SuperTerminals for Fun and Profit

[Thasero]

I just finished up a game where I tried capturing a SuperTerminal to see just how long I could last holding on to it.

I'd read previously on the forums that the strength of the Terminal's waves depends on the total AI Progress Reduction (i.e. any data centers you've already destroyed) and that it's hard to hold on past 40.  I had a reduction of 0 at that point and decided I'd do my best to see how long I could keep it.

My set-up:

340 MLRS turrets (mk I and II)
170 Missile turrets (mk II)
170 Laser turrets (mk I)
66 Lightning turrets (mk I and II)
3 Fortresses
4 Decloakers
20 Tractor turrets (mk III) under 2 force fields (mk II), the force fields not covering anything but the tractors

and mobile military forces including
5 light starships
3 flagships
15 dreadnoughts, 5 each of mk I through III, set at a distance
and the maximum of mk I Missile Frigates, and mk I, II, and III Space Tanks.

All of these forces surrounded the SuperTerminal in a gigantic ring of doom.  I built the orbital command station at a distance, covered by another mk II force field, and left 2 mobile repair stations next to it, along with 15 space tugs.  I built about 20 mk I engineers in the system to handle turret repair.

It took an hour to set up the entire thing, and drained all of my income during that hour to build.  All of the turrets used, plus the force fields, were knowledge-unlocked specifically for the purpose of holding the Terminal.

Result:

I held on to the Terminal for a total of nearly one hour, dropping the AIP by 195 (195 progress minus 390 reduction).  I had a net AI Progress of negative fifty.  The floor made for an effective progress of seventy, but gave me lots of leeway before I would see any more effective progress - I had an AIP of 118 before I went for the terminal, so even the worst possible AIP Floor of 100 would still be an improvement.

By the end, I had 100 Core ships trapped in the middle of my ring-of-doom, and lost control of the system when enough Core Demon Hands snuck by to snuff my command station.  I lost all of my mobile military ships other than the dreadnoughts.  All of the lightning turrets were out of commission by that time, and a fraction of the MLRS turrets as well.


So... I'm curious.  Has anyone else tried holding the SuperTerminal in recent versions?  How did it go?  Doing this pretty much single-handedly won the game for me, since it let me attack both AI home planets with an AIP of only 100 - with extra data-center and coprocessor raiding, I kept the AIP at 100 even after destroying the first enemy home station.

[HellishFiend]

The time my friend and I tried taking advantage of a superterminal, it did not go well. We wasted millions of resources and maybe an hour or two preparing our defense, only to lower the AI progress by about 30 before we had to scrap the command station ourselves to prevent from having so many mk 4 ships spawned that they would eventually overrun not only our defenses in that system, but adjacent ones as well.

We had already had maybe ~150 total reduction at that point, though, so maybe that had something to do with it. I didn't know data center reduction added to the amount of ships spewing out of the superterminal.

[Kjara]

My most recent game got about -160 or so out of it, very worth it.  Really you have to hit it before hitting more than 1 or 2 data centers to get the real value out of it (and when it starts with mkI ships, its much easier to get your turrets up for the later waves).

[Thasero]

Kjara, were you "hot-dropping" the Terminal by building your orbital command center right away and using the command center to build turrets?  (That's what you seem to be saying by "easier to get your turrets up".)  It's a lot easier if you use a mobile builder to set up all of the turrets ahead of time and then only actually take control of the planet (and activate the Terminal) once everything's ready - that's what I did.

The key to the Terminal really does seem to be getting to it before any other data centers - that lets you get the first 100-150 points of reduction at low cost up front, at levels before the Terminal creates Mk IV ships.  I was able to survive all of the Mk IV waves up until it started spitting out Core ships, but I unlocked and built a lot of firepower to do that.

[Kjara]

You assume I took any planets next to it .  I generally don't take connected planets whenever possible(with the occasional exception).  But yeah, my fleet had pretty much no problem handling the mkI and mkII ships that came up, which gave me plenty of time to get my turrets setup.  I had to cut my losses after 4 or 5 waves of core ships as well.  I had to unlock a decent number of turrets for it, but afterward, they beefed up my defenses everywhere else, so it wasn't a loss.