Post by Sharples on Aug 20, 2018 23:50:07 GMT -5
This thread has been transferred from the official Sporum.
(Yes, terrible edit)
So you came here to destroy the Grox smooth and efficiently? Well, come on in! I'm going to show how you can destroy the Grox in a measly 45-50 hour campaign. I managed to defeat them in about 48 hours on hard mode, abducting every single collectable I found in each system destroying the Grox as well as looking for Story-book planets. To top that off I also planted 22 systems around where the Grox live, this also included going back and forth trading spice, stopping EVERY eco-disaster, and occasionally having five-six crashes.
YES, in only 48 hours. No seriously, that's actually pretty SPORE quick. People have reported that it would take two months to do it, and while this can be true it's all about willpower and forcing yourself through it.
Here's a little montage I made, check it out if you're interested.
So how exactly did Senpai Shrpee do eet?
Well young chap, you're going to want to prepare first!
PREPARATION LIST:
PACING IS CRITICAL
Now that you've prepared, or at least are preparing; the next step it to meet the Grox. Of course, it's totally up to you if you want to ally them first, in which case do that. It doesn't really hamper your game, ignore the communication blips that appear for other empires when you ally the Grox, although it is worthy to note that the two big empires that you did ally, you want to keep them friendly. After you've done this, you want to go to the core as soon as possible to and unlock the 20-parsec radius along with the Staff of Life. Anyway, once that is done...
The systems around the Grox that I planted (which I will refer to now on as sectors) are amazing for pacing yourself out. These sectors usually take one-two hours to complete with the core taking about five hours. You have a couple hours to play Spore, use it to wipe out a complete sector. Each sector is twenty parsecs in all directions of the home sector, you may need to explore out a little more and kill some pockets of Grox systems (1-20 systems), but otherwise, this works perfectly. Now you can COMPLETELY ignore all of this and just start conquering systems right away, but I find doing that just isn't great for pacing. It's so important to pace yourself because destroying the Grox is all about forcing yourself through boring one-by-one system destroying. Counting how many you've destroyed in a session also works, but I find this to be the best.
(There's more here than what you'll actually use, this is because I colonized 8 storybook planets and lost a sector colony as well. But this is what you can expect it to look like.)
Now these 22 sectors, as you can imagine the outer ones are going to take the longest. Like how running between your kitchen and living room takes maybe five-ten seconds. Running around a massive building will probably take you about a minute. Now I recommend starting out in the outer-region and working your way inside like a spiral. This is just my method, of course, you can start where you want. Now as for the sector placement, you're going to want to put them slap bang in the middle of a huge Grox cluster. Do it one at a time, work on Sector 0, destroy all Grox colonies within the 20-parsec radius, occasionally save from time to time. Once finished, take a break. Come back a few hours or days later, build the next sector. You see where I'm getting at? This is all very important stuff. PACING MY FRIEND!
If you want to follow/copy my placement, you can observe this excel I made showing every sector's positions. The good news is that the stars are all static, although planets are randomly generated and so are the Grox colonies in those systems too. You might get lucky and have every single system be only one Grox planet, or it might be the full five, I don't know. RNG is... yeah. Generally, you seem to get around 2-3 Grox colonies per system though.
Now since it's going to be lethargic work and YOU KNOW it's going to be lethargic work, you might want to buy a few planet busters, you know alleviate a bit of stress why not? Pop off a planet buster every thirty or so systems. Put you favourite music on, look at Spor- okay, nevermind. But you get the idea. If you're getting to the point of where you have to scroll out to look at how much work is left in that particular sector, take a break. Try not to look at it. It's a big disgusting blob of a darkish purple, looking at it won't get it cleaned up SPORE! Only scroll out if there are a few pockets of Grox resistance left and you need to find them.
TIER LISTING OF GROX CITIES
Grox cities are very different depending on where you are in retrospect to the core. If you're far away from it, you'll only see one city, if you're right next to it, you'll see fully developed cities. Now, most Grox cities that you will be fighting can simply be wrecked with a mega-bomb, that's it. The only ones that you can't are the ones at the core and need to be treated differently. (Unless you're on easy-medium)
-T1: These colonies are colonized by the Grox just as you naturally expect any empire to do so. However, these colonies are T2, so when you go onto these planets, the Grox will instantly leave. This is a bug with how empires in hard mode function, but it's not game-breaking. Sometimes the Grox will recolonize planets you've taken over, but these are rare. You'll usually find about 20-30 of these in your entire destruction, but can easily be destroyed as they only have a single turret in the one city.
T0.5: Atoll planets are glitched and only have one city regardless of where you are in the Grox territory. They happen everywhere and are pretty common. They spawn in the 'middle' of the map and only have one (normal) turret. Use your mega-bomb to destroy them.
T1: These colonies have one city with a couple buildings and minor defences. Use your mega-bomb to destroy them. Use slight caution is you're at low health. They are located a little further in towards the core.
T2: These colonies have a couple cities that are half full and have strong defences. Use your mega-bomb to destroy them. Use a high amount of caution try swooping into one of these cities as turrets are incredibly deadly (as well as the minor and massive rockets they shoot out). They're generally in the low-middle sector zone. They are the most common tier.
T3: These colonies are fully developed and are around thirty-forty parsecs from the galactic core. They are incredibly resilient and one should not be around one unless in easy-medium mode. If you're in easy-medium mode, just use the mega-bomb again. In fact, you don't even need to use anything else. If you're playing on hard difficulty, you ONLY want to mega-bomb a city on hard mode if it's very close to where you land on the planet, this is because the turrets aren't 'prepped' yet. If you do this, you want to destroy at least two buildings first and then the city hall. Chance is you'll get a lot of damage, but it's all about timing. Now if the cities are far away from where you land, the recommended action is to use your anti-matter bomb, volcano, asteroid call button. The anti-matter bomb and asteroid call button take far longer to 'hit' the ground that the volcano, but the both of them are great together if you can manage it, say you use the anti-matter bomb on city 1, then the asteroid call button on city 2, your timing will be reduced. If you've already destroyed one city with the mega-bomb, I'd recommend using the volcano. If two cities are very close to one another, you can usually plop of these volcanoes in the middle of two and they'll instantly destroy both, although if they're slightly further apart they'll just damage them.
THE FAQ!
Q. How long did it actually take you to destroy the Grox? In terms of taking breaks and so forth?
A. About two months. There was one month where I did nothing at all. This is simply because it was my birthday last month and I couldn't be bothered to transfer 35 GB's of video and save files to my new computer. I only had a four GB pen drive... DON'T ASK WHAT I DID... But anyway, the middle sectors and core took about four days to do.
Q. Shouldn't I just terraform the planets instead of doing all of this work?
A. NO! It's too slow, you should be in and out of these planets in five-twenty seconds. For the core, I guess you can do it; but Spode would that be boring, lighten it up with anti-matter bombs, asteroid call buttons, volcanos and PLANET BUSTERS!
Q. Should I use the monolith tool to create empires in Grox territory so I can make them attack the Grox?
A. This was something I absolutely refused to do. I'm all about doing the work myself. I guess for the core it would be useful, but usually, I've seen them fail and for the outer-regions, it's totally worthless. Use the sector system instead.
Q. What the hell do I do about the Grox spaceships? They're ripping me limb by limb!
A. IGNORE THEM! No, seriously. While yes they do tons and tons of damage, the fact is that engaging with them takes a ton of time. You can use anti-matter missiles to destroy them, but I only recommend it if you're in a system with three or more Grox colonies in them. Even then it isn't essential.
Q. I keep dying before I can even enter the system or the planet!
A. NEVER use the default system to scroll inside a planet/system. This is a little complicated, but basically, you want to pause for EVERY single system/planet you come across. On easy-medium you don't need to. But hard it's usually essential. When you're about to go into the system, you want to press the little '+' button
at the bottom left corner and unpause, this will let you get inside the system before the Grox can even get a hit of you, this also applies to planets, but you'll need to target your approach in advance if I get the Let's Play out soon you can look up some examples of what I do, I almost never use the default system to get inside anywhere.
Q. My sectors/home planets are being attacked! What do I do?!
A.IGNORE THEM! Every single system by now should have an uber turret. Usually, one sector can stand three up to three Grox waves providing you also have buildings and turrets to defend them with, colony buildings also help as the Grox usually target them first instead of the cities, and they pack quite the punch. An uber turret can never be destroyed (unless the planet is hit by a planet buster).
Q. They're also being pirated!
A. Uber turret destroys them in literally three seconds.
Q. But what about eco-disasters?
A. Depends on if you need supply or not. You tend to not want to put bio-stabilizers down where your important spice planets are so you have a reason to supply and come back. I did this so I could work on getting the Eco-Hero badge which by the way, is incredibly tedious to get. *ahem*
(I still need 10 more to get the level 5 badge, and that's with destroying the Grox). Otherwise, if you aren't going to supply or aren't interested in them, IGNORE THEM!
Q. I keep dying a lot...
A. Expected with this strategy, you'll be taking more risks rather than the boring passive terraforming. The good news though is that you're not far from the sectors you planted, meaning you can get back there is less than a minute.
Q. Does the shield help?
A. Yes, but it's regeneration rate is slow. But when it is available, you should almost always try to use them. Especially of T2-T3 planets. You can also use them to wait for the Grox ships to catch up so you can destroy them with the anti-matter missile.
Q. So you never cheated, why?
A. Cheating doesn't give me motivation. But should you cheat, half the strategy I outlined here is pretty worthless to you.
Q. I KEEP CRASHING!
A. Save every twenty minutes or so, (I tried to save every 10). It's worth not risking losing about twenty systems. You should also save when you plant three colonies in that particular sector.
Q. What do I do with the Staff of Life?
A. I personally used them for each sector I created. The planets/spice don't matter, it just takes less time instead of terraforming.
Q. How many pizzas did you eat and how many Coca Cola's did you drink during the destruction?
A. Hm... maybe five-cheese pizzas and ... sixteen one litre bottles of Coca-Cola? Yeah, totally healthy.
Q. What is the point of recording all these videos if nobody is going to end up watching them anyway?
A. Actually, it's just to show my method out. Nobody should be watching all the videos, just some examples here and there. But I also want to continue this Let's Play and only completely end it once all badges and collectables are acquired.
Q. Shouldn't I just buy out the Grox colonies instead when I ally them?
A. This is the slowest method possible to destroy the Grox. Each trade route takes time and you could only have five going at once. On top of that, the new colony that you have now makes the save file bigger which in turn, slows how long it takes to save. I have about 36 systems near the end of the destruction and it took me about 35 seconds to save each time.
Q. What consequence powers did you use against the Grox?
A. Nothing. I made it a rule to not use them on Grox colonies. Although important side note, the pirate ability is actually great for stopping attacks in your sectors. When the Grox invade one, plop the pirate ability down, the Grox will leave. The game does not allow two AI belligerents to attack a planet at the same time. The pirates will spawn through a wormhole, before they do this, have your mega-laser on the wormhole so when they all pop out, they all instantly die. It's actually a neat way to get the defender badge.
Q. Did you use wormholes to travel?
A. I never went inside a wormhole, but they should be extremely useful. I just made it part of my game to not do it.
Q. What did you wish you could change in your conquests?
A. Having a few more purple spice planets and having the placement of the Asteroid Call Button, Anti-Matter bomb, Volcano, Repair/Recharge packs next to one another.
Q. But how do I know which sector is which when I plant them?
A. Rename the star's of each sector to the corresponding number. I.E SECTOR_0, SECTOR_1, SECTOR_2, ect. You can rename systems by opening the console and typing 'Rename Star <STAR-NAME-HERE>. This does NOT give you the Joker badge or make you lose achievements.
That's all I really have, for now, I do plan to update this and add some videos demonstrating what you should be doing with this strategy. Anyways, have fun forcing yourself through this to get a little badge!
(Yes, terrible edit)
So you came here to destroy the Grox smooth and efficiently? Well, come on in! I'm going to show how you can destroy the Grox in a measly 45-50 hour campaign. I managed to defeat them in about 48 hours on hard mode, abducting every single collectable I found in each system destroying the Grox as well as looking for Story-book planets. To top that off I also planted 22 systems around where the Grox live, this also included going back and forth trading spice, stopping EVERY eco-disaster, and occasionally having five-six crashes.
YES, in only 48 hours. No seriously, that's actually pretty SPORE quick. People have reported that it would take two months to do it, and while this can be true it's all about willpower and forcing yourself through it.
Here's a little montage I made, check it out if you're interested.
So how exactly did Senpai Shrpee do eet?
Well young chap, you're going to want to prepare first!
PREPARATION LIST:
Your difficulty matters dramatically, I'm using this guide on hard difficulty.- At least two purple spice planets, the more you have of these the better
- Two large neighbouring empires. Make them as big as you can, say about twenty systems each. You want to select these empires very carefully, you want one (I.E a Warrior empire) that can trade you mini/mega healthpacks, AOE repair, anti-matter bombs and optionally Planet Busters. The next one (I.E Ecologist empires) you want them to trade you Volcanoes and the Asteroid Call Button. It's recommended to max Volcano's, Asteroid Call Button and Anti-Matter Bombs out.
- Get at least 22 of all Colonization tools, although if you want to be extreme, just get the uber turrets. Uber turret is INCREDIBLY important to make sure you don't lose sectors. (Although you will still lose a couple).
- Get Prime Specimen, if you're playing on hard, trust me kid; You're going to want it. Speed Demon might look like an exceptional choice for speed, but you WILL be dying a lot, if you're playing on easy or medium, go for Speed Demon instead. BUT DON'T BE WEAK!
- Get the maximum energy level and health, shield helps
- Consider whether or not you're going to be looking for collectables, you will get A LOT of them, there are 2,400 systems after all. You can cut down your time by ignoring them as well as not looking for storybook planets. If YOU ARE looking for storybook planets, ignore T1 planets and hunt for T2-T3 planets. Note that not all of them will be storybook, chances we're 50/50 to me. Also keep in mind, you will be getting eco-disasters occasionally, you can stop them somewhat by getting the proper colonization tools, although you can just simply ignore them, I use them as an advantage to resupply.
- Maximum parsec drive helps greatly
- Get the Mega-Bomb
PACING IS CRITICAL
Now that you've prepared, or at least are preparing; the next step it to meet the Grox. Of course, it's totally up to you if you want to ally them first, in which case do that. It doesn't really hamper your game, ignore the communication blips that appear for other empires when you ally the Grox, although it is worthy to note that the two big empires that you did ally, you want to keep them friendly. After you've done this, you want to go to the core as soon as possible to and unlock the 20-parsec radius along with the Staff of Life. Anyway, once that is done...
The systems around the Grox that I planted (which I will refer to now on as sectors) are amazing for pacing yourself out. These sectors usually take one-two hours to complete with the core taking about five hours. You have a couple hours to play Spore, use it to wipe out a complete sector. Each sector is twenty parsecs in all directions of the home sector, you may need to explore out a little more and kill some pockets of Grox systems (1-20 systems), but otherwise, this works perfectly. Now you can COMPLETELY ignore all of this and just start conquering systems right away, but I find doing that just isn't great for pacing. It's so important to pace yourself because destroying the Grox is all about forcing yourself through boring one-by-one system destroying. Counting how many you've destroyed in a session also works, but I find this to be the best.
(There's more here than what you'll actually use, this is because I colonized 8 storybook planets and lost a sector colony as well. But this is what you can expect it to look like.)
Now these 22 sectors, as you can imagine the outer ones are going to take the longest. Like how running between your kitchen and living room takes maybe five-ten seconds. Running around a massive building will probably take you about a minute. Now I recommend starting out in the outer-region and working your way inside like a spiral. This is just my method, of course, you can start where you want. Now as for the sector placement, you're going to want to put them slap bang in the middle of a huge Grox cluster. Do it one at a time, work on Sector 0, destroy all Grox colonies within the 20-parsec radius, occasionally save from time to time. Once finished, take a break. Come back a few hours or days later, build the next sector. You see where I'm getting at? This is all very important stuff. PACING MY FRIEND!
If you want to follow/copy my placement, you can observe this excel I made showing every sector's positions. The good news is that the stars are all static, although planets are randomly generated and so are the Grox colonies in those systems too. You might get lucky and have every single system be only one Grox planet, or it might be the full five, I don't know. RNG is... yeah. Generally, you seem to get around 2-3 Grox colonies per system though.
Now since it's going to be lethargic work and YOU KNOW it's going to be lethargic work, you might want to buy a few planet busters, you know alleviate a bit of stress why not? Pop off a planet buster every thirty or so systems. Put you favourite music on, look at Spor- okay, nevermind. But you get the idea. If you're getting to the point of where you have to scroll out to look at how much work is left in that particular sector, take a break. Try not to look at it. It's a big disgusting blob of a darkish purple, looking at it won't get it cleaned up SPORE! Only scroll out if there are a few pockets of Grox resistance left and you need to find them.
TIER LISTING OF GROX CITIES
Grox cities are very different depending on where you are in retrospect to the core. If you're far away from it, you'll only see one city, if you're right next to it, you'll see fully developed cities. Now, most Grox cities that you will be fighting can simply be wrecked with a mega-bomb, that's it. The only ones that you can't are the ones at the core and need to be treated differently. (Unless you're on easy-medium)
-T1: These colonies are colonized by the Grox just as you naturally expect any empire to do so. However, these colonies are T2, so when you go onto these planets, the Grox will instantly leave. This is a bug with how empires in hard mode function, but it's not game-breaking. Sometimes the Grox will recolonize planets you've taken over, but these are rare. You'll usually find about 20-30 of these in your entire destruction, but can easily be destroyed as they only have a single turret in the one city.
T0.5: Atoll planets are glitched and only have one city regardless of where you are in the Grox territory. They happen everywhere and are pretty common. They spawn in the 'middle' of the map and only have one (normal) turret. Use your mega-bomb to destroy them.
T1: These colonies have one city with a couple buildings and minor defences. Use your mega-bomb to destroy them. Use slight caution is you're at low health. They are located a little further in towards the core.
T2: These colonies have a couple cities that are half full and have strong defences. Use your mega-bomb to destroy them. Use a high amount of caution try swooping into one of these cities as turrets are incredibly deadly (as well as the minor and massive rockets they shoot out). They're generally in the low-middle sector zone. They are the most common tier.
T3: These colonies are fully developed and are around thirty-forty parsecs from the galactic core. They are incredibly resilient and one should not be around one unless in easy-medium mode. If you're in easy-medium mode, just use the mega-bomb again. In fact, you don't even need to use anything else. If you're playing on hard difficulty, you ONLY want to mega-bomb a city on hard mode if it's very close to where you land on the planet, this is because the turrets aren't 'prepped' yet. If you do this, you want to destroy at least two buildings first and then the city hall. Chance is you'll get a lot of damage, but it's all about timing. Now if the cities are far away from where you land, the recommended action is to use your anti-matter bomb, volcano, asteroid call button. The anti-matter bomb and asteroid call button take far longer to 'hit' the ground that the volcano, but the both of them are great together if you can manage it, say you use the anti-matter bomb on city 1, then the asteroid call button on city 2, your timing will be reduced. If you've already destroyed one city with the mega-bomb, I'd recommend using the volcano. If two cities are very close to one another, you can usually plop of these volcanoes in the middle of two and they'll instantly destroy both, although if they're slightly further apart they'll just damage them.
THE FAQ!
Q. How long did it actually take you to destroy the Grox? In terms of taking breaks and so forth?
A. About two months. There was one month where I did nothing at all. This is simply because it was my birthday last month and I couldn't be bothered to transfer 35 GB's of video and save files to my new computer. I only had a four GB pen drive... DON'T ASK WHAT I DID... But anyway, the middle sectors and core took about four days to do.
Q. Shouldn't I just terraform the planets instead of doing all of this work?
A. NO! It's too slow, you should be in and out of these planets in five-twenty seconds. For the core, I guess you can do it; but Spode would that be boring, lighten it up with anti-matter bombs, asteroid call buttons, volcanos and PLANET BUSTERS!
Q. Should I use the monolith tool to create empires in Grox territory so I can make them attack the Grox?
A. This was something I absolutely refused to do. I'm all about doing the work myself. I guess for the core it would be useful, but usually, I've seen them fail and for the outer-regions, it's totally worthless. Use the sector system instead.
Q. What the hell do I do about the Grox spaceships? They're ripping me limb by limb!
A. IGNORE THEM! No, seriously. While yes they do tons and tons of damage, the fact is that engaging with them takes a ton of time. You can use anti-matter missiles to destroy them, but I only recommend it if you're in a system with three or more Grox colonies in them. Even then it isn't essential.
Q. I keep dying before I can even enter the system or the planet!
A. NEVER use the default system to scroll inside a planet/system. This is a little complicated, but basically, you want to pause for EVERY single system/planet you come across. On easy-medium you don't need to. But hard it's usually essential. When you're about to go into the system, you want to press the little '+' button
at the bottom left corner and unpause, this will let you get inside the system before the Grox can even get a hit of you, this also applies to planets, but you'll need to target your approach in advance if I get the Let's Play out soon you can look up some examples of what I do, I almost never use the default system to get inside anywhere.
Q. My sectors/home planets are being attacked! What do I do?!
A.IGNORE THEM! Every single system by now should have an uber turret. Usually, one sector can stand three up to three Grox waves providing you also have buildings and turrets to defend them with, colony buildings also help as the Grox usually target them first instead of the cities, and they pack quite the punch. An uber turret can never be destroyed (unless the planet is hit by a planet buster).
Q. They're also being pirated!
A. Uber turret destroys them in literally three seconds.
Q. But what about eco-disasters?
A. Depends on if you need supply or not. You tend to not want to put bio-stabilizers down where your important spice planets are so you have a reason to supply and come back. I did this so I could work on getting the Eco-Hero badge which by the way, is incredibly tedious to get. *ahem*
(I still need 10 more to get the level 5 badge, and that's with destroying the Grox). Otherwise, if you aren't going to supply or aren't interested in them, IGNORE THEM!
Q. I keep dying a lot...
A. Expected with this strategy, you'll be taking more risks rather than the boring passive terraforming. The good news though is that you're not far from the sectors you planted, meaning you can get back there is less than a minute.
Q. Does the shield help?
A. Yes, but it's regeneration rate is slow. But when it is available, you should almost always try to use them. Especially of T2-T3 planets. You can also use them to wait for the Grox ships to catch up so you can destroy them with the anti-matter missile.
Q. So you never cheated, why?
A. Cheating doesn't give me motivation. But should you cheat, half the strategy I outlined here is pretty worthless to you.
Q. I KEEP CRASHING!
A. Save every twenty minutes or so, (I tried to save every 10). It's worth not risking losing about twenty systems. You should also save when you plant three colonies in that particular sector.
Q. What do I do with the Staff of Life?
A. I personally used them for each sector I created. The planets/spice don't matter, it just takes less time instead of terraforming.
Q. How many pizzas did you eat and how many Coca Cola's did you drink during the destruction?
A. Hm... maybe five-cheese pizzas and ... sixteen one litre bottles of Coca-Cola? Yeah, totally healthy.
Q. What is the point of recording all these videos if nobody is going to end up watching them anyway?
A. Actually, it's just to show my method out. Nobody should be watching all the videos, just some examples here and there. But I also want to continue this Let's Play and only completely end it once all badges and collectables are acquired.
Q. Shouldn't I just buy out the Grox colonies instead when I ally them?
A. This is the slowest method possible to destroy the Grox. Each trade route takes time and you could only have five going at once. On top of that, the new colony that you have now makes the save file bigger which in turn, slows how long it takes to save. I have about 36 systems near the end of the destruction and it took me about 35 seconds to save each time.
Q. What consequence powers did you use against the Grox?
A. Nothing. I made it a rule to not use them on Grox colonies. Although important side note, the pirate ability is actually great for stopping attacks in your sectors. When the Grox invade one, plop the pirate ability down, the Grox will leave. The game does not allow two AI belligerents to attack a planet at the same time. The pirates will spawn through a wormhole, before they do this, have your mega-laser on the wormhole so when they all pop out, they all instantly die. It's actually a neat way to get the defender badge.
Q. Did you use wormholes to travel?
A. I never went inside a wormhole, but they should be extremely useful. I just made it part of my game to not do it.
Q. What did you wish you could change in your conquests?
A. Having a few more purple spice planets and having the placement of the Asteroid Call Button, Anti-Matter bomb, Volcano, Repair/Recharge packs next to one another.
Q. But how do I know which sector is which when I plant them?
A. Rename the star's of each sector to the corresponding number. I.E SECTOR_0, SECTOR_1, SECTOR_2, ect. You can rename systems by opening the console and typing 'Rename Star <STAR-NAME-HERE>. This does NOT give you the Joker badge or make you lose achievements.
That's all I really have, for now, I do plan to update this and add some videos demonstrating what you should be doing with this strategy. Anyways, have fun forcing yourself through this to get a little badge!
