capture an out of the way planet with two fabricators?

[laughingman]

It's taken a while, but I have finally gotten to a point in a game where I am ready to plan the last stages of the campaign. I have mapped the galaxy and found both AI homeworlds. I've captured several ARS' and a mark IV factory and have Space Planes, Chameleons, Stealth Battleships, and Bulletproof fighters in my fleet. I have also managed to repair two golems (Black Widow and Armored) and build a few Spire ships.

There's a planet I would like to take because it has two fabricators: Bomber Starship IV, and Warbird. I haven't played with either of these ships before and would love more firepower, but the planet is about as far away from the homeworlds, and any other important planet, as it is possible to get. It's four hops away from my closest planet and only one of the intervening worlds is Mark III. I could probably take a large force of Mark IV ships and rampage my way through those worlds with little difficulty.

My AIP is already close to 200, and would probably be bumped to 230-240 after I'm done capturing the fabricators. Would it be worth it? Are those starships powerful enough to make a difference or is my time better spent fighting my way to the closest AI homeworld? I'm playing difficulty 7/7, Vanilla AI if that helps.

[keith.lamothe]

It's taken a while, but I have finally gotten to a point in a game where I am ready to plan the last stages of the campaign. I have mapped the galaxy and found both AI homeworlds. I've captured several ARS' and a mark IV factory and have Space Planes, Chameleons, Stealth Battleships, and Bulletproof fighters in my fleet. I have also managed to repair two golems (Black Widow and Armored) and build a few Spire ships.

There's a planet I would like to take because it has two fabricators: Bomber Starship IV, and Warbird. I haven't played with either of these ships before and would love more firepower, but the planet is about as far away from the homeworlds, and any other important planet, as it is possible to get. It's four hops away from my closest planet and only one of the intervening worlds is Mark III. I could probably take a large force of Mark IV ships and rampage my way through those worlds with little difficulty.

My AIP is already close to 200, and would probably be bumped to 230-240 after I'm done capturing the fabricators. Would it be worth it? Are those starships powerful enough to make a difference or is my time better spent fighting my way to the closest AI homeworld? I'm playing difficulty 7/7, Vanilla AI if that helps.

Bomber Starship IVs pack a pretty hefty punch and are good against the endgame forcefields, and Warbirds are fun cloaking-with-huge-salvos though a bit fragile.  Your AIP sounds fine though it's more a question of how well you're doing against waves now.  If the waves are stressing your defense it might be better to avoid that, but my guess is that on 7/7 Vanilla and 200 AIP you're doing ok on that front.  If so, it would probably be a good idea to go for the Bomber Star IVs at least.  Both starship types are really fast and shouldn't take long to get to your front lines unless it's really a long haul.

[laughingman]

Wow, do you all ever sleep?   

I've set up some pretty good defenses against waves and am handling them fairly well right now even if I get a little nervous seeing 300+ bombers on their way.

 It sounds like capturing those fabricators is a "can't hurt, might help" kind of thing. Time to reposition the fleet...

[keith.lamothe]

Wow, do you all ever sleep?   

Even I'm out of bed by 11am

I've set up some pretty good defenses against waves and am handling them fairly well right now even if I get a little nervous seeing 300+ bombers on their way.

 It sounds like capturing those fabricators is a "can't hurt, might help" kind of thing. Time to reposition the fleet...

Sounds like it should be a good move, yes.  Make sure to get the knowledge from any planets you take; if you don't already have all 4 marks of bombers that's a great thing for those final forcefields, and in general the more ships you can throw in there (unless there's an AI Eye) the better.

[Nalgas]

My AIP is already close to 200, and would probably be bumped to 230-240 after I'm done capturing the fabricators. Would it be worth it?

That is enough to bump the waves and stuff up from mk1 to mk2, but if you're not already right at the homeworlds, you'll get the AIP up to that soon anyway, and the next jump isn't until around 700, so whatever.  The Bomber Starship mk4 is somewhat expensive to construct but also super awesome.  They are built like giant flying space bricks and tear holes through things.  If you can get them without screwing yourself over too badly in the process, they certainly don't suck to have around.  Warbirds are fun, but I haven't quite worked out what I like them for yet, only having played one game that I had them briefly in.

[Haagenti]

Capturing the fabricators is not so hard. Keeping them may be harder: the AI will target them. So you need to install and maintain defenses (if you want to be able to rebuild the Bombers and Warbirds). Often the cost of that outweighs the capture of the planet.

[laughingman]

Thanks all for the advice. I managed to capture it and two other planets along the way but it might not have been the best strategic decision. Each fabricator is located right next to a hostile wormhole and so I have to keep a small fleet there to defend them. I've neutered the planets they lead to, but between them they connect to five other worlds, two of which are Mark IV and currently on alert. I may just pump out the cap of each ship and be very, very careful about keeping them alive.

Nalgas, you're right about the Bomber Starship's cost and effectiveness. It took a long time to build one, even with five engineers speeding things up, but it's a beast. Was pairing it with a Flagship overkill?

I wish I would have scouted the planet earlier, though. It would have changed a lot of my early-game decisions and made some pitched battles a lot easier.

[Haagenti]

If you haven't already done so, build a level 1 or 2 forcefield over the fabricator (preferably with the orbital under the same forcefield). If you have killed all Warp Gates next to it, you can then probably use a circle of turrets to defend just outside the forcefield, rather than the more useful mobile elements.
Build one of the rebuilder drones and a single engineer who can reach all the turrets from inside the forcefield, and it defends and repairs itself.

[laughingman]

Haagenti, that would have been a great strategy had all of my forcefields not been employed elsewhere. I neutered the surrounding planets pretty effectively and the small force I left there was enough to keep them safe.

Both ships were incredibly useful. The Warbirds work very well on defense, making short work of ships caught in tractor beams or groups that managed to slip past them. On offense, I paired them with fighters and space planes and got a good raiding force. They're definitely something I'll use in future games if they come up.

Sadly, I only got to use them a couple of hours before a massive wave of Gravity Drains and Bombers coincided with a Cross-Planet attack of over 1500 ships. As I moved ships from planet to planet to deal with the different fronts, the AI forces that had been building up on alerted planets started pouring through the wormholes.  I was soon defending everywhere and it wasn't long before I was overwhelmed and destroyed.

It was a good learning experience, though. I'll be much more selective about my chokepoints and scout more thoroughly before committing to a strategy in future games.

[Martyn van Buren]

I see you've already finished that game, but I think I'd have advised against taking that world --- at 200 AIP, you should have something like 15-20 worlds, which probably means not enough resources to get much out of a bomber starship fabricator --- they're great if you can get them working, but if you're playing a low-AIP game, I think the fab is a white elephant.

[Ranakastrasz]

Considering that taking a world requires 20 AIP, I'm pretty sure that with 200 AIP a max of 10 planets were taken, Even with data centers, whose bonus is more or less canceled by the other increases.

[laughingman]

I had 18 planets at the time. Raiding data centers kept AI progress down, as did clever use of a Superterminal. A lot of my captured planets were strong economic centers so building the bomber starships wasn't a burden. They more than paid for themselves in the destruction they caused

I agree that there are many situations where the fabricator wouldn't be worth it to capture. It probably wasn't the best strategic decision in this instance, either. I could have captured some better chokepoints and perhaps survived that final assault. No use in pondering the "what-ifs" when I don't have a save to test the theory on.

[Martyn van Buren]

Oops, I thought it was 15 AIP/world.

[Zair]

15 for the com-station. Another 5 for the warp gate if you haven't already killed it; taking out the station destructs the gate at the same time.