The AI 9 through 10 run

[Wanderer]

Yikes, either I don't know how to transport raid or that's just not going to fly.  ~165 III/IV bombers died before getting off two salvos due to homeworld defenses, all dumped simultaneously due to a massive fleet of transports loaded up with 10 each.

[keith.lamothe]

Yikes.  Is this static/non-chasing defense or can it be kited?  Is any of it susceptible to lightning warhead spam or is the damage on those just too low?  Do you have autobombs?

Do you have supply?  I think a mobile builder can plop down turrets anywhere on the planet, which tends to pull things towards them.  Of course, if you have any turrets on the planet it frees everything, I think.

[Wanderer]

Yikes.  Is this static/non-chasing defense or can it be kited?  Is any of it susceptible to lightning warhead spam or is the damage on those just too low?  Do you have autobombs?

In theory, kited.  In reality?  Not with that much firepower, not for long.  Also, side note: Raids are neutrons.   Missile Frigs next time.

Do you have supply?  I think a mobile builder can plop down turrets anywhere on the planet, which tends to pull things towards them.  Of course, if you have any turrets on the planet it frees everything, I think.

Of course not!   Then the Raids would be non-stop.

Update on the mess.  After the Bomber run I pulled about 150 ships off the homeworld, about 100 off Kirk as well.  We engaged the resulting EMP kaboomage in Cyborg, with mixed results.  i'd used a portion of the fleet to deal with bleedoff and the rest of the fleet came in behind them after the EMP hit.  About the time the full blown Raid caught up to them I was down to about 700 fleet ships and ran.

During the rebuild, this happened:


Okay, this was getting silly.  Built off a warhead creator and dropped a pair of Lightning I's on the entry gate to Kerensky, taking about 600 of the buggers out.  The CPA hit so I shipped a few boys up to Macross and cleared the rear gate, and the front gate poured in during this.

I'm right, Kerensky CANNOT hold.  The so far rebuilt fleet came back and helped on FRD to try to defend the joint.  When the 300+ cutlasses got under the shields and took out the Mil III the fortresses went dead, that was the end of that.  I still had plenty of fleet left but 500 or so ships made it out and sat on the entry to Twycross.  I built off a transport convoy and got a new colony ship out to Kerensky and started rebuilding there.  Meanwhile, I'm trying to get scouts back oot and aboot for where the EMP shorted them out.  A short-time wave (700 ships or so, not much) hit Twycross and the CPA+Raid leftovers crashed into Twycross.  With guardian support and the like they ALMOST crashed the 10xHFF Is sitting on the wormhole.  It held though.

Currently Earth has ~100 ships, most of them in cold storage.  With all that firepower gone if I can ever get myself rebuilt I'm going to try another transport raid with Missile Frigs this time against the 2x Raid Engines.  The outer worlds have mostly held, just Eridani (the road from Earth -> Kerensky) took a beating and Solar Moon fell when 600+ ships from the CPA poured over them.

[keith.lamothe]

Remarkably stubborn, this Earth.  But things seem to be progressing into a more tractable state. 

The bypass will be built.

There aren't any alternatives

[Wanderer]

LOL, no kiddin'.   I did finally manage to land a full flight of Missile Frigs right on top of the Raid Gate that's not under FF.  Blade Spawners dropped in with them and did some damage to the leftover defending starships.  Rest of the fleet hung back at Kerensky.

At 18:20 I'm basically staring at a 2200 ship fleet hanging in Cyborg waiting for entry codes to Kerensky.  They just won't commit.  Apparently you won't let me power down 4 fortresses to encourage entry.     Was worth a try.

I tried an EMP on them... that was useless.  Oh, sure, it shutdown a viscious volume of MK IV ships, but even then the core ships and guardians slaughtered my entire mobile fleet.  I'm going to have to try to bait them and deal with the backwash/rebuild again.  At least I'm down to one raid now.

This game is taking forever.  And it's all the 2x Raid + Eye's fault.  Grr grr.  Silly mapgen.

Side note, the Raid wasn't triggered until my transports unloaded in Earth.  Which was kind of nice right until they all spawned IN Earth and flooded what was left of the fleet trying to batter a few more guard posts down.  D'oh!  Note to self: Make sure one ship triggers the raid in Kirk if I do it again.

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, that makes sense actually: the transports aren't military, and thus don't trigger the raid engine.  Similar to how the scouts don't trigger it (now wouldn't that be fun).

On baiting that 2200 fleet... yea, that's tough when you have such a huge amount of non-wormhole-traversing firepower.  You'd literally have to scrap and speed-rebuild those forts to both bait and have the forts on hand.

Does the AI have any tachyon coverage on the Cyborg side of the Cyborg-Kerensky link?  CloakerSS+Transport+Goons => unload on far end of cyborg => kite the 2200 away from the wormhole => deploy nastiness or at least be able to fight from non-point-blank-range?

[Wanderer]

Ah, that makes sense actually: the transports aren't military, and thus don't trigger the raid engine.  Similar to how the scouts don't trigger it (now wouldn't that be fun).

<ow>

On baiting that 2200 fleet... yea, that's tough when you have such a huge amount of non-wormhole-traversing firepower.  You'd literally have to scrap and speed-rebuild those forts to both bait and have the forts on hand.

Well, dropping back into Macross did it, but now we're rebuilding again.

Does the AI have any tachyon coverage on the Cyborg side of the Cyborg-Kerensky link?  CloakerSS+Transport+Goons => unload on far end of cyborg => kite the 2200 away from the wormhole => deploy nastiness or at least be able to fight from non-point-blank-range?

For some reason or another, the AI seems to like dropping off 20-30 MK V Microfighters (IE: Tachyon) when they send things at me...  They don't have them unlocked, but like the gravity rippers, apparently they just get a few extra MK Vs.

So.... Yeeeeaaaahhhh...  Ow.

Edit: Remnants from the swarm blew out the SW colonies completely.  I'll have to rebuild there.  I also have modified the positioning in Kerensky.  Both wormholes are in the Upper Right of the planet, and I'd built the Mil III 3 grav Is away.  It's now 9 Grav Is to the SW.  They won't pop me so easily next time!

[keith.lamothe]

The AI gets just-mk-V of a few extra types, which is probably why you're seeing the tachyons.  It's a little extra special gift for humans who tick off a homeworld

[Hearteater]

From the wiki, the bottom question and answer is the latest information.  The section right before has similar information, but mentions 3 Mark V unlocks which I believe is incorrect.  I'm not sure about the extra Mark I-IV unlock for tech 7+.

What ship types and tech levels does the AI have access to?
A:
1) The triangle ships (Fighter, Bomber, Missile Frigate), Mark I-V
2) Any ship types unlocked by their AI type, Mark I-V
3) An additional ship type, Mark I-IV
4) Additional ship types unlocked based on AIP, Mark I-IV
5) Two ships types, Mark V (does not unlock Mark I-IV if that ship type isn't unlocked by points 3 or 4)

[Wanderer]

Heh, yeah, I just thought they only got one.  Ah well.

Anyway, at 19:00 rebuild was complete and I sent in a small squad with Riots and Blades to take out the final Raid Engine.

Once I deal with this, I'm going to suffer a 100 AIP increase due to a Rebel Colony being ignored for too long.  Instead of that, I try to drive a fleet of transports to Vulture (Upper right, just off LLama) and they get hung up on the gravity rippers off the wormhole.  When they pop two of the 5 transports carrying 200 ships a piece those ships make a stand while the Rebel Ships and the rest of the transports make for Vulture... and run into a brand new black hole generator on Llama... sigh.

Well, +10 AIP later after blowing that we blow the station on Vulture, saving the rebel colony.  I also clean out some lingering threat that was against Liao with a portion of the fleet.  I need to warp gate pop Llama and Davion, or I need to abandon ship ( and get a 2 hr reprieve) in Vulture.  I shouldn't need more than two hours.   I'm speed building research stations to get a quick 3k and we're off to the races again, after I blow my own station.

[Wanderer]

Yeesh, what a bloody grind...



So, after popping Vulture and getting a 700 ship wave against it, and I run to Kerensky for a bit.  The wave heads south.  I don't want to deal with an 80 AIP so I throw up a few dozen turrets and kill all rebuilding on Three Kings to protect the super-research thingie.  They barely hold off the 400+ ships that come after it.

And while I clean up from that, a lovely 2500 CPA pops to make life even more interesting.

I finally get some decent fleet up and we go after Kirk to empty it.  That takes out enough fleet i move the factory planet to Eridani.  I grind Raid SS Earth for a bit until I can get the majority of the Ions down and then drop the blade spawners off in a corner to finish cleanup.  Eventually I get everything cleaned up.  The final assault goes down with the main fleet and shatters the 2xFF and fortress, finally letting me clear the homeworld.  Pop.

Wow, what a blessed grind.  Things learned:
1 ) Next time I find a homeworld with 2x Raid Engine and an AI Eye, I quit.
2 ) Whenever arguing with a long haul game, make sure I've got a good queue on NetFlix for massive rebuilds.
3 ) Don't pop Dysons without intent to use.  If you have to pop the Dyson, make sure you use the thing.  I'm pretty sure it would have chewed up some pretty lively pieces of the CPAs.
4 ) I REALLY need to use Raid SS IIIs.  I've become dependent.  Next time just open the things.  Early.
5 ) Fortresses cannot hold a whipping boy.  Even with heavy spider/sniper backup.
6 ) Riot IIs are powerful, but nowhere near the old power, even on single homeworld.  They shouldn't be that off but they are.
7 ) I'm gonna hurt, badly, when heavy K-Raiding is done away with.
8 ) You can't hide from Raid Engines on their own planet.  You have a 4 minute window.  Use it wisely. 

[keith.lamothe]

Congratulations!  9.3 put up a significantly better fight than 9, it looked like, but once again that sniveling Earth has been put in its place

1 ) Next time I find a homeworld with 2x Raid Engine and an AI Eye, I quit.

Hahaha, and the mapgen scores a kill   I'm considering having AI Eyes not spawn on homeworlds, but I dunno, it's kind of entertaining   Maybe after a balance pass on guardians and guard posts (some of which need more teeth, imo), and in light of the k-raiding changes, etc.

2 ) Whenever arguing with a long haul game, make sure I've got a good queue on NetFlix for massive rebuilds.

Yea, I keep trying to figure out a way of not having those massive waiting periods.  I've considered and looked at implementing a "fast forward mode" that would just do a really coarse simulation (like an extreme version of what you can do now with performance-profile="Extremely Low" and +10 speed) but making that more than say 50% faster than Extremely-low (I'm looking for like 500% faster than that or more) would involve the equivalent of a nervous-system-transplant for the game.  We've done those before, but now's not the time.

Maybe some kind of device you could build that when it's not in low power mode it increases all resource gain by 10x (or 100x, whatever) but also increases AIP-over-time, AI reinforcements, wave timer countdown, cpa countdown, exo countup, hybrid spawning and maturation, etc by the same factor.  And maybe have it auto-disable if you have over X ships attacking you or are attacking an AI planet or something like that.  The key would be making sure the speedup applies to all the things that "time passage" is supposed to "cost" (other than minor things like how far AI ships move; if the Avenger is up or something it should probably just suppress this device).  It would probably take a number of releases for you folks to find all the stragglers, but does that sound useful/tenable from the player side?  It'd be involved code-wise but way more feasible than literally speeding up the game that far.

3 ) Don't pop Dysons without intent to use.  If you have to pop the Dyson, make sure you use the thing.  I'm pretty sure it would have chewed up some pretty lively pieces of the CPAs.

Friendly Dysons are a Good Thing (TM).  Hostile Dysons are a- (is blasted to smithereens).

7 ) I'm gonna hurt, badly, when heavy K-Raiding is done away with.

But you'll enjoy the pain

[Hearteater]

Maybe after a balance pass on guardians and guard posts (some of which need more teeth, imo), and in light of the k-raiding changes, etc.

I agree, Guard Posts do need more teeth.  You could also make each home world have no more than one "Really Bad(tm)" spawn.  Like double Raid, AI Eye, or whatever.  Of course 10 should be allowed two such spawns .

[TechSY730]

Maybe after a balance pass on guardians and guard posts (some of which need more teeth, imo), and in light of the k-raiding changes, etc.

I agree, Guard Posts do need more teeth.  You could also make each home world have no more than one "Really Bad(tm)" spawn.  Like double Raid, AI Eye, or whatever.  Of course 10 should be allowed two such spawns .

Should the "no more than 1 (2 for diff 10) 'nasty spawn'" rule also apply to core planets?

What about planets in general? (Ok, for planets in general, this could be bumped up by one, so no more than 2 (3 for diff 10))

[Hearteater]

Normal planets can be bypassed and are at best Mark IV, making things a ton easier.  I could see the issue with Core Worlds, but I'd probably give them +1 "Really Bad" spawns because they don't have some of the other nastiness of a Home World.  If I even limited them.  The current map gen doesn't stick people with insane stuff all that often as is.