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

[Dvd22]

From the patchnotes:

- AI: Aliens will schedule a retaliatory mission against a hab for an assassinated councilor if they aren't already at war with you and know you did it (less than critical success)

Its consistent with my experience and many others. But it may as well be bugged and only supposed to happen once for the first scripted attack? In my last game always happened.

 

[thesecret1]

From the patchnotes:

- AI: Aliens will schedule a retaliatory mission against a hab for an assassinated councilor if they aren't already at war with you and know you did it (less than critical success)

Its consistent with my experience and many others. But it may as well be bugged and only supposed to happen once for the first scripted attack? In my last game always happened.

Must be very recent change. I played on experimental around a week prior to the big update. Guess they snuck that in last minute

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

again under the threshold

since when it can be lowered?

 

[Dvd22]

I think since the beginning, hate is variable. Every action against the aliens (or the servants but in that case much less) generate hate against your faction, destroying your toys lowers it. Usually even when they are wrecking your things once the hate gets lower than 50 their fleets stop, pack their things and return to their stations.

There is also a hate floor, your MC usage makes the aliens angry, above X MC depending on difficulty and modified by some techs its impossible to avoid war because your hate floor gets above 50. And also they may have introduced a steady hate mechanic in higher difficulties, the aliens hate more and more some factions (Resistance, Humanity First) with time so total war is truly inevitable.

 

[Hellraiser]

I think since the beginning, hate is variable.

I think he meant that you can't really lower it directly as a player somehow through ops or whatever, you can only let ayys wreck your shit until their hate xenoboners go flaccid.

 

[Riel]

One of those retaliatory strikes targeted my main Earth fleet... My first instinct was to let them have it without fighting back, but in the end I fought back and destroyed them... and it didn't seem to produce any extra hate, the hate meter isn't the most precise measuring tool so while I have to test it more maybe those attacks don't cause hate when successfully defended?

 

[thesecret1]

I think since the beginning, hate is variable.

I think he meant that you can't really lower it directly as a player somehow through ops or whatever, you can only let ayys wreck your shit until their hate xenoboners go flaccid.

It also decays over time, albeit slowly

 

[Dvd22]

One of those retaliatory strikes targeted my main Earth fleet... My first instinct was to let them have it without fighting back, but in the end I fought back and destroyed them... and it didn't seem to produce any extra hate, the hate meter isn't the most precise measuring tool so while I have to test it more maybe those attacks don't cause hate when successfully defended?

If you are defending yourself (the aliens initiate the attack) you get very reduced hate for the ships you destroy most of the time. Almost nothing.

Before it was possible to bait the aliens surveillance fleets (you attack then try to flee beting 0 dv and now if they pursue you are defending), as you are much weaker the aliens dont let you escape half of the time. But i tried it and now i get normal hate when i blow up the surveillance ships so i think they patched it.

 

[Alpharius]

Well as long as aliens don't learn to systematically destroy all the mining bases & orbitals on Mars and Mercury, even losing all the orbitals & fleets in Earth orbit is not that big of a deal imo. I guess Earth is prioritized higher. It takes about half a year to rebuild all the orbitals, unless you have t3 heavy fusion reactors, but by that time the defending fleet near Earth should be strong enough to win any fight.

I think it would have been much harder do win if say aliens started building colonies & orbitals on Mercury, Venus and Mars after declaring total war on player faction instead of spamming them near Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

 

[Dvd22]

Well as long as aliens don't learn to systematically destroy all the mining bases & orbitals on Mars and Mercury, even losing all the orbitals & fleets in Earth orbit is not that big of a deal imo. I guess Earth is prioritized higher. It takes about half a year to rebuild all the orbitals, unless you have t3 heavy fusion reactors, but by that time the defending fleet near Earth should be strong enough to win any fight.

I think it would have been much harder do win if say aliens started building colonies & orbitals on Mercury, Venus and Mars after declaring total war on player faction instead of spamming them near Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Well... They are certainly more clever now, in my experience they target Mars and Mercury often and the earth decoy station strategy dosent work anymore. I havent experience it personally but it seems they are also now capable of building stations on Earth orbit.

 

[Riel]

Yeah, they do build stations in the Earth-Luna system, I've had 3 of them, one was in Earth-Luna L1 Lagrange point and the other two on the Moon's orbit proper. They have Observation Modules which play a similar role to Surveillance ships, so you have to deal with them at some point. Also, those are usually heavily guarded with fleets.

I was told the precise mechanics behind surveillance and abductions a few days ago, so here you go if you don't mind spoilers:

Spoiler

Aliens accumulate bonus to their missions, this bonus is equal to: abductions * [diff.modifier]*[alien progress slider] in each region. Capped at 60 per region.
For multi region countries the bonus that is applied is the average of all regions in the country.
These abductions come from:

• Councillors, 1 abduction per mission (alien agents from the get go, later on Servants can do them too)
• Surveillance Ships, when they complete their 6 month long mission they have a chance to get an abduction on every region on Earth equal to region's population / 10M
• Surveillance station, every observation module gives a 1% chance per module tier (1,2,3) of getting an abduction every month on each region in the world.
• Alien Armies, these are crazy adding up to 1 abduction per DAY (They may fail to abduct), so expect anywhere they've been around to be at the cap.

In normal maximum modifier aliens can get is 60 (cap) * 0,15 (dif.mod) = 9. So it's not so bad and you can compensate it with anti pherocite techs.
But they also get bonus to missions from Alien flora and Servant Support and of course PER from the councillor.

At the moment you can make surveillance ships totally useless at 0 hate build up

Spoiler

just get in combat with them before they complete their mission, no need to win or destroy anything, just get in a fight and the mission timer is reset. But this is an exploit, ofc.

 

[Dvd22]

Not only that,

Spoiler

Their Armies and Xenofauna also get a miltech bonus from abductions.

 

[Mortmal]

Has the game changed lately? Last time I played, it was me vs everyone—every faction was fighting me instead of the aliens, and no one was managing space at all. Is the AI more competent with that now? Is the endgame still a slog, with endless easy fleets and bases to clean up?

 

[thesecret1]

Is the AI more competent with that now?

They're more competent in terms of research and economy, fight each other as much as you (though they'll dogpile you if you aggro all of them at once. The AI somewhat respects diplomatic relations and will leave you alone if you leave them alone, unless you have an important and badly protected country, in which case they'll try to snatch it), and you can't cripple them quite as easily anymore (it's generally easy to rebound from getting trashed in the Earth game). Space-wise, they're competent in gathering resources, even building some research habs and the like (albeit it usually takes them far longer than it should, IMO), but still absolutely hopeless when it comes to making ships or space warfare. You'll be fighting the aliens alone.

 

[Alpharius]

Has the game changed lately? Last time I played, it was me vs everyone—every faction was fighting me instead of the aliens, and no one was managing space at all. Is the AI more competent with that now? Is the endgame still a slog, with endless easy fleets and bases to clean up?

In my last game almost every faction had plenty of fleets and bases. They took most of the good asteroid mining spots cause i've had enough on Mars. Though their fleets were still pretty bad. They mostly fought aliens due to aliens attacking them because of hate meter i think, and even won occasionally. Still it helps in mid game when aliens attack other factions instead of player faction because AI factions like to use all their MC.

Late game pretty much the same as in the first early access version only some balance changes & new weapons and ship types & aliens became smarter.

 

[Dvd22]

More info: they definitely implemented scripted retaliations on alien assassination, the first time 1 base will be marked for death, the second time two bases and the third time three bases. It seems to stop scaling at three. Critical assassinations bypass this, as the aliens dont know who killed their agent. The bases marked for death will continue to receive attacks until destroyed, independant of the hate meter and difficulty.

I dont like this change. seems confusing and arbitrary, we already have a hate meter, assassinations accrue hate, and in fact the attacks provoked by hate feel much more organic and less gamey. No wonder the game has fallen into mixed on Steam; this mechanic and others aimed at increasing difficulty for the very experienced players are not new player friendly at all.

 

[Riel]

When playing this you should always remember the game doesn't attempt to be a Hollywood movie in which apes with planes beat the alien invaders with shields and plasma guns like in Independence Day movie.

A more powerful and technological advanced alien race would be able to spank humanity where and when it wanted, you need to simply accept that winning in the end will involve a lot of losing on the way. If you have trouble being spanked in the ass, this is probably not the game for you.

Then it's also a game you play against artificial bots, if you do well enough you can prevent them to develop and cripple them before they are powerful enough, Jupiter rushes are a way to do it. You simply deny the aliens Jupiter's moons and their economy never really gets big enough to be a real threat. But this is a real world technological limitation, not a design choice and devs work to make these strategies as hard as possible. Jupiter rush is a lot harder now, but apparently with luck and total dedication to it you can still make it work, it's just on a very tight schedule now, so much that not getting the right councillors and quick project unlocks of key devices makes you get to Jupiter too late. If aliens complete their bases before you get there, you fail.

Previously, I never bothered with auto mines, now I am spamming them left and right: low on Mission Control, 1,5x production, fast to build, cheap and above all expendable. I mix them with a few very upgraded regular bases/mines where I actually have space economy building and Space Yards, usually mostly in Mercury.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

When playing this you should always remember the game doesn't attempt to be a Hollywood movie in which apes with planes beat the alien invaders with shields and plasma guns like in Independence Day movie.

nice rationalization for "the game rarely provides a winnable scenario".

 

[Dvd22]

When playing this you should always remember the game doesn't attempt to be a Hollywood movie in which apes with planes beat the alien invaders with shields and plasma guns like in Independence Day movie.

A more powerful and technological advanced alien race would be able to spank humanity where and when it wanted, you need to simply accept that winning in the end will involve a lot of losing on the way. If you have trouble being spanked in the ass, this is probably not the game for you.

Then it's also a game you play against artificial bots, if you do well enough you can prevent them to develop and cripple them before they are powerful enough, Jupiter rushes are a way to do it. You simply deny the aliens Jupiter's moons and their economy never really gets big enough to be a real threat. But this is a real world technological limitation, not a design choice and devs work to make these strategies as hard as possible. Jupiter rush is a lot harder now, but apparently with luck and total dedication to it you can still make it work, it's just on a very tight schedule now, so much that not getting the right councillors and quick project unlocks of key devices makes you get to Jupiter too late. If aliens complete their bases before you get there, you fail.

Previously, I never bothered with auto mines, now I am spamming them left and right: low on Mission Control, 1,5x production, fast to build, cheap and above all expendable. I mix them with a few very upgraded regular bases/mines where I actually have space economy building and Space Yards, usually mostly in Mercury.

I am criticizing the strange design choices, i find the crude scripted attacks a downgrade compared to the dynamic alien AI and confusing for new players that will not know whats going on. If you know, in fact these changes create a strange situation that gives you an easy and regular source of exotics.

A videogame is ultimately a game, games have a ruleset, if you define a set of rules in your game and explain them to the players you should follow them and break them on counted exceptions. Also, i understand this is EA but i dont think poorly explained or intentionally hidden mechanics should be the base for difficulty in any game, very similarly to the concept of security by obscurity, it tends to fail. People learn.

I understand the devs want to limit the amount of time you can be "under the radar" but a game offering different playstyles its a virtue, not a defect, if people want to try and not anger the aliens too much and revolt at the end, let them. Many devs are falling these days into the trap of forcing the playerbase to adopt an intended playstyle.

This review also address the current dilema the devs seem to be facing regarding the difficulty and accessibility of the game, pretty common in EA tittles with a very dedicated fanbase: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198044982309/recommended/1176470/

 

[Jaedar]

When playing this you should always remember the game doesn't attempt to be a Hollywood movie in which apes with planes beat the alien invaders with shields and plasma guns like in Independence Day movie.

nice rationalization for "the game rarely provides a winnable scenario".

They must have changed it a lot then, used to be a couple liferafts with barely any propulsion and a dozen missiles each could take out small alien craft.

Put a couple of inches of steel plating and a point defence laser on them and they might even survive!

 

[Riel]

The original concept was that in the early game aliens are much more powerful than humanity and so they are overconfident, hence they tolerating a few primitive solar mines and so on, but if you though a combination of either appearing too strong MC and hostile actions you riled them up they spanked you until they were satisfied.

The problem with the implementation is that once it was understood by players it was way too predictable and it basically meant a limit to MC players could use before they decide to go to war with aliens.

Now if you shot down their surveyors, bases, councillors... they want revenge, this is independent from them actually declaring a war or total war against you, they just retaliate when you do nasty things against them. I think this is more realistic.

Btw, you haven't talked about another change that I find more meaningful than scripted retaliations, before, it was very easy to have some weak stations in the different orbits that would most of the time be the first ones attacked sinking meaningful amounts of alien hate, while critical assets with better defences were left unscathed. Now this doesn't work either. They will often go for you best mines and stations and you will suffer a proper set back. The situation is so dire, that it’s made T3 stations/mines not so desirable, due to the time and resources necessary to build them, until you can truly kick the aliens butt, at least when playing in home turf. It's very fair and realistic that they do this, but I agree it feels very nasty. That's why I was proposing auto-mines... you get something out of them very quickly and if you lose one, you can have another one in working order very fast.

On the good side of things having them attack your stations is a great opportunity to cull the alien's ship numbers before you move to war against them, since when defending against an attack you don't generate hate by destroying alien fleets. Sure they won't be satisfied, and they will try again, but they won't be at war with you restraining themselves to limited attacks. If you do this I would suggest you prefer quantity over quality, large amount of cheap (almost unarmoured) missile monitors in the hopes of having them blow far more expensive and critical alien ships before they themselves go down. The objective here is a favourable rate of attrition.

 

[Riel]

When playing this you should always remember the game doesn't attempt to be a Hollywood movie in which apes with planes beat the alien invaders with shields and plasma guns like in Independence Day movie.

nice rationalization for "the game rarely provides a winnable scenario".

They must have changed it a lot then, used to be a couple liferafts with barely any propulsion and a dozen missiles each could take out small alien craft.

Put a couple of inches of steel plating and a point defence laser on them and they might even survive!

Yeah, but the paradox here is that beating them in an offensive battle invites further retaliation. So, yeah, you can beat them, but its gonna cost you. Thus you have to ballance if what your taking down is worth what they will likelydestroy after you act against them.

Losing Tier 1 stations and mines doesn't matter much, T2 starts hurting and T3, between their costs and building times, are a whole lot of pain.

This doesn't apply when it is the aliens who decide to engage your ships, so if they hate you enough and appear weak you may atually goad them into attacking you and you will suffer no hate for wining.

 

[Jaedar]

When playing this you should always remember the game doesn't attempt to be a Hollywood movie in which apes with planes beat the alien invaders with shields and plasma guns like in Independence Day movie.

nice rationalization for "the game rarely provides a winnable scenario".

They must have changed it a lot then, used to be a couple liferafts with barely any propulsion and a dozen missiles each could take out small alien craft.

Put a couple of inches of steel plating and a point defence laser on them and they might even survive!

Yeah, but the paradox here is that beating them in an offensive battle invites further retaliation. So, yeah, you can beat them, but its gonna cost you. Thus you have to ballance if what your taking down is worth what they will likelydestroy after you act against them.

Losing Tier 1 stations and mines doesn't matter much, T2 starts hurting and T3, between their costs and building times, are a whole lot of pain.

This doesn't apply when it is the aliens who decide to engage your ships, so if they hate you enough and appear weak you may atually goad them into attacking you and you will suffer no hate for wining.

Iirc ships in the same orbit as stations automatically defend with the station when it's attacked. So you should be able to defend stations even with shitty ships. Can't stop aliens from orbital bombardment though, presumably.

 

[Dvd22]

Now if you shot down their surveyors, bases, councillors... they want revenge, this is independent from them actually declaring a war or total war against you, they just retaliate when you do nasty things against them. I think this is more realistic.

That was also the case before, every action against the aliens generates hate. If you blow up one of their stations for example they will smack you with no scripted retaliation, just pure hate. Before the scripted retaliations were implemented killing alien agents generated hate (and still do) anyway but there is a difference, the mechanic was transparent, gave feedback to the player and the aliens decide the targets: fleets, habs or stations. Everything is in the menu. The aliens feel alive, moving their fleets to attack you in a crusade. Destroying one station after another, everything in their path until satiated.

Also, hate dosent vent by itself anymore after a certain date. So a hate attack is inevitable now (Except for the fact that the scripted retaliations vent their own hate). Thats why i think the scripted retaliations make no sense, they are redundant.

And to clarify, i like the game, its very unique and original in its premise.

 

[thesecret1]

I think the main issue of the game overall is the same as with the research tree, namely that you kind of need to know how the game works when you start playing in order to win, rather than learning as you go. There's way too many things that, if ignored, will provide no detriment for dozens of hours, up until you suddenly need them, and their lack will lose you your playthrough. On one hand it is clever and provides an interesting setup for veteran players. On the other, rookies will inevitably bash their skulls against the wall after downing like 80 hours into it.