Well, Prediction 1 was sort of true, I forgot to list the other alternative of it unlocking Raid guardians in its next round, which it did. Hate. Took the Eyebots away from it already at least, hacking is rough on 9/9, I am going to have to reevaluate how much of that I will be doing.
Next stop is denying it any more Zenith Siege Engines -- those things are absolutely horrifying in enemy hands. I had to warhead down a swarm of 70 of the things at the 45 minute mark, 1-2 salvos took out 50% of my double FF coverage and the splash damage alone ate 25% of my home command's health. UNACCEPTABLE. I think I hate these more than Spire Railclusters.
TL;DR -- Difficulty 9 has some teeth.
Outa Tracks MkII is out! Two hours of hotnotes about messing up with stealth and teleportation!
YES! \o/
Gonna read that and do a little peanut-gallery commenting over there after I get some sleep (sun's coming up here). Fingers crossed it's a quiet day at work so I don't have to wait until I get home.
Well this "waves come from anywhere" game sure is interesting so far, I didn't do any optional stuff except marauders but I did bump auto progress up to 1 every 5 minutes. God, that's uncomfortable, but it really changes the way I play. No more slowly waiting for things to finish--I'm splitting my forces to take objectives faster, and suddenly distribution nodes and zenith ship caches are a no brainer. I also realized I'd been playing with simple ships before, and bumped it up to the full loadout. Took protector starships...having to put a lot more thought into my attacks since I can't afford to throw the i am spam sink at enemy planets then wait around to rebuild. I'm pretty scared of threat this time, no idea what it'll be like on 7.6 compared to 7, but probably I'm paranoid for nothing...I think it doesn't get smarter until 8?
As luck would have it, there's also not many good core turret controllers. This is going to be painful. Might have to take a bunch of extra planets just so I can ensure quick travel. And I think I found an answer to an earlier question I posted about when to use logistical command stations...when waves can come from anywhere, you can't even defend yourself with gravitational turrets, so they may well turn out to be more effective than military stations.
<steeple fingers> Excellent. Sounds like the combo is doing exactly what I was hoping for -- hope you're having fun!
Protectors will serve you very, very well, they are incredibly powerful.
I think 8 is the last main breakpoint, mostly for unlocking a few more unit types and just making it a bit more aggressive in general. 7 actually unlocks 99% of the behaviors, so you're already seeing the majority of its logic.
I can't speak for 7.6 as I skipped from 7 to 8, but Threat on 8 (non-Preemption) didn't draw much of my attention until somewhere between AIP 400 and 500. That was the point where it would rack up 2000-3000 strength over time and go stalk a planet. And then eat a warhead once it bunched up sufficiently. But your experience may vary, everyone plays differently.
Look forward to hearing how the Logistics stations work out for you, I have yet to try them.
