10/10 Scorched earth/ Scorched Earth - impossible to beat?

[Aklyon]

-- turning on golems-easy AND spirecraft-easy, and the friendly factions to intensity-10 with no counterbalancing hostile/mixed factions would also tend to cause me to not take the result terribly seriously from a balance perspective.  More mild combos of that also tend to contextualize the result for my purposes.  Please have fun with it if you like, though.

I'm going to have to disagree with the friendly faction bit. Given the power that Guardposts have now, a 10/10 Dyson doesn't really do a thing anymore, and only helps if you clear a path, including killing the AI Command Stations, right back to your own territory. So that makes them somewhat decent on defense, but nothing else. And while the Dyson is neutral, its not going to do a thing to the AI, even on 10/10. Human resistance is similar, even at 10/10 I don't see much impact from them overall. It may just be me, but either they show up when I already overwhelm the AI and don't need them, or they show up and its a battle I'm going to lose even with their help. In the former case, yeah they patrol my/neutral space, but they also like to go one at a freaking time into AI worlds and die for it. In the latter, I'm usually doing a sacrifice play to raid something or thin out threatfleet. When raiding the AI goes for my forces first anyway, and then the Resistance, whom I can't control, dies anyway. Leave only one scenario where they are of any real use, which is as extra bodies to burn against threat buildup.

i haven't played with roaming enclaves, so i cut that part off, but otherwise I'd agree with Zanewolfe here. I have resistance 10/10 every game, and the most I've ever had as a response to them was 'ohai, resistance. Theres...not really enough of you to help here, but thanks for trying!', and a single missile guardpost can stall an unlimited amount of gatlings, since they spawn one at a time and aren't targeting the missile posts, they've got a different target and die on the way there.

[keith.lamothe]

To clarify, I meant golems-easy AND spirecraft-easy AND those friendly factions cranked up, with no counterbalance.

[Kahuna]

Friendly factions at 10/10 intensity are not op? Not op? .. mmMMM-BWAHAHA "NOT op" hahaha oh yes I get it now "NOT op" haha that's a good one! haha I get it "NOT op" hahaha that's funny!

[Faulty Logic]

Friendly factions at 10/10 intensity are not op?

Well, the Dyson sphere or resistance at 10 wouldn't be. They help, a bit, sometimes.
Enclaves 10 is probably OP.

As for cheese evaluation, I don't find any specific setting immediately qualifies a game as cheesy. It's the overall balance between player-friendly and AI-friendly stuff.

[Kahuna]

The resistance fleet can clear a whole planets for you and help stop waves and CPAs. Thus they will save a lot of resources and time. Also if you free multiple Dyson Spheres they will stop Exos for you. But hey good thing that's not op at all.

[Faulty Logic]

The resistance fleet can clear a whole planets for you and help stop waves and CPAs.

I don't usually have trouble with waves, CPAs, or capturing planets. Yes they save time and metal, but those are rarely limiting factors.

multiple Dyson Spheres

What? Does this happen?

they will stop Exos for you

In my experience the Dyson sphere has been useful for repelling minor attacks and nothing else. How did you get it to stop an exo?

[Kahuna]

The resistance fleet can clear a whole planets for you and help stop waves and CPAs.

I don't usually have trouble with waves, CPAs, or capturing planets. Yes they save time and metal, but those are rarely limiting factors.

Me either. But they still help a lot.

multiple Dyson Spheres

What? Does this happen?

I'm pretty sure I've seen more than 1 Dyson Spheres in one game.

The resistance fleet can clear a whole planets for you and help stop waves and CPAs.

In my experience the Dyson sphere has been useful for repelling minor attacks and nothing else. How did you get it to stop an exo?

My empire was connected to the Dyson Sphere. It was adjacent to one of my planets. I think I setup redirect rally posts so the Dyson Gatlings would patrol my empire. When I needed their help I redirected them to the planet that was under attack. That's what I always do when I use the Botnet Golem. I had like 6000 zombie ships defending my planets. I'm pretty sure they could be used for offense too.. maybe even AI homeworld attack. Just have a "highway" to the AI homeworld with redirect posts and boom.

When the Dyson Gatlings helped me stop exos the Dyson Sphere was at 4/10 intensity. I've never really played with 10/10. Just tested once. I think that was when I saw more than one Dyson Sphere.

EDIT: Ohh.. redirect posts have so much trolling pontential in multiplayer games.. build a redirect post on your friend's planet and redirect all the ships to an AI homeworld.

[Faulty Logic]

I setup redirect rally posts so the Dyson Gatlings would patrol my empire.

I had no idea zombies or gatlings responded to redirector posts. Do they still?

Then again, I've never used a redirector post.

[keith.lamothe]

Dyson Spheres come at most 1 per game.  Modern guard posts do indeed shut them down, but if you connect them up to your empire just right you can indeed stop absurdly large attacks with the kinds of "Dyson Ball" accumulation that result.  It's just rarer nowadays.

Dyson 10/10 by itself isn't a big cheese to me, though.  It's very situational.

[Kahuna]

Dyson Spheres come at most 1 per game.

In that case it was just one of my AI War dreams.

[Aklyon]

Dyson Spheres come at most 1 per game.

In that case it was just one of my AI War dreams.

Or you cheated another one in.

[RockyBst]

I would quite happily pay the Zenith trader 100 million or so metal to construct me another Dyson sphere. I think the process goes 'first, get a mining golem to eat the planet'...

[Draco18s]

I would quite happily pay the Zenith trader 100 million or so metal to construct me another Dyson sphere. I think the process goes 'first, get a mining golem to eat the planet'...

Just checking:

You know what an actual dyson sphere is, right?



The one we see in the game is...lets just say...not to scale.
(The mass of all the planets in the solar system contain enough material to construct a shell only 20cm thick, if placed at 1 AU, so keep that in mind as well).

[RockyBst]

Hmm, never actually thought about the figures. 100 million metal and a planet's worth of scrap probably won't be enough then

[Arc-3N-4B]

Well, first we have to ask, how much is 1 metal, anyways?

As we don't seem to have much of an actual scale, and the fact that there are apparently nukes capable of destroying entire galaxies instantly (though, I picture the Mk3 Nuke as some kind of supernova device, where the supernova travels through the wormholes, obliterating everything in its' path. Supported by, uh, certain things involving hybrids, too), as well as ships like the Mothership which are considered overkill when used on an entire galaxy...

Hm. How large would these ships actually be, anyways? I assume nothing is to-scale, of course (I would assume that a starship is at least an order of magnitude (or even two) larger than a fighter, for example)...