Author Topic: How to kill the AI home systems?  (Read 1376 times)

Offline Ekkoria

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How to kill the AI home systems?
« on: July 18, 2011, 05:32:30 pm »
I'm a bit of a noob at AI War, so this is the first time I've ever really managed to make it all the way to the AI home system. Once I found it, I used transports to get my fleet of 3000+ ships to the system of about 300 ships. I killed two guard posts, but somehow the enemy destroyed my fleet and rampaged across five of my seven or eight systems (I'm on a 40 planet map), destroying everything on them. What did I do wrong? How can I more easily kill the AI home system and prevent a massive counterattack? My threat was upwards of 1200 ships, I really don't want them all gathering up and killing me.

Offline Orelius

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Re: How to kill the AI home systems?
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2011, 06:52:42 pm »
Protip:  Throwing everything you have at a planet and leaving nothing else is a very, very bad idea, especially when it's a homeworld.  Frankly, an AI homeworld is bound to be very, very heavily defended and will massacre your fleet several times even if it's the strongest you can make it.  The AI homeworlds also have a set of very nasty guard posts that can do grevious damage to both your fleet and even your worlds that are far, far away. 

Don't expect to take everything in a sweeping blow, ever.  Always have contingency plans.  Don't throw in everything you have and have nothing left to defend.

What I would do would be to send in a small fleet primarily consisting of bombers and other ships that hit structures hard, and focus fire guard posts one by one.  After the attack wave inevitably gets destroyed, rebuild it while lounging under your defense fleet which more than likely is able to fend off attacks for the amount of time it take for the bombers to rebuild.  Wash, rinse, and repeat until the homeworld suddenly happens to lack any core guard posts left.  At  that point, you can go and destroy it rather easily, as most of the hard-hitting defenses on that world are now gone. 

You should always set up lots of static defenses(turrets, fortresses) and make sure you have some rolling defenses (mobile ships) to cover up weak points.  Set up chokepoints and force most of the AI to go through one or two planets so you can concentrate your defenses more and take advantage of splash damage from lightning turrets and electric shuttles.

Simply put:  You're doing it wrong.  Don't go all-in, especially when you've still got another AI homeworld to deal with.   Make sure you have something to defend with if and when your assault fails.  Attack in small waves to whittle away at the homeworld until it's easy to take in a single blow.

Offline Ekkoria

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Re: How to kill the AI home systems?
« Reply #2 on: July 18, 2011, 07:00:50 pm »
Thanks for the advice. Whenever I took a planet, I usually threw most of my ships at it, and I guess it worked cause I just overran the AI's ships there. But I guess that won't work on homeworlds. I also do have turrets and defense forces set up, it's just 200+ core ships were too much for them to handle. Once again thanks

Offline Orelius

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Re: How to kill the AI home systems?
« Reply #3 on: July 18, 2011, 07:03:46 pm »
No problem.  If there's anything you want to know or need to ask, please, don't hesitate.  :)

Offline Ekkoria

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Re: How to kill the AI home systems?
« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2011, 07:43:23 pm »
Well, how bout this? The home planet has two core raid engines. I killed one but the other keeps sending loads of ships at me, and the starships are immune to tractors and just destroy my command stations before my defenses have a chance to kill them. How can I stop that, other than destroying the raid engine? It has a forcefield around it..

Offline Orelius

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Re: How to kill the AI home systems?
« Reply #5 on: July 18, 2011, 08:28:13 pm »
Use an armored warhead and nuke the raid engine.  That's what I'd do in that situation.

Offline Ekkoria

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Re: How to kill the AI home systems?
« Reply #6 on: July 18, 2011, 10:25:32 pm »
What I ended up doing was putting a mark II forcefield on the command station that kept getting popped, it held up long enough for my defenses to kill anything that tried to attack it. But i did end up accidentally setting off an EMP on the wrong planet. I felt pretty stupid after that.