What happens if you don't get the (AIP) memo?

[Hearteater]

Scouts are good for that.  Poor man's anti-snipe.

[chemical_art]

Working on this with an X map now.

To those who accussed of saying superforts in less then 2 hours, I'm sorry. I got two up after hiding under a choke with behind 10 planets for a total of 5 hours.

This game will be far create the largest choke, ever, in my game. So far the costs are running over 50 billion M+ C


I'm also in the works for the largest mass casualty AI command station sweep ever, of over 20 within 10 minutes. In other words, I'm going to take out one side of an X map "spoke" with 120 maps, in one glorious heavy starship sweep.

[LordSloth]

I finally found my advanced starship constructor, and after that a few short hops to a knowledge archive and one homeworld.

Unfortunately, I just realized I don't have cheats enabled, and I have CSGs on. I can't try taking out a the homeworld quite yet, despite the territory I've been grabbing. I'll have to reivse my plan here.

I had intendended to pop one homeworld, while not even having a good guess to the other one quite yet, then see about pushing around the rest of the forces. Unfortunately it looks like I'll actually have to do more scouting. Even with lane clearing, my mk3 scouts don't get too far, and I've only found two (and taken one) ARS.

Now I have to consider whether I can actually hold the starship constructor, and maybe go for the advanced factory and mark iv scout first.

I'm not real eager to grab the advanced factory. No longer just because I'm facing so many AIs, but the constant stream of special forces Maws tend to render my fleetships irrelevant if they're not supported by starships that I've already unlocked. I mean, maybe bombers fleetships would be sufficent, what with the fortresses as well. Fortunately, I've got a thief setup riot starship, which has been instrumental in salvaging my swallowed fleet. Pull 'em right back to my miniforts and set them free.

Surprisingly I can't remember seeing even a single arachnid guard post. In fact, the logs show I've killed exactly one. On the other hand, I've killed at least 450 Spire Maws of various marks. I expect that number to start climbing very rapidly, so I'm a bit skeptical of tossing any knowledge at short-range fleetships without the right multiplier. I've also faced about one thousand teleporting leeeches. This is probably contributing greatly to my "it's so much easier to leave my fleet at home" mindset. I only bring the fleet out to counter fleet, and after that I can take my time countering and not even fleeing the patrol, just going standby.

So tomorrow I decide on my plans and start kicking up the AI progress while my MKIV scout looks for those ARS. I hope to finish up this game before Friday, so I can reserve Friday for the Eador remake, and update to the latest beta of AI War for a weekend co-op session. I'm probably just going to end up ramping up the AI rather than trying to knock out half the AI equation, unless my scouts get lucky soon.

[Kahuna]

What is an "AIP memo"?

[Faulty Logic]

What is an "AIP memo"?

The memo that says AIP is bad and you should try to minimize it.

I may do this once I finish my current game.

[LordSloth]

It doesn't look like I'm as far along the route to my own death as I planned. Ten hours, fifty minutes, 339 total AIP,  279 effective.

I would have sworn things were more difficult. It must have to do with the absence of Spire Civilians, where I kill systems without (immediately) grabbing their knowledge or resources, and have about five-seven hours before they pay me back. That, or all the other balance tweaks (and starships being awesome) adding up into less pain. Or me making certain to neuter anything on account of eyes anyways. I'm certain postponing neutering of systems was a bad habit of mine.

Some suggestions of low to middling priority, which I think I'll toss up on the mantis after I finish this game. Some of them might already be there, and shot down/discussed even.

• Stack Flagships in the system list. I think I've seen this one in the past.
• Add the starship equivalent of "Mobile Military" to the galaxy search. With build times being what they are, and cloaking allowing for starships to be constantly useful, it is easy to look track of the odd starship or two, and this would be mildly helpful.
• Make the Guard Post (non-wormhole variant) icons larger and higher priority, and possibly make them more visually distinct in style. As it is now, when I zoom out, they just fade out behind everything else. I might just not recognize them because I don't see them at icon level that often. However, they're even more important than most guardians now, and to some extent the barracks sitting next door. This introduces a couple unnecessary right-clicks on the taskbar to the right to track down where everything is, and I've found myself misclicking the proper target more than once, but I can blame that in part due to a new mouse I'm not entirely used to.
• If and only if advanced starship constructors are here to stay, then adding them to the objectives list right alongside advanced factories would be nice.

I've got my Mk IV advanced factory, and I'm finding Bomber Fleetships extermely helpful despite my early misgivings... I still almost always lead with my starships, however. I haven't run across any 1000+  reinforcement systems yet thanks to my regime of brutality, and enough neutering to make a veterinarian wince. I'm slowly working my way to that advanced starship constructor, but not out of difficulty as much as sweeping systems clear with a wider variety of starships, and generally only bringing in my fleet to kill runners, clear up buildup, etc. Doesn't hurt that I'm not spending much on wave defense either.

My scout has explored the entire galaxy, I'm probably going to grab the sniper, leech starship, beam starship fabricators and the advanced starship constructor before pushing out to the ARS and finally the homeworlds. I should probably clear my backwaters soon, but i've got to figure out where to put my new whipping boy, since the nice little bottleneck I have is littered with fabricators, it'll take more careful thought than I'm prepared to give at one in the morning.

[Zeyi]

Started mine a few days ago, X map, quickly took my 'sector' since then progress has been slow but steady... fireflies are.. OP? Can just send them to neuter everything and clean up frigates with bombers afterwards. My chokepoint is totally locked down thanks to the Zenith trader (not sure if that counted as a super weapon?). However the biggest problem so far is counter attack guard posts as there have been a few planets with THREE of them. Makes for very interesting attacks when the AIP is high 

Up against neinzul youngster and vicious raider AI type. I'll post some screenshots but they're a little boring as I'm playing this challenge in spare moments at work (think netflix mode with the fireflies ) so I have many graphical settings turned off and it windowed to a very small size but never the less here are some interesting ones.

Basically I triggered a SF alarm and 10k SF immediately beelined my chokepoint however i set fireflies to flood into the systems approaching my chokepoint thinking I'll cut them down a bit on the way.. oh no, the fireflies literally tore them up, destroying everything in minutes. Love these ships but that seems far too convenient and easy.

I tend to play very high AIP games anyway (fallen spire campaign though) but this is quite adifferent experience as it's been quite a while since I played with spirecraft and golems off.

[Kahuna]

"Golem on a stick" = ?

[Zeyi]

"Golem on a stick" = ?

I think it refers to the AI's undivided attention of chasing down a golem if it leaves a system and following it wherever it goes whether or not they have any chance of killing it.

[Hearteater]

Exactly correct.

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, maybe the golem-chasing exos need to be more... purpose built

And interesting on the fireflies; I'd seen people enjoying playing with them but they were still losing games so I figured it wasn't too bad.  Maybe an adjustment is necessary.

And yea, those Bomber Starships are nice; the mobility combined with the punch and the durability can take out nasty stuff faster than the usual stuff can (Raids are faster, but are more limited in what they can kill outside-an-ff before dying in my experience).  I've found even the mkIVs sadly susceptiple to dying on those charges, though, despite having very high HP (just with a cap of 2 vs the spire/zenith cap of 1).

[Toranth]

And interesting on the fireflies; I'd seen people enjoying playing with them but they were still losing games so I figured it wasn't too bad.  Maybe an adjustment is necessary.

I've found Fireflies to be a cross between Autobombs and Teleport Raiders.  Cheap, fast moving, high numbers, cheap, weak attack, and do damage to things around them as they die.
Aka, they convert resources into damage as a stream.  More useful against Missile Frigates than Autobombs.
However, they are not very good against Mk IV and Mk V stuff, I'm finding.  I tried setting up a 20 space dock feed into an AI HW to clean out the reserves.  It didn't work too well.

What's the famage formula for them dying, anyway?  It looks like they get BP equal to damage dealt, and on death damage is something like MIN ( BP/10 , 5 * per shot damage ), but it is surprisingly difficult to measure exactly.

[keith.lamothe]

What's the famage formula for them dying, anyway?  It looks like they get BP equal to damage dealt, and on death damage is something like MIN ( BP/10 , 5 * per shot damage ), but it is surprisingly difficult to measure exactly.

Build points is equal to actual damage dealt, yes.

When it blows up, it hits up to 20 targets with:

(normal_attack_damage / 4) * (build_points / normal_attack_power)

but that build-point multiplier is always at least 1 and at most 20.

[RCIX]

So after savescumming away a blindside hybrid assault, this is the current state of my *actual* brute force game

http://i.imgur.com/aL2LLwa.jpg

And i've triggered some viral swarmers on my next planet. -.- i hate those

[keith.lamothe]

Viral Swarmers are easy if you're prepared to kill them from range.  And even if not they are _nothing_ compared to their original stats.  Those... those could cause CPU trauma.  During one of my tests I popped a cluster and it quickly devoured the ships next to it before going through (as a much bigger mass) a wormhole and heading to a much juicier blob.  It was as if the galaxy held its breath, the human/AI war fading into the background, waiting to see if the blob would be killed before reaching the target and quickly exceeding the RAM addressing capacity.