Champions guide?

[drozzy]

So me and my friend just started playing AI War and absolutely love it, even though we've been clicking aimlessly for the last 4 hours ;-) (We didn't do the intermediate tutorials yet because we really wanted to play).

We started a game with him playing the strategy part, and me playing the Champion. Amazing! But I am not sure what to "do" with the champion. I mean, should I help him defend, or explore planets or look for some special "wormholes" (which I don't really know how to find)?

I know that I am supposed to learn things on my own, but could someone provide a few (spoiler-free) hints or directions on how to play champion?

Much appreciated.

[Wingflier]

Champions aren't that difficult to use, it's just a little confusing the first time.

Depending on the settings you've used, look on the galaxy map for the "small" planets, which branch off of a bigger planet (like a tree).

If you're on a planet with a "Champion wormhole", it will have a blue wormhole that only Champions can go through. When you go through these wormholes, it starts up a "Champion scenario" where you undertake various missions to save allied factions. Your friends will always be green, the enemies will be purple or orange. In order to win the mission(s), you must kill the enemy's final Starbase. After each mission, you get new Champion upgrades and abilities which can be applied on the CTRLS screen on the final two tabs.

To successfully complete Champion scenarios, make sure to use your Champion's Forcefields under the "Abilities" tab in the bottom left hand corner of your screen. Defending allied ships is an important part of winning each scenario.

If you need to know more, I'm currently available on Steam (and am on often). Add me as Wingflier.

[Bognor]

Welcome to the forums, drozzy!

If you press tab to bring up the galaxy map, you can select a filter near the bottom of the screen that will show you which planets contain champion wormholes.  I think it's called "Nebula wormholes", which is the proper name for them.

[PokerChen]

There are three main things that would be useful to know:

- You're faster than most of your friend's units, and will always respawn freely, so can help him clear out dangerous things in the galaxy. He will get some production capacity from a successful nebula mission (don't forget to use it).
- When you start a nebula mission, be prepared to stay in there for 20 minutes+.  Some missions won't have an opposing starbase, but all starbases will take more damage from missile launchers (packing at least one will be helpful).
- When you unlock modules, some of them will only be for other champion types. You won't have the level points to fully upgrade many of them.

EDIT: fixed,

[orzelek]

- You're faster than most of your friend's units, and will always respawn freely, so can help him clear out dangerous things in the galaxy. He will get some production capacity from a successful nebula mission (don't forget to use it) - there's no warp gates for them though.

That was modified at some point. All nebula ships will teleport to starship constructor warpgate.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the game and to the forums, drozzy

Looks like the answers I would have given have already been given

[drozzy]

Great info guys,
some follow up questions (for posterity's sake):
1. So it's ok to die? (I am constantly running back to base to regen my health with my buddy's eng.)
2. Should I be exploring the galaxy and killing everything I see in my way? (It brings up the AI meter every time I destroy enemy buildings) Or just undertake missions and help defend?
3. Will my friend ever reach a level of development where I essentially become useless to him? (I.e. he has a huge fleet that can easily handle any threat)

[orzelek]

1. Death only costs you shadow capacitor charge. If you are far from home it's usually easier to die than go back for repairs.
2. You need to be careful with exploring. Try not to trigger AIP producing stuff or deep strikes. You should align your offensive actions with plans of main player and clean out stuff like guard posts from planets he wants. It's also very easy to use champion to destroy command station if you want to take planet and then deal out with attacking enemy wave.
3. By doing the champion missions you will also advance in levels and hull size. In game with no other super weapons (golems, spire) you won't get overshadowed. Champion has distinctive features that make it useful even with super weapons (speed for quick strikes, Neinzul one can cloak and is very useful for clearing of planets to mention few).

[LordSloth]

The only time I try not to die is Nebula mission, or when I know I'll have time to regen a few sets of shields to full strength.

orzelek has already covered deep strikes... I believe that you're free to go four hops from player or neutral territory without triggering a particular response.

Two things to be wary of: freeing lots of guard units for threat, particularly in a mark IV system next to your friend's homeworld; setting off a Raid Engine. I'd recommend your friend unlock miniforts or put up a handful of snipers everywhere to keep just a pair of ships from knocking out your commands. I'd also recommend not heading out until your friend has 'auto-explore'd a few waves of basic scouts. If you feel a need to see more of the universe, the best thing to do is not scout yourself, but knock out all the tachyon guardians, making it much easier for your friend's scouts to travel the distance. There's less chance of triggering something nasty this way.

Try to develop a feel for what AI systems will draw a patrol; you can make a very effective distraction if your friend needs to strike elsewhere. On the other hand, you may need your human friend to take out a portion of the core shield generator network if you just cannot get anything done (if the patrol is 'at rest' on a chokepoint) In most cases, one collapses the entire 'letter' of csg, making operations much easier, but there are still other things the patrols will go out of their way to protect.

If you're not already using it, check out Ctrl-M; you can save a few layouts to quickly switch between. Most times not very necessary, but helpful if one of the AIs has a fondness for some particularly nasty bonus ship in their waves.

As a player with a champion ally, I like to set up a few engineers at a rally point where I don't have production going on, this way champions can head here for a quick repair/remodule without having to fight for the engineers attention. You should also be able to quickly respec your modules near a large nebula starbase.

Most guard posts won't raise AIP at all, and they're the number one source of reinforcements and hard limiter on the number of "Guardians" that can show up in a system. Command stations themselves are actually pretty fragile, just leave that to your friend to pop unless you're both trying to skip a few systems in order to reach much further into AI territory.

[Aklyon]

Try to be insystem if you're killing command stations or guard posts (not guardians), though; you can get a bit of experience out of them for your champ.