I was suddenly struck by lightning

[Haagenti]

Perhaps this is common practice, but was new to me:

When I invade a 1200+ ship planet, this planet often takes a long time to clear. Long and tedious fights, with many casualties on my side, followed by waiting for new replacements. If you don't know what I'm talking about, fight an AI-8 Teleport Turtle.

Then a simple equation struck me:

If a battle between my fleet of 500 ships and an AI cluster of 400 or so takes more than 10 minutes, it is actually cheaper to use a Lightning Missile to win that battle quickly by wiping out most of the enemy.
Yes, it increases the AI by 2, but the AI increases by 1 per 5 minutes anyway. And this does not even take into account that while I'm fighting, all other adjacent planets are already increasing their forces rapidly. So the true number may be more like 7 minutes or so.

And there are not that many battles which take less than 7 minutes to fully resolve (unless you like suffering a lot of casualties).

[darke]

Personally I try to strike the enemy with lightning myself, but I digress.

And yes, this is a rather effective tactic since I'm used to fighting these sort of things with every planet on AI10s, or AI7s since I like the Turtle AI's. This is why there's a bug/suggestion post floating around with me griping about some of the faults of the current missiles. I usually only spend them on expensive to kill targets though. Such as forcefielded points, or just points way out in the middle of nowhere compared to the rest of my guys. Or just being annoying and knocking out the command center/gate then having fun running around dodging enemies as they swarm towards me. (I don't recommend trying this against a IV world though, it can be rather painful.)

The only issue is after a certain point the size of the amount of ships around a single command post is too large to completely knock out with a single lightning missile.

Another use for a Lightning Missile, though the Armoured one this time, is to run it around between all the command points in a sector, it usually bleeds off at least half the ships on each point, and they run for your wormhole. It makes it much easier to assault the command post, and the armoured lightning missile is essentially invulnerable so you don't have to worry about it dying really. About the only use I've found for the things myself so far.

[Haagenti]

Ah! A use for the Armored Missile!

Is the AI fascinated by it to the point where they will completely ignore everything else? That is, like Exoshields, you can park a bunch of ships next to them and they will keep killing the Exoshield even though they are massacred themselves?

[darke]

Ah! A use for the Armored Missile!

Is the AI fascinated by it to the point where they will completely ignore everything else? That is, like Exoshields, you can park a bunch of ships next to them and they will keep killing the Exoshield even though they are massacred themselves?

Doesn't seem to be too fascinated. They will distract themselves from shooting at it to shoot at a normal lightning missile for instance, but you'll normally only pull a fraction of the pack, rather then the entire lot. Something about the huge amount of health seems to attract more bullets for some reason. I blame emergent AI myself, it's all His X-ness' fault for making an AI too smart for it's own good!

Other uses I have for them:

Using them to lead an assault into a world: This way some of the enemy on the other side of the wormhole flood through into your defended planet to be easily slaughtered before you toss your guys through the wormhole. Rather important to reduce the AI wormhole defenses on the other side in F&D since that's where you lose probably half your troops on a world assault, if not more.

Using them to guard a normal lightning missile to my target: I use them to basically lead a lightning missile or two into an enemy planet since often at AI10 the level of defenses around a wormhole will completely obliterate a lightning missile before you can even blink, which isn't all that useful if your target is elsewhere. So if they're already shooting at the armoured lightning missile, only some of them re-target to attack your normal lightning missile when it appears.

If I'm feeling particularly lazy, or the world is a particularly nastily defended III/IV, I'll have two lightning missiles, one to peel off the enemies at the entrance wormhole (and to sit there and distract) another to move to my target area inside the world to peel off a bunch of the defenders (and send them zooming back to attack my forces on the other side of the wormhole), and distract the enemies there whilst I send my lightning missile in to do killing things.

(This post of mine has a couple of gripes about the current problems with one lightning missile being too weak, the other too strong: http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1075.msg7453.html)

Back to the original topic: I do think you're underestimating the cost of lightning missiles in your calulations though, there's a huge energy cost to have a missile base (30k?) then there's an equally large cost to staff it with lots of engineers to crank them out quickly. Then there's the limit of 8 (which in my size games is about the number of command posts I have per world anyway), and the time taken to move them from your missile-building world to wherever your front line is.

The only times I ever use them on a world to obliterate all the command points (as a cheap alternative to a nuke), is when there's a world with something like 3-4k of III or IV ships on it. I run around the world with a couple of armoured missiles in loops around the various control points, then systematically lightning missile each point, defeat the wave of ships that escape (since I usually only kill about 25-50% of them given the side of the groups around each point on such worlds), then take out the command station and run around cleaning up all the turrets left behind.

[Haagenti]

Doesn't seem to be too fascinated. They will distract themselves from shooting at it to shoot at a normal lightning missile for instance, but you'll normally only pull a fraction of the pack, rather then the entire lot. Something about the huge amount of health seems to attract more bullets for some reason.

Perhaps some sort of long-range abuse featuring cruisers or laser turrets is in order here. Seems worth an experiment.

Using them to lead an assault into a world: This way some of the enemy on the other side of the wormhole flood through into your defended planet to be easily slaughtered before you toss your guys through the wormhole. Rather important to reduce the AI wormhole defenses on the other side in F&D since that's where you lose probably half your troops on a world assault, if not more.

I'm still experimenting on breaking enemy wormhole defenses at AI8 in a cost-effective manner. But anything helps there.

Back to the original topic: I do think you're underestimating the cost of lightning missiles in your calculations though, there's a huge energy cost to have a missile base (30k?) then there's an equally large cost to staff it with lots of engineers to crank them out quickly. Then there's the limit of 8 (which in my size games is about the number of command posts I have per world anyway), and the time taken to move them from your missile-building world to wherever your front line is.

I think 40K for the missile base. I have become quite adept at saving energy: I rarely have energy problems once I have a few worlds. With a little bit of management I produce as many as I need, then turn off the silo, and redirect my engineers to production or repair.

And the missiles won't be a complete solution: I'm not planning on using 8 per world. But they are good for outlying posts and cracking heavy enemy defenses. In some cases I may even use them to kill raids.

Now that many of my tricks to keep the AI Progression low are nerfed, speed becomes the essence in this game. Shaving off 15 minutes in conquering a planet, will make conquering the rest easier and faster as well.

BTW: Are you actually winning AI-10 games, or are you just masochistic?

[darke]

Doesn't seem to be too fascinated. They will distract themselves from shooting at it to shoot at a normal lightning missile for instance, but you'll normally only pull a fraction of the pack, rather then the entire lot. Something about the huge amount of health seems to attract more bullets for some reason.

Perhaps some sort of long-range abuse featuring cruisers or laser turrets is in order here. Seems worth an experiment.

Possibly. Though enemy ships really don't seem to care about missiles unless you happen to be moving in range (they shoot) or moving to near a guard-post type thing (some of them move to try to attack your homeworld). I would imagine if there was a bunch of ships attacking a missile near a command point that when you moved your cruiser, etc into range they'd immediately try to attack the ships.

Using them to lead an assault into a world: This way some of the enemy on the other side of the wormhole flood through into your defended planet to be easily slaughtered before you toss your guys through the wormhole. Rather important to reduce the AI wormhole defenses on the other side in F&D since that's where you lose probably half your troops on a world assault, if not more.

I'm still experimenting on breaking enemy wormhole defenses at AI8 in a cost-effective manner. But anything helps there.

A lightning missile or two used to work well there, but I haven't really had a chance to play a game recently now that the turrets have a much higher health. It's possible they'll just shrug off a missile though that really shouldn't be the case for the AI cost.

And the missiles won't be a complete solution: I'm not planning on using 8 per world. But they are good for outlying posts and cracking heavy enemy defenses. In some cases I may even use them to kill raids.

I've been trying to use lightning missiles to take out some of the massive assault waves I get in my AI10/8-start-world games, but the whole timing thing is an issue when your game turns into a quivering lump of lag when 3000+ ships warp into a system and onto the screen you're looking at.

Now that many of my tricks to keep the AI Progression low are nerfed, speed becomes the essence in this game. Shaving off 15 minutes in conquering a planet, will make conquering the rest easier and faster as well.

BTW: Are you actually winning AI-10 games, or are you just masochistic?

A little from column A, a little from column B.

Mostly it's that I've got a quirk where when playing pretty much any game I either want to lose fast, or have a good chance of winning. I tend to dislike being in the situation where I get half way through the game, only to slowly be stalemated.

As a result I'll usually end up playing the first hour or so of game time of a map probably about 15 or 20 times (being essentially wiped out by the AI each time so having to load from a "10 seconds from the start of the game" save with basic stuff built) before I find a particularly good tactic with my combination of ships, or map layout, or just luck sometimes.

On the other hand it does get me into the position where I'm pretty much going to win once I get my planets stabilised and I start to expand. The main issue is once you get past about the half-way point at AI10, the game really turns into a same-old-same-old grindfest (which is expected given that's what His X-ness said way back when I first started playing this mode semi-seriously).

Net result is I usually get to the point of being a handful of planets away from the AI's, and not really wanting to go through yet-another-IV-world-assault like the last three I've already done, but with an extra 10% more ships.

I count about 3 games "won" in the last month or two I've been playing AI10s (though I haven't really had a chance to play since 014 came out, so I'm a little out of practice ). Two of the games I got within 3 planets of the first AI V planet, and the second AI V planet was adjacent to it, then decided I'd won just due to sheer boredom. The third time I took out one AI V planet, and there was a collection of three AI IVs between it and the next AI V, and so I decided I'd won since really just doing the same thing on every planet (including the V) without really having to change my tactics, or really feeling challenged.

This was about the time I made a few griping suggestions around the place about each command point feeling like another because they had all the same pattern of ships, etc, etc, and suggested that maybe the AI might want to try and specialise some points like the way players tend to, or otherwise at the very least just try to give a different mix of ships (even if all the missile/bomber/fighter mix was covered every point), just so it feels a little different.

Anyway, I ramble and should be asleep.

[x4000]

You're playing with a handicap against those 10s if I recall.  Right?

Also, the new version fixes that thing with the armored missile:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1386.0.html

[darke]

You're playing with a handicap against those 10s if I recall.  Right?

No handicaps, I just play with more start worlds (usually 8 because it's easier to defend a large cluster with lots of wormholes then a small one with lots of wormholes) to compensate for my non-existent patience at slow starts.

Also, the new version fixes that thing with the armored missile:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1386.0.html

I'm not quite sure of it's a "fix" or not since it does remove one of the few uses of armoured lightning missiles, but it does make the AI look a little less dumb, so it's not too bad.

[x4000]

Gotcha.