Dealing with Eyes (and Forts)

[Fleet]

I'm not sure I understand how to deal with the new Eye changes. If I send a good number of fleet ships in to target guard posts, my ships will either 1) Auto-target their fleet ships, reducing their numbers, and triggering the eye, or 2) Only target guard posts, but get obliterated by all the AI fleet ships attacking them unopposed. The lower mark Starships don't have near the durability they used to, and can be taken out by fleet ships and guardians, so they are not great for guard post killing (stuff like gravity rippers necessitates the use of transports). Then there are cases where a fortress and a guard post is under a forcefield, so I can't kill that post to kill the eye without slowly taking out the forcefield and post while under fire from other fleet ships, while I only have bombers since anything else would be taken out by the fortress.

So...a little complainy, yes. I just finished a short play session and the planet with the eye felt incredibly grindy, and I was always worried about killing too many AI fleet ships, or sending them on suicide guard post runs and having to pour my economy into rebuilding my fleet after each attack run. Any comments on how I can better approach these planets, specifically, dealing with what appear to be my two choices I listed above?

[BobTheJanitor]

Without force fields, of course, you just make strikes on the guard posts until they're all gone. Cloaking can help especially. Also bring only the firepower you need, because not only do you not want to activate the eye, but you don't want your force to be so big that it enrages the planet and frees a ton of guards to come after you, leading to further eye problems. With force fields, or with the horrifying situation of a guard post and a fortress under a force field... well what I did when I ran into that situation was to load a new game and hope for better spawns.

[Zeyurn]

In the game we're currently playing, every AI Eye always has Spire Shield guard posts (old game upgraded in version number) so we've been sending raid starships, bomber starships, and bombers against the AI Eye and ignoring the guard posts if this happens and killing the AI Eye and just eating the damage we take in the process.

If it doesn't have those, raid and bomber starships take out the guard posts instead.  You're going to take some losses but we're playing on difficulty 8 with planets that have 1000+ mark 3/4 enemies on them and can handle it this way, so it should be even easier for most people who do not play where their AI progress is frequently above 500.

[hullu]

I think people often exaggerate the danger of the eye spawns too. If you have a solid fleet you can just go in and blast everything to pieces and not care too much about the eye spawns, at least my experience would say so.

Of course this WILL end up in more losses, but is way less grindy=)

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I think people often exaggerate the danger of the eye spawns too. If you have a solid fleet you can just go in and blast everything to pieces and not care too much about the eye spawns, at least my experience would say so.

Of course this WILL end up in more losses, but is way less grindy=)

Hmm, I wonder how difficult your playing on as well, also, triggering an eye and then having a CPA/wave come in is not too fun. 

King

[Red Spot]

Even Eyes under Shield post WITH FF are easy enough to take down.

Load up a cap of bombers into transports, send a few transports without ship in to distract any free AI ships. Send in the other transports(more than 1, severel unload faster and if all but 1 get killed you can still get your bombers out of there), get near the target, unload and set your bombers to attack the guardpost/FF.

When there are Forts the above still works exactly the same, just ignore the Fort untill the Eye says 'poof'.

On planets with ~20-50 AI ships I can send in 2 caps of bombers and only get minor reinforcements from the Eye.

[BobTheJanitor]

On planets with ~20-50 AI ships I can send in 2 caps of bombers and only get minor reinforcements from the Eye.

On planets with 20 ships you can send in 400 and get minor reinforcements. How's that work?

[Red Spot]

Mk1 bombers give me 98 units, mk2 88(iirc), that means that 2 caps at most will be 186 units, not 400.

[Shrugging Khan]

IF you play with normal caps.

[Red Spot]

Got this planet without a glitch

[Shrugging Khan]

It's got all you need, and is located ideally for any defensive purposes. Just put up a perimeter around the wormhole over in the next system, and you've got a definite bargain.

[Tharrick]

I think people often exaggerate the danger of the eye spawns too. If you have a solid fleet you can just go in and blast everything to pieces and not care too much about the eye spawns, at least my experience would say so.

Of course this WILL end up in more losses, but is way less grindy=)

I'm always wary of eye spawns ever since I got caught out horribly by one several versions ago in a multiplayer game, which spawned a fleet about 3x the size of the one my friend had just put into the system. The eye fleet wiped out all of my friends' ships, then all of mine, then went on to bomb us back to the stone age and lose us the game.

Even if that was a bug, or if they're somewhat nerfed in recent patches, AI Eyes still terrify me for that particular reason.

[BobTheJanitor]

I've never sent in enough ships to really get it to spawn more than a handful of things. I guess it really shouldn't be that much of a concern. As long as you don't nuke the planet, they shouldn't spawn in massive groups, and burning through a steady steam of them wouldn't be a big deal. And if they decide to make for the wormhole, a handful of tractor beams and turrets on the other side should handle them ok. Maybe I worry too much about them. If they were changed to spit out a whole ton of ships all at once when set off, that might be more of a bother.

[Zeyurn]

The AI Eye has always (in multiplayer) for me spawned crazy fast until we reach the point where the eye trigger condition is not met.  It's capable of punting out hundreds of ships in a second.  That's why we don't just send the whole fleet in, only take stuff good against Command Grade (I think?) hull.

[Red Spot]

In previous versions where you could wack the Eye itself, you got a decent fleet on the planet and the Eye was near the gate, you could take it out.
With the current Eye, the fact that posts seem to spawn much more scattered through the planet, it simply takes to long to send in a full fleet, the Eye would swarm you to death.

It seems the Eye, in a blink of an eye, can spawn about as many ships so the total AI ships on the planet >= your shipcount. When you kill some, the Eye respawns them. The knowledge raiding spawn is nothing compared to it, this really is brutal when you hang around (long enough).