Two unusual things in my current game...

[Blahness]

#1: When I turn on my 25 crystal manufacturies, they turn off, 1 after another.  I have a positive income of both resources even with them on, and about 200k energy, but they shut off one by one.  Any idea why this is, or is it a bug?

#2: Every AI planet above mark III has an ion cannon, a warhead interceptor, and an orbital mass driver.  This is making invasions very risky and difficult (my research into riot ships was pointless, I use them as anti-wave now =/).  Why do they have so much stuff?  And, any good strategies for dealing with it?  My 4k raiders/zenith bombardments/BFF/parasite/pulse emitters are having a lot of trouble with it.

Feel free to look at the attached save.

Thank you!

[RCIX]

1. That's because of "Auto Manufactories" (which aren't as helpful as they sound, it only turns them on if your income is actually negative :p ). There's a control node which turns that behavior off.
2. In that case, i'd say that you've only found Homeworld border worlds for MkIV

[Blahness]

Well, there's another control node I'm building ASAP. 

What's the best way to break a mark IV world without having to rebuild my entire army?  The combination of fortresses, zenith ships, spire ships, beam cannons, and the aforementioned ion + orbital mass + warhead interceptor makes my losses extremely high, and I'm afraid that the AI will replenish its forces faster than I can build them.  That, and the two cursed golems I have access to would just die quickly and raise my AI prog by a lot, so I don't want to use them. =(

[x4000]

With #1, that is the intended behavior -- the manufactories manage themselves by default, and there's no reason to turn on if you have a huge amount of resources of what they would produce; that's just being wasteful of your overall resource income.  There is a control node that you can build that will let you manage them completely manually, though, if you wish.  But in general, there's not much of a reason to do so.

For #2, that must be a factor of the type of AI you are facing off against; one of the more defensive ones, perhaps a Turtle of some sort or something along those lines.  I don't remember exactly which AI type does that, but there are definitely some that do.  On the plus side, you're going to have an easier time defensively, generally, with an AI type that is itself defensive.

Generally speaking, my advice when facing an AI that is doing something like that would be to take the fight to your own territory.  If you're a big user of starships, that's really the only way you'd be able to maintain your preferred ship mix.  If you normally use smaller fleet ships (as I tend to), then just focusing more on the mkIII/IV unlocks would let you fight in their territory, but still you'd take more attrition than you'd probably want.

Basically, the idea of taking the fight to your own territory is that you should fortify yourself heavily with turrets, ships of the sort that would get killed in their area, and so forth.  Then sweep in with a wave of cloaked ships, or bombers, or something else fast and at least somewhat durable (and cheap, if possible) and just kill their command station.  If the command station is under a force field and you don't have something that is able to pass through force fields, then that is more of a challenge, but you can still pop an EMP in there and then send your guys on a raid.  You can also use transports either paired with the EMP tactic, or just in general, to make it easier to do a quick raid on their command station.

Anyway, once you've destroyed the command station, then you're back to the mode where your riot starships, etc, are useful again: cross-planet defense.  The AI will swarm you with all its stocked ships, of course, and if you've got sufficient defenses (and preferably some bottlenecks for them), then you can pick them off quite well.  This sort of tactic often works wonders in general, because it's a way to fight away from all those nasty turrets that the AI tends to hide inside.

The downside, of course, is that then the AI is the one "setting the tempo" on their attack, and if your defenses turn out not to be sufficient you've probably just lost the game.  And, instead of being able to pick them off one guard post at a time, you're left to face most all of them at once (at least sans turrets).

If the AI is massing at a wormhole with so many guys that you'll never be able to defend against them, consider sending a lightning warhead or two through.  That also can make a big difference with CPAs, incidentally.

In short, that sort of strategy is not without risk, but when compared with the inevitable slog you're otherwise facing, it seems like the clear winner to me.  And hey -- with each planet you use that strategy with, you can actually avoid killing any of those big defensive things, and can instead capture them for your own use.  That would then make future such defenses even easier if you've got an ion cannon and orbital mass driver on your side (core warhead interceptors are useless for you since the AI doesn't have warheads).

Good luck!

(P.S. -- This turned into a strategy discussion, so I'm moving this to the strategy discussion forum)

[x4000]

1. That's because of "Auto Manufactories" (which aren't as helpful as they sound, it only turns them on if your income is actually negative :p ). There's a control node which turns that behavior off.

That's the only time where using a manufactory is actually a good idea.  Otherwise, you're throwing away resources for no reason.  Trying to build up a large story of a given resource is not a good reason in a game that is entirely flow-based.  Maintaining as close as possible to a zero balance of metal and crystal, while having a high throughput that allows you to change tactics when you need to, is what gives the healthiest economy.  The auto manufactories help you avoid shortfalls, but won't help you store up resources at the expense of your total income.

That's a bit different than most strategy games (SupCom, etc, aside), so I can see where the incentive to build up stores comes from.  But it's rarely -- I am tempted to say never -- purposeful to do so.  Better to have "the goods," aka ships, and actually use them.

[Blahness]

With #1, that is the intended behavior -- the manufactories manage themselves by default, and there's no reason to turn on if you have a huge amount of resources of what they would produce; that's just being wasteful of your overall resource income.  There is a control node that you can build that will let you manage them completely manually, though, if you wish.  But in general, there's not much of a reason to do so.

I have about 50k crystal and 300k metal, and I use crystal a lot more than I use metal. So, I want a higher crystal income than metal income.  I want this income ratio at all times, because the only reason I have such a higher metal count than crystal count is that I ran out of things to build that were metal-heavy (such as bombers and parasites).  The reason I keep about 50k resources on me is so that I can rush turrets or a fortress in an emergency with a fleet of engineers.

For #2, that must be a factor of the type of AI you are facing off against; one of the more defensive ones, perhaps a Turtle of some sort or something along those lines.  I don't remember exactly which AI type does that, but there are definitely some that do.  On the plus side, you're going to have an easier time defensively, generally, with an AI type that is itself defensive.

I wish.  One's a black hole machine lover (Why do these machines give +10 AI progress when killed?), and I'm not sure about the other, but there've been a few 1k-2k cross-planet attacks and lots of 300-ship waves.  

In short, that sort of strategy is not without risk, but when compared with the inevitable slog you're otherwise facing, it seems like the clear winner to me.  And hey -- with each planet you use that strategy with, you can actually avoid killing any of those big defensive things, and can instead capture them for your own use.  That would then make future such defenses even easier if you've got an ion cannon and orbital mass driver on your side (core warhead interceptors are useless for you since the AI doesn't have warheads).

With the black hole machines, this sounds like suiciding my ships, but it's definitely the best plan, from what I see.  The problem with "attack and siphon forces" is that most of the forces they have are, in fact, turrets; about 50 core turrets around the entrance wormhole alone.  Clearing out the mobile ships will help a lot, but it'll still be an anti-turret slog.  Then the homeworld after, which I'll want to hit as quickly as possible to avoid massive reinforcement attrition.

[x4000]

With #1, that is the intended behavior -- the manufactories manage themselves by default, and there's no reason to turn on if you have a huge amount of resources of what they would produce; that's just being wasteful of your overall resource income.  There is a control node that you can build that will let you manage them completely manually, though, if you wish.  But in general, there's not much of a reason to do so.

I have about 50k crystal and 300k metal, and I use crystal a lot more than I use metal. So, I want a higher crystal income than metal income.  I want this income ratio at all times, because the only reason I have such a higher metal count than crystal count is that I ran out of things to build that were metal-heavy (such as bombers and parasites).  The reason I keep about 50k resources on me is so that I can rush turrets or a fortress in an emergency with a fleet of engineers.

None of that requires that manufacturies to run until your crystal hits zero, though.  If you have enough manufactories, then it won't make any difference then.  If it boils down to preference, then of course do as you will -- my goal is not to tell anyone how they must play, or anything like that (hence the control node in the first place).  But from a mathematical sense, I am not convinced that your case would gain anything by manual manufactory management (and there are several benefits to lose).

But -- I won't harp on about that, you should do as you like.

For #2, that must be a factor of the type of AI you are facing off against; one of the more defensive ones, perhaps a Turtle of some sort or something along those lines.  I don't remember exactly which AI type does that, but there are definitely some that do.  On the plus side, you're going to have an easier time defensively, generally, with an AI type that is itself defensive.

I wish.  One's a black hole machine lover (Why do these machines give +10 AI progress when killed?), and I'm not sure about the other, but there've been a few 1k-2k cross-planet attacks and lots of 300-ship waves.  

Whew, sounds like a tough scenario there!

In short, that sort of strategy is not without risk, but when compared with the inevitable slog you're otherwise facing, it seems like the clear winner to me.  And hey -- with each planet you use that strategy with, you can actually avoid killing any of those big defensive things, and can instead capture them for your own use.  That would then make future such defenses even easier if you've got an ion cannon and orbital mass driver on your side (core warhead interceptors are useless for you since the AI doesn't have warheads).

With the black hole machines, this sounds like suiciding my ships, but it's definitely the best plan, from what I see.  The problem with "attack and siphon forces" is that most of the forces they have are, in fact, turrets; about 50 core turrets around the entrance wormhole alone.  Clearing out the mobile ships will help a lot, but it'll still be an anti-turret slog.  Then the homeworld after, which I'll want to hit as quickly as possible to avoid massive reinforcement attrition.

If there are core turrets there, then this MUST be one of the core planets bordering an AI homeworld.  Approach with great caution, because you don't want to alert the AI home planet too soon.  Or, if this really is applying to planets all over the place and somehow this is not just right next to the AI, then this must be some sort of technologist AI, or something along those lines.

Generally speaking, I try to avoid taking planets next to AI home planets, but in this case you may have no choice.  Depending, I might try doing a raid on the black hole machine, then the ion cannon, then the orbital mass driver, and then just ignoring everything else and sending masses of transports through to hit the AI homeworld from a hop away (generally it goes vastly easier if you can get that element of surprise to a degree, without alerting them).  Or if you really don't need your starships to come along with you, you could just blow up the black hole machine and then push onwards straightaway from there with the transports.

So there are definitely a few things you could do, but it's going to be tough either way, it sounds like.  Some scenarios are like that, depending on the AI types you draw, and how the map seed plays out.  But this one doesn't sound unwinnable, just really hard.

Good luck!

[Blahness]

The mark IV planets are bordering homeworlds; I got a few scouts into it.

I'm not sure if my fleet will survive taking out the black hole machine and the core homeworld, especially with the avenger that'll come out.  Does the avenger only come out of the second homeworld you kill, or is it from both?

And the starships aren't absolutely necessary; in fact, I'll probably keep them back to defend against the Avenger with.

[x4000]

Ah, that makes more sense then, with the homeworld.

Well, I tend to be sort of a "burn and replace" player, so I never expect my fleets to survive an encounter of that magnitude.  The idea would be to take the black hole generator out with a fleet or sub-fleet (transports work wonders for their survivability there), and then have it so that docks have churned out full replacements by practically the time you are done.  And then your first wave of a few thousand ships crashes into the AI homeworld, takes out a few guard posts, dies, and the next wave is pretty much already waiting and loads into fresh or repaired transports to whittle down the AI more, and more, and more.

The avenger is an optional thing, and it is based on which AI you turn it on for if you did it through the cmd text (or, if you did that through the lobby, it's randomized I believe).  So most likely you'll have one after you, yeah, but that's going to take multiple fleets to take it out, anyway, from the sound of things.  I haven't played with that one yet, myself, actually; that one is Keith's creation.

Hope that helps!

[Blahness]

Haha, it does, thank you.

Now... why is it that my ion cannon mark II shoots half as often as an ion cannon mark I?  Is it because the mark I is AI owned?

[x4000]

My pleasure.  There shouldn't be any difference in the targeting speed of AI ships versus your own ships -- mark IIs may be slower in general, I can't recall (you can check their stats), but I think they may be multi-shot.  Honestly, that's been rebalanced so many times that I can't remember offhand!

[Blahness]

Both say reload time 1s, and neither multi-shot, yet the ion cannons have different shooting speeds.

Oh, and in my game, I freed the dyson sphere planet, and it annihilated a planet near it... There's about 30 dyson gatlings sitting at the planet, doing nothing.  Is this normal?

[x4000]

Hmm, you might want to report those in the bug report forum so that Keith can take a look at those in the next pass.  Perhaps the smarter targeting (engines first) for ion cannons is causing some sort of discrepancy there.  Or, it may be based on there being fewer "ideal" targets for your ion cannon if it has no targets it can insta-kill, but only targets it can damage engines on.  Either way, that would need some looking into.

For the dyson gatlings just camping out, sometimes they will do that, but generally they should move on in search of new planets.  Maybe there's some sort of structure on that planet that they aren't allowed to kill?  If you kill that structure, most likely they would move on.  As it stands, they might just be sitting there on guard duty, killing any reinforcements that pop out, until you come along to fully conquer the planet (or if you never come, they'll just sit there sucking up reinforcement points from the AI, potentially -- which has its uses, but is not so powerful as them roaming around to other planets on a rampage).

[Velox]

With #1, that is the intended behavior -- the manufactories manage themselves by default, and there's no reason to turn on if you have a huge amount of resources of what they would produce; that's just being wasteful of your overall resource income.  There is a control node that you can build that will let you manage them completely manually, though, if you wish.  But in general, there's not much of a reason to do so.

I have about 50k crystal and 300k metal, and I use crystal a lot more than I use metal. So, I want a higher crystal income than metal income.  I want this income ratio at all times, because the only reason I have such a higher metal count than crystal count is that I ran out of things to build that were metal-heavy (such as bombers and parasites).  The reason I keep about 50k resources on me is so that I can rush turrets or a fortress in an emergency with a fleet of engineers.

None of that requires that manufacturies to run until your crystal hits zero, though.  If you have enough manufactories, then it won't make any difference then.  If it boils down to preference, then of course do as you will -- my goal is not to tell anyone how they must play, or anything like that (hence the control node in the first place).  But from a mathematical sense, I am not convinced that your case would gain anything by manual manufactory management (and there are several benefits to lose).

But -- I won't harp on about that, you should do as you like.

     I think the argument in favor of auto manufactory management would be spot-on except for the very high energy cost associated with manufactories.  If your income disparity is high enough, having enough manufactories to deal with drain spikes on the weaker flow gets to be a significant energy cost even when they're offline.  What's more, having enough energy for them to all power up requires a lot of generation capacity, and then you have to either carry a huge overhead (with associated cost) or micromanage all the excess capacity.  The added resource drain of all that power generation specifically at times when your flows are already stressed doesn't help either.
     In short: lots of manufactories are too energy expensive, and making do with fewer means running them constantly to build up a resource buffer for demand spikes.

[x4000]

Hmmm -- that is an excellent point, actually.  The energy costs were a factor I was overlooking, for sure.