Losing Hope

[unseen4ce]

I like this game alot, I really enjoy it. But I cannot even beat it on the easiest setting (80 planets, easy AI), I have spent over 16 hours over a couple weeks. My progress has slowed to a crawl, the last planet I took required many hours, I learnt about taking reinforcement units first (such as the Spec. Guard and Com Stat.) but am now facing a planet that is rather powerful while trying to squash every offensive act by the enemy.

I simply cannot juggle defense and offence becauase as soon as my army is on one planet ready to attack, I have to move it in-order to deal with a distant uprising and by the time I move them all-back another attack is underway.

My AI is 371(II) but I regulary get attacked by lvl 3 ships. Is there a penalty for being slow-minded? (does progress/difficulty increase with time?)

I don't know what to do, this game has so much depth and I can't even get my toes wet, so-to-speak.

Any advice?

[x4000]

The biggest thing that is causing you grief right now is how you've chosen to expand your empire.  What you're doing is something that is certainly possible, but it makes you HAVE to juggle offense and defense in a way that is really much more advanced.  Terrain matters!  If you start in the middle of a galaxy like you did there, and then expand out in all directions, you're going to be constantly surrounded and embattled at all times.

The game is SO much easier if you can find a corner of the map to completely take over, and have only one of your "core" planets bordering an AI planet.  Then you can concentrate a few mobile ships there to defend, and mainly have tons of turrets and such there.  All the ingress points in your empire boil down to a single point, then, rather than the eleven points I count below.  I see that you've been gate-raiding, which is great, in terms of cross planet attacks and border aggression your flanks are really wide open all over the place which is the source of the constant trouble.

There's not really a good way to solve that on the map in question that I'm looking at, because your start position is dead center in the galaxy and there's just no way to blockade yourself.  Like I said, this isn't a definite loss position by any stretch, but it's going to be incredibly harder than an easier map.  One of the biggest early decisions you make is what starting planet you choose, and what kind of map structure you choose.  At the moment from what I can see, you've chosen one of the very hardest sort of maps you possibly could, while pairing that with the easier AI and so on.

Hope that helps!

[keith.lamothe]

I simply cannot juggle defense and offence becauase as soon as my army is on one planet ready to attack, I have to move it in-order to deal with a distant uprising and by the time I move them all-back another attack is underway.[/b]

Defending solely with turrets should be quite possible until AIP gets fairly high if the difficulty isn't high.  Say, 10 tractor turrets under a forcefield near the wormhole and a bit further back (in the direction of your command station) but still in-range have 20 basic turrets, 20 laser turrets, 20 mlrs turrets, 20 missile turrets.  Having 5-10 sniper turrets scattered around the edge of the planet isn't bad either.  More of each can be added, obviously, if there's a need.

Later on, like if you're getting mkII waves or mkIII roaming threat, etc, then you may need higher mark turrets and more concentration, but by then hopefully you've "spent" the AIP (i.e. chosen planets to take) such that you only have to defend 1-3 wormholes to hold the core of your territory.  If you get to mkII waves and still have like 10 wormholes defend then you could get into a situation where you have to defend with your mobile fleet, yeah.

My AI is 371(II) but I regulary get attacked by lvl 3 ships. Is there a penalty for being slow-minded? (does progress/difficulty increase with time?)

There is a setting that increases AIP with time, not sure if you have that on.  And as the AI continues to reinforce its planets over time it will eventually reach the limit of what can be on a planet and the excess can wind up coming to look for you, though iirc it's supposed to stuff those in barracks (which don't come looking for you) and then carriers (which do come looking for you, but you didn't mention any).  Alternatively, if you've shot at ships on an AI planet then some or all of them (depending on how many distinct guard positions you shot at and how big your force was) will release from their posts to come hunting you.  If you've got defenses they'll stop on the other side of the wormhole until they think they have enough free ships piled up there to take you, then bam.  And those could be mkIII, or even IV or V if you hit a planet of that level.

I don't know what to do, this game has so much depth and I can't even get my toes wet, so-to-speak.

Any advice?

Start a new game against two diff 5 (or even diff 4) "Vanilla" AI-type AIs, making sure AIP-over-time is not on, and pick a map that's reasonably easy to find chokepoints on.  The Concentric type is pretty good for that in my experience without being _too_ easy to chokepoint; the X type is great if you want something that's easier to chokepoint but isn't quite the totally linearness of Snake.


(naturally, Chris ninja'd me)

[unseen4ce]

Great, both of you have given me alot to think about and pretty much hit the nail right on the head in terms of juggling offence and defence. I will start a new game and save this one for later. Makes alot more sense now...

10 tractor turrets under a forcefield

I never thought of this, I didn't know tractors worked under a forcefield, awesome idea, though I never have enough force-fields; two for each command station, and now some for the tractors, .

[x4000]

Our pleasure!

And if you consolidate your borders better, you won't be so short on FFs, either -- just put the FFs on your home planet and on your few border planets.  If you're not bordered on 11 planets, suddenly you have a LOT of options with FFs.

[keith.lamothe]

10 tractor turrets under a forcefield

I never thought of this, I didn't know tractors worked under a forcefield

Yep!  Won't make them immortal particularly against bombers, but it can really keep a lot of ships tied up for a long time.  Unless they're immune to tractors, of course.

I also like to put grav turrets under the ff with the tractors; those cost knowledge but they can make it way easier to contain an attack.

though I never have enough force-fields; two for each command station, and now some for the tractors, .

Yea, FFs can be pretty scarce, though you can spend knowledge on more (you may want to look at unlocking mkI Hardened FFs at least, they're less knowledge than mkII standard FFs and unless you're up against something that is a nemesis to high-armor stuff it's just as good if not better thank mkI standard).  Also, 2 per command station may be excessive: having to rebuild a normal command station isn't really a huge problem.  I often have like 10-20 stacked on top of my home command station by mid/late game, though

One thing I like to do when colonizing a planet is to put the command station right next to the wormhole that leads "deeper" into my territory (that can be kind of vague if it has a bunch of wormholes, but typically it's the one you sent your colony ship through) and put an ff so that it covers both the station and the wormhole.  That way most AI ships can't get in deeper to cause trouble until they've actually taken out that planet, and fighting a rolling retreat is a lot easier.  Eventually I have to spend more K on more FF cap or start scrapping more "interior" FFs, though.

[x4000]

It's funny, I almost never even unlock any mark II FFs or any of the hardened ones.  I tend to do just fine with mark I forcefields mixed with lots of turrets of various sorts.  I try to always keep it to one border planet, though.

[unseen4ce]

I unlocked mark II force fields and still didn't have enough, I literally have 0 left to place due to my 'strategy' (even after I removed some of my doubles and forced my latest aquired planet to have a standing army rather than a FF or turrets due to my inefficient and ineffective strategy).

and put an ff so that it covers both the station and the wormhole.  That way most AI ships can't get in deeper to cause trouble until they've actually taken out that planet

You're on a roll, this is an awesome idea. I will definetly do this. Thanks again.

[keith.lamothe]

Another thing you may want to try is stationing Riot Control Starships (built on the second tab of the starship constructor) fitted out with laser cannons (or machine guns if you intend to station them closer to the action) to gut the engines of attacking ships.  The mkIs are unlocked for free, and there are more for more K if desired (though the caps are a little on the small side for the costs right now).  Particularly if you start your defenses at a "throwaway" planet to fall back from that can take a lot of enemy ships out of the real fight that will happen farther away at your real defensive line.  And when your defensive situation calms down you can bring the riots along on offensives and they tend to reduce total enemy DPS by stopping ships from actually getting in range of you.

There's also spider turrets, which are basically sniper turrets that do engine damage too.  Enough spider turrets have a pretty hilarious effect on anything trying to attack you.  But they can't be picked up and dragged along with the fleet.

[x4000]

Yeah, spider turrets are another big part of why I don't unlock more FFs.  Also, fortresses on a bottleneck world, and/or military command stations there, can have an enormous impact.  And strategically placed lines of minefields.

[unseen4ce]

The FF advice was spot-on. My defences, even early-on, are more efficient as I use far far less turrets using an FF with tractors. They split the forces so that only tractor immune forces get anywhere near the command station, and since the ai has to go around the FF it makes it very difficult for them to launch an effective attack. Now the tractors will hold without remains rebuilders constantly trying to maintain everything, and I no-longer need an absolute matrix of tractors on a single planet. I will try the raid starships very soon.

Is there any reason an MRS would not heal certain starships within range (sorry to go off topic, I will keep it brief by not elaborating beyond this post). For example I have cloaked a group of 4 anti-matter SS, 2 cloak SS and 1 MRS, when I get near the target I wait for the MRS to count-down before putting the anti-matter SS online to attack.

What happens each time is that the MRS will heal 2 of the anti-matter SS but not the other two. I tried moving them around, putting the MRS and anti-matterr SS on and off, moving the cloak SS away to see if they would heal uncloaked and moving the healed anti-matter SSs away, but nothing worked. Not too important as the anti-matter SS was less effective then a transporter with a cloak SS, but I was still wondering if it is a rule or something...

[x4000]

Is there any reason an MRS would not heal certain starships within range (sorry to go off topic, I will keep it brief by not elaborating beyond this post). For example I have cloaked a group of 4 anti-matter SS, 2 cloak SS and 1 MRS, when I get near the target I wait for the MRS to count-down before putting the anti-matter SS online to attack.

What happens each time is that the MRS will heal 2 of the anti-matter SS but not the other two. I tried moving them around, putting the MRS and anti-matterr SS on and off, moving the cloak SS away to see if they would heal uncloaked and moving the healed anti-matter SSs away, but nothing worked. Not too important as the anti-matter SS was less effective then a transporter with a cloak SS, but I was still wondering if it is a rule or something...

It's probably to do with the max repair cost per second setting in the CTRLS window, I'd guess.  You might want to up that a little.

[_K_]

The game is SO much easier if you can find a corner of the map to completely take over, and have only one of your "core" planets bordering an AI planet.

On that note, it would be really interesting to see a map layout with no corners. Like by making planets on the edges of the map connect with the planets on the opposite edge, wouldnt look very nice with the current system though.
Defending a sufficiently large territory against border agression would become seriously more challenging and interesting though, as youd need to set up light defences and even patrols everywhere.

The 3D global map is the feature i absolutely loved in that other 4X game, Sword of the Stars. Playing on the surface of a sphere, or a torus, where there are no corners, no sides, where the symmetry is absolute and all planets are equally vulnerable... oh god how much i loved that.

[keith.lamothe]

On that note, it would be really interesting to see a map layout with no corners. Like by making planets on the edges of the map connect with the planets on the opposite edge, wouldnt look very nice with the current system though.

It's not exactly what you're asking for here, but the Crosshatch map type makes it basically impossible to have an easily defensible "surface area" by mid-game.  I wonder if anyone plays it for a serious game, actually

[keith.lamothe]

I will try the raid starships very soon.

Just fyi, I meant Riot starships, not Raid starships.  Raids are great for certain uses, but I can't think of a way of making "defend" one of them   Well, they are good at chasing down enemy Raid's that get through, though I don't recall off hand if they can kill another Raid in any reasonable time.