Arcen Games
General Category => AI War Classic => AI War Classic - Strategy Discussion => Topic started by: Zincat on June 26, 2014, 04:18:34 pm
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Hello, I'm new to the forums though I'm not really a new player. I recently returned to AI war after some months of hiatus, and before I finished about 10 or so games, ranging from difficulty 7 at the start to, more recently, 8 or so. I also already finished Fallen spire, on a 7.6/7.6 game, by building the galactic transceiver. I also finished games with various ai plots and minor factions turned on.
So, while not an expert, I'm not a complete newbie and I'm familiar with planet neutering, reduction of entry points, loweiring aip through extensive scouting and raiding, clearing out threat when possible, usage of warheads and the like. But this game really baffles me and I'm wondering what I could do about it.
I am trying a fallen spire campaign game. Settings are
AI1 and AI2: 8.3 random moderate/easier with secondary type random moderate/easier
Realistic map (yes, perhaps I could have done without all those star connections... but that's not the problem)
Schizophrenic AI
Zenith Trader
Hybrids 4/10 on both AIs
Advanced Hybrids 4/10 on both AIs
So, for me at least, these are rather painful settings which I chose in order to improve. And I expected to struggle, but what is happening here is that the exowave I get when building the first spire city completely tramples me and I get a game over.
I'm a little more than 4 hrs in the game (hybrids slowed me down and the planets are heavily fortified, with multiple fortresses. Plus I scouted a lot). I have 5 worlds and AIP is 85
The waves come generally from 2 different ways. One heads for the system where I'm building the Spire City, the other for my home planet. This I expected. What I did NOT expect was the size of the wave.
Each wave is about 250 ships, of which 30-40 starships, 2-3 dire guardians and 2-3 golems. Is this normal? I mean, I don't have any spire ship yet except from 4 frigates, how can I stop THAT?
My defenses are set very much like what's written in this excellent post here
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15646.msg172836.html#msg172836
with turrets between the incoming wormhole and the commands station, mines and everything else pretty much as that post.
For turrets I have on each chockepoint full caps of Needler MK1 and MK2, Laser MK1, MLRS MK1, Missile MK1 and MK2, Sniper MK1 and MK2, Flak MK1, Lightning MK1, Spider MK1 plus some tractor beams and about 15 grav turrets. I also have normal mines set down and my whole fleet there, plus 2 forcefields II on the military command MK3 station. To complete the defense, 2 miniforts and a mk1 fortress. That's pretty much all of my tech unlocks here (aside from mk3 resource collectors).
And with all this, the wave just rolls over me. It's not that they really kill everything. More like, they smash the grav turrets as they go, pass my defenses, destroy my forcefield and everything below it, and then move to the next planet.
I am asking for some generic suggestions here. I want to understand If i set the game wrongly, or if I am trying to buid up the first city too soon.
I am rather new to these difficulty settings, but it's not the game in general that gives me problems, rather the exowave kills me before I can start pumping out some spire ships. Was I supposed to put some sort of toys in the game also, like golems, spirecrafts or the like?
Or, am I supposed to bide my time more at these difficulty settings, lower aip further, maybe get a couple more tech unlocks like FF mk3, grav turrets mk2, spider turrets mk2 or someting like that? Or, make liberal use of warheads? I am a bit worried by the AIP but...
Sorry for the rather longish post. Hope I will be able to find some suggestions. Thanks :)
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So, for me at least, these are rather painful settings which I chose in order to improve. And I expected to struggle, but what is happening here is that the exowave I get when building the first spire city completely tramples me and I get a game over.
I'm a little more than 4 hrs in the game (hybrids slowed me down and the planets are heavily fortified, with multiple fortresses. Plus I scouted a lot). I have 5 worlds and AIP is 85
The waves come generally from 2 different ways. One heads for the system where I'm building the Spire City, the other for my home planet. This I expected. What I did NOT expect was the size of the wave.
Each wave is about 250 ships, of which 30-40 starships, 2-3 dire guardians and 2-3 golems. Is this normal?
Yes. Sounds a slight bit weaker than what hit me in my recent 9/9 Fallen Spire game, but overall it sounds reasonable enough.
I mean, I don't have any spire ship yet except from 4 frigates, how can I stop THAT?
Warheads. They are the cheap always available human-only superweapon. Use them.
Armoured warheads do damage to the targets with MOST hp in their area of effect first. They are exceptional for killing golems (and much later in the FS campaign if you go for a lot of cities, excellent for taking out large numbers of Hunter/Killers).
Lightning warheads do damage to the targets with LEAST hp in their area of effect first, up to a capped maximum. They are great for clearing out numerous lesser threats.
The next few waves will be much weaker - it is the initial wave upon building the first city that is nasty. Always keep a stock of warheads in reserve and nothing Fallen Spire will throw against you will ever threaten you. If you build up a lot before building the first city you won't need warheads, but if you want to go for the city quickly, and you apparently do since you go for it with only 5 planets and hence weak defences, you probably do.
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Thanks for you answer :)
Warheads. They are the cheap always available human-only superweapon. Use them.
Armoured warheads do damage to the targets with MOST hp in their area of effect first. They are exceptional for killing golems (and much later in the FS campaign if you go for a lot of cities, excellent for taking out large numbers of Hunter/Killers).
Lightning warheads do damage to the targets with LEAST hp in their area of effect first, up to a capped maximum. They are great for clearing out numerous lesser threats.
The next few waves will be much weaker - it is the initial wave upon building the first city that is nasty. Always keep a stock of warheads in reserve and nothing Fallen Spire will throw against you will ever threaten you.
So, warheads. I had considered this possibility but I was afraid of the aip problem. I have been taught to keep the aip as low as possible by repeated death... errr I mean, gentle tutorials, so while I considered it I was hesitant to do that. Generally I keep warheads for truly fortified targets. the idea of using me just for waves seemed a bit... excessive. At least to me. Guess I was still living in a flowery world where harsh decisions are not needed to win....
If you build up a lot before building the first city you won't need warheads, but if you want to go for the city quickly, and you apparently do since you go for it with only 5 planets and hence weak defences, you probably do.
The reason I am considering this so early is the hybrids. Coupled with the realistic map setting. I have a LOT of planets where threat is gathering, and that means 30-50 hybrids as well. With my very limited fleets, that's a huge problem. Neutering those planets is also a problem, because there's so many of them and each of them is a really hard target, even with beachheading. I was also considering beachheading them all, leaving the turrets there, but then I'd have huge energy issues. Conquering other planents would only increase the amount of entry points, given how the map is set up.
There are also no real good capturables/hackables in the immediate vicinity. A couple of backup servers with useless stuff, a useless mk5 constructor, and a flak mk5 constructor. Now, normally this is a very good capturable, but with FS the flak turrets do not really help that much with starships, dire guardians and golems.
So, back to the topic. Warheads. I have another couple of questions.
- How high can I let the aip go before I become really worried? I'm used to keeping it ultra low, but this is Fallen Spire so I need some reference. Also, won't the aip increase the strength of the exowaves?
- You suggest using armored warheads, and I understand why because they target golems and the like first. But they cost about 10 times more, and also give you triple the aip. So another question, which armored warheads should I aim for? For example, for the wave above. Would a mk1 armored + a mk3 lighting do the trick? Or should I aim for a mk2 or mk3 armored? The cost would be a rather huge problem as of now... but if I have to...
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So, warheads. I had considered this possibility but I was afraid of the aip problem. I have been taught to keep the aip as low as possible by repeated death... errr I mean, gentle tutorials, so while I considered it I was hesitant to do that. Generally I keep warheads for truly fortified targets. the idea of using me just for waves seemed a bit... excessive. At least to me. Guess I was still living in a flowery world where harsh decisions are not needed to win....
First, AIP is far less of a concern in a spire scenario. In last game, I had to rush because I had civilian leaders and ended up at 180 AIP by the fourth hour mark. Notably for Fallen Spire, AIP doesn't affect the strength of Fallen Spire waves.
The first spire city wave is really harsh, but do note that a fully up spire city (with the appropriate laser/beam unlock) is a fearsome amount of firepower. Once you have got it set up, it's a lot easier to deal with the exo-waves.
One trick is to get resources maxed and LOT of engineers in your future spire-city system. With one homeworld you should have 2 millions+ resources, which allow the combined effort of engineer to complete the city very quickly. After that instantly rush for reactor and equip it with highest laser/beam/shield that you can build, then go for the habitation center, which also deal an enormous amount of damage to any wave in range.
Having beam turrets II and III unlocked + laser turrets III should give you a lot of firepower to put at your homeworld. (Knowledge hack is a thing, if you don't have knowledge/didn't buy those.)
Another trick is -indeed- warhead. a couple lightning+ one or two armored (or a single one of each, depending on mark), accompanied by a cloaked starship to ensure they won't get shot when you don't want to.
Keeping warheads on key systems, especially homeworld, is almost mandatory in Fallen Spire (above 8/8). Often you don't use them, but the assurance is very, very nice.
The reason I am considering this so early is the hybrids. Coupled with the realistic map setting. I have a LOT of planets where threat is gathering, and that means 30-50 hybrids as well. With my very limited fleets, that's a huge problem. Neutering those planets is also a problem, because there's so many of them and each of them is a really hard target, even with beachheading. I was also considering beachheading them all, leaving the turrets there, but then I'd have huge energy issues. Conquering other planents would only increase the amount of entry points, given how the map is set up.
Do note that exo-waves come from warp gates, you can force them to appear from a chosen system, or a more distant one, by picking warp gates to kill. A little advanced trick for early FS games though.
Threat can also be dealt with warhead if that's needed. I have done a few 7k ship clearing that way, mostly with mark 3 lightning. Otherwise your spire fleet might be able to do something about that. At worst, try beachheading with gravity turret II/III to keep AI ship too far from you 13k range spire fleet. Beams attack from spire ships + beam modules tend to to a more than decent amount of damage (And spire ships are fairly cheap for their firepower.)
There are also no real good capturables/hackables in the immediate vicinity. A couple of backup servers with useless stuff, a useless mk5 constructor, and a flak mk5 constructor. Now, normally this is a very good capturable, but with FS the flak turrets do not really help that much with starships, dire guardians and golems.
Lasers turrets, which you need to put as modules on your spire ships, should help a lot with starships and golems.
Again, knowledge hack is a thing.
Area mines can also do a fairly good amount of damage. Especially over multiple systems as exo-waves always go straight for their Spire-system/Homeworld target, and thus advance in a nice line between wormholes. (Alt+right click with mines selected to build them in a row, with "place line")
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So, I went and managed to survive my first spire city exowave with the abuse of exploding confetti. I must say, it was rather... satisfying after struggling with it before. I can see how I will be strongly... encouraged... to keep some warheads ready all the time, just in case.
First, AIP is far less of a concern in a spire scenario. In last game, I had to rush because I had civilian leaders and ended up at 180 AIP by the fourth hour mark. Notably for Fallen Spire, AIP doesn't affect the strength of Fallen Spire waves.
This I had no idea about. It's not written anywhere I can find, so I thought AIP would increase exowave size. I must say, this does put my worries to rest quite a bit, though the game is by no means won as it is.
Do note that exo-waves come from warp gates, you can force them to appear from a chosen system, or a more distant one, by picking warp gates to kill. A little advanced trick for early FS games though.
Threat can also be dealt with warhead if that's needed. I have done a few 7k ship clearing that way, mostly with mark 3 lightning. Otherwise your spire fleet might be able to do something about that. At worst, try beachheading with gravity turret II/III to keep AI ship too far from you 13k range spire fleet. Beams attack from spire ships + beam modules tend to to a more than decent amount of damage (And spire ships are fairly cheap for their firepower.)
Oh, I'm aware of all this, but once again I was rather hesitant to bring the aip up. Also, with my limited fleet, it was not easy at all to try and clear those threat gatherng worlds, courtesy of all those hybrids
After that instantly rush for reactor and equip it with highest laser/beam/shield that you can build, then go for the habitation center, which also deal an enormous amount of damage to any wave in range.
Having beam turrets II and III unlocked + laser turrets III should give you a lot of firepower to put at your homeworld. (Knowledge hack is a thing, if you don't have knowledge/didn't buy those.)
Lasers turrets, which you need to put as modules on your spire ships, should help a lot with starships and golems.
Again, knowledge hack is a thing.
Ok, this here puzzles me a bit. Laser turrets are needed more or less for Spire ships, though I tend to put as many HBC on them as possible besides shields.
But for spire cities, unless I'm missing something, rail cannons seem to have a higher dps than an equivalent mark laser cannon modules.
Let's see what I have now:
Laser Cannon module mk2 4000x3 every 8 seconds -> dps 1500
Bonuses close combat 10, Heavy 2, Ligt 5, Ultra light 5
Armor piercing 15
Rail cannon module mk2 12000 every 6 seconds -> dps 2000
Bonuses close combat 5, command grade 0.1, medium 4, polycrystal 4, Ultra light 6
Armor piercing 999999
Let's see against specific ships. Not going to bother with fleet ships, as it's generally bigger ships that create problems.
All golems are ultra heavy, so no bonus there. But the rail cannon has armor piercing, so it's better.
Starships:
Laser cannon has bonus against Flagship (heavy), leech starship (heavy, but generally not really a problem against a spire city), raider starship (ultra light), beam starship (Heavy), warbird starship (heavy)
Rail cannon has bonus against Spire starship (medium), bomber starship (polycrystal), raider starship (ultra light). The rail cannon also has armor piercing, so it's generally better against anything that does have armor. It IS useless against hunter killer though, I must admit.
Dire guardians are almost all medium, to which rail cannon has a bonus against, with a few ultra light in between.
So, unless I am mistaken, the rail cannon seems just better all things considered against big AI ships. Except the hunter killer. The question at this point is, is that reason enough to use laser turrets instead of rail cannons?
EDIT: I noticed that the mk3 rail cannon vs laser cannon have the same dps, but the armor piercing and better general bonus should still stay true.
Ofc mk4 laser cannon modules are better... but you need the galactic capitol so not until a long while later.
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Ok, so, after this latest update I'd like to ask for more guidance.
I am 14 hrs and half into the game, due to early game hybrids slowdowns and some noobishness on my part. And I'm about to start building the third spire city.
The exowave I'm seeing after starting that is
55 massive ships 61244S
and the total strength of the incoming ships is about 180000, as shows by the threat popup, divided into three generally.
I attach here a save, a few minutes before I tried to build the spire city. If you want to see the exowave I'm seeing, just pick the spire colony ship (it's near the home command station), move it to Zaraeo (2 jumps away) and start building. No, the defenses there are not completely ready in this save, but rather close.
Now, I tried it a couple of times. I can only survive this by deploying at least 2-3 armored warheads. More to the point, once the exowave came through the spire city at Qucau, one step from home system, and obliterated it in 50 seconds flat. I'd like to think it's a rather well defended system
Normal systems, like Rinigen just one hop away from home system, last like 30 seconds or so. And in my opinion, it's a heavily defended system, with multiple shields, fortresses, turrets, everything I can put there. And even my spire fleet can't really do anything to stop them. Sure, the spire ships do not die, but the exowave marches on to the home command station and kills it.
So, I may be a bit of a noob but I question this kind of... one way solution of using warhears. The exowave strength seems disproportionate to the spire fleet/spire city modules I have right now. I mean, this is not a 10/10 game where I would expect something like that. When I did read the changelog, I thought that since the spire ships and cities were buffed, exowaves were meant to be stopped by using those mainly. One would say that the fallen spire campaign is mainly about the fallen spire, not about liberal use of warheads.
At any rate, I wanted to ask for opinions and suggestions. I could finish the game the normal way, I think, by sending my spire fleet to the ai worlds etc. But I would like to at least finish the galactic capitol. Or, I could try to make the exo waves pass through multiple systems, so that they lose strength... but on this realistic map, this would require conquering/neutering about 15 worlds or so...
So... on to my questions
What am I doing wrong?
Are my defenses set incorrectly?
What could I do better?
Is there something I'm missing?
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It's certainly possible the FS numbers need more adjustment, as the changes I just made were very broad strokes. Just trying to get back into the right ballpark, really.
A few thoughts on what I'm aiming for:
- The main challenge of an FS game should be these exos.
- The main thing you use to survive that challenge should be your cities and capital ships.
- Needing to use some warheads isn't bad, though I don't want wanton warhead spam to be the only way. Warheads are kind of the human superweapon, so it make sense they'd be used in conjunction with the spire superweapons to survive the worst of the AI's assault on the joint human/spire forces.
Anyway, three things come to mind to make the situation you're facing line up better with it being a challenge rather than an auto-curbstomp:
- reduce the strength of the 3rd spire city exo (possibly the 2nd one too; I didn't increase the first one)
- increase the strength of spire cities further
- increase the strength of spire capital ships further
I prefer the latter two but it might be an overreaction. Possibly just +/- 10% for all three.
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It's certainly possible the FS numbers need more adjustment, as the changes I just made were very broad strokes. Just trying to get back into the right ballpark, really.
A few thoughts on what I'm aiming for:
- The main challenge of an FS game should be these exos.
- The main thing you use to survive that challenge should be your cities and capital ships.
- Needing to use some warheads isn't bad, though I don't want wanton warhead spam to be the only way. Warheads are kind of the human superweapon, so it make sense they'd be used in conjunction with the spire superweapons to survive the worst of the AI's assault on the joint human/spire forces.
Anyway, three things come to mind to make the situation you're facing line up better with it being a challenge rather than an auto-curbstomp:
- reduce the strength of the 3rd spire city exo (possibly the 2nd one too; I didn't increase the first one)
- increase the strength of spire cities further
- increase the strength of spire capital ships further
I prefer the latter two but it might be an overreaction. Possibly just +/- 10% for all three.
Thank you for your answer. I'd like to specify a couple of things.
First, it is entirely possible that I'm making mistakes, which is why I posted my savegame etc. I'm not that experienced, and perhaps someone will point out some glaring mistake I did. So before thinking of nerfs or such, maybe the opinion of a better player would be useful.
But the main problem, I feel, is not really the lack of firepower. More, it's the lack of time. By doubling the exowave strength, my defenses and shields get smashed too fast for my firepower to make a difference. This is, of course, especially true for systems without spire cities. The exowave smashes the shields and move on to the home system and kill me, and my defensive firepower is left largely unused. I have to resort to armored warheads because I can't seem to find a way to slow them down enough, to buy time for all my turrets/fortresses etc to actually kill the ai ships.
Tractor beams are useless as the massive ships and the starships are tractor immune.
Grav turrets are too low health, only buy me a few seconds alltogether before dying because the waves have too many ships.
I have all the shields unlocked, but 4mk3 shields and 4 mk2 shields, a mix of hardened and normal ones, get destroyed in 5 seconds flat
Even core spider turrets make hardly a dent in the incoming wave, since all those ships have 100000+ engine health.
I'm using mk3 military command station, perhap I could use mk3 logistic which would double the time... but then I'd have half the firepower
I just don't know how to gain enough time to stop those exowaves without resorting to warheads....
P.S: I could heavily use zenith trader toys. Up to now I avoided them because they're costly and I did not decide where to put them (where the final front would be). But I feel they are beyond the point, as far as balance goes. Many do not use it, so the game should not be balanced for those toys)
Besides I'm not sure they would help that much. Radar jammer perhaps....
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On the trader toys, if you combine a radar jammer mkII with properly placed mkIII grav turrets (on either side of the probable line of advance, such that they cover it but aren't closer than necessary for that) you can often slow them down without them being able to kill the gravs (unless they break off to do so, which exo forces generally won't).
Another possibility is logistics command stations, which reduce enemy speed. I'm not sure how much overall impact they'd have in your case, however.
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I wanted to try my luck on FS but I see things have gotten interesting - I seen latest buffs for FS stuff - did I miss buffs for exos?
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I wanted to try my luck on FS but I see things have gotten interesting - I seen latest buffs for FS stuff - did I miss buffs for exos?
The 7.045 notes include buffs for the exos, if that's what you mean :)
And yes, the capital ships should now be fairly ridiculous, though we'll see how it goes in practice.
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Okay, I checked the save, so I have some answers to the questions: [Good lord, this turned out much longer than I expected. I ended up spending an hour writing this! Hope it is of some use.]
So... on to my questions
What am I doing wrong?
Are my defenses set incorrectly?
What could I do better?
Is there something I'm missing?
First, you are playing Fallen Spire on 6/10 rather than the default 4/10, so it is to be expected that things are tougher for you than on 4/10, and you are missing many obvious improvements to your approach. I can fully understand that you are experiencing pain in the given situation.
Second, a small but obvious thing - you are placing your gravity turrets poorly, directly along the line of advance of enemy ships. You should put them along lines parallel to the line of advance such that they merely overlap it (which means that short ranged enemy ships won't even be able to hit the turret without detouring from the advance) and, since you've got Zenith Traders, if you slap down a Radar Jammer 2 as well even most long-range enemy ships will be unable to hit the turrets without departing from the line. Which they eventually will, of course, but time the enemy wastes is time you can take advantage of - and which your defences surely will.
Third, you have conquered... unwisely. Lord knows that your map isn't trivial to make sense of, but you seem to have been going for a maximum of exposure to hostile threats with minimal safe interior space and minimal use of defensive depth. Nearly everything is either exposed or is one jump from the frontier. Consider the top-left corner of the map as the obvious example: What possible reason do you have for NOT occupying Causeip and Ashteio? They are both safely behind your chokepoint defences, as is the Superterminal world on Qachar. Likewise, along the left edge of the map, you've got six hostile systems on or above the Ginwig-Ginyae-Chrsi line that are mixed in with yours and, if you took control of them all, could be defended directly by only two chokepoints, Ginya-Chrsi, while allowing you to reduce defences in three current chokepoints behind the line. If you take down the Superterminal, you can certainly afford it, and it will give you lots of knowledge. (And if you then take Weppan-Hartus-Neiner, you own the entire western side and have an enviable defensive setup with lots of space for the economic stations you've already paid to unlock, giving you only a few contacts with the enemy and the energy to build strong distributed defences in every system leading to your homeworld)
Fourth, regards to knowledge, one obvious thing to note is that you've skimped on turrets in favour of spending on your economy on the per-galaxy capped forts and shields. 28000 knowledge on your economy, but only 17,750 on turrets? Okay, I understand the Mil3 stations. I even understand the Econ3 stations, despite you controlling so little territory that isn't on the frontline and hence has military stations that you don't get much benefit from the economic stations (my solution would be to conquer more territory as noted above, taking down the Superterminal along the way), but regardless of that you don't control anywhere near enough territory for it to be worth additionally spending 9k on Harvester upgrades, and yet you've done so.
For that 9k price you could, for instance, have unlocked Needler 4, Laser 4, Missile 3+4 for 5500, and throw in Sniper III and IV for 3500. I daresay they'd help you more than your harvester upgrades, given that you are to a large degree living on salvage income anyhow.
Now, I wouldn't unlock those if I only had 9k to use - I'd go primarily for Sniper, Spider, and Missile turrets, and I'll tell you why - I love defensive depth. Key to using defensive depth is knowing that it is never about stopping the enemy before the final destination (in this case, your homeworld, later in the game a spire city), it is about inflicting attritional damage on the way, and THAT is mostly about maximizing time-on-target for defences. If you try to stop the juggernaut head on in each system before reaching the next, it will roll over you. Even worse, if it comes in multiple successive groups (which exowaves do) and the first group roll over your defences, the second wave may not even suffer attritional casualties when it is its turn to pass through the system!
Certain things follow: A system is intended for one of two roles, either stopping an enemy or inflicting attritional casualties on an enemy, and its defences should be set up accordingly, but in both these cases, Sniper and Spider turrets are invaluable. Exowaves consist of both large and small ships - ideally you'll mainly have to bother about the large ships while your defences kill most of the smaller, and few things are as good for weeding out the smaller ships as having sniper and spider turrets set up safely away from the enemy keeping their perfect 100% time-on-target damage for both of them, and slowing small ships in their tracks for the spiders.
Putting the station for the defences directly on top of the exit wormhole leading to your homeworld as you've done almost everywhere ensures that the station will be wiped out before the enemy progresses any further; Putting all your turret defences in a standard Kahuna-style defence ensures that they get wiped out too. This is inefficient. The purpose of a good defence in depth is to take advantage of that depth to bleed the opponent while limiting your own casualties.
Rather, for attrition purposes, the station should either be located as far as possible from the route the enemy is traveling (and be a logistics station) with all sniper and spider turrets placed far from the anywhere anybody passing through would come (e.g. behind the station), with other turrets placed to cover the route passersthrough traverse at maximum distance, OR be placed close by the exit wormhole but to the side of the line of advance, such that defences set up protect the station also overlap the line of advance to the wormhole but enemy ships are capable of traversing the line without having to fully destroy the station+forcefields. (The second should be your preferred for systems that double as current tanking locations with hostile wormholes).
In both cases, you may lose some or all of your defences to enemies that pass through, but a) it will take longer time for the enemy to do this, time in which it is under fire, and b) it is not guaranteed to wipe out your defences, which posting them directly on the wormhole does.)
MOREOVER, since the Fallen Spire exos arrive in several individual groups, NOT having them bunch up is a very good idea unless you expect to be strong enough to stop them cold in a system. Once your FS fleet is larger, you may very well end up with a Level 2 spire city that boosted with other defences makes an excellent chokepoint on which to KILL THEM ALL, but you don't have any such locations now.
Fifth, USE THE ZENITH TRADERS! You've played 14h and your number of toys is depressingly low. Your homeworld does not have the full set of obligatory Trader Toys - I refer to the Radar Jammer II, the Armor Inhibitor, the Armor Armor Booster, the Black Hole Machine... They should all be placed under a forcefield behind the home station, so they can live in peace and not be destroyed during construction should anything hit the home's forcefields. Nor have you built the Orbital Mass Drivers or the Superfortress. Sure, these toys are expensive, but they are powerful and if you cannot think of anywhere else to put them, the homeworld is also a nice location for those toys (and, in fact, with you having to defend on so many fronts, a very good idea for defence in depth as exos coming from any direction will end up there after hitting only two systems). You've got the traders enabled, why on earth not make good use of them? Between the exos and the regular waves, you'll have more than enough metal income to build their toys. (If you feel you have too low a metal income, just increase your AIP by conquest and the increased wavesize will do the rest).
Anyhow, I hope there's something in what I've written that will be of use. Much of my frustration is because I simply don't see the logic of the way you've expanded and spent knowledge, apart from a vague feeling that you've been focusing on limiting your AIP expenditure over setting up a good defensive and economic network.
While it probably makes sense to you, and it may even make good sense, as people have different playing styles and I'll not insist that my own is the best after having played the game for so short a time (2 months), when I look at it I only see all the great missed opportunities for setting up secure lightly defended inner areas that pay for significant defence in depth and major defences on the borders. You've focused on unlocking defences with per-galaxy cap and spread them over many systems rather than focusing on those with per-planet caps, with the results that - as I see it - you are weak everywhere. Forts are fun and I highly recommend them, but they don't provide anywhere near the bang for the knowledge-buck that turrets do when you are defending more than one planet.
The problem is, as I am seeing these things through my strategic vision and not yours, I am not sure that my advice is all that useful to you in the given situation unless you are willing to depart from your own and adopt mine, and since you cannot take back actions already taken, that will require you to start killing off a bunch of enemy systems, even those nasty eyes in the regions I advocate clearing first, to afford the defences I'd already have in your place.
(Fortunately, eyes are fairly easy to kill. Parasite Eyes don't hurt starships, so if you have good starships, and you do as you have Spire Corvettes, taking those down should be trivial (or would be if you unlocked higher tier Spire Corvettes and higher tier sniper turrets). Plasma Eyes can be nasty against Starships, but they provide overkill vs fleetships and can only target 10 per 2s, so just send in the whole fleet and accept the casualties. Threating Eyes threaten, and who cares, that's just more chaff. Nuclear Eyes should be hacker-sabotaged, and sabotage is, of course, a completely acceptable solution to any Eye threat.)
EDIT: It is tempting to think of Mil3, boosting strength by 100%, and Log3, reducing enemy speed by 50% as roughly equivalent. Nothing could be further from the truth. It depends entirely on the firing range of hostile ships, the location within the gravity well of the station, and on whether the time that is won from the use of logistics stations is put to good use elsewhere. And since time is the single most valuable currency in most strategy games, that should be possible. One classic example: First defending one planet with ALL HBC turrets backing up its regular defences, then as an exo passes that planet and continues into a logistics corridor, tear down any surviving HBCs and build them in the next planet on the line of advance, until they are in the final system. In case of limited resources, just do this with HBC IIIs and IV and leave the others in the system where you expect greatest time-on-target.)
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Thank you for taking the time to answer my post. There's a lot here that's useful to me, and I will elaborate further.
Anyhow, I hope there's something in what I've written that will be of use. Much of my frustration is because I simply don't see the logic of the way you've expanded and spent knowledge, apart from a vague feeling that you've been focusing on limiting your AIP expenditure over setting up a good defensive and economic network.
Third, you have conquered... unwisely. Lord knows that your map isn't trivial to make sense of, but you seem to have been going for a maximum of exposure to hostile threats with minimal safe interior space and minimal use of defensive depth. Nearly everything is either exposed or is one jump from the frontier. Consider the top-left corner of the map as the obvious example: What possible reason do you have for NOT occupying Causeip and Ashteio? They are both safely behind your chokepoint defences, as is the Superterminal world on Qachar. Likewise, along the left edge of the map, you've got six hostile systems on or above the Ginwig-Ginyae-Chrsi line that are mixed in with yours and, if you took control of them all, could be defended directly by only two chokepoints, Ginya-Chrsi, while allowing you to reduce defences in three current chokepoints behind the line. If you take down the Superterminal, you can certainly afford it, and it will give you lots of knowledge. (And if you then take Weppan-Hartus-Neiner, you own the entire western side and have an enviable defensive setup with lots of space for the economic stations you've already paid to unlock, giving you only a few contacts with the enemy and the energy to build strong distributed defences in every system leading to your homeworld)
Now, this is probably exactly to the point. And my major problem I think. I am used to playing extremely low AIP games. And I mean, extremely low. Like, less than 100 aip before killing the first ai homeworld. As such, while I did finish fallen Spire once before (on much lower settings), I probably went about it in an inefficient way, taking too few worlds.
This time I tried to conquer more of them than usual, but apparently I fell back into my usual way to play and only got a few more than what I usually do. It's probably silly for fallen spire, but the thought of AIP going over 400 is so ALIEN to me, I just can't put it into words :)
And this resulted in a very resource starved game, which bring me to the next points...
Fourth, regards to knowledge, one obvious thing to note is that you've skimped on turrets in favour of spending on your economy on the per-galaxy capped forts and shields. 28000 knowledge on your economy, but only 17,750 on turrets? Okay, I understand the Mil3 stations. I even understand the Econ3 stations, despite you controlling so little territory that isn't on the frontline and hence has military stations that you don't get much benefit from the economic stations (my solution would be to conquer more territory as noted above, taking down the Superterminal along the way), but regardless of that you don't control anywhere near enough territory for it to be worth additionally spending 9k on Harvester upgrades, and yet you've done so.
Fifth, USE THE ZENITH TRADERS! You've played 14h and your number of toys is depressingly low. Your homeworld does not have the full set of obligatory Trader Toys - I refer to the Radar Jammer II, the Armor Inhibitor, the Armor Armor Booster, the Black Hole Machine... They should all be placed under a forcefield behind the home station, so they can live in peace and not be destroyed during construction should anything hit the home's forcefields. Nor have you built the Orbital Mass Drivers or the Superfortress. Sure, these toys are expensive, but they are powerful and if you cannot think of anywhere else to put them, the homeworld is also a nice location for those toys (and, in fact, with you having to defend on so many fronts, a very good idea for defence in depth as exos coming from any direction will end up there after hitting only two systems). You've got the traders enabled, why on earth not make good use of them? Between the exos and the regular waves, you'll have more than enough metal income to build their toys. (If you feel you have too low a metal income, just increase your AIP by conquest and the increased wavesize will do the rest).
These two are the direct consequences of the fact that my game has been very resource starved. I didn't use any trader toys yet because my income was low, and I needed it elsewhere. And the econ stations and harvesters unlock were only done lately, in an effort to increase said resource income. I did plan to put down toys and unlock more turrets when I had a better income.
I do not regret unlocking the shields, but regarding forts, that is probably just a plain mistake I did. I was used to having turrets with galaxy-wide caps. It's only recently that they became planet-capped. As such, I unlocked forts before thinking it through very well, and also probably thinking of strong chokepoints to defend (once again, courtesy of my take-as-few-planets-as-possible usual approach)
Second, a small but obvious thing - you are placing your gravity turrets poorly, directly along the line of advance of enemy ships. You should put them along lines parallel to the line of advance such that they merely overlap it (which means that short ranged enemy ships won't even be able to hit the turret without detouring from the advance) and, since you've got Zenith Traders, if you slap down a Radar Jammer 2 as well even most long-range enemy ships will be unable to hit the turrets without departing from the line. Which they eventually will, of course, but time the enemy wastes is time you can take advantage of - and which your defences surely will.
Now, I wouldn't unlock those if I only had 9k to use - I'd go primarily for Sniper, Spider, and Missile turrets, and I'll tell you why - I love defensive depth. Key to using defensive depth is knowing that it is never about stopping the enemy before the final destination (in this case, your homeworld, later in the game a spire city), it is about inflicting attritional damage on the way, and THAT is mostly about maximizing time-on-target for defences. If you try to stop the juggernaut head on in each system before reaching the next, it will roll over you. Even worse, if it comes in multiple successive groups (which exowaves do) and the first group roll over your defences, the second wave may not even suffer attritional casualties when it is its turn to pass through the system!
Putting the station for the defences directly on top of the exit wormhole leading to your homeworld as you've done almost everywhere ensures that the station will be wiped out before the enemy progresses any further; Putting all your turret defences in a standard Kahuna-style defence ensures that they get wiped out too. This is inefficient. The purpose of a good defence in depth is to take advantage of that depth to bleed the opponent while limiting your own casualties.
Rather, for attrition purposes, the station should either be located as far as possible from the route the enemy is traveling (and be a logistics station) with all sniper and spider turrets placed far from the anywhere anybody passing through would come (e.g. behind the station), with other turrets placed to cover the route passersthrough traverse at maximum distance, OR be placed close by the exit wormhole but to the side of the line of advance, such that defences set up protect the station also overlap the line of advance to the wormhole but enemy ships are capable of traversing the line without having to fully destroy the station+forcefields. (The second should be your preferred for systems that double as current tanking locations with hostile wormholes).
EDIT: It is tempting to think of Mil3, boosting strength by 100%, and Log3, reducing enemy speed by 50% as roughly equivalent. Nothing could be further from the truth. It depends entirely on the firing range of hostile ships, the location within the gravity well of the station, and on whether the time that is won from the use of logistics stations is put to good use elsewhere. And since time is the single most valuable currency in most strategy games, that should be possible. One classic example: First defending one planet with ALL HBC turrets backing up its regular defences, then as an exo passes that planet and continues into a logistics corridor, tear down any surviving HBCs and build them in the next planet on the line of advance, until they are in the final system. In case of limited resources, just do this with HBC IIIs and IV and leave the others in the system where you expect greatest time-on-target.)
These are all good points that I did not think of or that I thought of but discarded. Once again, partly probably due to my usual approach, and partly because of noobishness. I am used to having like 10 systems in all, so staggered defenses over multiple systems are really not my usual deal. I am used to isolated planets here and there, it's rare for me to have 2 planets next to each other.
Now, after all is said and done, this game has suffered a rather interesting amount of setbacks. But I don't want to abandon it yet. I think I'm going to try to salvage it once again. I will probably go on a conquering spree to reduce my fronts (contradicting my every instinct of keeping the aip low, I tell you :)), and setting up the defenses over multiple systems, trying your suggestions in the meanwhile.
Thanks a lot for the suggestions, once again.
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Third, you have conquered... unwisely. Lord knows that your map isn't trivial to make sense of, but you seem to have been going for a maximum of exposure to hostile threats with minimal safe interior space and minimal use of defensive depth. Nearly everything is either exposed or is one jump from the frontier.
This is one of the biggest issues I've seen with your save. When playing on FS funneling the AI into defensive chokepoints is a MUST, whether they are in-depth corridors like Peter suggests, or building massive superchokes designed to face tank the like I do, you MUST funnel the AI or the exo forces will destroy you. Typically you want to start funneling the AI before you even build your first Spire City. This is done by destroying Warp Gates, so that waves and exos can only come from the direction you want them to come. Easiest method I have found is to neuter the AI worlds where you don't want the AI to spawn exos/send waves from, going back 2-3 hops at least. This also greatly reduces/eliminates any potential border aggression from those locations, because a neutered world can support MUCH less units. Admittedly on the map you are running its not going to be easy, there isn't a simple way to really narrow things down to just 2-3 ingress points that I can see. I usually play around maps where I can do so easily, (Maze and X are my favorites) because I always run with 4-5 exo sources turned on. Peter's advice seems to help a great deal though.
One thing for future games, when building Spire Cities, if they are going to be a dedicated chokepoint/an ingress into your territory, you want to build them pure defensive. One Habitation Center and five Spire Reactors. For cities that are NOT going to be in direct line for the AI, build them with one Hab and five Shipyards. This might delay how quickly you build up your FS fleet, but it maximizes both the defensive power of Spire Cites, while also maximizing how many shipyards you can build. Reactors do NOT need to be on the same planet as the shipyard. If you have 10 reactors across 2 cities, you can build 2 more cities with 5 shipyards each. And since shipyards can NOT mount modules, they have no place on the front lines.
Fourth, regards to knowledge, one obvious thing to note is that you've skimped on turrets in favour of spending on your economy on the per-galaxy capped forts and shields. 28000 knowledge on your economy, but only 17,750 on turrets? Okay, I understand the Mil3 stations. I even understand the Econ3 stations, despite you controlling so little territory that isn't on the frontline and hence has military stations that you don't get much benefit from the economic stations (my solution would be to conquer more territory as noted above, taking down the Superterminal along the way), but regardless of that you don't control anywhere near enough territory for it to be worth additionally spending 9k on Harvester upgrades, and yet you've done so.
For that 9k price you could, for instance, have unlocked Needler 4, Laser 4, Missile 3+4 for 5500, and throw in Sniper III and IV for 3500. I daresay they'd help you more than your harvester upgrades, given that you are to a large degree living on salvage income anyhow.
Another VERY good point. When playing FS, no matter if you are building multiple ingress points or a single one. Defenses are MUCH more valuable than econemy, and to a point even more so than mobile ships. Now I would agree with your choice about shields, especially since FS shields require shield research (BUT only normal shields, hardened shields weren't needed yet IMO), forts were a mistake, a big one IMO. Unless you can narrow the AI down to only one possible way into your territory, which on this map is utterly impossible, turrets are going to be infinitely more valuable.
As Peter pointed out, turrets are per planet, and forts are galaxy capped. This means that turrets can cover MUCH more area, limited only by your energy. And even with my games, where I can usually narrow the AI down to just one way in at me, I still prefer turrets over forts. Forts work best IMO, if you cap every single mark on the same planet. This uses A LOT of energy. And while forts can be very powerful, they are utterly useless against their counter. Which is one of the most dangerous types of AI Fleet Ships, Bombers. Bombers are the bane of your shields/your FS Fleet, and forts cant do a thing to them, or anything with a polycrystal hull. The only for that can harm Bombers/Polycrystal is the Mod Fort, but you only get ONE of those.
A full cap of all normal forts costs 1.17 MILLION energy. You can build a full cap of every single per planet turret, excluding Mark V versions, for only 729,600. You can throw in a full cap of HBC turrets, which are per galaxy cap, for only an additional 79,800. This is BELOW the energy cost of the forts, and while I didn't crunch the numbers DPS wise I am certain that it easily out does the forts. To top this off, turrets have a Turret hull type, which almost nothing gets a bonus against. (H/Ks are the only thing I can think of that does.) Also, no turrets get penalties to damage against any type of hull, and every single per planet turret gets a bonus against a set of hull types, with Spider/Sniper turrets getting a 5x and the others getting 3x bonuses. So, all combined, turrets have lower energy costs, higher combined DPS, able aim at more targets due to sheer greater numbers, and have no hull penalty/have hull bonuses. Uh... Keith, I think Forts just got rendered moot by turrets. Whoops?
LOTS OF VERY GOOD STUFF ABOUT DEFENSE IN DEPTH!!!!
Um... Eh.... Nope. I got nothing for this. I use the "Yeah, lets see you break THIS WALL!" style of chokepoint, designed to simply stop exos cold there and then. So I offer no opinion other than "sounds good to me." I will state that I also use a backup chokepoint, exactly 3 hops behind my main choke, armed with every single per planet defense I can easily afford to give it, using another defensive Spire City with MKIII Mill station, because there are times when the unfortunate happens and something gets through the wall. I may be crazy, but I'm also crazy prepared. I don't duplicate the trader toys, even if I do have the resources, because i save that for expanding the chokepoint forward.
Hey Keith, can we have COMPLETED trader toys drop remains that start at 1%? Pretty please? I get annoyed waiting for the Zenith to finally come back in the rare case the choke gets over run.
Edit: Guess I took too long typing.
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Hey Keith, can we have COMPLETED trader toys drop remains that start at 1%? Pretty please? I get annoyed waiting for the Zenith to finally come back in the rare case the choke gets over run.
Sorry to swerve off topic, but THIS! THIS receives my enthusiastic support. Especially in a highly connected map, where the Trader will sometimes cross through adjacent systems multiple times - mocking me, I know it...
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A full cap of all normal forts costs 1.17 MILLION energy. You can build a full cap of every single per planet turret, excluding Mark V versions, for only 729,600. You can throw in a full cap of HBC turrets, which are per galaxy cap, for only an additional 79,800. This is BELOW the energy cost of the forts, and while I didn't crunch the numbers DPS wise I am certain that it easily out does the forts. To top this off, turrets have a Turret hull type, which almost nothing gets a bonus against. (H/Ks are the only thing I can think of that does.) Also, no turrets get penalties to damage against any type of hull, and every single per planet turret gets a bonus against a set of hull types, with Spider/Sniper turrets getting a 5x and the others getting 3x bonuses. So, all combined, turrets have lower energy costs, higher combined DPS, able aim at more targets due to sheer greater numbers, and have no hull penalty/have hull bonuses. Uh... Keith, I think Forts just got rendered moot by turrets. Whoops?
Fortunately, forts still retain an enviable role in defence, even if it not what their name would suggest. They are not hardened defensive positions, they are mobile long-range turrets.
Their attack range is so long that they can usually cover the entire area the AI fleets will traverse, so long as one positions them wisely. Even if one gets one of the good systems with an entry wormhole near a border and cunning places the station opposite, a fort can be placed near the middle of the system offset enough from the road of death the AI traverses when going for the station that it will have to deviate significantly to get the fort into range, while still covering the entire road.
The only turrets that provide the same type of functionality are the Spider and Sniper turrets - all others, including the missile turrets, are much shorter ranged and have a low time-on-target against enemy ships in-system, growing ever lower the better the system is defended with gravity turrets and other means of slowing down the AI fleet advance in-system. Forts thus properly deployed in a system provide a much greater damage over the duration of the enemy stay than equivalent cost turrets of the non-Spider/Sniper varieties do, but only when properly deployed and supported. (Get those Gravity 3 turrets.)
Those standard turrets provide much larger dps for their energy cost while they engage, certainly, but they have very low time on target before they are destroyed if you use them in a blocking system - longer time if you set up an enfilade in a defensive depth setup).
And with regards to forts vs. Spider and Sniper turrets, those turrets, nice though they definitely are, are all hard-countered by anything that is immune to sniper shots, but the forts attacks are not sniper shots, so they'll happily fire on anything thus defended.
Finally, forts provide excellent repair cover in case teleporting engineers have not been unlocked, slaved to a control group and then always present where they are most needed, and supportive repair cover when the engineers have been unlocked.
In short, forts are pretty damn good at the niche they fill, they are not made obsolete by the turrets, their energy costs aren't outrageous for their damage, and they supplement turrets well, but they are definitely supplementary to the Spider/Sniper turrets. Their main problem in a FS game is that they are galaxy-capped, so even when one has the energy, they have to be concentrated in one or two locations to make any significant difference in the defensive setup, giving them a fairly small niche.
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These two are the direct consequences of the fact that my game has been very resource starved. I didn't use any trader toys yet because my income was low, and I needed it elsewhere. And the econ stations and harvesters unlock were only done lately, in an effort to increase said resource income. I did plan to put down toys and unlock more turrets when I had a better income.
1) If you feel you lack metal resources, increase your AIP and they will come. :P Harvesters are nice but unless you have lots of territory they don't compete with economic stations, and between Habitation Centers and Salvage, you should have metal income enough for anybody.
Fun thing for you to consider - you can build several Habitation Centres in a single system, should you so desire. Yes, it comes at the cost of a city slot, and all else being equal you don't want to do this as you'll prefer to maximize number of shipyards, but it is an option, and a strong option if you are trying not to increase your AIP and still feel you need a boosted metal income.
2) Given that you can pause development of trader toys just like you can pause everything else and given that all trader toys except for the Superfortress have very low energy costs, you should always purchase the toys you want for the homeworld (possibly excluding Superfortress) the first time the trader visits. Pause construction on all, select the one you want to build first and slave it to a control key. Then, whenever your resources are capped, hit the hotkey, start construction, and abort it a few seconds later when your resources have been sufficiently depleted. Once completed, hotkey the next toy and repeat. You'll have completed your trader toys sooner than you thought possible simply by reducing your resource waste. (And since you have positioned them under their own shield immediately behind the shields covering your home system, even with 0hp they won't get hit should anything actually manage to penetrate deeply enough to take a potshop at the home station's forcefields.)
Now, after all is said and done, this game has suffered a rather interesting amount of setbacks. But I don't want to abandon it yet. I think I'm going to try to salvage it once again. I will probably go on a conquering spree to reduce my fronts (contradicting my every instinct of keeping the aip low, I tell you :)), and setting up the defenses over multiple systems, trying your suggestions in the meanwhile.
Thanks a lot for the suggestions, once again.
Good to hear. We'll make a conqueror out of you yet! :)
Also - something pretty obvious I forgot to mention - once you are swimming in energy, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from beechheading ahead of your planets the exowaves will hit, should you want to win a bit more time for attritional tactics, though this is rough on such beechheads and you should expect to rebuild them all once the exowave has been dealt with, so probably only relevant for you once you feel you are swimming in resources. (Getting all those economic stations down and getting a much larger salvage cap will help a lot with that.)
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Thank you, Zanewolfe, for the answer and the time you put into looking at my save. I appreciate it, really. Also thanks to Peter for answering me yet again.
This is one of the biggest issues I've seen with your save. When playing on FS funneling the AI into defensive chokepoints is a MUST, whether they are in-depth corridors like Peter suggests, or building massive superchokes designed to face tank the like I do, you MUST funnel the AI or the exo forces will destroy you. Typically you want to start funneling the AI before you even build your first Spire City. This is done by destroying Warp Gates, so that waves and exos can only come from the direction you want them to come. Easiest method I have found is to neuter the AI worlds where you don't want the AI to spawn exos/send waves from, going back 2-3 hops at least. This also greatly reduces/eliminates any potential border aggression from those locations, because a neutered world can support MUCH less units. Admittedly on the map you are running its not going to be easy, there isn't a simple way to really narrow things down to just 2-3 ingress points that I can see. I usually play around maps where I can do so easily, (Maze and X are my favorites) because I always run with 4-5 exo sources turned on. Peter's advice seems to help a great deal though.
I have completely unfurled the map and looked at it from every direction. No matter what I do I cannot reduce the number of entry points below 5. This is.... far from optimal for a fallen spire game. I really doubt I will be able to build the galactic transceiver under these conditions. I think I will aim for building the galactic capitol and winning after that.
One thing for future games, when building Spire Cities, if they are going to be a dedicated chokepoint/an ingress into your territory, you want to build them pure defensive. One Habitation Center and five Spire Reactors. For cities that are NOT going to be in direct line for the AI, build them with one Hab and five Shipyards. This might delay how quickly you build up your FS fleet, but it maximizes both the defensive power of Spire Cites, while also maximizing how many shipyards you can build. Reactors do NOT need to be on the same planet as the shipyard. If you have 10 reactors across 2 cities, you can build 2 more cities with 5 shipyards each. And since shipyards can NOT mount modules, they have no place on the front lines.
I am aware of that. In my other FS game, a few months ago, I did precisely that. Here, with 5 entry points, I will try to put a spire city on each.... and so it's hardly applicable. I think I'm probably best served having somewhat similar cities. Unless I manage somehow to neuter so far that they only keep coming from 1-2 directions. I will certainly try this later on. If I manage, then i will surely do this in order to have better spire cities on the critical defense points!
A lot of things about my technology unlocks, and turrets vs economy vs forts
Point taken, as I said above. Part of it was due to me being resource starved, due to having too few planets. So I unlocked a lot of things for economy, hoping to get out of the red...
1) If you feel you lack metal resources, increase your AIP and they will come. :P Harvesters are nice but unless you have lots of territory they don't compete with economic stations, and between Habitation Centers and Salvage, you should have metal income enough for anybody.
Fun thing for you to consider - you can build several Habitation Centres in a single system, should you so desire. Yes, it comes at the cost of a city slot, and all else being equal you don't want to do this as you'll prefer to maximize number of shipyards, but it is an option, and a strong option if you are trying not to increase your AIP and still feel you need a boosted metal income.
Ehh, I'm about to go on a conquer spree. Which will bring my aip to numbers never seen before by me (except when the galactic transceiver WAS built in the other game and fun stuff destroyed just about every ai planet XD)
2) Given that you can pause development of trader toys just like you can pause everything else and given that all trader toys except for the Superfortress have very low energy costs, you should always purchase the toys you want for the homeworld (possibly excluding Superfortress) the first time the trader visits. Pause construction on all, select the one you want to build first and slave it to a control key. Then, whenever your resources are capped, hit the hotkey, start construction, and abort it a few seconds later when your resources have been sufficiently depleted. Once completed, hotkey the next toy and repeat. You'll have completed your trader toys sooner than you thought possible simply by reducing your resource waste. (And since you have positioned them under their own shield immediately behind the shields covering your home system, even with 0hp they won't get hit should anything actually manage to penetrate deeply enough to take a potshop at the home station's forcefields.)
Fun thing is, I actually did put a couple down, paused, before building the second city. The exowave that came, armed with some nice energy bombs, destroyed them all from under the forcefields of the home systems... and left my home command station with 5% health. That was a close shave XD
Also - something pretty obvious I forgot to mention - once you are swimming in energy, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from beechheading ahead of your planets the exowaves will hit, should you want to win a bit more time for attritional tactics, though this is rough on such beechheads and you should expect to rebuild them all once the exowave has been dealt with, so probably only relevant for you once you feel you are swimming in resources. (Getting all those economic stations down and getting a much larger salvage cap will help a lot with that.)
I always beachhead into hard targets, when I can. I had also considered this, but resource starving prevented me from doing this.
Anyway, for now the plan is as follow. As said, no matter what I do it's impossible to reduce entry points below 5. I can neuter planets beyond, but we will see if that actually prevent exos from coming from there. One warp gate guardian would be after all all that's needed, and they spawn like rabbits. So, what I will do is
- Rearrange my defensive planets more to the way that Peter suggested, with defenses in strafing places where they can attack the enemy hopefully without being destroyed.
- Conquer about ten planets on the left side of the map. This will reduce my entry points to 5, and give me planets which I don't have to defend where I can employ those nice econ 2 and econ 3 stations. The difference in energy and metal should be significant. Also, with this I get more planets in between the entry points and the home world, and on each of these planets I can have defenses set to whittle away the enemy
- Use those 30 techs or so that I gain. More turrets unlock, perhaps the logistic mk2 station too. And keep some for later on when I build the galactic capitol which requires a lot of tech
- And of course use the superterminal. Those 10 planets will bring me close to 500 AIP. I don't know how much I can manage to reduce the aip, considering that I don't have that many spire ships, but I do hope quite a lot.
We will see how it goes with this :)
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Fun thing is, I actually did put a couple down, paused, before building the second city. The exowave that came, armed with some nice energy bombs, destroyed them all from under the forcefields of the home systems... and left my home command station with 5% health. That was a close shave XD
That sounds as if you made the mistake of putting them under the force fields covering the home station and thus taking damage when the home station or its buildings got shot at rather than, as I advocate, putting them under their own forcefield behind the home station - so far behind that the home station forcefields do not overlap at all - such that they are will only be damaged if something shoot at something covered by their own force field.
Well, either that or the AI had unlocked sniper ships or something that chose to target your unfinished trader toys, which were located at a range that none of the normal AI ships would be able to reach normally.
I guess there are other possible reasons - it may have been a "You had to be there" situation - but generally speaking, so long as you make sure they are located far enough back not to be affected whenever something shoot at the homestation or its immediate vicinity, they are safe.
Anyway, for now the plan is as follow. As said, no matter what I do it's impossible to reduce entry points below 5. I can neuter planets beyond, but we will see if that actually prevent exos from coming from there. One warp gate guardian would be after all all that's needed, and they spawn like rabbits. So, what I will do is
- Rearrange my defensive planets more to the way that Peter suggested, with defenses in strafing places where they can attack the enemy hopefully without being destroyed.
- Conquer about ten planets on the left side of the map. This will reduce my entry points to 5, and give me planets which I don't have to defend where I can employ those nice econ 2 and econ 3 stations. The difference in energy and metal should be significant. Also, with this I get more planets in between the entry points and the home world, and on each of these planets I can have defenses set to whittle away the enemy
- Use those 30 techs or so that I gain. More turrets unlock, perhaps the logistic mk2 station too. And keep some for later on when I build the galactic capitol which requires a lot of tech
- And of course use the superterminal. Those 10 planets will bring me close to 500 AIP. I don't know how much I can manage to reduce the aip, considering that I don't have that many spire ships, but I do hope quite a lot.
We will see how it goes with this :)
Ask yourself why you mind having 500 AIP, and once you fully realize that it is a historical fear that has no place in the game as it currently works at these sort of difficulties regardless of whether you are playing Fallen Spire or not you, it will set your feet squarely on the path to conquest.
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Ask yourself why you mind having 500 AIP, and once you fully realize that it is a historical fear that has no place in the game as it currently works at these sort of difficulties regardless of whether you are playing Fallen Spire or not you, it will set your feet squarely on the path to conquest.
While the main game is going to be fixed so that AIP matters, in FS AIP is completely irrelevant after 2-4 cities, depending on your game. AIP does NOT add to exos, and it stops adding to defenses at 200 or so. (Though that may have changed given this new patch.) I've had the AIP so high in an FS game that the AIP FLOOR was over 1000. Pro tip, the floor is 1/5 your total AIP. FS is ALWAYS going to be about conquest. Whether you're aiming to take the entire galaxy back, like me, or you're trying to get enough territory to secure your borders and funnel the AI, you are going to have massive amounts of AIP. Rather than looking at he map and going "How many planets can I take before the AIP is dangerous?", you need to go "Ok, where do I want to force the AI to attack? Got it. Everything behind this/those location(s) is mine then." I find that I get 25 planets MINIMUM every single FS game.
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FS is ALWAYS going to be about conquest.
That's the idea, but, (as Peter's recent AAR detailed) with the reinforcements-redirecting-to-waves on high AIP it got to the point where a full galaxy conquest on diff 9 was not really all that feasible. The waves (nevermind the exos, the WAVES) just got too punishingly huge.
That particular issue has been addressed, since then :)
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Well, I thought I would report on how the game goes. It's basically finished in the sense... that I more or less lost. I mean, I am going to kill the AIs the normal way, but I cannot really go further along the fallen spire campaign in any sensible way.
There are 2 main reasons:
1) Fallen spire 6/10 apparently is rather hard indeed, and the waves keep increasing
but mainly
2) I cannot reduce the number of entry points below 5. This means that my galaxy capped defenses AND most importantly my spire fleet cannot cover all the entry points.
This is the final unfurled map
(https://i.imgur.com/Prx9CgM.jpg)
The normal exowaves that I'm seeing have 4 different waves, more or less, each of total strength around 80000. Each of those has 1-2 hunter/killers, 1-2 golems, 6-8 dire guardians, 6-8 or so other large ships (spirecraft siege towers, spirecraft shields etc), plus between 30 and 60 starships. This is enough to come on top against a spire city unaided by the fleet, warheads, or massive concentration of galaxy-capped stuff. And there's 4 of them each time.
I set up 5 hard chockepoints in the systems underlined in red. All the systems underlined in green instead are fitted with mk2 or mk3 logistic stations and all the spider, sniper and missile turrets I have. I have to say, they are quite effective in thinning out threat, killing a lot of ships while they approach. But the exowave do not take enough damage and reach my hard chockepoints still too strong.
The home system also has a full complement of trader toys, minus the ion cannons. Since there are so many entry points, it made sense to put them there.
So, when the last 2 timed exowaves came, I managed to kill them, but I had to use a lot of warheads AND I took immense damage. My fleet was entirely destroyed, as well as one spire city razed to the ground. Rebuilding all of that took time and so I had little time left to do other stuff in between the waves.
Now, considering that the waves keep getting worse and worse, I think I'm finished because the time it would take to build the fourth city, retrieve the fifth shard, build the fifth city and then the galactic capitol would likely mean the exowave surpass the level at which I can still defeat them.
Regarding tech, I ended up unlocking mk3 logistics, mk1-4 sniper, spider and missiles, and mk3 grav turrets. I do have some tech I was saving up for the galactic capitol. But there's nothing really to spend it on that would change things in a significant way. And besides, since I have significant defenses in 14 worlds I am still rather energy starved, and the metal income is just 2000/second.
I wanted to report in this thread, as a thank you for those who answered me and gave me tips.
A few considerations:
- The staggered defenses over multiple systems, aided by logistic stations, are immensely useful against exowaves. Sure, a lot of turret dies, but they do their job. If I did not set the defenses up that way, I would have died long ago. I now laugh at what I considered a hard exowave at the beginning of this thread.
- Logistic stations, especially mk3, are extremely useful in this regard. Not only they are more or less equivalent in damage to the military ones(because the enemies stay inside the same system twice as much), BUT they also allow you to gain a lot of time, which can be used to move the fleet, rebuild things, move galaxy capped defenses etc. Having one system with logistic mk3 and serious defenses before a hard chockepoint system really allow for a lot of time. They are also immensely useful during shard recovery chases
- Fallen spire 6/10 is rather brutal. I mean it :)
- Ai progress is indeed much less important during such a game. But I would not call it irrelevant, because the ai unlocked some high health, annoying ships in my game, and built a LOT of them. Sure, they could not survive against my spire fleet... but they took time to kill, and that left me with LESS time between the exowaves.
- I must bow to Peter on the matter of most useful turrets. When setting up defenses over multiple systems, spider, sniper and missile turrets are indeed king, because of their range. Also, they have bonus against medium, which is what most of the dire guardians are.
- And finally, I probably started the fallen spire campaign too early, and then took too much time to reach the point I am now. This, combined with the 6/10 spire difficulty, increased the exowaves too much. Got to be faster next time...
Well, that's it, I think I will take a break on this particular game, and perhaps come and finish it later in a conventional way. I don't think the ai worlds can really stand up against a 3-cities spire fleet, the way the FS ships are now. Could probably roll over them rather quickly.
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Congratulations on getting that far :)
Yea, it looks like a combination of things:
- FS set higher than 4/10 (the balance target)
- HW pick is in one of the less defensible parts of the map
- Map type is already a particularly defense-hostile graph topology
- Difficulty 8.3, while not extreme, is far less forgiving of settings like the above than, say, diff 7
So yea, you can win it by just kicking down the AI's front door with your capital fleet and a bunch of warheads, but you don't have the defensive position to follow the campaign all the way through since it's primarily a "defend well enough to win" victory condition. But winning by offense is still open :)
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The only remaining defensive extension that you could consider is to scrap your lowest mark duplicate turrets to give you the energy to build on the most popular AI exo-wave spawning systems... it's a bonus if you have cross-planet waves turned on. Although, I wouldn't build on Moatadm unless you've effectively neutralised the adjacent homeworld.
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Well, I thought I would report on how the game goes. It's basically finished in the sense... that I more or less lost. I mean, I am going to kill the AIs the normal way, but I cannot really go further along the fallen spire campaign in any sensible way.
There are 2 main reasons:
1) Fallen spire 6/10 apparently is rather hard indeed, and the waves keep increasing
but mainly
2) I cannot reduce the number of entry points below 5. This means that my galaxy capped defenses AND most importantly my spire fleet cannot cover all the entry points.
Question:
Have you tried a large scale campaign of eliminating warp gates?
I am not sure of this functionality, but it seemed to me as if the exos spawned at warp gates near your territory and then go after specific spire city or homeworld targets. If that is the case, then if you kill off all warp gates near all of your chokepoints but one, I would expect all of the exos to arrive near that one and go for it as their shortest path to either homeworld or spire cities would go through that chosen chokepoint, meaning that you could stack nearly all your global-cap defences there and have your fleet there as well at the start of the wave, helping to deal with everything - or nearly everything.
This would require you to make that one chokepoint or a planet near it the single entry point for normal waves, but surely that would be an acceptable tradeoff? (If it worked).
Note that I have not tried this, it is merely how I guessed the functionality worked based on my single Fallen Spire game. If they spawn at any AI warp gate rather than merely those close to you and don't take a shortest path approach to their target, then the odds increase that some will take an apparently long way around to hit you where you are vulnerable, and you'd have to go on a larger warp gate elimination campaign to increase the odds of their paths going the way you want.
So that said, rather than throwing in the towel at this point, I do think that attempting to control things through warp gate elimination is the way to go: Just do it to a depth 3 to start with to see if it makes any noticeable difference and, if it does, expand as necessary.
Even if I'm right, it might not do much given the openness of the map you've chosen, but it would surely be worth trying out if you haven't done so already.
- Ai progress is indeed much less important during such a game. But I would not call it irrelevant, because the ai unlocked some high health, annoying ships in my game, and built a LOT of them. Sure, they could not survive against my spire fleet... but they took time to kill, and that left me with LESS time between the exowaves.
That's why you go and eliminate them by hacking when they show up rather than dealing with them in combat. Spire Stealth Battleships, for instance, are as good as an immediate "Go hack!" order.
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Have you tried a large scale campaign of eliminating warp gates?
Operation "Warp Grid? What Warp Grid?"
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Have you tried a large scale campaign of eliminating warp gates?
I am not sure of this functionality, but it seemed to me as if the exos spawned at warp gates near your territory and then go after specific spire city or homeworld targets. If that is the case, then if you kill off all warp gates near all of your chokepoints but one, I would expect all of the exos to arrive near that one and go for it as their shortest path to either homeworld or spire cities would go through that chosen chokepoint, meaning that you could stack nearly all your global-cap defences there and have your fleet there as well at the start of the wave, helping to deal with everything - or nearly everything.
This would require you to make that one chokepoint or a planet near it the single entry point for normal waves, but surely that would be an acceptable tradeoff? (If it worked).
Note that I have not tried this, it is merely how I guessed the functionality worked based on my single Fallen Spire game. If they spawn at any AI warp gate rather than merely those close to you and don't take a shortest path approach to their target, then the odds increase that some will take an apparently long way around to hit you where you are vulnerable, and you'd have to go on a larger warp gate elimination campaign to increase the odds of their paths going the way you want.
Have you tried a large scale campaign of eliminating warp gates?
Operation "Warp Grid? What Warp Grid?"
I was under the impression that they can spawn at any structure that gives the Warp Gate to a planet. So, for example, a Warp Gate Guardian as well. Am I wrong in that? Because, if they can spawn from any War Gate Guardian, it's probably futile as I likely don't have the time to do that before I'm killed. I'd have to fully neuter a lot of worlds, I don't know if I can manage
IF instead they only spawn at warp gates proper, then it's another matter. And it might be worth trying it out.
That's why you go and eliminate them by hacking when they show up rather than dealing with them in combat. Spire Stealth Battleships, for instance, are as good as an immediate "Go hack!" order.
Well... that's assuming there is something to hack to make the annoying thing go away. Or is it granted that there a design backup for unlocked ai ships somewhere?
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Have you tried a large scale campaign of eliminating warp gates?
Operation "Warp Grid? What Warp Grid?"
Just taking gate raiding and neutering to its logical conclusion.
Well, it seems a reasonable approach to me, given my knowledge. It might be entirely wrong, of course, and the exowaves might not spawn/pursue targets as I estimated they did, but did not rigorously test for, but it would be a shame to just give up when possible avenues for victory remain!
I was under the impression that they can spawn at any structure that gives the Warp Gate to a planet. So, for example, a Warp Gate Guardian as well. Am I wrong in that? Because, if they can spawn from any War Gate Guardian, it's probably futile as I likely don't have the time to do that before I'm killed. I'd have to fully neuter a lot of worlds, I don't know if I can manage
When I say Warp Gate, I mean any structure/unit that grants the warp gate ability, not just the structure.
Why are you allowing Warp Gate Guardians to live? They are a blight upon the galaxy and should be destroyed whenever you have the chance, such that you rather than the AI remain in control. (It would be really helpful if there was a filter for WGGs so you didn't have to do a custom search).
ANYHOW, that is easy for me to say as it is something that is undoubtedly much easier when done as part of regular operations rather than, as it would be in this case, having to perform a lot of cleaning up under time pressure due to having been deficient in that regard up to this point.
I just don't see any reason for allowing the AI any control of the tempo or direction of the game if I can avoid it (any game, really - AI War isn't special in that regard), and mostly I can. :)
That's why you go and eliminate them by hacking when they show up rather than dealing with them in combat. Spire Stealth Battleships, for instance, are as good as an immediate "Go hack!" order.
Well... that's assuming there is something to hack to make the annoying thing go away. Or is it granted that there a design backup for unlocked ai ships somewhere?
If they are unlocked by AIP progress, all I've seen until now suggests the answer is yes - they'll even erect a new design backup server somewhere else (any random AI world except AI homeworlds seem valid targetrs) with the design if you destroy the one a design is currently on. If your AIs have them from start as part of their personality, I don't know.
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Peter's suggestion makes a fair amount of sense if your map topology allows a certain target warp-gate that the AI prefers to spawn in. When given a clear choice, exo waves will prefer to spawn at the closest accessible wormhole to their target. E.g., if you designate one warpgate 4 jumps from your HW and leave all other entry points at 6+, then it's likely that every exo wave targetting your HW will probably jump in at that point.
Looking at your map, Nuto may be your best (least worst) choice as an ingress point - clearing warpgates 2 deep from Fisash and Suozupunu, and one deep from other Non-Nuto ingress points will be probably do.
If they are unlocked by AIP progress, all I've seen until now suggests the answer is yes - they'll even erect a new design backup server somewhere else (any random AI world except AI homeworlds seem valid targetrs) with the design if you destroy the one a design is currently on. If your AIs have them from start as part of their personality, I don't know.
Every design the AI has at the start of the game or gains due to AIP will have a corresponding design backup server, until you hack it or you take the planet without hacking it. I have not seen respawns myself after I took the planet said design was on, or I was being inattentive because I had no interest in said design.
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Every design the AI has at the start of the game or gains due to AIP will have a corresponding design backup server, until you hack it or you take the planet without hacking it. I have not seen respawns myself after I took the planet said design was on, or I was being inattentive because I had no interest in said design.
I used the respawning mechanic to amusing effect during last weekend's "What AIP memo" challenge game - unfortunately, I didn't manage to get all the remaining designs in the galaxy on to one server park as I moved into the endgame, as it seems there is a limit and when I destroyed the second to last location the last legal location in the galaxy (the planet from which waves were sent to my homeworld) ended up holding only held 8 designs rather than the accumulated 13 or 14 I was expected.
But at least I was able to design download all 8 designs in one hack, sending my HaP balance plunging from ~1k to -11.5k. :D
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Well, I think I will give it a try. And see if I can manage. Not really hopeful about it, but we will see.
Regarding Ai warp gate guardians... I do kill them but they respawn like RABBITS. So even though I do try to cull them, well...
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Well, nevermind. It was not meant to be. the next exowave killed me. I tried it 4 times, but I could not survive. 117 massive ships.... sigh. I didn't have time nor metal to build more mk3 armored warheads
Ah well, time to start a new campaign then....
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From the sounds of it Peter, are you saying the Design backups can respawn on other worlds if they aren't hacked?
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AFAIK, they not only can, they always do, (when not hacked) except in the edge case he mentioned.
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From the sounds of it Peter, are you saying the Design backups can respawn on other worlds if they aren't hacked?
Yes, they do respawn. My doubt was just that I am not sure the AI gets a Design backup for every ship they unlock. But there are people here with a lot more experience than me so...
I am really rather disturbed by not being able to continue this game. But The exowave that comes is really quite harsh and 5 entry points.. meh..
That said, I've thought about it and I'm not sure extensive neutering would solve much. Unless I neuter the entire map or something... It seems to me that not all parts of the exowave head to the home system. Some of them seem to head for other places, likely the other spire cities.
This means that even if I could somehow force the exowaves that go for the home system down a certain path and to a specific, reinforced chockpoint, the others would cause extreme damage to other less defended places. And that means a lot of time spent chasing down the remnants of those and rebuilding. Once again, unless perhaps if I were to leave like 3-4 wave spawners in the entire map. But I don't have time for that in this game anyway.
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Well, post-mortem: there isn't enough defensive room to play Fallen Spire in this game - IMO your starting location in the realistic map style locked you into an awful position. An AI HW 6 hops away leaves your maximum buffer at ~4 planets before a HW kill, and implies (without needing to count) that the majority of the map also lies within 6 hops. NB: Exos can spawn from the HW wormhole, so neutering the whole map won't help. Exos indeed also head towards spire cities and non-replacable assets (has a small chance of targetting them).
= = =
If the remains rebuilders would themselves leave remains that could be auto rebuilt without supply, then it would be trouble-free repairing of destroyed systems... :P Would be such a quality of life change.
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If the remains rebuilders would themselves leave remains that could be auto rebuilt without supply, then it would be trouble-free repairing of destroyed systems... :P Would be such a quality of life change.
Do you mean auto-rebuilt as in not requiring remains rebuilders themselves? If so, I object. There needs to be some way for the AI to punish you for taking out remote base in a way that exploits that fact that it is a remote base. (Note, taking it out itself, aka, the fact that it is remote and thus reinforcements are hard to get to thus it is more likely to be taken out doesn't count for this, and IMO, not enough). The sheer fact that if your remains rebuilders and colony ships also get taken out meaning you are required to ferry one or more of those back to the system is a balance point; the danger of getting things back there. I think that is a good thing, and should stay.
Now, making it a bit easier to ensure that remains rebuilders are less likely to get killed due to stupid decisions they can make, that I can get behind. But losing an entire remote planet should be painful, and risky to re-establish.
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1 word: wall of text
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Hmm, thinking about Zincat's bad position, I got do wondering, what exactly does the Fallen Spire intensity do?
The obvious guess would the that at the very least it scales AI reponse exos, but is that all? Does it, for instance, scale the number of spire ships supported by each spire shipyard or scale the ships' stats? Scale the metal income come spire habitation centres? Scale how far away from the homeworld the shards will spawn for the shard chases? Something else? In other words, does playing with a different FS intensity result in a somewhat different challenge, or is it all about ever larger exowaves?
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[...] Kahuna-style defence [...] is inefficient [...]
How could I improve my defenses?
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[...] Kahuna-style defence [...] is inefficient [...]
How could I improve my defenses?
Your defences as explained in your super cat thread are good for what they are designed for, that is, killing an enemy going for the command station, and I don't have any general improvements for that.
As I hope I made clear in the post you are quoting from, it was their use in the specific circumstances that was inefficient. There are different threats in the game, and while killing waves going for command stations is one of the biggest, it is not always the biggest one.
Specially, such a defence is not necessarily the best solution to the big threat Zincat faced - namely that of inflicting attrition casualties on an enemy that is passing through the system and too strong for him to stop (though in this case it can still be a good defence depending on where in the system the station is located), and it becomes an outright bad solution if that defence is set up the Zincat did, putting the command station directly on the wormhole that an exowave passing through would have to exit, thus guaranteeing that the exowave (which he was too weak to stop on the border) would smash all of his defences (including spire city buildings) before proceeding onwards, resulting in huge repair bills and huge holes in his defences until repaired for very little gain.
It was his terribly inefficient use of your defences, that I remarked on, as it violated all classical ideas of how to deal with an enemy of superior strength and, unsurprisingly as AI war is a pretty good strategy game, had the classical outcome when a weaker defender tries to stop the stronger invader in a straight-up fight rather that taking advantage of strategies of terrain, strong interior lines, and attrition.
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namely that of inflicting attrition casualties on an enemy that is passing through the system and too strong for him to stop
I'd say use "Kahuna-style defense" but add a couple of beachheads/"buffer planets" in front of it. Especially now that turrets have per planet caps. Fleet can be used for attritioning too.
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Yea, the supercat guide defense (iirc) is for "brick-wall" planets where it's ok that failure-to-stop-attack => failure-to-continue-existing.
Making "car-wash" (or beachhead) planets whose sole defensive role is to inflict attritional casualties should be treated as an entirely different use case. Particularly when facing exos where you often have multiple attacks rolling through in quick succession.
The latter case is, I think, more commonly needed nowadays than it was in the past.
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The latter case is, I think, more commonly needed nowadays than it was in the past.
This is true. I should experiment with beachheads and buffer planets in front of and behind super cat defenses. The thing is.. thanks to my new job I have only about 1 hour of free time per day.
add a couple of beachheads/"buffer planets" in front of it Edit: or behind
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This is true. I should experiment with beachheads and buffer planets in front of and behind super cat defenses. The thing is.. thanks to my new job I have only about 1 hour of free time per day.
Congratulations on the new job, I hope it works out :)
Pity about the free time, I certainly know how that transition feels. Nowadays I have to make a concerted effort to make sure I actually play games, rather than just write them.
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namely that of inflicting attrition casualties on an enemy that is passing through the system and too strong for him to stop
I'd say use "Kahuna-style defense" but add a couple of beachheads/"buffer planets" in front of it. Especially now that turrets have per planet caps. Fleet can be used for attritioning too.
Any proper use of defence in depth gets my support, whether it is made using forward or interior defences, or indeed made using both, and using mobile forces for attrition purposes is pretty much a given.
The one thing I insist on in AI War is not placing the command station complete with a defensive setup directly on an exit-wormwhole, unless one expects to be able to stop the enemy cold in that system. Basically, don't ever set up a block unless it is imperative that the enemy be blocked in that location and you have the force to ensure it works, as it severely limits your own scope for action when you do so.
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The one thing I insist on in AI War is not placing the command station complete with a defensive setup directly on an exit-wormwhole, unless one expects to be able to stop the enemy cold in that system.
I've known this for a long time. Just haven't had the time nor the energy to really test stuff and update my strategy guide.
I think it would be better to "move the super cat defenses" so that the tractors/flaks/lightnings/forcefields are on top of the exit-wormhole. I've had this in my mind for a long time. There's always room for improvement in everything.
Arf.
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Hmm, thinking about Zincat's bad position, I got do wondering, what exactly does the Fallen Spire intensity do?
The obvious guess would the that at the very least it scales AI reponse exos, but is that all? Does it, for instance, scale the number of spire ships supported by each spire shipyard or scale the ships' stats? Scale the metal income come spire habitation centres? Scale how far away from the homeworld the shards will spawn for the shard chases? Something else? In other words, does playing with a different FS intensity result in a somewhat different challenge, or is it all about ever larger exowaves?
I can tell you that spire shipyards do not support more ships, nor metal income is increased in any way. Not sure about shard distance.
The one thing I certainly noticed is that the waves were bigger. Like, a lot bigger. Shard chases too, I had to try them SO many times, because they would destroy the shard. That said, I *might* have noticed another thing. I think, though I'm not sure, that the waves charge quicker at intensity 6. I certainly do not recall the waves being so often in my other game 6-7 months ago, and I finished that fallen spire game.
But this might also be due to the recent buff to exowaves, so I'm not sure
Regarding the brick wall defense (Kahuna trademarked :P) as you might imagine I gave it quite a bit of thought lately, due to being screwed over by the ai so many times in this game. I can think of 3 situations where they are still perfectly valid.
- In games where there are exowaves, but they are not too extreme. In such games, you are generally able to stop the enemy in one system with a brick wall defense, and you should do so! Having defenses over multiple systems is very good for attritioning, but result in more energy spent, and generally the possibility of range resulting in losing something important if some enemy ship slips through.
- In games with no exowaves. In these games, unless difficulty is extreme (10/10?), or unless you let ai progress go up too much, you should be also able to stop enemies cold in some chockpoints. Once again, if you can you should do so, same reasons as above.
- In games with fallen spire, where you have a Spire City. You WILL use a spire city to block a wormhole. You want to, to avoid the exowaves going through. Spire cities, at least those at the frontline, are generally in critical places. Unless you use a Black Hole machine, but that's dangerous because the exowave might have units which ignreo forcefield, or use energy bombs. And if your Black Hole machine goes poof, then you're generally in a very bad position.
In games with strong exowaves instead, or in system before/behind a spire city, then I find that the attrition soft block defenses of Logistic station, sniper/spider/missile turrets, mine, grav turrets etc are better, and you don't want to put the station on the wormhole. It would get burned toooo fast.
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- In games with fallen spire, where you have a Spire City. You WILL use a spire city to block a wormhole. You want to, to avoid the exowaves going through. Spire cities, at least those at the frontline, are generally in critical places. Unless you use a Black Hole machine, but that's dangerous because the exowave might have units which ignreo forcefield, or use energy bombs. And if your Black Hole machine goes poof, then you're generally in a very bad position.
I strongly disagree with this one as a general principle, though it might end up being relevant in a specific situation depending on map setup.
The more open the map, the more tempting it will be with hard stops, but so long as you can pretty much predict the route an exowave will move once it passes through a system, it is possible to take advantage of that knowledge.
I took ruthless advantage of this in my Ride the Lightning game. I had the significant advantage over your game here that I played on a much more closed map and could ensure that every exowave passed through a single chokepoint where I built a spire city (spire city beta), that led to my interior systems, but I most certainly did not use my spire city to block any of the exit wormholes deeper into my territory. Why would I do that? Any part of the exowave that managed to pass through would continue directly towards its goal (another spire city or the homeworld), taking potshots at anything that got within its shooting range but otherwise leaving everything in the systems it passed through alone. So long as the attritional damage they take on the way is large enough when combined with whatever is their ultimate destination to kill them off and so long as there is no irreplaceable building that is in range of the line of flight between wormholes traversed, that's fine with me.
As far as I am concerned, the danger of not blocking a wormhole comes from regular threat rather than from exowaves, for exowaves are much easier predictable than threat behaviour, and anything predictable can be anticipated and planned against.
(And, of course, anything that one considers truly irreplaceable that the AI can get at on a shortest-path route to one's homeworld should probably be hacked rather than merely controlled, such that one doesn't maneuver oneself into the position of feeling forced to defend on the border when one has defensive depth to take advantage of.)