Looking for some general advice for hard 7/7 game

[zoutzakje]

The RNG got me good on this one. Maybe he's punishing me for playing on a lower dif than normal. Random AI type roll and he gave me Heroic/Everything for the first AI and Extreme Raider/Neinzul Nester for the second one. 3 Hard types and 1 red.
Started with paralyzers on a world with 2 exits, player champions disabled.
Dyson on, golems on, botnet on, spirecraft on, fallen spire on, showdown on and shark plot A on for both AI's, everything 4/10.

I don't feel the need to post a save yet, as I'm just looking for some general advice so far. Just some tips and hints that might work. What is the best way to deal with nests? Should I use Rams for champions or is there a better way?
I'm assuming that the design downloader and especially corruptor are going to be absolutely holy in this game, especially since I always play high AIP games. Backups everywhere, probably because of the Everything AI. Let's say I corrupt every single Youngling ship, would that render the Neinzul nests useless (Most of the nests I've found so far are MK IV, so they're deadly in my early game)? Everything AI makes hacking quite challenging though, even at the beginning.

Also, how bad are the DG lairs? They tend to block the road to important stuff I need in my game. I'm wondering if I should go around them or go right through them.

[PokerChen]

Each dire guardian is at the golem level of firepower, and about half as tough. Consider well - you might want to have a counter for every one that can spawn.

I haven't played Nesters in a long time, so can't offer anything particularly useful. Do they spawn Roaches as well (according to the wiki)? Since that one is not on the unlocks list, you might not be able to completely disable the nests.

[keith.lamothe]

Heroic/Everything for the first AI and Extreme Raider/Neinzul Nester for the second one.

That RNG really, really got up on the wrong side of the HDD this morning, I guess.  That's a lot of pain

Corruptor may not help you as much as you think, as the Everything has soooo many types that it'd take a ton of hacks to get rid of all the annoying ones.

But Design Copying is kind of a holy-grail with Everything.  You can literally pick any bonus ship type in the game, and then do it again as long as you can pay the hacking cost.  You can put together some real dream-team ship combos that way.

[Diazo]

Yeouch.

First, Dire Guardians are on the wiki and their stats are up to date. In my limited experience with them you can expect 3 DGs to spawn when you destroy a lair. At least in the early game, I do not know if more spawn as AIP rises.

Of course, the lairs just spawn DGs periodically, but at least they start at only a single DG spawning at once in the early game.

I'd look at the Military command station for the tachyon abilities, pretty sure a lot of the ships the Extreme Raider gets have cloaking.

You'll also be facing exo-waves in addition to everything else. Find a chokepoint fast.

Nests are actually not a big concern, their danger pales in comparison to the other stuff you have enabled, just they will spawn more frequently. Having said that, I don't think corrupting the younglings would prevent the nest from spawning them, that is a different mechanic then the ships the AI gets as reinforcements.

I'm not sure I'd worry about design corrupting, with the Everything AI present it has all the bad ships available. It's not worth the HaP to corrupt all the bad ships (in my opinion). The Design Downloader is where I'd put all my HaP in this game probably, you are going to need a lot of ships on your chokepoints.....

Really, between the exo-waves, the Heroic AI, the DG Lairs you are going to need strong chokepoints to survive that.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

Iirc, the DG lair spawn rate doesn't increase with AIP (either gradual or on-death).  In general they're less threatening as the game goes on, but can be a serious threat in the early/mid game.  And even later if you let one catch you unawares and it spawns the wrong (right) type.

The variety of DG types it can pick from goes up as AIP increases, though.

[zoutzakje]

shoot, I could swear I posted this in the strategy section. Oh well.

anyways, thanks for the tips guys. Yeah I meant the downloader to be better in this game. I'm gonna have some fun with that. Already picked up vampires, which I enjoy a lot.
To bad that corrupting all the younglings won't work, but I kinda already expected that.
I'll avoid all the DG lairs for now then, at least until I got myself one or 2 nice golems.
I'm playing on a realistic map with a lot of opportunities to chokepoint so we'll see how that goes. Already managed to take down several mk IV nests by taking out the nest quickly and luring the younglings to my HBC chokepoint where they got vaporized.

Only thing I'm unsure about now are the champions. I believe Heroic AI type has been tuned down a bit ( a lot) since last time I played it, but he can still be deadly. Especially the fact that he occasionally sends a champion to attack me without any warning bothers me. Last time a bug gave me +100 AIP I wasn't supposed to get, making the champions unbeatable. So I'm hoping this time I'll be lucky. I need lots of rams and an Artillery golem too if possible I suppose.

[TIE Viper]

Gotta love those Arty Golems, perfect for any big nasties! 
Well, except for the H/K...