Killing 1200 MK V ships with MK II ships

[Ozymandiaz]

In my recent game I am at a cross roads. Either I abandon my siege on one of the home systems in favor of getting more ADR, knowledge and a Mk IV fac, or I pull some cool trick and kill 1200 MK V ships (from a zenith descendant AI) and take the border world to the AI home planet (and netting more knowledge that way for more MK III ships). All the 1200 ships are at the WH in a huge AI blob.

I do however have MK III bombers, and Missile Frigs.

I can have access to a hive golem and a bot net golem... at 60 AIP... so I dunno if thats really worth it.


So, what trick would you guys use? my 1500 fleet is not that strong (500 of that is Infiltrators MK I and II). I think it is looking dark, even using transports to ferry my fleet some way off will only buy some slight time before I need to rebuild it

[BobTheJanitor]

I don't know if you're playing with LotS on, but SC Martyrs are glorious for clearing out enemy blobs around wormholes. If not, you could throw caution to the wind and sacrifice more AIP for some warheads. Or you could nuke the whole galaxy from orbit.

[Ozymandiaz]

I got LOTS on, but I got spire craft off, otherwise I agree, the martyrs are cool.

A lightning/amrored warhead could work, tho for that AIP cost I might consider a Hive golem and save up some wasps to go with my assault. after all I can reuse my Golem Too bad Mk Vs are immune to EMP, if not a Mk III warhead of that kind would rock and let me mop up easily.

[Sunshine!]

You will need knowledge for this (and this needs to be a NEUTRAL, non-reinforceable planet...), and you will probably need to repeat the below a couple times, but:

Mk1 Cloaker Starships + however many Riot Control Starships you can get your hands on.  Give them all Lasers and lots of forcefields (you'll need them against the Bombards), slip your Riot Controls through the wormhole, cloaked, and then open fire from a good distance.  The goal is to do significant damage to their engines for the next phase, which is to slip a mobile builder, a bunch of engineers, and whatever other forces you can through the wormhole (in transports - your cloaker starship should be able to cloak them all), and rush build a pile of sniper and missile turrets on the other side of the planet.  Your infiltrators will act as a screen (they're easily replaceable) to protect from whatever ships haven't had their engines knocked down to 25% and also to do more engine damage.

If you have spider turrets and MRS unlocked, this will help things.

If you have Fortresses unlocked, keep in mind that fortresses are not immune to Cloaking Superboosters, and can therefore be cloaked by your cloaker starship, so you may be able to cloak it while it's building (not sure on this point).  If this is possible, it should help immensely because of how much damage it can put out.

Can you give us a better idea of how many planets you have, what you have unlocked, how much knowledge you have left, that kind of thing?

[Ozymandiaz]

I got about 15 planets (an early super terminal made me able to enjoy some more planets), MK II fleet ships and Mk III bombers and missile frigs, Inflitrator Mk II, and I got a new ADR with Sentinel Frigs.

I actually do have spider turrets, and I do have MRS, but only 1000 knowledge left, but able to raid 3000 more if needed. I have built all my Spider turrets, but I can easily rebuild them a new place. I also got fortress Mk I........ So I guess I can actually put your plan to work fairly easily with some cloakers.

I aslo got a MK V constructor along with the new ADR, so I can make Chameleon Mk V as well.

[Laelia]

Depending on your difficulty setting, you can sometimes entice enemy ships to chase you back through your wormhole a few at a time, which is good if you have a deathtrap waiting.  A bunch of tractor beams to hold them in place, lightning turrets, and other turrets along with your fleet can make short work of even mark V ships if they come through in smallish doses.  If you have heavy beam cannons, especially the mark III and IV, these help immensely against the higher mark ships.

For "bait" typically I use a few empty transports, which really seems to tick the computer off.  On higher difficulty settings this doesn't work, though, and you'll have to actually go blow something up.  Sneaking siege or raid starships in via a transport and having them blow up a guardpost of some sort seems to work sometimes.  This tactic can backfire if you don't have enough defense and the computer just decides to roflstomp you with all 1200 units, so proceed with caution.  You also need to watch for guardians because some of them can utterly chew up turrets.

I don't know if this will work, but if you have maws or etherjets, you can attempt to whittle down their army by physically dragging some of them through your wormhole into 'badly outnumbered' territory.  To do this effectively you need to send something with a lot of HP through to take the first hits.  Transports work well for this, as do starships.

Yet another (rather fun) tactic is to get mobile repair stations and leech starships and steal their ships.  This doesn't work nearly as well as it used to though, since leech starships got hit pretty hard upside the head with the nerfbat in terms of reclamation.  Mercenary micro parasites might work better for that, though.  It's also been a while since I tried it but I'm not sure if core ships can be reclaimed either.  Even if you don't reclaim mark V ships though, you can go to a different neighbor and steal some of their ships to use against the core world.

Another tactic that sometimes works is to move in (or build) a bunch of mark II/III force fields along with a mobile repair station and 40 engineers (and army too), then start building sniper/spider turrets and such in a distant corner of their planet, behind the force fields.  You need a really big stock of resources for that, though, and have to be willing to micro quite a bit while under pressure.  While you're in there you can knowledge raid, too.

Hope some of that helps give you ideas!

[superking]

if there are all concentrated around the wormhole, I would 100% crack out a lightning warhead

[Mithror]

if there are all concentrated around the wormhole, I would 100% crack out a lightning warhead

Or, in that case and if available, have a space dock keep sending autobombs in FRD or Attack mode to the wormhole and then clean up the remaining bombards and frigates with your bombers. =)

[Ozymandiaz]

if there are all concentrated around the wormhole, I would 100% crack out a lightning warhead

They are, and it was my initial thought. But I was wanting to avoid too much AIP, as its closing to the Mk II waves soonish again ^^

But I guess a MK II wahead is a good idea (since the range on MK III is kinda low)

if there are all concentrated around the wormhole, I would 100% crack out a lightning warhead

Or, in that case and if available, have a space dock keep sending autobombs in FRD or Attack mode to the wormhole and then clean up the remaining bombards and frigates with your bombers. =)

If I had autobombs, yes

[Ozymandiaz]

Depending on your difficulty setting, you can sometimes entice enemy ships to chase you back through your wormhole a few at a time, which is good if you have a deathtrap waiting.  A bunch of tractor beams to hold them in place, lightning turrets, and other turrets along with your fleet can make short work of even mark V ships if they come through in smallish doses.  If you have heavy beam cannons, especially the mark III and IV, these help immensely against the higher mark ships.

For "bait" typically I use a few empty transports, which really seems to tick the computer off.  On higher difficulty settings this doesn't work, though, and you'll have to actually go blow something up.  Sneaking siege or raid starships in via a transport and having them blow up a guardpost of some sort seems to work sometimes.  This tactic can backfire if you don't have enough defense and the computer just decides to roflstomp you with all 1200 units, so proceed with caution.  You also need to watch for guardians because some of them can utterly chew up turrets.

I don't know if this will work, but if you have maws or etherjets, you can attempt to whittle down their army by physically dragging some of them through your wormhole into 'badly outnumbered' territory.  To do this effectively you need to send something with a lot of HP through to take the first hits.  Transports work well for this, as do starships.

Yet another (rather fun) tactic is to get mobile repair stations and leech starships and steal their ships.  This doesn't work nearly as well as it used to though, since leech starships got hit pretty hard upside the head with the nerfbat in terms of reclamation.  Mercenary micro parasites might work better for that, though.  It's also been a while since I tried it but I'm not sure if core ships can be reclaimed either.  Even if you don't reclaim mark V ships though, you can go to a different neighbor and steal some of their ships to use against the core world.

Another tactic that sometimes works is to move in (or build) a bunch of mark II/III force fields along with a mobile repair station and 40 engineers (and army too), then start building sniper/spider turrets and such in a distant corner of their planet, behind the force fields.  You need a really big stock of resources for that, though, and have to be willing to micro quite a bit while under pressure.  While you're in there you can knowledge raid, too.

Hope some of that helps give you ideas!

I got a fairly relaxing dual 7.6 AI game going here. Been using it to test new features and what not (still want to win tho... ). So I have not exactly played it the most optimal way possible .

I do long term intend to take this planet, I think, since it has a nice Spire Tech thingy I have been wanting to try out.

I think leeches is out of question, since the ships are MK V and due to they hardly being able to capture any ships, and die quickly to the storm of Mk V fire ^^.

[Ozymandiaz]

I did actually manage to rile them up and get all (now 1500) ship to attack me.

There is a "hole in the wall" in the current AI behavior making it fairly easy to trick it into attacking me while it normally would not. So I lured it to me and killed it.

[BobTheJanitor]

It does seem that it's been counterattacking with everything on a planet when you go in and tickle it there lately. Is that the behavior you're talking about?

Edit: Never mind, just saw your other post in the 4.066 thread.

[Echo35]

Or you could nuke the whole galaxy from orbit.

Always the solution.