And AI 96 bites the dust. Let's see, I last left off at 9:20 or so. Right. Alright, well, I let the fleet partially rebuild and I take them off to the Southwest and start rebuilding the economy. Econ's a bit in the dirt and I don't have a lot to work with. After about 20 minutes we get the SW rebuilt up without any turrets and head for home. Fill up more of the fleet and head over to Batman to pick up the Rebel Colony. At about 10:00 or so they've got a nice set of Basic IIs surrounding them and the fleet heads home. My Raids are about ready (still waiting on the IIIs) so I send them down there to pop the warp gate in HotStar. They had popped up a Black Hole Generator and I wasn't ready to commit the fleet yet and saw no reason to get 10 AIP.
They start building off Rebels, whom I notice ignore Black Hole Generators. Ah, this will work nicely. There's fortresses and Tachyon Guardians and a bunch of stuff I'd like to clear out on the east. I'll use the Rebels to do it. So, while the rest of this story is going on, I'm microing around 80 or so rebels to pop fortresses, tachyons, etc on the east, retreating when I'm down to 50 or so, and then heading out again after a rebuild.
Time to start pounding Earth to dust. Roger Dodger! Take the fleet down and park them on the inbound gate to Earth. Raids head in and primary targets are the Ion Cannons and Mass Driver. Those go down with about 4 raids left and the fleet's handled the backwash, so I send the Raids home to get replacements. I can't send the fleet in because of the eye. I micro a bit on the east and then get the Raids back down to Earth, and clean house. Right up until they run headfirst into a Heavy Beam Cannon. *facepalm*
I finally figure out I need to micro my raids in all different directions so the cone attack can't erase them all at once, and kill it with 5/9 raids left. They pop the last guardpost after that, an electric core, and poof, down goes the eye. Send in the troops. Bombers are now at III, so my flock of Bombers and Bomber SSs start working over the FFs on the fortress/command center. We get about halfway there and I'm barely able to pop the Starship Eater Guardian before my Bomber IV SSs die. I'm basically out of polycrystal units so the fleet heads home for more troops.
On the East, I've broken into Tau which was nothing spectacular but it had an Eye and a Spire Shield. *rolls eyes* Greeaaaat. Can't kill those things easily without mass fleet and the eye wouldn't let me do that. Allllrrighty. Send the Raid SSs down and they slowly but surely chew on the spire shield until it finally pops. I can get scouts into Three Kings now. It's about 10:45 or so. There's nothing special in Three Kings for once, just a fortress and the usual core guardians. I setup the Rebels to do a bit of microing in there via shift-click and they got chewed to pieces by a ton of starships. Ah well. The Raids retreat to Batman and regroup with the local rebuilding rebels. That backwash should be arriving shortly.
The main fleet's rebuilt and I ship them down towards Earth again. It's 11:00 and another CPA announces. Didn't we just do this? Alright, fine fine. I basically ignore it for now and continue to pound down Earth. Finally, we're able to pop the fortress and all his buddies. Yawhoot. I leave the Command Station intact for an easy pop later and not have to build out the AIP.
Take the fleet back towards home and park 'em in Blackjack. While they're waiting another 5 minutes for the CPA, I start neutering Blackjack for the fun of it.
CPA goes as expected. Majority of troops were 400 or so back on Shawshank and Roulette. They blew Huge to pieces and then died horribly to the Dyson Swarm. I sent a colony ship back to Huge to rebuild the econ station. The troops in Blackjack pretty much blocked everything coming at us except for Green Lantern troops. I snuck my blade spawners in and they cleaned up the little bit of annoyance attacking that. Good to go, time to head east.
In the meanwhile, the rebels and raids cleaned up the coreworld backwash and went back for seconds. Clearing the Tachyon Guardians meant I got my first look at Riker. 2x Neinzul and nothing else of note. Main fleet gets to Batman around 11:30 and starts pushing through to Tau, which I'm going to use as my 'takeoff' point. The raids head into Riker and chase down the Mass Driver and a pair of Ion cannons, triggering a cockroach spawn at the same time. Unconcerned, I continue on my merry way. A transport with some Engi Is and a colony ship gets to Tau as I finish popping Krupp's Warp Gate and the cmd Center on Tau, and head for Three Kings. The place is pretty nerfed at this point. Polycrystal units and blade spawners enter, and they grind down the double FF and fortress. That dealt with, I pop both warp gates there to force waves to continue to hit Macross and we proceed to assault Riker.
Everyone heads into Riker to clear the wandering defenders. My Raids head off to pop the cockroach spawns and we clean up the locals. Two of the spire shield guardposts will take a bit of time to kill. Most of the standard guardposts die pretty easily and what's left of my fleet (about half) starts working on the first shield post. My blade spawners are basically ignoring a heavy beam post that I'd like them to kill, they're hung up trying to get blades onto the home command center which is grav guardianed and fortressed. *rolls eyes*
Well, I clean up the two shield posts and decide I'm going to need more firepower. I send reinforcements from Cyborg as a group down to Batman, and my main fleet retreats back up to Batman. My Raids stay behind on Tau to defend it from drifters. Rearm, pick up fresh Rebels, and we head in again. This time my blades didn't utterly ignore the heavy beam, but maddeningly stopped hitting it at ~35%. Raids head in trying to time them between shots. Thawck, that's done. Polycrystal assault on the 2xff+fortress+gravity guardian. This is taking *forever*, and I'm losing ships because the blades can't hit the actives under the ffs. Send in the entire armada. It's gonna hurt but to heck with it. Pile on the Fortress and the grav guardian. Once they're both down, the rest go down like butter. Pop the Cmd Station while my Raids are high-tailing it back to Cyborg to pick up a few buddies. They get to Cyborg, I've got 8. Wait for the 9th while I start bringing the fleet home.
I take a look at Earth. Because it's unalerted there is no defenders who reinforced while I was gone.
Raids head in, pop pop pop, bye bye command center. Woot woot, 9.6/9.6 Win.
