At the start of the game...

[Mánagarmr]

I...don't really see your point either. The only time I have issues like this is when I know I'm playing beyond my skill (at present 8+) and need to whack the first wave. Then I'm building turrets so much I barely get any ships out. After that, I'm fine.

[Zeyi]

Sounds like a turtle strat, and as expected a turtle strat takes time and patience.

Try a different style of play for awhile to liven things up? That is after all the reason for the many, many game options and variations.

[KDR_11k]

no. Its boring because I dont take planets I cant defend. I know that at the difficulty I play at (8ish, no wave warnings, crossplanet waves), I need to expect an entire ai fleet to show up at any of my planets at almost any moment.

Don't do that then?

Also the MkI worlds are ones that you take as a buffer zone for your homeworld, if they fall it's no biggie to fix them up again.

[zoutzakje]

I use mark I worlds to build up ships for any CPA that might come, works pretty well.
anyway, you're not the only one lancefighter. In the 9/9 crosshatch game I played I spend about 1 hour and 30 minutes getting stuff ready, this was with mk III harvesters. The only difference is that I actually enjoy that first stage of the game Manually scouting and finding good targets while your fleet and defenses are being build. Even in 7/7 games I tend to wait at least a half hour before making my first move.
Don't get me wrong, I could have attacked much sooner, I just wanted to be well prepared. Considering the power of some waves I was getting, I'm glad I did.

[Soyweiser]

If you want something to do the first half hour, create some leech starships and go on a safari.

Some ships can be pretty useful to have. Medical frigates or Spy Eyes. I tend to keep ships I cannot build back at my homeworld as a home defence fleet.

[Histidine]

The way I see it, you only need to hold three types of planet:

• Homeworld(s)
• Whipping boys
• Planets with Adv Fac, Fabricators, or similar immobile high-value target

Everything else is expendable, if they die it's just a matter of having a Remains Rebuilder fix 'em up again.

In fact, wouldn't having undefended "decoy" planets increase defense effectiveness against waves (cross-planet or otherwise) by virtue of increasing walk distance to "real" targets (and possibly causing the wave to get split up after the first system)?

[Diazo]

Well, that is sort of true.

Don't forget the energy collector however.

My fleet expands fast enough that I have yet to take a system where I did not need the energy from the energy collector of that system and losing said energy collector is a -300 Metal and Crystal hit to build metal converters to cover for its loss until you can recapture the system.

I'm still mulling over suggesting some changes to the energy system because of this, at the moment I feel it is too easy to start the energy blackout spiral of doom, but nothing I've come up with is actually an improvement so far.

As for the topic of the thread, I have to ask what strategy are we talking about?

I personally have 2 types of strategies, Low-AIP and defensive depth.

In a Low-AIP game scouting is my early priority but to get my scouts out far enough requires taking down Tachyon Guardians so my fleet is out killing those.

In a defensive depth game I will be taking some (or all) of the systems adjacent to my homeworld so I can start working on reducing the guard posts in those.

In both cases by the 5 minute mark I have military ships in hostile space and by the 10 minute mark I've had some decent sized battles fought already.

As long as you pick your battles so you don't have to rebuild your entire fleet, you can get a lot done in that first 10 minutes before the AI starts to get multiple reinforcement pulses in and the ship counts start getting to high for small fleet actions.

D.

[Kahuna]

Ok here's my new game. I started this game today. Game time: 1:32:53. 2 10Diff Special Forces Captains. I have 3 planets and have gate raided 2 AI planets. AIP is 67. Piece of cake. I have caps of all ships I need atm and quite a lot of turrets. I was building ships and turrets while capturing and attacking the AI's planets.

Yes.. I have Parasites as my bonus ships. AND I've unlocked MarkII Leech Starships now that their Knowledge cost was reduced. This parasite strategy seems to work very well. Turrets defend and reclaimed ships attack and work as meat shields.

Anyway.. here's the save file of my typical early game.

[Draco18s]

I want to spend 1.2 million metal, and 1 million crystal. (not including: Turrets, scouts, bonus ship, siege starships, bomber starships.)

This amounts to:
Flagships mk1/2 (480k,360k/240k,160k)
Zenith starship mk1 (160k,240k)
Riot starship mk1 (120k,200k)
Fighter, bomber, frigate mk1 (180k,140k)

You're trying to front-load ships that aren't meant to be built that early.  There's a REASON starships costs 200,000 resources.

[keith.lamothe]

Aw, stop picking on the starship guy

But yea, you're not gonna be able to crank out a full line of starships off your homeworld resources alone in a really quick period of time.  Otherwise you'd be able to crank them out with trivial relative costs when you had a lot of other resources.

Just use more economical stuff to capture a resource base, while putting some portion of your economy towards the starships.

[Martyn van Buren]

Don't mean to be rude, but why don't you take worlds you can't defend?  Command stations are cheap.  Plus, if you do play NWW/CPW, surely they could serve as defense-in-depth or at least early warning for your homeworld?

[Lancefighter]

And yeah keith, I might be slightly exaggerating the amount of stuff I need to build before I can do anything. Sometimes though, I cant really find the time to mess around in wormholes (because either there arent enough immediately available, they just dont take long enough).

If I dont own any planets that arent my homeworld, non-mk1 systems wont go on alert. the jump from guardianless mk1 systems to guardians on mk2 systems is actually kinda huge by itself, and I dont really like making that jump until I am ready.

In some cases, like if I am on the inside of a concentric circles map or something silly, I can pick up systems that are directly defended by my homeworld's defense, which is perfectly fine. But until I can make these segments that are 100% safe, I feel it is rarely worth taking space. I am not really sure if it is just because the broodlord/infestor fleet is just too slow to deal with the counterattacks of a ling/muta army, or because I just dont like loosing things..

And martyn - I need about 200 turrets on a planet before I decide its reasonably safe. This number is sadly not exaggerated at all. Unfortunately, I can do that with about two planets early on, even if you ignore the resource cost..

I am thinking like I mentioned somewhere else, I should run a game with inflated difficulty hybrids and spire plot, with the tradeoff of 0 waves. The only potential issue I can see with that is that it would cause a huge jump in ai response at the first spire city compared to pretty much the entire rest of the game..

It could probably still work though.

[Hearteater]

My first move is often to neuter the highest mark planets next to me.  A Mark IV is much easier to take at 10 minutes compared to 45 or 60 because it hasn't gotten very many reinforcements.  Hybrids make neutering Mark IVs critically important.  By 30 minutes, a Mark IV on 9/9 can have 20-25 Hybrids if you haven't touched it.  If you don't think you can clear it out, remember that with small forces you don't wake up the entire system, so you do hit-and-run actions knocking out Guard Posts and stuff like Hybrid Spawners and Ion Cannons.

While you are doing this, 15 Sniper around the system edge and put 10 Missile, 10 MLRS, 10 Basic, 10 Laser, 1 Gravity Turret, and 5 Tractor Turrets per Worm Hole.  If you can cover multiple Worm Holes (like with Missile Turrets) just drop 10 to cover both.  Drop 5 Lighting and 10 Flak on your Command Station, along with 3 Force Fields.  That's enough for early aggro and waves.  Whenever you have room, add Force Fields and turrets.  Starships should be last.  Especially after their rebalance, you don't have the energy to have many unless you get a ZPG up or capture a few systems.  I like to get one Flagship and one Leech, and fill out a cap of Plasma Siege if possible.

[LordSloth]

I've decided against actually submitting it to the tracker, but for a while I was thinking of moving starships up one mark. That is bumping up the mark number, making no actual changes to them. Mark Vs would be available from fabricators. In exchange, you'd get a new MkI starship with about half the cost and half the power. In all likelyhood it would be incredibly weak, but it would give you access to something that can help with the early tractor guardians and the like.