Game settings, planets, ai progress?

[maritime]

Hey, I have beaten the game a few times with the 7.3 AI, moving up to a more challenging level.

What do veterans generally set for the # of planets / ai progress increase?

I have been going with 80 planets, 2 ai progress every 30 minutes...

[Lancefighter]

bump it up to 8.3 or so muhaha.

Also, do random harder (non tech, or tech if you are masochistic) and then do the schizophrenic waves (they bring a bunch of different stuff)... Oh, and teleporters are evil, for the record.

[Minty]

What's more evil than teleporters? Translocators! They TP YOUR units around the map. Good Gods those things are annoying, but a great challenge.

[Lancefighter]

actually, in a rather recent torture test, I've found how damn annoying special forces captains are.


...
Seriously.
Imagine a wave going through your planet every minute or so.

Then add a mad bomber with two waves. ... ... ... boom home station gone didn't even get a chance to get anywhere, was defending the entire time.

[Kjara]

I don't tend to push the ai progress higher than 1 per 5 (and sometimes do 1 per 10). 

I'd say you should bump up the difficulty level about one level per game unless its far far too easy.  Around 8 or 8.3(I'm blanking on which one), the ai gets a blanket level bonus which makes it start with mkII ships instead of mkI(for raids/ reinforcements--and it jumps to III when a lower level enemy would jump to II), which makes for a big difficulty jump--nothing quite like having something like several hundred mkII infiltrators attacking at around the 30-40 minute mark if you aren't ready for it.

Note that choice of ai type can make a huge difference though(esp if you start playing with some of the harder types).  I've had games with a "harder" type that are more difficult than a "easy" type thats a level higher or 2 higher--Though some of the harder types just require you to approach the game in a unique way, and once you figure that out they arn't that much harder(or can even be easier once you get past an initial hurdle--special forces captain is a good example of this one).

Most of my games are have been on 80 planets, though I've recently started one on 120 planets(and dropped the diff, since I haven't played in a while + all the new changes).

[Lancefighter]

...-Though some of the harder types just require you to approach the game in a unique way, and once you figure that out they arn't that much harder(or can even be easier once you get past an initial hurdle--special forces captain is a good example of this one)...

Hell I cant figure out how to live past the first half hour, let alone get anywhere!

On the bright side, its a welcome challenge 

[Kjara]

Note that turrets are generally provide much better dps + hps per resources/energy.  Against harder types, I generally spend the first 30 mins or so just building turrets (or a mix of turrets and the hard counter units to whatever the first wave ends up being).  I also tend to unlock laser 1's and missiles 1's right off the bat to increase the unit spread that at least one turret will be good at killing.  Only after I've secured my home planet do I build up my attack force (and generally  have to live with a mk3 generator while building it up until I can get a 2nd mk2 up on a new planet--usually in a turret ball).

[Lancefighter]

oddly, I've found that missile turrets are more effective than lasers, seemingly due to unseen bonuses.

Also, I've recently discovered that 20 MLRS turrets are perfectly fine against most anything an ai will throw at you early game. Of course, add the same number of basic turrets, laser turrets, and missile turrets for improved usefulness. Voila, my cookie cutter wormhole defense turret setup.

Lately i havent even been bothering with tractor beam turrets

[Kjara]

I generally like lasers for two reason, one is that they are great against a few special units(like armored) that they get huge bonuses against that would otherwise wreck your turrets fast.  The second is I need laser 2's for my turret balls(to keep wormholes clear), so I have to pay the laser 1 cost anyhow.

Agree that I don't bother with tractors much these days except for a few scattered around my command centers(to make infiltrator/bomber deaths a bit less likely).