I used this for the first time today, and my God... the amount of damage it caused was just unreal! The ships which were destroyed and the ones that survived seemed to be a bit random though... about 25% of the ships in the blast radius survived, including some relatively light frigates. So, I'm wondering if anyone knows what determines survival against 'last resort'? Is there a maximum number of ships which can be affected?
I was playing a 7v1 against the AI and was a little over 2hrs into the game, turtled into my own little empire behind a single choke-point planet (which is the only way to win against 7 hard AIs really). I had just bumped my fleet up to a point where I thought I could break out (16 caps, 50 heavy cruisers, 30 light carriers). The enemy had 3 planets surrounding my choke world, and each of the 7 had their main fleet in one of these three planets. I picked the most suitable world to attack (had 2 ~1000 FS fleets garrisoned), using virtually all my forces, and within a minute of me jumping out the AI sent in a fleet. This was soon joined by another 4 fleets who quickly worked their way through the 30 gauss turrets to get to the fully upgraded starbase.
When this happened I jumped my cap ships back in (for the experience ) and when the starbase health dropped to 3000 (took about 1 minute I guess) I hit the 'last resort' button. In a flash I anhiliated 75% of the 5 enemy fleets, of around 1000 - 1200 fleet supply each. Before the blast my cap ships were mostly level 1, and immediately afterwards the majority of them were at level 5 or 6 (!). I brought in the rest of my forces and just managed to clear out the remaining forces, as well as the further 2 fleets which jumped in from the planet I tried to break-out to. After this I had 16 cap ships between level 6 and 8 (and my original cap ship at level 10).
Anyway, I have a newfound respect for the TEC starbase! I was thinking it was a bit lacking compared to the vasari (movement) and the Advent (meteor), but what else in this game can take out 5000 fleet supply all by itself?! I know that against a human player you will never get close to that, but this could be the 'easy' way to beat massed AI opponents. Garrison a border world, then jump out (if the enemy has a large force nearby they usually seem to attack within a few minutes once your fleet leaves). Draw them in close... and then BOOM In my game the enemies never did really recover. By the time they built their fleet up again I had taken the territory of my closest rival, and now had 3 separate choke points which never got attacked by more than 2 full fleets at once (defendable with mines, SB+gauss, and ~800FS of defence force). I also got 4 starbases in the star, which the vasari enemies seemed to just love throwing their forces against.
Anyway, the moral of the story is: last resort rules!
LOL that is a great story! I'm relatively new to the game and was wondering about that particular ability and if it was worth it. It seems to have a very specific, but highly effective use. Cool!
P.S. I think that story deserves some Karma
I was on the receiving end of one of those. All that was left were my capital ships. I thought it was super bullshit, but w/e.
Hmmm. So the moral is -- what, primarily use large swarms of strikecraft against them, or ships you don't mind losing, or attempt to distract the owner with diversionary attacks (if the ability can't be automatically triggered at an appropriate time) ?
the funny thing is seeing how the enemy avoids all your sbs after they take one of those hits... then when they avoid them, you dont even need to use that ability anymore; same result (fleet nerf3d) put all structures next to sb and youre all set
I believe anti-structure units outrange the blast... and a full HP capitol ship will, generally, survive it.
Basically, it's a great way to make attacking a starbase conventionally a nasty gamble. When will my opponent press the button? Does he have the button?
Thanks bud
I guess the moral of the story is, from an attacking point of view, use capital ships and strike craft, or your anti-structure frigates. For some reason the strikecraft themselves also survived the blast, which was amusing and a little strange. Most of their carriers had died (since the AI wasn't smart enough to leave them out of range), but the remaining SC were still floating around!
No Problem. Loved the story.
LOL That is weird. I think we can safely call that a minor glitch. Strick craft should not survive a blast that kills their mothership.
Mabey its a blast shadow, such as a other ship between the base and the ship that surrvived, taking the blunt of the blast?
well i cant say that that is worse than metor in its curent state ( i dont think second rank meteor works yet) but still advent starbases are rather boring...imean you just give it distortion and metor and some combat ups and it slowly mills things... slow isnt fun
Yeah i argree, each starbase should have a wepon of mass distruction that can only fire at one ship at a time (with a area effect) that dosnt include blowing up your starbase as well.
Strike craft/bombers do not get hurt by it, They lived through 10 exploding starbases. thats some taugh armor on those little babies i guess .
If you want amusing, well here you go
Me and my entire fleet were defending one of my worlds, taking heavy damage, and my friend was helping me, I was wondering what that did, so i built it on my starbase *after weapons, slight armor and Docking booms" i was wondering why it wasnt auto-using, so i click it and well, there went my entire fleet and most of my friends, and next to no enemy ships.
Moral of the story, Dont hit the blinking red buttion if you dont know what it does, with your fleet all next to it...
It depends on the current mitigation of the target. A low level cap ship that was not being targeted with damage, and therefore has low mitigation, will take enough damage to die. But if it's mitigation was already up to 57% or higher, it might survive. Also cap ships that are higher level and have more shields/hull points will tend to survive, but can be damaged pretty bad.
HAHAHAHAHA! Brilliant.
"Ooh... a big red button - what could this do?"
*BOOM*
"... I'll get my coat"
Anyway, I've had another play around with safety override protocol during another 7v1 game (this one was way harder - I needed to split their fleets up over 2 starbases at separate planets in order to thin them down enough to survive the first assault). I kept messing up so I did it a few times and re-loaded until it worked and so I learned quite a bit.
Anyway, I had one starbase with level 1 SOP, and the other with level 2. In both cases all the strike craft survived completely unscathed (a bug I presume?). Also, in both cases most of the enemy capital ships survived, though the low level ships were heavily damaged. The difference came with the light carriers. With level 1 SOP the advent light carriers also survived, with about 50% hull damage. With level 2 they were all destroyed. It's also worth remebering that level 2 SOP has a much larger range - bigger even than the range of torpedo frigates.
So, bottom line, if you're intending to use your starbase as a big floating space-bomb, it's worth going for the second level of SOP. It gives you the range and destruction needed to gurantee utter devestation. From an attacking point of view, the only way to guarantee taking out a TEC SB without losses is to use strike craft or high level cap ships - even torpedo frigates aren't safe. This being said, I did notice something else - "disable" cap ship abilities (like akkan's ion bolt) will not disable the starbase, but will stop it from using its abilities, including SOP. So, if you're close to finishing off a SB, a quick blast from an ion bolt (or whatever the advent's equivalent is) could be enough to deny the defender the chance to wipe out your fleet.
If the structures fall within the blast radius, then they get heavily damaged (or destroyed) as well. The blast radius is indicated as you hover over the big red button.
Oh, I didn't mean the orbiting structures. I meant that the devastation was so great as to wreck the planet's health.
Ah, I get you.
That might be interesting actually... It would provide another incentive to only use the thing as an absolute last resort.
One thing that I really like to do is use Last Resort offensively. Of course, it doesn't work as well as it did in beta 1 because of the increased build times in hostile gravity wells, but its still a lot of fun. If I knew a planet had a big fleet at it, I would jump in my fleet, followed by a constructor. The enemy fleet would attack my fleet, and totally ignore the starbase being built nearby. Once the SB was done and had the upgrades for last resort, my fleet would retreat, leaving just the SB. As soon as the enemy fleet gathered around it...BOOM! Then my fleet would come back to clean up any survivors, and claim the planet.
Has anyone seen the AI use this yet? I've been lucky enough not to so far but I'd prefer that it was something I needed to concern myself about!
I suppose this sort of thing also only makes it even more important to send somebody disposable through a warp point or star. It'd be a nasty surprise to have a large fleet show up only to be already within range.
Nope
Not seen the AI use it yet, and they have had plenty of opportunity. Just like the superweapons, I think it's something that the AI just doesn't build. Which is a shame.
Any way to get the AI to use the super weapons?
wait, remind me what is last resort
Last resort is the ability to self destruct thereby damaging or destroying all ships and structures within the blast radius. This only available on the TEC starbase, and then only after research and paying for the upgrade. The beginning of this thread has a great example of this being used.
Well, Is safety Override protocol/last resort bugged? I used it on 4 unfair bots entire army, Level 2 last resort, and it didnt even damage the scout attacking my starbase when it blew up... Im pretty dispointed.
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