View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0025007 | AI War 2 | Balance Issue | May 20, 2021 1:59 pm | Dec 22, 2021 8:26 pm | |
| Reporter | Metrekec | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 3.000 Begin The Onslaught | ||||
| Fixed in Version | Beta 3.771 Expert Mode And Civilian Industries | ||||
| Summary | 0025007: Supercat died 3.000 | ||||
| Description | Another pure Supercat run, this one 1v1 as double AI had some significant hunter bugs (hopefully now fixed). Once again making a ticket as ArnaudB felt it was appropriate. Full Ensemble 10/10/10/10, Base game + DLC1 + DLC2, Vanilla, default options. Realistic map, 80 planets. Mostly played at 3x speed, though did use 5x speed occasionally while waiting for construction/metal. Forgot to turn off beacons again but did not interact with them. Total game length: 10 hours 8 minutes. Classic starting fleet with Duality and Webbed defenses. This is the best start for a Core focused build in my mind, as Nucleo + Tritium + Ablative do a lot of work and start you off with 3 core turrets. Spider + sniper turrets are also great for beachheading. Overloading support factory for speed. Also swapped to an Agile transport when I found one as Agile transport speed is very important for repositioning a fleet. All other transports were left at the homeworld for economy buff. No officers were used - I did not have the science to spare, even if a Thanatos Ark was available on one of my captured worlds. As always, all command stations had at least 1 direct upgrade in them all game other than my cubbyhole econ, which spent most of the game at mark 1 due to me not needing the extra energy until later. Key installations got 2 direct upgrades, usually the 2nd upgrade put in right as the AI sends a big wave in to make sure to get the hunter to take as much damage as possible before realizing it is outgunned and disengaging. Respeccing direct command station upgrades was used a couple of times as well to make sure to inflict as much damage as possible to hunter waves and protect command stations that would otherwise have probably died. Main techs were Core and Piercing, Got a tech vault for +1 Core, but otherwise invested 3 tech into each. Did not invest in Strikecraft Hulls as they were not worth it. Got 1 turret hull as its power for its cost makes it always worth taking. Put 2 points into military tech for that cheap strength upgrade as well and 2 points in forcefields for defense. 3 in Engineering as per usual, cannot ignore the build speed increase it provides. Did not need to invest in metal generation tech at all due to a ZMG pickup - +5000 metal is huge after all. I only put points in it while the 2nd phase overlord was in transit as I wanted to make sure to have enough metal to max out my defenses, and I respecced it back into military tech afterwards for the final stand. Ended up with a couple of Darker Mirror frigates + V-Wings and a combination of Assault Frigates and bombers/stingrays for my ship DPS. Darker Mirror frigates were helpful in keeping my forces alive, but some fights got annoying as the fights would end up with Darker Mirror Frigate zombie ping pong. Might have been better to cut my parasitic ship due to this, but overall the Darker Mirror frigates were doing more good than harm for me. Having that additional protection along with my Forcefield Frigates helped for setting up beachheads. Turrets picked up were 2x mini fortress and 2x ablative. I got pretty lucky with my turret type generation which resulted in HaP to spare by the end - usually it would have taken me at least two more hacks to get to this power level. Multiple turret hacks of the same type seems to have slight diminishing returns on military command posts, but it doesn't make much difference. I would have preferred nucleophilic turrets at some point though! Picked up a Bastille Cruiser to try it out, but was not too impressed by it for its cost. Felt like another line of forcefield frigates would have accomplished the same goal in this scenario, but it was still nice to have. More forcefield is always very good, and with more investment and FRS ships, I can see how it can be very strong when you are not facing the extremely large AI forces that diff 10 sends your way. All in all very similar to my last diff 10 single AI win. 2 Hacks on ARS/TSS at most since the third hack response is ludicrous on 10, had a strong early-game package with core and piercing + base turrets to carry me through the early-game. Also got a relatively early Core tech vault on an MDC, but I am still unsure if MDC is worth it on solo AI diff 10 - the added hunter budget is quite scary and it's another planet to invest and protect. At the same time, buffed ZPG means that you can afford to hold more planets with more turrets. Mid-game was mostly relatively safe as well - did not end up having access to an early spire archive, but it was not too big of a deal as I had strong core turrets and an early core tech vault backing me up. I only ended up going for the spire hack five hours into the game because of this. Warden AI was manipulated via going after 2 fronts that were hard for the AI to keep covered since they were basically the opposite ends of the galaxy. The AI even ended up using wormhole borers to make its map traversal easier once AIP hit 100 (though luckily for me this made for an otherwise hard-to-reach data center easily accesible, thanks AI!). Late-game wasn't too hard. After initially breaking through the praetorian guard through similar means as my last diff 10 win (large turret build speed helped a lot here - getting significant strength quickly on the planet ensured the warden/hunter would stay away while I killed the praetorian guard blob), I swept through the bastion worlds with little counter. The Homeworld was a lot tougher since I ended up with around 140 AIP going at it, which resulted in around 1k strength camping the homeworld itself. I figured it would be easier to distract the AI and snipe its guardposts than take it head-on at that strength level, so I ended up doing a few raid runs with my transport while building small beachheads at various spots in the gravity well to keep the praetorian guard busy as I sniped guard posts and the command station. Piercing's ability to kill guardposts through the shield helped significantly here, though it definitely felt like I could have also made this work without bypassing the guardpost shields, it just would have taken longer. For the final push I was able to convert my logistic station to military and the AI could not take any of my stations while I was besieging it, despite around 4k worth of threat roaming the map, of which included 10 exogalactic war front units. However, I feel like if I had not killed phase 1 when I did, I was soon going to get overwhelmed. There is definitely a "small" window of opportunity to kill phase one after triggering exogalactic war front units. The second phase was largely straightforward- I had enough economy to build up my defenses against it and enough HaP to do the refunds I needed to prepare for it. Battlestations still outpace it, particularly depending on the path it takes (if it tries its best to avoid consecutive chokepoints), so I could use my battlestations on the final assault and still get them back in time to build up all their defenses. My other command stations started falling during the 2nd overlord fight, but this is usually the case with the last AI - the game is over by that point, after all. Badger's idea of having the Overlord phase 2 spawn or direct its forces more aggressively along its path sounds like a good way to make the phase 2 Overlord more exciting, so it could soften you up before arriving. It would definitely make building up defenses tougher if you had to weather an assaulting force while doing it. At no point was the hunter a truly significant threat to my installations. Due to ZPG, I could even use my military+econ cubbyhole as bait along with my logistics planet. They only fell once during a CPA, but they were easily recovered afterwards. My logistics bait fell a few times, but it as well wasn't too big of a deal as whatever ended up killing that would then run into my fortified MDC worlds. The hunter force would never stick around long after a planet was taken and the warden would not reposition in time to protect it, so I could always swoop in with my fleet. clean up the warping in guardposts and retake the world. Possibly the Hunter fleet could stick around a world that was destroyed a bit longer or the warden fleet should be better at defending a world that's just been reclaimed. Overall another successful and fun diff 10 run. Unsurprisingly DLC2 did not change too much in a "pure" run, but I couldn't resist giving it a shot after seeing those turret build time changes and other minor AI tweaks that have occured since my last one. This one has less saves than my others, presumably since it went smoothly for me. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| related to | 0025011 | closed | BadgerBadger | Hunter fleet is not aggressive enough when it has 1k strength or more |
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Does this include some saves with giant hunter blobs not doing anything? If so, can you tell me which saves to look at? |
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I've made a new ticket with some saves where I feel the hunter is either not being aggressive enough with its forces or attempting to build up its forces to attack planets in an inefficient manner. |
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The new standard is dual AIs on expert mode in the new build or onwards. :) |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 20, 2021 1:59 pm | Metrekec | New Issue | |
| May 20, 2021 1:59 pm | Metrekec | File Added: Diff10ZOWon.7z | |
| May 20, 2021 2:20 pm | BadgerBadger | Note Added: 0061728 | |
| May 20, 2021 6:43 pm | Metrekec | Relationship added | related to 0025011 |
| May 20, 2021 6:43 pm | Metrekec | Note Added: 0061731 | |
| May 20, 2021 7:09 pm | Metrekec | Description Updated | |
| Dec 22, 2021 8:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Dec 22, 2021 8:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => resolved |
| Dec 22, 2021 8:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Dec 22, 2021 8:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => Beta 3.771 Expert Mode And Civilian Industries |
| Dec 22, 2021 8:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0063570 |
