More Awesome Than You!

Behold, planetary invasion for real men! Wussies need not apply! All I gots is a minibomb, 900 HP, and a bad attitude!
Part 1: The Attack Begins! (http://beta.moreawesomethanyou.com:8080/spore/invasion1.html)
After I make it back into space, I repair, reload, and then...
Part 2: CONQUER! (http://beta.moreawesomethanyou.com:8080/spore/invasion2.html)
At no point during this do I actually DIE. And remember, this is the REAL difficulty setting! None of that pussyass 10K HP shit! Seriously, how can you even DIE with that? You wussies on EASY have more hitpoints than my maxed out ship!

I take it you use the keyboard to guide your ship. I've got to practice that a lot more, because if I do use it I always overshoot my targets.

Your ship looks like the ship from Starflight.

It looks like he's using the Klingon D7 Gus made (found in another thread a few below this one).

Darn, I wish I could see those.  I've tried in IE and Safari, and each time all I get is the sound once the clip starts playing.

 - Gus

The point is not to worry about overshooting your target, this is a fly-by shooting anyway. Notice how I'm not actually picky about when I stop, I just get roughly over the target and drop some bombs.

I've been loading for three minutes on cable with just the Quicktime logo to look at. *cries*

I get a black screen with "[no video]."

Bah, you're going to make me post it on Stupid Youtube or something, aren't you?

I wouldn't dare ask that of you. However, I would like to know what format the video is so that I may find out how to play it in my browser.

Updated Quicktime, and now it is loading, but is sure is slow.

My Quicktime was updated, but it was hella slow. I solved it the old fashioned way...by looking at something else for a second.

I switched the rendering engine to IE and it is now loading. I only had the big blue Q before that.

I don't seem to have the plugins needed to play it in a window, so I used the handy download link it gave me instead.  Over 42mb, Pescado?  How unlike you!  The movies look pretty cool; I really need to get around to installing the game so I can try it myself.  The hit-and-run tactics look useful.

And remember, this is invading like a REAL warrior! None of that wussy godmode-level HP! I have a nice, fair, measly 900! It is a good day to die!

Ok.. let's see you kill the Grox. YOu will be assimilated.

The Grox are kinda in the center of the galaxy. It is a LOOONG way away. And Grox colonies are reportedly easier than homeworlds.

You think mini bomb is good.. try Mega bomb .  ;D  It doesnt take much for them to beg for mercy.

I used to command a wimpy empire, pushed around by every Spodist in my spiral arm.  Then I got J.M. Pescado's Free Book on how to be a real man, and now I've invaded several enemy homeworlds without calling in allied mercenaries!

Really, just knowing that ship strength depends on the number of colonies in the empire has been very helpful.  Whittling away at the weak T0 colonies makes the T2s and T3s much easier when their time comes.  Choosing tag-alongs from the big empires has greatly improved their survival rate.  While it's true they aren't very useful for taking enemy planets, they do make short work of the interceptors that show up whenever you enter enemy territory.

It's true that the way to win is to concentrate on bombing and ignore just about everything else, particularly turrets.  Though taking out defending ships is worthwhile if you can do so quickly and without much effort.

 - Gus

Here's a couple of useful keys that weren't in the manual:

Home zooms you up out of the atmosphere, or after just a couple of presses out of the solar system entirely.

End is basically the same but zooming in the way or down below the radar.

The Page Up and Page Down keys will pitch the camera up and down, but those aren't useful for getting in and out of bombing range quickly.

It's really only "quick" and "effortless" to take out enemy ships if you have things like the megalaser and megaproton, or even antimatter, and your enemy ships don't have 1K+ HP. If you can destroy them in two or three shots, go ahead and take them out. If all you have is a minimissile and minilaser, forget it.

However, did you know that you can actually destroy even very big enemy ships with your BOMB? Yes, that's right, you can BOMB enemy ships. Occasionally, they can collide with the bomb (and be killed nearly instantly because the megabomb does 1.8K HP vs. the megamissile's 120, and even the minibomb does 300). Also, if you are very low when bombing, or the enemy buildings are very high, you can drop a bomb that impacts with the building immediately, destroying all enemy ships caught in the blast. I have killed more enemy ships with bombs while invading than I have with missiles or lazors.

Also, to get additional damage in a fight, use your lazor against enemies while the missile launcher is reloading. This is useful when defending a weak colony or trying to take out a pesky defender quickly so you can bomb unopposed.

I find that as I play the game more, I grow increasingly less tolerant of the alien interlopers crowding my space and more inclined kill them. As such, my invasionary technique has improved: I can now kill alien homeworlds in my lousy 450-hp starting junker upgraded only up to the minibomb. No health or energy. What's more, I can take out 2 or 3 cities in a single pass, all WITHOUT DYING.

I should post a new video of "homeworld invasion on a noob ship" soon, since I have a game where I am about to do just that. If I keep improving at this, soon I'll be invading homeworlds with nothing but the lazor. :P

I kill every spacefaring race I encounter, no talking and no mercy (except to decline the inevitable surrender offers). Primitives I leave for later. For some reason alien empires leave me alone if I don't do the 'contact an alien empire' tutorial, so it's easy to build up and then initiate first contact on my own terms, like a planetbuster on the enemy homeworld.

That's both true to a degree and not true. Like most things, the game will only let you procrastinate for so long, but you CAN delay their expansion into your sphere by delibeately avoiding contact. However, contacting them can ALSO jumpstart your expansion, as their more developed economies seem to pay higher prices for spice (underdeveloped planets seem to have a lower probability of good prices), AND you can buy colonial supplies as low as half-off. Some of them are worth keeping around for that reason...others, well, others are destined for an ass-kicking.

My meanest race (which looks a bit like a t-rex) has let two empires live. One is getting uncomfortably huge and rings my central empire. But I let them and another small one live so that I have a cheaper place to buy uber turrets and colonies. Though I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be bombing things...I already have Empire 5 and Warmonger 4.

My strategy has been to do a quick survey of the empire first. Take out the T0, T1, and T2s, then get the T3. By the time I get to the T3, the enemy ships are sufficiently weakened that I can take two cities in a swipe, maybe three if my aim is good with the mega bomb. Getting a lot of initial travel space helps. I can have one or maybe two taken by the time the enemy ships catch up.

This race and another I have waiting in the wings are going to be taking on the Grox in concert.

I played a T-Rex race too and hated the way the game forces you to play nice: tutorials getting you to make unwanted contact ('Oh Captain, we should find other intelligent life and make friends with them!'), only real way to make money is through trading, best discounts only found in foreign markets, extremely unprofitable to wage war, only way to get more ships is to ally, and they start you off right next to aggressive Spodists so you need to kiss their boots to avoid war. It's very different (and not in a good way, although perhaps more challenging) from earlier stages where you could slaughter your way to the top. Back when I first played the space stage, the Spodist empire I came across demanded 1 million sporebucks for peace, while the friendly merchant empire next door happily gobbled up every single profitable system in sight, leaving me with red and yellow spice worlds, and two other empires much further away immediately declared war on me. So now I never bother to talk at all, just exterminate. Everything is either food or target practice.

Trade within your own empire. My own empire will give me 43k for pink spice, etc. Just have to pick the right planets.
Very true. This is why I have the two friendly empires around.
Allied ships suck balls.
Don't avoid it. Kill them. Uppity little things. Let's see how Spode fares against the all-powerful mega bomb!

I try to locate one pink, purple, or green spice world the moment I get my paws on a colony kit. After that, whatever. I'm either going to ally and trade, or kill & conquer. Who cares if the empire next door took all the green spice for 100 parsecs? It'll be mine in two minutes.

Allied ships don't suck as much balls as you might think.  Since J.M. pointed out that they vary in strength depening on empire size, I've found allies from large empires to be handy.  Not great, and you have to repair them periodically, but handy.

I've not had any problems with Spodists once I mastered Space.  I've found it relatively easy to get them sweet on you early, which means they don't demand money and you don't have to kiss boots.  Warrior and Zealot races give you +10 relationship right off the bat if you threaten them in your initial contact instead of being mealy-mouthed.  Run one mission for them, sell them a few Spice / buy a few items, and pretty soon you're +50 and they're friendly.  Start a trade route and they're Green pretty quickly.

Once past the mid-game, you can use the Medium or Super Happy rays and get +50 relationship for the cost of some energy.

Going the other way, taking planets is fairly easy once you realize it's about nuking cities, not destroying ships or turrets.  Zoom along at maximum alititude for speed, and them zoom down to absolute minimum for the maximum damage and to avoid turret fire, let off a couple of bombs, and you're done.  T0's are always doable once you have the minimum bomb, T1's and T2's aren't that hard if you don't stick around for enemy retaliation, and homeworlds aren't hard once you have the shield.

Finding a claiming a couple of good-color Spice planets early is the key to prosperity, though you may want to stick to Wild planets initially if you're playing without the Terraforming Tutorial exploit.  It's also helpful to concentrate on getting 2-3 good colonies before contacting any aliens.  As J.M. pointed out, they don't start their own rapid expansion until you talk to at least one.

 - Gus

I can take homeworlds with nothing but a minibomb. Not even health upgrades, so all I have is a 300/450 hp junkmobile. :P I will post a video of the new improved invasionary technique the next time I play.

Spice hunting tips: There remains no doubt in my mind now that the colors of spice you can find are directly correlated to the color of star: M stars always have practically nothing but red, with a little yellow spice. As you move up the spectral classes, you shift towards the higher-classes of spice. Red spice is favored at M stars, you start seeing more yellow and green going into K and G stars, and A and higher tends to be dominated by increasing amounts of bluespice over red/yellow. So if you want to find higher-classes of spice, search hotter stars.

Every now and then though you will get a purple/pink spice planet in even a red star system, so there's some randomness involved.

I am simply not that awesome.  However, I've found that I generally don't need to invade (unless playing by Ur-quan rules) until I've got a few upgrades.

I have noticed that 1. damage seems to depend on distance to target, and 2. there's a dead spot where the turrets won't fire on you if you're in the center and very low.  Sometimes you'll run into a planet with very tall city hall / building models, and you can't get into that dead zone because it's blocked.

I started to say that they should have made G-class stars have more life but tend toward red spice, and put the less common spice on harder to terraform worlds at the ends of the spectrum.  But then I remembered that M stars are about 75% of the stars out there.  So if you're going to have a correlation, crappy spice should be around class M's.

I don't think I've ever seen a Wild planet with anything better than Green.  Pink and Purple always seem to be on blue or red orbit planets.

 - Gus

1. False. Bombs deliver the same damage every time: 300 per a mini, 600 for a medium, 1800 for a mega.
2. I have found that the hoverbomb technique works better with the higher-classes of bomb. With the minibomb, it really has its own invasion strategy, since any attempt to bomb with precision will get you mauled by the defenders when attacking a homeworld. With this NEW technique, I can roll through 2 or 3 cities on just 450 HP before having to repair.
I'm not saying "going to have" or how it SHOULD be. I'm saying that this is how it IS. Look over any large empire you've had, and check the spice types: Red/yellow spice is nearly always dominant at M and K stars, with G stars showing red/yellow/some green, and A and higher stars having blue where you'd normally find red/yellow, with a smattering of pink/purple/some green.

Interestingly, your homeworld is always G-class star. This was particularly amusing in the "slug" game where the timeline said I took some 20 billion years to reach space. The lifespan of a G-star is around 10 billion, making that impossible. It'd be funny if you could lose by taking so long that your star puffs up into a red giant and eats you.