2k+ wave ships at 7:00

[Wanderer]

Sweet, that's good to know.  That's not too shabby at Diff 10, really.  If you take the next world over you get the standard 'beginning' wave since you're at AI 30, so you'll be pumped back up to 100'ish.  If you try to do a homeworld defense so you can get yourself together before you move out you're risking your homeworld(s) for a lower risk.  Cool.  I like the tradeoff.

Believe it or not I've been working out a non-horribly exploitive setup to try to take down the AI.  My problem is coming in for two things.  1) Who's the wise guy that made Missile Frigates immune to lightning turrets (AoE), the only other turret besides basic good against Artillery Hulls and 2) All starships are roughly EMP immune.

Basically setup goes like this, I'm just working out the correct 'preferred targetting' because otherwise I lose too much to survive wave two.  Remember there's two problems in the first wave.  1) You don't have enough econ and 2) the sheer ship volume.

First we need countermeasures to the economy and mass problem.
1) Research Riot Starship IIs (for their tazers), Grav Turrets, and get the first bump in extra crystal production.  You'll be going to the second bump as soon as your researchers catch up and can get you another 4k.
2) Start production of a Tazer ship (2xshields, tazer, 3xMGs) and begin mass production of standard units.
3) Produce until 3:30.  FRD the mob into the next system to begin cleanup.  As soon as you don't have to worry about spillover, pop the CMD center and then clean the system out.
4) Send a mobile builder, colony ship, and mob of Engi IIs over to guardian system.
5) Do NOT build your command center yet.  Instead, immediately begin Grav Turret build out in two directions.  1 to the homeworld gate the second to where you'll be building your turrets.  Also drop 5 or so FFs on the homeworld gate and the inbound gate.
5a) Should have Crystal III at this point.  Upgrade your cheapest neinzul unit to Level II for speed builds and get yourself a counter-mob.
6) Don't waste materials on tractors.  You're going to park all of your tazer ships under the FFs at the inbound gate.
7) Get up a mob of LRMs and Basics.  The basics are for anti-frigate work.  Continue to allow your fleet to build.
7a) Don't get ahead of your economy.  Let things finish before you start the next batch.
8 ) Around 6:45 or so you'll get a wave to ? ? ? item.  PAUSE.  You've got work to do.
9) Setup a Logistics I post (can improve later).
- Get all your Riot IIs under the front FF (you should have 6-7)
- Place a token set of snipers (10-20).  These need to be the last things to be 'helped'.  You'll want them for anti-bomber-starship.
- Get the rest of your fleet near, but not under, the front FFs.
10) Continue building, improving your LRM and Basic units.  Toss in about 20 flaks to beat on things that get tazered.  Upgrade to Basic IIs and start building those.
11) First strike will be ~15 Raid starships.  Get these things DEAD.  If they wreck your tazer fleet you're screwed.  Start watching for the Missile Frigates to come in.
12) When the missile frigates arrive, get all your basic turrets targetting the frigates.  Get your LRMs to start pounding on the Fleet Starships.
13) Start building out MRMs to cover any 'escapees'.  Toss up another 10 Snipers or so. (Toss up 10 snipers anytime the last set is complete)
14) Wail away.  Use whatever you've got to take down what you can.  Fleet Starships can chew up your regular fleet in sheer volume, but keep an eye out for Raids.

I've managed to survive the first raid this way.  The problem is I couldn't get rebuilt in time for Wave 2 at 11 minutes.  I also didn't have time to raid my neighbor (Lousy IV system with 2xFortresses) to force another wave style, so I got hit all at once.  But, the pattern will work, I'm just still tweaking it.  A couple of Raid Starships should be able to hit my neighbor pretty easily, I just thought I'd have till 13-14 minutes before I had to worry.  I've seen this before when I was able to stall but not kill the raid.

It appears at this level, Raids will be hitting you every 5 minutes or so, if not shorter.  Be wary.

[keith.lamothe]

An inventive approach to a desperate situation

[Wanderer]

Well, I got there.  It's ugly.  Minor tweaks on the above but really it was just a matter of timing things better, and not bothering with sniper turrets until I had my flaks and Basic IIs built.  I also built off a second space docks dedicated to bombers (I/IIs) and IREs (Is only), to make sure they didn't get stalled up.

That and I got lucky.  Second wave wasn't until 15:00. 

I still haven't hit my neighboring Warpgate however.  I've been digging in for an hour now.  I'm trying to get my Z-Gens online (8 of them), armor reducer and enhancer, and finish building out the rest of the defenses.  160 snipers at 1/2 fleets takes a while.

So, some pics.

My galaxy.  Green are the homeworlds.  Red dot is 'Sucker Punch', my whipping boy.



So, what does Sucker Punch look like?


A closeup of the important pieces:


I highlighted in Red the time and the wave I see.  This is the 6th or 7th wave to come inbound in an hour.  I've had two tiny ones (400s or so), but this is normal, between 2-3000 ships.

The blue highlight is a pack of LRM Is (Priority: 1/2 Fleet Starship, 1/2 Missile Frigate).  The yellow is where all the Basic Is and IIs went (Priority Missile Frigate), along with a stack of MRM Is (Priority Anti-Matter Starship).  The Purple is a pack of Laser Turrets I've got facing the 'exit' point.  They high-priority Raid Starships.
Behind my command center up and to the left are my sniper turrets.  Up until about 20 minutes ago I only had 20 of them.  They High Priority Bomber Starships.

Around the gate are armored forcefields.  There's only 5 in the pic but usually there's 10-12.  My riot IIs hide in there.  Immediately surrounding it is a full set of flak and lightning turrets.  They usually die a quick death but they take some heat off the rest of the troops, of priority the Riots.

The Riots are key here.  Shut down everything else coming in besides starships and missile frigates.  Use the basics to flatten the missile frigates.  Supporting firepower handles everything else.

[keith.lamothe]

I think you're making the AI frustrated

[Wanderer]

I think you're making the AI frustrated

I wouldn't say that.  I've spent the last four hours sealing up the front door from constant waves.  Having that tech IV world right off the port bow with 2 Fort IIIs in it has made life interesting, the threat from it will come in with the waves and make life interesting.  I've been slowly blowing away guard posts in a hope I'll eventually be able to pop it, while continuing to try to build up defenses.  In hindsight, I probably should have waited a bit before I dinged it but I needed to bleed off its threat or they'd eat me.

[Wanderer]

I'd like to discuss this further.  One of the things I ended up doing was beating my head against a wall known as a Tech IV World with two FF IIIs on it.  Eventually I was able to kill this but it took a while to constantly bleed off threat.  I also took far too long trying to get the Z-gens and friends up with my econ while trying to keep a full fleet up.  In essence, I just took too blasted long.

Eventually, however, I was able to take the Tech IV system.  I attempted to turn it into a softening world, allowing the next area down to keep its gate, primarily because the Entrenched Homeworlder puts a Captive Human Settlement on every homeworld.  At +100 AIP each for a loss, I was being highly protective of going near one.  The softening world failed miserably.  When the wave hit it went after everything in the system (which I should have remembered) instead of bee-lining towards the homeworlds like Exos do.

A few additional attempts to create the softening world and allow for the further back whipping boy to handle the work failed.  I just couldn't keep the system alive without moving the entire whipping boy forward.  Due to economic stress I was loathe to attempt this.  I had gotten Frigates up from the refugee camp at this point and they were negligible in firepower.

Due to the loss of a warp gate against an owned planet, threat started building at the rate of 3-4k/raid, eventually going up to 5k/raid.  Also, somewhere out there was a dyson sphere that couldn't gain traction, causing all sorts of significant threat as AIP went up due to some minor work at neutering the next two systems to try for the Hub Shard and simple AIP progression due to time.

I ended up in a significant stalemate because I couldn't walk the whipping boy forward and really couldn't make significant progress.  By the time I had everything put together and could make an attempt at the shard, Threat was at ~20k, waves were hammering at me with 6k/wave (this is 1/2 units, remember), and I was 7 hours in.

I figured that I needed a better setup on the map.  I'm looking for what I call a 'hanging' world off the first or second world away from my primary, one entrance area.  One of the larger problems with this is trying to find a neighboring 'starting whipping boy' that *doesn't* have a blasted fortress on it.  The hanging world is something I can hang off the primary whipping boy with its warp gate intact while I create an Exo 'runway' for softening systems.  I've found a few, and it's taken a lot of work to get to find systems with decent backing units and what I wanted.

However, there's a lot of units that are immune to Tazers that aren't listed as being EMP immune.  Spire Starships and Armor Rotters for example.  They break out of the Tazer holding cell and with the combined strength of them and the Missile Frigates, I can't hold them back using the above mentioned method.  There's a lot of Tazer immune ships apparently.

I agree that AI 10 should be incredibly hard, but this is getting inane...  I need to find a more consistent way to stop the first wave, at least until 5.021 comes out. Even after that, I'd have to still figure out an early defensive control for the first system to take.

The above method worked in a specific situation and is inconsistently useful.  I'm still looking for a more consistent method.  Consistency is the problem here.  I realize that enemy configurations will play a part in this but I hadn't realized I'd gotten VERY lucky.

One last note, starting income is highly variable with 8*homeworlds.  You can end up with between 3600/s to 4400/s in either material depending on luck.
I take that back, It seems to waver between 4200-4500.  It was the resultant + values that varied highly and I wasn't paying enough attention.

[keith.lamothe]

When the wave hit it went after everything in the system (which I should have remembered) instead of bee-lining towards the homeworlds like Exos do.

Variety strikes again   But I find it amusing that you'd gotten so used to exos (supposedly a special form of attack) that you'd thought of that as normal instead of waves.  Of course, fighting FS against 2 no-wave AIs will do that.

I had gotten Frigates up from the refugee camp at this point and they were negligible in firepower.

Really?  As in, 24 spire heavy beam frigates?  Negligible?  Wow.  They must be hammering you.

However, there's a lot of units that are immune to Tazers that aren't listed as being EMP immune.  Spire Starships and Armor Rotters for example.  They break out of the Tazer holding cell and with the combined strength of them and the Missile Frigates, I can't hold them back using the above mentioned method.  There's a lot of Tazer immune ships apparently.

Tazers don't EMP, they paralyze, so the immunity you're looking for (or not) is immunity-to-paralyze.  But the tazer can paralyze anything a zenith paralyzer can, except for aoe-immune stuff.

[Wanderer]

Really?  As in, 24 spire heavy beam frigates?  Negligible?  Wow.  They must be hammering you.

32 actually.  They helped out defensively but on offense it just didn't seem to make that much of a difference against inbound threat.  They'd pop carriers quickly enough but it was mob vs. high damage pinpoint strikes.

Tazers don't EMP, they paralyze, so the immunity you're looking for (or not) is immunity-to-paralyze.  But the tazer can paralyze anything a zenith paralyzer can, except for aoe-immune stuff.

Ah hah!  That's part of the difference, I'm sure.  I started to realize that but wasn't sure when I made the post originally.