Questions from an old player

[Cyborg]

Hey, here's a question from someone who wants to get back into the game:

How in the bloody hell do you deal with a 7/7 One Way Doormaster/Raid Engine Vicious Exotic/Mad Bomber?

Could you be more specific?

[Arc-3N-4B]

Eh, I've got fallen spire on, 4/10, but I ended up on an X map with a black hole machine with a raid engine mk4 behind it blocking my way out of my cluster.

And then there's the mad bombing exo-waves.

[Draco18s]

Nuke Mk3

[Cyborg]

Eh, I've got fallen spire on, 4/10, but I ended up on an X map with a black hole machine with a raid engine mk4 behind it blocking my way out of my cluster.

And then there's the mad bombing exo-waves.

Wait for a wave, hopefully you have your defense set up like the Kahuna guide describes, and then counterattack. You may want to use raid starships to take down strategic targets (suicide missions) or load up a Transport Mark 2 (the offensive kind) and take your best shot. The nuclear option is there, but I never use it.

[Vinraith]

So I just played and lost a game, 7/7 sledge hammer/stealth master and neinzul cluster bomber/teleport turtle. What killed me was a seemingly endless early game stream of Mk 3 zombies. Any idea where those might have been coming from?

Edit: Ah, I think I figured it out. It's a hacking response, just got the same thing but worse in my new game. How is 500 threat worth of Mk 3 zombies, two waves "hacking response" waves, and a tachyon blanketing a "very low" response to an in-budget hack (as the roll-over says is anticipated)? Is there something I'm not understanding here? I thought the response was supposed to be manageable if you didn't run into the negative. This isn't so much "very low" as "game ending." What am I missing? At present I feel like I just can't hack, for fear of game-ending responses, any clarification of the rules here would be a great help!

[Toranth]

Eh, I've got fallen spire on, 4/10, but I ended up on an X map with a black hole machine with a raid engine mk4 behind it blocking my way out of my cluster.

And then there's the mad bombing exo-waves.

Wait for a wave, hopefully you have your defense set up like the Kahuna guide describes, and then counterattack. You may want to use raid starships to take down strategic targets (suicide missions) or load up a Transport Mark 2 (the offensive kind) and take your best shot. The nuclear option is there, but I never use it.

The BHG/Raid Engine combo is nasty, just because it drives up the AIP so fast.  I'd suggest high mark Raid Starships to kill Raid Engines, and hacking to Sabotage BHGs.  100 points of HaP will give you 8 Sabotages (saving 80 AIP on BHGs).

On the other hand, the Mad Bomber/Vicious Exotic combo is one I've never dealt well with.  When I tried it one game, I got an Artillery Golem popping my Home Command Station about 5 minutes into the game.  And that was enough of that.

[Aklyon]

Vicious Exotic is a very angry AI to deal with on its own, giving it more to play with is not the best of ideas.

[Orelius]

Dual AI types are extremely brutal; it's essentially a few extra points of difficulty with all the bonuses they get 

The main problem with the BHG/raid engine combo is that you have to eat big AIP costs to dislodge unfortunately placed raid engines.  It's not really that bad otherwise; all you have to do is make small suicide fleets to destroy guard posts.  When the planet is weak enough, you can swoop in, destroy the command ship and colonize the planet.  Capturing the BHG ensures that you don't eat the AIP cost of destroying it.  Also, free BHG.

[Bognor]

If it's any help, Raid Starships and Neinzul Battleships are both immune to Black Hole Machines.

One Way Doormaster and Raid Engine are both supposed to spawn extra Data Centres to compensate for the extra AIP hits in destroying their special structures, but I've no idea how that works with duel types.

[Vinraith]

Here's an easy one: Do cleanup drones still have no purpose whatsoever? I was surprised to still see them in the game, since their reason for being was removed years ago.

[Vacuity]

They're still needed for cleaning up AI mines so they don't get rebuilt.  If you're not up against an AI like the Mine Enthusiast, they're useless.

[Vinraith]

They're still needed for cleaning up AI mines so they don't get rebuilt.  If you're not up against an AI like the Mine Enthusiast, they're useless.

I forgot all about mine enthusiasts. That's fair!

[Draco18s]

They're still needed for cleaning up AI mines so they don't get rebuilt.  If you're not up against an AI like the Mine Enthusiast, they're useless.

Last I checked, mines don't get rebuilt by the AI at all because they don't have engineers and rebuilders any more.  Just throw wave after wave of your own men ultracheap units at the problem until the mines reach their kill-count.

[Vinraith]

A couple of times now in my current game I've been hit by ~2000 ship fleets of mark 1 ships (mostly fighters and acid sprayers) when there was virtually no threat on the board, no CPA, no waves, and indeed nothing at all to explain their presence. These fleets seem to just be patrolling around the map, and occasionally spill into my territory en masse. They've been manageable thus far, but I don't understand what's causing them or where they're coming from. Any thoughts?

[TechSY730]

A couple of times now in my current game I've been hit by ~2000 ship fleets of mark 1 ships (mostly fighters and acid sprayers) when there was virtually no threat on the board, no CPA, no waves, and indeed nothing at all to explain their presence. These fleets seem to just be patrolling around the map, and occasionally spill into my territory en masse. They've been manageable thus far, but I don't understand what's causing them or where they're coming from. Any thoughts?

Possibly special forces. They tend to try to stay as a group much more now. It may be that some of your planets are just unfortunately placed so they path through your planets to get to their special forces rally points (special forces guard posts, mostly).

I think Keith has them set up so they will try to avoid doing this (they will try to path around hostile planets), but you may have either given them no choice, or the way around your planet is too long for them. IDK.