Fallen spire, 8.3/8.3, first city exowave woes

[Zincat]

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...

[Zincat]

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....

[Aklyon]

From the sounds of it Peter, are you saying the Design backups can respawn on other worlds if they aren't hacked?

[Lord Of Nothing]

AFAIK, they not only can, they always do, (when not hacked) except in the edge case he mentioned.

[Zincat]

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.

[PokerChen]

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... Would be such a quality of life change.

[TechSY730]

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... 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.

[Kahuna]

1 word: wall of text

[Peter Ebbesen]

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?

[Kahuna]

[...] Kahuna-style defence [...] is inefficient [...]

How could I improve my defenses?

[Peter Ebbesen]

[...] 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.

[Kahuna]

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.

[keith.lamothe]

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.

[Kahuna]

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

[keith.lamothe]

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.