Always Slaughtered part way through by carrier waves

[keith.lamothe]

I understand the approach to keep AIP low, but I find it difficult to stick to it - especially as taking an Advanced Factory, Advanced Research Facility, etc. not only requires you to take the respective planet, but also to provide a supply line leading to the system to be able to take it...

(emphasis mine) This is the key misunderstanding.  Actually you can just take the planet regardless of where it is, all you need is the absence of an AI command station and the presence of a colony ship   Granted, you probably don't want to incur deepstrike threat in the process, so having another planet within 4 hops is a good idea.

As for the special forces, I haven't found them very problematic for setting up satellite worlds.  If they are a problem, just wait a while after taking down the command station before putting yours up, and the capturables won't have switched sides and thus the SF won't kill them.

[TechSY730]

As for the special forces, I haven't found them very problematic for setting up satellite worlds.  If they are a problem, just wait a while after taking down the command station before putting yours up, and the capturables won't have switched sides and thus the SF won't kill them.

Not quite. Even after doing this, the special forces will still sometimes come through, even if I wait...

Wait, now that I think about it, where I chose my second sattilite world meant that the galaxy was divided into two; AI ships had to pass through at least one of my worlds to get from one half to the other. If the special forces decided to "reposition" themselves, and the new target was one the "other half", then they would have no choice but to go through my world, there was no alternate route that entirely avoided my worlds...
Yea, that one was my bad. 

[nas1m]

Thanks!

I knew I had to be missing something ; ).
Well - I think I will see whether my current game can be saved anyway.

But as things are going this will be my last high AIP game for some time - this is just too much stress = P...

Cheers,
nas1m

EDIT:
BTW is this at some point mentioned in the tutorials? I confess I skipped most of them as I felt I should be able to cope.
Might be a worthwhile addition otherwise...

[zoutzakje]

Tutorial only covers some of the basics. Most of the game you still have to learn yourself. Still it would be a good idea to do them though. Tutorials of AI war made me realize that this was going to be a very difficult and complex game. That and the near endless options at the campaign lobby scared me enough to play 1/1 games the first few times lol. Just to learn a bit how the game exactly works.

There are also a few beginner scripts you can start with. You can select them in the campaign lobby. It's a fairly new feature and it might help getting you in to the game.

[Kahuna]

So what am I missing about keeping my AIP low? Do people just make due with economies run purely on the handful if isolated systems that contain useful stuff?

I keep the AIP under 90 as long as possible and only hold max 5 or 6 planets.

[zoutzakje]

I personally keep my AIP at about 300-400 before i attack the homeworlds. In any 100 planet game I often end up with at least 25 planets. It all depends on if you can hold the increased AI response or not.

[Martyn van Buren]

Are the tutorials being redone?  I think I remember reading this.  If so, might it be worth making the map a bit larger and having the tutorial walk the player through the process of scouting a world, deciding it's not worth taking, and then leapfrogging past it to colonize a satellite?  It seems to me like the most common question on the forums by far is "How do I keep my AIP low while building a chain of 20 worlds to the AI Homeworlds?" and it would be good to demonstrate in-game that you don't have to.

[zoutzakje]

Are the tutorials being redone?  I think I remember reading this.  If so, might it be worth making the map a bit larger and having the tutorial walk the player through the process of scouting a world, deciding it's not worth taking, and then leapfrogging past it to colonize a satellite?  It seems to me like the most common question on the forums by far is "How do I keep my AIP low while building a chain of 20 worlds to the AI Homeworlds?" and it would be good to demonstrate in-game that you don't have to.

Agreed. Though I think it would also be a good idea to somehow demonstrate ingame that victory is still possible with a lot of planets and high AIP.

[amasuriel]

Agreed. Though I think it would also be a good idea to somehow demonstrate ingame that victory is still possible with a lot of planets and high AIP.

Yes I agree with this. It would also be great to have a single sticky or wiki page that links all the threat related info together like how CPAs work, how reinforcements and special forces work, the info in this thread about alerting the core worlds etc. Its all out there, but its not all together so its easy to think you understand when you are still missing a critical piece.

As a side note, I beat my first dif 7 game yesterday, so thanks everyone for the advice I also think it would help new players to understand the awesome power of the mark IV scout drone, so you can explore the whole map as soon as you get an advanced factory. It really makes things a lot easier and I'm not sure how people scout more that 2-3 systems out from their borders without it.

[keith.lamothe]

Are the tutorials being redone?  I think I remember reading this.

I did a full sweep through them before 6.0 to make sure it wasn't wrong due to changes since 5.0, but that's about the extent of it. 

If so, might it be worth making the map a bit larger and having the tutorial walk the player through the process of scouting a world, deciding it's not worth taking, and then leapfrogging past it to colonize a satellite?

The intermediate tutorial has an explicit lesson to do exactly that

[Martyn van Buren]

Oh really?  I remembered it as going around a planet rather than over it.  My bad!