Starting on my first campaign, need advice

[Rohar]

Heya all folks !

Just wanted to introduce myself or so. I'm relatively new to AI war, got the game in the last six months or so. Been very slowly playing through the intermediate tutorial, to the point although I haven't finished it yet (just got the AI Home World to attack defeat) , I decided to start my first proper game concurrently along with it ...... I've been playing for 8-9 hours, and would like to ask some questions and for advice

I'm playing on a 50 planet map, with some minor factions enabled
I also enabled Neinzul Hybrids on one AI, which I'm kind of unsure was wise (although the two AI's are lower strength than normal, both 5) especially since I got the "An abnormally strong hybrid is somewhere in the galaxy" notification. After scouting I've found it's on Saeras, which is about 3 hops away from my nearest planet. Can someone who's had experience of this fill me in on how this event operates ? Is it likely to just sit there, or will it be used in an attack at some point ?
I've also got 3  AI planets with worryingly strong forces bordering my frontline (Mirisia, Bangnow & Juakishlo) -(see attached screenshots).
 Mirisia & Bangnow have Neinzul Hybrids ( 5 and 8 ) Juakishlo is the real worry, there's 41 Riot Control Starships !!!. I have picked up some nice Zenith Mark V starships (partly from a  Mark V reserve, and from a Fabricator), most of the other planets don't seem to have that strong forces, but I'm mind in two minds whether to continue or to hiatus this for the moment and make a new campaign for the time being.

Thanks,
Rohar

[Hearteater]

Did you enable advanced hybrids? You can open the STATS panel and one of the tabs will list your game setup including all minor factions if you aren't sure.

[Rohar]

Didn't think I had - and I checked, and the galaxy stats tab confirmed that - I just have hybrids enabled on one AI, at 4/10 strength, but not advanced hybrids.

[Bognor]

Welcome to the forums, Rohar! 

The Superhybrid still spawns when advanced hybrids are not enabled, but as far as I know it has no special abilities.  It's just a big, nasty hybrid with powerful minions. 

8 Hybrids hardly constitute a powerful threat.  It's a good idea to purge hybrids once in a while to prevent them building up in numbers and tech.  You could easily take these guys out with your mobile fleet.

In case you didn't know, it's possible to neaten the galaxy map a bit.  I can't remember exactly how you do it, but try right-clicking or shift-right-clicking when in galaxy view and look for "untangle map" or similar.

[Kahuna]

I'm just going to leave this screenshot here

[Rohar]

Thanks for the advice and encouragement I'll stick with this campaign for now and see what happens, since I do have good forces plus a lot of allied enclave stars on my homeworld.

Would it be a good idea to actually take Bangnow and Mirisia since they're directly connected to my homeworld so I've got more of a buffer ? Or would that be liable to increase AI progress too much and should I just raid and take the hybrids out ?

Rohar

[Hearteater]

It is generally a smart move to control all systems adjacent to your homeworld, especially while still learning the game. As for hybrids, definately raid them often enough they don't build up into an unstoppable blob. Keep in mind they are increasing in number and "level" (aka, Mark) over time. You can make your life easier by raiding the Hybrid producing structures located on every Mark IV world. Note there are a lot of those structures, and some produce the weapon modules hybrids equip, and others produce the hybrids themselves. They aren't well named, but read the text and you'll figure it out. If you kill off those you'll drastically reduce the number of hybrids you need to deal with.

[Rohar]

Thanks again - will go start working on taking Bangnow and Mirisia. Mirisia looks simple, but Bangnow might be a challenge since there's a couple of AI carriers. I'll go scout Mark IV worlds, see what's on there. I've quickly checked and I can only see 3 Mark IV worlds at a glance, with only one set of hybrid facilities, but then again, there's at least 8 worlds that I've yet to scout (including one branch which probably has the 2nd AI homeworld).
Will probably post and update again here for more advice later, thanks very much all !

[Peter Ebbesen]

One thing that is easy to overlook in your toolbox is lightning warheads. Using a warhead does cost AIP, but they are cheap to produce and excellent for clearing out anything that is not immune to AOE. In case the hybrids - or anything else - proves a major threat to your continued survival, or in case you ever feel you are cooped up with no way to go, unleashing the lightning is likely to solve your immediate problems.

Building a few and having them ready in some critical system under cloak by a cloaker starship can prove very helpful while you are learning the game. (Place them somewhat off to the side in the critical system, such that they won't accidentally get mixed up in minor fights happening there.)

[Rohar]

Ok, update on my campaign. I've now taken Bangnow and liberated Mirisia.
Bangnow was quite a struggle, although not exactly the way I expected.I kind of sent an experimental invasion force of most of my stronger ships in to see what would happen, and then committed when I released it was holding it's own. The attack proceeded pretty smooth, didn't lose much of my force at all. However, it did rile the AI quite seriously, to the point of a 1,475 strong Neinzul Youngling Tiger reprisal at Zimb, which was quite a shock and partially spilled over into my homeworld before I defeated it. As you can imagine, I had to scramble to defend against this, withdrawing from Bangnow in the process, and then I got distracted doing other things,  which allowed the AI to rebuild on Bangnow, including reinforcement of 6 Hybrid Hives. Got re-organised and launched a 2nd attack, and finally cleared out Bangnow. Established a beachhead on Mirisia, and things went pretty smoothly (just waiting to see what kind of a reprisal I get).
Also finally got around to scouting the rest of the AI planets. Looking at Hybrid facilities, most of them are concentrated on 2 branches, the smaller the south west and the bigger one on  the south east branch (which is where the other command AI is). Got a scouting network set up so I can check on hybrid activity via the galaxy map work, so hopefully that'll help til I start killing hybrid facility, so all in all I think I'm on top of the hybrid situation for now
Trying now to plan ahead. After taking Mirisia my AIP is to about 181. I assume this is probably the time when I need to start being selective ? I've read the wiki plus a few forum topics on the subject of AIP, but I'm still a bit confused - is this ok at this stage and what sort of AIP is going to be reasonable to deal with in terms of the endgame ?
As far as plans so far go,  I'm thinking of deep striking Neimurder and Kudusama to get rid of one of  lot of hybrid facilities, as well as Shloape, (I enabled Dyson sphere too, among other things, and it spawned there). Haven't got to much further with plans(I'd like to get rid of the other, bigger lot of hybrid facilities, but that's where one of the AI command stations is, so may not happen til the near the end, should I get that far)  . Would like advice on what ship fabricators to go for on the galaxy (see screenshot).
Thanks for the tip on Lightning warheads, that might come in handy (I've noticed a second planet with a large concentration of Riot control starships - in fact this is probably a bigger threat (Sekqui has 17, Juakishlo 46), so both of those are probably priority raid targets.

[Hearteater]

You'll end up taking at least 2 more planets, probably 3, to give you access to the AI homeworlds without triggering a deep strike response. On the top homeworld, easiest would be the Mark IV adjacent to the homeworld.  On the bottom you could take the adjacent Mark IV, but it would be tricky since I believe doing that will trigger a deep strike. You'd have to rush down the CS, which can be pretty dangerous due to all the threat that releases. A stepping stone world before getting the bottom homeworld's adjacent Mark IV would probably be safer. Keep in mind once you take out those Mark IVs the homeworlds are on permanent alert, so you don't want to wait too long to take out the homeworlds. All of the above assumes CSGs aren't an issue of course.