played to year 2570 most time hit F9.

3 Players down and a unbeatable fleet guards my HW ........

If you real need a count I will play a game with backups.

You are making a general statement that while being true "most of the time" but it doesn't make the game any easier in this situation

Why don't you play and see what everyone's experiencing , instead of theory-crafting yourself ?

nmid wrote on Tue, 13 May 2014 20:06

Why don't you play and see what everyone's experiencing , instead of theory-crafting yourself ?

It's not theory. I've played equivalent setups, and related (increasingly harder) ones, with the Humanoids themselves, dozens of times. That's how I started, so many years ago, before even knowing what "race design" was.

If you say you survived the 1st 25 years without reloading any backups or did it in one go, I'll be very hard pressed to believe you.

Have you played this challenge yet?

You have 2 HE neighbours throwing metamorphs (8 shields variants) and using bazooka's while you are still on x-ray lasers... and only 1 station with only 700-900 resources.
By the time you get to bazooka's/colloidals, they are using jihads.

Update: I just killed the last ship of an AI somebody else had already destroyed. Does that one count for the challenge?

I also have my wits, and plenty enough experience baiting AIs and milking them. Plus a million+ pop and a few little ships. By the time they come knocking I'm no longer techless or resourceless.

As for Jihads, yeah, the AIs weak designs can be slaughtered with Bazs, even without using chaff. In fact, I'm now building my initial chaff to help my Jugg BBs hold my newly acquired colonies. My main worry in the med-late BB era is that tech is getting harder to come by, except of course Weaps, and I might need to Research some.

I'm not sure I'll be able to beat any speed record, tho.

Unless you don't do 2 things (which I am not stating), you can't survive.

If you say you survived the 1st 25 years without reloading any backups or did it in one go, I'll be very hard pressed to believe you.

Looks like maintaining 6 scouts in the open almost guarantees a tech gain each year from battle observations for the first 30+ years.

But it is a lot of mass what will come for you so be prepaired. ( Special when 6 Races hit you and the beamer start 3 fields next to your jaggas )

it's not as easy as you make it out to be.

Ok.


So enouth talking. Want to see some nummbers frim you MA and you Nmid !

As with your skills there should be no problems against AI or ?

Ccmaster

It is quite annoying that it seems very hard to keep my mine field up and getting their minefields down. I had something like 20-30 frigates laying mines, and sent out sorties of 10 gattling frigate sweepers to jump in, sweep, jump back. Is there a better way to do mine field management?

Then I made the mistake to attack neighbouring planets in full force and attempt to keep them. Managed to capture Blue Giant, Hill, and Spittle without difficulty, but was booted off all of them by enemy Jihad BB's against a divided defense fleet.

Everywhere -> also in deep space? Won't the mine layers be killed immediately?

Ok.
So enouth talking. Want to see some nummbers frim you MA and you Nmid !
As with your skills there should be no problems against AI or ?
Ccmaster

(Paraphrased)
First attempt - played to 2515.
1. forum hint of scouts as researchers.
2. Lost my starbase a number of times
3. around 50 years (I think) I had approximate tech parity ... jihad cruisers and some BB's.
4. Then I made the mistake to attack neighbouring planets in full force and attempt to keep them. Managed to capture Blue Giant, Hill, and Spittle without difficulty, but was booted off all of them by enemy Jihad BB's against a divided defense fleet.
5. I am ready to give up, my HW was bombarded with a large packet and apparently packets go before defenses built, so the expeditions plus the package dropped my HW to around 500k with nothing to show for it and my fleet more or less gone.
6. I will try again and do more guerilla style warfare from my HW, conquering a planet and transporting all minerals back until I have an expedition fleet that can withstand an enemy attack.
7. It is quite annoying that it seems very hard to keep my mine field up and getting their minefields down. I had something like 20-30 frigates laying mines, and sent out sorties of 10 gattling frigate sweepers to jump in, sweep, jump back. Is there a better way to do mine field management?
8. I guess I also need to learn about using chaff against enemy jihad BB's... I also used beamer cruisers (move 2.5, 2 sappers + 5 phasers or 6 Mk IV blasters) but they just die so quickly because they run at the enemy, even if the enemies are still fighting among themselves, and they seem a bit expensive to treat as disposable.
9. Anyway, the challenge is quite fun and instructive, I hope that the second attempt goes better!

10. Edit: second attempt went much worse. The AI attacked with stacks of morphs much earlier, forcing me to rebuild my station quite often; and it feels like I was less lucky in the tech lottery. Turn 27 they sniped my starbase (13 cruisers and 10 destroyers still alive) and immediately bombed my population down to 57k. Game over...