Deadly AI war?

[Ktoff]

Hey Forum,

so it has been quite some time since I last played a round of AI war. But last night I started the game (now Version 5) again with two 7.0 Random easy/moderate AIs to get into the game and get a feel for this Version. I start buildung up my fleet (loop on Mk I and some MkII fleet ships) and do some scouting before choosing my first planet (not wanting to alert high level planets too early. Just as I get ready to attack my first planet, two waves are anounced of roughly 200-300 ships each, so I wait, upgrade my turrets a bit (around 20 in total, quite few) and continue to fill my ship cap (fleet of ~300-400 ships). The wave comes and has some Neinzul tigers in it which ignore my fleet fly straight to my home base and annihilate it while I am trying to shoot them down (the Starships didn't't help either).

Game over in 20 minutes. WTF? Did the game get harder or did I miss some basic rules about the early game?
Cheers,
Ktoff

[x4000]

Neinzul Tigers are a particularly hard first wave to deal with -- the younglings in general are not much threat when you have deep defenses (since they die after a time limit), but in the very early game they are unlucky to be facing off against because they are wicked hard while they do survive. Probably you needed a different kind of turrets, but I can't remember offhand what those guys are weak to.

Welcome back!

[Ktoff]

Thanks!
I'll try again and hope for different AIs. This outcome did surprise me. I usually lost when I overstreched myself or freed a huge glob of ships when not prepeared to deal with them, but this was just nasty buisness :-)

[zoutzakje]

missile frigates are also a hard counter against youngling ships I believe

[keith.lamothe]

As long as you have enough tractor turrets you should be able to lock them down long enough.  If not, try about 50% more tractor capacity than the ships warrant, under a forcefield (such that the tractors are well in range of the wormhole, of course).  If that doesn't work, add some grav turrets under the ff.

If the lockdown is good enough, the tigers will die from self-attrition.  But some mix with actual kill-things turrets and ships would be better

[Ktoff]

Thanks for the tips. I guess I just severly underestimated my need for tractors. I might also start using grav turrets. Can you believe I never tried them?

[keith.lamothe]

I might also start using grav turrets. Can you believe I never tried them?

There's a fairly large number of unit types in the game, even only counting the "always available" types (as opposed to the ARS, Fabricator, and superweapon types).  So it's pretty easy to believe one escaped your notice

Riot Starships (the second tab of the starship constructor) are also pretty good at crowd control, though if you've got 300 tigers already on your homeworld (as opposed to a few hops out) then a single Riot might not be able to stop enough of them; they're better at picking off the engines of a bunch of ships on each planet during a rolling retreat, etc.  They can mount tractors too, though perhaps not a competitive capacity compared to the turrets (the shotguns and ffs are generally just a better deal).

[Coppermantis]

Younglings, tigers in particular (Since they self-attrition fastest) are vulnerable to anything with engine damage or slowdown. Logistics command stations, Grav turrets under forcefield, tractors, Riot starship shotgun/laser/machinegun or taser, etc. If you can hold down them long enough, as others have said, they'll self-attrition and either die or be very weak on escape.

[Ktoff]

I love the riot starships, i usually put only shotguns, no FF in there. But a rolling retreat is not really possible when you have only 1 planet and the tigers pop out the nearest wormhole to your home station :-)

In my earlier games I never dealt with the Neinzul ships... But mostly I forgot that I need LOTS of stoppy things for my homeplanet defense. I foolishly thought that mainly my (almost full) fleet would provide sufficient stopping power

[superking]

upgrade my turrets a bit (around 20 in total, quite few) and continue to fill my ship cap (fleet of ~300-400 ships).

20 MK I turrets = not many turrets

you want at least 100, of various types