no, I just finished playing as the three races.. Started with TEC, then Advent, and then Vasari.
Here is my thus-far evaluation of Entrenchment.
Starbases:
I must say that while I love the trade ports of the Argonev, I still hate playing as the TEC. I was disappointed with the boom of the big red button... I wanted a bigger explosion... instead I got a couple blue rings.. I was wanting a monstrous, moon-sized fireball and a huge equatorial shockwave shooting out... If I ever get particle forge working and I have the time, I am remaking that thing's boom.
I must also say that while I love the ships of the Advent, I don't have any particular affection for their SB.. Of course, I never got the chance to use meteor on any of their forces as I had already subdued them before i got around to researching the defense tree. I will likely play as them in the future so I can exploit this, but as the Advent, I am almost always on the offensive and I don't think I would be terribly good at using theirs offensively, so I don't think it will have much use for me unless I want to push one front and guard another where my fleet is absent.
In my Vasari game (the race I most commonly play as), I built an Orkulus to guard an asteroid. All the asteroid had was two hangars, two repair bays, five missile platforms, and my Orky. Since I love my research, I had both phasic traps and disruptive nanites up and running. However, the real feat here was what my beloved Orky accomplished. That starbase was bound and determined to attack at will rather than stay beside the other structures where it was safe, and since this was a test of what it could do, I let it. Four times, enemy fleets attacked it. It singlehandedly destroyed them all. And everything after the first one was equipped with at least five Orgovs (it went up each time, with the fourth one having twelve.) It destroyed multiple capital ships, all between the levels of 3 and 6. Even a round where a Kol was supported by Kodiaks and hoho's galore was destroyed. In fact, after the first two fleets had been destroyed, I found myself saying, "Orky doesn't like visitors" whenever anything popped into the gravity well, regardless of whether it was a scout or a fleet, and found myself laughing maniacally after completing the phrase. Because nothing they sent in came out. Orky does not like visitors (Just typing that made me laugh maniacally!)
Structure Killers:
Orgovs are as ugly as I've heard, though they look like HAL if you look at their front.. That little glowing red dot surrounded by black... Though despite their looks, they are functional Those little ships put enemy Argonevs through a lot of pain and nearly killed one of mine that had its defense systems fully upgraded. Against my beloved Orky, they once brought it down to less than a hundred health, but then it killed the last of them (this was the third fleet btw) and I quickly activated its maul to repair itself and sent it over to see the repair bays.
Starfish are wonderful little things and against those that spam static defenses, I must say that it works out very well. Also, the description says extreme range. They weren't kidding! That range is monstrous. I had a lot of fun destroying Argonevs with these.
Oh, my beloved army of Orkies (in case you haven't figured it out yet, i fell in love with those things very quickly) was also incredibly functional. Some have argued that the Vasari need a bunker buster. My response? USE THE ORKY! Offensively, I obliterated half a dozen Argonevs (without any fleet backing whatsoever) and only lost two in the process (both of those were due to my enemies use of a level six marza). Towards the end of the game, I took a gander at the actual stats of one that I had fully upped the arsenal of. I was astonished. Nearly 600 DPS. And that is not including the second banks of weaponry allowed for by research. After seeing that, it was perfectly clear why my beloved Orky managed to survive four fleets.
Mines:
I like proximity mines, its a very efficient system. You pick your place and you set them up. Nothing special about them, though once spammed, no fleet would ever try invading said planet.
I hate the homing mines. Absolutely hate them. Way to labor intensive for me to like them. First you have to order them to go to their location and then order them to convert into mines while the next batch is being made. It takes too long...
I love the Vasari's miner. The voice is perfect. "Watch your step." "I've got a present for you..." Both great lines that also made me laugh maniacally. The mines themselves are ordinary, nothing special there, thought the gravity mines were used to great effect. Once, a retreating fleet was attempting to escape, so I flew a couple of these things up into their fleet and had them let loose a volley of gravity mines. This thwarted their attempts to escape. Later in the game I also used these things to fly into their formations and deploy conventional mines before coming back to my overseers to be healed so they could repeat the process.
Turret Upgrades:
I adore the missile pods and meson bolt cannon upgrades. Five Gauss Turrets stood against a fleet for a good four minutes while I moved my fleet to protect that world (of course there were repair bays and a couple hangars too, but the GT's did 99% of the offensive work because they had a bunch of flak. Very good upgrades I must say. For FD, I was wanting to have heavier static defenses. IC made my wish come true with these upgrades.
I also liked the Synergy upgrade for the Advent's beam turrets. As if these things weren't cool enough already, now they stack their damage. I put these things in giant walls to protect the flanks of of my Transcendia and they worked wonders. I must say that I also love this upgrade.
And then the Phase Missile Turrets. I also loved Disruptive Nanites. In every case of the battle with my Orky, I started it on the opposite side of the gravity well so that my turrets would have at least some opportunity to fire before its determination to use its ability to move possessed it to do something stupid like attack the Orgovs at the very back of the enemy formation. The enemy forces would then proceed to turn around and go out of range of my turrets. Even so however, despite the lack of damage they inflicted, the statuses they inflicted was a massive boost to that things ability to stay alive. I'm assuming it must deactivate active regeneration such as the hoho's repair bots as well or I don't see how it could have lived against the force of Kodiaks, a Kol, some Percherons, eight orgovs, and more than a dozen hoho's. Regardless, I loved it.
Hangar Upgrades:
Flak was nice, but it wasn't a huge boost to the survivability of the things. Sure, it helped a bit on defense and did some damage when I was going against it, but really it just proved to be an annoyance.
Telekinesis was also nice, but not game changing.
Phasic Traps however were very helpful. Due to the stupidity of the AI, it sent its bombers after my hangars instead of my Orky (I think you know what happens next). Then, stripped of their bombers, the Percherons became worthless and I told my Orky to forget them and go kill the other ships (which it did with very little effort). Against a human, I'm sure this wouldn't have happened but at least against an AI, it was quite helpful.
So, here is my standing on the races:
TEC: I still hate them and probably always will. I still hate the Sova and the Akkan. The only thing I don't hate about them is what was added in Entrenchment. Everything else is hated. Sure, the Kol+Dunov combo is awesome, and so is MB, but I rarely use either until later in the game.
Advent: I loved their ships before and still love their ships. I still find that Having two fleets (one run by Progenitor and Halcyon and the other a Radiance) works quite nicely before combining them at end-game to unleash the power of the Holy Trinity (this is also when I rename them the Imperia (Progenitor), Trinity Blade (Radiance), and Providence (Halcyon).) I'm not a big fan of the Transcendia, but I'm sure its good, but I just didn't get to see it in action with meteor.
Vasari: My favorite race just improved its standing with me. I absolutely love the new strategies I can exploit thanks to the new ships and the Orky. Oh how I adore the Orky. That thing is wonderful.
After I eat supper, I will begin looking at Aurora for revisions.
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