Tachyon Radiation?

[LordStryker]

When I'm hacking an AI planet, the AI responds to my hacking by layering the planet with tachyon radiation.  I haven't been able to determine what this actually does.  As far as I know, my units don't take damage from it, resources didn't seem to disappear from the system, etc.  Google brought up nothing.  Anyone know what this does and how it negatively affects the player?

[TechSY730]

Basically, the AI detonated a tachyon warhead, sons AIP.
So if you had any cloaked stuff, bye bye cloaking (for a while at least).

Important to note if you like to mix hacking and cloaker starships.

[LordStryker]

sons AIP

What does that mean?

I wasn't using cloakers to hack so that is probably why I didn't see any effect.  I was  beachheading all the way.  I love this tactic.

[zoutzakje]

he means that it's basically a tachyon warhead, but without the AIP increase from an actual tachyon warhead. But yeah, if you don't use cloacked ships, don't worry about.

[keith.lamothe]

sons AIP

What does that mean?

I assume it's a typo from "sans AIP", which simply means "without AIP".

Welcome to the forums

And yea, it's just the AI being given a bit of counter-cloaking cheese.  But you weren't being sneaky, you just busted down the front door and then fortified it, so it didn't help the AI at all

[LordStryker]

I'm a long time lurker on the forums, casual fan and player of the game and exponentially ramping up my interest and involvement in this incredible game.

So other than this tachyon radiation layering and AI wave responses to your hacking, is there anything else the AI will do as the hacking response level goes up (I've only gotten the AI to response level High... not sure if I can piss it off any further)?

[keith.lamothe]

Glad to hear you're enjoying the game.

So other than this tachyon radiation layering and AI wave responses to your hacking, is there anything else the AI will do as the hacking response level goes up (I've only gotten the AI to response level High... not sure if I can piss it off any further)?

It basically has a wild-magic table that it rolls on each time it does a counter-hacking spawn, and the higher the response level the more rolls it gets each time.  Other rolls include increasing the spawn size, switching the spawn to all-raid-starships, switching the spawn to all-zombie-guardians, causing the spawn to happen around the edge of the system instead of on the command station, causing the spawn to happen on a neighboring planet instead, and a few other things.  I'll probably add some more variation here later (and there are more "spawn X ship type" options in there than there used to be), but for now it seems to be working pretty well

[Thumpy]

sorry to bump this old thread, but how exactly do i prevent the ai from from using tachyon radiation, because out of the ten times i tried to hack a ship, everytime midway through this happens and my lab is being destroyed.

[keith.lamothe]

You can't prevent the tachyon bursts, but you can protect the lab by:

- keeping it on the edge of the planet
- keeping it under forcefields
- keeping a cloaker or scout starship near it to provide counter-sniper coverage
- laying down tractor and/or grav coverage on the probable approaches
- having enough military between it and probable approaches that the enemy ships don't get close enough to kill it
- ordering your stuff to focus-fire anything that you've found to be particularly prone to just charging the lab and killing it

If none of that helps, please post the save and I'm sure someone here will be happy to give some more scenario-specific pointers

[Thumpy]

thanks for the quick reply, i will try this now!

[Bognor]

I added "Tachyon" to the AI War Glossary.

[Histidine]

Scout cloaking boosters will prevent the tachyon pulse from decloaking the hacking ship. This could be useful to prevent it from getting sniped while decloaked, as long as tachyon frequency isn't too high.