Lots of Questions Questions Questions

[Napivo]

I think I passed the newbie state , finally ready for the real work

If I say so myself

Well I started a new single player game with AI at lvl 8 and a champion in the normal mode.
For a change I only took one home wold...

• Does starting with multiple home worlds make a game easier?
• Is playing a 80 planet single player game even feasible with only one home world at this level? I can't get a foot on the ground for now.... I have 6 planets and I can barely defend them even tough I succeeded one of the Nebulae and made the Shattered pillar allies.
  
• I Is there a place somewhere I can learn all about champions... Mine seems kind of weak.
• Does there exist a list of all ships available in the game.... I mean online.
  
• I know some of you very advanced players do play with settings that would kill me in the first wave.... Can you provide me some examples?
  

Thanks

Napivo

[Lancefighter]

Multiple homeworlds is akin to multiple players - The second homeworld doubles the AI's strength, the third makes it 3x of normal, etc. With that said, there is a large group of people that wont play without 3+ homeworlds.

I consider anything smaller than an 80 planet map 'too small', and anything greater than 1 homeworld starts blasphemous. I have beaten difficulty 8 AIs on an 80 planet map with a single homeworld. I would probably not say 'easy', but certainly not impossible.

Champions are kinda weak until you spend some time 'levelling' them. Either through nebulas, or alt- progression (I've been meaning to do a game of that sometime, so I dont know specifically). Generally if you have access to a nebula, you should try to visit it. Until you do a few of them, the champion wont be anything particularly noteworthy.

List of all the ships available? The wiki should have most, if not all of them, mostly up to date: Here. That might be your best source. Remember you can pause the game at any time to look at what is in play and think of how to deal with it.

Examples of difficult stuff? I tend to really like the no-wave-warnings,  cross-planet schizophrenic waves, on diff 8 or so. Dont know when waves are coming, where waves are coming from, dont know where they are going, and they often decide not to bother attacking and just become threat. Really emphasizes scouting to keep up with the AI. Also, hybrids tend to really muck things up. I think I am the only person to go quite as heavy on the wave modifiers, but others do some crazier stuff with flat difficulty. Usually this doesnt kill me, unless the waves happen to coincide with other major events (which I'm pretty sure keith recently put in code to force more often)

[Aklyon]

Considering 80 planets is the default map size, I would be surprised if it was impossible.

[Winge]

List of all the ships available? The wiki should have most, if not all of them, mostly up to date: Here. That might be your best source. Remember you can pause the game at any time to look at what is in play and think of how to deal with it.

You can also get more up to date info by pressing F1 to cycle through all ships by mark (pause is highly encouraged here).  Note that this shows EVERY ship in the game, so there may be a few Fallen Spire "spoilers" there.  It does not matter whether or not you have the options enabled as well--it is almost certain that you will not see every single ship in the game.

[Aklyon]

Also theres probably a Showdown device "spoiler" in the F1 menu as well.

[Draco18s]

Multiple homeworlds is actually slightly better than the same number of humans, unit cap wise.

Two players get between them:
2 caps of fighters, frigates, bombers
1 cap of chosen bonus unit A
1 cap of chosen bonus unit B

One player with two homeworlds gets:
2 caps of fighters, frigates, bombers
2 cap of chosen bonus unit A
2 cap of chosen bonus unit B

OTOH, two players means better micro, as they can each be dealing with separate problems in real time.

[tadrinth]

You should be setting up whipping boy planets on chokepoints such that CPAs are forced to fight through your defenses to get to your homeworld, then gate raiding to send waves into those defenses. 

Each whipping boy should have at least a quarter of a cap of each of your Mark I turrets (not counting support turrets like gravity/tachyon), plus a pile of mines. 

If you're doing that and Diff 8 is still kicking your butt, I'd probably check your settings; what AI types are you up against?  What's making you lose planets?  How high is the AIP? Are there some specific ship types that are clobbering your defenses?

[Napivo]

Thanks everyone for your input... this helps a lot.

I think that having multiple home words makes the game easier as you unlock more ship types and thus get a lot more ships to start with. something like

Homeworlds * (Homeworlds + Ship cap)

[ZaneWolfe]

It can make some parts of the game easier. Noticeably the early parts. However your doubled caps eventually stop mattering to the AI because they will ALWAYS be able to get more, while you cap out in the end. Still, I prefer my 2 HW start personally. It gives me 2 major units of my choice, which I make sure will work with my plan for that game. They almost always make up the core of my strategy, unless I get a random unlock that could possibly change everything for me. Such a thing is incredibly rare, because eventually I get my beloved FS fleet and they rarely need backup. >D

[Draco18s]

I can't Multihomeworld.  It makes my computer cry.

[Bognor]

Does there exist a list of all ships available in the game.... I mean online.

You might find my spreadsheet helpful: here.

I haven't updated it since the recent buffs to golems and spirecraft, but it's good for comparing fleetships, starships, and turrets.

[Vinraith]

To be honest, I've always looked at multi-homeworld starts as a sort of defacto cheating, much like cranking up your handicap or turning off waves.

[keith.lamothe]

2 HWs is relatively balanced.  3 is so-so.  4+ is pretty much just straight advantage. 8+ is a very different game, and I don't really even try to balance it.  It's still challenging (generally), but different.

Multiplayer is more balanced, but even there 3 players cooperating efficiently can stomp challenges that a single player might have trouble winning at all.  But in MP people are generally more interested in having fun together than they are in fine balance.  The difference in coordination often dwarfs the mechanical differences (sometimes in the favor of the players, sometimes not).

[ZaneWolfe]

I can't Multihomeworld.  It makes my computer cry.

Ultra Low caps might help.

[Draco18s]

I can't Multihomeworld.  It makes my computer cry.

Ultra Low caps might help.

Only if I'm solo.  If I'm teaming up with other humans, that alone is enough to make ultra low caps (eventually) drop the simulation down below 100%