Monster post: for the short version do not read text between ~~~ lines.
Took Iteration for the exp. translocator fab, then immediately lost the translocator fab. Oops. “Took” Relay to reachieve contiguity. Took is in quotes because I just destroyed the AI Command center and then harvested the k, but did not colonize because I do not want a Z generator. Unlocked Hardened forcefields. Not much strategic use, as command stations can be easily replaced, but worth it in that it significantly imcreases the expected lifespan of my computer, monitor, window, and sanity. Engineer IIIs unlocked for similar reasons. Basic Turret IIs unlocked: all of them will be deployed at HW, but I unlocked these because they were cheap and I wanted to try the new Drones. Took planet between my empire and the last ARS. Dealt with the Counterattack post. Core Shield Generator Networks are now all down.
Time to send a science lab to see what that last ARS has…
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The Grand Hack:
The High Admiral looked terrible. He had been slowly degrading ever since the awful galactic wormhole network was scouted. He had been using the quantum-stop box too much. It may have saved us all but moving through time at different speeds cannot be good for you, no matter what the artifact examination team may say. I personally don’t trust the Zenith who sold it to us, but we really aren’t in a position to quibble. Only the purchase of more forcefields and engineer IIIs had helped the Admiral, and that was only a small improvement.
Exhausted, haunted eyes barely moved as I entered the room with the scientific report on the so-called “Last Hope” AI Advanced Research Station on Segfault.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but it is just a youngling nanoswarm data file. We may even consider bypassing this world, as we already have destroyed the A-Prime Core Shield Generator network. All hacking would get us would be teleport battlestations or shield bearers, and after the SuperTerminal, it probably isn’t worth it.”
“Very well. Dis-Wait. Repeat that last.”
“It probably isn’t worth it?”
“No. The ship types we could hack.”
“Teleport battlestations or shield bearers.”
For the first time since the fall of the Grand Coalescent Fleet at Earth, the battle that lost the war to the machines, the High Admiral had hope in his eyes. The words “shield bearers” transformed him completely. He looked rejuvenated, ready, even optimistic.
“Build a ship design hacker. Wake me when it is complete and there are no waves inbound. Admiral Glau to command in my absence.”
“Yes sir.“We’re ready”
“I want the best science officers you have, and I want you, Chief Science Officer, to oversee this one personally. You did well at the SuperTerminal, and this may be even more important. I will command the fleet defending you personally. Glau can defend us from any inbound waves.”
“System cleared. Begin hacking.”
T+0: move hacker to edge of system. Cloak at full power. I can see Riot Starship IIIs out the window, providing forcefield defense in case the cloak should fall. But I have more important things to worry about. I need to unlock that data.
T+60: good progress, High Admiral has had no problems defending us.
T+150: Williams tripped a firewall. An AI anti-hacking routine is activated. I send a message to the High Admiral: AI response now estimated to be VERY HIGH. I repeat VERY HIGH.
T+220: Wave reported coming at homeworld. Half the fleet dispatched.
“Keep hacking.”
“Will do.”
T+330: Fleet reported as taking heavy casualties. Tachyon pulse knocked the cloak out. A zombie fighter got through, and hit the lower port section. No matter, that section was in charge of establishing a connection with the ARS, so its job was already done. We lost Williams. Never liked him anyway.
T+360: cloak back online
T+370: Glau’s subfleet has returned.
T+415: Broke through first major barrier to unlocking the station. Unfortunately the AI noticed and warped in an extra 300 mkIII ships.
T+500: We thank the heroic Riot III pilot who gave his life by activating his tractor modules to take 150 mkIII bombers away from the hacker. Another good man lost.
T+530: Second major data barrier breached. AI response similar to last time. Thankfully no heroism required this time around.
T+600: “Admiral: hack completed”
“Good work. Now go home, and take half an hour off. You deserve it.”
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Or, with less flavor but more concision, hacked ARS for shield bearers.
Unlocked shield bearers mkIII (SHIELD BEARERS! WOOT!).
3250 k left.
Econ is at max and I am out of almost out of AIP buffer (special forces posts), so I decide it is time for the first HW attack. I want a superfast cloaked strikeforce of elite units. I unlock Cloakers II and III. 1250 k.
I then group all the shield bearers, bomber IVs, speed boosters, spider Vs, and Starships (except for half the riots and the light starships) into one fleet of about 350 ships. The fleet is supported by Cloakers and the Merc Enclave starship, as well as 29 engineers. The rest of the fleet is on defense. I send it down from Relay to the first HW…
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The Infiltration:
The High Admiral looked terrible, but was in a good mood (for him) as he came on to my bridge.
“I will be coordinating the attack fleet from your vessel, Spire Captain Fleming. Control of this particular ship will remain yours, but it must survive, no matter what happens, for obvious reasons.”
Grumble grumble. No one likes to be expendable, even compared to a genius, but the Admiral was right; he was simply more valuable to humanity, and thus his presence meant my ship had to survive. I suppose this was actually good for my crew, but…
I digress.
“Our mission: scour the Mine Enthusiast Homeworld at Total Conversion of all guard posts. But I warn you, if we wake up any of the AI subcommanders on Arachna, Brisco Gap, or Deadly Folly… it’s over. We will not survive. Not just this fleet, everyone. Therefore we are going south from Relay, through No Retreat, then Always Go Left. We will succeed. We must. Any questions?”
“How strong is this fleet?” Idiot. Ensigns shouldn’t directly question the High Admiral. The comment was meant for me.
“It’s the best we can put together, it should reach and destroy the HW guard posts, and might even return more or less intact. Shield Bearers will defend us, spiders and Riot starships will hold the enemy at bay, bombers will destroy the enemy structures, and other starships and the resistance will kill the enemy fleet. It has to be a small fleet, otherwise we trigger the Eye. We don’t want that to happen. Now, if there are no more stupid questions, we sail.”
“How strong is the enemy fleet?” God. Jenkins just will not shut up.
“What war have you been fighting son? Stronger than ours, full of nasty tricks, unpredictable, highly armored, heavy firepower, you name it, they have it.”
“What kind of nasty tricks?” I think Jenkins is going back into cold storage after this flight. Everyone knows not to talk about what the AI could do. It is just too depressing.
“They have heavy beam cannons, capable of vaporizing lots of us at once, a fortress to carve us up, gravity guardians to slow us down, starships that can eat us whole, and mines. Lots and lots of mines.”
“No more questions. Time for the beginning of the end.”
We sail through No Retreat with no casualties, having already zapped the system.
The core world, Always Go Left, is a bit more of a problem, what with multiple ion cannons. However, the speed boosters and a short wormhole distance make it non-terrible. Only four unmanned shield drones lost.
Upon entrance to Total Conversion, five of our Cloakers are totally converted. To scrap. By mines. The Admiral quickly powers up the fleet, and it’s time to start the real mission.
Nearest post to the wormhole is a heavy beam, and it’s just chewing us up. My ship took a pounding: hull integrity at 8%. I retreat to the only Cloaker left, and a few seconds later the engi IIIs repair us to full. No idea how they do that, but I am rather grateful.
The fleet is staying together, and takes out two of three ion cannon IIs. Unfortunately, we came within fortress range. Shield bearers mkIs and IIs are dead now, but the engineers keep the rest up as working protection.
Going south in the system, suddenly the fleet stops moving. Gravity just went crazy. Admiral orders everyone to focus fire on the Grav Guardian. I thank the alien engineers who designed a ship to be immune to gravity. We sail forward to try to kill the thing, but suddenly we are inside a massive AI ship, our weapons don’t work, and we are slowly being dissolved in acid.
The fleet breaks us out 20 seconds later. We stay together, killing the last guard posts. Suddenly there is huge swarm of AI ships. Over fifteen hundred. They are weak though, and can’t do much against the Shields. They do kill the Engineers and Merc Enclave ship though. We were going to attack the Fortress III under double glass, but the Admiral said to pull out.
We are now without speed boosters or shields. Significant casualties on the retreat, but mission mostly successful.
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Zapped first HW. Refit. Carved Tachyon-free path to second HW, triggered and zapped core cpa.
Observation: three heavy beam posts all next the wormhole = dead fleet.
Took huge casualties. Repelled cpa (and the simultaneous waves and normal cpa). Refleet the elite ships. Time for the big attack on second HW…
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The Final Hour:
“Gather the entire fleet together, and build me a nuke.”
“Yes sir.”
“It’s ready sir.”
“Excellent.”
“Send an elite strike force of the Spire and Zenith starships to take out tachyons and warhead interceptors.”
“Done. No one returned.”
“Rebuild.”
“Now send the cloakers and warheads to the final AI Homeworld.”
“Warheads en route. Sitting at the last wormhole.”
“Nuke ‘em.”
“It’s done sir. The AI ships are… leaving their homeworld.”
“Send in the rest of the warheads under cloak and the entire fleet.”
“But sir, we need to defend against the released ships.”
“No. This war ends now.”
...
“First, use our missiles to destroy the Heavy Beam posts before the fleet arrives. Then split the missile group into three, to take out the far posts. Keep all the warheads under cloak. The fleet will kill the Spire shield post, then the AI Command Station.”
“Beam posts destroyed. The fleet has arrived, and is bombarding the Spire shield post. We are getting chewed up by the Superfortress. Also, one of the missile groups hit a tachyon guardian and died.”
“Dispatch spire and zenith ships to the post the missiles were going to kill, other ships need to kill the spire shield.”
“Other post dead.”
“Spire post dead. Not much left of us now.”
“Kill the Command Station. Officer, I am asking for all your lives, but it must be done to save humanity. Godspeed.”
“Yes sir.”
“AI Home Command Station destr—WHAT IS THAT? OH GOD!! It’s ripping right through us.”
“Pull your fleet back to our Homeworld. Except put the bombers in transports and send them to the other AI station.”
“Sir we have no bombers left.”
“Oh…”
At Human Home Command...
The Admiral hurriedly sent commands to the Engineer Corps to build bombers and transports as fast as they could. The second command station should have fallen to the eight lightning warheads planted hours ago, under cloak.
No immunities to major electric ammo were reported by the scouts. Joshua would need to be fired, as this mistake almost cost us everything.
The AI ships were next to the homeworld. The Admiral was once again grateful for the Riot Control Starships. Bombers and transports were reported as complete. He sent them in.
He leaned back, resigned, as the last AI Station fell.
"Sir, have we won? Will we survive?"
"This was never about survival. Only vengeance. I am going to sleep. I expect I will never wake up. I am sorry, but this was never a war we could win."
"But sir! SIR!"
He ignored me. I went to his second in command.
Glau gave me the defensive situation. Two giant monster ships coming in, as well as hundreds of normal mkVs, and seven hundred ships of assorted mkII rabble. Our fleet was in tatters, and we had few stationary defenses. It looked hopeless.
But then she said:
"I can make this work."
I hope so.
It doesn't look possible, but she hasn't failed us yet...
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Victory!! The last homeworld attack was pretty bad, but not as bad as I thought it would be. I am never playing on crosshatch again. Once I started to get AI carriers from the core I knew I had to win soon or not at all.
Nothing as exciting as last time, though; victory at close to twelve hours.
Possible bugs:
1: ships lose their cloak for a split second going through a wormhole. Not usually a big deal, but when you are escorting a nuke... (this happened despite cloaker SSs on both sides of the WH.)
I destroyed the warhead interceptors and guards around the wormhole to sidestep this.
2: You can nuke a planet with a warhead intercepter, just recquires some micro + pause.
3: AI Home Stations are immune to warheads, but it doesn't say so in their immunity list (no "Major Electric Ammo" listed).
4: You still get the AIP from a warhead destroyed by an intercepter, contrary to the text description. I will probably mantis these after I get some sleep.
State of Empire:
