Surprise

[keith.lamothe]

but once I destroyed the Command Station, the Barracks positioned there sent about 300 Mk. III ships at me

They might be late to the party, but they're gonna crash it anyway.

The Threat meter at the top indicates 101 Threatening units on Eastasia, but scouting intel reveals only 34 total units on that planet. Is there something that I'm missing?

... odd.  Possibly cloaked stuff, but I believe that would show anyway.  Possibly something in a transport/carrier/bag-of-holding.

Suddenly, 310 ships on Vanguard Party? That's a bigger wave than I'm used to at this stage.

Oh, it's just an Enclave Guardian. Carry on, the Friendly Enclaves should be able to deal with it.

Aaaaand then the rest of the threatfleet decides to crash the party.

Gotta stick with what they're good at, y'know.

Update: ****, I really, really hate the devourer golem. At least some of my Merc fighters made it out this time.

Cookie's just misunderstood.

Well, at least his caloric requirement is misunderstood.

[Qatu]

 I used to always play with wave warnings disabled but since counterattck posts happened and without warnings they are really unfun on higher difficulty i haven't played with it off for so long. I miss this option

 Good luck o your game!

[Coppermantis]

@Qatu:

Yeah, I can see how that would get annoying.

@Keith:

Actually, upon further observation, I think the threat weirdness is actually just Enclave Guardians.

In any case, I decided that I probably had enough time to actually do the shard retrieval, not just the preparation, before the Exo hit. It turns out that I definitely did.

The retrieval was really easy. A few static defenses on Arrakis (Mini-forts, missile turrets and mines) combined with my fleet proved more than enough to deal with the AI forces that tried to intercept the refugee ship. Once the Surveyor picked it up, I rushed my Shield Bearers to cover it and my fleet so I ended up taking minimal losses. The refugees are thankfully much faster than the shards, so It wasn't long before I had them safely on my homeworld, constructing that little outpost of theirs.




Battling the AI on Arrakis

^^ Upon further notice, neither of those screenshots is of this battle. Whatever, they look cool.

I might as well keep the Spirecraft Shieldbearers in use for something, so I put them by the Outpost to free up some of my Force Field cap and energy.


They seem to be getting along with the Neinzul


"[some number of ships] freed in cross-planet attack"

Oh.

It occurs to me that while it makes sense for these CPAs to not be warned of in advance (I can tell that this will hurt later on), for some reason the Exogalactic attacks are still showing up in the warnings. They're a little different, so that's not entirely strange, and to be honest I'm pretty glad that at least I won't have Golems and such suddenly showing up at my doorstep without warning.

But that's not really relevant to the fact that there's a Carrier sitting outside Vanguard Party. A little military poking shows that I probably can't win against this without significant losses, but maybe getting these Imperial Spire Frigates constructed will tilt the odds in my favor.

I hear some faint explosions in the background

"Devourer Golem on Vanguard Party"

>_>

[keith.lamothe]

"Devourer Golem on Vanguard Party"

When you keep restocking the cookie jar, how can he resist?

[Coppermantis]

I spent the time waiting for the exo to hit by building a fleet of Mercenary ships to augment my main fleet. In the end though, it was barely enough. Barely.

Once the Strike Force hit, Everything went to absolute Hell. A raid starship immediately sniped my command center on Vanguard Party, causing an energy brownout and dropping the forcefields on Atmospheric Spire, leaving it vulnerable to swift vengeance from the AI. My fleet moved to intercept the AI on VP, but was overwhelmed by 30-some Flagships and their fleets, with an Artillery Golem and Mk. IV bomber starships handling any static defense I had. Even my Spire Frigates did nothing against the relentless ounslaught.

It was the fleet of Neinzul Enclaves that saved me, I think. My many, many missile turrets on my homeworld managed to take care of the fleetships, but the fleet of Flagships were closing in on my Home Command Station, completely ignoring my Spirecraft Shield Bearers (How are these supposed to work? I had everything underneath them, but the AI just moved through and fired at things under them like they weren't even there). Fortunately, my Neinzul buddies and their little drones destroyed the last of the AI menace before I completely died. But just barely.


Human Rebel Fighters weren't any help, though. I suppose whoever's in charge over there considered us to be a lost cause. Whatever, I made it out alive, so the joke's on him.






I think that this was just a regular wave that hit at a bad time, since it was suddenly all fighters

I mean, It's not like I'm seeing Hunter/Killers or anything, but that was still nasty.


Some help you guys were.

[keith.lamothe]

but the fleet of Flagships were closing in on my Home Command Station, completely ignoring my Spirecraft Shield Bearers (How are these supposed to work? I had everything underneath them, but the AI just moved through and fired at things under them like they weren't even there)

The "green" shields (as opposed to "purple" shields) don't block movement, but they should _definitely_ be blocking shots from non-ff-immune stuff.  And flagships are definitely not FF immune.  So if flagships were directly shooting (and damaging) stuff under spirecract shield bearers, that would be a big bug. Please tell me you have a save of this

Fortunately, my Neinzul buddies and their little drones destroyed the last of the AI menace before I completely died. But just barely.

Yea, it appears that during their lengthy exile the ally-enclaves learned how to play goalie.  Hard.

[Coppermantis]

but the fleet of Flagships were closing in on my Home Command Station, completely ignoring my Spirecraft Shield Bearers (How are these supposed to work? I had everything underneath them, but the AI just moved through and fired at things under them like they weren't even there)

The "green" shields (as opposed to "purple" shields) don't block movement, but they should _definitely_ be blocking shots from non-ff-immune stuff.  And flagships are definitely not FF immune.  So if flagships were directly shooting (and damaging) stuff under spirecract shield bearers, that would be a big bug. Please tell me you have a save of this

Fortunately, my Neinzul buddies and their little drones destroyed the last of the AI menace before I completely died. But just barely.

Yea, it appears that during their lengthy exile the ally-enclaves learned how to play goalie.  Hard.

I have a save from ~20 minutes earlier, so I can just wait it out and recreate the battle.


EDIT: Hmm, so it's not so much that they're passing the Shieldbearers entirely, but rather that the damage is being applied to the regular FFs underneath the SBs before the SBs themselves, which makes it look like they're being ignored until it actually gets to the point where the good stuff is vulnerable. My original experience didn't get this far, which is why It seemed to be the case. It's a little odd that the bigger, more powerful shields end up getting hit last, regardless of whether the SB itself is underneath the FF or not. But it does work, so no real problem there.

[Coppermantis]

Resuming the neverending struggle against the AI overlords.

Dunwall is now firmly under my control and has been fortified to a great extent. Fortresses of both regular and miniature variety, mines, all manner of turrets. With my fleet present, it is unlikely that the AI will be taking this one back anytime soon.


The line tool, which I just discovered thanks to Kahuna's guide, is very useful.

My next goal is to secure the second shard and get the resulting Spire Colony Ship. It's going to be a little tricky, though, since Dragonforge and Cenar (the two planets in my way) are stocked with some nice AI toys. Dragonforge is a pretty easy job, for a Mk. IV world, however. Once some starship raids eliminate Ion cannons, my fleet goes in and mops up the rest. The only tough part was losing an entire cap of Imperial Spire Frigates to a Mk. IV anti-starship guard post. That hurt.

Cenar proves to be more difficult. I initially attempted a full assault with my entire fleet, but quickly discovered how poor of an idea that was. A Translocator Eye executes some sort of divide and conquer strategy, immobilizing vast swathes of my fleet while Ion cannons pick off the stragglers. The losses are expensive, but survivable. Perhaps I ought to have payed more attention to the scout intel.

My plan B is to use a starship Vanguard to clear out the Guard Posts ahead of my main fleet. This works, for a little bit. One or two posts fall before I quickly realize how good Sniper guardians are against Imperial Spire Frigates. There is one survivor.

Plan B2 is to replace those Frigates with Raids. They're not so good at clearing out the guard posts themselves (the remainders of which are under the cover of a Mk. II Fortress) but they kill the Sniper and the Ion Cannon.

Clearing out the remaining posts, though, is an interesting tactical problem. Small numbers of starship raiders (of just about any type) will die to the fortress. Sure, I could win in a war of attrition here, but it's not worth it. I'm spending most of my resources on mercenaries and don't want to have to switch to rebuilding starships. The radar dampening on the guard posts prevents any form of long-range bombardment, and any substantial number of fleetships will trigger the Eye and get cut to pieces. 

Then I remember something that I often forget. Spirecraft. I can build rams and break things with them. This is a good idea.


My flock of rams


I don't think I needed to build that many. Everything worth destroying goes down with three rams remaining. Maybe I can use them to take out any big things that might come in the inteception waves.

Well, with the planets neutered, I can begin the survey operation. A CPA hits with ~500 ships, but it doesn't even make a dent. I'll need to watch out for later ones, though.


I destroy a helpless wormhole guard post in the mean time.

The retrieval goes well. For some reason, the interceptor fleets seem more intent on throwing themsleves at my defenses than actually, I don't know, intercepting. In any case, I got the colony ship pretty easily.




Nomnomnom

http://i.imgur.com/c9ZXZnR.jpg

I place the colony on Dunwall, since that's the most fortified position. An exo timer appears, which is scary considering how much damage the last one did. I'll have more Imperial Spire ships, though, so It might be easier.

I'm glad that the exos still warn you even with No Wave Warnings enabled, since the FS exos would be a pain given how often they hit if they arrived unannounced.

[Coppermantis]

As I boot up the game again, I get hit with a number of sizeable attacks on most fronts. Probably leftovers from the last Shard interceptor fleet. The younglings clear out most of them, but I send in my Spire Frigates to help out some.

The city is now under construction. It's expensive. I unlock Metal Harvesters II to help keep up. I heard tell that these were generally better than Econ Stations II, but that was because that person (I forget who) preferred to use Military or Logistics stations. I mostly use Econ except for on my worlds that the fleet can't reach as easily. So I have all my economic stuff at II.

For the defenses on the city, both the Habitation center and reactor get a forcefield. The reactor, though, has all railguns and the habitation center has all laser turret IIs. I'll have a shipyard soon enough. I don't know why I can even build a Habitation center though, since the neighbouring planet Sloths has a full AI presence including warp gate. Perhaps I didn't need to destroy everything on the other planet, Dragonforge, either, which I totally did. Oh well, I can tolerate AIP increases at 7/7. I already lost all four of my Imperial Spire frigates trying to clear out Sloths (carrier guardians are pretty tough) so I'll be glad to be able to leave it alone for now. For now. I'll later have to pass through to take the hive golem on Sloths II, so that will be a minor problem. I will likely be able to take the planet with my whole fleet, but it's a Mine Enthusiast one so clearing out the mines will be work. I can probably get a transport through with some ships and a tachyon drone and clear the mines then run.

The shipyard is up and my refugee outpost is producing more frigates. I should have a sizeable Spire fleet soon enough.

Oh, I think I get it. The first habitation center can be built with an AI presence nearby, but it can't get bigger until I clear them out. That's okay.

Meanwhile, the first FS exo hits and goes down with barely a fight. Seeing it move at raid starship speed is a little scary though until they all get held up by a forcefield as their fearless leader abandons them to their deaths. Also, I've got eight frigates and a destroyer forming some sort of Spire Elite Corps now, which should do some decent damage all on its own.




It's time to test out my new ships against Sloths to free up the Spire city. And boy, those are really effective. They just absolutely eat everything the AI throws at them and then some. A Needler Guard Post III does manage to take out two of them, scarily enough, but the whole planet crumbles before my might in the end. This is a good thing, because now I can support more Spire things.

The two non-FS waves are at about 70%. Let them come, I say. We'll see how they like a taste of Spire vengeance.


The new subspace signal is at Wepkilchar, which is conveniently right past Dragonforge and Cenar. Taking it should be a piece of cake.

Rebel colony on Etvaju will lose invisibility protection in 119:55

5 hops away from Atmospheric Spire, which is two hops from the core systems. (Mimoulette, Vanguard Party and Dunwall). This will be interesting.

[Tridus]

The city is now under construction. It's expensive. I unlock Metal Harvesters II to help keep up. I heard tell that these were generally better than Econ Stations II, but that was because that person (I forget who) preferred to use Military or Logistics stations. I mostly use Econ except for on my worlds that the fleet can't reach as easily. So I have all my economic stuff at II.

If you're taking a lot of planets, harvesters are way better just because they scale up with planet count. They're also better if you don't build a lot of econ stations, of course. (I'm one of those people, I use military or logistics nearly everywhere.)