All my base are belong to cross planet

[allmybase]

Just curious how frequent are these cross planet strikes? Once per 5 hours? How randomized is it?

[x4000]

Umm... it varies by difficulty, and there is a big random component, too.  I think it's every 3-5 hours at difficulty 7, or something along those lines.  But it can be more or less.  If they come in quicker succession they are smaller, and if there is a larger gap, they are larger.  So if you haven't been struck for a really long time, that is usually more cause for concern than if you get pounded a few times more quickly.  As you'd expect with an enemy mustering forces, basically.

[Voodoomancer]

Oh -- and Riot Starships.  You could use those to really wreak some havoc on the engines of the ships in the CPA.  Don't stand and fight, if you try that tactic, but rather have your ships leading the AI ships away.  The AI ships will be dropping out of the battle like flies thanks to the engine losses, and since you are moving away they then can't shoot at you anymore.  Then you're left with a long trail of angry, immobile AI ships to clean up, but you can do it on your terms.

Spider turrets FTW! 

And riots! Infiltrators too, to a point, I guess...

[allmybase]

I'm doing much better this time around. The CPA was "only" 800 ships this time, partly because it came a little earlier (4:30 mark) and mostly because I kept my AI progress under much better control (177 instead of like 286). I smashed their main thrust which they dumped 600 units on my doorstep (hello lightning turrets  ). I don't know where the second thrust will come (the remaining 200 threat) but that should be easy to deal with.

I'm still "cheating" a bit - no astrotrains, full map vision, no cloaked units, but they are AI 7's with no penalty/handicaps either way.

I also fully abused my situation - I used those loveable transports to go on a rampage throughout the galaxy, killing all but a couple data centers and all the co processors.

So this time around I have more planets and knowledge and less AI progress, big pluses all around.

When I cap the ARS I plan to flash raid all the surrouding zones so I'll get ready for that next.

In spite of all my optimism, I still have huge leaps to make. I did bypass some major hurdles such as scouting and I abused transports which will be nerfed next version. And I said no to cloaked units which previously kept slipping by me. And on top of that, I still cherry picked the map to have a very nice bottleneck, and I played extremely defensively, I only kept 4 planets at the start then I unhinged a massive chain of systems in succession than after beating back their retaliation then I blossomed into a 20'ish planet empire. I don't think I'm ready to play at the "normal" level yet where one has to spend resources and attention to scout or where you expand constantly and in small bits rather than all at once.

[ShadowOTE]

"Only" 800? That's pretty tiny, at least in my experience. Heck, we've seen raids of 2900+ ships (not CPAs, raids) only a few hours into the game. True, it was from a difficulty 9 AI, but still. Anything less than 2-3 thousand ships isn't a CPA by our standards, though we do tend to play on the more defensible map types.

On a side note, it's always funny when a high tier AI like the experimentalist diff 9 launches 4000 ships at you  2 hours into the game, only for the diff 7 sledgehammer to follow up with a measely 400 ships (and yes, we did lose that one... though Kryzite managed 4700+ kills for a 3170% kill to death ratio with his fortresses, and we killed probably 6000-7000 AI ships before finally being wiped out)

[x4000]

Very nice, allmybase!  Sounds like you are moving ever onwards and upwards.  Sounds really great all around.

ShadowOTE -- sounds like you are indeed making great use of bottlenecks.  I am pretty sure that diff 9 and 10 are only possible for maps where you can really bottleneck up in some fashion (and those are really hard even then).  Very cool stuff, I really don't go over diff 7 myself.  I think my own KTL ratio is generally around 150% to 500% based on my turrets, but when it's on the lower end it's usually because of my "churn and replace" offensive style.  Who needs repairs when you can just sucide your fleet to the last man and have a new fleet ready to jump into the breach right behind them?

To be clear, it is my belief that these are all unmanned robotic drones piloted by distant humans, ala the forever war.  That's my rationalization, anyway.

[ShadowOTE]

Yeah, playing on spokes and trees really helps with choke-points. Eventually I'm sure we'll try some of the other options, but for now we're achievement hunting, one difficulty 9 AI at a time.

[x4000]

Aha!  Clever.

[allmybase]

Well I'm on a simple type map, lots of random connections over so I had to worry about CPA coming from multiple entry points, not like a tree/spoke where they all converge to one defense point necessarily.

The enemy's gate is down 

Got both AIs, 80 planet no resource handicaps level 7.

I two punched each one - the first wave took out all the guard posts, the second wave finished the job.

I did a lot of lazy things - I never made a forward base two jumps away (was scared to aggravate the MKIV and didn't want to invest in more turrets to hold that base), I just built 20 transports at my outermost point. I lead with 5 empty transports to take all the damage and divert attention (and an EMP on the first hop to get past the "crusted" planet). I had 23k unspent knowledge and only captured 1 ARS (electric shuttle), and no mark IV factories or zenith power reserves or golems. I researched MKIIIs of each basic ship type, never used any special capturable factories or zenith reserves or anything of the like. There were no dyson spheres (turned it off, seems a little too cheesy).

My kill loss ratio was 93%, under both AIs (who had 97% and 110%) - but that's fine, after all it is against overwhelming odds and I wasn't playing just a defense game, I had to go out there and burn ships to kill the last command post. After I killed the first AI the AIP was just over 400. Finished in 7 hours, owned 22 planets.

I really love using mass fleet ships in tranports. Starships are such a bother because you wind up having to use fleet ships anyways to augment them and deal with mass drivers (means more time spent alerting planets because mass drivers are tough and are located on both the guard and the core planet). They are really slow too and can't be put in transports. Screw starships 

[ShadowOTE]

Nicely done! And yes, starships are a pain to build, but if you stick a few engineers on the constructor and are careful not to intentionally lose them, its not too hard to build up a good number of them, and it really does help. Riots are great for clearing out ships disabled by spiders after a wave hits, and the spire starship line is great overall. Just be careful to keep an MRS with them and to keep them under cover of the blob, and you rarely lose anything bigger than a light starship. 

[x4000]

Congrats!  Very nicely done. And bonus points for knowing where the enemy's gate is. (To be honest, some of the design of the final worlds of the AI was inspired by the conclusion of that book)

ShadowOTE has some great advice on the starships, and that is all true -- and a lot of people really love starships.  My teammates in multiplayer love starships, and often do better in certain engagements than I do.  But, allmybase, I'm like you and tend to just lean on fleet ships, often not even building a single starship constructor over the course of the entire game.  I think both routes have their advantages and disadvantages.

Anyway, congrats again!

[ShadowOTE]

Yeah, starships are great, but they're more of a support role, partly due to their low numbers, which offset their high hitpoints. It would be interesting to try playing with only starships, but I doubt you could pull it off. That said, what they're good at, they're REALLY good at. Mix a few in with your fleet or put them in the right situation and you could well see a large jump in your capability. But if you have to choose between building starships or frigates, I'd say frigates every time.

Out of curiosity, has anyone tried playing with large amounts of starship unlocks? I'd be curious to hear how that turned out.

[x4000]

In multiplayer, my uncle (one of my alpha testers) does play with a ton of starships sometimes.  But given that it is 4-player co-op there, the ability for players to specialize more as part of the team is definitely there.  My dad tends to help with the defenses for my uncle, for instance, since my dad is more defensive and my uncle is more aggressive.  So while my dad is holding down the fort along with my uncle's smaller numbers of fleet ships, my uncle can be out rampaging with his starships, which can be really effective.  The main downside seems to be that once his starships get killed, if he does not repair them in time, he's then out of commission for longer than the rest of us, while he gets them back up to their full numbers.  Lately he has still been using a lot of starships, but not to the degree he once did.