Black Kraken

[Bengie]

Hi,

i am at Turn 238 and got overwhelmed from a massive ammount (ca. 27+) of "Black Kraken" monsters.. Is this a Bug or "Normal"?

It seems that they only attack me, they don't fly to the blue AI but the blue AI fly to my worlds and got killed by the Black Kraken. Also they came all at the same time..

I have no problem with a challenge, but 2 or 3 of them will be enough.. my Ships have 60 Armor and 7 Shield and a Black Krake has 4000 Armor!?

I took the Spiral 4-Arm Galaxy with 120 Systems and 2 AI Player and lower rate of monsters than normal. It was my 2nd Game with this Version.

Thx for reading and bye

[MatGB]

They're being launched by The Experimentors, a precurso race that, sometimes, turns up at level 200+ to threaten you in an end-game manner. First time I came across them I died horribly but did manage to get the tech together to take them down (I tend to use fleets of Quantum and Fractal hulled ships with higher end death rays and good armour).

FWIW, if you're at turn 200+ and your ships are only at that sort of strength and your detection score is so low you've SERIOUSLY neglected your research and are, unfortunately, going to be unable to deal with them very well for some time.

First time it happened to me I eventually gave up on that game, but being able to beat them in the end game (if they turn up) is a nice little challenge.

Strongly recommend you put a lot more into research concentration in the earlier stages of the game, then everything produces more at this stage.

[Bigjoe5]

They are (or rather were - I believe they were removed some time ago - what version are you playing?) an attempt at forcing the player to use real strategy to develop his empire. In the past, it was hard to test the necessity of making particular strategic tradeoffs, or the real usefulness of competing strategies when there was no competition to run up against. First come the Black Krakens, the Bloated Juggernauts, then the Psionic Snowflakes, and finally the Cosmic Dragons. The Cosmic Dragons are able to destroy entire systems, so you need to somehow hunt down the Experimentor Outpost and destroy/capture it before the entire galaxy becomes a wasteland.

As for balancing, I basically set the stage in the game where they start appearing, and their frequency pretty arbitrarily. After I finally beat it (6th try or so), I simply delayed all the monster spawning by 100 turns, which would be the version you have. So it should be beatable, if you are aware of what's coming.

[Geoff the Medio]

...what version are you playing?

Based on the screenshot, v0.4.3 RC2.

The Experimentor Outpost building is still present, as is the Black Kraken ship design and its hull, and SM_EXP_OUTPOST monster fleets are defined with a high spawn rate and limit of 1.

[MatGB]

I've seen them in most of the recent weeklies so they'r about, not got there in RC2 yet (if they're in my current game they're the other side of the galaxy from where I'm stuck against a pretty good AI and I haven't scouted yet). I really like them, they definitely force you to progress in able to defend yourself against a real, different, threat in the later game.

The only problem with them from this players perspective is, once you know how to defeat them, they get a bit easy to deal with. So a varied end game thing of this nature is something to look for medium term I think, but they're fine for now.

[Bengie]

Hi,

Ok so i have to tech and build Ships to be prepared for that. In the game above, I researched everything without focus. Because I want to test what technologies I really need.

Now i have a new game with better ships. I will test now.

One little thing i have found as a displaying glitch. when the Building list is longer than the Window height, than i cant choose for the lower ships no repeat, Because it is out of window.

But thats not really a problem.

Cya

[Geoff the Medio]

when the Building list is longer than the Window height, than i cant choose for the lower ships no repeat, Because it is out of window.

Drag it up, set repeat, drag it back.

[Bigjoe5]

...what version are you playing?

Based on the screenshot, v0.4.3 RC2.

The Experimentor Outpost building is still present, as is the Black Kraken ship design and its hull, and SM_EXP_OUTPOST monster fleets are defined with a high spawn rate and limit of 1.

I'm almost certain they were commented out at one point (or at the very least, we came to the conclusion that we could remove them, because the AI was pretty strong at that time), so I'm not sure why they're back (or still there).

[MiniMe]

Wow, i play a quick game almost every day and have never seen these monsters

[Dilvish]

when the Building list is longer than the Window height, than i cant choose for the lower ships no repeat, Because it is out of window.

Drag it up, set repeat, drag it back.

The window hiehgt sometiems blocks me from getting as many repeat options as I´d like from the repeat button, but I´m having a hard time figuring out how the button could be blocked entirely; could you perhaps post a screenshot? Maybe there is something related we should add to your todo list.