Thematic Play-Vengeance of the Spire

[Coppermantis]

Inspired by GUDare's "Disposable Heroes" AAR, I'm doing something similar, but with Spire ships. Specifically, I'm playing a self-set scenario in which the Spire must regroup and rebuild their own empire, the humans having been destroyed long ago. To make matters worse, a faction of Spire traitors has sided with the AI (one AI Type is Spire Hammer, the other is Turtle)

My rules: I cannot unlock any upgrades to human tech or unlock and tech not related to the Spire. This means no triangle ships above mk. I, no starships above mk. I (I did accidentally unlock Mk. II Riots, but supposedly those are based on Spire tech so I'll kinda accept that one). If I get things in Zenith caches or ARS, I'll take those but otherwise I won't use anything the Spire wouldn't have. The human triangle ships will only be used on defense, since it'd be a bit too challenging to only use Spire ships.

I've got some stuff on, most importantly Dyson+Hybrids (Never been able to see this combo in action), Fallen Spire, Medium Golems+Spirecraft (The medium versions I find more fun).


Redoing the actual game with Kieth's Seed.

[keith.lamothe]

Interesting   I had been kinda thinking about this too. 

It would mean starting over, but if there's a particular combo of bonus types you want from adjacent homeworlds, I can probably find a seed.  Just let me know what map type and what bonus types.  For reference, these are the types the Spireling AI gets:

SpireArmorRotter
SpireBladeSpawner
SpireGravityDrain
SpireGravityRipper
SpireMaw
SpireMiniRam
SpireStealthBattleship
SpireTeleportingLeech
SpireTractorPlatform

The rotter, ripper, teleporting leech, and miniram don't get a lot of love around here, it seems, but some of the others are pretty highly favored (or hated, if the AI draws them).

[Coppermantis]

 The one I've got right now is the best one I've found, but if you were to find one with, say, Gravity Drains, Blade Spawners, Leeches and Tractor Platforms that'd be cool. I'm not too far in, so a restart would be alright if such a seed exists.


As far as this game goes, The Scan has revealed a shard on Xil. My Fleet will be more than enough to handle the operation.

[keith.lamothe]

Took a while, but found this one: 89607298

With:
Map Type: Simple
Planet Count: 80
Campaign Type: Conquest
Expansions: all three on
Available Ships: Complex
Cloaking, Teleporting, Parasites, Tractor Beams and Swallowers on (the others may be on or not on at your discretion)

It's got Drains, Blade Spawners, Teleporting Leeches, and Tractor Platforms in a connectable fashion.  Up to you if you want to use it

[Coppermantis]

Sweet, thank you very much. I'll try it out.

[keith.lamothe]

Sweet, thank you very much. I'll try it out.

No problem, always glad to facilitate interesting gameplay stories

[Coppermantis]

A little potential bug I'm noticing--Blade Spawners go crazy in the presence of the Subspace Signal. They know there's an enemy, but can't attack so they constantly spew out blades that just sit there and die.


Okay, so this time doing basically the same thing.



I'm using Meinhoff as a staging area for the fleet. Talnarus to the south has a SuperTerminal (!) so I'll leave it neutered but take the rest of that little arm. Nothing else special except the new subspace signal revealed on Kern. All my Spire ships are on Mk. II except for Blade Spawners which are fully teched up to mk. III. all human fleet ships are still Mk. I per my base rules.

[Coppermantis]

This is why it's a good idea to ensure one is aware of the little changes. Shard retrieval operations had commenced on Kern. Last time I did a Spire game, I could just send a cloaker ship and then deal with the resulting threat. Can't do that anymore. By the time I realized this, the shard was taking damage and my fleet was elsewhere. The shard slowly creeped across the screen until my fleet arrived with the shard at ~50% HP.


My fleet escorts the shard on Coruscant Kern. Its health is at 29%. Fortunately I have 1300 fleet ships of various mark levels defending, I will probably be able to deal with this.

[PokerChen]

This is why it's a good idea to ensure one is aware of the little changes. Shard retrieval operations had commenced on Kern. Last time I did a Spire game, I could just send a cloaker ship and then deal with the resulting threat. Can't do that anymore. By the time I realized this, the shard was taking damage and my fleet was elsewhere. The shard slowly creeped across the screen until my fleet arrived with the shard at ~50% HP.

This reminded me - I couldn't defend the first city shard properly on 10/10 8HW with just the fleet (no golems of anything like that). Not enough firepower to take down the sheer number of starships and spirecraft the beeline the shard.

[Coppermantis]

An hour and a half into the game and I haven't taken any planets yet because I'm ensuring that my homeworlds are adequately defended. Tadegen-Moatquibi is the only remaining warp lane left alive and my fleet is neutering planets one-by-one down to the last wormhole guard post. The Leeches are being very nice in that every attack or defense scenario adds a good fifty ships to my fleet. Gravity Drains are also useful when combined with auto-kite.

Hybrids are my main problem. When I'm somewhere else, they tend to lead a large (for my current AIP, at least) invasion against one of my worlds, forcing a retreat since I can't lose anything yet. Chencha has 31 of them, but they don't tend to be an issue when my main fleet is present because Blade Spawners take them down from long range with grim efficiency. This seed is really nice because I wouldn't ordinarily get to use these ships because there are a lot of others I prefer.

1:38:13: An abnormally strong hybrid is somewhere in the galaxy. Oh dear. I've never seen this before. This must be the super-hybrid I've heard tell about. Dispatching scouts to hopefully locate this monstrosity before it can do something bad. It spawns a little over 2 hops from player space, doesn't it? Or am I remembering wrong? Unfortunately I only have mk. I scouts, so it's a bit of a challenge doing deep scouting. Starships+transports might do the trick though.

[Eternaly_Lost]

1:38:13: An abnormally strong hybrid is somewhere in the galaxy. Oh dear. I've never seen this before. This must be the super-hybrid I've heard tell about. Dispatching scouts to hopefully locate this monstrosity before it can do something bad. It spawns 1-2 hops from player space, doesn't it? Or am I remembering wrong? Unfortunately I only have mk. I scouts, so it's a bit of a challenge doing deep scouting. Starships+transports might do the trick though.

It spawns on the AI homeworld or a core world. But when it moves onto the next step it moves to a world 3 spaces away I think it was.

[Coppermantis]

Ah, thanks. So no chance of hunting it down, but I might be able to kill a later stage. Alright.

[Coppermantis]

1:50:32: Super hybrid on Noom! The fleet has been recalled to the closest planet, Meinhoff, to deal with the approaching threat. Shortly after, though, it changed course to Castanar and then Damb, both of which are under AI control. The good news is that I won't have to deal with the thing for the time being, but the bad news is that it's leaving the scouted radius so I won't be able to monitor its activities.

In other news, Data Centers have been scouted on Agria and Xil. The Raid starships, five of them, are being prepped for a deep strike. If successful, the AIP will be reduced to 13.

The first data center goes down easily enough with only Gravity guardians proving a challenge to deal with. All five starships make it safely home. Xil will prove a harder target because it is protected by two Mk. IV worlds and an interplanetary munitions booster.

[Coppermantis]

Almost three hours in and several planets bordering Spire territory have been neutered down to just the command center. No wormhole guard posts, nothing. This is probably a waste of time, especially because Turtle gets 2x wormhole guard posts.

Attempts to combine tractor platforms and leeches to harvest mk. IV ships have met with mixed results. It's looking like Kuu will be my first target. Talnarus has already been  neutered as has Kuu, so this will be easy enough.

A "Strange Hybrid Facility" is under construction on Agria. I don't seem to have a visual on it though. What I do see, however, is something I missed earlier. A Mk. V Spire Armor Rotter Fabricator. Perfect for the theme of this game. I'll capture it after I finish taking out the Talnarus-Xil arm.

Also of note is the ARS on Murdoch. If I'm lucky, I can get another Spire ship type. I'm hoping for Battleships.

[Coppermantis]

Kuu has been taken and several Armored golems have been scouted. A few Spirecraft Siege Towers have been produced as well. One Zenith III cache has been popped and the contents are assigned to a new control group. Hopefully I can grow my Shredders into a much larger force if I use them right. The mysterious Hybrid-thingy is still under production, but the Dyson sphere has been freed! Yay!

"513 AI 1 enemy ships, 1 starships (IV) -Raid Engine to ? ? ? in 0:49"


FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. Dyson Gatlings trigger raid engines, eh? Well, this is a little unfortunate. I can handle the ships, but an attack every 4 minutes will be annoying, to say the least. The AIP is a little over 100, so the Data Center on Xil should take it down to a more manageable level.