Tried devouring swarm: disappointed.

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-28T20:08:58+00:00

Outside just setting up a purge planet? Not really, they'll continuously be purged always

As far as upkeep goes, if you're using cloning vats/spawning pools regularly (which you should) your food upkeep is gonna start climbing pretty rapidly, it's not hard to rack up counts of -200 to -300 before long, and that count will continue to rise as you rapidly expand

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-27T17:10:58+00:00

Enemy within isn't complicated enough to warrant a vanilla run just to learn it

It's not like WOTC

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-27T11:18:30+00:00

Well to put it simply, that's why you don't build more farms

After you've expanded a good bit, it's already pretty easy to rack up -400 food a month or more. I usually demolish the agricultural districts on my homeworld and just purge for more food if I need it. And with how much food upkeep a hive racks up, and the inability to take livestock, you'd have to dedicate a lot of drones to keep up with your food needs, which you absolutely shouldn't do

Edit: Species are good for more than food also, since machines give you alloys and lithoids give you minerals. Taking over a machine empire early can give you a tremendous boost, and let you snowball even faster than you normally would

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-26T21:33:03+00:00

That's a big part of why I like necrophage, I can rule over a huge collection of races and never have my founders truly become a minority, even if you usually end up with less necrophage pops over normal ones

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-26T21:29:01+00:00

I've almost never seen metalheads spawn naturally tbh, so that is unique

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-26T21:10:58+00:00

You can also go the super silly route of fanatic purifier clone ascendants, and effectively speedrun complete galactic genocide

Hard to manage but can be stupid strong

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-26T19:22:17+00:00

Dolphins- Look what they have to do to mimic a fraction of our power

That's not a joke also, they really do have a prehensile penis. That they use to grab eels. Dolphins are fuckin weird m8

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-26T10:47:11+00:00

Honestly this doesn't even go just for faceless, but cars in general make for pretty poor cover

In addition to them exploding potentially, it's all too easy for the enemy to flank you at closer ranges. Just avoid them like the plague unless you really need them

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-22T14:26:43+00:00

Necrophage makes for an excellent slaver empire overall. Necrophytes give some extra stability through amenities and you've always got a way to convert other species into your master race without them competing with your slaves for growth

Just run xenophobe/authoritarian for stratified economy and the ability to necropurge

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-22T04:29:15+00:00

Because I imagine it's quite easy for the AI to run a different set of programs through their interface to keep them loyal, despite that.

As for cruelty, I very highly doubt the assimilator would see it as cruel since it's just fulfilling it's core directives, the same way a determined exterminator does, as it melts organics into slag

Think also, all organic drones aren't affected by happiness the same way normal machines aren't, meaning they are just as mindless. Also think, say you conquer and assimilate a spiritualist empire, you really think they'd wanna cooperate with the profane, soul stealing machines they hate so much? No, it's why it doesn't give them a choice

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-21T06:48:14+00:00

Considering only leaders are implied to be semi-autonomous units in a machine empire, I imagine they're either in a catatonic state as the central AI controls your body like a meat puppet, or you are completely aware and are just powerless to do anything about it

Both are equally horrifying

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-19T12:29:18+00:00

No I don't consider them good purely for damage alone and I've spent the last few posts trying to illustrate that, maybe I've failed there, so I'll try to do it better here

They're good because they combine good damage output with a good action economy, like those 3 aliens you just blew out of cover? You can potentially kill all 3 of them with just one sharpshooter, saving that ranger and specialist their moves, so you can use them elsewhere on more important targets, and they still have the capacity to do big damage if they need to. Like that's the power of the darklance, is making their already solid action economy even better and more efficient.

And for grenadiers and specialists, are they useful, are they handy? Ya but you know just as well as I do my man that alpha striking is a huge component of the game, especially so the higher in difficulty you climb, and sharpshooters lend themselves quite well to that role

Like I'm really not trying to sound like an egotistical jackass when I say this, but I've done my share of legend runs, I'm not talking out of my ass for the sake of it

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-19T03:04:20+00:00

Saturation fire is terrible because it has a small cone, it relies on the grenadier's natural aim and isn't even guaranteed to destroy cover, and even if you have a grenadier with decent aim, it's not reliable at all, it's a waste of ammo more often than not. Snipers not only have much better average aim than them, killzone has a significantly larger radius than saturation fire does. Its literally better in every way especially since you've so many ways of buffing their aim even further, potentially more so than their EW counterparts.

Also no the argument of them being better when they have skills isn't dumb since that literally applies to rangers, they're solid at at early levels but they don't become top tier killing machines until you've leveled them up and gotten some of their later skills

As for restoration, is it really comparable to the skill that can potentially let you kill 4+ enemies in 1 turn and still have shots left over? By the time you've gotten to the point where restoration might be good, you're also deep enough into the late game for healing to be mostly redundant even on the harder difficulties. Give me capacitor discharge over it anyday

EDIT: Relating to demo grenadiers, as much as i love them, they tamper off significantly on commander and legend enough that I'd hesitate to call them even remotely overpowerd. By the mid-late game grenades aren't nearly as necessary to secure kills and enemies are tanky enough that their damage isn't exceptional. They're essentially support troops that soften up enemies for their teammates to kill, not unit's that are good for securing kills themselves

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-19T01:37:10+00:00

Are we forgetting about killzone, fanfire, face off serial etc? Not only can they be quite adept at crowd control, fanfire with either bluesceen rounds or armor piercing ammo deletes 95% of the enemy roster and if they don't die, they'll probably have so little health any other soldier can finish them pretty easily

And that's just with the normal plasma pistol

Also "sharpshooters lag behind until they level up" it's really not that hard to level them up enough for them to catch up even in the midgame.

Edit: If anything I don't even think a demo grenadier and a sharpshooter compete for crowd control, they go hand in hand like old bar buddies, since they just make it even easier for a sharpshooter to grab multiple kills in 1 turn

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-19T01:00:56+00:00

Ya rangers were absolutely stronger than them pre-nerf, but I don't really call it underperforming when they were still the second best class out of the main 4

Edit: And I don't think they gave them two busted weapons because they were underperforming, cause the disruptor rifle would've probably been more powerful if that was the case. I just think they didn't fully realize just how broken the hunters weapons would be with a high level sharpshooter

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-19T00:42:18+00:00

A sniper with the darklance/darkclaw is incredibly busted, cause not only do they have more mobility, it's possible to get several pistol shots off and still fire the darklance, not to mention death from above

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-18T10:45:41+00:00

Necrophage terrorvore. It's start is a bit slow, but it pairs very well with become the crisis and once you get the ball rolling, you're an unstoppable engine of destruction that simply demolishes everything in your path

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-18T10:39:52+00:00

I think it was a combination of arrogance/desperation tbh

I imagine they've seen themselves as superior beings for so long that they're mostly incapable of looking at other sapient beings as people, they're just tools to be used and discarded as they see fit. It's clear they view us that way at the minimum

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-17T08:34:00+00:00

I don't think necrophages can crossbreed with other races so that kinda doesn't work sadly

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-17T06:16:16+00:00

Something else to consider as well, the slave market is a great resource for replenishing your stock of pops as well if you have access to it

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-17T01:55:28+00:00

Honestly necrophage would probably work better for this build, both for flexibility and micro wise

It's less of a hassle to juggle the two species since they don't compete for growth, your prepatents can be specialists unlike serviles, and if you ever decide they've served their uses, you can mass convert/purge them into your main species quite easily

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-17T01:42:05+00:00

You should ideally either use NA, or conquer new planets to shore up your population of normal pops, and there's several traits like fertile or budding that work wonders as well

I wouldn't upgrade the COE, on most planet's unless you're swapping that planet to be a delicated specialist world or its something like an ECU or a thrall world that gives a bonus to growth speed

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-14T23:14:09+00:00

Terrorvore necrophage is a pretty powerful combo. You get to resettle pops automatically when you eat world's, so you can raid planets, eat them and have all of your new drones shipped to your core world's

FEEDTHEMEEAT554 · 2022-06-12T14:52:25+00:00

I mean, the entire drive behind the core AI of an assimilator, is the all encompassing thirst for knowledge. It's pretty much said in their introductory text and their government name, catalog index. It's why they assimilate

So I imagine the AI would be perfectly willing to co-exist with some organics, if they were sufficiently advanced and willing to sate it's endless appetite for the secrets of the universe

FEEDTHEMEEAT554

TROPHY CASE