My Noob Alpha AAR

[Mick]

I am at best, a "dabbler" in AI War. I decided that the best way I could give feedback for the alpha is to simply catalog my experience as it goes. I fully expect this game to end in disaster.

Game Setup:
All expansions enabled

First AI:
Chivalric/Artillarist 7
Second AI:
Bouncer/Reservist 7

* No champions
* No AI plots
* ALL minor factions enabled. Medium for spirecraft and golems. 4/10 settings on every one as appropriate.
* No auto AI-progress
* 80 planets, honeycomb map
* Normal ship types
* Map seed: 707532906

Game start:

I pick the planet on the bottom left to start because it only has one wormhole and should be easily defensible. As a bonus, it has one of the new ship types (Zenith Devastator). I don't realize at first that it's a star ship, so I spend a bit of time wondering where it is (didn't even know you could have bonus star ships neat).

I start with my standard "opening" strategy. Please don't laugh if this is awful, because I'm really not that good at the game.

I set one dock to produce scouts, and create three more docks for my standard fleet. These will produce fleet ships at a 5:5:1 ratio. My star ship constructor will produce the new ship and a flagship at 1:1 ratio for now. I make a butt-load of engineers and set things going. Sending out my scouts to see what's what.

And we are off...

[keith.lamothe]

I fully expect this game to end in disaster.

That's the spirit!

As a bonus, it has one of the new ship types (Zenith Devastator). I don't realize at first that it's a star ship, so I spend a bit of time wondering where it is (didn't even know you could have bonus star ships neat).

Good point, just added a note to their description that they're built at the Starship Constructor.

Sending out my scouts to see what's what.

Doom Well, they might actually survive.  Briefly.

[Mick]

Initial Scout Report:

My initial scout report finds that the planet next to mine (Lapyx) has 0/4 resources. Not pleased about that, but it could be worse. It has nothing fancy on it, so I'll be taking it for the knowledge and to simply expand my borders.

Undine has an ARS! I'm very rarely so lucky with these things. Nothing too annoying like an eye on it or anything either, just a fort.

Not too happy about having to alert a III and IV to take these, but that's life. Warp Jammer?..... NAH!

So my immediate goal is to snag both of these planets and get something of a turret situation going.

Of course my economy is in the hole right now, but I'll keep my knowledge unspent for the time being while I clear out these two planets. Poseiden and Seafowl both have distribution nodes, so I'll consider raiding those in order to get what I need for pumping our turrets, or if something goes horribly horribly wrong and I need to refleet faster than I thought.

EDIT: And if anyone wants to offer advice and/or point out the horrible strategic and tactical blunders I'm making, I promise you won't hurt my feelings. I like learning.

[Aklyon]

How the heck did you manage a 1 warp home on a grid-style map?

[Mick]

How the heck did you manage a 1 warp home on a grid-style map?

Just lucky I guess.

I did include the map seed.

[keith.lamothe]

How the heck did you manage a 1 warp home on a grid-style map?

Some honeycombs get a ton of holes punched in them, which can lead to a planet being without any neighbors at all, and then is autoconnected to the nearest planet (as maps where not all planets are connected aren't good, m'kay?).  Sometimes a 1-warp spot happens even without a full disconnection during mapgen; there's a planet like that on this map though I dunno if it was available as a HW pick.

[Mick]

My conquest for Undine is pulled back briefly to deal with a wave (which is easily dealt with).

In the meantime, I spend knowledge on bomber II's and set my star ship constructors to add in bomber star ships in order to make taking down that fortress a lot less of a snorefest.

Also, I upgraded my harvesters to level 3 because I'm impatient in general.

UPDATE: Undine captured, Shredder unlocked.

[Mánagarmr]

Bah, to bad you got the whineshredder and not the Utrom Shredder.

[keith.lamothe]

It'll still help if the AI tries to turtle.

[Mick]

Well I'm taking a break for now because I have some other things I want to do today, but my current status in the game is to determine my next move.

My current thought process is "Is it possible to take Seafowl right now?"

It's a 4/4 resource planet right at my front door, but also it's mark IV. It's mark is not the only complication, it has a fortress, an orbital mass driver, a Mark II and Mark III Ion cannon, and some nasty looking guardians.

Some might say trying to take it right now would be a Fowl's Errand...

...

...

*crickets*

OK, sorry about that.

[keith.lamothe]

The orbital mass driver isn't too big a deal as long as you kill it fairly quickly.  The ions are easily killed by raid starships.  The fort is bomber bait.  The guardians... well, there we may get into a bit of a difficulty.  But their durability is finite, and with enough loop building space docks your firepower is not

But I'm not sure there's much need to take the planet; even 4/4 resources isn't that big a deal if you've already got harvester IIIs.

My suggestion would be to wait until you've either got a good "space dock cannon" type (autobombs, fireflies, or railpods) to take it out "remotely" or you've got a big enough fleet that it doesn't really matter.  Even then, you may just want to neuter the planet.

[Mick]

I took the advice to table Operation Seafowl for now and upgraded my scouts to mark II in order to help scout further out.

Resolute Assassion and Tentacle Plant both have Core fabricators for vultures and bombers respectivly, so these sound like pretty good targets to get. One problem is that Resolute Assassin has one of those annoying rocketry corps things, but I guess I'll just have to live with the bombings (anything else you can do about these? I honestly don't know). It seems like they are too worthwhile to ignore completely.

Ocean Dragon also has one of those silo things.

Will Head HAD a data center, but I took it out, as well as neutering a lot of the stuff on Poseidon along the way.

My plan is to carve a path through Will Head and take on Resolute Assassin. Assassin doesn't have much that worries me. A barracks that I'll have to pop and a Warp Counterattack guardpost are the only things that stand out.

Tentacle Plant has a civilian leader I'd like to try to hold for long term AP reduction, and one of those new showdown things which sound nice to have (I don't know if holding one will cause any nasty side effects.)

After taking these out, the plan will be to go after Gillman. This will essentially be my front into the rest of the map, and it has a civilian leader I'd like to hold as well (as well as a data center to pop, score!) It also has a broken botnet golem on it. It will be a little annoying to take with the parasite eye, but I think what I'll do is transport raid with my new bombers. Of course, this may be getting ahead of myself.

[Mick]

Brief Update:

Resolute Assassin and Tentacle Plant are taken. Took a little longer than I thought because of some back and forth to deal with waves (I probably go a bit overboard with defense on them, but I figure I can't be too safe). Fortunately, Showdown Device doesn't appear to do anything nasty right when you take it.

Two new fabricators pumping out some ships. Next step is to break into the rest of the galaxy.

[Mick]

Brief Update:

I didn't give up on this game, I actually hammered at it for an hour or so last night. Gillman is proving to be a tough nut to crack (although I'm definitely making progress).

The AI was using its reserve to defend the planet, plus there is a parasite eye, and a lot of the guard posts are shielded and protected by a fortress. On top of this, the fortress has both a spider and a tractor 'thing' (don't remember they were guard posts or guardians, I often get both confused) defending it... there was also a ion cannon next to the fortress.

So basically I was fruitlessly throwing bomber strikes trying to dismantle this defensive monstrosity while the reserve units chewed me up from behind (and half of them got engine killed as well). I believe the guard post on the planet was also a special type that made the enemies faster (ugh!)

Somewhere in the middle of this assault, the cookie monster decided to slowly move back and forth along my reinforcement path, so I had to kinda wait him out. And my ball on Ocean Dragon waiting to reinforce would sometimes get harassed by the rocket silo on that same planet, cause you know.. it wan't easy enough.

At this point, I've managed to dismantle the annoying stuff around the fortress (but not the fortress itself), and I stopped being dumb about the reserve ships and simply popped the command station to stop them from spawning (once it clicked for me that it would do this). I was a bit hesitant to do this before because of the barracks, but those units being unleashed is not nearly as much of a pain as the reserve.

[keith.lamothe]

Interesting, sounds like you ran into a subcommander planet, since they're the only ones to get the special command stations and guard posts.  The placement of the fort and ion cannon and whatnot wasn't specified though, but they of course get placed next to guard posts where it was gaming the placement.

Sounds gloriously nasty