Cutlasses; OP?

[RandomDude]

So, I've been playing AI war for some time now, never won a game tho I have around thirty hours of playing (Most of it on diff 7). I decided to give a try at the cutlasses, and I got an astonishing result; In great swarms they wipe out guard posts and guardians as if they were butter (Under forcefields too) they cost an extremelly low amount of resources and you can rebuild back very quickly. So I got to neuter planets like crazy, sending them first and then waiting to wipe out all freed AI ships at my planet with all my fleet ships. This strategy for neutering planets I'm pretty sure it wont work for very high levels, (The reinforcements there are crazy high!) Though for diff 7 it works just fine (was able to neuter a core planet(Adjacent to the Home, not the home))
Opinions?

[Bognor]

I'm surprised no-one else has responded, so let me be the first to say it: Welcome to the forums! 

I've never really used Cutlasses, but I can point you to the 5.026 patch notes, in which they got a tremendous buff.  That followed a poll in which they were voted the worst ship of the (time interval). 

I've heard before they can be used to essentially wipe out nearby planets cheaply and with little micro, but I think that's true of a bunch of bonus ships, including Awesomebombs and Youngling Fireflies, in fact probably most Neinzul Younglings.  Combine with Mobile Space Docks for best results.

[Aklyon]

Enough Neinzul will tend to kill any problem that isn't out-massing it if MSDs are involved. Especially if you add the enclaves.

[Orelius]

Note that this also depends on what kind of AIs you are playing against.  A mad bomber, for example, would be far easier to wipe out compared to a golemite or teleporter turtle.

[RandomDude]

Thanks a lot for answering people!
Right off I'd like to mention that I havent bought any expansion as of yet (So I dont have any neinzul thinge) , if I keep enjoying this game so much, I'll totally do it.
Back to the cutlasses, I guess they worked out pretty well on my games because I'm against a Sledge Hammer, (Easy guy) and the standard difficulty. I didn't really find any particular weakness against fleet ships (Looking at their stats I deduced that they should win a cap vs cap against fighters) I'll be the only Vorticular cutlass fan xD.
I also want to post the game I am in right now. I'd like some feedback and stuff here, so I dont clutter the forums with another thread (If any mod thinks I am doing things wrong, feel free to do something)

Difficulty 8/7.3 Entrenched Homeworlder, Turtle
80 Planet map
Available ships: Complex
Bonus Ship: Armor Ship.
Game Options:
All default
AI Options:
Schizophrenic
2 AIP every 240 minutes
Techs: Econ Station Mark II (4.000)
Mark II of all fleet ships, scouts too(10.500)
Spire Starship Mark I, Flagship and Bomber Starship mark II (2.500)
Scout Starship Mark II (250)



Glossary:
P0: Nothing of importance
P1: Neutered + Gate raided
P3: Neutered Planet (Except for the barracks), the one not bordering one of my planets has a Core Laser Gatling Constructor.
P4: Advanced Starship Fat
P5: Data center
P8: South: Core Bomber Starship Constructor, Core Tank Constructor North: Core Leech Starship + Core parasites  (Oh sweet irony!).
P9: All Advanced Fats, except for one on the western Mark IV planet [Has an ARS (Damn, they are faaaar away!    )] The eastern one is a core.
Mini game: Find the Whipping boy!
I've been doing lots of scouting with the scout starships and fleet ones, thats why the time is so high compared with the amount of planets I took (I know I should do multiple things at a time, but I like to do stuff when I know where everything is). Also, i'm kind of turtle anyway
A plan to follow is ussually something I really struggle in, What would you do?

Thanks in advance!



 

[Draco18s]

The critical weakness of cutlasses is that they're--

Oh, they got buffed.

Hmm.  They needed that.  Before Vampire Claws were better than them at everything.

[Aklyon]

Thanks a lot for answering people!
Right off I'd like to mention that I havent bought any expansion as of yet (So I dont have any neinzul thinge)

I'm just going to point this out, instead of the rest of the post: You always have Neinzul Enclaves, they aren't a bonus ship. Check your Starship constructor. Them alone won't work quite as well however, you'd need to support them.

Also, your time isn't really that huge. THeres a lot of people who end up with several hours more than the ingame time says due to lots of pausing.

[RandomDude]

I'm just going to point this out, instead of the rest of the post: You always have Neinzul Enclaves, they aren't a bonus ship. Check your Starship constructor.

(I have a problem inserting quotes, I'm doing them manually)
Sorry for the short post, but I searched everywhere and I cant find them, I'm playing on version 7.009 just in case.

[Bognor]

Nice scouting!  Three planets taken after an hour and a half is actually pretty quick progress, at least by my standards.

Here's what I'd do:

• Clean up that orange planet bordering three of your worlds.  Should be easy with your fleet, and there's no need to have that many hostile ships bordering your empire when you can easily avoid it.
• Set up a beachhead on that same planet.  I'm thinking 30 Sniper Turrets, 30 Missile Turrets, plus, if necessary, whatever short-range turrets counter whatever ship type that planet tends to reinforce with (eg MLRS for Fighters, Needlers for Frigates).  You've got plenty of resources so this should only take a couple of minutes.  Now your empire is sandwiched safely between your whipping boy and this beachhead, so you should be fairly safe from threat, and you'll be in a good position later when a CPA strikes.
  
• Pop those Data Centers near your homeworld.  You can probably do it with just Raid Starships, but if you need to send in your fleet, at least your beachhead will deal with any stirred-up threat.
• Now you're quite secure, and can boldly devote your fleet to offense.  Next, I'd go for the Laser Gattling world.  Assault transports (3000 knowledge) would make it easier to get there, but with patience you could just use ordinary transports plus Cloaker Starships (or do you need the first expansion for those? I can't remember.)  The Gattlings themselves are a nice bonus, but the main reason you want this world is to help you-
• Take P8 South.  You're against two defensive AIs, so you're going to meet lots of eyes, forcefields, and fortresses.  Bomber Starships and Space Tanks both have polycrystal hulls, making them near-invulnerable to fortresses.  They'll also take down forcefields rapidly, and are unlikely to trigger eyes.
• Pop the Data Center next to P8 South.  (You might actually do this before taking the P8.)
  

(Optionally, you could hack the Laser Gattling Fab before capturing that planet, which would allow you to ditch the planet after you'd got the knowledge and staged your capture of P8.  Less to defend, at the cost of only 20 HaP.)

[Toranth]

I'm just going to point this out, instead of the rest of the post: You always have Neinzul Enclaves, they aren't a bonus ship. Check your Starship constructor.

(I have a problem inserting quotes, I'm doing them manually)
Sorry for the short post, but I searched everywhere and I cant find them, I'm playing on version 7.009 just in case.

Enclaves were added in a later expansion (CotN, I assume);  if you don't have any expansions, you wouldn't have access to the Enclaves. 
I would strongly recommend getting all the expansions.  They offer tons of cool stuff to play with, as well as lots of new and interesting ways to die.

As for suggestions, Bognor's list is very close to mine.  About the only difference is that I would suggest hacking the southern P8 for the Core Bombers and Core Tanks rather than capturing it.  Those two shiptypes are just as useful as Bognor suggested, and by hacking them you eliminate any risk of losing access to them.
I would suggest using your fleet in raid-style attacks to clear out more Tachyon Guardians and extend your scouting to find the rest of the ARSs.  You've done a good job scouting, especially for this early in the game, but you've been very unfortunate that there are no close ARS systems.  Finding the others will help you plan which systems to take.

[Draco18s]

Enclaves were added in a later expansion (CotN, I assume);  if you don't have any expansions, you wouldn't have access to the Enclaves. 

I think it was CoN* yeah.  Not a lot from that expansion that's really worth having, but them Enclaves...

*Children of Neinzul

[Aklyon]

Huh. I'd thought they were an exception, but I guess I was wrong

[Draco18s]

Don't count my info as definitive.  I've had all three since at least when they came out.  Enclaves are much much newer.

But if they're not base, then CoN is the only expansion they'd make sense for.

[zoutzakje]

welcome =)

and yeah, if you love the base game, you will love the expansions too. There were already 2 or 3 expansions when i bought the game and i bought them right away too. It was quite overwhelming at first, but there is just so much fun stuff in there. Can't play without them now, I think I'd get bored if i played with just the base game. Each expansion adds new AI types, new ship types, new minor factions, and more nastyness for the AI to abuse you with (are H/K's base game? I forgot).