Will Entrenchment let me do "1 versus many" easier?

answer to first question:  What are your trying to say?  crew extractors won't work?  You may have turned the ability off of autocast

 

answer to second question: what exactly is the problem?

 

answer to third question: no

First question: The AI doesn't crew the extractors that I crewed. That let me crew those extractors for posterity, despite the fact that those resources are very close to AI's territory.

 

Second question: AI should have hit (Reverie) my Marza bearing missile barrage. Instead, it hit my novice Marza, leaving my experienced Marza free to do a barrage.

 

Third question: Hmm. Then I might just get Entrenchment, since it doesn't throw the game off balance. Adding defensive tools without giving rise to unbeatable defensive stances? Sounds good.

first quesiton:  still not understanding what you are asking

 

second question: the ai doens't know what abilities you have on your marzas, so it probably picked the one closer to it

 

third question: entrenchment is definately worth it.  it's very balanced.

First question: I crewed a neutral resource extractor. I left the scene. Enemy AI came upon the scene with some missionary vessels. Enemy AI just stood there, not taking over (crewing) the extractors that I had crewed. 2 unfair benefits it gave me are... free sight of passing ships, truly "invulnerable" resource extractors.

 

Will I have to relearn lots of stuff with Entrenchment? I've barely finished looking through the .entity files and figuring out what counters what. (Eg. Kol is the only way against Advent fighter/bomber spam).

 

I don't request for new features often (eg moving starbases around or something). I prefer to be surprised by the game designers. But I want the surprise to be good, the features balanced against lopsided exploits. (I love the Reverie against Marza's missile barrage).

ok now i understand your first question.  you never can tell with the AI.  they seem to do weird stuff sometimes.  idk

 

and no you won't have to realearn the entity files cuz they are the same.  and Kol isn't the only way to counter fighter and bomber spam from advent, use flack and and bombers to counter them.

You saw my replay?

 

The 1st Kol is free. I noticed that flak frigates don't kill fighters as fast as fighters kill fighters, so they're quite expensive to use to counter fighters. Bombers will get chewed up by fighters faster than my flak frigs can kill them fighters. But I guess I'll have to use flak frigs if I don't have the Kol. One capital ship can be replaced by 12 flak frigs (ship slots). That actually seems much better than the Kol's flak burst; no need antimatter or leveling up to kill fighters. Maybe I'll try this.

 

Any other "1 versus many AIs" replays I can find out there?

Uhm...I'm sorry to disagree, but I'd definitely say that entrenchment makes 1vX AIs much easier. The AI got the IQ of a loaf of bread and goes straight for the SB, when it attacks a planet. Given that you can easily fortify chokepoints that way, are guaranteed to kill their fleet given a PJI present and are free to level up your caps there and build up a fleet...yes, I'd definitely say it makes it a hell of a lot easier. But unless you hadn't done it before: be sure to get lots of bombers as well, because the AI likes SBs as well and bombers kill those fairly easy.

The problem will not be the starbase. That helps greatly. But the amount of small planet bombing frigs the AI sends in is terrifying!

I tried 1vs9 unfair AI several times with TEC. Built up a starbase and 3 caps with repair bays as a defense ball. Then about 100-150 frigs invade the planet, about 15 to 20 of these bombing frigs. The caps, SB and repair platforms stay all fine. But the planet goes down like whoops! Maybe you could install the auxiliary government (or equal) on the SB, and try a breakthrough with 3 or 4 lvl 10 caps. But, this still seems somewhat risky!

A few fighters can easily take care of siege-frigates. Just make them hold position close to them and your planet won't be in any danger. And as you already suggested, SBs can be upgraded to prevent the loss of a planet to bombardment.

Wow, all that additions with Entrenchment seems like there's more to learn. Isn't the AI also a loaf of bread in vanilla Sins? They always go for my repair bays and gauss cannon cluster.

 

Fighters chew up siege frigs fast. But against advent fighter/bomber spam, my TEC fighters don't survive at all to do anything. And flak frigs simply don't kill their bomber blobs fast enough before they take out my repair bays (within 1-2 mins). Kol is the only answer, as in my replay.

 

I'm still waiting for a chance to play Vasari versus Advent fighter/bomber spam.

You have to take into account that a) advent carriers have 50% more squadrons than yours do and their squadrons contain more strikecraft. Still, those big numbers come in a trade for durability, their fighters are the weakest ingame. So get about fighter_squadrons/2 flak and a bunch of fighters to kill their bombers. If your SB can take the beating keep your fighters docked until the Flak has thinned out their fighters a bit, because otherwise there might not be enough fighters left to take care of the bombers quickly. Also make sure that your flak protects your LRMs in case the fighters attack those, lacking a better target and that your flak are always in range of their fighters. Shouldn't be a problem then.

And that's the problem. They go after only my repair bays, not my harder gauss cannons (I have no Entrenchment yet). My repair bays go down with almost full antimatter. Yeah, bombers fly fast.

 

By the time my flak frigs thin out their fighters, 2 repair bays are gone. Their Disciples may also try to chew on my flak frigs, forcing my LRMs to focus on their Disciples (and not the siege frigs). (Don't you love the AttackType mechanics in AI? Nice. :D)

 

By the time my docked fighters now take on their bombers, new squadrons of Advent fighters are produced (1-2 per squadron). Again, no Entrenchment, no slowdown of carriers' production in battle.

 

My fighters barely halved their bombers, and their frigs have almost killed my cap ship (no repair bays).

 

While my fighters were docked, siege frigs bomb my planet to a crisp.

 

1v2 unfair AIs is like playing 1v4. Each unfair AI gets a resource/income boost.

 

I know. I'm masochistic.

Looks like you are generally underpowered. Did you try getting some econ up with TEC? It's pretty cheap after all and might give you the edge in production you'd need without a SB.

Yes, I tried getting trade ports early.

But if I do that too early, I can't get a 2nd cap ship that is needed to prevent my enemies from getting more planets (each planet with credit income of 3+!).

Even if I trade-port my only 2 planets (home and a desert), I can't out-econ the 2 unfair Advents. (Each trade port takes 10 mins to break even, not counting the metal/crystal costs. My game ends in 30 mins if I don't get 2 Kols up soon enough.)

If you see my replay, the only way I could win was to split their forces. Bombard their fringe planets every time they start making a modicum of credits from them. I'm too weak to go for resource-deprivation.

Of course, I will be terribly underpowered to handle their fighter/bomber hordes. I used Kol to do that. I just parked my fighters beside my Kol, then flak burst the incoming fighters. (AI fighters tend to go after my fighters).

Making my stand at home planet is no go. First, no trade port chain. Second, constant bombardment of my home planet pushes my credit income down from 10.1 to 3 often.

I played the 3-player map "Balance of Power", in case you wanna try this masochistic experiment yourself. I took 2.5 hours to beat the 2 unfair Advents.

I'm unwilling to go Entrenchment yet, until the AI is beefed up more and any balance issues ironed out first.

By the way, the Kol's gauss gun is fantastic. Just make sure you fire it at a target with only 15% shield mitigation (and not 65%).

Entrenchment's worth the buy imo. The AI IS stronger in Entrench, and it'll be worth the (very) slight unbalance to start learning the strats on the new game. Besides, the original Sins is also unbalanced. People just find ways to get around it.

Oh yeah. It's only ten bucks. Come on. And you can play the original whenever you like, so you're not forced to play the new one. They're both supported. And since you seem to be planning on getting entrenchment sometime anyways, sooner is better than later.