Newbie questions

[Kingwood]

Hi all,


discovered this great game 3 days ago and finally decided to register on the forums after having done some lurking. I'm in the mood to ask a few questions, and hopefully someone is in the right mood to answer them. Unfortunately even after reading the Wiki from top to bottom, left to right and right to left not all of them were answered.

So...

1. Powering down units - the Wiki mentions pressing the button 'K', but even after ever so gently pressing and stroking it a few times I don't know whether it does anything, as there's no visual feedback in-game. How do I know whether a unit is powered down or not? And what key binding do I have to change if the 'K' on my keyboard refuses to cooperate further? I couldn't find it in the settings.

2. AIP increase - the Wiki mentions that AIP increase for killing those defenseless AI fleet command stations should be 10 AIP. I am however very sure that I just saw a 15 AIP increase for killing them. Was this changed recently or did I accidentally touch a setting somewhere inappropriately?

3. Youngling Regeneration Chamber - how do I stop those Younglings from breaking off in the middle of a glorious firefight and heading back to the system next door for a small vacation? Related, how do I set a rally point for the chamber? It seems a bit micromanagey and I'm sure someone can show me how the smart people do it. As it is right now, I probably won't use Younglings again except as suicide bombers (and not building a vacation resort for them either).

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4. Steam related - I bought the bundle from Gamersgate but would like to add them to my list of scalding water games. Two expansions are griefing me and refuse to be added (Ancient Shadows) or don't have a serial key at all (Vengeance of the machine). I actually sent an email to the honorable persons working at Arcengames asking for the possibility of receiving a Steam key for these two. Dear Mr. Developer, would it be possible? The Gamersgate files work fine, I just like having games in my Steam list. If not, do not worry and do not lose sleep. It will be fine.


Thank you in advance for reading my questions, for thinking about them very deeply and carefully and for answering them very profusely and elaborately.

[The Hunter]

Welcome to the forums!

Powering down units - the Wiki mentions pressing the button 'K', but even after ever so gently pressing and stroking it a few times I don't know whether it does anything, as there's no visual feedback in-game. How do I know whether a unit is powered down or not? And what key binding do I have to change if the 'K' on my keyboard refuses to cooperate further? I couldn't find it in the settings.

Not sure about hotkeys(I barely use them), but you can try pause-like button near the bottom left of the screen, which does same thing. Also powered down units look darker than normal ones.

AIP increase - the Wiki mentions that AIP increase for killing those defenseless AI fleet command stations should be 10 AIP. I am however very sure that I just saw a 15 AIP increase for killing them. Was this changed recently or did I accidentally touch a setting somewhere inappropriately?

The 5 increase is from warp gate, which dies together with station.

Youngling Regeneration Chamber - how do I stop those Younglings from breaking off in the middle of a glorious firefight and heading back to the system next door for a small vacation?

Scrap chambers, there's really no need to use them and they are more harmful in situation of yours, younglings are cheap enough to not worry about them decaying. I really hope chambers will be buffed/made more useful in future updates though.
Btw since you got younglings, get MCDs too, then you can kite AI while pumping out infinite younglings. Its fun.

[Kingwood]

Just tested it again and it was 15 AIP for the Command Station and 5 AIP for the Warp gate.

What is an MCD?

[Shrugging Khan]

Yar. It's definetly 15+5 AIP for the full package.

And Hunter probably meant an MSD. Mobile Space Dock.

[Diazo]

Welcome! 

Could you link the pages on the wiki where you found this info? I have access and can tweak them to make them clearer.

Having said that:

1) Powering down.
Powered down units have two indicators that they are powered down. First, their icon in close-zoom is grayed out. Second, the Pause button in the bottom left corner will show a Forward arrow. So that button shows what state clicking the button will move the unit too. Also be aware in a multi-select that if some units are powered down and some are not, the button will show a Pause icon and all selected units will become powered down with the ones already powered down staying powered down. Clicking the button (now showing a Forward arrow) will power up all units at this point.

Powering down has 3 effects:
Units under construction: Powering down a unit under construction pauses construction and stops consuming resources. This is standard practice when building the big units to allow other units to be rebuilt when needed.
Space Docks (and other construtors): Stops the unit from building units. Note that current unit under construction is paused. So if you lose your fighters and need to crash build them back up (hello bomber wave), you can pause the Starship constructor and that Spire Starship under construction at 75% will stay at  75% without consuming resources until you unpause the Starship constructor. Of course, if you need metal, you can cancel the Spire Starship construction and be refunded the 75% of the metal that has already been consumed, but then you are starting from 0% when you go to build the Spire Starship again.
Stops units from firing: Vital to pretty much every strategy involving cloaking, a powered down unit will not fire under any circumstances. When a unit fires, it loses its cloak for 8 seconds so most units will never recloak while they are engaged as most units fire faster then this. Note this applies to both a unit's own cloak and the cloak granted by a Cloaker Starship.

2) AIP increase.
I just checked an a command station kill is 15 AIP (+5 for the warp gate). Simply an issue of the wiki being out of date. (I could have sworn I remember AIP costs for command station kills scaling with difficulty, but it is a flat 15 in the current version.)

3) Regen chamber.
Ehh, this is an oddball. It is known that this unit currently has iffy mechanics and there are requests out there to modify its behavior. I don't use them myself so I can't really comment.

4) Steam:
I'm not sure what you mean by scalding water but on my install only the base game and the first expansion are steam registered. All the other expansions I downloaded directly and just installed them to the game's directly in Steam and everything works as expected.

Have fun stomping the AI, it needs it. 

D.

[Aklyon]

At somepoint I've ended up with all of my expansions showing up if I look at steam-registered keys, so that might just be how your install works, diazo.

[Draco18s]

At somepoint I've ended up with all of my expansions showing up if I look at steam-registered keys, so that might just be how your install works, diazo.

I'll just say that my game is probably even more bizarrely installed.

[tadrinth]

What were you trying to power down? The icon should grey out when it's powered down, halting production and/or attacks. There are a few units that don't power down, like decloakers. 

Most people don't bother with Regen chambers and just rebuild the Younglings as they die.  They're very cheap to rebuild.  This is partly because the regen chambers are not particularly configurable; younglings will only enter them at low health and automatically go into FRD mode upon exiting.  You can use them to keep a pile of younglings on a planet to defend it for long periods. 

[Kingwood]

Welcome! 

Thanks, kind Sir!

Could you link the pages on the wiki where you found this info? I have access and can tweak them to make them clearer.

It was like a first date, so I was all over the Wiki. I can't remember the page, but if I see it again I'll send you a PM.

3) Regen chamber.
Ehh, this is an oddball. It is known that this unit currently has iffy mechanics and there are requests out there to modify its behavior. I don't use them myself so I can't really comment.

Okay, it wasn't just clumsy me then. I did notice the dev being awesomely active and pushing out updates every few days. Any chance this might be changed soon? As a new player, I really have to say that using Regen chambers with Younglings is quite annoying. At the moment, I've settled on a weird tactic of building a few space docks directly on a wormhole to a fortified planet and having them warp in automatically. They're really like cheap suicide bombers.

4) Steam:
I'm not sure what you mean by scalding water but on my install only the base game and the first expansion are steam registered. All the other expansions I downloaded directly and just installed them to the game's directly in Steam and everything works as expected.

Have fun stomping the AI, it needs it. 

D.

Scalding water is just another way of saying 'Steam' when I'm bored.


Thank you for your answers. They were immensely helpful.


One more question:

I ran into a Mad Bomber/Shield Ninny AI who used (lots of) Spire Maws and Zenith Bombards among other things. I attempted an ARS hack which ran for 10 minutes and spawned incredible amounts of Mk III versions of these (when I had Mk II bombers as the only unlocked ship type). I had to use lightning warheads at some point but it just wasn't enough and I died in a not so glorious battle. How would I handle this AI and these ships?

[vigilo confido]

Bring in all your starships and just do not do a hack very early on.


I also highly recommend downloading all the beta updates if you have not. You should also see maws on higher difficulties. They tend to swallow as many ships as possible then run deep into AI territory. Then rinse and repeat.

[Diazo]

Glad to help.

One more question:

I ran into a Mad Bomber/Shield Ninny AI who used (lots of) Spire Maws and Zenith Bombards among other things. I attempted an ARS hack which ran for 10 minutes and spawned incredible amounts of Mk III versions of these (when I had Mk II bombers as the only unlocked ship type). I had to use lightning warheads at some point but it just wasn't enough and I died in a not so glorious battle. How would I handle this AI and these ships?

Ouch.

First, which hack was this and were you going into a negative hack balance?

Each hack gets a progressively nastier response and if your hack balance goes negative the AI can start throwing a truly stupid amount of ships into your face.

Second, on the stuff the AI has, while it largely depends on your game layout, my first thoughts are:

Mad Bomber: Unlock fighters.
Shield Ninny: Unlock bombers, or maybe Raid Starships as they are FF immune.
Spire Maws: Use starships
Zenith Bombard: Ouch. Get ready to lose units as this one does not have a method to be easily countered. Grab units with bonuses against them, such as bombers, and do your best to get them in range fast. Or sneak them in with cloaking if you are up against a really stubborn road block maybe?

You won't have enough knowledge to pursue all these options so you are going to have to take a look at your game's map layout and your current strategic situation and decide how you want to proceed.

D.

[Kingwood]

It was my first hack attempt and I had 62 AIP when I started it. The response was quite surprising, to be honest. Then it got amusing. Every time the AI had around 300 spawned ships in the system, they would jump in and attempt to attack my command station. I think my fleet and the station died after the fifth wave. Zenith bombards do stupid amounts of damage at range. It didn't help that my ships were being swallowed and digested also.

I guess the next time I'll either have to just jump my fleet in and have them covered with Spirecraft Shieldbearers or build up way more defenses.

[Diazo]

First hack at 62 AIP? Sounds like you had only conquered 2 or 3 systems by then. That is early to start hacking. The first hack is supposed to be 'easy', but that easy is balanced against a mid to late game fleet.

The number of ships does not sound wildly out of line either. Add in the fact that it was two of the nastier ship types and that adds up to pain.

One unit I want to make sure you are aware of is the Mobile Builder. With this you can build turrets in the system before you start the hack without capturing the system from the AI. It does require supply however so it has to be adjacent to one of your own systems for this to work.

For reference, in my current game I am setting up for my first hack. I have one more system to capture first, taking my empire to 6 controlled systems. That is a significantly larger fleet to defend my hack attempt with then what you have and I have an adjacent system to build the turrets to help out.

Good luck in your fight.

D.

[tadrinth]

Force Fields (though not force field modules) are immune to the Zenith Bombard ammo type.  Kahuna mentioned in another thread (well, I think it was him anyway) that he will cover all his turrets with forcefields to force zombards to close, then power down the force fields to let the turrets do full damage to the zombards. 

Is that a Mad Bomber as AI 1 and a Shield Ninny as AI 2, or a Mad Bomber with a Shield Ninny secondary type?  The latter would be very rough. 

Mad Bomber sends double-size waves and tends to use Bomber Starships.  Ergo, you'll probably want to unlock turrets, mines, and MilSpec command stations more aggressively than you usually would. Fortresses will be less useful than usual, due to their penalty against polycrystal.  Turrets with polycrystal bonuses will be extra-useful.

Bombers, Bomber Starships, and Plasma Siege starships will all be useful against forcefields. Raid Starships are force field immune if you need to snipe something annoying under a forcefield.  If you can get them, Zenith Devastators and Siege Engines are also good.  Infiltrators and Eyebots are immune to force fields. 

Assuming they're available, Neinzul Enclave starships are cheap to build and fantastic force multipliers. Great for hacking, offense, defense, you name it.  Just keep them out of the way, they have low health but compensate with radar dampening.  Bring Mark I and II along and your hack will probably go a bit better. Flagships have radar dampening as well, which should protect them against Bombards.

Zenith bombards do very large amounts of damage, but they have a 30s reload time.  Bait them with Neinzul Enclave Starship drones, fighters, or younglings (ie disposable chaff), then chase them down with something fast, like your younglings. 

You probably shouldn't need to use one-shot weapons like martyrs, shieldbearers, and warheads for your first hack, or really most of your hacks. 

If you're using the latest beta update, you can build 48 of each basic turret type on your homeworld, then another 48 of each on the hack world if you have supply there.  If you haven't already done that, it would probably help.

[The Hunter]

And Hunter probably meant an MSD. Mobile Space Dock.

Whoops, yes indeed. I keep thinking of them as of "Mobile Construction Dock" for some reason... But yeah, those are basically mobile version of standard docks that can repair stuff, build stuff alot faster, doesnt need engis, and also cloaked while not building/repairing. Perfect for neinzul offense.

Make a cap of those, power them down and set it to loop-build all your neinzul(Loop build is switched on by an arrow button in bottom left, near power down one). Then kill tachion and send MSDs to AI system's outer ring(Works well together with neinzul champ, if you play with champions on). Then set MSDs to FRD, power them up and circle around the system's outer ring, power them down if AI gets too close to MSDs. Will not work against heavily defended planets though unless you have done tons of neinzul unlocks including tigers and fireflies. Also be wary of AI Eyes.