AI Eye grind

[Shelly]

Let's see the big picture.
Red circle - ALARMS.
Yellow circle - planed expansion.
Green circle - not so planed expansion.
Erwo is that planet whit the stupid, time wasting, grind inducing AI EYE. The only option i see is sending full caps of mk1 starship's (- raiders, - leech i am currently on energy constrains). If anyone has a better way of doing it please tell me.

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[Suzera]

You unlocked mk 3 bombers right? It's a mk 1 planet. I'm assuming you're low ship cap, but just clear the entry WH, send ship cap of mk 3 bombers at the sphere post to blow that up then retreat then send a set of mk 1+2 fighters to blow up the rest of the posts without touching any of the ships except the ones that might shoot your bombers.

If you're NOT low ship cap, research raid a planet for 3k knowledge for fortress mk 1 unlock and build one on Erwo with a ship cap of mk 1 engineers. Build a second mk 3, a second and third mk 2 and 3 extra mk 1 power generators on your HW if you need to to power the fortress. You can always just turn them off when you don't need them.

[Shelly]

You unlocked mk 3 bombers right? It's a mk 1 planet. I'm assuming you're low ship cap, but just clear the entry WH, send ship cap of mk 3 bombers at the sphere post to blow that up then retreat then send a set of mk 1+2 fighters to blow up the rest of the posts without touching any of the ships except the ones that might shoot your bombers.

If you're NOT low ship cap, research raid a planet for 3k knowledge for fortress mk 1 unlock and build one on Erwo with a ship cap of mk 1 engineers. Build a second mk 3, a second and third mk 2 and 3 extra mk 1 power generators on your HW if you need to to power the fortress. You can always just turn them off when you don't need them.

No mk 3 bomber's i wasted my knowledge on other things and no fortress's but using a fortress is a bit of a waste on resources but still a quite nice strategy.
It's is down to 20% now and marauders will finish it (not the eye but spire shield guard post). But still i WASTED 1 HOUR BUILDING STARSHIPS WHICH I DON'T NEED TO KILL AN EYE ON A PLANET WHICH WOULD POSE ANY SIGNIFICANCE DIFFICULTY.
Bottom line EYE waste time and are a big grind fest.

[Suzera]

You probably could have research raided the knowledge for and then built a fortress in less time. You would have also had a perfectly alive fortress afterward! All those lost starships probably cost way more resources.

[Suzera]

4 bomber starships alone cost as much metal as a mk 1 fortress...

[Shelly]

Yup that's is true, but i didn't see your post before wasting time. Also this tactic wouldn't work if eye isn't adjacent to your planet.

[Suzera]

But if it isn't adjacent, it also isn't going to be warping attack waves at you nor blocking your expansion or defense consolidation, so it's not an issue. It's also probably going to have more ships on it to start with so you can send more bombers at shields etc before raiding all the posts with fighters, or just more bombers to blow up the eye first.

[BobTheJanitor]

Say, this is tangentially related, but do Eyes count human zombie ships as enemy ships for purposes of spawning their AI zombies? I just imagined sending a Botnet Golem in against an Eye planet and what would happen if the Eye kept trying to top the numbers up with new ships, which get converted, so it spawns more ships to match the new numbers, which also get converted, etc. until the game crashes. Does that happen? I'm at work now so I can't go test it out myself.

[Suzera]

Ships do blow up you know.

[BobTheJanitor]

Ships do blow up you know.

Yeah with a botnet golem around, they blow up real quick, and turn in to zombies. I find one of these is pretty good for keeping the AI numbers down, and keeping them busy fighting zombie bots, on quite a few worlds at the same time. I can send it in by itself vs a world with 500 AI fleet ships, and come out a few minutes later with the golem only at half HP and the world down to 50 ships and those busy fighting my hundreds of zombies.

[hullu]

Bottom line EYE waste time and are a big grind fest.

Bottom line is you chose to waste that time, there was no necessity whatsoever to take that planet, at least looking at the screenshot I couldn't see a reason. If you went there for resources you'll probably have to extend your campaign to 50 hour mark to pay back the resources it seems you wasted:)

[superking]

Dear god those Eye are annoying.
Here's my situation. AI has about 100 ships on the planet. As soon as i sneeze the ship count goes down to 20-30. Where is a spire shield thing guard post (mk II). I have underdeveloped economy. Eye planet is my best choice. I send almost a cap of mk I starships but only taken 19 % of health before i had to run.
THAT IS THE POINT OF EYE IF THEY ONLY SLOW YOUR GAME DOWN TO A HOLT.
They down offer anything special only forces you to trey to kill something whit inadequate forces again and again and again.

put your forces on low power on the way to the shield, then they wont kill the garrison. if you dont kill the garrison of 100, you can get 200 ships onto the planet for the singular purpose of hosing down the shield. make that out of bomber starships and highest MK bombers you have (mercenary bombers even). jobs a good un

[Dalden]

Say, this is tangentially related, but do Eyes count human zombie ships as enemy ships for purposes of spawning their AI zombies? I just imagined sending a Botnet Golem in against an Eye planet and what would happen if the Eye kept trying to top the numbers up with new ships, which get converted, so it spawns more ships to match the new numbers, which also get converted, etc. until the game crashes. Does that happen? I'm at work now so I can't go test it out myself.

I'll also have to double check, but I've used a Botnet Golem in a game this weekend to take a system with an Eye in it, and I'm reasonably sure the count of my zombie ships + actual ships exceeded the number of AI ships on the planet without the Eye activating.

Also, it's also possible that the ships the Eye creates are immune to reclamation - the Eye never activated for me to check this.

[Nalgas]

Also, it's also possible that the ships the Eye creates are immune to reclamation - the Eye never activated for me to check this.

The last time someone in my multiplayer group set one off, it looked like it had been changed at some point so that it spits out zombies now instead of normal ships, presumably for that very reason.

[akbr1984]

I'm encountering similar frustrations.

In my current multilayer game, there are at least 4-5 crucial planets with both an AI Eye and a Shield Spire. Several of these Shield Spires are behind high level force fields. This setup forces you to attack the 4,000,000 HP Eye itself or the 2,4000,000 HP Spire (+ shield HP in some instances), all with a very limited ship cap.

We've had some luck using EMP Nukes to knock out defenses followed by a rush of high level bombers, but little else seems to work.

I can't help but feel this grind reduces the fun and fluidity of the game. An occasional "tough nut" like this makes sense, but it's disheartening to see the same difficult scenario pop up many times in the same campaign.

Any ideas?  

Update: This game was rolled in 5.0.