Random AI10/8-start-world/80-planets report (started in 201B I think, ended in 201H):
Eventually gave up on my game two planets from the AI pair of home worlds. Game seems beatable, the only issue is that it looks like I'll need around 10k ships per world assault. Whilst this is do-able (I apparently have 20k ships in total in comparison to the enemy's 45k ships), the game doesn't really like me using more then around 6k ships per world and $(smallnum) FPS is rather tedious to play with, with 10k ships plus enemy ships on a world it would be more then a bit choppy.
His X-ness needs to think about how to handle the AI Modifier of "Nuclear Command" and it's interaction with Lightning Missiles.
It certainly makes the game faster to play, though not particularly easier from experience.
As mentioned in other threads the Turtle AI's are relative pansies in comparison to other AI types due to latest upgrades, the only real challenge is making it through the wormhole.
A mistake I made was relying too much on Mark I ships. It's not worth bothering with any of the I mobile ships as a consequence of the game bogging down so much when you do use hordes of them, much better just using your start (plus 8-homeworld) knowledge on II turrets and II ships, and III turrets if you've got any left and start cranking those out.
I found the I turrets are somewhat useful in heavily enemy-trafficed areas, since it doesn't really matter if they die you just rebuild a few dozen more with ctrl-shift-clicks since they're relatively quick to build. All things considered though it'd probably be worth shaving off 30 seconds from the time to build the short/missile/tachyon I turrets since they die relatively quickly (so you don't get to use the resource-free repairs on them), and it would give them a good niche to use when you're trying to recover after an attack before the next wave hits. Toss some of those rather then the II/III's and you have some defense even if the others don't build in time.
Main constraint in the game seems to be Energy. AI level doesn't really matter since they're throwing so much stuff at you already that you never really notice the difference increasing. The only thing you really notice is the II/III level change, and even then you're getting hit with a lot of III stuff before then (such as bombers) that it's also a relatively small defensive adjustment.
Starships at this level are relatively worthless. Their munitions booster affect is tiny in comparison to the size of the fleet they need to keep them alive. I ended up upgrading all levels of all the starships, but ended up pretty much just building them all and tossing them into my fleets and ignoring them.
One shiptype I did find particularly useful early-ish on was the raid starship, but they really need some cloaking+cloak boosting so you can do the proper hit-and-run guerrilla type thing, and like the scout starships they also really need a bit of auto-repair so you can use them more thematically as starships that survive away from "home space".
As much as I'd hate it from the AI perspective, the Leech Starships would probably benefit from cloaking+cloak boosting+auto repair as well. That way you could use the scout/leech/raid starship trio (plus, say, a force of cloaked ships like the space planes and such) as some form of deep-assault setup to take out particularly annoying ion cannons, or data centers and the like. Would give that upgrade tree a more distinct flavour like the other starship upgrade trees have.
Random other notes:
Tractor Beam Turret III's take the same amount of time to build as the II's, which seems out of pattern compared to the other turrets.
Lightning Turret build-time: O.o
Fortress takes 4 minutes to build, Lightning Turret I takes 10 minutes. Fortress can make 6*900*21 attack shots in the same time the LT I can make one 400 attack shot, so unless there's something like 300 enemies in range, the fortress is way better value per attack.
Yes the fortress costs a lot more initially to build, but even the LT III's the value is only worth it if there's 100 enemies in range (granted probably the case at that point, but LT III's take 21 minutes to build!), but given you're going to be rebuilding these turrets continually at $(mega_slow) speed it really seems to be not worth the effort.
That's all for now, though I will probably think of other things after I hit send.
