Kahuna's Guide To AI War - Find Your Inner Super Cat!

[RobertSmith]

This is a fantastic guide!!

I really hope after some coffee you will find time to write more fantastic write-up for the Self Studying Package 

[ErictheRed]

Great guide!  I just finished a 7/7 with a loss - had major energy issues.  In the past, I have always been more offense oriented when spending research, getting higher fleet and starships as a first priority.  I took your advice and was much more defense focused but energy became very precarious.  I tried to have a whipping boy planet to focus defenses on but with the warp gate guardians spawning all over the place (at least in my last game), it seemed less of a sure thing that the AI will only hit that one planet.   I had a couple of questions:

1) How many planets do you typically grab on an 80 planet map?
2) Do you build a full complement of turrets on each of your planets?  If so, how do you handle energy consumption (especially when you have up to mark 3 of many turret types)?  It seems to take massive amounts of energy to maintain this type of full court defense.

[Kahuna]

1) How many planets do you typically grab on an 80 planet map?
2) Do you build a full complement of turrets on each of your planets?  If so, how do you handle energy consumption (especially when you have up to mark 3 of many turret types)?  It seems to take massive amounts of energy to maintain this type of full court defense.

1. I have about 6 or 7 permanent planet (including the home planet) which I try not to lose and rebuild if I do lose them at some point. In addition to that I capture about 3 to 5 - maybe "even" 6 - temporary planets that I use as staging grounds and beachheads.

2. I build full defenses on all planets that have hostile wormholes and also spread minefields and force fields between those planets. Planet with no hostile wormholes have partial defenses. If a Warp Gate Gurdian spawns I rebuild full defenses again. Note that Mark IV turrets cost as much energy as Mark Is. So scrap Mark Is and IIs if you don't need as much defenses. This will pretty much halve the energy consumption on that planet and you will stillhave quite strong defenses (Mark IIIs and IVs).

To solve energy problems I use Mark III Economical Command Stations. Of course you can build similar defenses with only Mark I turrets. The energy consumption won't be as high but the defenses are't going to be as strong (obviously). Unlock more turretsif you need/want to and Economical Command Stations if you need to.

[RobertSmith]

Hi
This is maybe a stupid question but in your recommendations for game settings you recommend

Game Options
Visibility: Full fog of war

But in "Enter The Raid Engine - The Balls Of Steel Self Studying Package" game options is
Visibility: Complete Visibility

• Was "Complete Visibility" only for demo or do you have this as a standard settings?
  
• Does it affect the possibilities to get achievements or not?

Edit:
Or are you just starting a new game (same map seed) to make a game plan? 

[Kahuna]

in "Enter The Raid Engine - The Balls Of Steel Self Studying Package" game options is
Visibility: Complete Visibility

• Was "Complete Visibility" only for demo or do you have this as a standard settings?
  
• Does it affect the possibilities to get achievements or not?

1. Only for demo.
2. I don't know. I've never cared about achievements.

Edit:
Or are you just starting a new game (same map seed) to make a game plan?

Yes, I often check the map with complete visibility to see if it's doable on 10/10 difficulty level. Some might call that cheating but a bad map can ruin the game so all I'm doing is saving time. I'd just restart with a new map if the map turned out to be undoable. So then restarting the game after a loss/stalemate would be cheating too.

Also there are 2 different starting save files:
Enter The Raid Engine - The Beginning - Complete Visibility 00_00_01.sav
and
Enter The Raid Engine - The Beginning 00_00_01.sav

All autosaves have full fog of war.

[Mal]

Yes, I often check the map with complete visibility to see if it's doable on 10/10 difficulty level. Some might call that cheating but a bad map can ruin the game so all I'm doing is saving time. I'd just restart with a new map if the map turned out to be undoable. So then restarting the game after a loss/stalemate would be cheating too.

When you say you check the 10/10 map to see if it is do-able, what do you look for that would "disqualify" a game from being playable?

[Kahuna]

Update: added 6. My After Action Reports. I aimed to keep the AARs informative and some found them helpful so I though they deserve their place in this guide.

I know this guide could be improved and updated quite a bit but I don't time for big overhauls atm. I still decided to do this small update. The information, tactics and strategies in this guide are still valid.