Playing "Faster" Games

[Procyon]

Hey there, new guy to the forums with a starter question:

When I play my 7-difficulty games, I find myself relying on blobbing with a trio of raid starships gate-raiding or taking out structures ahead of the 1,000-strong blob of, well, everything I can produce. While this seems to be doing okay, I've come to know some clear flaws to the tactic:

1) Waves on the other end of my territory put any offense to a halt as I move the blob to the system in need. Same thing happens when there's a large threat build-up, forcing me to send the blob into neighboring AI systems to conduct neutering "purges" that eat up lots of time where I should be forwarding my own position instead of proactively defending.

2) Blobbing takes epic loads of energy, especially if fortresses are involved in protecting high-value systems. The tactic almost requires a zenith reactor to avoid being completely inefficient.

3) It's slow work. My current game is fourteen hours in and I've seized eleven systems (AIP at 144 thanks to an hour-long camp of a super-terminal where the progress floor may come back to haunt me later). I don't know how long 80-system games average, but reaching what seems to be the midpoint at just over half a day feels as if I should be moving a little faster.

I've been reading some of the fleet ideas on the forums already, but when shipcounts in AI systems are 300-600, how can one expect to clear a system without the blob?

[Orelius]

I'd say that the best way to clear a system is to snipe out the command ship with a bunch of raid starships or bombers, and then waiting for the ships now released to come smashing into your border worlds.

I tend to evade planets that have a large amount of ships if I can.  If there are too many to easily deal with, I tend to break open a zenith cache and start massing some shredders.  A large amount of shredders will multiply and ultimately destroy much of the ships on a planet.  Be sure to pull all of them out and distribute them across your planets once the shredder count starts falling faster than it rises.

[Procyon]

Might work. I'm always a bit leery of drawing AI into my space, though the gravity/Ion Cannon trick might be useful for this tactic.

[Brad]

Here are a few thoughts...

If you're attacking a planet that you know you won't have trouble with I don't think it's necessary to send raid starships in before. Just send the blob in and while it's attacking send starships to take out guard posts or whatever else.

You don't need all of your ships to be attacking. Leave a few hundred, or however many necessary depending on the size of the waves, back in your system to use to defend. This way you can attack and defend at the same time.

I purge planets as a I move my fleet forward. That way I rarely have to go back to purge them again since their reinforcement levels are low.

[Lancefighter]

You can set the settings just to like +100% resources for you.. That will make the game faster (youre gathering resources faster -> less fleet idle time -> less ai units built up -> less time to kill ai units)

If you play on maps with less chokepoints, it will make the ai gather less in chokepoint systems, which means overall you can blob them with less resistance per system. Youll note on x type maps eventually you get just absolutely blobbed at certain points by defensive hybrids..

[Martyn van Buren]

Sorry to necro, but two things might be useful for new players:

One, I really wouldn't worry about pulling small clumps of enemy ships onto your border worlds, unless they contain valuable captured structures.  Turrets, and even command centers, are pretty cheap to rebuild, and the remains rebuilders will take care of it for you (except the command center), so you don't even have to redo your plans.

The other --- you don't have to engage all of a planet's defenders at once.  Guards will only leave their post if a military ship (i.e., not a scout) comes near them.  So even if there are 600 ships on the planet, if there are only 80 near the entry wormhole you only need to send in enough ships to overwhelm the 80.  This is a big drawback to using raid starships, actually --- if you let them cruise all over a planet, they'll wind up stirring up lots of ships that would otherwise stay quiet until your main fleet gets there to crush them.  I love raiders, but I think you want to save them for things where you can get a big advantage by taking them out early ---- for example, warp gates if you're gate-raiding, ion cannons and orbital mass drivers if you don't want to capture them, and data centers on worlds I don't want to capture.  Of course, they're also great as support ships with the main fleet for doing things like taking out guardposts under shields.