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

[Alpharius]

I think i started intercepting like 90% alien fleets near Earth when i've researched coilguns and the drives from deuterium-tritium fusion, the ones that use fusion tokamak. Later switched to the ones from z-pinch reactors, they are much better and don't require that much additional techs compared to basic fusion drives. Started shooting down like 99% alien ships with these + advanced coilguns + arc laser point defense.
Researched lots of techs after that but haven't switched from z-pinch drives yet since the next ones aren't that much better, waiting for torch drives now. No idea which is good so i'm researching the required techs for most of them.

The upside is no need to hunt alien councillors, and no army landings, though they didn't treaten me much when they did land, and thats it i guess. Maybe not worth it considering how much effort it takes to intercept the alien ships.
Also haven't lost an orbital since forever but that may be due to me putting 2x point defense on all the t2 and t3 ones. Or maybe the alien AI is bugged, the 3k fleet would have surely been able to destroy one.

Also researched antimatter, there is an antimatter spiker module for fission and fusion drives which gives +50% thrust.

Edit: Tried designing a destroyer with current technologies

Spoiler

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the 3k fleet would have surely been able to destroy one.

i've seen a very basic t1 layered defense destroy a mothership.

 

[Jaedar]

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: You will get drives that have even higher delta-v stocks than the aliens at the cost of just a couple propellant tanks, but it's end game tech. Actually, from what I've seen, any drives that are worth a shit among the end game techs. You get some that are somewhat serviceable (managing to make it to Mars, then refuel, then go back for example) about three quarters through the tech tree, but they'll be slow as shit in combat.

Yeah, I'm currently using triton... hope drive (tier 3 intertial fusion drive), and it's... ok. I could probably build ships with 100 deltaV if I wanted, but the resource cost in water is insane. And I didn't see the point before because its faster and cheaper to just build ships where you need them than to build them on earth and fly them places.

Edit: Tried designing a destroyer with current technologies

That's a really strong ship. That drive is insane, especially considering the armor count. I wish there was a way to tell which engines were decent before researching them. There's so many fusion types to choose from, and each has its own engine family...

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

this is centripetal bullshit.
turn 2033, somehow aliens haven't landed yet, but servants gave them... canada. do you know who owns usa? resistance. 6 tech 5.4 troops sitting right in front of their sworn enemy's capital, defended by two mighty tech 4.1 troops. spread out.
halfway through 2034. in the meantime usa declared war to half world (just to be couped/reconquered 5 seconds later), not giving an absolute flying fuck about the aliens conquering everywhere.

 

[thesecret1]

torch drives now

Technically the best speed and range, practically useless because they weight like a 100 000 tons or some ridiculous shit like that.

Or maybe the alien AI is bugged, the 3k fleet would have surely been able to destroy one.

Yeah, they formed fleets of 20+ ships in my game, and never went to destroy my stations (had them at t3 battlestations, three each, but they still could have blasted past that easily with their fleet)

 

[thesheeep]

this is centripetal bullshit.
turn 2033, somehow aliens haven't landed yet, but servants gave them... canada. do you know who owns usa? resistance. 6 tech 5.4 troops sitting right in front of their sworn enemy's capital, defended by two mighty tech 4.1 troops. spread out.
halfway through 2034. in the meantime usa declared war to half world (just to be couped/reconquered 5 seconds later), not giving an absolute flying fuck about the aliens conquering everywhere.

US mostly just busy with totally unecessary internal bullshit while ignoring the planet around them going to shit.
Sounds pretty realistic to me.

 

[Jaedar]

So it turns our 8x elite marines have 100% chance at killing alien bases, and even after 1 base I'm still at 98%. Can't kill stations like this unfortunately, but it's still pretty good, and protecting your marine convoys is *a* reason to get a fleet early (I'm assuming that damaging the aliens bases has a meaningful impact on their ability to build ships and conduct anti earth operations).

Also, what's up with naval strength? I have 4 nations at war with aliens, and somehow 3 of them are free and blockading aliens, but the fourth is blockaded, despite having more strength than one of the free nations. Is it related to how the war begins and the fact that most of the nations are at war 4x with AA?

 

[Raapys]

Naval strength seems to be calculated as one side's combined strength vs the other side's combined strength. However, it's possible to declare war against someone your allies are fighting without actually joining that specific war, effectively starting a new war. In that case, you don't get the advantage of combined naval strength. Maybe that somehow happened to you? In my case I specifically chose 'join ally's war' or some such.

 

[Jaedar]

Naval strength seems to be calculated as one side's combined strength vs the other side's combined strength. However, it's possible to declare war against someone your allies are fighting without actually joining that specific war, effectively starting a new war. In that case, you don't get the advantage of combined naval strength. Maybe that somehow happened to you? In my case I specifically chose 'join ally's war' or some such.

That does not seem to be an option for AA, but I did get the option (and declined it) to join as ally with the other nations. I declined it because if I ever decide to peace AA, I don't want to spend 50 actions for it.

But yeah, I guess that's it. Unfortunately the various army movement fuckery means resistence has lost japan and eu, so they're basically dead. It remains to be seen if I can take back eu, since there's so many places for the aliens to retreat when they get low on hp...

Edit: Turns out mk3 coilguns are also pretty decent at orbital bombardment: With 5 of them firing, a tech 4.8 army will beat a tech 8 army with 50% hp remaining. Collateral damage is a bit unclear, but seems minimal.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

jenuary 2036, usa finally stepped in canada. but only because FREAKING AUSTRALIA attacked the aliens, with their 1 troop and 0 navy, and dragged usa in with them.
february 2036, aliens melt.
[surprised kirk]

edit: 30 seconds later, "alien ship lands". come on, fuck off.

 

[Jaedar]

Decided to go Servants for completionism, Brutal to make it as hard as possible. My starting councillors are kinda eh.

Servants seem like kind of a free win tbh. Maybe it's different on brutal, but at least on normal the aliens are going to sweep everything clean by 2040 if the player doesn't stop them.

Meanwhile, in my save the AA has figured out how to use nukes, making reclaiming nations very problematic.

Still no idea how to deal with alien stations. I made a ship with 150 front armor and it tanked decently, so maybe that's the ticket together with plasma weapons, but clicking + that many times sucks.

Also, a question. How do I get the starting formation to place my unarmed transports BEHIND my actual combat vessels?

 

[Alpharius]

Decided to go Servants for completionism, Brutal to make it as hard as possible. My starting councillors are kinda eh.

Servants seem like kind of a free win tbh. Maybe it's different on brutal, but at least on normal the aliens are going to sweep everything clean by 2040 if the player doesn't stop them.

Meanwhile, in my save the AA has figured out how to use nukes, making reclaiming nations very problematic.

Still no idea how to deal with alien stations. I made a ship with 150 front armor and it tanked decently, so maybe that's the ticket together with plasma weapons, but clicking + that many times sucks.

Clicking with ctrl or shift adds 5.

Also tried my luck against the alien station, my 150 front armor destroyers with uv phasers slaughtered the defending fleet but were only able to scratch the paint on the station cause they were annihilated in laser range.

Now gonna try to tank with destroyers and shoot with a battleship with heavy plasma battery from 1000 km range.

 

[Jaedar]

Clicking with ctrl or shift adds 5.

Good to know.

Feels like there's something off with exotics balance. Raid an earthside facility and you get 3 tons. Take down an entire enemy base and you get 0.5 tons.

I'm inching ever closer to the endgame. At this point I have 650 admin cap, which means that for the first time I'm actually capped by what the enemies will let me do, rather than how much I can admin. I have to spend most my actions reducing unrest in the eu or it's going to go to hell, but hopefully I can escape that once I grow it a bit, and stop throwing new unifications and liberations at it. United africa still grows by one country every other month or so, at some point I'll have to figure out how to deal with the middle east and south america.

But with the daedalus drive, I now have INFINITY deltaV, I just have to figure out how much armor and weapons I need to take down threats like motherships and bases. Still can't manouver for shit though, maybe if I research antimatter spikers or something...

Big problem is going to be exotics pretty soon. I felt I was doing pretty well on stocking them up and not spending on frivolous things like armor, but I only have 50 tons and that's probably less than 10 good ships once you get down to it, since all good modules and weapons needs a bit of it.

Is the damage formula listed anywhere? I'm trying to figure out if plasma or uv phasers is correct for damage, and in the end I think it comes down to how DR is calculated...

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

my granpa was right, "if you want to wash the jackass' head, you waste water and soap" (whereas "washing someone else's head" also means to scold, or to teach, and an ass is an ass is an ass).
https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/yali07/cobalt_dust_radiator_and_other_mysterious/
i try to point out that radiating in space is done *today* but it's absolutely impractical and should be ditched as soon as we can shoot in space loads larger than a can of soda. also metal is space welds itself on contact and having metal dust in space means having a metal clump.
in return i get a barrage of "you know nothing jon space, radiators are well in use today, so a radiating system based on metal dust would work perfectly".
i can't even.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

finally invasion slowed down to a crawl*, i got all asia for myself, aliens got only a bunch of nukes and i'm on the verge of kicking servants out of usa, while even my ground bases start to consistently repel bombings while losing only one or two buildings.
then the game crashes. always on the same moment.

*: not thanks to me, or to anyone else. the aliens went quickly for the rich targets, inflicting themselves a lot of unrest, they got so big no agent could do anything anymore, then more troops landed, went on an invasion spree and the alien nation suicided by unrest. the troops aren't moved when this happens, they were still sitting in several capitals, quickly reconquered them, and the nation got to 10 unrest again as fast. then again. and again. until all the alien troops died to attrition.
nations should be inverse proportionally influenced by raise unrest. the bigger they are the easier it is to find unhappy people. but perhaps raise it less much, maybe -0.3, 0.25. something must be done, because once aliens reach that critical mass, they can be stopped only by artificial stupidity. giving suggestions to the game here is as much useful as giving to the circle-cocksucker reddit is.

 

[thesecret1]

then the game crashes. always on the same moment.

Check the crash log, there might be a way to bypass the issue

 

[Jaedar]

i try to point out that radiating in space is done *today* but it's absolutely impractical and should be ditched as soon as we can shoot in space loads larger than a can of soda. also metal is space welds itself on contact and having metal dust in space means having a metal clump.

I will admit that some of the radiator concepts in this game seem really strange. Like, tin droplet radiator. You funnel the heat into tin drops and then eject them. But... it's ejected now, so you're losing mass constantly? The game says you recover them afterwards but like... afterwards when? You're moving through space! And if you recover them you also recover the heat. And just having a cloud of droplets isn't helpful, as the droplets inside the cloud will radiate most of their heat to other droplets because they're surrounded....

Heat dissipation is a big problem in space as I understand it though.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

don't tell me.
technobabble in this game is jodorowski-level jarring insanity. that one engine which works by microwaving the fuel. facepalming over 9000. the problem is twofold, they wanted a thousand different parts, then went out of ideas and had to chase the impossibly idiotic in order to fill the quota. having fewer (of the 200% useless) items would also cut the retardation.
honestly, i'm no good at anything in life, and i could write better stuff.

 

[Alpharius]

Had another go at an alien station. Gatered a 4k fleet of 3 uv phaser destroyers to kill the enemy ships, two battleships with heavy plasma battery each and three lancers with spinal coilguns. Aaand only the battleships did anything at all. I thought the projectiles from spinal coilguns would be more difficult to intercept but no such luck. Alien defenses oneshot them. Tanking with destroyers didn't seem to make much of a difference.

Had a lot of trouble lining every ship up so that they would enter weapons range at the same time and have the same speed so as not to fly into laser range. This game could really use some formation commands during the battle.

Gonna bring like ten dreadnoughts with double heavy plasma batteries for the next attempt.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

considering how the toughest targets in this game are the bases, i'd try for an almost immobile, full front armored ship with nothing but a crapload of point defense and some lasers.
most of all, this game needs references. so i just built a ship with 2g acceleration. is that good? bad? at what distance 2g is enough to dodge projectiles? let alone, most men haven't the slightest idea what even g is.
the same ship has a delta-v of 15. this must be good because it's not red or yellow, then i'm going to mass build this ship only to find out 15 is barely enough to move to your backyard.
i'm going to skip this landing site on the moon with a fissile of 6, i'm sure i'll find better somewhere else. no dude, you're not.

 

[Jaedar]

the same ship has a delta-v of 15. this must be good because it's not red or yellow, then i'm going to mass build this ship only to find out 15 is barely enough to move to your backyard.

There is an "example transfer" button right there in the ship designer. The ui is not great, but it exists.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

that's the mistake: you wanted to go for the big targets yourself. no. let the aliens do that for you. they will, and they're unstoppable. look for a comfy place to sit and wait, like russia or japan, all you need is a couple platforms with +xeno research if you want to go faster.
let me go check what year my own game ended.
2034. and i went in blind and wasted a lot of time researching pointless space stuff.

 

[Alpharius]

Finally managed to take down a weak(?) alien station (it had like 4 point defense, 4 layered defense and 1 or 2 battlestations). Brought 3 of my anitship uv phaser destroyers, 2 obsolete single heavy plasma battery battleships, 5 double heavy plasma battery dreadnoughts and 6 gunships armed with a light phaser canon and 1000 front armor and 100 side armor . Intended to tank with the gunships but they spawned way back and i couldn't be arsed to micro all of the ships so they only managed to eat like half the enemy shots. Didn't control anything apart from rushing gunships to the front.

Ended up losing two gunships and one of the dreadnoughts and a destroyer got their reactors shot to hell. Also brought a ship with a repair bay but it doesn't seem to be able to repair anything, perhaps it can only repair itself.

 

[Jaedar]

6 gunships armed with a light phaser canon and 1000 front armor and 100 side armor

That's absurd. The game really needs to limit the maximum armor depth.

Intended to tank with the gunships but they spawned way back and i couldn't be arsed to micro all of the ships so they only managed to eat like half the enemy shots.

My kingdom for a way to actually control starting formation.

Do enemy stations add to the enemy fleet strength? I'm honestly considering just never attacking the stations and just wrecking all the alien fleets. Not a fan of just zerging them with dozens of ships. Meanwhile the ground bases are fairly trivial to take out with marines.