My First Win!

[RCIX]

Yes after 8-odd months of owning this game, it's the first time i've won.

Anyway, i'll only recount the details of what i accomplished today as i don't really remember the rest.

I fired up the save, and i was watching my snipers clear out a few turret blobs when i lost my homestation. To put it shorly, after a harrowing experience in which i used my engineers to inflate and juggle 3 FFs while my Ion cannon and Superfortress cleared out ~1350 attacking ships, i rebuilt. I then took the planet that i was clearing out (i had briefly built a command station on it before which netted me MLRSes through the ARS on it), and K-raided the next planet in the line (investing the knowledge in sorely needed defensive turrets). I then proceeded to use the Autocannons (great ship by the way) to ninja raid the adjacent warp gate and take out the command station on the next ARS in the planet chain i was on. After i rebuilt my fleet some more, i punched through the two intervening planets and cleared out that planet. Sniper ships are great here because they are so cheap and mobile, i can use them as an alternative to wasting fleet plowing through the blobs manually.

I then took the planet (which got me Z Chameleons; good given i needed more bomber type ships), and knowledge raided to afford MkIIs and MkIIIs of Zenith Chameleons. i then built up my cap in Mks I-III of:
 * Fighters
 * Bombers
 * Autocannons (-2 MkIs so i could fit everything in 11 transports)
 * Z Chameleons

and used 11 transports to fly it all to the home command station. It was simple from there; rip down the forcefields and survive the fire long enough to win.

Hmm. The endgame (by which i mean starting at the time of preparing to nail the first homeworld) needs something.... I spend a good majority of my time on speed +1 (which is slightly irrelevant given i like to run most of my game this way) waiting for resources or ships to build.

Notes:
 * MLRS aren't a very good fleetship. I used them as they were a crystal-cheap equivalent to frigates, but they don't seem to have as much effectiveness and more vulnerability compared to them.
 * Z bombards are obscenely expensive. It would take like 1m crystal to build to cap, which is crazy for any fleet or bonus ship.

[x4000]

Congrats on the win!  That's some sort of a record there.

MLRS might need a rebalance, I'm not sure.  People haven't really mentioned them in a long time, and I kind of forget they are there.  The bombards are so expensive for a reason, though -- if you use them at range, they are practically invincible.  Sure, you'll lose a few to sniper fire, but if you are careful with them and keep your fleet between them and the enemy, they can be incredibly powerful.  If they are just lumped in with other fleet ships on raids, and get into range of the enemy, that's when they become ridiculously overpriced and not worth it.  But used carefully, they can be incredibly powerful.

Congrats again!

[RCIX]

I suppose that's true with the bombards. I guess they don't fit my play style then (cloud of doom steamrolling anything that thinks about getting close)

Thanks for the congrats!

I'm now deciding if i want to slog through cleaning out the entire galaxy; That way i've won already and don't have to risk my win

[Kjara]

You won't lose any to sniper fire anymore if you keep them with a scout starships now as well.

[RCIX]

You won't lose any to sniper fire anymore if you keep them with a scout starships now as well.

I've been sticking with 3.097 up till now (so i could actually transport raid the homeworlds), but i might just update for the new stuff (like MRS and starships fitting in them).