haven't played for a while, so going through the new stuff was pretty fun.
hacking is a great change. the acquisition of new fleet ships has always felt samey. on one hand, the game intentionally doesn't involve enough micro to allow substantially different uses for most fleet ships. most ships are probably just gonna go in the fleetball, and the ones that don't have historically sucked (teleport battle stations, looking at you). on the other hand, acquiring new fleetships through an ars didn't promote any strategic choices either, since you had no control over what you got. there wasn't any way to counter an AI bonus ship or fill a hole in your fleet. since there weren't many ways for fleet ship unlocks to actually make a difference in player actions, in either micro or macro, it was hard to care about the process on a level deeper than i just want more ships to throw at things.
and now i have some input on the process. this direction is where the game needed to go.
the other thing i've learned is that it's far better to deny the AI shieldbearers than it is to take them yourself (at least, if you took protector starship as your bonus ship).
core turret controllers: really cool as well. i suspect lots of things have been written about that elusive defense-in-depth, but my spin on the whole thing is that seeing two fabs per planet is pretty common now. taking a planet just for a fab was almost universally a terrible idea before, but for two? And you can also consider hacking them now. We're gonna want to look at turret knowledge costs once the core turret controller implementation is settled, however. And miniforts. Miniforts are really terrible now (very little damage for the energy cost of a full cap of core turrets? that's a joke), and should probably get removed or reimagined now that defense placements aren't a zero-sum game.
and the showdown. oh man, the showdown.
ok, so my getting-back-into-it game was 7/7 with only VotM and AS on, and AS was only because I couldn't remember if I'd tried all the new fleetships it had; champions were off. realistic map, bonus ship was protector starship. protectors are awesome, by the way. turned hunter and showdown on.
once I scouted and saw a whole bunch more fabs on the map, and realized how hacking worked, I thought I would do something different. I'd spend my knowledge primarily on starships, not fleetships. i'd capture more territory than I'm used to, use the new core turrets to defend it, run around with a starship fleet, and fill in the gaps with core fleetships and/or picking a couple decent choices from hacking.
that worked out pretty well in the main game. The hunter plot was a small roadbump, although that was primarily due to protector starships. Once I saw I could just load my prots up with the anti-energy module... as it turns out, 12 anti-energy modules is enough to render at least a mk. i hunter/killer helpless. I had more trouble with the train of 40 artillery guardians that the special forces kept throwing at me; no idea why it thought they were so important. I nearly lost when I tried hacking two fabs at once. The actual hacking part went well, and then even though my hacking progress ended up below -100 the hack was over, so I thought I was safe. Nope. It got one last wild roll off at the new hacking progress level, and that wild roll was a threatfleet of 4.5k mk. iii ships (aip was at around 100-something, I hadn't hit mk. ii yet) that proceeded to nearly obliterate me.
and then, once I rebuilt, I started the showdown.
the waves were fairly hard. I was relying primarily on core turrets (I had basic, laser, missile, sniper) and fortresses for defense. then it turned out that I probably should've unlocked more things after all, so I dumped the rest of my knowledge into more forcefields and heavy beam IIs. Defenses at any particular system were strong enough to hold off any one wave, but it took a few savescums to learn that if the threatfleet carriers or exos combined with wave that system was lost unless I dumped warheads and used my fleet well. One particular planet got hammered by 3k ships a couple times... it took savescums to hold onto it. Mobilizing my fleet was hampered by the last showdown device planet not being connected to the rest of my empire in any way.
but eventually I made it through. and then I saw the GSC.
I don't think my game, in its current state, is winnable. I can't fight that thing. I knew it would be a terrible idea, but I tried. I ambushed it with my fleet as it exited a wormhole. 30 seconds later, my fleet was gone and it was down to 90% health. The highest level bomber unlock I have is mk. ii. I can't refleet fast enough, esp. with a starship-heavy composition (a ridiculously harmful mistake, since they all get one-shotted anyways. RIP my core zenith starship).
Here is the only way I could win, with my current save. I could go back to just after clearing the waves (it actually took a while for me to notice where the GSC was, since who's gonna look at a planet to inspect a threat display of 1? maybe I should switch to firepower display rofl, but then I won't know what the numbers mean). I could take my raid ships, and clear a whole swath of AI planets that now have nothing on them. I could mass-produce science ships and send them to all those planets, and simultaneously start colonizing in a line towards the AI homeworld so I have supply. Then I could use my new knowledge to get mk. iii/iv bombers, basic turrets mk. ii/iii (no point concentrating those into mk. v turrets when their effective hp is 1), maybe other things if I have the opportunity. Then I could take all that, start laying down a maginot line of turrets at the exit to a wormhole, and hope I have the cash to build it fast enough.
I could do all that, and I'd probably only get it to 50% before it wipes everything I have, and I'd be screwed anyways. It's not even worth my time to try. And even if I did take down the first, I probably couldn't refleet in time for the second.
If I wanted to win this, I can either roll back hours & get all my knowledge back & plan it out from what is effectively game start, or I can start a new game and turn on a superweapon. Could probably take it with a single artillery golem if I pop out of a wormhole, take a shot, go back through wormhole before the counterattack hits. Man, though, this thing is just way too strong for vanilla ships. For a minute I thought I could save myself with tachyon hacking, but then I realized it wasn't the same effect as planetary cloaker, and your ships would uncloak if they fired.
so yeah, showdown beat me, and I'm not sure whether to be annoyed at that. or maybe I'm just bad, rofl. those are my thoughts.
