[WON!] - Alarming Vengefulness (10RaidEngine/Vengeful // 10Vanguard/Alarmist)

[Kahuna]

You don't cycle up your turrets do you? like your defensive design that is in your strategy thread  as you unlock higher and higher levels of missile/laser/etc turrets they are just being added to your overall defense correct? (With the except of probably the global cap turrets like tractors, and such) so once you've unlocked mk II missiles for example, you'd fullcap mk1 and 2 on your systems?

Yes I build higher mark level turrets in addition to lower levels. I want and usually need all the firepower I can get.

If I'm beachheading or capturing a planet temporarily as a staging ground, to avoid deep striking or to allow Assault Transport to travel the longest possible distance without being destroyed I might leave Mark Is out if I have say Mark IIIs or IVs. That's to save energy if I'm tight on budget.

[Kahuna]

Fourth day of this game.


Am clearing the surroundings of Droch (the second ZPG). Zir still has dozens of Guardians even though I've already destroyed dozens and dozens of them. NTigers are being cut down like grass by those Laser Guardians.



Just expanding my horizons by raiding Tachyon Guardians and Raid Engines and scouting as far as possible. Looking for planets that are worth capturing and most importantly AIs' homeworlds. Finding the homeworlds helps me decide which planets are worth capturing because I'm going to have to make "highways" to the homeworlds anyway. So when I find the homeworlds I'm going to pick a route and capture important planets on and nearby that route. Naturally I triggered multiple Raid Engines while doing this so I got another 6k ships incoming. Already triggered 4 Raid Engines.



I'm basically just going in with the MSDs and NTigers and focusing on destroying the Tachyon Guardians so my (Mark I (don't want to use knowledge to unlock higher marks of scouts)) Scouts don't get destroyed and get as far as possible. If I didn't have NTigers I'd do this with Assault Transports and possibly Fighters (Bonus damage vs Medium (Tachyon Guardians)).


Manually shift clicking on those Tachyon Guardians. Then I go through a wormhole and destroy all Tachyon Guardians on the other side the same way. Then I repeat that for all wormholes or as many as I can. I also destroy any Raid Engines I come across. And now I've got over 12k ships incoming. Most of them are Mark III and IV.


Had to use one Mark I Lightning Warhead.

And another one. That blob of 414 ships is what's left of the Carrier that was about to drill trough my Force Fields.

I manually ordered all Engineers to repair the Force Fields while they were still out of range. Everything should be in control now.



Made some progress on scouting and got myself 17k worth of Raid Engine waves. I'll definitely have to use multiple Warheads but I think it's worth it because this way I save alot of time. Tachyon Guardians are destroyed on the orange planets. Now I'll just send scouts to those planets and all planets next to them. And repel this Raid Engine CPA of course. I've soon scouted half of the galaxy..
..The reprisal wave was now announced so the total number of incoming AI ships increased to a bit over 19k.



Time to start popping some Warheads
Before:

After:



Before:

After:



Before:

After:



Before:

After:



And everything is under control again. A lot of AIP was increased that day.
But it was the only way to be sure.



Found the other AI homeworld! Didn't manage to scout it but I did manage to scout a core planet next to it!

Again based on various distances I've made a new guess where the second AI homeworld is which I've marked on this map as red. The orange arrows show my next scouting routes. I think the upper red planets have a higher chance of being AI homeworlds so I'm going to go with the upper scouting route first.

Also the second CPA was announced and it's a tad short of 14k ships. In other words it's smaller than what I got from all of those Raid Engines few minutes ago. So it shouldn't a biggie. And now that I've soon found both AI homeworlds I think it's a good time to start building Armored Warheads. Especially when I got millions of salvage from those +19k ships sent by the Raid Engines.


The CPA has spawned and threat is now at a bit over 15k. I'm spreading scouts on various AI planets around my planets so I can see beforehand where most of the Carriers are coming from. I also started a knowledge hack on LV-3615 which is next to my homeworld. So far the hacking response is quite underwhelming. Or perhaps the firepower of my beachhead is just overwhelming. Anyway I've got 1632 knowledge from that already so I think I'm going to unlock Mark II Needler Turrets. After the hack finishes I'll have 2000 knowledge left. Then I'll probably hack another planet after which I'll have 5000 knowledge.. which is enough to unlock Mark III Military Command Stations. Mark III Mil CSs will tremendously increase the strength of my defenses. Mark II provides planetary attack boost of +50% and Mark III provides +100% so the difference should be noticeable. It also shoots 8 projectiles instead of 6 so it will disable 4 AI ships every second since it has a reload time of 2 seconds.



I've built beachheads like this on 4 planets. I've left 2 Remain Rebuilders and a Mobile Builder on each of them. These Core Sniper Turrets (which are immune to EMP) just sniped 2 EMP Guardians before they entered Zir. The only downside of defensive beachheads like this is that they keep the fights on AI planets for quite a while so I don't get the salvage from it. Although I'm sure I'll get my salvage soon enough.




The defenses are working perfectly even though I had to use a couple of warheads on Zir. Over half of the CPA decided to attack Zir, probably because of the ZPG. I tends to after Traders' toys, Advanced Factories and such.

The beachhead on Corali II-6F (631 threat) completely stopped the CPA Carriers that were coming from there and has already destroyed about half of them. The beachhead on LV-3615 (161 threat) is still holding back some of the AI's ships and greatly softened up the CPA before it entered my homeworld. Didn't need a single warhead on my homeworld. However there were well over 6000 AI ships on SHC-95302 (438 threat) so that beachhead was overrun. It still held back the CPA for minutes, softened it up and most importantly stopped those 2 EMP Guardians.

On Zir I used a Mark II Lightning Warhead as soon as the first 2000 threat came through the wormhole. They were almost all Mark IV and there was a few hundred Shield Bearers. And it seems like the Carriers are partly filled with Shield Bearers I might have to use a few more warheads.

And as soon as I finished writing that sentence^^ the Carrier unloaded 83 Mark III Shield Bearers. Luckily my MSDs just arrived so I can start spamming Neinzul ships.


Wow I'm so happy with the performance of these beachheads. This one has completely stopped over 1000 ships so no threat from this direction at all. It will certainly shred the rest of those Carriers to pieces.

Also time to pop a Mark I Warhead on my homeworld. I moved too many Engineers and Remain Rebuilders to Zir..
..And time to pop another one.


The CPA has been repelled and all defenses including the beachheads are rebuilt. Time to hack me some more knowledge.

Mean while on Hephyrus the Cookie Monster is hungry for my Warheads. It's actually chasing them (it turns as I move the Warheads away from it... Gonna have to bring the MSDs from the hacking planet to Hephyrus so I can safe escort the Warheads to another planet.



About half way through the hack the AI sends a wave of ~2000 ships in response and the beachhead is overrun. Soon after all the threat and numerous EMP Guardians enter my homeworld and all my turrets and shields get EMPd for 2 minutes. Had to use a Mark I Warhead to destroy all the Guardians (there were dozens of them) before they destroyed my Home Command Station..

..Oh I have -8 hacking points. That explains this.


34 seconds of EMP left and they're getting close. Argh.. need another warhead..

..Oh of course. The range closest to my Home Command Station you see there is the range of those ~700 AI Missile Frigates... which are immune to Warheads. Great. Damn EMP Guardians. Not cheap or anything. No surprise I died few seconds after this. Time for the second reload in this playthrough. I think this is the second one.


Ok where are we now. Right. I've just started the hack and Cookie Monster is chasing the Warheads..
Yeah time for a break.


03h39m.sav attached.
Edit: It's actually 04h46m

[Atepa]

I'm not sure what time zone you live in, but I do so enjoy the fact that you seem to update your AAR at around 7AM my time, it gives me something to read while at work... (when I have time, heh)

I had a question about your beachheads... do they not eventually get overrun? I mean you're sitting on an AI planet and just constant putting on alert that system (which would be regardless due to adjacent to you), but also all the systems connected to it, which I don't believe are really neutered other than Tachy's and REs so the other posts should be getting tons of reinforcements, shouldn't they?

[Kahuna]

I'm not sure what time zone you live in, but I do so enjoy the fact that you seem to update your AAR at around 7AM my time, it gives me something to read while at work... (when I have time, heh)

I had a question about your beachheads... do they not eventually get overrun? I mean you're sitting on an AI planet and just constant putting on alert that system (which would be regardless due to adjacent to you), but also all the systems connected to it, which I don't believe are really neutered other than Tachy's and REs so the other posts should be getting tons of reinforcements, shouldn't they?

I'm glad you enjoy it. I live in Helsinki so UTC +2.
http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/
https://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/

Yes they do get overrun every now and then. Even though they're meant to keep the planet clear of threat and to stall any attacks coming through that planet they're also meant to be expendable. It would be unreasonable to expect a beachhead to stop 6000 ships when you get attacked by a CPA. So the beachhead will certainly be overrun and completely destroyed (only the remains will remain) but at that point it has done it's job which was so soften up and delay the CPA. In this game during the second CPA I think the beachhead next to Zir destroyed like 1000 of the 6000 ships that were about to attack Zir. And in Corali II-6F the beachhead completely stopped the ~1000 ships that were coming from there.

Now that I have cross planet waves enabled the beachheads also work to counter and soften up normal waves because the waves spawn on top of the Warp Gates on AI planets. So if I have a beachhead on that planet the wave that just spawned will first fight the beachhead before entering my planet. That could be good or bad. Bad because when the waves get big the beachhead will probably get overrun every time.

Alerting planets isn't something I really worry about unless they're planets I regularly go through. If a planet is uninteresting to me (as in I'm not going to capture it) it doesn't matter if it has 100 or 1000 guards (not threat) because I'll just ignore them. Also the more planets AI has on alert the thinner it's reinforcement budget is spread. So one strategy is to alert some distance planets on purpose make the AI "waste" some of it's reinforcement budget over there.

[Kahuna]

Ok lets get on with the hack.


So this is why the hack got overrun. The AI spawned 2 waves of ~2000 ships on top of the Command Station at once.

And for some reason I'm running out of metal..
..-1400 metal/s from the Matter Convertors. Ok going to scrap some of the beachheads for now.


-400 metal/s from Matter Converters now.


The Traders have come to visit my homeworld. Time to start building a Mark II Radar Jammer.



Now the threat from the hack is attacking my homeworld and some Mark III EMP Guardians from adjacent planets are about to join them. Going to send a Mark I Lightning Warheads through a wormhole to meet the EMP Guardians.


Phew. I just avoided 2 minutes of EMP.


Time to stop the hack. Also the Cookie Monster is still chasing the Warheads. There's dozens of guardians on the planet next to the Warheads so I can't move them away from that planet. Clearing the Guardians with NTigers and MSDs takes too long and I need the MSDs on my homeworld now.


And a reload because I was focused on the fight and the Cookie Monster caught the Warheads. Aint gonna enable the Devourer anymore. I didn't remember it eats Warheads too. 


Ok so I loaded the 03h39m.sav (which is actually 04h46m) again and stopped the hack immediately. Cleared the threat (guardians) on SHC-3278 and AS2209. Moved the Warheads to AS2209 and waited until the Devourer left Hephyrus. Now I'll go scout and destroy some Raid Engines to make my life easier later on and also to increase AIP so I get more hacking points to hack more safely. I also scrapped most of the beachheads and only left the Gravitational Turrets and Missile Turrets.


So I did some scouting and found the other AI Homeworld.

It's Calais.

Now I need to start destroying all the Data Centers and Co-Processors. However I've ran into a problem:

That Missile Command Station has attack multiplier against Polycrystal so how am I going to break through that.. argh, sub commanders. It will take forever. And as soon as I start spamming 2 Raid Engines get triggered.

Then the Raid Engine waves force me to stop spamming NTigers and while things calm down on this planet the Raid Engines cooldowns are almost done and they're ready to send another wave.

Yep. At least I'll get the Raid Engine before these waves spawn.

Off to the adjacent planet to destroy that Raid Engine.. let's hope that planet doesn't have a sub commander..
..And now the EMP Guardian that was under those quadrillion Force Fields and next to the Raid Engine I just destroyed just EMPd my homeworld.


So I managed to destroy both of those Raid Engine^^ but I still have 6335 threat. I also pushed forward with my NTigers right next to the Core planet (AS17174) and triggered the Raid Engine. Didn't want to enter the Core planet to destroy the Tachyon Guardians in there just yet. It could have triggered something nasty on the AI Homeworld. Like a CPA Guard Post.

The threat just arrived to my homeworld with an EMP Guardian (of course) so I had to use a Mark III Lightning Warhead since they were almost all Mark III or IV.

Going to take a look at the Core planet and the AI Homeworld now.
Here's the core planet. Holy. Cow. 16 Core EMP Guardians. That's 13 minutes 20 seconds of EMP.

And here's the Homeworld



So now I've found both AI Homeworlds and I can start preparing the attack. Although I think I need a bit more knowledge before that. AIP is now at 137 which isn't too bad. I have about 40 minutes to 1 hour until the next CPA which is probably going to be a bout 22000 ships. We'll see. I'd like to attack the other AI Homeworld after that CPA. So I have, lets say 40 minutes, to destroy as many Tachyon Guardians, Raid Engines and AIP reducers as possible and get as much knowledge as possible and scout as much as possible. My hacking progress is now 40 so I can safely finish the hack that I had to stop earlier. So next I'm going to rebuild the hacking beachhead and go scout and raid with NTigers at the same time. Got to be fast and furious now.


Good progress was made again. Time for a little break.


05h06m.sav attached.

[Kahuna]

Awesome! Got myself 14000 threat and still +5000 ships coming from triggering multiple Raid Engines and 2 Raid Eyes! Fast and furious indeed. Might have to cancel the hack once again. Am getting my warheads ready before the threat arrives..
..AAANNND now I got myself a 8496 ship reprisal wave.. what?! Well. At least I have full caps of Lightning Warheads. I need to finish the hack so I can unlock Mark III Mil CSs to counter this amount of threat..
..Ok never mind the hacking beachhead was blanketed with Tachyon so the hack is over. If I survive this I'll easily survive the next CPA too.


Here they come..




Glorious..
..and after many more Lightning Warheads. Threat+attacking AI ships is now at ~3000. Time to get back to raiding, scouting and hacking. Although I'd have easily died without the Warheads that wasn't even close. Still have few Warheads left. I think ~200 AIP is where it's at. Then I'll have to be very careful.


Did the same again and got 10k AI ships. Only had to use one Mark I Lightning Warhead to stop the first 5000 and I only need to hack 516 more knowledge from the planet. I found the third and the fourth Co-Processors. Also Doom Shrooms also gave me the "Thief" achievement.



Now I'm just going wait for the threat to arrive and then I'm going to blitzkrieg those Co-Processors and try to finish the hack. It's going to trigger a mininum of 5 Raid Engines which is going to be at least 10000 ships. In addition to that the hacking will most likely send at least 4000 ships before the hack finishes. And after the hack finishes it's going to spawn the after hack response. Need to pump out some more warheads. After that I'll need to get ready for the CPA and probably start building Armored Warheads too. When that is done the hardest part before attacking the AI homeworlds is over. Unless I'm going to hack the Super Terminal later. Which is most likely going to be extreme to say the least. Although I probably can't afford to do the nuking hack because I'm not using Economical Command Stations so I don't have enough turrets to do it.



The threat is now being turned into salvage on my homeworld and my MSDs are in position to start building NTigers to blitzkrieg the Co-Processors.


I just realized the AIP is going to be reduced by only 10 which is as much (or little?) as Data Center. There's 4 Co-Processors and each increases the AIP by 20.. and when all are destroyed the AIP is reduced by 90. In addition to that the AIP floor is going to raise. Oh well -10 is better than nothing. Anyway I'm not going to bother destroying the Raid Engines because after this I'll never have to travel in this part of the galaxy in this game again..
..Done!

Although I wonder why the AIP was reduced by 30 instead of 10 since 4*20-90=-10. Whatever, I'll take this. This is a better deal than that -10.


All the threat has been repelled and I had to use a couple of warhead but it's ok since the AIP has been reduced quite a bit and I've got more hacking points. I've also accumulated a nice fleet just by using the Core Doom Shrooms. These ships are all reclaimed from the AI. I'm actually going to start saving the Bombers and Zenith Electric Bombers for the AI Homeworld attacks. They're going to help me bring down the Force Fields.



And FINALLY the hack is finished and I get my Mark III Mil CSs.

Now off to destroy the 2 Data Centers I have visibility on..
..Destroyed the other one in the lower part of the galaxy where some of the Co-Processors were so it triggered 3 Raid Engines. The other one is heavily protected by Force Fields and Guardians next to one of the Core planets. The last bits of the threat are now attacking my homeworld and I get to test the Mark III Mil CSs.. the difference in my firepower is noticeable. Thousands of AI ships are melting like a piece of butter hit with a glowing hot sledgehammer. If you want to this is a perfect opportunity to test the defenses and see them yourself. Feel free to use a warhead if you have to. Also try focus firing the Carriers by selecting all Needler and Laser Turrets and the OMD and then clicking a specific Carrier. I don't actually know how this fight is going to go. Paused, wrote and posted this.


05h55m.sav attached.


Edit: Yeah didn't need a single warhead and Force Fields barely got damaged.
And there was probably close to 800 AI ships disabled and out of the fight thanks to the Mark III Mil CS.

[Kahuna]

This is what I meant by the other Data Center being heavily protected...

A lot of Guardians, including that Tractor Guardian, under a Force Field on top of the wormhole. Argh. And the Data Center is sooo close too. Gonna have to just keep grinding. At least the Special Forces went away. I think I'm going to have to leave this one and focus on building defensive beachheads now before the third CPA arrives.


........................................................................................... -____-' and a reload because of the Cookie Monster again. I tested whether it was chasing the warheads by moving the sideways.......... the devourer didn't change it's course so I assumed it's not interested in them but apparently it changed it's mind while I was looking elsewhere. Not going to put up with stuff like that so I'm going to reload the sav file I just attached above.


Ok. So I reloaded, cleaned up the attacking AI ships and built some beachheads. I think the next CPA is going to arrive soon so I'm going to take it easy for a moment. There's still 2800 threat but apparently my defenses are so strong they chose not to attack. I think I'm going to grind that Data Center and build one or two more beachhead while waiting for the CPA. I've already capped out my Lightning Warheads.


Time for a break.


06h10m.sav attached

[Atepa]

I feel like I need snacks and a drink while reading this epic movie.

[Kahuna]

I feel like I need snacks and a drink while reading this epic movie.

I know right!

I've already played a little bit after posting 06h10m.sav *spoiler alert* (well not really a spoiler) and the third CPA was announced and spawned just as I predicted, around the 6 hour mark. After that I can hopefully start attacking the AI Homeworlds.

The fireworks are going to be epic! Bring out the popcorn!

[Kahuna]

So the CPA has been announced and it will spawn in 8 minutes 45 seconds. It's 198358 ships so a bit smaller than I predicted. I thought it would be about 22000 ships but I guess it ended up being a bit short of 20k because I managed to destroy the Co-Processors and a few Data Centers just in time. Now I'm clearing some nearby AI planets of threat with this reclaimed fleet so I can build some defensive beachheads and have some depth in my defenses before the CPA arrives. After building the beachheads I need to save as much metal as I can..



..And speaking of saving metal for some odd reason some of the threat decided to attack Tranatos. Looks like the AI read my mind and decided to help me a little bit by recycling some of it's ships. I need to focus down that Carrier but I don't think it will be a problem. Especially with the Mark III Military Command Stations.

I'm going to send the MSDs to help repel the attack but I'm going to keep securing the beachhead planets while they're being built with the rest of the fleet. I ambushed the AI from behind. You aint leaving this planet alive AI!

Also I need to spread out my scouts tactically so I see the CPA Carriers 2 hops before they're on my planets. I've marked the beachheads and where I'm going to send scouts on this map.

Each beahhead is going to be exactly like this one. Mark I-III Needler Turrets, Mark I Laser Turrets, some Mark II Gravitational Turrets, Core Missile and Sniper Turrets and 2 Remains Rebuilders and a Mobile Builder. These turrets counter the most important hull types at the moment. I'm not really worried about Fighters.



What?? The CPA just spawned and it's only 4556 ships(!). Perhaps there weren't enough AI ships in the galaxy so it freed some ships from the Strategic Reserve and the Special Forces. That means a lot of Mark V ships and Missile Guardians..
..Yeah. 3639 ships from the Strategic Reserve. Those probably all Mark V or Mark IV. And those 192 ships from the Special Forces are probably all Missile Guardians. I hope they're not all Mark V.

I'd like to clarify that a smaller CPA isn't necessarily easier because the amount of total strength stays the same. I think those 198358 ships were Mark II ships since the AIs' tech level is II. So the AI basically converted the strength of those 198358 into 4556 ships that have the same amount of total strength. So there could be Hunter/Killers too and there has been many times in my previous games.


Also I'm running out of metal and some of the beachheads are still under construction. I think I'm just going to pop this conveniently placed Distribution Node with the Missile Turrets on this Beachhead.

*pop*



Ah here the Missile Guardians come. 89 Mark V Missile Guardians. Nice. Luckily they're on their own so I can go meet them with NTigers and probably destroy them. They're just about to enter Corali II-6F which is one of my beachhead planets. That amount of Missile Guardians would certainly walk over any of my beachheads.

And shortly after 3 Carriers (more than half of the whole CPA(!)) appear on Gradian which are following the Missile Guardians. So they're not on their own anymore. Well that would have been strangely bold and too good to be true. Also a wave conveniently spawned on SHC-3278 just in time to assist the CPA. Luckily SHC-3278 also has a beachhead. Good thing I prepared well for this CPA.



NTigers are going head on with the Missile Guardians on Corali II-6F and the Carriers will arrive soon. I focus fired the Laser Guardians with Sniper Turrets since they have attack multiplier against Polycrystal (NTigers). That amount of high mark level Missile Guardians are proving to be really tanky even when they got in range of my beachhead.



Tranatos got it's fair share of CPA too. That will be easily auto stopped without even looking..

..speaking of stopping and looking I just realized I need to build all 12 Mark I HBCs on my homeworld before the 3000 threat and the Guardians walk over the beachhead and arrive to end my days. Luckily the Missile Guardians are dumb enough to actually chase the MSDs around. On the ohter hand the Carriers seem to be heading straight to the wormhole leading to my homeworld. All these AI ships are pretty much the whole CPA. There's still 800 threat somewhere where I don't have visibility on but 800 ships is no biggie. AI you need to try harder if you are to impress me. I've seen much worse CPAs *knocks the wood*..


..Ah this explains the small size of the CPA. Those Guardians are almost all Mark V and ALL of those fleet ships are Mark III or V. I need to focus that Core Munitions Guardian and then the Core Implosion Guardians before anything else. Also there's still 89 Missile Guardians on Corali II-6F and they're now about to join the fight..

..And shortly after it appear that the Carriers are almost entirely filled with Mark III Zenith Electric Bombers. Yeah I don't want those near my Force Fields.

Oh well. What would a CPA be without having use a warhead or two.



And Holy. Cow. The Missile Guardians did a lot of damage to the Force Fields in one burst. After detonating the Mark II Lightning Warhead there were still some Missile Guardians' missile in the air (space?) flying towards my Command Station.

That was enough to destroy 2 Force Fields and put 2 Mark III Force Fields down to 38% and 27% health and damage the others too.

The attack has been repelled but there's still ~1400 threat. I also got a reprisal of ~2000 ships because the beachhead on Corali II-6F was completely destroyed. Spamming the NTigers also contributed to the reprisal wave.


.......WHAT?! 4 Hunter/Killers are heading towards my homeworld from Corali II-6F. I have to say I'd have been very surprised if that^^ would have been all of it. Ok AI you got me impressed. They're already almost om top of the wormhole. And they're immune to the OMD too.

And the reprisal wave just spawned on LV-3515. Luckily the beachhead hasn't suffered any damages yet.


Fire everything!

Mean while on LV-3515 2 Mark II EMP Guardians joined the reprisal wave. Luckily I have Core Sniper Turrets so I can snipe them before they EMP my homeworld too.



And the last Hunter/Killer is about to bet turned into salvage. My fleet took some heavy losses since the Hunter/Killers focused on my ships instead of Turrets and Force Fields. That was easier than I thought. Destroying all 4 Hunter/Killers took only about 43 seconds.

There was close to 5 million salvage on my homeworld alone. A perfect time to start building Armored Warheads. Need to scrap the beachheads in order to have enough energy for the warheads. Lets see if I get another salvage wave.. I mean reprisal wave..
..And sure enough few seconds later. "AI 2 Reprisal Warning Level 1". The only beachhead I'm going to rebuild temporarily is the one on LV-3615 to get rid of the ~1k threat hanging in there. Gonna go in with my whole fleet support the beachhead and minimize losses.

Yeah talk about minimizing losses. My fleet actually got bigger after the fight. Also the reprisal wave was just announced. ~100 guardians. Of course.



Hahahaha I scrapped the remaining Remains Rebuilders and Mobile Builders on those beachhead planets (which I just scrapped) and the I says "How stupid do you think we are?". Well it's not nice to call anyone "stupid" but I do think you should step up your game Mr. AI. "They must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel when they hired the programmers to program us"



My next step is to capture the Spire Archive and get the knowledge from it. First I'm going to capture Avema and use it as a staging ground to capture the Spire Archive. Capturing Avema also allows Transports to travel from my planets to Avema without getting destroyed (attrition per wormhole) and to avoid deep striking. Sure capturing the Spire Archive will alert the Core world but I don't care since I'm going to warhead everything on the Core worlds anyway. Trying to overpower the Core worlds with only my fleet would be a suicide. Could as well just scrap all of my ships..
..Anyway I've marked the route (blue arrows) I'm going to take. The route is already clear of Tachyon Guardians and Raid Engines so staying on that route is safe. There are some Guard Posts still left but they will be easily cleaned up. Now let's get going. 1 hour and 30 minutes until the next CPA.



Oh of course. The Special Forces are coming to defend Avema because it's an ARS planet. Great. And now I'm deep striking too.

Actually.. Avema has a Plasma Eye and there's a lot of Guard Posts so it's literally impossible to capture in a reasonable amount of time. Especially without Assault Transports. Yeah I'm going to capture the adjacent AS1360 instead. I'm just going to destroy the AI CS on AS1360, collect the knowledge and wait for things to calm down and then capture it..
..On second though I'm going first wait for things to calm down and then do it. Luckily they're not interested in my Transports.



Umm.. I'm just going to pretend I didn't alert the Special Forces for now.

I hope they attack one of my core planet instead of AS1360 I'm about to capture.

Ok the Special Forces are attacking Droch. Time for warheading again..

..Good thing one Mark I Lightning Warhead was enough to clean up the Missile Guardians that were out ranging my Needler Turrets.


AS1360 has been secured. Now I'm going to unlock Assault Transports and clear my way to the Spire Archive..

..Meanwhile on my homeworld. There's 187 AI ships on my homeworld and 78 of them are Guardians. Mostly Mark II Guardians, some Mark IIIs. I also completed the construction of my very first Armored Warhead. A Mark III Armored Warhead. Ooohhh buddy did building that thing take a long time. And it costs 3 million metal too.. Going to build Mark Is and IIs first now.



I loaded everything including the Neinzul ships and the kitchen sink into the Assault Transports and am going to neuter Avema. The rest of the planets I can clear with MSDs and NTigers. The Plasma Eye is an extremely nasty thing. It destroys MSDs (and starships and other big things) too so spamming NTigers isn't an option. Surely I could bombard Avema with 10 Space Docks and 30 Engineers spamming NTigers but I think it would take way too long..
..BOOM! And the Assault Transports one shot the very first Mark IV Missile Guardian I ordered them to attack on. Oohh yeah.  Don't wanna go near that Anti Starship Guard Post just yet though..

..Oh never mind. Apparently Assault Transports aren't considered to be "starships". Ok cool..
..Aand the planet is clear. I may not have Golems but I have Assault Transports and warheads.



However this planet is too much. Too much firepower and too many shields. I'm just going to fly past this planet with Assault Transports in stand down mode. Also a wave of 2753 was announced. A good example how big of an impact +20 AIP increase has on high difficulty level. Before I captured AS1360 the waves had less than 2000 ships so that's a significant increase.



This is just ridiculous. Look at the amount of Guardians and Force Fields.

There was probably literally 100 Guardians on this planet but I managed to get rid of them by attacking all Guard Posts and the Command Station so they got freed as threat and flied away.
Done. And the last Guardians leave the planet as well. Except those that were still camping under those Force Fields and next to the Fortress and the Cloaker Guard Post... Of course... Going to bring in the Engineers, Colony Ships and others with Assault Transports now. Metal bank is conveniently topped off too so building all the defenses (and additional Matter Converters (and sustaining them)) shouldn't be a problem. Lets hope the threat turns itself into salvage on one of my core planets.



What?!!? 257 Mark V Guardians which are all attack boosted by Mark V Munitions Guardians! Just wow. Grinding that will take a long time.

Lets see if the other scout makes it through the wormhole alive..
......HAHAHAHA!. Holy. Cow. 2 Raid Engines, 1 Raid Engine Guard Post and a CPA Guard Post. Don't need no Wrath Lances nor Teuthida things to have a scary AI Homeworld. And there's 18 Mark V EMP Guardians too! This has to be one of the nastiest AI Homeworlds I have ever encountered and I've played this game for.. let me check.. 2687 hours. And the distance are so long too. The Raid Engine AI type never disappoints. Really.

I might have to destroy the other AI first and then this AI. Might even nuke the waves that spawn from those things and then blitzkrieg the planet with warhead and everything else. Yeah, definitely bring out the popcorn and facehuggers Edit: what on earth is a "facehugger"?? Did the forum just "auto moderate" the word s.u.n.g.l.a.s.s.e.s I wrote? Apparently so. when it's time for that.


I think this is a perfect end for this post.


07h24m.sav attached.

[keith.lamothe]

I've been wondering if the Preemption 10/10 would cause the AI to come up short in CPAs since it's basically putting 100% of its reinforcement guards straight into threat. But apparently you're still seeing guard forces after the CPAs, so perhaps it was just a matter of it not being cheeky enough to read "19k" as "19k Guardians" and it adjusted for individual unit strength.

[Kahuna]

Ok so scouting that homeworld changes things a little bit. I'm going to get the knowledge from the spire archive next but I'm not quite sure what to do after that. Whether I should hack the Mark V Needler and Laser Turrets or the Super Terminal. Or just attack the other AI homeworld.

The waves from all of those Raid Engines on Raid Engine AI's homeworld wouldn't be as big if I attacked it now as they would be if I destroyed the other AI first. Btw.. I dearly hope the other unscouted core planet is owned by AI 2 and doesn't have a Raid Engine of it's own.. going to scout it now..
..Scouts were unable to get through. Well. We'll see when I start attack then.


Aha so there's the threat. There's even 4 Hunter/Killers in total on Ascs 6680 and SHC-95302 (the 2 threat planets near Droch). I hope they're not threat too. They could be leftovers from the CPA and if they are, they are threat.

Anyway I'm sending my whole fleet and Engineers to SHC-2511 (the Spire Archive planet) to capture it and then deal with the remaining Guardians and the Fortress that are camping under the 2 Force Field Guard Posts. I'm also going to scrap AS1360 since I don't have enough energy to sustain that many defenses. I've already scrapped all of my beachheads and have to use many Matter Converters. In addition to that I'm building Armored Warheads so I'd run out of metal.

And success. That was pretty close though.. there was a lot of long range Guardians under that Cloaker Guard Post and they all tried to destroy my CS as soon as it was built. And the Ion Cannon killed all the Engineers so I couldn't really build anything. Thankfully capturing the planet also captured the Ion Cannon which was of course destroyed by the Guardians and Fortress next to it. So capturing the planet was a handy way to get rid of the Ion Cannon. Time to rebuild the Engineers and then build everything else. The Spire Archive gather knowledge with a rate of 5/s and it can collect up to 9000 knowledge from a planet so it will take 20 minutes. Then in-game time is about 7 hours and 55 minutes which is roughly when the next CPA should be announced.


Scrapping everything on AS1360 but leaving an Assault Transport with a few Colony Ships, Engineers and Remains Rebuilders on it so I can recolonize it when I'm done with the Spire Archive and want to get back home. This is how I always do AI homeworld attacks. I capture expendable planets like AS1360 just as a staging ground and then scrap it to save energy when I move forward or retreat back to my core planets..


..And the Spire Archive planet is built and secured. Now I just need to wait for it to collect the knowledge. I need to pause building Armored Warheads for a moment and get myself more metal before the CPA. With the knowledge I have and will get from the Spire Archive I'm going to unlock Mark II and Mark III Force Fields and Mark II HBCs. I need all the Force Fields since now things are starting to get serious.


Also I managed to scout the other Core world now and guess what.. of course it has a Raid Engine. Silly me for hoping it wouldn't. And it has 9 Mark V EMP Guardians too!

Yeah I'm already leaning towards destroying the other AI first and nuking the Homeworld and the Core planet after the waves have spawned. It will destroy all the Raid Engine waves except perhaps the one from the Core Raid Engine Guard Post. I don't remember if those are all Mark V ships. It will also destroy the Raid Engines themselves.



Some threat attacks my homeworld with the support of an EMP Guardian that EMPs everything for 30 seconds. But at this point It's not a big deal. Those 50 Laser Guardains are going to destroyed in matter of seconds and the Carriers will also be recycled in no time.

I got an insane amount of metal income from that attack so I can continue building Mark II Armored Warheads..
..And the Trader arrives my homeworld just in time. I think I'm going to start building a Mark II Radar Jammer to halve AI's range on my homeworld. This thing costs 10 million metal so it's going to take a while but it's also going to be worth it. Since the AI's range will be halved on this planet I'm not going to need as many defenses so I can move some of the HBCs to other planets.

Triggered a Raid Engine to help me build the Radar Jammer a bit faster. Yes that is a Raid Engine. Just one. Carriers filled with Mark III Zenith Electric Bombers do a lot of damage and they're tanky as well.



Got a lot of salvage from the Raid Engine wave. All the knowledge from the Spire Archive has been collected and I'm rebuilding AS1360 to get out safely. Then I'll scrap the Spire Archive planet.... or wait a second. It could actually work as a distraction to the CPA. It could draw a part of the CPA so my other planets wouldn't get hit as hard. Yeah I'm going to leave it be for now. AS1360 I'm going to scrap as soon as the AI attacks it. Then I'll just replace the 150000 energy from the Energy Collector by building 3 Matter Converters on one of my core planets. The new Force Fields have also been built.

Shortly after I went to clear the way to the other AI homeworld with MSDs and NTigers and naturally destroyed some Guard Posts. Well the AI 1 got really vengeful and sent a couple of small exos to my homeworld. There were even some Dire Guardians and Spirecraft. Luckily they were countered by the OMD. Edit: Actually I just noticed the Spirecraft Shieldbearer is immune to OMD. Oh well, it was countered by all the Needler and Laser Turrets. This means tons of salvage!

Radar Jammer is now 39% built..
..Yep, again. Basically every time I destroy AI 1's Guard Post threat goes up by ~300 to 500. A small exogalactic strike force for each Guard Post I destroy. This can be either a really good thing or a really bad thing. And then I get a reprisal wave of over 5000 ships. That's exclusively a bad thing.


And once again just as I predicted, the fourth CPA has been announced and in-game time is 8 hours 15 minutes. So around the 8 hour mark. This time it's 26344 ships but we'll see how many of those ships get converted into Guardians and Hunter/Killers. Thanks to the huge amounts of salvage the Mark II Radar Jammer is already 79% complete so I think I'll complete it's construction before the CPA arrives. I still have 2 unused Distribution Nodes on my planets too so I'm going to pop those to complete it's construction if I have to.



I destroyed both Distribution Nodes to get me enough metal to rebuild HBCs on Tranatos to stop the reprisal wave. Luckily it consisted of ~5000 Fighters so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. With the Distrubution Nodes and the salvage from the 5000 Fighters I finished building the Mark II Radar Jammer 3 minutes 30 seconds before the CPA. In other words, just in time.




And once again vast majority of the ships get converted into something more big and nasty. All the defenses and everything is ready.



Speaking of being ready.. Wow where did they come from. Didn't notice since I was looking at other planets. Um yeah I'm gonna go with a Mark II Lightning Warhead. Don't wanna take any chances with Mark I not being enough..

..Ummm yeah.. not close or anything.. that was just one volley. Honestly my jaw dropped when I watched the missiles fly towards the Force Fields and the Force Fields just started dropping like flies.. The warhead destroyed all the Missile Guardians but there were still missiles in the air (space) flying towards my CS. Those were the ones that did the damage.



And sure enough my trick worked. A part of the CPA is attacking the Spire Archive planet.

I barely managed to save it by rebuilding Engineers and HBCs and by building a new Force Field next to the ones I've selected in the screenshot. CS got below 50% health.



The fourth CPA has now been repelled so this is a good milestone to take a break.


08h31m.sav attached.

[Kahuna]

I'm still not quite sure if I should hack the Super Terminal or the Core Needler and Laser Turrets. On the other hand perhaps I could hack the Super Terminal and at least other Core Turret Fabricator. I need to do some calculations on how much destroying each AI is going to increase the AIP. But most importantly how much AIP is attacking the first AI going to increase. I'm going to attack AI 2's homeworld first (Calais). It has 8 Core Guard Posts.

After I'm done with the second attack I've already won the game so it doesn't really matter how much AIP I have at that point. I assume I'm going to use full caps of all Lightning and Armored Warheads for each AI Homeworld so that's +36 from Lightning Warheads and +90 from Armored Warheads = 126 AIP from the warheads.. wow I didn't remember it's that much. Destroying the 8 Core Guard Posts increases AIP by 8. So the first attack would increase the AIP by 126+8=134. Atm I have 168 AIP so after the first attack I'd have 302 AIP. And since my AIP floor is now 106 it would be 134/3+106=150,666.. I assume it's going to be rounded up so 151. So AIP: 302 and AIP Floor: 151. Which means I'd need 151 AIP reduction from the Super Terminal. But since I'm going to nuke the Super Terminal hacking response it's going to increase the AIP Floor. I'm also probably going to use a couple of Lightning Warheads to stop the Mark V hacking response that survives the nuke. So let's say a nuke and 2 Mark II Lightning Warheads. That's +54 AIP which is +18 AIP Floor. Then the floor would be 169. Ok not terrible..

..Except I forgot that to even start the hack I need to destroy at least one Raid Engine and capture the Super Terminal planet. That's going to increase AIP by 25..

I think I'm first going to hack the Super Terminal because I want as much AIP reduction as possible. Then with the remaining hacking point I'm going to hack the Core Needler Turret by beachheading from AS1360. If I wanted to hack the Core Laser Turrets I'd have to capture Gradian. Besides Needler Turrets counter Missile Guardians (Artillery) and Shield Guardians (Structural) so they're probably the better option at this point anyway.

So first I'm going to destroy the Raid Engine on Formalos and since the Super Terminal is incredibly heavily defended I'm going to capture it right away instead of beachheading it or anything like that. I'll capture it and let my defenses handle the AI's defenses (in addition to the hacking response that will start as soon as I capture the planet. I don't think there's any other way since the planet is incredibly heavily defended. Sniper Guard Posts, Fortress, Translocator CS, 3 Ion Cannons and a Mark II Radar Jammer and all of that covered by 2 Shield Guard Posts and dozens of Guardians. Great.

...Edit: I just realized to capture it I have to destroy the Command Station (herp a derp).. And the Command Station is protected by the things I just mentioned... Yeah I'm just going to destroy it with a Mark I Armored Warhead.


I'm sending my MSDs and NTigers to clear the way to the Super Terminal and at the same time I'm going to capture AS1360 just as a staging ground to capture the Super Terminal planet. Got 2 big waves. The other one from the Raid Engine on Formalos I'm about to destroy.




I waited for the threat from the RE wave and the other wave to fly away and then built AS1360. Built the Sniper Turrets just in case because it seemed like some AI ships were going to attack..

..but looks like the threat is now attacking my homeworld with the support of an EMP Guardian.


 
Moving one of the Armored Warheads to the Super Terminal planet now. After the Translocator Command Station is destroyed I'll go in with Assault Transports filled with my fleet, Engineers, Colony Ships and such and build everything as fast as I can.

Also the threat has now been taken care of. Most of it attecked my homeworld which is incredibly heavily defended. Some attacked Hephyrus and some Spire Archive planet. The salvage from those attacks quickly topped off my metal storage.


Yeah this should work. Don't want to destroy the Super Terminal nor the Mark II Radar Jammer. I also don't want to waste the warhead's firepower on that Fortress.


Perfect! ..Well except that it didn't destroy the Command Station..
..Except I'm probably going to wait until those Guardians leave the planet. Lets hope all of those Guardians attack my homeworld so I get 40% salvage from them..

..Ok they're attacking the Spire Archive planet. At least I'll get rid of them and at least some salvage.


Except that now threat consisting of dozens of Guardians and 4 Hunter/Killers came to defend the planet. Gonna kite them around so they all bunch up and then fly behind the Translocator Command Station and park my MSDs about 9000 distance units away from it since MSDs have radar rampening range of 8000.



Then I order all NTigers to just attack the CS and keep spamming more NTigers.


Success! Lets hope the threat leaves the planet now..
.. and it did.


Now I'm just going to build my Command Station and the defenses as fast as I possibly can. I'm also going to start building the Mark I Nuke soon. I'm going to handle destroying the Super Terminal with Assault Transports. Get your popcorn ready, there will be fireworks soon..

Yep.. building all the defenses. -75k metal/s. The AI is going to get a hack of a lifetime. Gonna destroy some Distribution Nodes if I have to..

..yep, sent one Assault Transport to destroy Distribution Nodes. I'll have to survive the hack and the aftermath so I definitely can't afford to be bankrupt right now..

..And shortly after all hell broke loose. I'm going to focus build the Nuclear Warhead now. I don't think my defenses will last much longer. The spawns are getting bigger and bigger each tick. The total amount of AI strength after destroying the Super Terminal is going to be monstrous..



WHAATTT?! Geeezz.. All of that just spawned at once..

..Oh the hacking points are at -85, how the heck did that happen?! It dropped so fast I didn't even notice! And WHAT, well over 400k threat already?!? DESTROY THE SUPER TERMINAL NOW!

*game froze for a couple of seconds when the Super Terminal was destroyed and the response spawned*
NNOOOO and for some reason the Engineers stopped building the Nuke!! BUILD IT NOW! 11 seconds left COOMMEE OONNN!

ONE SECOND LEFT! THE SHIELDS ARE DOWN! THE COMMAND STATION IS TAKING HEAVY DAMAGE! 440K THREAT!

THE NUKE IS BUILT! DETONATE IT IMMEDIATELY!


*The game freezes for 33 seconds as I detonate the Nuke*
BBBOOOOOMMMMM!!!



HOLY. COW. Talk about fireworks! Happy new year to you to AI! That was intense but it worked! Now I just need to survive the monstrous aftermath..
..Good thing I have full stacks of Lightning Warheads on my core planets.


"08h57m NUKE EM!.sav" and "08h57m.sav". "08h57m NUKE EM!.sav" is right before I detonated the nuke so you can load it and see this yourself. Pause the game as soon as you see the "Load completed!" text. Then go to the Super Terminal planet (It's the one with the 437820 threat, you can't miss it) and scrap the nuke. The game will probably freeze for a moment.

[Kahuna]

Looking at the amount of AIP reduction it seems like this hack was a huge success. It worked almost as well as the other nuke hack I did before. I didn't have as many defenses unlocked this time so I had to stop a bit earlier. I also ran out of hacking points so the response would have gotten completely out of control. I actually reloaded a save mid hack and tried to reduce AIP even more but the game process completely froze when threat got to 13 million. Oh well I'll take this 238 AIP reduction. That should be enough.

Since each Super Terminal tick increases AIP by 1 and lowers it by 2 the total AIP reduction is 238/2=119. AIP Floor increase is 170/3=~56 (apparently it's runded down).


Total AI Progress
Before: 351
After: 521
Difference: 351-521=-170 (including 50 from the nuke)
So the whole hacking progress increased AIP by 170.

AI Progress Reduction
Before: 150
After: 388
Difference: 150-388=-238
The total amount of AIP reduction I got from the hack is 238.

AI Progress Floor
Before: 117
After: 173
Difference: 117-173=-56
AIP floor was increased by 56

Effective AI Progress
Before: 201
After: 173
Difference: 201-173=28
Effective AIP was reduced by 28.

Before 351-150=201 effective AIP
After 521-388=133 effective AIP. However since the AIP Floor is now 173 the effective AIP is 173. This means I have 173-133=40 AIP "in the bank" so I can increase the AIP by 40 before it starts actually increasing..
..Which means the total amount of AIP reduction I actually got out of the hack is 201-173+40=68

[Kahuna]

After some discussion on Discord I came to conclusion that it's much better to stop the hack before HaP gets negative and you have to use a nuke. How disappointing, the nuke doesn't have a use after all. I went back and did the hack again and destroyed the Super Terminal when I had 104 hacking points left.

There was over 22k AI ships but I didn't have to use the nuke so after dealing with the threat I got a total AIP reduction of 70. In addition to that I still have 112 hacking points left so I can still hack the Core Needler Turrets.


The Super Terminal planet was quickly overrun so I packed everything into the Assault Transports and retreated to AS1360.

Then the threat steamrolled SHC-2511 (the Spire Archive planet). Even though I only built Sniper and Missile Turrets on AS1360 it managed to hold off hundreds of threat thanks to the Military Command Station. However Carriers are immune to knock backs and engine damage so it was eventually overrun too.

Finally the threat (mostly consisting of dozens of Carriers) arrived my homeworld where all of it was recycled with the help of two Mark III Lightning Warheads and a Mark II Lightning Warhead.





So all of this resulted in me getting a total AIP reduction of 70 and still having 112 hacking points left.

439-308=131 AIP. However the Floor is 146 so the effective AIP is also 146 so..
146-131=15 AIP reduction "in the bank". And before the hack I had 201 AIP so..
I got a total AIP reduction of 201-146+15=70 points.
Yeah I'll take it.


Off to recapture AS1360 and hack the Core Needler Turrets before the salvage runs out.

Before I evacuated AS1360 I left behind an Assault Transport with a Colony Ship and 2 Engineers and 2 Remains Rebuilders.



Speaking of the reamining 3k threat being a no big deal.. As I'm rebuilding AS1360 my homeworld gets EMPd for 2 minutes and 50 Implosion Guardians and other ships attack there. But thanks to the Gravitational Turrets and Mark II Radar Jammer they were unable to get in range in time.



I started hacking the Needler Turrets and things are going smoothly even though there's a lot of AI ships spawning. The salvage I got from stopping the Super Terminal hack response allowed me to pretty much instabuild all of these turrets on this hacking beachhead. So far the AI hasn't even been able to get close to the hacker. I can probably stop all of the hacking response with this beachhead, neinzul spam and the ships I've reclaim. 2 minutes 50 seconds left.



And as soon as the hack finished I build the Mark V Needler Turrets to counter all the AI Missile Frigates, Grenade Launchers and Carriers. There ended up being over 5000 AI ships but they were easily cleaned up and I got myself a reclamation achievement and a fleet of 743 ships.




I still have tons of salvage so this is a perfect time to get Tranatos a Mark II Radar Jammer.



Now I'm basically just building the rest of the Armored Warheads and the new Mark II Radar Jammer and waiting for the next CPA. I unlocked Mark II Engineers to help build those Armored Warheads faster. Otherwise those things take forever to build. I still have 2500 knowledge left but I'm not sure how to use it. I can't really afford to unlock more turrets because of the energy consumption. When the salvage runs out the amount of Matter Converters I'd need would consume vast majority of my metal income.

After the next CPA I'm going to destroy AI 2 whose homeworld is Calais. For that I'm going to save up all the reclaimed ships and the Armored Warheads. I'm also going to capture Meinos Predex as a staging ground and possibly hack the Core Needler Turrets (Kiwiina) from there after I've destroyed the AI 2 Homeworld.



Ok so the.. fifth(?).. CPA has been announced. It's 33227 ships and will spawn in 7 minutes 1 second. The Mark II Radar Jammer on Tranatos is now 86% built and I'm only missing one Mark II and one Mark III Armored Warhead. After that and repelling the CPA I'm ready to destroy AI 2. I need to pause the constructions for a moment in order to prepare for the CPA. Almost 4000 threat has accumulated next to my homeworld waiting to join the CPA. 2 waves were also announced and they will spawn at the same time with the CPA.



The CPA has spawned and it gets compressed into fewer, bigger and somewhat nastier ships. 10/10 seems to make the somewhat easier since it reduces the size of the CPAs. On the other hand it seems to release quite a few EMP Guardians so pick your poison. Looks like majority of the threat is going to come through Corali II-6F and attack my homeworld. Good.

Shortly after there was over 6000 AI ships on my homeworld. Already destroyed 50 Implosion Guardians and 20 Laser and Spider Guardians and some Tractor Guardians. Still 201 Missile Guardians left of which 95 are Mark V 45 Mark IV, 29, Mark III, 16 Mark II and 16 Mark I. Luckily their range (18000) is halved and I got the Core Needler Turrets so they're unlikely to get in range of anything important..
..Shortly after that dozens of more Guardians appear. No biggie. Food for Sniper Turrets. But then a Mark III EMP Guardian EMPs my defenses for 30 seconds.. Time to use a couple of warheads.


There's still 649 AI ships (Zenith Electric Bombers and Bombers) right in front of the Needler Turrets in one big blob. 9 seconds of EMP left. They were quickly cleaned up as soon as the EMP ended after which the remaining AI ships started retreating. There's over 900 AI ships disabled by the Neinzul Nanoswarms and the Military Sub Command Stations and my fleet of reclaimed ships is growing quickly. The CPA has been repelled and threat is now at 2596. All selected ships in this screenshot are reclaimed.

Also the Mark II Radar Jammer on Tranatos has been built so basically I no longer have to worry about losing that planet. I built all the HBCs to Droch to protect the ZPG.


Ok here we go. The first AI Homeworld attack in this game and for me first in about 2 years.

Yay 4 Shield Guard Posts. This is going to take a while. And for each of them I get a small exogalactic strike force from the Vengeful AI.

The planet has been captured, defense have been built and the first Tachyon Guardian on the Core planet next to Calais has been destroyed. Time to sneak in.



These 2 Assault Transports have all the NTigers and MSDs. I'm going to order them to destroy that Tachyon Guardian and the one on the other side of that wormhole. Then the rest of my attack force will follow.


The alpha strike from the Assault Transports wasn't enough so I unloaded the NTigers.

However it freed 2 Mark V EMP Guardians so I need to destroy them with these Assault Transports before they EMP everything for 100 seconds.



On other side of the wormhole (on AI 2's homeworld) NTigers are being tractored away and there's a Warhead Interceptor on top of the wormhole. I send all the Assault Transport and first a single Mark I Armored Warhead through the wormhole. The Mark I Armored Warhead destroys the Tractor Guardians and some others and the Core Shield Guard Post. Then I order all Assault Transports to focus fire the Warhead Interceptor and order the rest of the warheads to go through the wormhole to the AI Homeworld.

Assault Transports' alpha strike wasn't enough to one shot the Warhead Interceptor so I unload everything and focus fire it again. At the same time I've give orders to each Armored Warhead to go to a specific position in order to destroy all the Core Guard Posts and the Force Fields and the Fortress next to the AI Home Command Station. I'm surprised the Strategic Reserve hasn't spawned yet. I guess they got all freed by those CPAs.



Looks like this one is already in range of everything important.. let's see how it works..

WHAT? I didn't do anything, a bug? It LITERALLY did nothing.

Ok then I'll use another one.

That worked except it didn't destroy the Guard Posts. Still it got rid of the most important(nasty) things.


Warheads are soon in range of those Core Guard Posts. I'm loading all Bombers into 2 most healthy Assault Transports to fly the to  Core Leech Guard Post on top of the screenshot.



Only 2 Core Guard Posts left.. oh those CPA Guard Posts in middle of my fleet are also still alive. So 4 still alive. Soon 2.

CPA Guard Posts were quickly destroyed and the Core Leech Guard Post was one shot by the Bombers.



Now I just need to destroy the AI Home Command Station and the AI is dealt with. Unfortunately AI's cavalry has arrived..

Luckily I still have the Bombers. They're no doubt going to get the Home CS..

..and sure enough, they did!

However now I have to deal with the Avenger.

There also seems to be a Raid Engine on the unscouted planet next to this AI Homeworld. I need to destroy it ASAP since it's going to be on a permanent alert now because this planet is destroyed. I still have 5 MSDs left so I'm going to try to get it with them.


That was awesome! Now I just need to get rid of the permanently alerted Raid Engine and survive this aftermath. Time for a break.


11h04m.sav attached.