightning IIIs.
Finish killing the invincibility posts. Unfortunatly, I forgot about the SF post, and my cloakers died (somehow; I have absolutely no clue) (@$%^ AI #%@^@). The nemesis swarm made short work of the remaining ships.
And a 5,500 ship wave declares for my gutted HW. And there are still 1000 (in a carrier) ships lurking. Recalling fleet. Blind Side 2 was a qualified failure. The eye is still there. However, there are no longer any layers of invincibility on either AI home command station.
Operation Signature ExecutionThe wave is defeated. Warheads were involved. I now have more aip from warheads than other sources. Even with that, only champion shields saved home command.
Now, time to go for the win.
I group my entire fleet. This includes full caps of lightnings II/III, and a nuke. We attack the first (northern, eyeless) HW. Wait, queing epic music (imminent annihilation seems appropriate). Nuclear strike to kill nemesis shields and put the fort III out of supply. A lightning warhead II takes care of the non-frigate part of the strategic reserve.
Further warheads prove unnecessary, as the fleet pounds through two mkV forcefields, taking horrific casualties from the nemesis fleet.
The first station is down, but the fleet is in tatters.
At this point, a nagging suspicion dating all the way back to my 10/10 crosshatch imposes itself.
During that game, detonating warheads next to an AI home command center did nothing to the station. But that applies to all AIP increasing objects in AoE. So I send the replenished lightning warhead caps to the other AI HW. I get them next to the station.
And I actually give an attack order, instead of scrapping.
Victory!
Whew. That was the most exciting endgame since my first AAR. The next wave would probably have been it.
Go warheads.
=== Closing Thoughts===The recent tackle drone nerf really did its job. They are less than half as effective as they were before.
Neinzul spawner posts < warheads. In fact, it makes a very pretty circle of explosions.
Large groups of neinzul fireflies + warhead = region of white from their deaths.
Strategic reserves must be warheaded on high difficulty. 1000 core ships is no picnic. Or rather, the human fleet serves as the food.
And the AI HWs are
finally where they should be, meaning exquisitely painful at diff ten (been annoyed about this since 4.0, when I bought the game). In fact, it may be a little too far. As it is, I think playing without CSGs is reasonably balanced again, simply because the HWs will curb stomp anything a supertiny empire can through at them now.
The nemesis fleet are extremely painful, enough that they actually fulfill their function (given the choice, in a non-FS game, I would actually wait for some AIP before fully nebulaing). They hurt. A lot. Amusing that shield modules aren't immune to nukes, but the ships are.
The new music: awesome. For example, about 30 seconds after the 5500 wave declared, AI revolution started up. And the alarms coincided with the AI beating on my home forcefield.
Once again, this game is awesome. I particularly like the endgame, where you pull out all the
stops warheads, up the stakes, and audacity
dies spectacularly prevails.
Seems every time I do something effective, the AI gets a buff. This game, for example, would have had even more hacking pain, and no cloaking on the HWs. My signature has served me well thus far, but I don't think I can keep this up much longer.
State of empire:
