Dark Fog Seed whack a mole isn't very engaging.

[Elin]

I'm currently at the point in game where universal data is running in at a steady tick, dyson frames are being constructed and launched consistently over a few systems and where expansion is mostly down to going to new planets to plonk down extractors and blueprints for increasing production of components such as mag coils, quantum chips, frame materials, etc.

What annoys me to no end is that I have to spend half an hour every hour to go hunt down the lastest round of Dark Swarm Seed spawns.
In a game about automation if have to manually go deal with enemies and I have no way to prevent them from putting up new space bases in systems that I have already cleared of their previous base.
Alternatively you could ignore the seed spawns but then you have to deal with the occasional base being put down on your planets and clean out those. Or you have to go fight the hive which takes even more time and effort to clear out. It's exceedingly frustrating that after all the time and effort tou spent to clear out a solar system you are not given the tools to retain that security without manually clearing out the enemies.

Could you imagine in factorio after you cleared out an ore patch, put down defenses and walls around the area and and all infrastructure, you'd have to manuall check the map every 15 minutes. Just to see if there's no flying biter (that's immure to all defenses you have) on its way to make an immune floating colony over that patch. Which once there occasionally plonks down a biter base in the middle of that patch...
With the only way to stop that being to travel all the way over there to shoot it with a stinger to only have to rinse and repeat that another 5 times before you can go back to building for another half hour and have to do it all again.

This is an issue that shouldn't be that hard to solve.

Off the top off my head:
- Have an intrasolar missile silo that takes a fair bit of materials (plasma charges, fuel rods, thruster units, etc) and build time to produce a missile that can be fired at any seed entering the solar system and takes it out. You can give already established hives some type of point defense against this if you don't want this to be a tool that can clear them.

-Alternatively you could change the design philosophy where the player is required to manually go fight the hive and you provide so type of fleet HQ building where you can put your ships and set orders to your fleets to engage in battles of attrition with hives or patrol the system to clear out anything from raiding fleets to seed spawns. That doesn't stop the seeds directly, but lets you take on hives without having to be present for engagements.

- Have some type of control center that can produce an interplanetary battlecruiser that can take down a (single?) seed by itself. Make it pricey to produce (the cruisers can be the base you build on, give it plasm or mortars and several warp charges) and if you really want to annoy the player into spending focus on dealing with it: have them manually task the ships to specific seeds. (I still think it's dumb to force the player to spend their attention to individual events in a factory game, but apparently that's part of the development philosophy here...) .
You can make it reusable i that after each sorty it returns to base and needs to be refueled and rearmed.

[b...]

Those are some valid points. Until there is some automated solution I have a trick for you.
Find a system you want no fog activity in. Clear all the relays in the system if there already is hive presence there. Place a bunch of plasma turrets on all planets 5 on each pole is usually enough and extremely easy to power with several windturbines and 2 exchangers running 1 accumulator on a loop. since they shoot like 30s every hour.
Seed will make a hive -> Fail to establish any bases -> remain small&pathetic forever unable to even muster enough mass to take revenge for you killing relays.
Then if you don't plan to build sphere around the star you can leave it paralyzed forever. If you do, then you can delete the core with a bunch of corvettes

[josmith7]

Right now the space combat systems, and presumably automation, aren't yet in place. So we're pretty limited.

That said, you can automate defending your worlds; which will prevent the space hives the seeds create from being able to successfully land new bases.

There's two ways to do that:
1) Planetary shields -- bases will not land anywhere that's covered by even the most tenuous planetary shield; so IIRC 8 shield generators placed properly will prevent a hive from even trying to land.
2) Anti-space defenses -- missiles and/or plasma turrets near the planets' poles will engage incoming relays and destroy them before they can place a base. Configure them to engage space and and upper-atmosphere targets at high priority. (May also need signal towers at the poles for this work)

You'll still get space hives that you'll need to clear out -- but if they can't land bases they can't gather the material they need to really expand; so they're easy to kill off later.

[Trent]

I'm all for building large interplanetary weapons that can attack any Dark Fog in space within the system.

If such a weapon causes every craft in a DF system hive to attack at once, then so be it.

[Elin]

Originally posted by b...:

Those are some valid points. Until there is some automated solution I have a trick for you.
Find a system you want no fog activity in. Clear all the relays in the system if there already is hive presence there. Place a bunch of plasma turrets on all planets 5 on each pole is usually enough and extremely easy to power with several windturbines and 2 exchangers running 1 accumulator on a loop. since they shoot like 30s every hour.
Seed will make a hive -> Fail to establish any bases -> remain small&pathetic forever unable to even muster enough mass to take revenge for you killing relays.
Then if you don't plan to build sphere around the star you can leave it paralyzed forever. If you do, then you can delete the core with a bunch of corvettes

Yea, I had figured out a similar configuration by that point as well. Issue being that in a system with multiple planets it quickly becomes a lot of infrastructure just to deny any chance of a foothold. Which brings me back to the tedium of it.

[OKOK]

I prefer 8 missile turrets each planet, that quite easy to setup.

Dark fog is like adding spice to a boring ending. Else nothing to do at all later into the game.

If fun to find a beta hive, those stacks of ships.

[Protoz]

A couple of points:

Ignore the seeds and ignore the hives. The worst they can do is block 15% dyson energy each, so 45% total. Not a big deal with dysons around 2x or higher luminosity stars.

Hives have no loot yet, so the incentive to bother with them should be next to zero.

Once your laser repeating tech is very high dealing with hives will be simpler, but again zero incentive.

And lastly the game is still in development, there is clearly unfinished parts of dark fog such as complete absence of hive loot.

I'm on a 45hr 3000% metadata save and my star cluster has no fog seeds moving around because i've let them all settle & completely ignore them.

[DrLamp]

maybe we can make a nichol-dyson beam to destroy the fog once and for all.

[Marilius]

For hives, i think once you have destroyed them in the system we should be able to build a "Starbase" you have to keep feeding it stuff and when a new seed enters the system the "starbase" health takes a hit and the seed is destroyed. If you don't keep feeding the "starbase" then it will be destroyed and the seed will be able to create a hive.

[Elin]

The "best" strategy for dealing with Seeds I have figured out so far is to load up the materials for "inderdictor" bases (plasma turrets, power generators, signal towers, shields, etc) each time I head out to kill seeds. As soon as I killed a seed, I go to the system of origin and clear every planet of the fog and place an "inderdictor" base on the poles of every planet. That system then never produces another seed.

It's still time intensive and a pain. But it means every time I do it there will be one less system spawning seeds, eventually making my space entirely free of seeds.

[OKOK]

Why u want it free. Dark fog just add some interesting things to do. And free resource. Just don't be hard core in getting rid of them .

[juho.saarikko]

Originally posted by DrLamp:

maybe we can make a nichol-dyson beam to destroy the fog once and for all.

Just make it a function of a large enough (10-100GW?) Dyson Sphere - but not the swarm - to use some of that energy to fry any spaceborne Fog things within the system. That way a system with an established Sphere is basically fortified against further incursions and any remaining stragglers will get cleared automatically, at the cost of needing a large amount of resources to establish the fort.

[zuniger]

There deff should be a final solution for dealing with the swarm, A building similar to the planetary shield generator? or have the generator itself do it?

[Elin]

Originally posted by Goyim_Pride:

There deff should be a final solution for dealing with the swarm, A building similar to the planetary shield generator? or have the generator itself do it?

You may want to be careful in using that specific wording :p. But yean I agree

[Elin]

Originally posted by OKOK:

Why u want it free. Dark fog just add some interesting things to do. And free resource. Just don't be hard core in getting rid of them .

How about just expanding your production capacity to the point that you can produce a dyson sphere every hour rather than every ten hours?

[OKOK]

Originally posted by Elin:

How about just expanding your production capacity to the point that you can produce a dyson sphere every hour rather than every ten hours?

I am doing a battleship production online now