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 Massalia We undergo a number of counterattacks and standard waves while taking this down, but Massalia is captured and it's goodies revealed. A couple of times we almost lose a system to the Plasma Siege Starship, probably the most dangerous early-game threat due it not caring about tractor beams and the ability to damage stuff under force fields. This underscores the need for more defenses, but our task is achieved and the task of charting the rest of the galaxy can begin. The only unlocks here as those we get for free with Massalia; MK V Autocannon Minipod, MK IV Scout, Mk IV Bomber. Up Next Naturally we'll take a look at what the scout uncovers, and that will determine the next course of action.
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Dec 21, 2018 22:00
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PSSs are the main reason (in a mostly vanilla setup at least) to get grav turrets and set up your main defenses farther away from your command center.
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Dec 22, 2018 01:13
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Do you think that justifies spreading the turrets out more (diluting firepower) and allowing for the possibility that they could also get by some/most of your turrets which wouldn't be able to fire on them by the command station? It would definitely work better against plasma siege, I just think it has its own drawbacks - might be a matter of taste.
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Dec 22, 2018 22:43
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Thotimx posted:Do you think that justifies spreading the turrets out more (diluting firepower) and allowing for the possibility that they could also get by some/most of your turrets which wouldn't be able to fire on them by the command station? It would definitely work better against plasma siege, I just think it has its own drawbacks - might be a matter of taste. Do they ever deliberately take a roundabout route to the target? If they always beeline from the wormhole to whatever they want to kill, then you could stick with the line-defense setup and just put the turrets further out, maybe.
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Dec 22, 2018 22:46
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Mid-game Multi-tasking The beginning of this update is me blathering on about strategic considerations. I don't wait for the entire galaxy to be scouted, since much like Vader I find Hoth to be a target too enticing to wait on. At the same time, another covert knowledge raid is conducted. I don't remember if I talked about it in the video or not, but I also did eventually knock out another Data Center, on planet lofi. Human raid starships starred in that one again, since it was under a force field; that was the only quick way to get it. Managing multiple theatres as once led to some minor mistakes in Hoth, but not enough to threaten our eventual success, and by the end of this we have the entire galaxy scouted. Unlocks: Mk II Turrets of the Needler, Laser, MLRS, and Missile variety. MK V Sniper(for free via Fabricator in Hoth) and Assault Transport as well. Up Next It's time to formulate a master plan for reaching the enemy homeworlds now that we know where they are. We'll have to take a number of Mk. IV planets to get there, and I still consider our defenses inadequate despite a bit of upgrading. I think the newly-acquired Snipers could prove vital for wearing down some of the more difficult targets.
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Dec 22, 2018 23:14
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Thotimx posted:Do you think that justifies spreading the turrets out more (diluting firepower) and allowing for the possibility that they could also get by some/most of your turrets which wouldn't be able to fire on them by the command station? It would definitely work better against plasma siege, I just think it has its own drawbacks - might be a matter of taste. It's usually possible to position your command station so you can get away with one turret mass covering every angle of attack. If not then you avoid taking waves in that system. And since that's usually due to needing to cover something irreplaceable like an advanced factory you wouldn't want to take waves there anyway. Akratic Method posted:Do they ever deliberately take a roundabout route to the target? If they always beeline from the wormhole to whatever they want to kill, then you could stick with the line-defense setup and just put the turrets further out, maybe. Sindai fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Dec 23, 2018 |
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Dec 23, 2018 01:39
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Sorry, but I have to hope you lose this game now.code:
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Dec 23, 2018 03:02
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Slaan posted:Sorry, but I have to hope you lose this game now. It is still quite possible, though not particularly like I think. Any reason why - besides the obvious HK-47 motivation? Sindai posted:You keep the main turret mass in range of the command station, but as far away as possible while still doing that. I'm a little confuzzled here. I thought I was already doing that. I have: ** Needlers as far as way as they can be while still providing command station coverage ** Other mainline turrets(Laser/MLRS/Missile) behind them to match the extent of their range. If I move the longer-range turrets further away from the command station, they could shoot at the enemy ships sooner. They wouldn't benefit from gravs/tractors though so that's of quite limited utility. If I move the gravs/tractors further then the needlers can't shoot at the ships that are tractored, so I'm diluting firepower that way, even if the increased (worse) approach angles from the 'wormhole cone' don't require me to split into multiple lines for at least the grav/tractor/flak/lightning. I think we may be talking past each other here or something, but I don't think I understand what you are suggesting. My personal conclusion was that I just need to kill the enemy quicker - so more turrets can concentrate on the plasma siege starships - which means more turrets in general, which is basically what I did.
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Dec 23, 2018 03:41
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I am the enemy homeworld. I welcome my new robot overlords
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Dec 23, 2018 03:49
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I actually just got confused by the fact that you put your sniper and missile turrets directly in front of the command station shield, while I put snipers behind the station and missiles with the other turrets. And since I haven't actually played the game in a couple of years I've lose my ability to identify everything by icon. Really you just need grav turrets.
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Dec 23, 2018 19:10
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Gotcha. I have Grav Turrets - but only the Mk I variety in the two systems in question. Just for the interest of the thread, I may well talk about this in an upcoming video as well, all variants have enough range for the current application, but: ** Mk I Grav Turrets slow non-immune ships to a maximum speed of 32. Plasma Siege Starships have a speed of 48, so this does help but it only makes them travel a third slower. ** Mk II slow them to 20, so they would give us almost twice as much time to potentially be shooting at them. This is just slightly slower than a missile frigate moves for reference, and they are notoriously slow. ** MK III slows ships to only 8. You don't go anywhere quickly when one of them has you in their grasp. This would give us exactly four times the current window to shoot at them before they reached firing range. The present situation is that I've added Mk II Grav Turrets only to a couple of key systems - Deimos and Massalia. Getting the better types in place everywhere, even in small numbers - they aren't bothering the AI enough to shoot at them yet, and if they do that at least they're not shooting at the command stations - seems like it would do as much as anything to improve defenses.
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Dec 24, 2018 08:07
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Planning & Neutering Elektra Merry Christmas! The full galaxy having now been revealed, I plan out and summarize my prospective path to victory. Three new AI structures are noted: the Superfortress, Translocator Eye, and Electric Guard Post. Then an offensive, semi-permanent beachhead is established on Elektra to protect Hoth for future issues, and also I talk a bit about grav turrets vis a vis the discussion here in the thread. Upgrading defenses continues to happen, but gradually. Unlocks: Mk III Economic Command Station, Mk II Sniper/Flak/Lightning Turrets. Up Next As discussed later in the video, the conquest of Vanth will continue so that I can hit the various Data Centers.
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Dec 26, 2018 07:50
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Data Center Hunting I experiment with not actually taking out the guard posts at Vanth before setting up my Command Station. Conclusion; this is not a good idea if you need metal anytime soon, but I think it's worth doing if you don't - so basically at the point we are in the game or later it might be worth considering. Then five Data Centers ultimately fall, including at least one goon planet thanks to malkav11. There's one more out there but it is out of range. In any case, AIP is now down to a mere 68, near the floor. Unlocks: Mk III Economic Command Station, Mk II Human Raid Starships Up Next It's time to resume our march towards the AI homeworlds and upgrade the rest of our turrets (over half are at Mk II by now). I'm happy with where things are, and surprised at having been able to do this much in a little over three hours.
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Dec 28, 2018 07:55
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Huh, I never tried leaving guard posts up while taking a system. What's the benefit, just leeching reinforcements and getting some salvage automatically?
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Dec 28, 2018 22:46
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Slaan posted:I am the enemy homeworld. I welcome my new robot overlords I didn't realize what you were saying here at first, sort of went over my head. I can't really protest you rooting for yourself, being in such an oppositional starring role. Just know that the humans are coming for you, and we will not be denied! Sindai posted:What's the benefit, just leeching reinforcements and getting some salvage automatically? I don't think you can leech salvage, as they stop getting reinforcements once your Command Station is up. I would say the pro is avoiding getting your ships killed/reprisal waves generated in the battles against their guard posts, with the con being having to wait longer for the new metal harvesters to come online.
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Dec 29, 2018 11:34
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Cleanup Our economy has now fully matured; we've reached the 'more metal than we can use' stage, approaching 4k income/second. In contrast to the last couple of sessions, it's non-stop action here with a CPA, our largest reprisal of the game, multiple threat cleansings, and two new planets falling as well. Turret upgrades are now complete, at least for the time being. No new unlocks; the big prize is the Mk IV Ion Cannon we captured on Mars. Up Next It's time to unlock some new toys, and also to test our strength against that trio of Mark IV targets. If we're successful, Slaan will not be far away.
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Dec 29, 2018 21:42
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When having your fleet help defend a system I'd wait to engage until they hit your turrets. More concentrated firepower means fewer losses overall, and as you saw if you just use FRD the fastest units rush in and die alone.
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Dec 29, 2018 22:55
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Punching Through The final Data Center and the trio of Mk IV worlds that represent the final significant mid-game hurdle are conquered in another long-ish update. I also take a look at the Matter Converter for the first time, which turns 200 metal/second into 50k energy. This is for the purpose of putting up expensive Fortresses to bolster our defense. We are now nearly in striking range, with only one more system left to handle before it's homeworld time. Also, I finally get around to showing how the customization of ships works - just the Riot Control is available now, but it's a thing that will be expanded on later with expansions. Unlocks: Fortress, Mk II Riot Control, Mk III/IV Flagship. We also get the Armor Ship and MLRS from the new ARSes. Up Next Probably a shorter update, with final preparations for the assault on Slaan. Unless something unexpected happens. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Jan 3, 2019 |
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Jan 3, 2019 07:17
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The Path Forward Also at the end of the last video I talked briefly about how future games will commence. I think I'm ready to open things up a bit to suggestions for 'special challenges' if anyone has something they'd like me to do down the road. The general pattern for now will be that after each game I win or am competitive in/should have won, I'll add an expansion pack and a small difficulty boost, with a focus for that game on whatever new stuff the expansion adds. Ergo, the next game will include the first expansion, The Zenith Remnant, and 7.3 difficulty, the next step up. There will also be a few other changes that I'll talk about at that time, including adding in the last few vanilla things that I haven't put in the cocktail yet. Of course victory in this one is not yet guaranteed, but I've reached the endgame sooner than expected, defenses and economy are strong - if I do lose, it won't because I wasn't good enough to win (in which case I wouldn't want to up the challenge); it will just be because I did something dumb to allow failure. Entirely possible. Anyway, in this manner I will be steadily tightening the noose around my own neck with each successive run, as well as adding considerably more complexity with the expansions. If I continue to be successful, which is not going to keep happening at some point probably, this would get us through all the expansions around the time we reach Very Hard (9 difficulty). One thing I definitely plan on doing at the very end, when I've essentially reached the best I can do with the game, is put everything on the hardest possible settings just to see how fast the game destroys me without mercy. I would be pleased to consider any other suggestions for challenge runs that I may throw in as well.
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Jan 3, 2019 07:25
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With the huge amount of stuff in the game I can think of a ton of run possibilities, first, the alien runs: Zenith (play with golems and zenith unlocks vs Golemite/Zenith Descendant AIs, and all the Zenith-related factions enabled) Spire (play with spirecraft and spire ship unlocks vs Spireling/Spire Hammer AIs) Neinzul (hybrid hives, neinzul AI types, all the neinzul factions) Champions (show the full nebula campaign, possibly vs Heroic AI but it is nasty so you would probably need to turn the difficulty down for that) And the alternate win conditions: Nomad Planets (not a full win condition but worth showing) Fallen Spire Exodian Blade Showdown Devices Finally, there's a few really odd AI types I always wanted to see like Vanguard, Starship Fanatic, and Exotic.
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Jan 3, 2019 10:06
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If you do show off champions, I'd suggest also showing off what happens when you start with 8 champions, however briefly. 
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Jan 3, 2019 11:31
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Sounds like something I don't know but will need to look up … when the time comes. Approaching Slaan The strategy for the endgame here is very much an anti-Slaan one; the exo-galactic wave he is sure to drop deep in our homeworld system when we take the plunge, plus that Death-Star-on-steroids avenger thingy once defeated, occupies my thoughts. I consider this stretch to be preparation for the critical moment in the game, at which juncture it will either be won or lost most likely. Accordingly, I set up beachheads along the most likely course of approach by the Avenger, and fortify the exo-galactic Deimos entry to a truly stupid degree. A threat cleaning takes place in Frozenzen, a new use of hacking (the Fabricator Hack) is seen, and our final pre-homeworld-assault system, Melpomene, is taken. Unlocks: Fortress Mk II, Fortress Mk III, Grav Turrets Mk III, Heavy Beam Cannon Mk II, Parasite MK V (via the Fabricator Hack on the last one) Up Next Assuming threat-cleaning goes well … and I can relatively painlessly deal with deleting the beachhead that I placed between the wrong two wormholes in this update, and deal with the reprisal waves which will result … we will eventually commence with the Slaan assault next time. I'm sure he's quaking in his boots. In related news, saving up metal with Matter Converters running takes flipping forever, so I may actually find said reprisals to be beneficial.
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Jan 5, 2019 10:37
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You will never defeat me! 
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Jan 5, 2019 15:16
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You are a royal jerk and a worthy opponent (at least in-game); as a teaser for the next update, I do not make all that much progress against the dastardly Slaan, who is still very much standing at the end of it.
Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 06:59
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Slaan Beginnings We begin with me having quite a bit of trouble clearing out the AI threat and saving up metal. There are two reasons for this. Unintended consequences relating to my engineer settings and also Yes Virginia You Do Need That Stand-Down Mode Control are the reasons. Once that is sorted, we hit Slaan for the first time - and it hits back, but not where we expected it. "Lachesis will be fine" are immortal words of hubris, and I don't exactly clean up the mess in the best possible way. I'm definitely learning some things from this endgame. Up Next I may or may not get my house in order in time to go back into Slaan before the next exo-wave hits. There's no question that we're at the crucial period of this game, and the outcome is not yet certain.
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Jan 6, 2019 10:16
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The one major mistake I noticed was not cleaning out the core system before attacking the home world. Going in with your transports already nearly dead is a big deal since you're really going to need them to manage Eye aggro. I was going to say something about using up the first 30% of the strategic reserve but then I noticed you're in the very unfortunate position of having only a single core world from AI 2 next to AI 1's homeworld. Actually, I guess you could have beachheaded one of AI 1's cores next to the other homeworld, but I probably wouldn't have thought of that in advance either. Sindai fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 20:09
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Hmm. I thought about that actually but I decided not to try to clean up Sila because it would have been a very costly PITA, and for energy reasons it would mean less defenses somewhere else.
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Jan 7, 2019 21:23
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Tug of War Slaan takes the initiative as most of the fighting here is of the defensive variety. We do weaken it further with the Barracks and another guard post going down, but more exogalactics, a CPA, and shrinking metal reserves are among the obstacles faced in keeping the fleet spending much of the time bouncing around putting out fires. We're getting there ... slowly. Gotta give a shout out to the Human Resistance that has been actually helpful more and more lately. Been seeing them a lot more than the Marauders for whatever reason - they were more active earlier in the game. It's definitely a helpful change. Up Next More of the same is expected until we get over the hump and/or the rebellion at Sibylla happens.
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Jan 9, 2019 00:47
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Really looking forward to watching more of this, AI War is one of my favorite games of all time... and yet somehow with hundreds of hours in it I still haven't secured a victory. Looking forward to seeing all of the expansions, there are a few there that I haven't seen yet after putting the game down for a few years.
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Jan 9, 2019 18:20
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I hope you continue to find it interesting, thanks! My own search for a first win on 'standard' difficulty is definitely on shaky ground …
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Jan 11, 2019 07:01
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Slaan Still Lives Careful micromanagement is undertaken on the howevermanyth return to Slaan. It's not careful enough though, and while we weaken the beast severely, it is not yet slain. And it is angry. You won't like when it does when it is angry. Lesson learned from this one; exo-galactic waves grow with each iteration apparently. I was suspicious of this, but they most definitely do. Up Next I think the culmination of our tussle with Slaan has been reached. Very likely one of us won't survive the next session. I'm not sure which one of us that will be.
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Jan 11, 2019 12:18
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Yeah, the retaliation exogalactics increase in size every wave with no upper limit. They exist specifically to make sure the game ends one way or another once you start the homeworld assaults. Also, as you've noticed, they tend to have more dangerous compositions than waves and CPAs because they put most of their strength budget into bigger ships. The 60 flagships thing is probably another side effect of turning off all the expansions. Exos try to buy a single huge ship with a big fraction of their strength budget to serve as the main boss of the wave. In this case it probably wanted a spirecraft or dire guardian, but since those and practically every other type of super ship were added in expansions, it fell back on randomly selecting a a ship in the next largest group and buying the equivalent strength of that. On the bright side it's not 60 siege or spire starships. Sindai fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 19:02
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Good to know there's no upper limit - which does make sense, painful as it apparently is/can be.
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Jan 14, 2019 07:24
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Slaan's Last Laugh Slaan posted:You will never defeat me! I'm never going to live this down … Two new things in this, the finale of this run. I built a Missile Silo, talked about warheads some, and used them badly enough that they had almost no effect. Still, it was one of the few remaining major vanilla things that I hadn't gotten to yet. I'll learn - we're getting more into stuff that I haven't seen before and it's showing. I could have called this episode Mismanaged Chaos. A lot of stuff was going on, and there were times where I so focused on what was happening in one place that I forgot about equally critical stuff happening elsewhere. Ultimately I came very close to stopping Slaan's latest exo-galactic attack -- but didn't quite, and his words above proved prophetic. That's the second new thing - my first loss in this LP. It won't be the last. Quite a few things to do differently next time out. More starships I think - more bang for the buck in Eye-defended systems. I kept thinking about upgrading the Leech ones but never did it. Allowing my starships to get stranded in Mars was fatal. Too much dinking around with ultimately less-important things in the attacks on Slaan, not realizing how big the exos would get. Next time I need to use warheads, I need to wait for more of them to come in the system and start from further away to crash their party and take out more of them hopefully. Interesting that my massive front at the exo-galactic entry into Deimos ended up being circumvented; got smashed at the 'back door' so to speak even with the fortresses in place. And just in general, I need to get better at endgame management. I think if I were to go back to when I first attacked Slaan and do things a bit differently it shouldn't be that difficult to win from where I was. Paying attention to bleeding the special forces reinforcements from the other AI. Etc. The only thing I really regret is I wanted to face off against the Avenger and that'll have to wait now. From a pure, game-example LP sense, there's part of me that's glad I lost this. A small part, but still. The whole AI War schtick of you're closest to defeat when you think you've just about won is very much appropriate. It really ain't over … till it's over. Lose your home command station, and nothing else matters. Up Next What else but our third try, with The Zenith Remnant? Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 07:35
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I'm starting to see, now, why the Mark III Nuke exists...
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Jan 14, 2019 08:39
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Some things about warheads you might have missed: Lightning warheads have a fairly low maximum damage per target. It's mark x 100,000. Flagships, for example, have 100k health per mark level, so to wipe out all of those mark 4 flagships you would need 4 mark 1 lightning warheads. They also hit the lower HP stuff first, which is usually a bad thing. They can't be transported but they can be cloaked by cloaker starships, and you pretty much have to since they're so fragile. The big benefit of armored warheads, other than the survivability and convenience of integrated cloak, is that they have no upper limit on individual damage and hit stronger things first. This becomes very important when you start facing super ships in the AI's hands. In harder games you should get used to building a few lighting and possibly even armored warheads if you find yourself sitting at the metal cap. Otherwise that 60s cooldown on building them can get you killed. Finally, are fortresses immune to the force field attack reduction? I remember certain turret types are but I don't think forts are. If I'm right that was really hurting you since the full 6 forts have incredibly high total dps. Possibly more than everything else you had in that system combined. Sindai fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 09:20
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Thotimx posted:Quite a few things to do differently next time out. More starships I think - more bang for the buck in Eye-defended systems. I kept thinking about upgrading the Leech ones but never did it. Aren't leeches (and parasites) a terrible idea in Eye-defended systems? They'll put you over that too-many-ships threshold a lot faster than ships that just blow things up.
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Jan 14, 2019 13:12
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Jan 14, 2019 13:34
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Sindai posted:Some things about warheads you might have missed: Thanks for your continued excellent contributions! I knew some of that but didn't catch the per-target damage limit. Definitely plan on trying to get into the habit of putting some spare warheads in reserve, I like that idea a lot. Friend Commuter posted:Aren't leeches (and parasites) a terrible idea in Eye-defended systems? They'll put you over that too-many-ships threshold a lot faster than ships that just blow things up. That's a good point I think - I've gotten used to just dealing with a short period of whatever burst the Eye does and putting ships away or whatever, but it appears that's going to be more and more costly and is probably just a bad habit I should get rid of. I can get away with it on some of them that have a sizable countdown timer or whatever, but still. Sindai posted:are fortresses immune to the force field attack reduction? I remember certain turret types are but I don't think forts are. If I'm right that was really hurting you since the full 6 forts have incredibly high total dps. Possibly more than everything else you had in that system combined. I thought they were. I would have to conduct !SCIENCE! on it but after looking at it I don't think they are (I couldn't find a definitive answer). So yeah you're right about all of this here. GUHHHHHH. I just figured that 'gee, the AI always puts them under force fields so it must be a good idea to do that durr durr durrrrrr … ' but beyond doing it to protect them from bombers it maybe isn't such a super-great concept. Especially in the specific situation of the recent unpleasantness. Wish I hadn't already deleted the saves so I could go back and check -- and see how different the battle would have gone. Ahh well. . Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 06:35
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Per usual, a few new names of new posters in this thread were added to the galaxy pool. Zenith Remnant Intro Discussion of the new Zenith Remnant stuff, mostly in terms of the setup options but also we start with a new starship available to build (the Cloaker Starship mentioned by Sindai) and new things to unlock if we so choose. Just what I needed; harder decisions on where to spend my knowledge. Also spent the initial knowledge pool, and I am trying out some new previously-available options for variety and demonstration sake. At least initially, Golems and Astro Trains would seem to be the biggest changes this time. Starting Unlocks: Mk II Scout Drones, Hardened Force Fields, Counter-Dark-Matter Turrets, Grav Turrets (Mk I & Mk II), Spider Turrets, Mk II Logistic Command Stations Up Next The action actually begins with us facing our first waves at the new homeworld of Laetitia and hopefully doing our first expansions. At least there's no exo-galactic wormhole staring us in the face this time ... even though it was used a grand total of once the last game. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 21:56
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