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

[RCIX]

He has 13k knowledge, surely there's something he could unlock :<

[Winge]

He's probably built all of them already.

I don't have Mk III forts yet, but those would be overkill at this point.  Right now, I need offense more than defense.  I might pull out a few more Starship unlocks, as I head for the Zombard ARS.

I still have ~300 Merc Etherjets left before I completely run out of money sinks 

[keith.lamothe]

(...) overkill

(...) before I completely run out of money sinks 

1) Select all military ships.
2) Tab to galaxy map.
3) V+right-click AI homeworld.
4) Select all docks/starship-constructors doing loop build for unit replacement
5) Tab to galaxy map.
6) V+right-click AI homeworld.
7) Wait.
Money not a problem.


9) If money becomes a problem, repeat with other AI homeworld.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Keith, you just described how all Starcraft 2 competitive play works below master league.

1) Make a maxed out army
2) attack-move your opponent's base
3) Replace the army you just lost

[Zeyurn]

Okay, our glorious campaign has come to an end, so now is the time for the final barrage of screenshots!

Hopefully some people were entertained by our road to victory through blood, sweat, and tears.

I only made one serious mistake this campaign, and it was right near the end here when I didn't pay attention to my forces and a swarm of special forces came out of the homeworld along with the strategic reserve and annihilated literally my entire fleet.  (I pulled it back a sector at 20% strength and didn't notice when my friend retreated even further and the AI swept through to annihilate what I had left.  Oops.  And right after I finished all the mercs too.)

Any questions, commentary welcome, and here comes the final screens.

The first two screens actually are unrelated to the campaign except that they happened in it, I believe this should be an illegal Counterattack location for the AI but there it was.

[Zeyurn]

More screens!

[Zeyurn]

And now we end with a display bug and some amusement factor.

[Zeyi]

Pretty much got everything locked down now, full cap of mercs, turrets, starships (inc MKIV). Just killed a 16k SF fleet and neutering planets ready to just kill as many as possible in one fell swoop.

[keith.lamothe]

Hopefully some people were entertained by our road to victory through blood, sweat, and tears.

Haha, yea, it was quite entertaining   Feel free to keep us posted on your trio's future exploits (the AAR forum is good for that), doesn't have to be long posts or whatever but it does help for me to be able to see folks' play experiences for balance and other feedback purposes, and generally there's some good laughs to be had.

I only made one serious mistake this campaign, and it was right near the end here when I didn't pay attention to my forces and a swarm of special forces came out of the homeworld along with the strategic reserve and annihilated literally my entire fleet.  (I pulled it back a sector at 20% strength and didn't notice when my friend retreated even further and the AI swept through to annihilate what I had left.  Oops.  And right after I finished all the mercs too.)

Glad to hear the AI got a little of its own back before the end

On the illegal-counterattack thing, remember that if the counterattack post has _no_ legal targets it defaults to the old behavior.  From the look of it, there were no human planets in the post's range from any AI warp gates.

On the objectives bug listing the "First AI Home...", pretty funny.  The AI may be dead, but the bugs live on.

Congratulations on the victory; winning with over 3000 positive AIP (albeit tempered by a ton of reduction) is normally the domain of Fallen Spire, but you did it with no superweapons at all

[keith.lamothe]

Pretty much got everything locked down now, full cap of mercs, turrets, starships (inc MKIV). Just killed a 16k SF fleet and neutering planets ready to just kill as many as possible in one fell swoop.

Yea, I hope that AI has an exit strategy, it's not looking good for it

[Zeyi]

Pretty much got everything locked down now, full cap of mercs, turrets, starships (inc MKIV). Just killed a 16k SF fleet and neutering planets ready to just kill as many as possible in one fell swoop.

Yea, I hope that AI has an exit strategy, it's not looking good for it

Games like this make me think it'd be interesting to see an AI type that actively takes back and recolonises planets. Maybe even reconstructing guardposts after periods of time. Although we might see some never ending stalemate games, which is why i'd never suggest it as a standard feature

Interesting I came accross something I've not seen before in this game, the AI bought a "One Shot Raid Engine" from the zenith trader - 2 hops from my choke point. I spotted it and set it off in a controlled manner, what I however didn't realise is that the AI felt like really shelling out that day because it had built another OS raid engine on an adjacent planet to the first one (I'm not sure when as I wasn't monitoring this particular planet) anyhow 2 raid engines at 700+ AIP almost had hilarious consequences.

[Zeyurn]

Hopefully some people were entertained by our road to victory through blood, sweat, and tears.

Haha, yea, it was quite entertaining   Feel free to keep us posted on your trio's future exploits (the AAR forum is good for that), doesn't have to be long posts or whatever but it does help for me to be able to see folks' play experiences for balance and other feedback purposes, and generally there's some good laughs to be had.

I only made one serious mistake this campaign, and it was right near the end here when I didn't pay attention to my forces and a swarm of special forces came out of the homeworld along with the strategic reserve and annihilated literally my entire fleet.  (I pulled it back a sector at 20% strength and didn't notice when my friend retreated even further and the AI swept through to annihilate what I had left.  Oops.  And right after I finished all the mercs too.)

Glad to hear the AI got a little of its own back before the end

On the illegal-counterattack thing, remember that if the counterattack post has _no_ legal targets it defaults to the old behavior.  From the look of it, there were no human planets in the post's range from any AI warp gates.

On the objectives bug listing the "First AI Home...", pretty funny.  The AI may be dead, but the bugs live on.

Congratulations on the victory; winning with over 3000 positive AIP (albeit tempered by a ton of reduction) is normally the domain of Fallen Spire, but you did it with no superweapons at all

The SF blob is still my favorite recent addition to the game because it makes us think and act differently.  I also like the strategic reserve, and as much as I hate to say it the Wrath Lance guard post was an amazing thing after we'd come back from our hiatus to play the Shadows expansions  (3 human fleets = obliterated in seconds as we try to figure out why the AI was into disco suddenly)

Okay, that makes sense on the counter thing.  I'll have to remember that for future AI dooming.

Thanks for throwing down a gauntlet, it was fun to pick up, and I'm excited to see how everyone else's campaigns go if they manage to finish them

[TechSY730]

Keith, you just described how all Starcraft 2 competitive play works below master league.

1) Make a maxed out army
2) attack-move your opponent's base
3) Replace the army you just lost

Not sure how accurate this is.

Yes, if you survive to late game, it tends to work that way. But even down in the silver league, I see people pulling off early and mid game rushes.

(just a side story, one embarrassing incident is when I thought they were going to use a ground based army (they went early game dark templar), so I built anti-ground (collosi, immortals, etc), and lo and behold, void ray mid-game attack...That's what I get for not keeping my scout intel up to date. Yes, I lost miserably in that game.  )

[LordSloth]

I wanted to check out that 'almost no knowledge spent' game, but I need to update my version soon for that.

I might find time to finish or update my high AIP game later today, but I'm probably moving on from a pure 6.018 testbed, and giving more up to date feedback. I feel we've pretty much learned what we set out to find in the first place. I'm going to throw out one thought, however.

Speaking of the higher AIP games, would increased border aggression have a place? We don't have the old 'straggler' special forces, and my flanks were pretty tame.

I'm wondering whether wormhole guard posts are undesirably increasing the threshold for border aggression. In my high aip games I had 600 ships build up easy in neutered systems. A pain to clear out certainly, but if they freed up half of those forces I certainly would have been in for a headache.

[Mánagarmr]

(just a side story, one embarrassing incident is when I thought they were going to use a ground based army (they went early game dark templar), so I built anti-ground (collosi, immortals, etc), and lo and behold, void ray mid-game attack...That's what I get for not keeping my scout intel up to date. Yes, I lost miserably in that game.  )

Bad intel is the best way to lose an RTS game