Some newbie questions

[Tridus]

Hi. Just got the game, played a couple games so far. It's great! Some things are confusing me though:

1. I've seen talk of knowledge raiding. Is that something you still do in 4.0? I decided to make an attempt at it, and it went... poorly. The AI got very, very angry and a planet with no warp gate (I'd already destroyed it because it was next to my homeworld) got a large number of ships and overwhelmed me every time I tried. They followed me back, but that world was still defended enough to fight it off. Also, is the tooltip right that only the mark 3 science lab works for this? Those take *forever* to build.

2. What counters armor ships? Those just refuse to die. Is there any turret/defensive structure aside from capturing an Ion Cannon that works well on them?

3. Late in my second game after I tried the knowledge raid, I got a warning about a cross planet raid that was 1600 ships. Suffice to say that was way bigger then anything I'd seen before. Did I trigger that by accident?

4. Any defensive tips in general? I don't want to build turrets on every planet, but sometimes I get AI ships sneaking past the defended planets and going for undefended ones. Can I build something to make it harder for the AI to do that, or is the only option to use a defensive fleet to chase them down?

I don't have any of the expansions yet (but I intend to get them), so it's possible solutions are in those and I just don't know it yet. Thanks.

[Lancefighter]

1: I do not do it very much.. It generally is very resource and time intensive to do, and thus generally not worth the time/resources. If there happens to be a system I am in for an extended period of time (say, I'm completely neutering a planet for some other reason), I will set up knowledge labs or two and enough turrets and just leave them there for a bit.
Otherwise, I really do not use mk3 labs every game even...

2: There actually is a shipclass 'anti-armor ships'.. I'm not sure what which triangle ship does it.. A safe bet is raid starships.. One of the 5 turrets (basic, mlrs, missile, laser, flak) has a bonus to the armor-ship hull type, but I am not sure which hull the armor ship is.

3: cross planet attacks dont happen because you did stuff (except on ai homeworlds). Knowledge raiding should not cause this either

4: if you knock out the warp gates of a planet, no ai waves can come from that planet.. Do that a lot
keeping the main ai waves hitting one or two planets is what you want.. Place forcefields over the wormholes that lead to your other planets, and put turrets everywhere

[Winter Born]

Hi. Just got the game, played a couple games so far. It's great! Some things are confusing me though:

1. I've seen talk of knowledge raiding. Is that something you still do in 4.0? I decided to make an attempt at it, and it went... poorly. The AI got very, very angry and a planet with no warp gate (I'd already destroyed it because it was next to my homeworld) got a large number of ships and overwhelmed me every time I tried. They followed me back, but that world was still defended enough to fight it off. Also, is the tooltip right that only the mark 3 science lab works for this? Those take *forever* to build.

K-raiding was pretty standard in 3xxx. and Chris decided that it was not where he wanted the game to go so he buffed the knowledge per planet from 2k to 3k, made K-raiding very hard and created the MkIII sci lab so that you could get out of a knowledge hole if you really really needed to.


2. What counters armor ships? Those just refuse to die. Is there any turret/defensive structure aside from capturing an Ion Cannon that works well on them?

look at the ref tab q&a section
http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_STATS_Button_Overview

3. Late in my second game after I tried the knowledge raid, I got a warning about a cross planet raid that was 1600 ships. Suffice to say that was way bigger then anything I'd seen before. Did I trigger that by accident?

Not sure -- you may have had CPA turned on in the game setup lobby. The AI may have had a bunch of excess ships so launched a CPA to get rid of them.

4. Any defensive tips in general? I don't want to build turrets on every planet, but sometimes I get AI ships sneaking past the defended planets and going for undefended ones. Can I build something to make it harder for the AI to do that, or is the only option to use a defensive fleet to chase them down?

The AI is getting better at sneaking past. Are the ships cloaked - use tachyon detectors. Do they have mine avoidance - if not a few minefields around your worm holes will soften them up. Engine killers like spiders can slow ships down so that other defenses can kill them.

I don't have any of the expansions yet (but I intend to get them), so it's possible solutions are in those and I just don't know it yet. Thanks.

[Tridus]

Great, thanks.

[Tridus]

Couple more questions:

1. I've been playing against easier AIs to learn the game, and I've been tending to research both better harvesters (mark II), and the economic station mark II. Should I try to elimiante both of those as I get to higher difficulty? One of them? It seems like the econ station is a better bet early game, because the boost is so large for one investment. I do seem to have economy problems for a while early game, but then it shifts to a point where I can't spend fast enough.

2. When trying to raid a well defended world, I've been using bombers and siege starships to take out some guard posts/fortresses, with other ships acting as cover. I then retreat to a defended world with whatever survives and use the defenses there to help me fight off the ships that follow. I guess the trouble I'm having is that it works well when I can actually defend those ships, but siege ships are sitting ducks and pretty fragile. Is that still the best way, or would something faster like raid starships be capable of doing more damage to a big target like a superfort?

3. Is there any tips for defending against a counterattack warp guard post, other then putting ships all over the place so they can respond quickly? First time I popped one of those, I lost several bases and a mark IV factory.

Thanks!

[ShadowOTE]

1. That really depends on play style. I'll leave answering that to someone else

2. Generally siege ships are sitting ducks outside the blob, so you might consider keeping part of your fleet on them as escort - "ctrl L" and "shift L" (or maybe alt?) allow you to select 1/2 or 1/3 of your fleet - just group them using a control option (ctrl 1-9) and stick them on top. For raids, also consider sending transports and using them to draw off defenders at key targets, then sending in bombers. That way your fleet sits back and waits for the response in friendly space with MRS and turret/forcefield support. Raid is nice, since they shoot through FFs, but are fragile, so keep them under the blob!

3. No clue - last time i faced one was during the special "gigantic waves" edition, which ended... poorly. I'd recommend redeploying appropriate counter turrets, moving spare FFs into place, and redeploying high level fleet ships. Don't bother with Fortresses unless you have plenty of resources to spare. Put your defenses around the high value targets, starting with those that add to AIP or are irreplacable (or both!). Also prepare for energy brownouts (if you're low on spare energy) and leakers. Finally, if you can try to pop the carriers one at a time and deal with them piecemeal.

[Suzera]

1) Unless you're taking a LOT of planets, the economy bases tend to end up better knowledge/payoff. If you're taking about 15-20 you're probably better off with econ stations. If you're taking 30-40, you might start thinking about harvesters instead. Decide early on and do one or the other though in my opinion. The early vs mid game economy issue thing happens to a lot of people. Just keep building junk until you can't build anymore without spending more knowledge you don't have.

2) Attack planets with your entire fleet every time all at once, unless it has an AI Eye then only attack with about 1.8x as many units are on the planet, but use your highest marks to send first. Anything else is suboptimal except in very very extremely rare edge cases.

3) Spider turrets, tractor beams and emp mines in the path, reloading and just not taking the counterpost you aren't ready for. When you are going to pop a counterpost, be ready to move your entire fleet there within 15 minutes. They can essentially stop your game for 15 minutes so be sure what you're getting is worth it.

[NickAragua]

1. I got along just fine in the past without these new-fangled mark II harvesters and econ stations. I would probably avoid those altogether and go for better fleet or starships instead, the return isn't all that great on your knowledge investment.

2. Unless there's an orbital mass driver or something equally starship-shattering, I generally send a full cap of all marks of raid starships to take out important targets, while my fleet camps out on my side of the wormhole. Raid starships decimate most guard posts, eyes and other individual targets pretty quickly, so you can be in and out pretty quick. It's even better to bring them in a transport or something so they don't have to run a gauntlet on the way in and out. If you need extra firepower, bomber starships are also reasonably fast and are good at zapping single targets.

In the latest beta versions, the ships released by your raids don't make a beeline for your worlds any more, but instead hang out in the back somewhere until you either leave yourself open to counterattack somewhere, or jump in when a wave or whatever comes in or they reach critical mass, so keep that in mind.

Superfortresses are one of those things that I tend to just avoid like the plague unless the world is absolutely critical.

3. Yeah. Unless there's an overriding reason to do so (like a golem or some other non-stupid capturable), don't take over planets with counter attack wave guard posts. If it's a neighbor, just neuter the system (destroy as many guard posts as you can, plus any warp gates or warp-gate-like structures) then get out.

[Tridus]

You folks are great, thanks.