Glad the info was helpful, Awod, my pleasure.
allmybase, to your last batch of questions (and that is a great name, by the way):
1. Most likely you are killing ships that have a positive AIP cost of +1. The full list of what causes that is
here, but it's also in the tooltips in game. My guess is that it was from train stations and/or special forces guard posts that you were killing. +1 is a really minor increase, I wouldn't worry about that overmuch.
2. Well... the answer to that really depends on playstyle. Honestly I'd suggest doing two different AI types, as that can make for more of a balance. If you find extensive offense tedious, then turtles or things close to them are not the way to go (but since they never attack you via waves -- though still CPAs -- you'll have more resources than you were thinking, thanks to saving a ton on your insurance... I mean defense
). If you find defense to be overly challenging, then something like mad bomber is probably not the way to go. The Entrenched Homeworlder is basically one of the most average types of AIs all around, with moderate attack and defense capabilities. Fortress Baron is another one that was a traditional average AI type that I always liked. Doing one of each of those might be a good starting fit.
3. Well, this third one is really hard to answer without really being able to see the map. If you want to post a screenshot of it, I could give a more intelligent answer to it. But basically, the early game for
me looks like this (I emphasize me, because not everybody plays even remotely like this):
-Game Starts.
-Start docks building scouts, followed by a mix of fighters/bombers/cruisers
-Build another 1 or possibly 2 engineers, depending.
-Start sending out those scouts in groups along the various wormholes that connect in.
Up to this point, it's pretty much formulaic for me. Also, this covers the first 20ish seconds of the game only.
From this point on, things start changing up a bit depending on the situation. Mostly I spend the next 2-3 minutes analyzing the scout data, and looking at the AI planet formations, as well as peeking at what sort of fleets ships they are using, so that I can decide what sort of technologies I might want to invest in. The line of decision making that triggers off is immensely huge and varied, and not something I can really summarize without writing a full-blown strategy guide to the game. The main thing is that I am looking at their planets, deciding which seem like targets and which seem like things to gate-raid and then wall off.
-Next up I unlock some technologies based on what I decided.
-I also build more scouts and send them out, since probably my first batches are dead now.
-I may even unlock tech II scouts at this early juncture to send out those as well, if scouting is really tough at the moment.
-I probably need a Mark I energy reactor, but no more than that if there is a nearby planet I can just go take.
-If the AI is particularly aggressive, I might build turrets and tractors at a given wormhole, but otherwise I'll just leave myself hanging open for attack. No worries, usually.
-Now I'll probably attack a planet and take it. I go for the most resource-rich of all the planets that are low-level and can easily be taken.
Personally, I tend to go straight for a mkII command station on that planet. Highest-tier ships and starships and better turrets, etc, can wait, as far as I am concerned. I want the cash now -- and having so much cash, I can make do with just mark I ships and maybe 2 mark II classes or on II/III combo. But I find mark IIIs not really worth it until later, unless I need to break a planet with an ion cannon early on in. Again, so my strategy there really varies heavily, and if I need that mark III muscle then I'll wait until later for my command station upgrades.
-At this point, I might take a second and/or a third easy early planet. The idea being to capture them quickly before they have a chance to get too strong, and then worrying about actually fully capturing and exploiting them once that is done. With just low-level ships, my economy is doing just fine, and I'm a powerhouse against these little planets (for now).
-Alternatively, in rare circumstances if there is a high level planet nearby that I just know I will need to take for some reason, I might invest more in higher mark ships and try to take that out. That involves a lot of advanced strategies such as potentially popping their command station early and then playing defense, or things of that nature. Depends on their position, my position, etc.
Regarding the planets that I capture, when I do get around to building on them each of those might get a force field around their command station, but probably not. Most likely I'll just put some turrets near the command station to keep the AI from destroying that. The AI ships that trickle in mostly will leave my resources alone if they think they can take out my command station.
Next up, I generally look at the other surrounding planets and see if there are more targets that would make sense, and which would cut down on the number of ingress points into my most resource-rich planets. Generally speaking I like to have a "whipping boy" planet that just gets slammed with waves and incoming ships, and which I reinforce heavily with turrets, etc. Even if this planet is resource-rich, I don't really worry about trying to keep those resource harvesters non-destroyed. As long as this planet is protecting my
other planets, I'm good.
As I get more wealthy and more powerful in general, I push my borders outward, mainly in an attempt to close off more wormholes while at the same time getting more resource-producing planets. Ideally there are only one or two whipping boys at a time, and which planets are the whipping boy might change as I go depending on how this is all set up. Then end result of this process is generally that I have secured 4-8 planets that are very well defended, and I have one or two whipping boys that are under constant threat and which I have extensive defenses on.
The focus of the whipping boys is not to protect themselves, but to protect the other planets behind them. Usually this just means strong wormhole defense on the whipping boy itself, but it could also involve force fields over the wormholes leading to my more important planets. I should also note that I tend to lose the command stations on whipping boys periodically, and I tend to have a colony ship standing by to rebuild. This is okay, as long as you don't have just a single point of wave entry into your systems (since you don't want waves coming at you from way out).
I also build some turret/tractor defenses on my inner planets to protect against those ships that might slip past from the whipping boys. How many I build, and where, depends on what types of ships the AI is using, primarily. If they are bomber-heavy, I need heavy defenses. If it's something that gets caught in tractors and easily killed by turrets, then lighter defenses are better. Generally speaking even at the lightest wormhole defenses I build 5 tractor beam Is, maybe 10-15 basic/mlrs/laser turrets (some mix of those). A "heavily defended wormhole," commonly found on a whipping boy bottleneck, usually for me has more like 15-25 tractors, and maybe 50-200 turrets of various sorts. The goal is that when the AI warps in a wave, the entire thing gets caught and killed in under 10 seconds.
That sort of defense won't hold forever, but it makes a great fly trap for the AI early in the game. And even then, you have to be prepared for what happens if they suddenly and unexpectedly break through that trap, which they will do every so often. That's usually when I lose a whipping boy command station, and if I'm really unlucky another string of command stations that were resource producing behind it. That's frustrating, but it happens, and you can simply rebuild and make sure your defenses are better next time.
In short, I guess, you have to concede the fact that you are going to get beat up somewhere. Where do you want that to be? You want it to be a planet that you consider noncritical to your income, and which provides a sufficient shield to your other planets. Then getting beat up there isn't a tragedy, it's all part of your plan. It's, to some degree, a decoy or at least a diversionary tactic. The challenge is that, as you (necessarily) grow, the AI has more and more potential choices of target, and it is harder to protect all your planets. As long as you have a really strong core of planets by the mid-game, you can weather the inevitable occasional losses (or strings of losses) without worry.
Generally the reason for a loss of that magnitude is that you were busy taking something from the AI at the time. That's a great tradeoff, usually, because the AI can't take back it's planets, while you can. I have literally been in multiplayer games where I had 6 planets out of the total of 14 that our team of four had, and I lost all 6 of my planets (including my home) in one big sweep. Whoops. But then it's a matter of rebuilding (in multiplayer you don't lose until all your teams homes are lost), and then pressing onwards. Those same games where those sort of sweeps have happened have also been victories for my team (sometimes -- some of those were also losses, haha). But anyway, taking a sweeping loss is not the end of the game usually, and if you are playing a risky situation where you keep just enough defenses to hold off the average waves while you use more of your income in an offensive rush, then you'll have to expect to weather some losses of your own. Really comes down to how aggressive you are, what you consider acceptable losses, and your playstyle in general.
I know some players capture a corner of the galaxy with maybe 6-10 planets in it, simply for the security of having 1 ingress point into that whole section if they are lucky. Then they can go raiding with impunity, for instance. All depends on your play style, what feels most comfortable and fun to you.
