First game questions

[Vacuity]

Hi,

I picked this game up on the sale on Steam and am very impressed.  So much so I bought the expansion that wasn't on sale too.

After having the AI kick over my anthill a couple of times in the intermediate tutorial, I learnt my lessons and treated it with extreme prejudice and caution (and a lot more turrets).  I'm reasonably experienced with strategy games in general and I think I'm not doing too badly for a first game, but I have one or two tiny queries.

Firstly; the map seed I used (1132539280, 80 planets, simple) placed my homeworld in amongst core AI worlds in every direction.  The longest direction I can go is three hops before I meet a core world with a shield generator on it.  In some directions I have core worlds just two jumps away from my home world.  Is this usual?  With 80 planets, and only 12 generators and 2 AI home worlds it seems strange that I'm trapped into a small corner of the galaxy like this.  My attempts to get scouts past these core worlds indicate that the planets beyond them are also core worlds, which would indicate that about half the galaxy is non-core and semi-inaccessible.  So: are core worlds grouped together? And is it normal to be trapped inside a small bubble like this?

Secondly; The core-shields info pop-up indicates a) that I have to own the relevant planet to destroy them, and b) that I have to destroy five of each AI's six shields to make the AI core vulnerable.  That means I have to take (but not necessarily hold) a total of ten planets, which is going to cause a very hefty +200 hike to AIP.  Granted there are options with Data Centres and AI Co-Processors (only found two of those so far) on some of those planets, and Advanced Research stations and Factories on some others which can reduce that pain and provide additional incentives, but is there really no other option than taking ten planets, some of which are of marginal intrinsic use beyond being able to get another 3,000 research points and another energy collector?

Thirdly; what is the best thing to do with Special Forces Guard Posts?  Destroying one raises AIP by a single point, which isn't really that much, but every point counts, right?  Why would any player choose to destroy them?  What's the benefit of destroying them, or put another way, what's the risk of not destroying them?  I think I understand how the AI uses them, having had a steady river of reinforcements flowing in from one while I was neutering a core world, I just don't see a benefit in destroying them.

Fourthly; how do people operate their scouts such that they manage to stay alive beyond say two jumps distant?  Every wormhole is guarded by a Tachyon Guard and even large groups of scouts never make it past three jumps distant.  This may be more a problem with me being surrounded by core worlds in every direction though...  The only way for me to see anything further in the universe seems to be for me to stomp my way there or maybe I need to use transports for my scouts?!

Fifthly; I've taken three reasonably useful worlds and am neutering all the worlds adjacent to mine (I already gate-raided all but one of them).  Is it reasonable for me to make a specific effort to eliminate those gates now, or should I expand further first?  If I am forced to take those ten planets then it makes more sense to me to avoid taking any more non-core worlds if I can possibly help it at this point.  I'm strong enough at this point to thump my way through core worlds, though not without a degree of pain, so should that be my path, or would I be better trying to find one or two more juicy non-core worlds first?  Quite how I'd do that trapped as I am, I'm not sure though.

Sixthly; When a new game starts, does the player always get put on one of the planets offering an additional ship?  If the player chooses a planet with no additional ship, does that put the player at a major disadvantage?

Seventhly; What are the major factors people use in choosing which planets to occupy?  Is it worth taking a planet just to access something like an Adv. Reseach Station?  This leads onto my last question...

Eighthly; The Ship Design Hacker and Knowledge Hacker both seem very useful.  I understand both of them generate a hostile response from the AIs but just how severe is that response?  Are they worth the bother?  Roughly how many times can you use each before the AI responses render the effort more harmful than beneficial?

Apologies for the slightly long-winded questions; it's a great game and full of depth and hopefully replayability and I am bursting with curiousity at this moment.

Thanks in advance,

Vac

[Bognor]

Welcome to the forums!

First up, a small note on terminology.  "Core worlds" are special Mark IV worlds that border AI home worlds and have many Mark V ships. I think you're referring to "worlds with core shield generators".  They're not much different to regular planets except that the special forces help defend them.

There's only one core shield network that's shared by the two AIs.  To bring it down, you need to destroy one B, one C, one D, one E, and 4 of the 5 As - that's 8 planets in total. Planets with As always have Advanced Research Stations, Bs have Advanced Factories, and Cs have Fabricators, so those provide incentives to capture.  Ds and Es generally don't, so you might pick ones that are on the way to a planet you want, or can provide a staging post for attacking the home worlds, or have lots of resources.

Gotta run, but check the wiki for hints on scouting.

[Faulty Logic]

1} What do you mean by "core world"?
Around here, "core world" refers exclusively to the mkIV planets bordering the AI homeworlds.

2} Core shield generators:
Both AI are protected by a single network of CSGs.
The A-net, corresponding to Advanced Research Stations, needs 4 to be destroyed before it stops protecting the AI homeworlds.
The other networks need only a single generator to be destroyed.
So you must take at least 8 planets before the final assault.

3} Each Special Forces guardpost in human space increases the special forces strength cap by 5 percent. I personally leave them alone.

4} Use scout starships, group move (hold down g) or transports. But those will only get you so far. You will have to unlock higher-level scouts or kill the tachyon posts. Also, using transports may free some AI ships.

5} It depends on the map and your plan. You can post a save for more detailed help.
(Additional Options below the textbox, Attach, Browse, AI War, RuntimeData, Saves, Filename.sav)

6} You cannot select a planet without a ship.

7} This is where most of the depth comes in. It's really hard to give a helpful, general answer.

However:
You want to take all 5 of the Advanced Research Stations (almost always). (A network)
You want one or both of the Advanced Factories. (B network)
You want at least one fabricator, often more. Take whichever works with the ships you already have.
You need to knock out the CSGs. Choose the best of the D and E networks.
You want to avoid deepstrike (this happens when your ships get more than four hops away from human or neutral planets.
You don't want a planet next to an AI homeworld, or next to a planet next to an AI homeworld, unless you have a Warp Jammer command station.
You want to minimize the number of planets the AI can send a wave against.

Take as few worlds as possible.

8} You will be able to hack 3 planets with ease. Expect to pay a lot of metal and crystal to replace your fleet if you continue. After hack 6, it gets really bad (but still possible).
Ship-design hacking: the first counts for less than a k-raid. The second costs about 1.5 k-raids. Then it probably isn't worth continuing. Finally, if you find a superterminal, you can hack that to reduce AIP (usually the most efficient form of hacking).

[Vacuity]

OK, so

1) My misunderstanding then: one Core Generator doth not a core planet make.  I shouldn't be too proud of myself for being able to neuter them so easily then...

2) Ahh!  So there are five networks with two mechanics that apply to both AI Cores, not two networks that apply to one respective AI Core.  That makes a lot more sense based on what others had written.  And 8 is a better number than 10.

3) So if you think the extra special forces numbers are a problem, remove the ones in your territory, otherwise leave well alone.  Gotcha!

4) Even mark 2 scouts seem to have problems getting more than three jumps distant as a group.  But as I'm no longer wondering how to jump past these worlds with generators, that's not such a major problem.

5) If the shield network worlds always come with specific bonuses and you have to take those worlds then that makes the choices a lot easier.  At this point I had been avoiding taking those worlds, which is why I had only taken the three worlds I did, but in retrospect I might have done better not taking all three of those.

6) Easy answer, thanks.

7) I understand that answers (and mileage) will vary, but that's a helpful explanation, particularly with the info from both of you explaining the bonuses that come with the shield networks.

OK, in that case, I'll probably include that in my options when I reload later this evening and make my new choices.

Thank you very much, both Faulty Logic and Bognor.  Apologies for my confusion over the term "core".  I get it now. That means there are probably very few core worlds in any galaxy, unless both AI cores sit in the middle of planet clusters, right?

Vac

[Faulty Logic]

That means there are probably very few core worlds in any galaxy, unless both AI cores sit in the middle of planet clusters, right?

Right.

That's why I use }s.

Thank you very much

Happy to help.

[Diazo]

Welcome! Glad to see someone else willing to stand up to the AI! 

I think your questions have been pretty much answered, but I do have a few more comments:

Firstly; the map seed I used (1132539280, 80 planets, simple) placed my homeworld in amongst core AI worlds in every direction. 

To clarify how systems are referred to, all systems that are not an AI homeworld, or adjacent to an AI homeworld are simply their Mark level. This can been seen on the galaxy map in the little roman numerals.

AI Homeworlds are the only Mark V systems in the game, but are typically called homeworlds.
Systems adjacent to the AI Homeworlds are the Core worlds. They will show as Mark IV, but they have several bonuses for being the final gateway to the AI Homeworld.

Sixthly; When a new game starts, does the player always get put on one of the planets offering an additional ship?  If the player chooses a planet with no additional ship, does that put the player at a major disadvantage?

Yes the player does. If you do not select a specific world (or worlds) you will start with a single homeworld randomly selected from the ones available.

I'll see you around,

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the game and to the forums   Sounds like you're off to a pretty good start.

Looks like your questions were answered so I won't create an echo.  There was one later on though:

That means there are probably very few core worlds in any galaxy, unless both AI cores sit in the middle of planet clusters, right?

Right, and it's generally rare for an AI HW to have a very high number of connections because mapgen chooses the first AI HW from the set of planets furthest from the human HW(s), and chooses the second AI HW from the set of planets furthest from the human HW(s) and the first AI HW.  So it'd be very unlikely to pick a hub world on a spokes map, for instance: one of the hub's children would basically always be further from the other HWs than the hub.

[Vacuity]

Thank you very much everyone for the warm and helpful welcome.  It's always pleasant to find corners of the Internet that aren't filled with bile.

That's interesting information about how the AI homeworlds get picked.  In that case, I am pretty certain I know where those planets will be as there's only a single planet 10 jumps from mine, and then only one other spot that's far away from both my hw and the first AI homeworld.  Given a choice between a single planet 10 jumps away and several planets 9 jumps away, the algorithm will always choose the 10 jump planet, right?

Last question for now, I noticed when playing around with map settings that if a player starts the game with two home planets the unit cap is doubled.  I presume this means that wave strengths and so on are also doubled, but do people ever usually play with multiple homeworlds?  Does the doubled up unit cap balance out with the increased attacker numbers?  It strikes me that the ability to choose a specific pair (or triplet, whatever) of extra ships has the possibility to be exceedingly powerful.  So far my Spire Gravity Rippers have been more than a little underwhelming.

Loving the game so far, but at this point I seem to be spending more time (re-)reading posts in the strategy forum.  I hope I get my head around things soon.

[LordSloth]

Here are my experiences scouting on 7/7, against a variety of AIs, defensive and otherwise, on simple, x, and cluster maps.

Basic Concepts

• If you select your scouts and alt-right click on empty space, you can auto-scout and auto-picket. Auto-scout is fairly effective for being micro-free, can usually go out two-three systems, though ion cannons are particularly devastating to scout waves, since they went from single to quad-target. Auto-picket is good for systems without tachyon guardians, but other hostile systems will take 3-5 scouts per jump, if not more.
  You can often use the galaxy map to recall all your scouts, send them on a mission, then repicket your surrounding area to keep an eye on things if you clean up those tachyon guardians.
• Cloaking booster and number of ships goes up as scout mark goes up, but the benefit of mk2 fleet scouts against a defensive AI is marginal. It is an inexpensive upgrade for tripling the number of scouts available, however. Mk3 scouts are nice, but also provide the single perma-cloaked mk4 scout once you grab an advanced factory. Scout starships don't quite have the hitpoints to make them effective scouting tools on their own but they can also detect mines and cloaked ships and counter snipers if a support role (with brave scout starships turned on in CTRLS). Generally, they're the less popular choice, but they can come in handy as other ship types can count as snipers, such as sentinel frigates. Most notably, the MK4 starship doesn't require an advanced factory, gives you a pair of perma-cloaked ships, and they're ridiculously faster than the smaller mk4 fleet scout. In co-op, one dedicated scout player can scout the entire galaxy with these within two hours, while other players spend their knowledge elsewhere to pick up the slack.
• Worlds adjacent to your homeworld lack guardians, esp. Tachyon Guardians. Tachyon Guardians have medium hulls, vulnerable to fighters, and even the higher marks go down to mark 1 fighters at a good pace. Because of this, it is helpful to wipe the nearest tachyon guardian from any system you want to picket (for CPA threat warning) at a moments notice. You can also send fighters(w & w/o transports) to clear a 'highway' for your scouts. This can be an easy way to get 3-4 systems deeper, though there's a limit on how far in you can safely raid. Before you raid the tachyon guardians, be sure to get scouts in-system, you don't want to knock loose 500 MKIV ships, but if the system hasn't been on alert and busy reinforcing, the retaliation from a raid may end up reasonable.

Early phase (roughly the first thirty minutes):
I start out by setting my stardock to a repeating 10 scouts, 2 fighters, 1 frigate, 1 bomber. I hold off on any turrets beyond some 1-3 tractor turrets on each wormhole until the composition of the first wave is announced. I don't start starship construction till later on, in order to prevent my eco from going into the red. As soon as each batch is done, I send my 10 Mk1 scouts on auto-scout until I know at least two systems out from my homeworld - raid engines near homeworlds are entirely possible (though rare) especially with 8 players spread out. My two mk2 scouts will support my fleets/do prior recon before assaulting an adjacent system or picket a hw-adjacent mkIV. Once I've got that basic knowledge, I'll decide where to manual direct all ten of my scouts for a final scout push.

Next step is manually picketing key systems outside of the initial ring, primarily in the direction of my initial expansion. After that, I just auto-picket everything else.

While this is going on, your mk2 scouts and fighters may be raiding adjacent warp gates, depending on number of players and AI difficulty. Warp Gate Raiding can go horribly wrong with a full co-op game and I suggest postponing all AIP until the first wave hits. Even 20 fighters are often enough to hit a warp gate and make it back to your homeworld.

Once that first wave hits, you can shore up your defenses again, and then send your fighters to take out Tachyon Guardians. They're quick to build, fast, cheap, and effective. Initially I can often hit two systems deep with just a full complement of MK1 fighters. If you need to strike deeper, Transports can help you strike a system or two deep, whereas cloaker starships can help your transports safely make it through a threatball on your border if you've already cleared the tachyon guardian.

Sometime after your initial expansion, you'll need mk2 scout fleetships for the additional bodies if nothing else. Unfortunately, any system with an ion cannon 2 or above can kill 4 scouts in a single shot, so you won't penetrate much deeper with just auto-explore. It can help to send all your scouts to a target system, then give the auto-explore order.

If you switch to manual scouting, you can get more done with your scouts. I do keep several scouting goals in mind, but my main concern is to always have scouted at least 1-2 systems out from a system I'm planning to take, and auto-explore is usually sufficient for that. You'll need to establish highways and some manual control (or higher level scouts) to get further out than that, but it isn't too much of a micro hassle to do occasionally, especially as it can be used to launch further auto-explore waves.

Tachyon raiding isn't necessary, but has huge benefits depending on how much you like cloaker starships (raid starships and transports, or fleetships on standby with the higher mark cloakers for example), stealth battleships, etc.

On multiple homeworlds... Quite a few people play with two homeworlds, but multiple homeworlds SP is subtly different though similar to mulitple co-op players. Enough homeworlds and your per-world cap does scale down, but it still gives you a huge leap up in clearing AI worlds quicker and with fewer losses. The resources saved from rebuilding do tend to go into even more turrets, however.

[keith.lamothe]

Thank you very much everyone for the warm and helpful welcome.  It's always pleasant to find corners of the Internet that aren't filled with bile.

We are very glad to have one of those corners, yes.  The AI gives us all plenty of abuse, so the forum doesn't have to supplement.

Given a choice between a single planet 10 jumps away and several planets 9 jumps away, the algorithm will always choose the 10 jump planet, right?

I haven't looked at the code in question in a while, so there might be a +/- 1 fuzz or something like that, but I think you're correct there.

Last question for now, I noticed when playing around with map settings that if a player starts the game with two home planets the unit cap is doubled.  I presume this means that wave strengths and so on are also doubled, but do people ever usually play with multiple homeworlds?  Does the doubled up unit cap balance out with the increased attacker numbers?  It strikes me that the ability to choose a specific pair (or triplet, whatever) of extra ships has the possibility to be exceedingly powerful.

Some players never play anything but multi-HW (some insisting on 8-HW or 16-HW).  It's a different balance, and somewhat unbalanced in favor of the player (80 Raid Starships can do things that 1-HW players need superweapons to pull off).  Basically just a matter of taste whether you prefer that or single-HW.

So far my Spire Gravity Rippers have been more than a little underwhelming.

Yea, they've chronically been a non-favorite, despite periodic buffing.  They'll get theirs eventually though.

Loving the game so far, but at this point I seem to be spending more time (re-)reading posts in the strategy forum.  I hope I get my head around things soon.

It's a complex game, but learning enough to go on with doesn't take too long

You may also want to look through some of the AARs on the AAR subforum for examples of practical strategy/tactics: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/board,24.0.html

[Bognor]

I noticed when playing around with map settings that if a player starts the game with two home planets the unit cap is doubled.  I presume this means that wave strengths and so on are also doubled...

Two homeworlds doesn't actually double the strength of the waves, it doubles the number of waves.  Waves come at you in pairs, each wave in the pair announced simultaneously.  The two waves might strike different worlds or the same world, even the same wormhole.  I think additional homeworlds then lead to stronger waves rather than more waves.

It strikes me that the ability to choose a specific pair (or triplet, whatever) of extra ships has the possibility to be exceedingly powerful.

A quick playtest earlier this week revealed that Neinzul Scapegoats can resurrect Spire Corvettes.  I don't know whether anyone's seriously tried a game with these two, but I think they could be insanely powerful together.

[Vacuity]

LordSloth, that's very helpful info to know, thanks.  I didn't know about the Alt-Rightclick option at all, so having those automatic options seems very useful indeed, and tachyon raiding seems quite a practical option.  Sadly, the advice on initial scouting isn't useful for this playthrough as I already made my initial expansion decisions based on the limited info I had and my misunderstanding about worlds with shield generators, but it should make things a lot smoother at the beginning of every future game.  Looking back, I now think I was reasonably lucky to have three planets so nearby with decent resources.

Keith, with that info, it seems tempting to try something like a snake or maze map starting with max homeworlds and try for complete domination.  I guess it'd take a very long time to play, and might not teach me much about the game, so perhaps some time in the future, but it's an interesting idea.

I did some more UI-exploring and found the gravity rippers (and to a lesser extent everything else) were rather more useful once I turned on auto-kiting.  A very useful feature that's a bit hard to find.

Bognor, on the basis I've no idea at this point what Spire Corvettes are or do, I'll take your word for it!

It's very interesting to learn my way through the game.  I made a Spirecraft Shield Enclosure, found it was extremely powerful so made another one and then wasted them in relatively trivial fights as I hadn't noticed the "cannot be repaired" text.  Sad, but they did seem unreasonably powerful up to that moment and I learned the lesson.

Now stomping my way through worlds with core shield generators quite happily and wondering whether it's worth the hefty energy investment to resurrect a black widow golem.  Well, I won't know if I don't try (and I've found two of them, so if I mess up with the first one, I can try again).

Edit: Oh, one more thing.  Is there a guide Riot Ship design anywhere?

[zoutzakje]

welcome to the forums ^^
Keep in mind that, if you ever want to play on a snake map, turn Core Shield Generators off. One of the AI homeworlds will be located halfway the snake galaxy, but if you leave CSG's on, you most likely can't actually destroy it yet once you reach it. Meaning you will somehow have to maneuver past the homeworld, which can be quite difficult/impossible depending on the situation.

Black widow golems are currently one of the most powerful golems out there and will be well worth your investment. With it's paralyzing tractor beams you can steal away huge chunks of enemy fleets, making even AI homeworld assaults a lot easier.

Hope this helps a bit =)

[Bognor]

Edit: Oh, one more thing.  Is there a guide Riot Ship design anywhere?

For the practicalities of how to equip them, this.  There's a summary of how the different marks can be configured I made here.  I generally outfit my Mark Is with one tractor, one shield, three lasers and one machine gun; occasionally more machine guns depending on the hull types of the AI's fleet ships.  They're extremely effective at damaging ships' engines so I generally find shotguns unnecessary.

[Vacuity]

Hmm, I'd seen people talking about turning the core shield generators off, but couldn't see the option, and as the posts I read talking about it were from quite a while ago, I assumed that it wasn't an option any more.  Where do you find that option?  I had another look at the map generation screen and still couldn't find such an option.  Out of curiosity, does that also reduce the number of ARSs, Fabs and other such bonuses available on the map, as (at least some of) these are apparently tied to the shield generators?

Do ships with tractor beams need to be micromanaged to make proper use of them?  I'm a little confused about how or why tractor beams are useful other than by holding ships within the killing zone of static defences...
[Edit: OK, I think I just found the answer to this question here after surfing across from the Riot Ship loadout link from Bognor]
Thanks for the info in both cases zoutzakje.

Bognor, I'll try that Riot ship loadout and see how it works out.  I got shield bearers as a bonus ship in the tutorial and loved those, so I suppose that if I have access to other ships carrying shields, it's less of a priority on my Riot ships, right?  And thinking about it, if I had ships with tractor beams (like the Black Widow Golem later on this game), putting tractor beams on them would be less of a priority.  So, they could be seen as a way to make up (a little bit) for deficiencies in your fleet composition.  Hmm, there's a lot to think about still.