About rift striders

[Fenris]

What do you think about this feature?

A rift has appeared near my empire (2 rifts in fact), and now i have a constant whack-a-mole game because rift striders keep popping without end.

It's just annoying and tedious to keep having messages about stations being destroyed because the rifts striders are too powerful for stations to last long enough for help to come.

And as i like to control my fleets, i spend my time running after them which is nowhere near fun to do.

I also tried to station a fleet near the rift, but the striders are powerful and keep popping, so the stationed fleet is just getting destroyed one ship after another.

What is your strategy about these? Is there something i'm missing?

[BFHKitteh]

Yea it just kind of sucks. Manually controlling fleets and trying to kill them is massively tedious. And the automated fleet controls are very buggy and clunky.

They have an attack range of 3000. So missile and fighter spam with ships set to cautious will reduce losses. Especially with sime ion protection.

They respawn at some rate, so if you can kill them faster than they respawn, eventually it becomes easier to deal with them. And you can camp the rifts with carrier fleets.

I was using a manual fleet of rebuilt hi tech ships to clear out as many as I could, but it still wasnt enough. Thats when I started using fleets of 8 destroyers with missiles and fighters, set to attack, 50% shield and any amor damage. A few fleets spread around the empire. Takes a few years for the automated fleets to make a dent, but pretty soon their numbers are thinned noticeably.

But by that point, other things are happening in the galaxy :)

[Nightskies]

I cannot help but feel like this is the rats in the basement quest but the rats are feral weretiger gnomes breaking out of the tavern while an army of the deep approaches the city walls, plagues are breaking out and pirates are taking the booze.

[BFHKitteh]

Aahaha that is a good description. Im interested to hear how you are enjoying the DLC nighskies?

[Nightskies]

I got big Battlestar Galactica feels with the Refugee Fleet start, with strong pirates and lots of them and monsters, it really feels like a desperate situation. Thumbs up.

I appreciate all the changes from the beta.

As for my games themselves... I had two attempts on probably too hard settings for Refugee Fleet. My Sixth Railgun Empire attempts both had really bad luck. I'm going for round 3 today after work~

[BFHKitteh]

I only had time to play one refugee start. I just decided to be very patient but aggressive.

I flew about 800 million units before i colonized. Was a nice big and high suitability world. I ignored all the other planets i found that were less than 30 suitability.

Ended up between a boskaran and a dhayut. So i played like a pirate from DWU, just smacked the boskarans with a couple of ships and kept them from getting research stations, and bleeding their caslon.

Was still close when i had to fight a two front war against both of them, but it was a fun challenge.

[corisai]

More I'm playing - more I'm getting annoyed by Rift Striders. Because it's a dedicated anti-station design.

A single hit of it's beam not only have ~3k range but also cut through 24 Ion Defense like it nothing (dealing ~10 Ion Damage), chewing ~300 shield points, dealing 32 raw armor damage and destroying some internals alltogether.

Together with extreme limits on defense slots for stations it's basically a hard counter to them.

Sure, it's somewhat fun to fight those ... once. Next game I guess just cheese my stations being naked & having more constructor ships to rebuild.

[SgtScum]

I haven't played the shakturi event yet as I'm still getting used to the new fleet mechanics and such with a normal game but if you really want to defend your station you need to manually build a few defense stations near it so they can overlap fire lanes and provide mutual protection.

[corisai]

Originally posted by SgtScum:

I haven't played the shakturi event yet as I'm still getting used to the new fleet mechanics and such with a normal game but if you really want to defend your station you need to manually build a few defense stations near it so they can overlap fire lanes and provide mutual protection.

Rift Striders are spawning in a huge mass (~120K power at each gravity rift). I don't know about that so don't have a fleet powerful enough to attack them at birth.

After it they're spreading and attacking your station all around as 1vs1 or 2vs1.

Defensive bases are not a solution here (expensive), for anything, but probable super-luxury mining places.

It's just a huge "whack-a-mole" for a quite long time. And my main issue here that Striders dealing both a huge damage (much higher then endgame beams lol) at max range, bypassing shields and armor AND having a huge EMP damage factor. Due to last one they're usually kill a station with Thalassos shields in 3 hits.

[SgtScum]

Sounds like the 'very late' option for the invasion should be most players first dip then? I'm all cool with an all powerful threat since its optional.

[The Golden Knight]

Originally posted by corisai:

More I'm playing - more I'm getting annoyed by Rift Striders. Because it's a dedicated anti-station design.

A single hit of it's beam not only have ~3k range but also cut through 24 Ion Defense like it nothing (dealing ~10 Ion Damage), chewing ~300 shield points, dealing 32 raw armor damage and destroying some internals alltogether.

Together with extreme limits on defense slots for stations it's basically a hard counter to them.

Sure, it's somewhat fun to fight those ... once. Next game I guess just cheese my stations being naked & having more constructor ships to rebuild.

Sorry I'm late, but I was trying to look up a very specific question: how do Rift Striders do damage directly to the hull that ignores both shields and armor? I thought it was psychic damage, but if you're saying it's instead ion, that changes my required designs tremendously, since I got decent but not excessive ion defense.

As for the "general initial approach", I admit I did this on the easiest settings, but if you have a MASSIVE fleet (we're talking 30 to 60 destroyers or battlecruisers), you can just have them hold at each rift within your borders to totally contain the situation (I have 2 of 4 rifts, and those 2 were all I could do without spreading too thin). At the same time, you can spam mining and monitoring stations...they MAY take out the striders by themselves, but even then there's an attrition to it, but the stations aren't mean to wholesale stop the invasion post-first-wave, just bog them down to prevent the "whack-a-mole" problem: they won't jump/warp/hyperspace if they're too busy shooting 6 or 12 relatively expendable stations.

[russlog6]

I have no issues with them with at setting 'very late', my fleets are strong enough to consider them an annoyance. Planets with Ion Cannons 3 seem to be giving them hell. Good hyperjumping tech on fleets also helps. You also need a good few fleets. And the good thing is they improve reputation.

[corisai]

Originally posted by The Golden Knight:

Sorry I'm late, but I was trying to look up a very specific question: how do Rift Striders do damage directly to the hull that ignores both shields and armor?

Shield & armor bypass by X %. Like vanilla gravitons.

It was on default setting for Shakturi arrival and was triggered waaaay to early (basically the best I'd were advanced destroyers).

Plus it's super annoying to have your mines destroyed as AI don't bother to rebuilding them automatically (seriously devs, Factorio and DSP do exist, you know it?).

[russlog6]

Originally posted by corisai:

Plus it's super annoying to have your mines destroyed as AI don't bother to rebuilding them automatically (seriously devs, Factorio and DSP do exist, you know it?).

You might check the load on your construction ships. Striders take them out and you may have to replenish. If facility construction is auto, AI does rebuild, if shortage. Otherwise it may consider construction not a priority.

[corisai]

Originally posted by russlog6:

If facility construction is auto, AI does rebuild, if shortage.

I want them to rebuild mines regardless of storages & exact in the same location I'd placed them (because I'm spreading them strategically) and not somewhere at random.

It's a very basic QoL feature that long ago was introduced by base builder games like Factorio & DSP.

[SandShark]

I love the new DLC and the game in general. I only had one play through so far with the DLC. I beat the Rift Strider problem by making sure I had a bunch of Defense and Attack fleets that were each strong enough to take on a big Strider alone. I then tried to over lap them when and where i could, mostly by leaving areas that hadn't been infected yet less or totally undefended. Upgraded my mines and other bases defenses as best as I could. as i got a message i went to the mine and set it to rebuild. I tried my best to build out any great resource systems to it fullest and then based fleets there. eventually i was able to clear my empire of Striders. But next game I plan to set creatures to very few so I dont have them adding to the wack a mole issue.