AI War: Fleet Command

[Moliere]

Anyone else play this game? It sat in my Steam inventory for years because I was so overwhelmed by the learning curve the first time I loaded it that I deleted it after 15 minutes. A couple weeks ago I decided to give it another try. Now I have over 100 hours of game time, according to Steam. It's an RTS that requires you to conquer the Galaxy against two AI's, one planet at a time. It has become so engrossing that hours will go by in a blink.

My biggest complaint is that the AI is designed to be very challenging. I think I am doing well and all of the sudden the AI sends multiple waves of 10,000 ship armada's after me and I am zerged to death.

Example screen shots from Google.

[Zenn7]

Not to be rude or dense - but you are aware of the mechanics of that game, it's not s standard conquer the galaxy. You have to be very selective in what planets you conquer and the whole building threat increases the AI onslaught right?

I played the tutorial through a couple times, just couldn't really get into that. I want to, I want to like it and think it's an awesome game. I own it and all of the dlc for it.

One of the DLC they added a "tower defense" mode - you start with X systems and have to try to survive for however long you set the timer for. Love Tower Defense games, so played that extensively. Not that I was really good at it. Though I may have been hurting myself by taking a "cheating" galaxy set up for most games where all the planets were sequentially linked and all mine were neighbors - so the AI had to come through one warp point into the maw of death I'd build up there. Until the AI overwhelmed it and I fell back to the next system. Problem being of course that your first max built up system that falls is the best, and you will never get the time to build up that strongly again - and the AI is even stronger than before. Weaker defenses plus stronger offensive makes for a domino affect.

Supposedly, one of the DLCs added a mode to play it as more of a standard conquer the galaxy game, have not figured that out yet in the extremely brief effort to find it I made so far. Need to go back to that some day.

[Moliere]

Not to be rude or dense - but you are aware of the mechanics of that game, it's not s standard conquer the galaxy. You have to be very selective in what planets you conquer and the whole building threat increases the AI onslaught right?

Yes. I conquer planets based on their defensive position in the galaxy map and what resources they have available (both planet resources like metal and technology resources that can be stolen/captured from the AI). Making the conquests contiguous helps for ease of travel to avoid AI blackholes and the need for warp gate coordination.

[GreenGoo]

I love the idea of this game, but I've only ever given it one attempt to conquer the learning curve. I was making progress when something shinier and easier got in the way.

It's like having some books that you are particularly proud of owning but never really got around to reading, or understanding.

In my mind this is still on the "I will play this" list, but honesty prevents me from completely believing it.

I loved seeing this thread and checking the date and seeing it was today. That was cool just to find someone playing it and enjoying it today.

I bought the 'bot game the developer made with a similar concept, but even that was a little detailed for easy playing.

[Moliere]

I love the idea of this game, but I've only ever given it one attempt to conquer the learning curve. I was making progress when something shinier and easier got in the way.

It took years and a lull in shiny new objects for me to get into this game. I'm glad I did even if I am frustrated at how good the AI plays. That is certainly one of the attractions. You can't count on a simple and singular strategy. The AI will find a new way to kick your ass.

[Zenn7]

I agree with Greengoo - cool to see someone bringing this game up and enjoying it today.

I'm really stretching here as I said, I've only ever played the non-tower defense through the tutorial twice, but I had the distinct impression even conquering the unimportant planets to make things contiguous could be too much. Maybe someone who has actually played/beat the game a few times could provide real feedback on that.

[GreenGoo]

I agree with Greengoo - cool to see someone bringing this game up and enjoying it today.

I'm really stretching here as I said, I've only ever played the non-tower defense through the tutorial twice, but I had the distinct impression even conquering the unimportant planets to make things contiguous could be too much. Maybe someone who has actually played/beat the game a few times could provide real feedback on that.

That does sound familiar. If I recall correctly, you can't "win" in the same way you win a normal 4x. You can't conquer everything and you can't get a stable empire. The best you can hope for it to gather enough resources and tech to enable a suicidal run at the AI. Since there is more than 1 AI, you have to do this sort of thing more than once. Basically large gambles that pay off or loses you the game.

That's what I recall reading anyway. Obviously I never made it that far.

Lots of decisions where you had to pick the least bad option, or possibly biggest payoff option.

[Moliere]

I currently control 37 contiguous planets out of 120 and now the AI has a 14,000 ship armada coming after me.

[Toxo]

I've successfully killed off both AI's twice and lost about 5 times. As I remember though there are a bunch of difficulty settings. Things like no AI progress over time and even easier AI 'routines' to go against. I love the game, but it is really dense. Alot of my time was spent reading enemy descriptions and then reading my research descriptions and trying to come up with some planet capture / knowledge raiding to get the right tools and position to kill the AI hubs. Oh and I always used the top scout. The one you can only build one of but it is 100% stealthed.

[Lorini]

Yeah I've never beat the game but it's a go to in a lull time. So different!

[Moliere]

I've successfully killed off both AI's twice and lost about 5 times. As I remember though there are a bunch of difficulty settings. Things like no AI progress over time and even easier AI 'routines' to go against. I love the game, but it is really dense. Alot of my time was spent reading enemy descriptions and then reading my research descriptions and trying to come up with some planet capture / knowledge raiding to get the right tools and position to kill the AI hubs. Oh and I always used the top scout. The one you can only build one of but it is 100% stealthed.

I have the overall difficulty setting at 7 out of 10. Most other settings are at default. I use a fleet of starships to take an enemy planet and use my regular ships for mobile defense.

[Toxo]

Yikes, I think I beat it on difficulty 2 or 3

[NickAragua]

I played the crap out of this game a couple of years ago. In fact, I managed to beat it with both AIs at difficulty 7. I didn't actually destroy the AI homeworlds myself though, I uh, had some help (I won via "Fallen Spire" victory from one of the expansions).

The main deal with the game is that you need to keep the "AI Progress" (AIP) metric as low as possible. Once it hits certain points, all AI units spawned from then on are improved, which is bad. The amount of AI units spawned in "waves" is also dependent on the AIP. At the same time, you can't win the game without raising the AIP somewhat - you need to capture planet, blow up warp gates and so on. So, how do you do it?

Capturing a planet by destroying the command center is an automatic +20 AIP.
"Neutering" a planet is +5 AIP (for destroying the warp gate but leaving the command station alone).
Destroying an AI home base is +100 AIP. Ouch.
Destroying certain other structures raises your AIP. Stuff like "Train Stations" and "Special Forces Guard Posts".
Destroying data centers drops your AIP.
Destroying the AI Co-Processors results in a net drop of AIP (I forget how much).
There's an AI node that you can hack to drop AIP, but you better be prepared for the nasty response.

So, in practice, you can usually get away with capturing ~15 worlds before you start seeing serious blowback in the form of AI reinforcements being upgraded and their numbers climbing drastically. Thus, my "professional" opinion is that you've taken way too much territory. I don't know what expansions you have, so I don't know what options you have other than "good luck". Maybe post a save?

[Moliere]

1) Three of my planets are currently in a battle. The 2000 enemy ships on the right are about to be taken out. The 500 enemy ships on the left are waiting for me to attack them. I can't do that yet because those ships are not as good for offense.
2) I have a ton of metal in storage and I produce a lot per second so this isn't ever an issue.
3) I leeched a small fleet of Eye bot ships from the AI so I use those as scouts, with 1 on all of my planets. If I want to scout an AI planet I send 3 scouts at the same time. Two will die and the 3rd will survive and make it to the outer rim of the planet.
4) I only use the Economic Command Stations (and their two upgrades) to get the extra metal and energy boosts. The exception is that the 5 front line planets have the Warp Jammer Command Station to prevent AI reinforcements. Every planet also gets an Energy Collector. Matter Convertors are only for emergency brownout situations. High profile planets near the AI get the 10 available Force Field Generators since I usually don't buy the upgrades. I only keep 2-3 Science Labs floating around to any planet that hasn't collected its 3000 Knowledge.
5) I am frugal with my spending of Knowledge points. Early priority goes in this order: Metal Harvestors, Engineer Drones, Turrets, Starships, and then regular ships. Fortress and Mini-Fortress haven't shown a lot of value. I like the two minefield upgrades.
6) I have completed two hacks this game which explains the current 690 - 775 disparity. This is going to get much worse in about 69 minutes because I am too far from that Rebel Colony to reach it in time. I saved them in a previous game, but they didn't provide much value to me.
7) When I change from my contiguous strategy I will have to start utilizing Assault Transports, Warp Gates, and Mobile Builders.


This is my typical defense on a threatened planet. The AI tends to fly in a straight line from the black hole to my Command Station. I give them a corridor of death to fly through. Currently, that is every turret upgraded and installed. I will also lay down anywhere from 10-60 mines around their black hole as a welcome gift. The AI will works its way to the Command Station and might even kill it, but will then hang out trying to kill all my turrets and losing 1000's of ships in the process. The two exceptions are the annoying teleport ships and the cloaked fighters. The one regret I have for this game is that I didn't remove the teleport ships from the AI's list of available ships. They are annoying to try and chase down.

You can see my current fleet of 43 Starships getting ready to take out the 2000 invaders at the next planet over.

I just got my 3 min. warning about the 10,000 ships getting ready to hit me. Fortunately they are headed to a planet well defended and its neighbors are also equally well defended. It will most likely take 3 of those planet fire lines to stop the armada and then I will have to run cleanup on the temporarily lost planets.


These are two of my Stats screens for those interested in my score and game config.

[NickAragua]

Looks like you've got a bit of a stalemate there.

Ok, so, three super important things:
#1 - Get to scouting. At this point in the game, you need to find the AI homeworlds and make a beeline for them. Ideally, I've heard the recommendation to hit one right after the other, because killing the first one will hit you with a +100 AIP, which will probably put the AI into tech level 4 territory.
#2 - You absolutely cannot let that rebel colony get destroyed. The +100 AIP will hurt a lot. I tend to actually turn those off in my games, as they are super annoying. On the plus side, you don't actually have to *hold* the system. Just get in there, blow the command station, toss up a quick one up of your own (and nothing else). Once it gets blown up, the timer gets reset to 120min, at which point you toss another one up near the end of the timer.
#3 - Speaking of scouting, you also want to find every data center and AI Co-Processor and blow them to smithereens to drop your AIP a little (don't actually blow up the command centers there, as that will raise your AIP back up).

Some other less-important things:
Your strategy of having contiguous territory is one that I also tend to use - I hate having to manage warp gates and not having a way to get reinforcements to planets that need them.
You have a lot of unused energy. You should build many more ships so that you have less unused energy. If that means unlocking higher tech level ships (small and big), then do so.
I personally never play with auto AI progress on. All it does is make the game harder as time goes on, without providing any real challenge or benefit.
Hacking doesn't directly affect AIP (unless you're hacking a Super Terminal, which drops your AIP a little bit but spawns a bunch of AI guys frequently until you stop hacking). Also, don't hack when your hacking is at 0 or below. Bad things will happen.
Another way of preventing enemy "waves" from arriving at your systems is to blow up warp gates on surrounding planets. Just the warp gates, not the command stations. Then, you leave one "accessible" system (or system chain) where you can stick a larger number of turrets. This way, the AI will always throw "waves" at that system, which means you can put non-jammer stations on your border systems.

[Moliere]

Looks like you've got a bit of a stalemate there.

This turned out to be true. After defeating the first 10k ship armada the AI's kept sending another wave of 10k one after another with no chance for me to fully recover or take the offense. I ended up going back a couple of save games to get to before I so thoroughly pissed off the AI.

#2 - You absolutely cannot let that rebel colony get destroyed. The +100 AIP will hurt a lot.

When I went back a couple of save games the AI moved the Rebel colony to a different and more accessible planet so I have a chance to save them now.

You have a lot of unused energy.

By design. The AI will occasionally sneak past my defense and take out 3-4 planets before I can take them back and rebuild the Command Station / Matter Converters. Also, I like have extra energy on hand so I can lay down a completely new defense on a planet being threatened without worrying about energy or metal.

Another way of preventing enemy "waves" from arriving at your systems is to blow up warp gates on surrounding planets.

Something for me to look into. I have neglected a lot of the more subtle strategies that don't involve me conquering one planet after another.

[GreenGoo]

I went to fire this up and realized it wasn't installed. Which is weird. Because I leave everything installed these days.

Anyway, marked it to install tonight during off hours.

How's your game going Moliere?

[Moliere]

How's your game going Moliere?

I control 39 out of 120 planets. I still struggle with the subtle strategy of bypassing AI planets. It requires a lot more effort to use Transports, cloaked ships, warp gates, and Mobile building stations. Even then I still have to face regular waves of 3-5k enemy ships at various points in my defenses. I could always play it at an easier difficulty level, but that seems less satisfying.

[Moliere]

I started a new game:

80 planets
Two random level 7 AI's
No teleporting ships
No cloaked ships
No AI Core protectors
No auto-AI progression
Half sized AI waves

We'll see how much I hamstringed the AI vs. my own fleet. I will be sad about not having the level 3 teleporting Engineers.

[NickAragua]

Those level 3 engineers are pretty important, but you'll probably be fine.

Just remember, gotta keep that AI progress low. Stay under level II as long as possible, definitely don't go into level III until you're already whaling on the homeworlds.

[Moliere]

Those level 3 engineers are pretty important, but you'll probably be fine.

You know what else is cloaked? Mines and Scouts. I like mining wormholes. I will have to make do with my two original starting scouts and Scout Starships if I want more.




I have secured my little corner of the galaxy with 5 planets out of 80. My plan now is to practice slinking along the bottom to the right and venturing up while trying to keep the AI Progress below 230. This is hard since every AI Command ship I destroy raises it another 20 points.

How do you use Riot ships and their various upgrades?

[NickAragua]

Once you build a riot ship, you can use that ship like a factory to add on modules. I forget how the UI works, though. Basically, the point of riot ships is to deliver engine damage to large numbers of ships. It won't get many kills, but it'll slow the bad guys down. You can also put force fields on them.

Without scouts, you're going to have a hard time finding the AI homeworlds. You'll need maybe scout starships? Or transports loaded up with scouts? I dunno. I always play with cloaked units/teleporters on. The point is to get a good handle on where the AI worlds are and then make a beeline for those. Again, take out any data centers you encounter. Other ways to lower AI progress include hacking the superterminal (risky but doable) and blowing up *all* the AI Co-processors. You'll want to capture and hold at least one advanced factory and as many advanced research stations as you can. There's actually a dynamic objective list buried somewhere in the UI that might help give you some priorities.

[Moliere]

Once you build a riot ship, you can use that ship like a factory to add on modules. I forget how the UI works, though. Basically, the point of riot ships is to deliver engine damage to large numbers of ships. It won't get many kills, but it'll slow the bad guys down. You can also put force fields on them.

Without scouts, you're going to have a hard time finding the AI homeworlds. You'll need maybe scout starships? Or transports loaded up with scouts? I dunno. I always play with cloaked units/teleporters on. The point is to get a good handle on where the AI worlds are and then make a beeline for those. Again, take out any data centers you encounter. Other ways to lower AI progress include hacking the superterminal (risky but doable) and blowing up *all* the AI Co-processors. You'll want to capture and hold at least one advanced factory and as many advanced research stations as you can. There's actually a dynamic objective list buried somewhere in the UI that might help give you some priorities.

How are AI home worlds identified?
The scout Starship will be enough for scouting.
I am going to use this game to figure out how to leap frog worlds, use Transports and Warp Gates, and minimize AI Progress.

[NickAragua]

Homeworlds are always Mark V worlds surrounded by Mark IV worlds. Usually, they're located more or less on the other side of the galaxy from you. The generally accepted consensus is that you want to avoid "alerting" a homeworld (by putting military forces next door or taking over a neighboring world) until you are absolutely ready to full-on assault it.

[Moliere]

I used my scout starship and located both AI Homeworlds. Fortunately I can reach both following the same line up the right side of the map. I am now 2 worlds away from both of them. So you think I can take each of the next planets without alerting the Homeworld because there will still be 1 buffer planet? As you can see I have plenty of Energy and Science left to help me decide what I will need for this final push. So far I have not upgraded anything except the level 2 starships. My level 1 turret defenses have held off all the incoming waves. My concern is the AI Progress. This beeline progress towards the homeworlds has minimized it's increase, but the next level up is 230. Each planet I take costs me 20 so 2 more planets and the AI will be at level 2. I can destroy a data center, but it's 4 planets deep into AI territory on the left side of the map. I was thinking maybe an Assault Transport might make it through carrying a few starships going on a suicide mission to just destroy the data center.

[NickAragua]

Two thumbs up for getting that far into AI territory without the AI breaching tech level 2.

So you think I can take each of the next planets without alerting the Homeworld because there will still be 1 buffer planet?

Correct. However, it will alert the MKIV worlds, which aren't exactly a picnic to take over, either. So I would recommend holding off until you're ready to take out a single homeworld and then plowing through as fast as possible. Then you can take a little time to rebuild your fleet and make a concentrated push for the other one.

I can destroy a data center, but it's 4 planets deep into AI territory on the left side of the map. I was thinking maybe an Assault Transport might make it through carrying a few starships going on a suicide mission to just destroy the data center.

I think it might be worth it. Two things to consider though:

1) Sending military units more than three planets deep into AI land provokes a "deep strike" response or something like that. It's pretty nasty.
2) You look like you have a significant number of un-scouted worlds less than three hops away from your bee-line. I would recommend checking all of those out for data centers and valuable goodies (advanced research stations/factories, etc) before committing to a deep strike or either of the homeworlds.

[Moliere]

I took out 2 data centers and then the next 2 planets (break even on AI Progress) getting one step closer on each AI homeworld. I used a bunch of Knowledge to upgrade starships, but picked up the Spire Archive so that's good for an extra 6000 Knowledge points. I love the Leech Starship. More than half my fleet was stolen from the AI.


This is on the AI Homeworld. I can't destroy the AI Command Center until I destroy all the Guard Posts on that planet. But I can't destroy the Guard Posts until I destroy all the Core Shield Generators in the entire galaxy? That's going to be a huge pain in a galaxy this size.

[NickAragua]

Do you actually have that core shield generator feature on? I thought you turned it off. If so, then sometimes the tooltips don't reflect reality.

[Moliere]

Do you actually have that core shield generator feature on? I thought you turned it off. If so, then sometimes the tooltips don't reflect reality.

I did turn it off. We'll see what happens when I get there. Taking my first Mark IV planet next to the homeworld was difficult enough. The AI doesn't like you attacking so near.

[NickAragua]

You've definitely got your work cut out for you. One other trick you can use to reduce the amount of reinforcement the homeworld gets is to, when you take over the world next door, put a warp jammer command station on it. That way it will go off alert at least while you're rebuilding your fleet and getting set up.

[Moliere]

You've definitely got your work cut out for you. One other trick you can use to reduce the amount of reinforcement the homeworld gets is to, when you take over the world next door, put a warp jammer command station on it. That way it will go off alert at least while you're rebuilding your fleet and getting set up.

That's true after I clear the planet. In order to do this though I had to build 4 separate fleets of 34 starships to clear out thousands of defenders on the planet and repulse 4 waves of retaliations all over the galaxy. To finally kill the Command ship I had to send a suicide squad of bombers to race around taking out the Guard Posts in order to kill the Nuke Eye thing and then kill the Command ship. Then the AI got really pissed and sent all the remaining ships to my neighboring planets. It was ugly and took me some time to finish rebuilding all my defenses. Before I go any further I will need to upgrade to the Mark IV turrets, destroy all my current turrets so I have the energy to upgrade all the planets with Mark III and IV. It's going to take me an hour just to to prep my defenses before I can contemplate the next planetary invasion.

[NickAragua]

Sounds like a plan. If you're having trouble getting your troops into a planet, you always have the option of popping an EMP or lightning warhead to beachhead things a little. EMP Warheads disable all ships on the planet for about 30 sec, while lightning warheads hit super hard and are good for clearing wormhole entrances. What kind of starships are you using?

Edit: Warheads cost a nominal amount of AIP so don't go too nuts.

[Moliere]

I have avoided warheads because of the AIP and retaliation danger.

I use all of the starships except Riot. I like them because they have high health and immunities to things like instant death. The leach is my favorite because of how it steals ships from the AI. On both offense and defense I usually end up with a few hundred extra of the AI's ships in my fleet.

[Moliere]

I took out 5 more data centers. That brings my AIP down to 115 and gives me some cushion to take over a few more planets if I need the energy or knowledge.

I also spent a few hours upgrading all my planets to level 3 and 4 turrets. I took my 34 starship armada into the second Mark IV planet bordering the other homeworld. They took out a number of high profile targets before being wiped out. That caused the AI to send fleets of 5500 and 3500 at two of my planets. Those were repulsed and now it's back to building up my starship armada again. Tomorrow I will probably take over 2 easy planets for the knowledge to upgrade the remaining 2 starships and the Warp Jammer Command station.

[NickAragua]

The other thing you could do if you want more knowledge is use some of your excess hacking points to hack some neighboring AI-held worlds that you have no intention of taking. Neuter a neighboring MK I world, clear out the guard posts that you can using raid starships, then send your mobile fleet in along with a hacker, and hack away (it's called "knowledge hack" or something similar). This way you can get a bit of extra knowledge without paying in AI Progress. The reason you need your mobile fleet there is to defend against the AI response, which can get pretty unpleasant.

[Moliere]

I am down to the two AI homeworlds and kept my AIP at 1. These final battles are going to be long. Not sure how motivated I will be if it turns into tedium.

[NickAragua]

The "good" part is that homeworld guard posts are much tougher and not very much like other guard posts in terms of gameplay. So you'll have your hands full. To be fair, this is the part where I usually get stuck and then give up, so if you make it past this bit, you can consider yourself better than I am at this game.

[Moliere]

About every 3 minutes the AI Homeworld sends around 150 ships to the next planet over. I have been using my Leech ships to capture on average 30-40 new ships each time. Depending on my level of patience I am going to try and maximize these leachings (trying to get only the leach ships to attack the AI fleet) and see how big I can build this stolen fleet and use it to attack the homeworld.

[NickAragua]

Seems like a good idea. You'll still need pretty much everything you've got, but at the very least you'll want to send these guys in first so they soak up the alpha strike. Don't be discouraged if you don't make too much progress, even one guard post down per assault is a victory. Expect the AI to counterattack pretty hard, as well, once you start your attack. But don't take too long, or you'll get hit even worse. It's pretty tough.

[Moliere]

Last night I sent my first fleet into the homeworld and took out the machine that was sending the 200 ship armadas at me every 3 minutes. I spent an hour dealing with the AI's retaliation for attacking the homeworld. My second fleet of 36 starships managed to take out 3 of the guardposts, including one that controlled some kind of cross planet attack coordination. Another hour of dealing with the AI retaliation before I had to stop for the night. The biggest concern now is that each guard post I kill raises the AIP by 1. After last night my current count is 229. One more and I bump the AI to level 2. I'm not sure how big of a deal this is since I am only attacking the homeworlds at this point. After the remains of my second fleet left the AI homeworld I got a message I had never heard from the AI: "Do you think we're stupid?" That was kind of scary, versus the usual taunting.