The one race least capable of fighting the Horwasp is the Crystalline. Because pods are immune to webs yet minesweep automatically every turn, they can easily sweep your webs. Horwasp warships outmatch your own in battle. The Privateer can’t fight them either, but at least they’re effective at robbing them dry. But what can you do?

It’s a bit like being the Evil Empire and being attacked by the Privateer. You will be the underdog in every scenario and most likely need help to overcome your foe.

But in this article, let’s focus on one special situation: you start as the Crystalline and your next-door neighbour is an aggressive Horwasp. How can you survive to the middle of the game, get a decent economy, and buy yourself time to marshal help to kill the bug?

(First, of course, the most important thing is to do my SIR MF. But this article is in addition.)

Take the Initiative

It’s easy for the Crystalline to hold occupied territory. It’s hard for the Crystalline to defeat an entrenched defense. Because of this my playbook for Crystalline entails this: always take the initiative, be there first.

An excellent tool for this is the Emerald, which can be built on the first turn and which can also function as an economy-building freighter. The Emerald is an excellent aggressor which can take all planets early on (those without starbases) and defeats competing light scouts and HYP ships.

Your objective is to take enough elbow room so you have at least 162-240 ly distance to your homeworld. When you spot the gnat, announce your find to others and ask for immediate help. Don’t be afraid to ask for more than you need! You might get that – neighbouring the Horwasp can be a great boon.

Small Webs in the Void

Another item in my playbook is small webs. Always in enemy territory, lay small webs. Lay them on planets, between planets, and on into the void as you move. Webs can’t be counter-mined, so each web requires one ship to waste one turn to sweep it. If laid smartly behind each other overlapping OR side by side without overlapping, no two webs can be swept with one ship in one turn.

The idea of small webs is also their awesome cheap price – 10 mk4 torps, and with FC mdq you can lay those 2-1 torp webs – if on a ship route, it’s a pain. Best place for webs is in the void between planets. You as the Crystalline are weak in and on planets and the enemy can get fuel etc. there. You are strongest in the voids of space, so you want the web action take place there. Be there first so you can decide the place of action is in the voids.

Have something small, like an Opal, in front of the Horwasp warships, laying a web on the route, with the web’s edge just about 1ly in front of the warship. It’s pretty safe, as the warships are slow.

But what about pods? Well, you can do something very tedious: to paint pod sweeping spots to the map.

In the beginning, the Horwasp can’t build Accelerators, since they are very expensive. He also won’t want to go warp 9 by overpowering engines, as fuel is scarce — but also because the enemy wants to sweep as much as he can, so he wants to move slow.

So the pods will be launched from planets to your planets, moving warp 6. Webs need to be swept inside the webs. So you use the measuring tool and drawing tools and mark the locations where the pods can be when launched from the planets. I would draw circles around the planets, increasing each turn by 36ly. Then draw direct lines from his planets to your destination planets, and then mark the spots to the map and after that close the views for the circles and the lines. 

Then you can lay those small webs everywhere, just as long as you don’t touch those spots with the webs.

Also, remember a very important point – Pods have a very high ID of over 1000. So you can ALWAYS scoop the webs away before the pods sweep, if the Stingers or other pods are there.

Pod Control and Fortresses

With small webs you can slow Horwasp warship movement to a crawl, but pods can still reach you. Read my Sting no more! article. Equip your alchemy ships with heavy blasters. Build up all worlds, at least drop 100 clans on each so no ground assault splash damage hurts you. But all this is just a side track to let you continue your economic building: with enemy warships stuck in the void you can keep on developing your pre-shiplimit economy.

It helps a lot if you can see the pods launch so you can plan accordingly, so you need to have picket ships close to enemy lines. Best are Rubies or Opals which also lay small webs all the time, dropping back now and then to scoop from a bigger web laid behind them. Remember, Stingers have always very high ID so you can always scoop before they sweep.

Mites might become problematic when close to Horwasp planets – use pairs of ships which zig-zag, this reveals the mites and you can use each to intercept the mite intercepting the other.

Against enemy warships your best defense is a starbase. It doesn’t need to be full of fighters, even 20 will do a lot of destruction. But you need starbases anyway, so build those starbases en masse for priority points and be prepared to equip some fighters there.

How to really annoy the bug

The bug wants to face you in battle because he can defeat your ships with his warships.

But he is very much afraid of your webs draining his ships, killing them instantly, making them vanish without even ground assault splash damage to planets. That can happen easily, especially for the most important sweeper and fighting warship, the Brood: it has only a 350 kt fuel tank and needs 900 clans for heavy phasers. So it weighs over 1000kt and has a small fuel tank. By the time it approaches you, it hasn’t got much fuel.

So how must the bug approach you? With empty ships! Coming from far away. And only just before they get to the frontline will they pick up clans for higher tech.

Build some Diamonds, but don’t fight the big bad warships at the front lines. Go past them! Go into the warpwells on the Horwasps route and hide there. At that point:

1. you are safe from mites,
2. you can minesweep protofields (Disruptors are enough – one protofield unit entails usually about 100 mines, 2500 at max),
3. you scan pods and see them coming,
4. you can retreat at warp 9 if he closes on you,
5. you can try to jump further deeper to the warp well of the next planet…
6. and snipe those empty warships! Or Sentries, which are sweeping with 6 heavy phasers and refueling 5kt of fuel into those empty warships moving to the front, saving fuel.

This will force the most important and most annoying thing: the enemy needs to start to guard his warships flying empty with full ones. So either a lot of those warships stay behind, far away from the front, or then he moves with full warships, wasting awfully big amounts of fuel. And for this, you need to do — nothing. Just sit there in the warpwell with minesweep on.

Snipe with Big Webs and Kamikaze

Then there is still something you can do. If the enemy warship (Jacker, Brood or Soldier) or hive runs out of fuel, it just vanishes. That can be very hard to do due heavy phasers on Broods, but Soldiers have only 3 beams and Jackers none. On the other hand, you don’t have to destroy the enemy ships at all. Just a little snipe can be enough to cripple them;

Imagine the enemy war ships are now there, in the void. Most likely they are filled with clans and thus have heavy phasers. But that means they use a lot of fuel. You might need only one web hit to a warship, and it doesn’t have enough fuel to either reach it’s destination OR return home. It becomes a stranded ship in the void, which is as good as dead.

Calculate for moments when you can temporarily grow the web greater than the enemy can sweep with the ships, maybe changing the angle so that you can hit some isolated target from the scattered ships. Warp 9 moving Emerald is more mobile than any enemy ship.

After ship limit has been hit, it’s hard for Horwasp to build new ships as they didn’t get +2 priority points from Starbases and they can’t get rbX builds. So after the ship limit, killing Horwasp warships might be prudent.

Sacrifice Diamond Flames and Crystal Thunders against his heavy phaser ships and then use big webs to drain the rest of the stack.

What Then?

It is very possible for you to defend successfully. But how to attack? I see only one option: flank and lay large webs which remove all Hives – warships – defending the area. Then attack the helpless planets.

Almost every other race is better equipped to scout and fight Horwasp planets. So your best weapon is diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy. Prior to the ship limit, ask every tech and ship available – and afterward, join forces with others to take down the scourge.

Ion godspeed!