How to not play as a Turtle in this game?

[Mithror]

Ok, so say I don't want to turtle in this game. What do I do?



This is an old pic, I'll upload the latest one tonight, but it does show what my original intent was. Basically, I have a massive fleet + defense at Tioorimb. Two hops away from an AI homeworld. With the update for CSG I had to take: Volueliu, Jomic, Mirdono and Casi. I still have to take Nourmas for the CSG-A. It is the only planet left with a ASR.

As you can see, all the planets, bar Nourmas I took are all adjancent to the ones I already control in the screenshot and with very good reason so it seemed later. Because as I took the planets, the AIP increased and it increased such that I was getting attacked from almost everywhere. I would often lose my OCS at Mirdono. Jomic would get hammered and I even lost a fabricator factory there (it was next to the hostile wormhole), the same applied with Volueliu, where I lost the Advanced Factory which was also next to the hostile wormhole. Luckily I have another at Owpo, but even Owpo got attacked continuously, though I managed to hold, largely due to spider turrets and the plenty Mk IV ships there.

I realized that having these multiple frontlines was not gonna make it easy to actually assault the AI themselves as I constantly have to reinforce these lines so they don't fall to the AI. I decided to start with Operation Clean Sweep. I basically took everything such that my frontlines only consists of: Murdoch, Vuwa, Garmicqui, Tioorimb and Volueliu. The only gap left between my systems is Murdoch-Tioorimb, but I can't really take this. Maybe I could grab Sicow and Udondedes (they have been causing me much grief), but Taock is out of the question. It has a captive human settlement and I really don't want to risk increasing my AIP by another 100, nor do I want 3x the waves.

My plan for now is to take Nourmas by deep striking. Hold it, destroy the node, gather the knowledge and then retreat back to Tioorimb. Assault the AI homeworld on Buis and then push for the other AI. Does this seem valid? I'm currently about 450 AIP, but I'm worried that I'll have to take my fleet from Garmicqui (2nd strongest fleet) to Tioorimb to help destroy the AI, leaving my back very weak.

However, the main point for the thread is not specifically to help me decide which strategy to go with, but rather to discuss what I should have done differently. To me it seems like it is really risky to just hop around and take multiple subsystems. It is far easier to defend one large system with few frontlines then it is to defend multiple subsystems with few frontlines each. Though the increase in AIP means it now becomes more difficult to leave these frontlines...

I would definitely call having one big system with few frontlines turtling, yet I seem to get the impression that x4000 wants to have use different methods of winning, so I'm curious. How do you guys go about and choose the planets you take? Do you try to get most of your planets connected in a big system? Or do you take different subsystems and if so, how do you defend those properly without losing the power to assault? I feel that with 40 planets it is probably doable to have a connected system, yet for my next game I want to go for 80 planets and I doubt I'll be able to do the same.

[ShadowOTE]

Basically the concern was that players were winning without taking many worlds. The "turtling" was just a byproduct - take only as many worlds as you need to get a good chokepoint, then deepstrike the homeworlds. New mechanics have been introduced to address this, namely massive waves while your fleet is 4+ systems from supply and improved ARS unlocks, along with nerfed MRS and engineers. That is all - carry on.

[Suzera]

Basically the concern was that players were winning without taking many worlds. The "turtling" was just a byproduct - take only as many worlds as you need to get a good chokepoint, then deepstrike the homeworlds. New mechanics have been introduced to address this, namely massive waves while your fleet is 4+ systems from supply and improved ARS unlocks, along with nerfed MRS and engineers. That is all - carry on.

You didn't even need a chokepoint. The AI would move in predictable lanes from planets, so you just make sure to blow up every drop of everything in every planet that isn't in lane to your defense planet if you go there for data centers. The prioritization of distance has been taken out supposedly, but I haven't seen a difference yet. I usually end up destroying everything the first time I enter planets anyway.

[Mithror]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh, this is so exciting =)

I'm at one hop from the last homeworld. I got plenty of ships to perhaps make one big push, but of course the AI is going to take advantage of this and probably rush for my home station. The planets on alert are putting a lot of stuff into aircraft carriers and I just barely held back a push with 7 or so of them (carying Mk III units)* on Murdoch. I don't quite safely hold Nourmas yet, but I do intend to make it my staging planet for the final assault. I just hope I manage to pull of my first win before I get my first loss! Any tips?



*Is there a way to have your ships NOT attack those carriers? I tried to manually avoid them, but it seems a bit tedious to do so.

[ShadowOTE]

Don't know if the carriers are immune, but if the HW is under alert you'll want to have a crapload of fortresses and turrets ready under forcefields to bleed their counterattacks. Then draw them out and start hitting the guard posts when they weaken over repeated raids if you can't make a beeline for their command station. Alternatively, dart in, blow up the carriers on the AI homeworld, then nuke the suckers (unless they have core ships, which i believe are immune to nukes). You'll take a big AIP hit, but the defenses will be greatly weakened.

Basically, 2 strategies at the end: attrition or raid. Raid goes for the home station in one massive strike, taking other defenses out if necessary. Attrition bleeds the AI defenses, by encouraging the AI to release ships to attack a meatgrinder you've set up, damaging ships in the AI system directly, and wiping out AI guardposts - in other words, lower the amount of defenses faster than the AI can replace them and cut down the maximum number of ships and turrets they can have present.

[Suzera]

My endgame strategy is just to have more good stuff. Just build your entire ship cap and blob move them and you'll win unless you're on difficulty 8+ for some reason.

[Mithror]

It's not really the homeworld I'm worried about. I think I can take that. I took the other Homeworld quite sneakily. Maybe I should do the same here. Though it'll be more difficult, because holding on to Nourmas won't be easy. What I did was send frigates or bombers and one zenith starship to the homeworld and took down the guard posts one by one. Then when I could hit the fortress, I send my three raid starships with all my bombers and had them FF the fortress. It went down without a problem and besides the leap in AIP I did not seem to suffer from any grave consequences

What I am worried about is that when I go after the Homeworld, every other world will send their free ships (7k :/) to my planets and rush for my home command station. I'm thinking of grabbing the broken artillery gollem at Maretswo, parking it at my home command station, unlocking tractor beams Mk II and position them together with the gravity turrets and the logistic command centers to make sure the AI will take a long time to reach my home command center, while I take out his. That or as mentioned above, move my ships to Nourmas, put up a stronger defense and do as I did with the first one and slowly take down the homeworld. Only problem is that there is one guard post under a Mk V shield and one Special Alarm Guard Post, which I definely want to keep as last.

[Mithror]

VICTORY!!!! NICE



I had to reload the last part a couple of times until I found a pretty good strategy. I basically send like 70% of my fleet to the homeworld and could defeat all the guard posts but could not destroy the command center because 2 Mk V shields take FOOOOOREVEEEEEEEER to go down, so I started operation hug Shields. As soon as I arrived at the homeworld, I send my 3 Raid Starships together with one cloak starship to the edge of the map to remain undetected until I cleared all the guard posts. Once that was done I used my fleet as fodder, while the raid starships went to work and huzzah, AIs defeated.

(Is it normal that in the highscores, the game remains on incomplete?)

[Suzera]

You should have blown up all the defenders before attacking the FF. Don't attack the FF itself unless everything is dead or there are snipers or some other REALLY long range unit under it.

If you run to the shield and back up out of the range of stuff inside, things will start following you out of the FF they are in to attack you while outside of it. Then you blow them up while they are out of the FF. When everything is then dead, you kill the FFs. I call this "fishing". If you watch me tonight (or what I record) you'll definitely get a chance to see it if I make it to the AI HW (which I might). Even if I don't you'll certainly see it if I run into a mk 3 FF, and there's a lot of those around on difficulty 8.

Also, WOW that's a long game...and high AIP.

[Mithror]

Good point. I was worried about the AI counter attacking though, high threat and all. Therefore I wanted the fastest way to take it down. I think using Raid Starships solved that pretty handily. Except I had to use my other ships to take the damage instead of the raid starships. They were basically on attack move near the shields.

And yeah, long game, but I definitely learned a lot, so next games should be a lot quicker! Most of the time was spent just looking at everything and figuring the game out. Also capturing my inner territory and a few tech raids, which took longer than I wanted.

I'll probably have to watch your broadcast on demand, unless it's like with the next 2 hours or so. But I definitely am looking forward to seeing it

[Suzera]

You don't actually leave the system, you just go far enough out of their firing range to drag them out. If you leave then they WILL probably try to attack somewhere else (unless you VERY VERY quickly go back, maybe). I probably won't be starting up for another 3.5-4 hours though.

If you're just only looking around at stuff, you should probably pause the game. AIP won't accumulate, reinforcements won't accrue, wave timers don't run, etc. Pausing pauses the game clock too.

[Mithror]

I was talking about the ships on other planets, not the one I'm attacking. I wasn't too worried about those as I kinda knew I would be able to take down the station in time.

And yeah, I know about the pause button. Looking around stuff wasn't really a reason it took so long, now that I think about it.

It was mostly scouting, wanting to build mercenary ships (no more of that though!), retaking territory, building defense (spider turrets are NOT meant to be built in bulk, lol), and just being too passive too long

[soMe_RandoM]

unless you're on difficulty 8+ for some reason.

9.8+

[Suzera]

unless you're on difficulty 8+ for some reason.

9.8+

I meant that specifically for the OP as a newer person.