Cyborg's Community Challenge: Play It Forward

[zoutzakje]

"Losing is Fun" is a hard lesson to learn

indeed, but AI war made sure I learned that lesson very well

[Minotaar]

*facepalm*
Just in for 5.035:

* Fixed bug where the new pop-cap mechanic for the dyson sphere was setting the population cap properly according to faction-intensity... and then setting it to 2.  Yeaaaaah.  Dyson's on vacation in 5.034, boys and girls!

Oh, so that was why I could hold the Antagonizer off for so long without a fort. How very considerate of you, Keith 

[keith.lamothe]

The Dyson's just in the penalty box for running rampant for so long; it'll be back out

[Lee]

I would take a crack at this if it weren't finals week at U of I, if it's free friday though I'll give it a go.

[Orelius]

I'll take a shot at it.  I'm in the middle of playing right now ... and things aren't going particularly well.

[Orelius]

Well, things went a lot worse than I'd thought it would.  I'm rather unused to situations like these, to be honest.

I first started off by preparing for an assault on the dyson world.  For about 20 minutes, I fortified Mikdesne with all the turrets I could build and a fortress.  I plopped down some newly unlocked Gravity II's, since they were in short supply.  After blowing up the command ship with raid starships, the alarm post triggered and sent a bloody crusade against my planets, which I thought I was ready for but really wasn't.

Suddenly, I wished I had build more than two martyrs to help deal with the attack.

They washed through Mikdense and wiped it out, and soon proceeded to go through Keweras and Kolo, causing major energy issues and brownouts.  Sadly, I ended up losing the civilian outpost on Mikdense as well.  I had to shut down power to the worlds that weren't in immediate danger, which was sort of impossible because all of the worlds had either lost their command stations or were under attack by those hybrids.  I had to shut down quite a few things to keep the fortress on the homeworld running.

It got rather close to a loss, but the mass driver on the homeworld just tore the hybrids apart, essentially saving the game.  The last 30 minutes or so of my session primarily involved rebuilding all the turrets and rebuilding the fleet, which is almost but not yet done.

The dyson/botnet/ars world is ready to be taken by the next player, I suppose.  I didn't really want to capture the botnet until I had the resources to repair it immediately.

[keith.lamothe]

This is clearly going too well.  I'll take a turn at it

[Wanderer]

This is clearly going too well.  I'll take a turn at it

*facepalm* This should get amusing...

[keith.lamothe]

6:00:01 - looks like the super hybrid is out there, and the signal (antagonizer-under-construction) is out there too.  And we don't know where.  Lovely   The dyson pop-cap bug will protect us from the antagonizer and converter, but not from the third stage, so looking for that...

6:03:37 - NRC Silo launches an EMPIII, Raid starship executes target practice.

6:06 - antagonizer is up, still haven't found it
- assassinated a hybrid spawner

6:07 - super hybrid spotted on HYBRID HERE.  Odd naming coincidence.  It's just passing through, no antagonizer here, but I can trace back its path...

6:08 - significant hybrid attack on Mikdesne, command station lost in hopes that the hybrids will back off after the successful attack and the system can be reclaimed; fort powered down elsewhere to prevent brownout

6:11 - Reweras falls to some hybrids that didn't give it up, but the wind is out of their sails now.

6:14 - both planets back up, sweep for antagonizer continues

6:16 - Dyson Antagonizer located on Yunsudu (boy am I glad I listened to Shrugging Khan and made the alert show the location if you'd ever scouted the system since the antagonizer was built rather than requiring current scout coverage; I didn't even notice it at first as I was desperately trying to get my scouts one more hop)

6:17 - another hybrid attack on Mikdesne; meeting it in force this time, and avoided needing to rebuild again

6:21 - NRC Lightning III kamikazes the Mikdesne garrison, taking out most of it.  Irony in here somewhere.

6:24 - the bad news about the antagonizer is that it's under an FF far away from wormholes and near a gravity drain

6:37 - lost Mikdesne again to hybrids (barely), rebuilt again

6:41 - finished scraping the K off the Dyson planet; at this point I might have the resources to consider repairing the botnet, but I don't think I could pull off repairing and defending it and all that, so I'll leave it to a more experienced commander

After I found the antagonizer I made an attempt to assassinate it.  Brutal failure   I made a few attempts to start clearing the first planet on the route to but without committing all my fleet assets and probably pulling some static cap into a beachhead effort I didn't think I could really work through that blob of hybrids.  So basically I didn't accomplish a whole lot   But I survived!

Edit: the next commander has something like 700k m + 700k c to work with, so hopefully someone who knows how to play this game (rather than just make it painful for other people) can make progress on the botnet and/or antagonizer fairly quickly

[Cyborg]

Congratulations commander Orelius and commander Lamothe. It looks like you have both brought our objectives closer with a valiant attempt. With targets identified, knowledge and resources, you have surely laid the groundwork for our next leader.

Question, how are the leeches performing amidst all this chaos?

[keith.lamothe]

Question, how are the leeches performing amidst all this chaos?

They reclaimed a fair chunk of one Hybrid attack that I accidentally included them in, but I mostly kept them in reserve because I figured they'd die fast and be expensive to replace.

I probably could have harvested some of the waves on the other planets, now that I think about it.

[Minotaar]

Question, how are the leeches performing amidst all this chaos?

I found them to be pretty much the worst parasite simply due to the cost. They reclaim full caps from waves just fine, though.

Looks like we've got a choice: repairing botnet (a risk, if that takes too long, we might be facing a Big Bang) or another suicide penetrator attack (will probably get the job done, but doing this all the time doesn't get us anywhere)

[Wanderer]

Hey guys, on the NRC, a recommendation... take the system with it and dump a grav turret and 5-10 basics on top of it.  You'll stuff it pretty cold.  I might take a shot at this, if for nothing more than giggles.

Edit: Yeah, I'll take a wing at it.  See ya in 2 hours.

[Wanderer]

I'm surrendering my attempt to take the game.  This is wickedly heavily involved at this point with the Inter-P Booster helping the AI on 4/5 planets (including helping the Dyson spawn and Neinzuls and anything else that isn't player) on top of a serious need to pause and re-evaluate.

I'm going away this weekend and don't want to keep the game locked up.  For those curious, I was wiped out my first attempt via econ at 22 minutes in due to Dyson antagonization and losing/trying to rebuild the fortress on Racovold.  It also took me about an hour and a half to get the systems better understood.  I probably could have continued on with defenses at homeworld but I need to work tomorrow and then get on a plane.

Some notes for the next commander:
1) The fleet is SERIOUSLY underwhelming.  I recommend getting Frigate and Bomber II online immediately.
2) The turret spread is non-optimal but rebuilding it will take a lot of time and income.  Be wary.  Also get some Basics closer to the bases (at least 5 each) to remove Acid Sprayers
3) There's a SERIOUS hybrid assault ready to go on Savaos, off the homeworld.  It's also sitting in your flightline to the Anatagonizer in the upper right.
4) AI HW is scouted because of core-worlds, it's down in the lower left-ish.
5) Racovold is getting HAMMERED by the Dyson.  They're fast-pathing there instead of the next door world Miksende.  Keep up a very heavy laser defense in Racovold.  They're appearing from the lowest right wormhole.  If you lose the fortress, you lose the system.  You won't get it rebuilt in the system with the constant flow, at least not easily and certainly not without a distribution node or two.
6) Power, Engineer, and Rebuilder settings are wonky.  Take some time and get it organized.  Get your hamsters in play to reset the power usage to be a little more optimal.
7) There's a human rebellion primed to go.  I got it to launch at around 7:15.  I recommend you invite them to come help on Savaos.  It's that bad.
When you start up get everything you've got in homeworld (in particular your Bomber SSs) over to Miksende.  It's under a small hybrid assault and will fall if you don't.
9) Priority key is all over the place and is somewhat inconsistent, I think it's primarily set for asteroids for spirecraft.  If you're looking at grand game and not tight game you might want to review it.
10) If you can't find a portion of your fleet, look one system left, there's another dock producing over there.

[zoutzakje]

I think we still got some time before hybrid plot stage 3 and I believe that botnet needs to be repaired ASAP. Raid some distribution nodes if you have to. Botnet just has to be a defensive unit and kill each incoming wave. Those zombies will deal with hybrid attacks.