Birth of the Federation

Species 8472 is getting on my nerves.

Two of them showed up in my recent game (I'm playing the Ultimate Dominion Mod) and started to wipe out my outposts and the ships I had in habited areas of my Federation Empire.

After throwing in 25 ships against one of them and losing them all, I had to move the remaining ships to unhabited areas and fast-click through about 100 turns, watching that lovely species wipe out every single outpost I've built.

When they finally left and I finally got my act together and started to fast-buy ships and Troop Transports in order to come back to the level I was on before the disaster, Species 8472 shows up AGAIN and starts wiping out everything I tried to rebuild, definitely ruining what could have been an interesting game.

At that point I finally lost my temper, finished the game and started a new game, this time without "random events".

Which is a pity because I do find the "random events" interesting and exciting.

Is there no effective way to kill off Species 8472?

only by cheating and editing the savegame I fear

Have had a similar game when fighting a borg sphere. Reffering to hitpoints and shields I expected it to vanish of first or at least 2nd turn when attacking it with my cloaked klingon fleet of about 30 or more ships, but it didn't even get a scratch cause all phasers missed target (veteran crew, some elite) and my ships didn't even fire torpedos.
Lateron thunderchero explained me that I shouldn't have started this on low tech, tech 1 actually, cause the random entities like the borg sphere and species8472 have such a high tech lvl, that there's no chance to blow them off. (you only could try to ram them off, but that's just too expansive normally)

It would be great if the random entities somehow would get adjusted to starting tech automaticly, but currently that's not the case and you should only activate randoms when starting on high tech.

cheers

Ermmm, I think this is a point that I will have to answer. First of all, thanks for the Feedback Lynx.

The Borg Sphere and the Species 8472 are very tough opponents on lower levels and I ended up setting their Stats so high to reflect their canon strenght more properly. As such they are a real calamity if encountered when your own civilization is still in its childhood.

I have given the advice before, and Flocke has already mentioned it, "Use ramming tactics!". And bring many many big ships when you do so. It might be expensive, but rather some expenses then no Empire at all (think about the battle at Wolf 359).

Both, species 8472 and the Borg sphere have the respective strenght of a t4-game space station, which make of course a terrible opponent for Tech 1-3 ships.

Alternately, change the Sphere and Species Stats with UE and make them somewhat weaker, ..... or ultimately turn off random events.

Cheers

Mentat

I think I'll try something to take them out. Cheating is not that fun, it's more fun to overcome the challenge.

By the way, I still have that game saved so I might re-start it and try to come up with something.

Most of the ships I did throw in were Destroyer III's. I'm not sure if a fleet with other ships would have managed better.

Lynx if you don't want to loose all your ships try using the maneuver I mentioned here in the Borg thread.

if it doesn't work: a combination from it + added ramming ships should work. Just be sure to have enough well trained fast attack sips (like your dd's) to "confuse" the monster.

Also a good construction, computer, energy and ofc weapons tech should aid a lot, too. In doubt better wait for a higher tech b4 attacking the monster.

I haven't ran into the Species since that encounter I wrote about earlier so I haven't been able to test any of the strategies suggested here. But I will try to find the best possible way to take it out.

playing new UDM 3 version in a t1 game and encountered species 8472 in turn 121 for the first time. I never met them b4 because I was more of a BOP player in the past... so I hope my assimilation tactics will work somehow.

what a challenge, exactly what I was looking for

atm I hope that 8472 has the same behaviour like cubes which just hop from system to system.

...one of the exploits that could be fixed in the future

edit: huge map, what else?

Species 8472 will act just like Husnock vessel, since recoding of monsters is still unknown.

thunderchero

funny situation. 8472 is hopping through the systems. I had some luck and it missed my systems so far. But it met the Breen. I was astounded to see that it didn't kill any inhabitants as it flew over their homesystem.

So are 8472/Husnok just attacking major race systems?

Another thing I recognized. (not only in this game/ not only with this monster)

The Breen seem to chase 8472 with their 9 ships. And it looks like 8472 is hiding from them (to my luck )
My guess is that the ratio of hull/shields of the Breen compared to 8472 is bigger.

Perhaps 8472 went just outta the range of the Breen but Monsters just seem to go where a low hull/shield ratio is... (same with cubes)

would be interesting to find out something more about the behaviour of monsters. all I got are just information through observations. but I seen this often so it seems to be correct.

Hi,
after about 5 years I had once again wants to BOTF and I found the fantasic UDM.

The only thing that bugs me is Spezies8472.
I realize that I can not defeat it in the early game, but even at t7 with about 70 ships -all legendary or veteran- I can not beat it.
I just do not fire torpedoes and phaser make up only about 10% shield damage.
After about 6 rounds I will not have enough firepower to make even more harm.
Also ram will not work because I either lose my whole fleet or lose important rounds in which 8472 shots on my small ships.

I hope someone can help me and tell if it's normal that you shoot any torpedoes?
And say how and where I can change it in the UE.

btw: sorry 4 my bad english

You can remove species 8472 and keep the rest of the other minor races.. can't remember how in stbof.ini somewhere where in Vanilla botf it has option BORG=ON/OFF...

Must be something similar for UDM3.

Also if you wish to defeat them all you should need in UDM3 is I'd imagine 20-30 Heavy Command Class Ships (Explorer/Warbird/Imperial Battleship/Dom Heavy Cr/or Card Command CR)

I would imagine..but I never usually have randoms on as I only play MP...

Are Species (whatever the number is) unable to be targeted by torpedoes? The one time I encountered them my entire fleet never fired a single torpedo over the course of like 15 turns.