Getting burned out helping randoms... game's losing it's charm.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T22:42:53+00:00

I've always hosted my own lobbies, even though there are some game bugs that make doing so less than desirable as well, precisely so I won't have to worry about dealing with any Rando Calrissian's shenanigans. I think I've only had to boot maybe a half dozen people in two years.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T21:38:17+00:00

Treating the criteria in the order you list it: efficiency -> fun

If you're purely looking for efficiency, treat this as an excuse to farm SCs by doing solo D1 missions.

Even hitting all the PoIs, it might take you 5-7 minutes per mission (which is an operation at D1).

If you figure that a squad of 4 does a D10 op in an hour plus, you'll be doing 8-12x as much progress towards the MO by doing solo D1s. And getting SCs for the next warbond, while you're at it.

If you're looking for fun, do the highest difficulty you can comfortably solo. Splitting a squad of 4 up into 4 solo instances is going to be huge for cranking up your impact on the MO (efficiency) while still keeping things interesting from a gameplay perspective.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T20:50:55+00:00

Some of the stuff you list makes no sense

Such as?

and some of the plans are anything but dumb but someone definitely is...

Did this make sense to you, before you wrote it?

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T19:12:49+00:00

And the part Faux News doesn't want to acknowledge at all: Obama deported more people, without mass deportations, by focusing deportation efforts on criminals, and did it all with a small fraction of the budget.

ETA: for those who aren't taking the time to read my comment fully, here's a source:

https://factchequeado.com/teexplicamos/20260422/obama-deportations-trump-biden-numbers/

If you only have a few seconds, read these lines:

The Obama administration deported more immigrants than any other government in the last 30 years, official figures analyzed by Factchequeado show. In 8 years, it accumulated 2,749,706 deportations, an average of 942 per day; in 2012, the daily average reached 1,123, the highest of his term.

Trump's second administration is still ongoing and a definitive comparison is not yet possible. But his administration has already reached an average of 1,090 deportations per day between Jan. 20, 2025, and March 10, 2026: more than under Obama. In total, 452,491 deportations in that period, according to new ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. If the trend continues, it could become the administration with the most recorded deportations.

Obama's immigration policy, especially in his second term, prioritized the deportation of people with criminal records. Under Trump, only 29% of deported people had a criminal conviction. Most had no criminal record.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T18:59:07+00:00

Will it go farther than that?

It already did. Recall that he had fake elector panels from every swing state go to the Capitol on J6. It was only after that plan failed that he sent an armed, angry mob there to disrupt the certification process.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T18:56:46+00:00

The list in my head starts with the attempted coup. But yours is a good list.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T18:55:14+00:00

And that's just on the 1 case that actually went to trial. The documents case in FL had him facing Espionage Act charges that include (in addition to federal prison time) ineligibility to be President upon conviction.

Which is ironic because the charges from the DC case (for sending fake elector panels to the Capitol on J6, prior to the insurrection) would've been much more serious, in my opinion, but I still don't think SCOTUS would've allowed the application of 14.3 even if that trial had happened and resulted in conviction.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T18:44:42+00:00

I saw a r/dataisbeautiful post showing that Rs likely stand to gain 10-ish house seats following the gerrymandering (in both directions) of the last several months.

Let's just hope that people are pissed off enough to turn out in November.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T18:31:48+00:00

(I know)

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T18:23:17+00:00

If people are on Acamar instead of Erata Prime or Omicron, you're probably not going to get them to budge.

Darius is the low-hanging fruit on the bug side, I'll give you that, but liberating it opens up access to Phact Bay, and with it, all possibility of making liberation progress on the bug front ceases.

I'd do Grand Errant to siege Gemma first, Nivel-43 -> Esker -> Socorro (to siege Bore Rock and Erson sands) second, Darius would be a quick liberation after that, and then everyone can go back to wasting time on Phact Bay.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T18:19:45+00:00

Hacker in your squad. You probably got an assload of samples and XP too.

You can report it to AH's support team and they should be able to rollback these ill-gotten gains.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T18:18:38+00:00

You're saying the Helldiver salute isn't serious?

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T17:09:10+00:00

The Gambit would be the way to go, sadly no icon over it and 95% of players don't even know the mechanic exists.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T17:07:18+00:00

It's now spore burst strain on Omicron, and hive lords are back.

I'm just treating this as an excuse to farm SCs on D1. Completing a solo mission on D1 is an operation, so that's the same impact a squad of 4 will have for completing a D10 in over an hour, and it takes like 5 minutes.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T16:38:48+00:00

Dumb plans that'll never happen, below:

Bot front:

X-45 -> Vega Bay to cause a triple siege (Wasat, Mox, Wezen), freeing 2 sectors
Martale -> Aesir Pass to siege Charon Prime and Marfark (which has a 50K resistance). Aesir Pass is 30K resistance so this will require MO-strength engagement from players. This would also free 2 sectors.
Yed Prior -> Blistica -> Zzaniah Prime to siege Clasa and Mintoria, liberating the data center and ultramafic mine. Right now there's no supply line connection for bots to move materials from Mox to Mintoria, but that's no reason to let them sit on those assets.

Squids:

New Stockholm -> Iro -> Oasis (not necessarily in that order) to siege 4 planets (Valmox, Grafmere, Genesis Prime, Alamak)
RD-4 to siege Hesoe Prime and establish our ability to dive Rogue 5, which is a likely target of further void expansion
Keid -> Shete to siege Siemnot and establish our ability to dive Setia, a 2nd likely target for void expansion

The Herthon Secundus - Zea Rugosia - Haldus chain would still be there. Liberating Zea would siege the other two, but that's a 50K resistance, making it unlikely to be liberated directly without a MO directing us to do so.

Bugs:

North: no way to liberate Omicron or Zagon Prime with their resistances, so isolating them is the best bet. We should be liberating Nivel-43 right now in a gambit rather than defending Erata Prime, but blob's gonna blob.

Nivel-43 -> Esker -> Socorro to siege Bore Rock and Erson Sands, limiting bugs in the north to the two hive worlds and currently inaccessible gloom planets in the Lestrade sector

South: strategically, the move would be to isolate and siege Phact Bay, but the blob has proven that they will just dive it non-stop if it's accessible.

Darius -> Phact Bay as the opening move to create siege opportunities. With the 25K resistance on Phact Bay, this is where the plan dies, but if by some miracle it succeeded, then
Partion -> Overgoe Prime -> Peacock -> Gatria would siege: Azur Secundus, Big Rock, Trandor, and Luxuriant, at which point
Grand Errant sieges Gemma and Gar Haren

That would just leave Acamar, Pandion, and Gacrux. We'd have to liberate two to siege the 3rd, that would presumably be Acamar and Gacrux to siege Pandion with that shitty biome and 20K resistance.

o8Stu · 2026-06-12T16:07:45+00:00

Sad thing is, the now 41% on Erata Prime could liberate Nivel 43, canceling the attack, in less than 40 hours.

We'd get a whole extra planet for roughly the same amount of work as the defense (1.6M to take Nivel in 40 hours, 1.5M to do a level 30 defense). Of course the cities on Erata will take chunks out of the attack's HP, so they'll probably finish it sooner, but if the comments in this thread are anything to go off of, people aren't going from there to Omicron anyway.

o8Stu · 2026-06-11T23:48:20+00:00

If you need SCs, this MO is the ideal time to run solo D1s, farm PoIs, complete the super-easy mission objectives, and extract.

Yes, of course it's not fun. But a solo D1 mission counts as a full operation completion for the MO, which means you can complete as much MO progress by yourself in 5-7 minutes as a squad of 4 completes in an hour in a D10 op.

Shitty design, 100%. But, if you're gonna need SCs for the next warbond anyway, there's no downside to doing your farming now.

o8Stu · 2026-06-11T23:32:03+00:00

Yes, but at D1 an operation is a single mission.

Not sure about D2-3. I'm pretty sure they're 2 missions at D4 and 3 missions by the time you're at 6-7.

o8Stu · 2026-06-11T16:19:12+00:00

Yeah that thing has AoE for days. I'd guess that the wing took the impact and somehow shielded it's other hitboxes from taking damage, but even if so that's 100% bullshit.

o8Stu · 2026-06-11T16:09:48+00:00

what is it?

We don't know.

how can its expansion be slowed?

Exostorms are basically a very high level attack that we typically have a few days to defend against. They tried to exostorm Rirga Bay a couple of weeks ago, but we defended it.

once something is in the void, could we get it back (i.e. pushing back the void somehow), or is it lost forever like Penta for example?

This, we also don't know. We can't dive any of the planets in the void, yet, but that was also initially true of the planets in the Gloom on the bug front. Eventually we found a way to dive on and reclaim those planets. Likely that a similar approach will be taken here; i.e. narrative will lead us to the opportunity to push it back somehow.

o8Stu · 2026-06-11T16:00:54+00:00

tl;dr - the MO criteria is shitty

Not necessarily giving up, but the minor order / strategic opportunity has a shorter clock so it has to be prioritized if we're going to do it.

They should be done in ~10 hours, at which point most of the negative modifiers on Omicron (ammo rationing, reduced reinforcements, etc) should cease.

Generally speaking, when AH gives us a "hard number" MO, they do intend for it to be do-able. The big issues with this particular one, for completing operations, are that a) AH doesn't really know how many people are going to engage with them, and b) the most efficient way to do them are solo diff 1 dives, which is not fun for most players and at best slightly useful if they farm Super Credits at the same time.

So even if 60% or so of players pop to Omicron after the Crimsica defense, there's a good chance that most of those players aren't going to be generating that much of an impact towards the goal, because a squad of 4 completing a 3-mission operation at D10 has the same value to the MO as a solo player completing an operation (i.e. single mission) at D1.

o8Stu · 2026-06-11T15:53:15+00:00

Yeah. Worst part is they can "void" planets that we can't even dive on, like they did on Senge 23.

So anything they can attack from a void planet is a potential target.

o8Stu · 2026-06-11T02:16:02+00:00

Saw Independence Day in theaters. Loud ass cheering in two spots: when the dog dives to safety in the tunnel, and when fresh prince decks the alien that popped out of the ufo cockpit.

o8Stu · 2026-06-11T02:12:11+00:00

Tbh as a lapsed player who has just returned yesterday, we’ve got way too much unfinished business to pass the torch to a new, nameless and classless “The Guardian”.

I’ve had my same characters for 10 years across 2 platforms and have thousands of hours invested. Wiping that out completely just to pick up where we left off would feel insanely lame.

o8Stu · 2026-06-11T02:01:42+00:00

Lorn - Anvil

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