The AI 9 through 10 run

[Wanderer]

I've been early game experimenting a bit, seeing what I can get away with basically only the homeworld.  I eventually took Janeway about 15 minutes ago just to shut down the Troop Accelerator before it gets ugly later and also researched up Econ III.

At 1:30 I can confirm, the Dyson will NOT spawn if you don't have eyes on the planet.  After a few rounds of transport assault I finally got my Scout Is in there.

The Fortress on Roulette's down and it's nerfed, as is the Eye on Huge.  Macross is still fat and fluffy but I'll get back to that.  I've taken Janeway but that's it.  AIP is 45 and I've decided I need to put up the starter whipping boy.  I can hold with the fleet but it's getting annoying, and I don't want to over-build the homeworld.

Besides, putting up the whipping boy on Macross gets me Dyson, 2 worlds of K, and the Dyson ARS if I flash control it.  I'll need to pop a fortress on Dyson but that shouldn't be a big deal.

Trying to get into Dyson the Transports pissed off an EMP II that I had to deal with offworld, so I caught it in Twycross and shut it down there.  Took a bit of fleet though.  I've also opened up Tachyon Turrets to rid myself of stray Space Planes.  I had plans for that 250 K but oh well.  So far so good.  I'm not sure how much, if any, of the 'backfield' I'm going to take.  I'd like to keep AIP way down, and I can ignore Fraggle and only need to take the warp gate on Roulette out.  I can neuter them into oblivion to remove aggression later, though CPAs might be troublesome.  I'll have to think on it.  I'm not even sure I'll take Twycross, though having the Dysons available for homeworld would be nice.  Then again, Dyson support on Macross will be very powerful.  Trade offs trade offs trade offs...

Keith, what's max Friendly Dyson galaxy population?  I think it's ~200 but I'm not positive.

[Wanderer]

I let the fleet rebuild and nerfed Fraggle while I let the Dyson run havoc amongst its own planet and Macross.  It actually took out the Fort I on the planet, too, which helped.  When a good chunk of Macross had fallen, I sent the Raids over to pop the command and let friendlies fight enemies.  Once friendlies were the population, I started using the riots to pop guard posts, to clean up the mess.

The fleet mostly rebuilt, I nerfed Twycross and sent them to Macross to assist the cleanup, sending a colony ship along with them.  After popping the Co-P, I send the fleet after the command center and take that down.  I immediately start building an Econ III and ship 5 Engi Is up from Sushi to help out.  Meanwhile, my Raids have been parked on Twycross, just waiting for this moment.  They blow the warp gate.  Macross is now the whipping boy, with Dyson support.

While I'm building I start getting waves.  This is 1:55 or so.  First wave is 600 ships.  Yeek!  Well, the fleet's still there but they certainly won't handle that alone and I'm just barely getting the starter turrets up.  I pull back with the fleet, hoping to space them out.  The 30 or so Dysons laugh as they blow past me going for the enemy.  My fleet, not to be insulted, chases them in.  It's a slaughter.

Macross is a long system, as I've mentioned in the past.  Twycross/Dyson gates on one side, Craps on the other.  It takes the Dysons who park on their wormhole a bit to ever get to the defense point, but when they do... wow.  I could defend this joint with nothing but grav turrets and ffs.  I don't, of course, but still.  If you've never seen 120+ Dyson Gatlings defend your whipping boy, try it sometime.  It's a bit spectacular.  The AI starts sending half/quarter time waves and they just get chewed up (4 of them, back to back to back to back).  All they're doing is causing a resource drain since I can't get the FFs back up and they're popping the short rangers like butter.  Not that it matters.  The Dysons inhale them.

Well, since the fleet's not needed, I pull them back while turrets continue to construct and briefly toss a Mil I up on Dyson.  Why?  I needed to pop the CSG-A and get my ARS.   Blade Spawners.  Woot woot.  Well, some things never change.  CSG-A dies before more than two Enemy Gatlings spawn and I take down the Mil I and take the fleet back home.  The Friendlies abuse the enemies and we're back in business.

I grab reinforcements from Sushi and head for Huge.  I've got another ARS I want to go get.  An easy pop, and another Econ III.  Armor Ships.  Well, pattern stays tight.  Hacking will probably come out during this game so I'll eventually get to swap out the bulletproofs and autobombers.  Depending on how things go.  I am purposely not looking at K-Raids yet for that very reason.

So, with Macross setting up and my turrets building, I've got Blade Spawners and Bulletproofs building at home.  Guess it's time to dig in a little.  I start to blow the wormhole gates on Roulette and pop the warp gate.  Less annoyances in the backfield, the better.  The wormhole gates take FOREVER with this measly fleet, but it's eventually getting done.  About 4 reinforces happen during this time.  No biggie, just chews up some ships.  I research up Raid IIs and Scout IIs, time to go deeper with scouts while I'm snoring killing Wormhole Guardians.

Superterminal on Kerensky!  Well, alrighty then.  Wait, how'd my... heh, some dyson gatlings invaded Craps and cleaned it out.  Raids go out and nerf Craps, including the Ion V sitting there.  One less problem for later.  So, SuperTerminal.  That'll keep, I want to see what it'll look like later on the update.  Push my Scout IIs through and 2 of them live on Cyborg.  Awesome collection of fabricators.  Acid Sprayer V, StarBomb IV.  And Spider V, which I still have't had a chance to see in action as more then a speed bump in the road of Raids.  Looks like Cyborg is going to become the front door again though.

At 2:30 I'm back at homeworld collecting up new fleet.  Before I push forward I want to neuter all the rear planets of guardposts, then I'll push for Cyborg.  I've got 3 Econ IIIs up so far, Dyson's a neutral, and ~140 AIP.  Waves are usually around 600 ships and I'd be pushing for Riot IIs or Military bases if the Dysons weren't so effective.  It just costs me some turret rebuilds.

[keith.lamothe]

The only other post that is a significant annoyance is the Heavy Beam Guardpost.  It annihilates Raid Starships trying to get at Ion Cannons (and other assundry annoyances, like Orbital Mass Drivers) that are parked next to them.  Add a FF and they're a significant pain.  Otherwise... no, not really.

I'm tempted to have it have an X% chance of throwing an FF on every single guard post and ensuring a Neinzul post, and if it doesn't do that then a Y% chance of seeding a Raid Engine, and if it doesn't do that then a Z% chance of an AI Eye + CPA-post, etc.  But that would be too static in general.  Some nastiness-ensurance may happen though   I'm getting the impression that some AI homeworlds are like 0.5% as hard as others simply due to the guard post selection (and seeding of FFs and Forts and Eyes), and that doesn't strike me as a good thing (correct me if I'm wrong).  But I also want to avoid setups that are just such an obvious kick in the pants that the appropriate response upon scouting the homeworld is to start a new game.

Because I can use half a fleet to take care of small objectives, like threat removal, while the rest rebuilds.  If I turn that on, the timers could get away from me.

That's true, and by all means make use of that time.  If you have something fun to do during that time, then you don't need this feature.  And I've been toying with some ideas that would provide additional fun uses of "downtime" between major fleet actions (which almost always involve rebuilds afterwards), so I don't know if I even want to add this "just gimme the resources, and give the AI its stuff, and let's get back to playing the bleeping game" button.  Maybe it's possible to just make sure there's always something there to do that's fun.  The "that's fun" part is the tricky thing, though.  You say you go and clean out threat and whatnot, I'm not sure that's what you consider a good time.

Anyway, by the netflix thing, did you mean that you would literally not even be watching the game for long chunks, or just that you wanted something to listen to or glance at while you were doing the small stuff?  The provocation of the just-gimme-the-money-button idea was numerous players telling me over the past year or so that they spend a lot of their game time just going and doing something else non-game-related while they wait for resources/rebuild.

I understand exactly what you're saying and you're right, which is why I don't have a good answer.  I'd like something that could improve my econ but not, at a 1:1 basis, speed up the game clock's repercussions for it.  Something different, maybe.  Otherwise, not sure I'd use it.

If it were truly 1:1, then why not?  Because of stuff that you'd miss seeing/doing and thus the game would be harder due to the quasi-mistakes?  If there's enough to see/do, then there's not a lot of need for it, I think.  I imagine it varies widely by difficulty and what sorts of things are on (hybrids, exos, etc).

On the other hand I wonder about giving them some kind of "warp gate" capability so you can also have your factories produce to them.  But I'm sure the exploits would be strong with that one

That... could be useful.  Significantly devalue the worth of the MK IV though, which is as an alternate to your Fact IV if you lost it.  Would need a very significant K reduction.

I didn't mean that it would remove their personal production capabilities, just that they would also be able to warp in stuff coming out of friendly factories.  I'm not sure if it would be feasible to have them have both, though, due to interface confusion on what the "low power" button would mean, without making the gate a module on the ship (and I'm not sure Chris would be keen on me adding modules to existing types).  On the other hand, modules could be a way of giving it other forms of utility... anyway, I've got enough plates spinning on new-AIW-stuff already, don't need to worry about these too much   But some survivability wouldn't hurt 'em, that's for sure.

At 1:30 I can confirm, the Dyson will NOT spawn if you don't have eyes on the planet.  After a few rounds of transport assault I finally got my Scout Is in there.

Yea, the "neutral dyson" spawn condition requires ( this.CurrentPlanet.OrbitalCommandStation.UnitData.Player.Type == PlayerType.AI ) and ( this.CurrentRollup.AlliedNonMinorFaction.Count > 0 ) , so if there's an AI command station and you don't have any ships there, it doesn't spawn.  Even if you had ships there in the past.

Keith, what's max Friendly Dyson galaxy population?  I think it's ~200 but I'm not positive.

Max?

If you've never seen 120+ Dyson Gatlings defend your whipping boy, try it sometime.  It's a bit spectacular.

Minor faction ships can be quite determined   Particularly the Invincible Death Machine ones.

Hacking will probably come out during this game so I'll eventually get to swap out the bulletproofs and autobombers.  Depending on how things go.  I am purposely not looking at K-Raids yet for that very reason.

My guess is next monday on 5.028; I don't really have much dedicated AIW time during the week at this stage in AVWW development.  So don't hold off on my account, unless you're planning on slowing down

Acid Sprayer V, StarBomb IV.  And Spider V

Wow, fabulous.     *hit by a truck

Be a shame if anything happened to them.

[Eternaly_Lost]

Anyway, by the netflix thing, did you mean that you would literally not even be watching the game for long chunks, or just that you wanted something to listen to or glance at while you were doing the small stuff?  The provocation of the just-gimme-the-money-button idea was numerous players telling me over the past year or so that they spend a lot of their game time just going and doing something else non-game-related while they wait for resources/rebuild.

I know that during any shard retrieval, I personally just leave the game running for hours at a time to finish getting that shard home well I am away watching a movie/tv/making dinner/playing the PS3 as there is no way to send the troop out with the AI waves knocking in the door so often. I find however that the rest of the game does not have that many long pauses in the action. When you don't have a wave a minute coming knocking, there is always something to do somewhere.

[keith.lamothe]

The issue there is more that you can defend against the ongoing exos completely unattended

[Wanderer]

I'm tempted to have it have an X% chance of throwing an FF on every single guard post and ensuring a Neinzul post,

Which, besides the roaches, basically ensures a Raid SS assault tactic or a Bomber Run.  That'll lack variety.

and if it doesn't do that then a Y% chance of seeding a Raid Engine, and if it doesn't do that then a Z% chance of an AI Eye + CPA-post, etc.  But that would be too static in general.  Some nastiness-ensurance may happen though  

I get your drift but there's only so much you can do with a seed randomizer.

I'm getting the impression that some AI homeworlds are like 0.5% as hard as others simply due to the guard post selection (and seeding of FFs and Forts and Eyes), and that doesn't strike me as a good thing (correct me if I'm wrong). 

 
It's just a variable, really.  Sometimes the map is dang tough so when you finally do get to the HW it's almost a sigh of relief.   Other times it's a pushover. 

But I also want to avoid setups that are just such an obvious kick in the pants that the appropriate response upon scouting the homeworld is to start a new game.

Yeah, those are sooo much fun.

That's true, and by all means make use of that time.  If you have something fun to do during that time, then you don't need this feature.  And I've been toying with some ideas that would provide additional fun uses of "downtime" between major fleet actions (which almost always involve rebuilds afterwards), so I don't know if I even want to add this "just gimme the resources, and give the AI its stuff, and let's get back to playing the bleeping game" button.

Well, threat removal is more janitorial work then 'fun', but it's always been just part of the game to me.  Unless you've let it get out of hand, at which point it can be challenging.  The other side is my Raid SS's usually generate threat because I don't stop and engage until after the defenders have wandered off.  I typically 'buzz the tower' with my Raid SSs, get the locals to move off as free threat, then come back and hit whatever they were guarding.

Anyway, by the netflix thing, did you mean that you would literally not even be watching the game for long chunks, or just that you wanted something to listen to or glance at while you were doing the small stuff?

Turn on Netflix, pick episode of random anime.  Flip screens.  X+G my fleet at threat target.  Wait for kabooms to stop.  Listen for strange whistles or announcements.  Pick up fleet, examine, decide if reinforce or next target.  Rinse Repeat.  If economy is no longer on floor pause show and examine current scenario.

If it were truly 1:1, then why not?  Because of stuff that you'd miss seeing/doing and thus the game would be harder due to the quasi-mistakes?

That's one of them, yes.  I see it as far too easy to shoot myself in the foot.  Reinforcements that I don't whittle down, travel time I didn't anticipate, any number of things.

Keith, what's max Friendly Dyson galaxy population?  I think it's ~200 but I'm not positive.

Max?

I'm about to break a game...  There's got to be some kind of max or I'd have been at 5 billion of the gatlings by end of game on a number of occassions as they endlessly patrolled the homelands.

My guess is next monday on 5.028; I don't really have much dedicated AIW time during the week at this stage in AVWW development.  So don't hold off on my account, unless you're planning on slowing down

We'll see.  I won't be monitoring overnight processes this week so I might slow down.  But no worries.

[Eternaly_Lost]

The issue there is more that you can defend against the ongoing exos completely unattended

If I could not defend against it with every fleet ship I have unlocked capped, every turret I have capped and carefully placed  and a full cap of fortresses, and all the special buildings and my entire Spire fleet in the world, with a full cap of MK3 engs attached to factories attached to warp gates with Auto attack set, several golems and a full cap of Spirecraft Attritioner stuck as far way as I can. Then defending takes too much micro for me. I rather like the minimal micro that is required.

I likely have enough firepower in that system to hold it to just walk into the AI homeworlds and take it down, but I really like winning by the Fallen Spire Exo trans a lot.

[Wanderer]

I've pushed through with the main fleet to Cyborg, and started digging in.  The traders have come by and I've started work on a ZPG and have toys on Macross.  The only one that's going to be important though is the Black Hole Generator.  Bear with me, I'll explain shortly.

From 2:30 till 3:05 or so I blow away every wormhole guardpost behind Macross.  Yes, as boring as it sounds.  I also opened up Raid IIIs so that was building while I dealt with this.  In the meanwhile Macross is shaking off 1000 ship waves without a problem.  I head for Cyborg, taking the time to nerf SuperTerminal along the way and blow its warp gate.  When I get to Cyborg I'm pretty beaten down, about a quarter of the fleet's dead.  We engage Cyborg and clear it, with Raid SS help, but I'm dealing with the highway of ships again.  Oh, joy.  Well, we clean out most of that but I need to go back for reinforcements, or I can try to transport them down...

<Warning: 1500 ship CPA inbound>

... right, returning home.  I've got scouts in the backfield and there's about 30 ships back there but I don't trust the AI not to do something goofy like spawn a 500 unit carrier behind me at a warpgate I didn't pop on Fraggle.

Well things go simple enough and everyone's in front.  Cool.  I take the fleet back to Macross and let them sit on the Twycross gate.  I'm curious about something.  I turn off all my turrets.  I've got the fleet for backup and I want to see what the Dysons are going to do.  I'm chillin' out and the Dysons start haring off for the Craps gate for no obvious reason.  Just this mob of 200+ Dyson Gatlings + some human rebellion guys.  Errr, ooookay.

I finally figure out they'll respond to neighboring system threat.  They head into Craps and just INHALE the line of troops coming in from SuperTerminal.  They keep trying to head back to Macross but little 1s and 2s of Missile Frigates keep dripping in, turning the entire squadron around.  I've got 1400 ships in 2 waves heading to Macross.  Well, hrm.  Alright, turn the turrets back on, and send the Raid squadron out to stop the interlopers confusing my allies.

The raids get to SuperTerminal pretty fast and keep the wormhole clear.  The mob of 1400 ships have blown the FFs off the wormhole and are proceeding towards my fleet, who are still just sitting on the command center.  The dyson squad blows in behind them and lays waste to the entire double wave.

Very nice.  I can make my whipping boy a dyson ball instead of a turret ball.  That'll give me some nice defenses on Cyborg.  Load up a transport with a colony ship and 5 Engi Is and we make our way to Cyborg.

Easy enough to build up, and I pop the warp gate and couple of guard posts on Blackjack pretty easily.  I've got 3 FFs on each of the fabs in Cyborg, enough to hold against a small to medium attack while the fleet which is parked in system can respond.  I turn off the factories on Sushi and build them local, replacing lost ships.  While micro-ing my Raid army around in Confederation to blow away the posts (and remove the AI Eye there) a little 400 ship wave attacks Cyborg.  I steal all the snipers off Macross and start building them on Cyborg.  Obviously they won't be done in time but worth a shot.  The fleet handles the inbounds pretty soundly, with the 15 or so Acid Sprayer V's that have been built so far just weed whacking the bomber squadron.  Nice upgrade, that.

Slowly but surely I've removed every turret from Macross so far except for LRMs and MRMs.  Cyborg could be a whipping boy in its own right, but I just want my axle well defended.  I'm going to take a bit of this and bit of that and drop it on Sushi, though, to rear guard a VERY undefended homeworld.  It'll get two fortresses too when I open those.

It's about 4:00 now and I'm getting prepared to dig into the world.  Solar Moon and Eridani have ARSs again, and Kirk's a Coreworld, so Earth is basically confirmed.  I need to try to get scouts on Earth to see what I'm dealing with this mapgen.

[Wanderer]

Here we go again:

[Hearteater]

I'm beginning to think the mapgen is reading this thread.

[TechSY730]

I'm beginning to think the mapgen is reading this thread.

Yea really. What crazy ISP is still giving service to AIs trying to conquer the galaxy?

[Wanderer]

So, I've passed an hour cleaning up portions of the map, drilling holes into areas with fleet or raid, with nothing particularly spectacular occurring.



Of particular note is I have net -80 AIP available to me.  I've found the other three Co-Ps (P4 planets).  Two of those have Data Centers on them as well. 

What's annoying me is the CSGs.  Once again, the only CSG-D available is on Jax.  Annoyingly, there isn't even an E down in the Riker arm.  So, I have to make a choice.  I have to take Jumping Jax, that's obligatory, it's the only D in the galaxy.  Solar Moon and Camel as an ARS/Fact IV combo is pretty obvious too, just need to give Green Lantern a good neutering.  The question is what E class do I take? 

If I take Blackjack or Confederation it means I have an 'interrupt' world enroute to Cyborg, which might turn CPAs down into Eridani or SolarMoon, not something I want.  I'd rather they stayed on the bee-line. 

If I take Twycross I dilute the power of the dyson ball, but I'll have defenders readily available for homeworld.  That might be handy, and in theory the longest the dyson ball would have to travel is the length of the wormholes in Twycross as they bounce back and forth.

I could take Fraggle Rock and not significantly upset the eco-system I have in the backyard, possibly buying time for a response for Sushi should something go awry.

Of these, I have to lean towards Twycross, and hope I'm right about the Dyson ball dilution.  I'm up to ~380 dysons right now in Macross.  I've had some pretty significant bleed off as they chased threat through Craps/SuperTerminal to Cyborg before the black hole generator went up, and those have kept the borders pretty clean.  Scoured would be a better term...

Once I have those I could take Eridani, and that'll pop the last of the CSG-As and give me the ARS.

I haven't K-Raided anywhere yet, to a particular purpose.  I'm trying to get better at working with less. 

The SuperTerminal is still right there, waiting for my attention.  I might go take it for a little spin before I pop more of the CoP's and Data Centers, just to break it down on the easy side for awhile.  I don't have the fleet to ride it into the ground right now and I'll be exposing myself to waves from Craps, though.  It might be worth it, however, if I can nearly put the AI to sleep and then push a second whipping boy up on Kirk to deal with Raid Waves, prior to popping all the CSGs.  It'll cost me 20 AIP just to be able to touch it however, which is half a level of 'raise' due to the 2:1 nature of it and 75 being the next cutoff.

If I can Raid Wave defend Kirk, I'll be able to deal with the outer CSGs and get the rest of the fleet built up awhile, particularly if the AIP is nearly underground.  I need to raid Kirk clean though, but that's doable with Cyborg as a nearly full-bore whipping boy.  I have 3k in research that's unused, and I could beach-head a few fortresses up in Confederation to chew on inbounds.  They'd also help with the SuperTerminal.  So would Maw III though, with the 3000 K I'd get from SuperTerminal. 

You'll have to pardon me, I'm typing out-loud a bit here.  With a single K-Raid, most likely on Shawshank, I could pick up Maw III.  That would give me a significant advantage in dealing with the SuperTerminal.  Blow up SuperTerminal's command center, and that'll give me the 3000 K I'd need for Fortress Is due to supply from Cyborg for my Research IIs.  After I put in a fortress or 3, fire up the SuperTerminal.  I have full Raids, so I can dip out to the rest of the reducers once I'm forced to blow the ST, which I expect will be around the high end of Tech IV or low end of Core ships.  One surge will tell me.  I'll need a Mil I station on ST.  I'd prefer a Mil II but I won't have the K available. 

As I hit the CSG worlds I'll be able to improve that, but that'll be for the Kirk whipping boy.  I'll have to setup on Kirk THEN head for the CSG worlds, but only after a few raids against Kirk to pick the coreworld clean.  Raid SS the CSGs if I can't get the fleet out.  That'll leave Cyborg pretty exposed but that should get the timer about right to allow for one of them to pick up (hopefully) the rebel colony so I won't have to tag an extra world.  With the research off Kirk and another planet, I'll be able to pick up Riot IIs for front-door lockdown (needs 4k, I'll have 3k).  I've got a bunch of FFs that Macross doesn't use anymore so I'm good there. 

Yeah, that should work.  I think.

[Wanderer]

Hour 5 - 6 was me doing a K-Raid on Shawshank, clearing off SuperTerminal and researching it to prep for the eventual invasion, and waiting basically an hour in resources to finish up the ZPG so I could build the Fortresses.

However, I've got this CPA coming in, see?  And well, it's a measly little 1100 ship one, k?  And about 200 spawn behind the homeworld, right?  No problem, my blade spawners shipped up there handle it.

Problem: The rest of the CPA is composed of Mark IV and V ships.

What. The. BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP?

[Minotaar]

There's only one thing I can say..
Shoulda cleaned up more bro!
 

[keith.lamothe]

I'm tempted to have it have an X% chance of throwing an FF on every single guard post and ensuring a Neinzul post,

Which, besides the roaches, basically ensures a Raid SS assault tactic or a Bomber Run.  That'll lack variety.

Point

Keith, what's max Friendly Dyson galaxy population?  I think it's ~200 but I'm not positive.

Max?

I'm about to break a game...  There's got to be some kind of max or I'd have been at 5 billion of the gatlings by end of game on a number of occassions as they endlessly patrolled the homelands.

Friendly spawns are 1 every 3 seconds; 10 hours = 36,000 seconds = 12,000 gatlings... hmm, yea, seems like it must be throttling it somewhere.  But looking at the unit def I don't see a cap, and looking at the spawn logic I don't see it counting or branching out.  In the actual processing of the AIBuyShip message (which is used to spawn it) there's a clause that would prevent the spawn if there were >= 5000 _AI_ ships on the dyson planet, but that's not gonna happen here.

From 2:30 till 3:05 or so I blow away every wormhole guardpost behind Macross.  Yes, as boring as it sounds.

A more interesting result from firing upon a wormhole guardpost could be arranged  

I'm chillin' out and the Dysons start haring off for the Craps gate for no obvious reason.  Just this mob of 200+ Dyson Gatlings + some human rebellion guys.

"1500 CPA?  We'll be right back."

with the 15 or so Acid Sprayer V's that have been built so far just weed whacking the bomber squadron.  Nice upgrade, that.

Glad to hear they're doing well   Yea, that's a lot of anti-polycrystal dps... and in theory they'll be nice against the core raid engine too, due to neutron hull.

I need to try to get scouts on Earth to see what I'm dealing with this mapgen.

Sorry you asked?

I have to take Jumping Jax, that's obligatory, it's the only D in the galaxy.

Interesting, that means it must have been the _only_ planet in the entire galaxy with a counterattack post but without an ARS, Adv Factory, or Fabricator.  If Jax had rolled a fab, the map wouldn't even have a D.

You'll have to pardon me, I'm typing out-loud a bit here.

Don't worry, the AI's taking notes.

Problem: The rest of the CPA is composed of Mark IV and V ships.

And, apparently, taking names.