Best time to take SuperTerminal?

[mindloss]

I started an 80-star game and there's a SuperTerminal right next door. The problem is, since it's on a neighbor star I'd like to take it ASAP, and the system has good resources to boot. On the other hand, it seems like with SuperTerminals, you want to wait as long as possible before cashing in on one... I'm only at ~200 AIP now, seems to make sense to wait longer first so I've been leaving it be (neutered of course) and working outward.

On a related note, once you trip the next tech level for the AI, if you cause it to decrease back, does it drop again?

On a related note to the related note, what exactly does it mean when an AI hits each threshold? I don't remember reading that clearly anywhere, but maybe I just forgot...

[BobTheJanitor]

I think you can actually make the AIP kind of sort of negative with a superterminal. The actual AIP will never go below the floor, which you are constantly raising with the superterminal, but you can still build up a sort of AIP debt (the AIP reduction you see when you mouse over the AIP at the top of the screen) by continuing to lower the AIP even if you're at the floor. The next time you do something to increase AIP it will take it out of that debt and not actually increase the AIP until you've used it all up. (I believe this is correct, but I'm basing this off something from the forums from months back that I may be misremembering)

That said, the best time to use a superterminal tends to be towards the end of the game, assuming you want to get as much reduction out of it as possible. The reason is that you want to have a powerful fleet to deal with the superterminal waves, which will eventually cap out as 200 (?) MkIV ships every 15 seconds. With some top tier fallen spire ships or comparable huge fleet, you can actually leave a superterminal running almost perpetually, but that wouldn't leave you much firepower for the rest of the galaxy.

Edit: If you pass a tech up threshold and then bring it back down, it will decrease the wave marks, yes. You can hit 230, see Mk2 waves, then pop a data center and go back to Mk1 waves again. But when you pass 200 AIP and the AI unlocks a new ship type, bringing it back below that level does not take away that new ship, the AI gets to keep spawning it.

Here is all you want to know about AIP (hopefully): http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_AI_Progress

If that's missing something important, it can always be updated.

[x4000]

The AI Progress can indeed be driven negative, however the actual benefit to you will be capped at a floor.

So, let's say you're at that 200 AIP at the moment, and you manage to reduce it by a mammoth 400 AIP via the superterminal.  Your effective AIP might only drop to 100, maybe not even that low, but that's okay -- if you hover over the AIP indicator, you can see your full 400 in reduction is still "on the books."  Next time you do something that causes your AIP to increase, it won't unless that increase also causes the floor to go up.  Since the floor goes up a lot more slowly, you might see an increase of 100 AIP (so from 100 back to 200) from your next 300-400 actual AIP increased.

So you start at 200 actual, reduce it by 400, go to 100 effective, increase by 300-400 actual, and come back up to maybe 200 effective.  Or thereabouts, anyway; the details of the actual math aren't right (and very by difficulty level, etc, anyway), but it's in that ballpark.  The bottom line is that it is NEVER a bad time to reduce AIP, even if you might not see the benefit from that reduction immediately.

The only question, with a superterminal, is if you'll be able to really withstand it's onslaught very long at the start of the game.  Those can be incredibly brutal, and get more so the longer you hold them, so be sure to make sure and plan for something like 6X the amount of defenses you think you need.

[Gudamor]

Take the terminal and reduce your AIP as much as possible now, then when you get overwhelmed destroy the Command Center. Leave the terminal alive.

You can come back and retake the planet later with a larger fleet and continue where you left off.

[Ranakastrasz]

Take the terminal and reduce your AIP as much as possible now, then when you get overwhelmed destroy the Command Center. Leave the terminal alive.

You can come back and retake the planet later with a larger fleet and continue where you left off.

I wouldn't recommend that, As I think they are zombie bots, and hence are immediately on attack mode, and are extremely aggressive.

[Gudamor]

That's right, they are. But you can even be cautious and self-destruct your command center before you even look to be getting overwhelmed. The point is that you can start, stop, and come back.

[mindloss]

Oooh, very good to know... I'll give it a shot

[Toll]

If nothing has changed, the "optimal" time to take the Super Terminal is before any other AIP-reducer. It sounds backwards, but here's why: The amount of ships being poured out of the SuperTerminal depends on the total AIP-reduction.

Of course, you can still amass AIP without affecting the difficulty of it, but optimally you should take advantage of it before getting any other AIP-reducer. Heck, in one of my later games, I tried taking it on and the first wave spawned 40'ish Mk. V I think, which meant that my friendly neighborhood Dyson Golem didn't quite have the impact I had in mind.

[superking]

unless I am mistaken, the optimal use of the AI Terminal is to turn it off and on as required to keep your AIP as low and close to the AIP Floor as possible- that way, total AI reinforcement over time is drastically reduced.

Also, to surely to use it after you have used all the AIP reducers, since if you do it the other way round the AIP floor will be high enough to negate the benefit of data centers.

[mindloss]

It all depends on what it is actually keyed to -- it can't be AIP, since that's going down as they're getting nastier. I guess the question is whether it's a) progress floor, b) pure amount of time you've had the terminal "on", or c) total (unadjusted) AIP...?

[Kittens]

I advocate getting it as soon as possible, before other AIP reducers, because the waves will be easier, and therefore you'll be able to get more AIP reduction before you have to give up.

I'll gladly increase the floor if that means I have more AIP reduction stored up. So long as the floor is sufficiently below the tech II threshold, I don't really care where it is. At some point, AIP will exceed it anyway.

[zoutzakje]

I advocate getting it as soon as possible, before other AIP reducers, because the waves will be easier, and therefore you'll be able to get more AIP reduction before you have to give up.

This really doesn't matter. Waves will be easier perhaps (are they really easier? I thought the difficulty of the spawns would just build up over time, not depending on current AIP. I could be wrong though), but you'll also have less (powerful) ships to use against it. If you wait till near end game you'll have some golems to use and such. I always take superterminal when my AIP is about 400-500 and with golems I'm able to bring it back to the floor

[Nethris]

I advocate getting it as soon as possible, before other AIP reducers, because the waves will be easier, and therefore you'll be able to get more AIP reduction before you have to give up.

This really doesn't matter. Waves will be easier perhaps (are they really easier? I thought the difficulty of the spawns would just build up over time, not depending on current AIP. I could be wrong though), but you'll also have less (powerful) ships to use against it. If you wait till near end game you'll have some golems to use and such. I always take superterminal when my AIP is about 400-500 and with golems I'm able to bring it back to the floor

Difficulty of the spawns is based on the current total AIP reduction I'm pretty sure.  Theoretically using the superterminal before taking out any of the other AI progress reducers might be beneficial for that reason, but if you're doing the fallen spire campaign, using golems, etc, that's probably a non-issue.  When possible you probably want to scrap your command station in the system to turn the superterminal off rather than killing the superterminal, just so you have the option of using it later though.  Just make sure you know if that's going to remove supply to the system and if that's going to be a problem for you (ie, you don't have another planet next to it for supply and are using turrets/forcefields, have other useful stuff in the system you want to keep, etc).