>>2479539
No

There's 1 viable strategy which is to ignore Earth and rush space ships. Want to run a ground game and defend Earth with armies and space defenses? Sorry, that's the wrong choice. The aliens will just spam missions to respawn the alien nation every turn. The protectorate will steal a control point from you every turn for free because people are scared they can bomb you from space. Even though you have SPACE DEFENSES WHICH MAKE YOU UNBOMBABLE in every region.

Want to make super nations and improve things for humanity? Sorry, wrong choice again. You should be building only mission control and boost. Everything else is a trap because space ships are the only thing that matters. Investments into anything other than mission control and boost take too long for a return on investment too. If you haven't won by 2040 then you played wrong. The devs say that with their balance not me.

Want to make alliances with like minded factions? Sorry, wrong choice again. It's not 6 factions vs the aliens with some infighting it's 6 factions vs you. Everyone is on the same team and will focus on you because YoU'Re ToO sTrOnG. You will never be able to change their mind.

Want to experiment with different techs and weapon loadouts on those ships? Sorry, wrong choice again. The correct choice was going fusion power and missiles/torpedoes. Everything else is inferior.

Then you get to the actual fighting with those space ships and it's dogshit. Dogshit that you're going to have to do hundreds of times in a game to win even if you're min maxing.

>>2479801
I should add that if you haven't won by 2040 then you played wrong applies to the 202x campaign starts. For the 2003 start if you haven't won by 2020 you played wrong.

>>2479539
I have 80h in it and I haven't done anything remotely satisfying it.

>>2479801
>If you haven't won by 2040 then you played wrong.
I assume you are exaggeration a bit, but how true is it really? My current run is semi-ruined, but I was under the impression that if you continue struggling you'll get the W eventually. Am I wrong?

>>2479891
The game loves its death spirals and I am not exaggerating with the timelines. You can get out of death spirals but it's incredibly tedious. If you let the aliens land a single assault carrier you fucked up bad because now they can recruit aliens on earth just like everyone else. They will always have 6 guys running around you'll have to kill and the xenofauna will constantly keep resprouting.

If you let the alien nation form you fucked up bad. The hate you get from killing it is massive which means constant retaliation strikes which means constant rebuilding which is tedious. If the alien nation can form once though then that means they can respawn every turn.

If the protectorate manages to build their station you fucked up bad. They will steal your best control point every turn. They will never steal anyone elses control points. You can crackdown and purge the points they steal but eventually you'll fail one and slowly lose all your points.

Basically, if you do anything that isn't rush ships with missile spam and kill everyone else in space, including alien scanners and assault carriers, then you fucked up and will suffer the consequences. Hooded Horse HATES every other strategy. The other AIs will never, ever help you either. They'll all dogpile you because you're the player.

>>2479891
what keeps you playing? is there the shadow of a fun game in there? is the premise fun enough to keep tinkering in spite of things?

>>2479921
NTA, I'm the guy bitching with essays. The game has some super cool systems with improving nations, making super nations, building ground defense systems against nukes and bombardment, ground combat is meh but the planning and nation buildup behind it is fun. Unfortunately all of that is a trap and simply the wrong decision. The ONLY thing that matters is your space fleet and the only loadout that will work for the whole game is missile spam. It wasn't always like this.

>>2479921
>what keeps you playing?
Space empire stage. It's a lot of fun, but I'm in what the other anon called death-spiral.

>>2479907
>Hooded Horse
Pavonis. HH is the publisher.

>>2479953
You right

>>2479930
I remember the leaked alpha. It was unironically better than what launched. If only it was fucking stable..

>>2479971
Near release I had a lot of fun. I was able to play a ground game where I focused on nation building and letting the aliens land then killing them with armies. I didn't even do the capital moving exploit that let you make India own all of Earth I just made continent nations. The AI actually fought each other too.

Now all of that was nerfed. I get removing the capital moving exploit but they've been slowly nerfing the super states too. Like recently China got claims removed so now they can't own all of the Pacific from New Zealand to Kamchatka. Why? The ground game was NEVER meta but it gets nerfed over and over. The game has 1 correct path, rush space ships with missiles, and everything else the devs absolutely fucking despise. Everything else is just a trap to make you lose after 40 hours.

>>2479539
You should play valkyrie's core instead.

>>2479976
I just remember them heavily nerfing the mercury dyson sphere tactic. It just gave you a ton of mission control but ofc the no fun allowed devs had to ruin it.

>>2479988
The total conversion mod? Is it any good? Review please?

The coop mod will save it, trust the plan.

>>2479995
It focus on earth's globe instead of space.
Lot of new mechanics. Also you can read story first (it's sadly unfinished).

>>2479539
I really love it but i have a serious case of pause/unpause autism.
Its basically all the busywork on a regular STG game without the 'send marines to kill ayyys in a XCOM type of scenario' and just the research stuff and buy shit to get buff for your agents till you get to the Stellaris space battle phase.
Oh and the whole 'It doesn't respects your time' meme is 100% real and in your face with this game, it hates your time.

>>2479801
All of this is true if you're doing a brvtal speedrun.

>>2479971
Because they balanced it for the superfans that played for thousands of hours instead of making it a fun game.

>>2479539
It's not really good unless you have a particular brand of autism.
>>2479988
This is true though. Actually uses the game's systems to make a somewhat interesting and enjoyable experience.

I think the game biggest issue is that theres not a REAL ground battle concept for either wait for the ayyys or if you get defeated in spess and have to turtle up and fight them on earth until you get the opportunity again to counterstrike.
Maybe that could be implemented in a future DLC?

>>2479907
Reminds me of Civ3, where basically all AIs are against the player and diplomacy is impossible. They'll all trade techs with each other for pennies but you can't get tech from them for even the most lopsided deal. The AI will constantly threaten and go to war against the player no matter what stage of the game or their chance of winning. It's dumb and results in every game playing like a turn based wargame or a tech rush to space.

>>2480019
Focusing on Earth sounds good. They ironically made a really good Earth based grand strategy game in their Stellaris battle simulator.

>>2480124
The brutal gameplay is ironically more forgiving because it'll kill you faster forcing a restart. Normal makes you think you have a chance at winning and you do but it'll take 4 times longer than just restarting and playing correctly.

>>2480229
Yea the current ground combat system is, "If you're doing this you lost already.". There is no benefit at all to ground combat.

>>2480266
Yup. It used to be like EUIV where all AIs were selfish and trying to help themselves. Now it's like every other game where every AI is against you.

>>2480287
If you're having all of those problems on normal then it's an honest to God skill issue.

How fucked am I that the alien administration took India and annexed China? I have north & america and the good half of Europe.
Also, i spend about the last 100 turns using my councillors almost entirely at campaign in my huge nations to counteract other factions boosting and enabling getting a foothold in Europe, and assaulting alien life forms around the world. What should I do with them instead?

>>2480982
When did it happen?

>>2480990
around 2036, with a 2026 start

>>2479801
Are you genuinely retarded?

The objective is to push the aliens out of the solar system, you can't do that without ships. Saying you will just keep earth safe by building defenses and making aliens unable to conquer it is just the Protectorate victory scenario with extra steps.

If the protectorate has enough resources to get to their wincon AND build the wincon structure in orbit to start flipping points then you didn't do a good job focusing on defending the planet. Also their station has to be excluded from space defences, otherwise anyone playing the faction could get hard-locked out of ever ever winning the game, it would be retarded design.

Mission control should really be invested in by smaller nations you plan to fold into a bigger one or bigger nations which are arleady "improved for humanity" because them being good places to live in is what makes them stable, defendable, and have good investment point output for building mission control. Boost you shouldn't be building that much later in the game as it's very expensive vs just building shit in space from resources you get in space.

There are really no like-minded factions, everyone wants different things and can only tolerate eachother as long as they don't get in their way. Every factions objectives are contradictory, even Servants and Protectorate are at odds as Servants want to join the Alien Empire on VERY privileged terms compared to other subject races, and the Protectorate wants to fully surrender.

Missiles are the early-mid game spam weapon you CAN use to make very cheap and effective ships. But even then you can't really ONLY use missiles, you need point defense ships at least, and laser boats for dealing with flankers ideally.
A proper late game fleet has a good mix of laser, kinetic, and particle weaponry. Missile only is really not that good.
If anything you should be complaining about it's particles as they are ridiculously strong both in your and Alien hands.

>>2481002
>>2479801
To add even more to the description of your skill issues

The Servants can only spawn the Alien Admin if the servants have executive control in a nation, build a alien base, and only then they get the mission. An Alien can do it directly, but he needs to get control of the nation in the first place too, so you can easily spot him and kill him.
If you have Aliens running around enthralling points and Servants building bases with impunity then again, you did a horrible, horrible job of focusing on defending Earth. As long as you have control of Earth orbit and supress Servants keeping both the Alien Admin and Alien agents out of the planet is pretty trivial.

Investment into economy only seems slow to return on investment because it starts slow, but then it compunds and compunds leading to insane IP and GDP values down the line. It's a game meant to span decades not TikTok, don't expect instant gratification. And again, if you had done a good job of defending earth, you would have all the time in the world.

Fusion drives are actually the worst overall in the game, their research path is extremely long and extremely expensive.
Anti-Matter is much cheaper and while it requires infrstructure to produce anti-matter, it gives you a lot of performance for very cheap research and exotics wise compared to Fusion.
Human Fusion drives are a meme compared to what you can do with anti-matter.
Fission tech-tree also produces very viable drives even into the end-game, but it's situational as it requires you to happen to own a lot of sites with very good fissile incomes which may not happen every run.
Fusion is a noob-trap really, it's really only the best for late-game powering of colonies as it doesn't take as many fissiles as pure fission, and you can cut costs massively if you own Jupiter.
But then again the entire inner solar system which should be your fortress anyway can do with solar power boosted by orbital mirrors.

I wonder if my old save is going to load if I play again, I was about to get a foothold on Jupiter as the Academy

>>2481006
>this thing you thought was good? It's also a noob trap! Take that!
Nayart but this is isn't the own you think it is in a game already stuffed to the fucking gills with noob traps

>>2481006
>Fusion drives are actually the worst overall in the game, their research path is extremely long and extremely expensive
This is true for inertial memefinement drives, Z-pinch drives are the best in the game.

>>2479539
It's a kind of blue ball game. The whole concept is extremely tantilizing, but then you start playing and after some hours you realize that the devs managed to suck all enjoyment out of what would have been potentially a great game, and replaced it with tedium. Then you leave dissatisfied and all that's left is to fantasize about how great it would be to play a game that is like this, except good. However it will never come.
Paradox are also masters of this blue ball genre.

>>2481000
Alien Nation in 2036!?
Call it quits.

>>2481259
I eventually did after the 5th war that (servant) russia started that dragged my european union in it, but mostly because I fucked up my space economy and was lacking the fissile to build up a fleet.

>>2480982
Its winnable. Main thing to do is destroy the GDP of the AA to the point where running unrest missions is viable to peel off regions with the splintered India and China techs. Read the codex to figure out how to prevent the other factions from affecting the public opinion in your nations.

What modules do you prioritize for low-earth-orbit stations? Skunkworks? Labs?

>5/6 Servant china
>Increase unrest to trigger a revolution
>They all switch to me, pushing me170 over control point cap
Any quick fix beyond abandonning unimportant nations?

>>2481180
I suppose that was probably to be expected from the guys gruellingly long challenge mod for xcom. The idea is cool in theory, but it's balanced around a fairly specific kind of autists who likes min-maxing those kinds of things. I'm never going to develop the perfect build order because I'm not gonna every play more than like 2 TI campaigns considering they take dozens of hours, and based on second hand accounts it's not like they are even that different depending on faction.
Another game I felt something similar was darkest dungeon where over time they nerfed the fun out of the game to balance it around some hyper-engaged fags on discord and as a result produced a game that just isn't all that fun for anyone else.
I'm just too much of a filthy casual to be the target audience. I just don't enjoy spending that much time on a single game.

>play academy because waifu leader and looked the most interesting and reasonable
>play nice with all other factions, never mess with them in any way other than kicking intruders out of my greater Indonesia
>all of my agents are busy strengthening my country or hunting aliens
>build up slowly taking the best spots on mars and many asteroids
>build no ships at all for long time, because just looking at the numbers suggested the aliens in orbit were too strong anyway
>eventually decide to try out a few small ones with nothing but missiles
>aliens immediately come to blow them up along with the station I build them at
>all of my missiles easily shot down by alien PD
>decide to sit back for a few more years and focus research purely on ships
>eventually build 2 stations filled with nothing but shipyards
>queue up a dozen battlecruisers at once with the biggest laser weapons, massive frontal armor, some PD and barely enough fuel to maneuver in orbit
>aliens come
>as we have no maneuver capability we just line up and let them come at us
>we lose 2/3 of our fleet but actually win
>reload to see if I can do better with some micro
>notice the aliens don't use their vastly superior delta V at all, they just come straight at us every time
>decide to use what little delta V we have to slightly split apart my battle line, just have half of my ships slowly drift left, the other half right
>aliens continue to fly straight down the middle and get shot in the sides
>completely obliterate them with barely a scratch on our ships
>in bigger fleets they send a few of them to flank, which is dangerous to us, but can be dealth with by quick focus fire into their early exposed sides
>repeat with a few more alien fleets coming at us and completely clear earth orbit
>Humanity first contacts us, surely to congratulate and ally with us
>they declare war instead because apparently we are too strong
>other "human" factions to the same

>realize this game is retarded and humans cannot be reasoned with
>they actually blow up 2 of my stations and leave me no choice but to remove all of their stations around earth and bombard their launch sites
>takes literally just a day or two to completely eradicate all foreign launch sites on earth with my laser ships
>meanwhile my neighbor China is taken over by aliens and USA controlled by servants
>I'm at war everywhere but easily able to hold them off by bombarding their armies
>have to manually order bombardments every day, making the game even more tedious than it already was
>aliens start attacking my mining stations and I decide to replace all non-mining modules with defences, which completely stops the attacks
>continue to blow up alien fleets coming to earth and eventually remove other factions from the Moon and Mars
>I'm now controlling greater Indonesia and Europe, easily winning the war against everyone else but unable to control the whole world (removed all base control capacity with custom rule)
>sit back to see what they'll throw at me
>literally nothing for years, except the occasional alien fleet that dies the same way every time
>realize I've won the game and just need to clean up the aliens in the outer solar system to end this
>sitting on gigantic stockpiles of resources just waiting for breakthrough in drive tech to build ships that can actually get around the solar system
>can't be bothered because I already know I will win every fight with a single weapon and ships that barely move
>uninstall
>glad I didn't pay

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>>2482230
1.9k strength, 1.5 kps
vs
3.7k strength, 120 kps

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>>2482272
Win with 0 losses, lose all interest in game.

>>2482272
>all battlecruisers
This would get raped by brilliant sky

>At war with alien administration
>Every time one of my ally capture a province they release the original country (in this case india)
>The original country switch immediately to servants
>Get annexed back into the alien administration
I'm never getting out of this shit

>>2482274
Wide as ocean, deep as pound.

>>2482230
Yea this is what I was talking about in my essays at the beginning of the thread. Space ships are the only thing that matters and they're fucking BORING. Every other mechanic and strategy that could be made around those mechanics is completely useless. Everyone is against you too. No one cares about winning they just don't want you to win. You didn't use missiles though which is good lasers are prettier. I see you've hit the, "I've won but now it's just cleanup duty" in 2037 too which is also on track. Congratulations! You have mastered this game that could have been so much more than shitty space battles.

>>2482459
Isn't them being able to respawn immediately and infinitely super fun?

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Why are they so bad at UI and QoL? Fucking up the balance is one thing. Adding 3000 duplicate techs with 80% being traps yeah sure sounds fun. Didn't send out probes fast enough, yeah you're fucked. And so much more shit.
But how do they play their own game hehehe and not notice the dogshit interface?
I niggerrigged myself my own UI stuff so I can actually see where my resources go. Or where my resources come from. Or what a base is expected to produce resource and energy wise when all construction is done. Or where your control points go. Or what stations still need life support added. Or some quick buttons to go to the most important planets, hidden unless the sun-icon is clicked.
Oh and how about we make tech and project names into hotlinks you can hover over for a quick tooltip with related techs and projects, colored by if already researched, which you can also click to directly go to that tech in the tech tree OR the archive depending on if you hold ctrl while clicking Plus a mouse-back function to go back to the tech before.

How is stuff like this not in the base game? It took me like 4 hours to vomit all this out with just retarded vibecoding, surely one of the devs can spare some time and actually do good for once.

>>2481051
His point is that everything except fusion sucks.
My point is that every major drive/reactor tech tree is viable, and it's a noob-trap to think that you can only use fusion since the research is so long.
And even then fusion is actually very viable once you get through the research, and you get to power your habs for almost free as a reward for sticking with it.

>noo the game is so complicated everything is a noob trap!!
If it were otherwise people would complain it's too simple and easy, just accept there is a steep learning curve, every other review on steam talks about it.

>>2481066
I mean i know they are extremely good drives in terms of raw performance, my point was that all factors included, they are the "worst" as research-wise you can get most of the same performance quicker and cheaper elsewhere, while also costing you far fewer exotics in the final ship design.

And I get that anti-matter is expensive funding wise and building up infrastructure to make it takes time and leaves you vulnerable if your Mercury dyson gets broken into by the Aliens. And that fissile drives take a shitton of fissile material to keep fueled.
I just think the benefits of having ships that match aliens much faster and with less optimized research are huge.

>>2483080
>My point is that every major drive/reactor tech tree is viable
They are not.
Basically we seek something for intercept ayys in early game, using boost for long travels.
In mid game it's depend on your strategy, but in the end it still something for intercept ayys but also something for long travels.
And in late game we want both long travels and ability to intercept. Also there ultra late where we hunt rest of ayys but thee really nothing matter, we already win the game but forced to do chores for few dozens of hours before will see titres.
All of this for reasonable research and fuel cost.
So in fact it's only 1-(1-3)-1 engines of over 9000 for whole game.

The same mostly with weapons.
Low tier lasers and cannons useless, need to use rockets.
Top tier lasers better than rockets.
Coils good only in big front slots.
We can delete early lasers and cannons, delete late rockets, delete small coils and it will change literally nothing.
This game just bloated with noobtraps and useless things, you can't deny it with sane arguments. Lot of people tried, no1succeeded.

the icons and ui made me uninstall within 10 minutes
also having to listen to rastafarai brown women and arabs on every research and event

>>2483089
early weapons are for human enemies, not ayys but as of right now there no reason to use anything but the best. Weapons need a balancing pass. Ayys need better ECM or PD to counter missile boat spam.

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it's pronounced "inweecta"

>>2479801
>>2479907
I don't get it. If the idea of people hurtling on Earth piss them off so much, why didnt they just put diminishing returns on the defense platforms over a timescale instead of just making the strat useless? They didnt even need to piss off the players that enjoy Earth, just make it so you cant do indefinitely. Why do they hate the Earth gameplay so much in particular?

>>2482998
building all these identical stations and bases and shit and keeping track of space resources which are universally available everywhere to make boost irrelevant past the first mars base..

some dumb game design and bad UI

>>2483200
Add in the tedium of build base, ayys destroy base because meter red, rebuild base for peanuts, ayys destroy base again until enough 'hate' is bled off.

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I have complete control of the USA and Canada
They are allies and in the same federation
I have researched "United North America" which gives the US claims on canada
They are not on diplomatic cooldown
Why can't I unify them? I could do it for micronesia (as if it matters), but the option don't appear for Canada

>>2483133
thanks kikero

>>2483644
Canada's democracy score may be too high

>>2483665
not if you accept it for a hollow label of allegiance

>>2483673
No I mean you literally can't peacefully unify with another country if their government score is too much higher than yours.

>>2483665
That explains why the option ended up popping out of nowhere, thanks.

>>2483131
>early weapons are for human enemies
Early rockets also better than lasers/cannons vs human enemies. If you will even see human enemies in early game lol.

Did they "fixed" you not being able to get rid of factions and having to micro manage everything like a fucking autist for hours to end?

>Alien lands war machines in Kaliningrad
>Sends over 10 armies there to try to snipe them at spawn while they're not completely overpowering
>Alien troops spawn and don't give a fuck about being engaged by a horde of humans, immediately fuck off to servant countries that are not in the war
>Can't reach them until next mission phase
>By then they'll have regen
>Also my lithuanian ally decided to nuke a province they were passing by, missing the actual alien, killing half of my US + China armies
That's some retarded bullshit gameplay

>>2483875
It's super fun how there is no retreat punishment and armies you've engaged can just keep moving while still fighting.

How are the new DLC scenarios?

>>2479801
>Want to make alliances with like minded factions? Sorry, wrong choice again. It's not 6 factions vs the aliens with some infighting it's 6 factions vs you. Everyone is on the same team and will focus on you because YoU'Re ToO sTrOnG. You will never be able to change their mind.

That literally made me drop my last campaign (2026 -> 2034) because the retarded fucking AI decided to crush all of my spaceyards (after I've intercepted ayys and mutually destroyed each other) with ONE FUCKING ESCORT made of chemical rocket and two rocket pods. When I realized I am at war with 5/6 factions (resistance not included as I was HF with NAP, and even they later dropped the NAP and changed their stance from tolerance to conflict) and what would it took to maintain at least neutral relations with AT LEAST 3 of the factions (servants and protectorate not included) I dropped the fucking game. I can't handle ayys, and retarded fucking ass space factions at once.

>>2482229
>>2482230
had literally the same problem with the game. early to early-mid game is quite fun with constantly shuffling agents on earth and playing whack-a-mole while researching shit, but then it all starts to break down when retarded human AI decides to hate on you because you are doing too good, so now you need to focus on ayys + all, or almost all, of human factions. mid-game onward made me drop the game, which is sad cause i quite enjoyed the autism like researching the drives (which is also a bit of a con in itself), designing first space ships or building space economy

>>2483771
>Did they "fixed" you not being able to get rid of factions
no
>having to micro manage everything like a fucking autist for hours to end
no, it's the intended experience

So, I'm liberating russia from the alien admin, and pushing my faction to 60-70% popularity in russia. Despite that, the servant keep flipping russian control points, even tho I fortify them.
Is it the alien doing enthrall? And if so, why don't the 5 or 6 tech I've researched supposed to give them penalties to enthrall don't do shit?

>>2484108
When a country is small enough it just becomes impossible to defend later on. Due to this, it ironically becomes easier in some ways if the alien administration is larger, as that means more territory for the main liberated nation to quickly absorb by taking territories from it. Having high science councilors also helps. Eliminating xenoflora (and by extension lowering abductions) is also very important.

>>2479539
No anon, whatever you do, do not buy you. Torrent it if you must its a boredom simulator.

I don't understand the complaints about diplomacy desu, maybe it's a late game problem
In my games I just kept good relations with the closest ideology factions and made sure they were relevant in space by gifting them my old shitty mines and shipyards
It's a good feel when the first HF ships left their shipyard and headed straight to the servant and protectorate stations to blast them out of orbit, or when your friends take out the survey ships and small ayy fleet so you don't get the hate penalty

>>2484140
there comes a point when you are so far ahead that even factions very close ideologically to you will hate you and actively hinder you, either on ground or in space. the only solution to that is to either go all guns blazing and don't let any of the factions have any space presence, or set yourself back by giving other factions your worked out lead. both are flawed, and result in unsatisfactionary outcomes

I normally play with only two factions, mine and servants and 9/10 times I'm resistance or HF because I want to kill ayys in space not play politics on earth.

>Think I finally unlocked a useful engine that will gives me >30 delta-v
>Actually it's another garbage noob trap with an acceleration that takes 2 years to go from one earth orbit to another
And of course I can't refit the ships I made with it because fuck making refitting useful

Apparently there is a new multiplayer mod out there. Has anyone tried it?

>add a bunch of different engines
>the vast majority of them are total shit or at the very least hyper situational.
>feel like this is a bunch of autists showing how smart they are for reading about these theoretical drives.

>>2479561
fpbp

There's one positive side effect to the clusterfuck of engines and impossibility to refit, it's that each bunch of obsolete ships I have ends up on guarding duty on one of my research hab around earth, and their type cluster my ship design list, giving me a good larp as a real navy with a mess of an inventory.

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>armies are still the worst way to fight xenoflora
>entire game is still a superhero team manager

>>2484103
Your fault for not putting defense modules on them

>>2484103
>skill issue no 373035001: forgetting to put defenses on your stations

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The protectorate managed to bomb one of my pan-asian-combine control point into submission before I could destroy their station. How can I recover it without doing a revolution or without waiting a year for a one-shot chance before they re-protect it?

>>2485678
I think your only option is invading yourself and disbanding any armies under their control point if they'd be a problem.

Not only is it good, it’s damn good. It is in fact my overall favorite X-COM game. There are so many cool things you can do. It’s awesome to see your small shadowy organization burgeon into a global empire, surrounded by other players with their own individual goals. You can customize your own ships, and amazingly it does its best to at least simulate Newtonian physics. It’s riveting, even though it is a spreadsheet simulator.

However, it is one of the most frustrating and monotonous games I have ever played in my life, and I have played thousands of games over decades. It’s a huge, huge timesink that does not respect your time whatsoever. If you do not play with a guide open and research this game extensively I honestly do not think you can reliably win your first game now, and if you do it will probably happen after like 200 hours of playtime.

There are simply too many strategies that were nerfed into the floor such that any player without foreknowledge of these things basically guarantees their doom. If you don’t know about and plan around Hydras stealing your control points then you are fucked. If you build a few monitors and try missile spam you are fucked. If you try to run to Mercury and build there you are fucked. And so on and so forth. There are so many mistakes even competent players are guaranteed to make that it’s extremely common for a new and sometimes even experienced player to completely fuck themselves over hours before their defeat finally comes.

It’s really frustrating. It’s among my favorite strategy games, but it is so fucking annoying and terrible in so many ways. It just has such a good arc of discovery, development, defense, and destroying the enemy, but it is so marred as to make me want to learn to mod just so I can fix the game.

Tragic.

What was the last """good""" version?

>>2487061
3.40 beta of VC

>>2487006
>If you try to run to Mercury and build there
Why is that?

>>2487077
Free solar energy obviously. We have magical teleportation for rss anyway.

>>2487109
Yeah that's why I think mercurcy's great, but I don't see why I'd be fucked if I go occupy it.

>>2487137
it was nerfed because the devs hated the mercury dyson sphere as it was called, basically people would rush and fill its orbit with stations, with cheap and abundant solar power and at the time there was no limit on mission control modules so you can have mercury managing a good chunk of your fleet.

But the devs hate when people play any other way than the way they intended it so it got the nerf bat, not mission control modules are capped to 1.

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I won this game once several patches ago but I cant seem to win again, every time the alien admin forms I just cant stop them, I can conquer their lands but it flips back to the Servants and back to Alien Admin back again, there is literally nothing I can do to stop them because apparently if you let xenoflora go rampant you cannot detect alien councilors, so you have to clear xenoflora WORLDWIDE from the get go and possibly hunt xenos before you even have a fleet to tank the Alien payback which sounds annoying and crippling depending where they hit you
I dont understand how to play effectively anymore and how people manage to rush tech and win in the 40s
Wish you could permanently defeat other human factions, its so fucking frustrating that I played two games in a row where I dominated space but servants still win because they get population win

>>2485678
I remember how I lost a long ass campaign to these ngrs without warning, how the fuck was I supossed to know they could do that? all my auto saves were too late, my fleets were in mars and the belt
Stupid fucking devs

>>2487211
Classic scenario or new ones?
Since in classic you definitely *can* and *should* hunt every but turned agents for Servants and Protectorate, and with proper research order (implying that you rush cap USA, then China) you can have rocket space ships for intercept ayys scouts enough early.

>>2487137
In addition to what the other guy said about mission control they also fucked Mercury by increasing the metals costs tremendously of building habs and reduced power received from solar farms. They did this because as the other poster said many players were building vast hab networks on Mercury to fuel research and shipbuilding. That wasn’t even the only time they did that though. They’ve basically all done it for a similarly stupid reason. Examples:

1.) Canny players learned early on that alien scout ships, while agile, could be reliably overwhelmed if defending ship designs used Monitor chassis with missiles in each slot. In response, devs equipped even earlier ships with point defense to swat them lazily, ECM to freeze your systems, AND they tinkered with AI to strengthen its defensive play so it conserved ammo for point defense. Now, an intelligent player that realizes the strength of the Monitor design and thinks to use missiles to overwhelm enemy ships will get blown the fuck out.

2.) Players used to build Universities on Mercury to fuel technology. The devs decided to make them impossible to build except on heavily populated worlds (e.g. Earth orbit). They also radically raised their costs drastically reducing their utility.

3.) Players used to slowly expand and surreptitiously create ships. They’d then often try to force major battles at larger stations bristling with defensive modules. Some real Japanese shit. Well they didn’t like it and made the aliens much more aggressive in expansion towards the inner planets, meaning instead of quietly expanding in the outer edges of the solar system they venture much closer much earlier. To add insult to injury, they fucking nerfed base defenses lol.

There are several more of these that you will see yourself throughout the game, just big fat fuck yous like balancing the power you get from solar farms such that it fails to supply power for two other modules by ONE POINT. It’s disappointing.

>>2487343
>2.) Players used to build Universities on Mercury to fuel technology. The devs decided to make them impossible to build except on heavily populated worlds (e.g. Earth orbit). They also radically raised their costs drastically reducing their utility.
I agree on that. Mercury would fucking sucks for Humans, even more than Mars, and it's silly to imagine fueling humanity's technological progress on such an inhospitable outpost.

Is it useful to get a small defense fleet to swat down the lone alien ships which (i assume) bring alien councilors on earth? Like, does it slow the aliens in any way, does it prevent them from propping up the servants so much, or something?

>>2487343
>devs equipped even earlier ships with point defense to swat them lazily, ECM to freeze your systems, AND they tinkered with AI to strengthen its defensive play so it conserved ammo for point defense
Can you really not take down these lonely survey ships with a couple of monitors? Somehow I doubt it

Also what's the intended way to play??? What about the Jupiter rush and early total war? Is this not allowed anymore?

>>2487394
The bases in mercury are said to be in craters near the poles. They would be living in domed bases just the same as on the moon or mars.

>>2487405
>What about the Jupiter rush and early total war?
The moment when you reach Jupiter is moment where you get total war.
So you need to have not only colony ship, but also defensive fleet.

So what is the actual meta now?

>>2487473
Playing VC

>>2487509
What does Viking Conquest have to do with Terra Invicta?

>>2484859
You put defenses on EVERY hab? That is fucking ludicrous anon

>>2487656
yes, stops one ship from just wrecking it and making you have to tediously rebuild everything.

>>2484358
>>2484427
It is all about autists wanting to jerk off about how much they know about anything. They always couch it in “realism” and then nerf the fuck out of “realism” when players use it to win too effectively. Typical.

>>2487660
Well, I will say one of my earlier games was ruined precisely because some South African fuckface with a single gunship using 30mm cannons took out like a dozen habs while all my ships were away trying to save Mercury. Gave up right away because I knew it would have been hours before I rebuilt them all even just making that top of the list.

Anywhere not Earth though I simply have a singular station --or sometimes, rarely, two-- acting as the command center for the area, with everything else undefended. I try to keep a fleet on each major body, but that's obviously difficult until you get gargantuan mission control. I have a habit of trying to make aesthetic or thematic stations, but since this game takes like a hundred hours to beat a quick game it makes it even more monotonous. I would like if we could just add presets for habs that fill in as we discover the techs, e.g. it auto-buys and builds structures as the resources and technologies are available.

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>>2487399
Yes and yes, both are extremely important. To be clear, the primary reason why you are losing so many control points later in the game is because escorts carrying Hydra councilors are able to land onto the planet, who come from those Escorts. They have a number of Enthrall missions only they can use which can steal organizations, cause a huge swing in popularity for the Servants, and yes most visibly they can steal control points. You should shoot down every ship you see carrying Hydra councilors unless doing so would cause permanent war.

Above and beyond these though are Assault Carriers. Under no circumstances should you EVER allow one to reach the surface, even if it means total war. Not only do they release their bullshit overpowered armies, they also release essentially INFINITE Hydras. As long as a single lone facility exists on Earth they can continue to recruit another Hydra councilor every turn just like every other faction on Earth, and even if you manage to somehow destroy the carrier and all alien facilities you will then have to empty a councilor pool, which can contain like a dozen more of them. I can't stress this enough, do not let one land. If you do you just added 100 hours of gametime if you are the type to refuse to quit.

>>2487689
The assault carriers is another thing I hate because of the hidden councilor mechanic. Want to bait the aliens to land and make them waste time and personnel because you set up a trap? Fight a manpower war against an opponent you severely outnumber? Haha fuck you! That was the wrong decision! Infinite hydra operators now. The lore of the setting doesn't matter if they can hurt the player.

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>>2479801
>The aliens will just spam missions to respawn the alien nation every turn.
I realize someone else already explained this, but I feel this needs to be explained so everyone playing is aware of how this works going in:

The game does not bullshit much for the aliens, they play almost exactly like every other faction. They start on one of the Kuiper Belt asteroids (randomly either Haumea, Quaoar, Makemake, or Orcus) with one tier 3 hab and orbital. They start with a single Hydra councilor on Earth, and a wormhole module inside their base that produces Exotics per month. They are bottlenecked just like human factions by mission control and resources, albeit to a much lesser degree. They also have to actually build their ships.

At the beginning Hydra councilors can only be recruited at the wormhole base. They then have to load onto ships just like Human councilors. Once the ship arrives into a low Earth orbit they can then perform a mission and transfer the Hydra to the reported region. After that's done, they perform missions just like a human councilor with one important caveat: They can't fly on planes. Thus, they are only able to move to adjacent areas.

Hydra councilors have special Enthrall missions to steal control points and give them to the Servants, but more importantly to this discussion they can perform abductions. There is a hidden Abductions stat in each REGION (important) that grants gradually increasing bonuses to all other alien missions as it rises. Abduction missions are in turn strengthened in direct relation to xenoflora level. This is all important because once a region has 15 in Abductions the Servants can build an alien facility. These facilities are a requirement for Alien (or Servant with requisite projects) councilors to use the mission that founds the Alien Administration.

pic unrelated but still patiently awaiting the mod

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>>2487712
The rule of thumb is thus:

1.) Aliens have to fly manually to Earth and land in a visible location. They can only move short distances from that location.
2.) Xenoflora is a bigger threat than it looks. Take care of it where you can
3.) In order to found the Administration, aliens need to abduct, make sure to keep investigating Servant points to find them and stop them.
4.) If you are able to stop Hydra councilors from landing, Servants can only found the Alien Administration with a specific project, and then only in regions that already have Abductions of 15.

There are various techs and projects which modify these limitations, but they are myriad and unnecessary since the real problem is that the game does not illustrate any of the most core mechanics in a clear way. There are actually more mechanics which are not well explained --did you know that you have a better chance of detecting enemies using the Surveillance mission if they're adjacent to you and in the same nation versus adjacent and in a foreign nation? You do now-- but it would honestly take an entire thread to dissect them.

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>>2487694
One of my first games I played the Assault Carrier landed and I wasn't able to get to it before the xeno armies were up and running. Since the game was totally fucked I decided to give myself like a billion dollars and pump all my councilors to 25 in all stats, and I actually thought the fact that aliens kept popping up was some kind of cheeky anti-cheat lol. What a fucking bullshit mechanic, when they make it clear Hydra are very few in the system. It would be annoying but reasonable if there were 5 or 10 in there, but INFINITE???

>>2487656
A single point defense array will stop retards from casually blowing up shit.

Is there anyway to restore diplomatic relations with a faction I'm at war with and which refuse negociations attempts? The protectorate has fleets around Mars and blow up any attempt to set up a shipyard there, and making a ship that can go from earth to mars is simply too expensive atm, so I need them to chill just long enough that I can amass a force that will kill them there.

>>2479539
No but it's the only game that does what it does in existence so you'll play it, same for pretty much every GSG out there

>>2487656
>he doesn't know about the exofighter menace

>>2487715
I always thought it would be better and cooler if the landed assault carrier created a building like the facilities. If that assault carrier facility is up and running then yes they can recruit councilors on earth all they want. But if you blow up the assault carrier facility then they lose that recruiting on earth ability, you get a bunch of exotics and a xenotech boost. Then baiting aliens to land on earth becomes a viable strategy that is still worse than just winning in space. At least with a system like that it's not just, "lmao you idiot you stupid fucking retard you made the mistake hahaha fuck you".

>>2487854
Find one of their councilors, turn them, send all of your councilors to talk to the turned councilor every turn and offer $1. This might improve relations eventually to the point that peace is available. If it does work it still might take like 20 trades. If they are sufficiently mad at you though then they'll simply never forgive you.

>>2487901
I mean you do have to be a stupid retard to let an alien army lands on Earth

>>2487903
>send all of your councilors to talk to the turned councilor
I can't do that because every time I offer contact them refuse them, even if I send it to a turned councilor

Is there merit to the idea of not taking the executive point for USA (or China), to save up on command points and pivot quicker to China (or USA) so I can break into it before the AI starts doing the same?

>>2487512
I can't get you that retarded so come to TI thread and ask about MnB or you that retarded so come to TI thread and tries to be smartass.

>The initiative is "in conflict" with me
>Request a truce
>They accept
>They proceed to immediately send a fleet to blow up one of my station
What the fuck

Hey guys explain me federation and conquest in details.
If i pick USA. Can i just declare war to every1 and add them to federation after conquest?

>>2488038
I haven't done much experimenting with truces, but the one time I did it seemed like you have to bribe them every single turn to keep the truce active.
Or it has just been bugged and never ever fixed.

>>2488072
To make it go smoothly you need control over target nations too so you can set up rivals and pull them out of alliances.

What miltech should I be aiming for in order to repel the first assault carrier fleet, about 10 years after the start (1.2k) ?

>>2488658
If you have to use your armies then you have already lost. Read the thread, you knock out the carrier in space, using suicide attacks if you have to.

>>2488695
That's my question, which weapons are best to rush in order to shoot it down?

>>2488793
This. If missile-spam monitors don't work anymore, then what does work?

>>2488793
>>2488803
Missile spam does work.

>>2487998
I'm not sure I understand. Are you trying to ask whether it's beneficial to not take the executive point for USA so you can save it to try and go more for China? No, there's no reason to do that, and you're not going to be able to go for both until like the very end game so it's generally one or the other.

>>2488793
>>2488803
Missile monitors work just fine, you just need to increase numbers more and/or add Targeting Computers to resist Alien ECM. Generally you want around 5 or 6 Monitors loaded down with preferably something around Artemis level. Even without them you still have a good chance of taking them out

>>2488853
Either I'm prioritizing control point tech & councilor admin/persuasion too much, or you're wrong. Canada->USA->China can work fine, eventually by abandoning Canada (or rushing for unify it into the US).

>>2488869
Explain the USA->China part of this, I'm failing to understand.

>>2488875
Take USA, then go for China when you will have enough cp.
You even can keep it cracked if AI not so much agressive for claim.

>>2488875
>Explain the USA->China part of this, I'm failing to understand.
Once I control the US, I set on taking the shitholes surrounding China, then have a high-persuasion councilor work on increasing support there, as soon as I can get ~25% chances of success by investing up to 50% of my monthly cash income.
Once my support has increased enough and I can get ~25% on a control nation mission by investing as much influence as I can, I attempt it.
Once I get a single point in China, I immediately abandon the other asian countries, and, if I haven't unlocked the +40 CP tech, on Canada (or I try to rush then north american union).
The limit of this plan is that I'm as much as I can over the CP cap, which strongly limit how much influenceI can get, but I haven't felt really limited by it.
The benefit, of course, is to have both biggest nations, to deny China to the aliens, and when the administration forms, to have 11 armies able to invade India or Russia

>>2488816
On the full fleet escorting the assault carrier? With their infinite laser PD?

>>2487888
No, no, I do. I do now. This fucking dev I swear to god

>>2489739
Based on the strength you mentioned (1.2k) you might be fucked. You’d need like 2 dozen Monitors. But if you can get that many or even a few more you’d just want to alpha strike at the Assault Carrier all at once, and hopefully that would be enough to take it out. Otherwise you’re fucked and will have to put up with neverending alien councilors fucking up your shit for the rest of the game.

>>2479539
Why the fuck are 90% of ship components in the game fucking useless have the devs even played their own game?

IR lasers - Trash
Green lasers -Trash
Railguns - Trash
Literally every drive besides Helicon until fusion - Trash
Radiators other than nano - Trash

>>2481002
I'd really like to see what kind of fleet you're running to use anything but missiles. If you have access to resupply they dominate at least coils, rails, green arcs, etc.

>>2487006
What's wrong with missile monitors?

>>2487343
All weapons besides missiles suck so what's the intended way to deal with ayy scouts?

>>2487689
>>2487694
So the lore bit about there only being 500 hydra in the solar system was a scam?

>>2490278
Well realistically you aren't killing all 500 hydra during a campaign.

>>2490293
If you assume every alien ship/army/station has at least one hydra with many having more that becomes rather possible.

>>2487512
hooded hoax guy made the viking conquest balance mod, thats the connection here

>Alien hate in the red
>For some reason they refuse to do anything about it except blow a few t1 habs that do nothing to appease them
I guess i'll live in fear that it passively tick into total war, then

>>2490278
I really wish the game went harder into that. But no. The hydra are infinite. I wish manpower mattered for you too. Like oh ok you sent a tiny solo ship to jupiter to set up a station and now you have infinite people there? What do you mean I can build 20,000 people worth of facilities in 3 months around Saturn from nothing? We should all have to ship man/hydrapower around.

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>HURR DURR Just throw missile monitors at the assault carrier

>>2490277
Still missile monitors, you just have to build more and/or use targeting computers. The ECM and missile defenses mean you have to bring more.

>>2490260
>hurr durr all of components, modules and researchs is useful and extreme important

>>2490436
You have magical teleportation over system, chill.

>>2490471
They have a TITAN? Is this the same guy whose Assault Carrier came like 10 years later? Is the AI that fucking fast now? Lmao

>>2490501
NTA but he is right that a lot of unlocks are near to useless. I actually am generally pretty pleased unlocking things in this game because there’s generally always some small little do-dad and I get off on creating ship classes and updated Mk2’s and 3’s and such. But it’s definitely the case that a lot of shit has either always been useless or was rendered effectively useless. Like their decisions regarding batteries. Good idea to help with ship customization, but now they are mostly a waste of resources in almost all situations.

>>2490517
Yes, i missed with quoting.

>>2490505
12 years in, this time. I think I slowed it down by killing a few alien councilors and surveillance fleets?

>>2479539
Also now that I think of it why the fuck does this game assign stupidly high efficiency to all components trivializing radiators?

>>2490525
That is crazy, who the fuck is able to spend the time learning to get good enough to survive against that? I’m honestly surprised you had a good enough economy to even damage them, these devs are out of their minds

>>2490585
Well i'm not getting good enough i'm restarting again and again.
I think next time i give up on a campaign i'll give myself the USA at start, fuck the early game RNGfest

I think the biggest problem with all these stupid useless drives is that it’s only really interesting to people obsessed with them in real life. They really, really should have gone the route of letting players “construct” their own drives. Make it an interesting minigame where we unlock types and parts we can mix and match to create different thrust profiles, open/closed cooling, etc. It can still be the case it’s all BASED on reality, and functions like it, but players should have more interactivity since this is the whole reason we played 20 hours just to get to space. It’s frustrating, this game has some extremely unique bones.

>>2490590
I’ve played a solid 1,000 hours total since it released and I only now play on Casual with modified rules. I do not think TI’s fun at all if you’re being seriously challenged, losses are simply too unforgiving with recoveries often measured in the dozens of hours. Like even after this you could still come back, it would just be a massive pain in the ass and probably take 150 hours of clicking.

>>2490471
Brother you're supposed to outnumber them 5 to 1. Not BE outnumbered.

>>2479539
oh hey, i tried to talk about this in /vg/, when did we get a /vst/ board?

so, is it good?

>>2490880
In its current state? Hell no. After someone makes a balance and realism overhaul mod? Very much so.

>>2490880
It is semi-good, even as base for VC - Tayta jump through endless hoops to make it work.
As standalone game? Good for 2 times: first one is your lose since lack of meta knowledge, and second one is abandoned run since no joy in pursuiting aays over a system.

>>2490880
As
>>2490889
Says you'll get a couple games out of it, but then the wasted potential and bad design decisions will eat at you.

The game is just tedious with tons of clicking and mircomanagement and battles get old fast

This and Endless Legend II on sale for 30 dollars
Good idea...?

Brand new level of fuckery by this game
>Alien hate in the red
>Alien fleet heads for a lab ring hab while my home defense fleet is still repairing
>Oh well, at least it'll bring that meter back down
>Aliens kill the single missile monitor guarding it
>Protectorate fleet now heads for the hab because it's undefended
>Protectorate fleet kills the hab
>Fuck my hate meter

>>2491545
The aliens would have had priority to destroy the station since they were already there.
They might've calmed down just enough from the monitor to no longer want to kill the ring.
You'll have to degrade hate slowly by building dummy stations.
Next time, consider evicting the Protectorate from orbit before you end up at war with them.

>>2491700
>only way to play is dominate that much so others can't do anything
Well on this point i hesitate are we really need 7 factions.

>>2491709
You could easily merge Humanity First and Resistance since Resistance is just a less interesting version of HF. You could also merge Protectorate and Servants since once again, Protectorate is just a less interesting version of Servants.

>>2491709
A lot of the time I turn down the number of factions at the game's start.I don't like the clusterfuck of 7 of them running around.

>>2491781
>>2491761
I think just massively nerfing hate mechanics would result in them being less self destructive and make diplomacy actually worth it. I actually want to try a mod where purge and crackdown generate 0 hate and envy is disabled.

>>2491761
What we actually need are different mechanics for each faction, and not just slightly different objectives.
Like Humanity First could be banned from a certain level of democracy due to their extremism, forcing you to play like a political extremist that works with terrorists.

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So, the combat power number don't mean much, but how little does it means?
Like picrel, it's 1/15th of the value of a missile monitor, but is it even actually worse? And would it really takes 60 of them against a 900-strong alien fleet?
Also, what is better between coil cannons and siege coils? At a glance the coin cannon shoot more shots so better saturation of PDs, but a search indicates that maybe the siege one is actually harder to destroy for PD?

>>2491988
Combat power is the aliens'(and the devs') best estimate as the the efficacy of the ship, boiling down every parameters into a single number. The aliens use it for determining how much force they send to destroy your fleets, and for deciding whether they should flee a fight you instigate. So until your ships can chase down the enemies it will still matter, and while going over the hate cap, it also matters.

>>2491988
Combat power is a meaningless number for determining actual combat power. The point of combat power is to make yourself have a smaller number than the aliens. That isn't hard. Make a fleet bristling with missiles and armor and point defense but give the ships shitty drives and watch as the aliens march a suicide train into them. Works especially well at places like Saturn or Jupiter since the aliens really want to kill fleets there so the magnet is much stronger.

>>2492282
>Make a fleet bristling with missiles
Missiles have crazy high combat rating dude. Especially once you get to the point where the ayy fleets are full to the brim of PD and they simply never hit anything

>>2492369
The devs thought they nerfed missiles by making them have high combat power, but now the aliens leave my Mars dyson alone until they build a mother ship because they are two scared of the single krait escort I built.

>>2492369
Missiles don't have a high combat rating for their effectiveness. Drives have too high of a combat rating but if the alien is going to engage you then having interplanetary drives is meaningless. You can also cheese the aliens even harder by putting shitty missiles on some ships, let the aliens target it and then switch the missiles out for better ones before the aliens arrive. Missiles never fall off. If you aren't hitting anything with them then you don't have enough. Watch Perun playing on brutal if you don't believe me. He wipes everything from start to finish with missiles and wants to do his next run with no missiles for greater challenge because they're so strong.

It doesn't help that game balance changes basically every patch, and most guides are months to years out of date.

>>2492520
The alternative to looking for an optimal up-to-date guide is to take a physics and calculus course to make the spreadsheet yourself.
Bringing 10 MC of missile monitors to take down one ship is the exact kind of recommendation I would expect from a defense contractor who is getting paid a commission.

>>2492438
>Missiles never fall off
They fall off when I lose so many of them I can't rebuild by the time the next aliens come.

Is using ECM against the aliens any good early on?

>>2492964
Considering there is a tech dedicated to making them work against aliens, I guess not.

I unlocked the poseidon lantern/torch fairly early, and for the last 10 years it's been my best drive. In fact it's pretty much the only one I can use for long distances that won't make the trip last forever or expend a shitload of resources. Even most of the late game drives I'm unlocking now have worse delta-V, and those that don't have absolute dogshit acceleration.
And yet, every discussions I've stumbled on which drive is the best, they're never mentionned, despite, in my experience, being there for 90% of the pre-total war game. What gives?

>>2493123
Poseidon is very mass efficient, but it uses a high proportion of fissiles, so many players can't support their usage with their early space economies.

>>2479801
>It's not 6 factions vs the aliens with some infighting it's 6 factions vs you.
Makes me wonder if a solo player vs. alien accelerated campaign is the way to go.

>>2493514
I frequently run resistance/HF vs servants+ayys only campaigns. Though it does fuck up the balance a bit since you have a ton of resource sites.

>>2493527
I suppose you could turn down mining efficiency or play on a smaller solar system. Although, I was more concerned about lacking research without other factions to contribute.

>>2493514
The early game is completely designed around the existence of other factions. They serve no other purpose than to act as an early game opponent while the aliens are off masturbating in the outer solar system.
To use X-COM terms, removing other factions would be like removing Sectoids in an attempt to skip to Mutons and Ethereals right away.

The crabs in the bucket will learn to love the taste of butter.

>>2479539
No

>>2479539
tried watching a letsplay (again) and just couldn't get into it (again)

>>2493223
I don't get where this "can't afford fissiles" meme comes from. Usually you can easily grab at least two +10 monster fissile asteroids and you're good to go.

>>2492530
Horrible advice. The game has a bunch of hidden fuck you modifiers like Mercury costing tons of extra metal you can't reason about using physics.

>>2494440
The cost of shielding Mercury only significantly matters if you were planning to build up a significant amount of large stations there, which suggests to me that you are reading an outdated guide about Dyson sphere research.
A normal new player would just put some mines there and wouldn't even notice the benefit of the sun scaling.

>>2494451
Man some peoples don't need a guide to understand that there shittons of solar energy near Mercury, and with magic teleportation this energy can power whole system.
What peoples doesn't know, is as anon said above devs just put additional cost for station here for no fun allowed reason.

>>2494463
the technical um ackchyually reason is the need for increased radiation shielding that close to the sun, which does kind of make some sense. We all know it was because the autist dev didn't like players doing it.

>>2494501
>which does kind of make some sense
It doesn't.
You no need to shield solar panels from radiation.

>>2494513
entire station is not just solar panels, and what about the electronics?

>>2494451
I mean that's what kneecapped my run where I wasn't reading a guide and I thought I can just spam amazing value mines there since the whole mine complex can be powered with just a single solar panel and some orbital mirrors.....
>>2494501
>>2494526
The game explicitly says habs are built underground into craters to shield from radiation.

>>2494576
>The game explicitly says habs are built underground into craters to shield from radiation.
Little things like that are what get me. The game explicitly says that the Hydra can barely get people through the wormhole every month so they have to build in system. Oh but an assault carrier landed once? They have unlimited Hydra now. The game explicitly says that the habs are built underground for safety. Oh but fuck you that was too strong you have to spend a shitload of metal now for shielding. The game explicitly says that army values are double strength every +1. Yea no fuck you that's not how it works. How it actually works is that it's just absolute value. Two 3.0 armies will 50-50 with one 6.0 army in a straight up fight.

I changed my mine on the alien administration: I now love the alien administration
Nothing better than annexing large swathes of land for free in the late game, without waiting an entire year to unify with every tiny ass nations, without having the human factions lob nukes any time you put more than one army on the same tile.

I thought I understoof unification but I guess not.
I have a big ass united arab league. I release the Caliphate, then federate them with the UAL The Caliphate is the federation leader, has a claim on the UAL capital, has higher democracy score, the diplomatic cooldown expired...and the UAL can unify (and thus absorb) the Caliphate, but not the other way around. What gives?

>>2494526
Why you even need electronic? You need just panels and cables, prob even no batteries since magical teleport.

>>2494808
Prob demo rating, bring us pick.

>>2494891
UAL is 9.4, Caliphate is 9.5. The federation is named after the UAL, but the caliphate is the federation leader.

>Autoresolve battle
>lose
>Play it, don't control anything, just set my fleet in a block at low speed
>Win with barely any damage
This game is the anti-total war: better to play manually the battle like an inedpt moron that to rely on the AI.

>Savescum a 44% roll
>It fails 10 times in a row

>>2479539
I don't know. Frankly it's just not for me. I really love the idea of playing as a secret cabal and vying for influence over earth but I have zero interest in ayys or the space stuff so when I realized it's the bulk of the game I stopped playing. I just want the cloak and dagger stuff + starting proxy wars sometimes.

>>2487888
>>2490025
Just like this anon, I learned too late...

>>2487689
My biggest gripe are things like these. Things that you should know about otherwise they'll give you so much additional work.

Could be a good game if they didn't cater to the turboautists like Perun who minmax the fun out of the game

Game really needs to drop the "shadowy org" and just make you play as a country. It would fix sooo much shit.

I fucking tired with this bullshit.
More than year passed and i didn't advance since retarded whack-a-mole.
More than year passed and i didn't get any fucking single org since no admin orgs rolled for market.
More than year passed and i didn't get any fucking single certain type org that i need for replace for missions.
I half mind to start with single faction and permakill it, and fuck global researchs.

>>2496632
The shadow org stuff could work fine were it not for the councilors.

>>2496886
They need to be taken off the board and the game needs to drop the pseudo turn based shit to make it flow better. Just make it pausable real time and have your councilors do things in the background over time.

>>2496886
>>2496935
No, just give me the fucking nations.
That removes many many problems that TI has and you have plenty of games to take inspiration from when it comes to mechanics of running the nation without need for all the weird TI shit.

So are you or are you not supposed to form the mega nations? I heard from an IP standpoint it was better to keep every nation small and well one enthrall mission or protectorate space cannon threat won't take a good part of your income.

>>2497157
>enthrall mission
Never got that on my big nations
>protectorate space cannon
Just keep the protectorate out of low earth orbit.
Mega nations are less efficient IP-wise but more CP-wise (which is the real bottleneck), and more importantly, they're safer from crackdowns and purges, and do you really want to play whack-a-mole with a hundred different tiny shitholes?

>>2479539
Holy shit do T2 and 3 mines scale poorly in this game. Tiny improvements in output in return for massive increases in upkeep.

>>2497150
You say that but as long as the councilors were still there with the turn based gameplay the game would still be a slog

>>2497157
You're supposed to keep them fragmented while you do MC and funding, then unite them to make them easier to handle.

>>2497461
At what point in game do you actually need to optimize for MC?
In the very early game, If you got China or US, you can set up your moon/mars bases.
Then the additional countries you'll snap from the AI will have their MC built up for you and will support your 15 mining bases.
Then all the MC you actually want is enough to spam low orbit earth stations, again you'll get it simply by expanding into the AI.
You only need a tiny fleet to keep the AI from staying around mars & earth
Then you just coast it till late game when you actually got to say "fuck you" to the aliens and by then you have 600 MC even with giant countries that you spent most of the game fixing.

>>2490595
IDK if devs should be expected to balance around players getting overly creative with custom drives.
I would be fine if it would be possible to equip more than six engines and/or ability to strap chemical boosters to my ships.
So many low thrust drives that can't get even small ships out of any gravity well and struggle to deliver payload in reasonable time windows within main asteroid belt would benefit greatly from two or more dumb chemical rockets, tech that you rarely use to move anything.

>>2497453
Yes that why you do nations and remove conucil bullshit.
You literally have entire games like that - HOI series, Superpower, Supreme Ruler.
Just rip one of them off ( like indie fags do all the time with space 4x and Master of Orion 2 ), add furture tech, space warfare, additional map layer aka the Sol system et voila.

>>2497668
>At what point in game do you actually need to optimize for MC?
Very early. Basically before unifications.
>In the very early game, If you got China or US, you can set up your moon/mars bases
>Then the additional countries you'll snap from the AI will have their MC built up for you and will support your 15 mining bases.
Bro peoples who care about optimization isn't aim for 15 mining shafts. They care about fight ayys in 5 years after start.

I still have no idea what drives are actually good at different stages of the game.