KickStarter Terra Invicta - sci-fi grand strategy from Long War mod creators - now available on Early Access

[Mortmal]

I am at the stage of the game where I can repel anything the aliens send. They send not much and most often flee, wasting my scarce fuel supplies. But the systems they are implemented in have bases with 12K defense and 4+ huge fleets or more orbiting. It's impossible to bring enough to get that down, and producing that much will take ages. The Earth game is unsufferable now, with alien administration reappearing all the time on shitty countries, and having to play whack-a-mole again with the armies attaching to a navy. I see that the victory conditions for most factions are to eliminate most of their fleet. There's such a huge quantity now, and the idea of having to micromanage all of the encounters is dreadful. I am wondering if it's even finishable. Was I too late? Is the only way a perfect rush build order to Jupiter and Saturn to block them completely way earlier?

 

[Riel]

Aliens do not cheat with resources, so if you let them harvest resources for a long time they will spawn hundreds of ships, and yeah in that even finishing the game is a chore. You can destroy their bases earlier to avoid that. Generally speaking if you go past the mid 40s without having engaged the aliens seriously you are in for a huge war of attrition.

Alien stations you can fight against them and are not so scary as bases are, though they are not necessarily easy, it will depend on the size and composition of your fleet. But bases will melt down bombarding ships in my experience. I know they've been rebalanced but I tested it last game and it was a total failure with a regular combat fleet just the same.

To destroy bases nowadays there's basically three ways:

• Bombard with insanely armoured ships, I am talking about 500+ front armour, people who do it use dedicated bombard ships, but I have never done it so I can't say more.
• Use a leader with the "Destroy Space Asset" mission, but this means having a leader wasting lots of time travelling around, this doesn't require lengthy repairs of the Marine Modules.
• Use many space marines, alien bases have about 200 marine power (you can see it when you select them) just bring about 20 more than they have and you will succeed most of the time. Of course this forces you to repair after each assault but you can do it at an space base you can construct with another ship. This is my preferred method since you can make very cheap ESCORT/FRIGATES Assault ships.

If alien administration spawns in an isolated backwater country you can let it be for a time, just make sure you are at war with it so it doesn't have "freedom of the seas", in that case it doesn't do much other than conquer some other neighbouring backwater countries.... I find a lot more problematic when the aliens land many armies, these can be enough to cross oceans from the get go and maybe finish off China or the USA in a moment. This can make stopping it later very difficult, though Alien administration eventually has very serious problems with unrest.

Anyway the late game is one of the weak points of this game.

 

[Jaedar]

Use many space marines, alien bases have about 200 marine power (you can see it when you select them) just bring about 20 more than they have and you will succeed most of the time. Of course this forces you to repair after each assault but you can do it at an space base you can construct with another ship. This is my preferred method since you can make very cheap ESCORT/FRIGATES Assault ships.

I thought they changed it so you can't send in marines while there's working defences?
This was my goto strategy though, I brought like 8 marine modules in my base killer fleets and it worked every time.

• Bombard with insanely armoured ships, I am talking about 500+ front armour, people who do it use dedicated bombard ships, but I have never done it so I can't say more.

I think bombardment depends a lot on what weapons you use. Iirc everything except missiles/torps has bombardment power <10, good missiles have triple digit power.

I never managed to take out a station though.

 

[Riel]

Use many space marines, alien bases have about 200 marine power (you can see it when you select them) just bring about 20 more than they have and you will succeed most of the time. Of course this forces you to repair after each assault but you can do it at an space base you can construct with another ship. This is my preferred method since you can make very cheap ESCORT/FRIGATES Assault ships.

I thought they changed it so you can't send in marines while there's working defences?
This was my goto strategy though, I brought like 8 marine modules in my base killer fleets and it worked every time.

A month ago I cleansed several Alien bases with Elite Marines in my last run, I did destroy the Alien Space Base in regular space battle first though, but I don't know if that makes any difference.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

To destroy bases nowadays there's basically three ways:

don't single-use nuclear bombers work anymore?

 

[Riel]

To destroy bases nowadays there's basically three ways:

don't single-use nuclear bombers work anymore?

I have never tried that, lol. Does it? I always assumed PD from the base would preempt any attempt at using missiles/torpedoes against it and I never read about it being a thing.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

base bombing was much more abstract than space battles, even more barebone than instant resolve, that's why even a base made only of defenses often suffered heavy losses by the puniest fleets. so when nukes were involved the game just compared their enormous attack value to any defense, declared "this is just too high, no chance in hell defenses can win" and destroyed the whole base. just very very very rarely you'd lose your ship.
the only game i was going to win (but systemic crash stopped me from) i used to send pairs of small ships around, equipped only with nukes and engines. even if one was intercepted by a nearby space base the other would pass and bomb. no idea if this behaviour has been fixed.

 

[asfasdf]

Boost is useful for income in mid-late game with hospitals and similar. In current patch just spam marines to destroy bases, base bombardment/defense system overall is a pos. Single nukes don't work anymore on bombardment, bases have crude PD or something.

Regarding alien fleet, the ai really sucks in combat. Some 10 lancers with plasma and maybe a few anti missile support ships can wipe a 50 ships alien fleet if it has no mothership. With mothership you can just cheese, ie disable mothership then retreat and reengage. I had a single station with 3 battlestation wipe a 100 strong alien ship, just spam those heavy plasma.

Alien on earth can be a pain, so just make sure you murder every alien and transport ships before they land. Also you can blob with 6 or so unified countries and deny servants any country on earth

 

[Mortmal]

Aliens do not cheat with resources, so if you let them harvest resources for a long time they will spawn hundreds of ships, and yeah in that even finishing the game is a chore. You can destroy their bases earlier to avoid that. Generally speaking if you go past the mid 40s without having engaged the aliens seriously you are in for a huge war of attrition.

Alien stations you can fight against them and are not so scary as bases are, though they are not necessarily easy, it will depend on the size and composition of your fleet. But bases will melt down bombarding ships in my experience. I know they've been rebalanced but I tested it last game and it was a total failure with a regular combat fleet just the same.

To destroy bases nowadays there's basically three ways:

• Bombard with insanely armoured ships, I am talking about 500+ front armour, people who do it use dedicated bombard ships, but I have never done it so I can't say more.
• Use a leader with the "Destroy Space Asset" mission, but this means having a leader wasting lots of time travelling around, this doesn't require lengthy repairs of the Marine Modules.
• Use many space marines, alien bases have about 200 marine power (you can see it when you select them) just bring about 20 more than they have and you will succeed most of the time. Of course this forces you to repair after each assault but you can do it at an space base you can construct with another ship. This is my preferred method since you can make very cheap ESCORT/FRIGATES Assault ships.

If alien administration spawns in an isolated backwater country you can let it be for a time, just make sure you are at war with it so it doesn't have "freedom of the seas", in that case it doesn't do much other than conquer some other neighbouring backwater countries.... I find a lot more problematic when the aliens land many armies, these can be enough to cross oceans from the get go and maybe finish off China or the USA in a moment. This can make stopping it later very difficult, though Alien administration eventually has very serious problems with unrest.

Anyway the late game is one of the weak points of this game.

500 front armor on a ship to bombard it? That's insanity. I guess with a station just above and refitting the ship, it could work, but it's insanely expensive in materials. Then you tell me you can assault the hab with marines. I was about to do that before reading your post, building cheap, stripped-off corvettes with 2 marine units each, and then you tell me it requires 200 of them?! That's even more insane, given it requires 70 days to build one corvette.

 

[Mortmal]

base bombing was much more abstract than space battles, even more barebone than instant resolve, that's why even a base made only of defenses often suffered heavy losses by the puniest fleets. so when nukes were involved the game just compared their enormous attack value to any defense, declared "this is just too high, no chance in hell defenses can win" and destroyed the whole base. just very very very rarely you'd lose your ship.
the only game i was going to win (but systemic crash stopped me from) i used to send pairs of small ships around, equipped only with nukes and engines. even if one was intercepted by a nearby space base the other would pass and bomb. no idea if this behaviour has been fixed.

Going to try it as soon advanced missiles are researched, i dont see how else i could do it without autoo resolve and nukes.

 

[asfasdf]

each marine unit gives 20-30 attack, so just about 10 marines

 

[Mortmal]

base bombing was much more abstract than space battles, even more barebone than instant resolve, that's why even a base made only of defenses often suffered heavy losses by the puniest fleets. so when nukes were involved the game just compared their enormous attack value to any defense, declared "this is just too high, no chance in hell defenses can win" and destroyed the whole base. just very very very rarely you'd lose your ship.
the only game i was going to win (but systemic crash stopped me from) i used to send pairs of small ships around, equipped only with nukes and engines. even if one was intercepted by a nearby space base the other would pass and bomb. no idea if this behaviour has been fixed.

Just tried it doesnt work anymore , in fact they are even the very first ships to die when bombarding.

 

[Jaedar]

base bombing was much more abstract than space battles, even more barebone than instant resolve, that's why even a base made only of defenses often suffered heavy losses by the puniest fleets. so when nukes were involved the game just compared their enormous attack value to any defense, declared "this is just too high, no chance in hell defenses can win" and destroyed the whole base. just very very very rarely you'd lose your ship.
the only game i was going to win (but systemic crash stopped me from) i used to send pairs of small ships around, equipped only with nukes and engines. even if one was intercepted by a nearby space base the other would pass and bomb. no idea if this behaviour has been fixed.

Just tried it doesnt work anymore , in fact they are even the very first ships to die when bombarding.

I think there used to be a "first strike" for the bombarders, which meant you could just stack high damage and instant win.

I think base/orbital attacks are one of the weak points of the simulation approach they otherwise took. Why can't I park my ships in high orbit, plot a firing solution, fire all missiles and then just wait 3 days for the base to turn into a smoking crater (assuming my missiles beat their pd)? I understand why you can't do this against fleets, they're too mobile, but ground bases are stationary (or rather, easily predictable where they will be in the future to very high precision), and while orbitals probably have some propulsion it's not going to be very fast. And considering the pace of the game, letting me accelerate some asteroids to a collision course a few years in the future would not be a bad option either.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Just tried it doesnt work anymore

so they nerfed to the ground the maybe only thing that actually made sense in their game. good job.

 

[Riel]

stripped-off corvettes with 2 marine units each, and then you tell me it requires 200 of them?! That's even more insane, given it requires 70 days to build one corvette.

As mentioned above I was talking about Marine Power, not number of Marine pods. Depending of the tech level of the marine pod they have something between 5 and 20 military power each... I don't really know the numbers now, but something like that. Anyway you can see the exact value in the ship design interface and your target number if you select the alien base you wish to destroy. Btw if you invade an alien base it is destroyed, you can't capture it for some reason...

 

[asfasdf]

Base bombardment should be simplified, as in no bombarding until you destroy orbital stations, then just make it trivial.

 

[Mortmal]

stripped-off corvettes with 2 marine units each, and then you tell me it requires 200 of them?! That's even more insane, given it requires 70 days to build one corvette.

As mentioned above I was talking about Marine Power, not number of Marine pods. Depending of the tech level of the marine pod they have something between 5 and 20 military power each... I don't really know the numbers now, but something like that. Anyway you can see the exact value in the ship design interface and your target number if you select the alien base you wish to destroy. Btw if you invade an alien base it is destroyed, you can't capture it for some reason...

So even in the best case, that's ten corvettes to build, 70 days each, 11 of them to be sure to outclass the base. But I am not in the best case, yet a measly 6 per marine unit. Then the other option, a 500 armor ship, is draining too many resources and that's a sitting duck that won't travel. Again, an unintuitive as heck game with false complexity. They are just hiding the trooper value of the base, and the same goes for the armor; you don't know how much they are worth. Everything takes so long to build it's hard to play by trial and error.

 

[Riel]

Yeah the game is a bit disappointing once you learn the tricks necessary to beat it. Hopefully they can polish it a bit more before they "release" it but it still is one of a kind so I am satisfied with the purchase and my time on it.

 

[Mortmal]

Yeah the game is a bit disappointing once you learn the tricks necessary to beat it. Hopefully they can polish it a bit more before they "release" it but it still is one of a kind so I am satisfied with the purchase and my time on it.

Yes, the game is great, which makes the shortcomings especially infuriating, as it's clearly a classic. There's nothing wrong with the core ideas around this game. I am at a late-game stage; I probably took too long to get there, and aliens built too many ships to clear. I know I've won, as I can win 10 vs. 100 encounters with no loss. Yet, there's so much cleaning it could take decades, as even with antimatter best drives, it takes half a year to move from aliens' little asteroid bases to the next ones. The game was unforgiving at every step: first, the country changing hands without notice; then later, I found out I should have kept a bigger material stockpile instead of trading them with other factions. Finally, very late game, it seems I need to build a lot of antimatter, and that's extremely resource-intensive. It turns out I should not have built so many habs but instead more mines. Late game requires some tweaking for sure. It will take ages, unless I had a rush strategy I could not possibly elaborate on when discovering the game.
The game was absolutely unforgiving at every steps, and I am still not sure about my ship designs. It seems I can be better off with smaller destroyers than big dreadnoughts; they are more cost-efficient. I could have used that way earlier in the game, the secret is to build on the spot some slow 200+ armor in front ship, at least with any weapons, really.