What the heck? 4000 unit deep strike, Diff 7.3, No Mad Bomber

[oddlaurence]

well, speeking of numbers - a almost lost my jaw yesterday when i saw a warning (it wasnt counter post) of 6k cloaked ships mark 3 (normal caps)  - luckily it was just raptors, not some eye bots  . playing on diff 9 - grav driller and support corps, Ai progress at about 300, 120 planets X type map...

I pressume this has sth to do with new meachanics, as those raptors were brought by AI carriers. I personally enjoyed the challenge of stomping those 6k units, even though for normal caps it just might be 'bit' much, but the real problem i faced was that game ran at only 20% for about 30 seconds - well imagine the situation of loads of tractor beams, all decloackers, boosters, all turrets  and such - i thought my computer will die, but luckily it didn't  .
What seemed stranged to me is that the actuall lag comes not when those units are roaming (up to 3k or such at time) but when they are actually being unloaded from carriers - my guess is that it requires some data to process, so my CPU becomes under pressure, no? or is there some other issues with this?

[oddlaurence]

Ok, nevermind to what i posted earlier - that's nothing compared to what i experienced recently... and that was a wave of 5k mark 3 bomber ships straight to my home planet I left one adjusted AI planet on purpose, so most of waves hit my heavy defenses and such... but those 5k bombers seems just to bee too much, especially at the worst possible timing, when about another 2k ships are roaming to my homeplanet because of recent CPA... so yeah - it pretty much makes about 7k mark 3 ships coming to get me  

The worst thing is that ships are being transported by AI carrier, so it just freely passes my all tractor beems, grav turrets and avoids my spider turrets...

I have read somewhere that difficulty 9 AI is hard to play against, but does that come in a manner of insane wave?

Hm, if i had like more time before attack maybe i could think of sth, as i have already destroyed half of those bombers before i got wasted... but i only have about 90 seconds before the attack begins - something tells me i might have hit a wall that's too high for me to climb over... but i'm not giving up yet - will try couple more times...  

[ShdNx]

We're quite in the same situation here with my friend. We've just destroyed a counter-attack post, and now having 5.5K ships (frigates mk2) coming at one of our planets in 14 minutes.
AIP is at 283, and we have about 1900 ships together, plus a black widow golem.

Now how the earth are we supposed to stop that?! 5K frigates pretty much instantly kills anything I can come up with.

Worse still, 3 of our planets are also under attack by earlier waves and, well, obviously that 1300 mk4 ships on a nearby untouched AI planet got bored there and are coming to have a BBQ party.

Playing on difficulty 7, one AI is gravity driller, the other is... uh, no idea, really, random easier.

Anyone can give us a hint? How do you stop 5K mk2 frigates?
Thank you!

[Sunshine!]

Set up a logistics station on the planet on which they're incoming, deploy as many forcefields on that command station as you can, and toss all your basic turrets under that forcefield blob.  Build as many missile turrets as you can behind that fortification, and throw in some spider turrets if possible.  Also use your Black Widow golem - I don't remember its stats, but if it has a longer range than the frigates you should stick that under your forcefield as well so it can disable all the frigate engines to give your turrets some more breathing room.

There will be 4 or 5 carriers in the wave, you'll need some way to blow those all up before they get to your fortifications.  They have scout armor, so you can really use anything because few things have bonuses against scout armor - what are your bonus ships?

[Vinraith]

Keep in mind that anything under a force field does 1/4 damage, though engine damage is not affected.

[ShdNx]

Set up a logistics station on the planet on which they're incoming, deploy as many forcefields on that command station as you can, and toss all your basic turrets under that forcefield blob.  Build as many missile turrets as you can behind that fortification, and throw in some spider turrets if possible.  Also use your Black Widow golem - I don't remember its stats, but if it has a longer range than the frigates you should stick that under your forcefield as well so it can disable all the frigate engines to give your turrets some more breathing room.

There will be 4 or 5 carriers in the wave, you'll need some way to blow those all up before they get to your fortifications.  They have scout armor, so you can really use anything because few things have bonuses against scout armor - what are your bonus ships?

Why should we put our turrets under forcefields? As it was pointed out above, that's a very high damage reduction.

I don't remember the range of the golem, but earlier when I used it against a fighter mk2 wave, it appeared that it had the range of a fighter, which is not very good news.

The bonus ships are space tank and beam frigate, we also have teleport battle stations and vampire claws.

Are carriers immune to engine damage?

[superking]

my suggestion: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1614

[Sunshine!]

You put all your basic turrets under that forcefield blob to increase their longevity.  Basic turrets and missile frigates have about the same range IIRC, so even though you're doing 1/4 damage, your basic turrets also have x3 bonus against artillery.  Additionally, it will take the frigates forever to bust through the forcefields - if the basic turrets aren't protected, they'll get flattened in no time by the frigates.  If the turrets are under the forcefields, and there are engineers to repair the forcefields the basic turrets will have significantly more time to pound on the frigates without being wiped, and with the Black Widow golem there to wreck engines, the Frigates won't be able to flee.

Mark 1 forcefields have what, 6 million hitpoints?  Assuming mk2 frigates do 800 damage with a 12 second reload (I can't remember what the new numbers are for frigates, but is that a good approximation?) They're doing ~66 damage per second.  That will take forever to get through one, let alone 5 forcefields, BUT with 5000 frigates on-planet you will lose whatever unshielded defenses you have deployed.

Usually you would not want to deploy your turrets under a forcefield, but in this case, where you have no chokepoint to spam with grav turrets and tractor beams.  You don't even know where the ships are coming from in the system.

[ShdNx]

You put all your basic turrets under that forcefield blob to increase their longevity.  Basic turrets and missile frigates have about the same range IIRC, so even though you're doing 1/4 damage, your basic turrets also have x3 bonus against artillery.  Additionally, it will take the frigates forever to bust through the forcefields - if the basic turrets aren't protected, they'll get flattened in no time by the frigates.  If the turrets are under the forcefields, and there are engineers to repair the forcefields the basic turrets will have significantly more time to pound on the frigates without being wiped, and with the Black Widow golem there to wreck engines, the Frigates won't be able to flee.

Mark 1 forcefields have what, 6 million hitpoints?  Assuming mk2 frigates do 800 damage with a 12 second reload (I can't remember what the new numbers are for frigates, but is that a good approximation?) They're doing ~66 damage per second.  That will take forever to get through one, let alone 5 forcefields, BUT with 5000 frigates on-planet you will lose whatever unshielded defenses you have deployed.

Usually you would not want to deploy your turrets under a forcefield, but in this case, where you have no chokepoint to spam with grav turrets and tractor beams.  You don't even know where the ships are coming from in the system.

Thank you very much, that was quite a nice idea (and a great explanation)!

However, we've decided to abandon that campaign with my friend, and began a new one... just to get a 4000 mk3 ships' wave after 2 hours (counterattack post mk3).
We've lost about 2000 ships there and about 300 turrets and several fortresses, but finally we've managed to stop the wave with losing only 2 planets and a Black Widow Golem. Actually it was the Armored Golem that saved the day, all those enemy ships desperately wanted to destroy it (see attached screenshot). Man, that golem rocks!

my suggestion: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1614

Very nice, agreed! Thank you!

[x4000]

Just wanted to point out this: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Why_Do_Enemy_Waves_Get_So_Large%3F#How_Wave_Sizes_Are_Calculated

In response to all the recent queries about wave sizes.

[keith.lamothe]

Also, we fixed a number of things for 4.042 with wave calculations that makes a rather huge difference in some of these cases; the counter-attack stuff is still intended to be punishing but it should be a little less wild.

There's also some logging features that will (if enabled) allow you to at least get some insight as to why exactly you're being hit with that many ships.

[superking]

actually, one way to stop 5k MK II frigates is through judicious application of the Counter-Missle turret 

[ShdNx]

Just wanted to point out this: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Why_Do_Enemy_Waves_Get_So_Large%3F#How_Wave_Sizes_Are_Calculated

In response to all the recent queries about wave sizes.

Thank you, that's quite interesting!

Also, we fixed a number of things for 4.042 with wave calculations that makes a rather huge difference in some of these cases; the counter-attack stuff is still intended to be punishing but it should be a little less wild.

There's also some logging features that will (if enabled) allow you to at least get some insight as to why exactly you're being hit with that many ships.

Thanks for that too!

[x4000]

Our pleasure.