How to Stop a World Killer or Defend Colonies ???

[John Robinson]

Easy Difficulty, Small Map

Today was a 6 hour session (so far). This was unstructured play to get more experience with the tech tree and colony growth.
Once I found out the Wolf Cruiser had no ability to damage a Xeno planet what then?

What I observed:

1. As soon as you see the first planet killer ship the game is over. They always have heavy escorts.
Once you have seen one there are more coming right behind it.

2. The Chancellery cannot defend the population and the colony will be destroyed.

3. The ability to invade an alien planet is so far down the tech tree they will have plenty of time
to rapidly colonize and convert their economy to total war, over running my colonies with swarms of ships.
In other words they can hit me but I can't slow them down or weaken their colonies to suppress naval construction
and invasion forces. This means planet killers.

4. Their ships cannot be killed fast enough with strike fighters and wolf cruisers take along time to build.

5. By the time my economy starts to produce a large number of ships the "Insufficient Funds"
display message is just around the corner.

Questions:
1. Will Chancellery combined with PDF forces be enough to defend a colony from destruction?
In other words since I cannot hit their planets for a long period of time can I build an effective defense?

2. Should I ignore researching anything else until I can build a ship that can attack planets?
I've got to go down the tree to level 6 right?

3. It is just as important to control the Alien growth rate as I do my own colonies shooting down ships doesn't get
the job done, what is everyone else doing?

My plan for the next long session is to really closely scrutinize the tech tree and ask a ton of questions.
I'm really not *itching, I expect to be crushed repeatedly, so I need to be patient and just ride it out.

So jump in give these poor hopless colonists some sound advice, what works for you? Thanks

[nails]

actually, I can defend and kill a WK after some basic research to upgrade the strike fighters.
The key is to have about 6 total units and keep blocking the WK while you kill it.
When it comes to the other ships, if you have 3 barrage attack and 3 torp attack ships, you can fight off everything.
Added bonus when you can build a repair ship.

[d34thspawn]

The furthest I got in 1.05 was around 4AE and I had managed to hold off the hordes for a while but I was also running into the insufficient funds message. int 1.07 i'm around 3.50AE and they are just starting their huge push and i'm taking some hits, I lost a colony but i'm about to take it back, blasting myself to starship construction 6 so I can start crippling their colonies at least.

I have been successful using some very specialized fighters, pumping pretty much all the points into guns and a few in durability, then making sure to use a reactor that has 2 ap so you can attach twice per turn gives staggering results. Low hull points make repair a must as well as the support of a repair carrier at some point. but you build two or three of those fighters and they can take out a world killer in one or two turns.

I too would like to know how planetary defense works thought!

[Cory Trese]

1. The Xeno will attack in waves. My current game I have killed over 25 Xeno WK. When they start sending 2-3 of them at the same world, it can be come very difficult.

1a. Once the Xeno research the WK ship, they will use it during any war phase the AI goes into.

2. The Chancellery can defend 7 Levels of Upgrades. That's not very much, really.

3. It isn't that far down the tech tree, really. Both teams gain the skill around the same time (by my math) and you can certainly cripple the Xeno economy.

4. I am surprised to hear that. I have one Fighters with 20+ kills and a team of 5 Wolf Cruisers who have 15+ each.

5. You cannot just produce a "large number" of Ships. You have to spend your Maintenance Credits, and do so carefully. In 7.0AE, my current Ship Maint budget is 1500 Credits / Turn. I have to think about how to break that 1500 Credits up, but if I built 2000 Maint of Ships, it would be a disaster.

Questions

1. Yes, absolutely. To lock down a world, you have to build a lot of defenses, and they're expensive. This isn't something you want to do for every world. [*] You keep going back to this "long time" thing. What date do you expect to get PI and what date are you actually getting it?

2. No, absolutely not. Until you are comfortable with the build process, I would advise you to go down both the research trees equally. Focus on expanding your colonies in an even pattern. (Put down hives, build up 3 colonies, make 3 colony ships, build up 3 more, repeat.) You need to balance your research so you are putting down good Colonies and taking over some territory (like the Xeno.)

3. Stay away from the Xeno until you have beaten them back at least once. In fact, the less they see you, the better. You are only more likely to trigger aggression shooting them.

* * *

The thing with the tech tree ... you're learning the secrets of the Star Traders and the Templar. Your Empire may not be ready, nor may it need the secrets you have gained (yet.)

Yes, you could research a MUCH better Light Gun for a Fighter. But ... it costs $25 credits more, per Fighter, per Turn. Over 6 Fighters that is 10% of my Maint budget of 1500 Credits.

This game is complex, and you're playing an alpha without an adviser or most of the canned ship designs.

[John Robinson]

Thanks for pitching in everybody nails, d34thspawn, Cory Trese

Today was loosely played. I plan to make allot of notes on the next round, so I'll be ready to answer the follow up questions.
At my point of surrender I had 5 strike fighters, 1 wolf cruiser, 2 Templar defenders, 1 Explorer and in the last 5 turns
a Paladin Carrier. (Before the crippling final battle)

The enemy outnumberd my fleet roughly 5 to 1. 3 WK with large fleets. I managed to take one out 1 WK trading 2 templar defenders,
the explorer and 1 fighter, ships I could not afford to lose. Several ships were damaged or very low on fuel even though I kept them in green zones. What was really smart about the Xenos is after destroying one of my Colonies the remaining 2 WK fleets attacked separate colonies very far apart so I would have to choose which would be the next colony to lose because splitting my fleet would have cost both colonies.
*Note the WK I did manage to kill nearly all of it's escort ships remained intact.

Before I dig in again Cory Trese I need a little more help understanding what you meant about the aliens;

"3. Stay away from the Xeno until you have beaten them back at least once. In fact, the less they see you, the better. You are only more likely to trigger aggression shooting them."

What did you mean about beating them back, wouldn't I have to shoot them to do that? They also built a colony very close
to Cadar Prime so they must have been able to see me right? Doesn't that give them a rally point and refueling station
close to my colonies? I did win a battle early in the game where none of the 3 Xeno ships escaped is that equal to keeping hidden?
I really couldn't avoid them as they came out of the darkness straight at one of my colonies.

I printed out your great advice and will have it next to my Kindle on the next go round. I also printed out the
great method fallen described in the Exploding population thread for firing up the economy, fits very well with what you are saying.

Thanks again

[nails]

Cory means don't seek them out and attack first. Let them come to you and defend yourself.

what kind of attacks are you using?

[John Robinson]

May 15, 2014 5:11:08 GMT -5 nails said:

Cory means don't seek them out and attack first. Let them come to you and defend yourself.

what kind of attacks are you using?

This game it was all sit back and defend. There was an occasion where a couple of Xeno ships were coming towards
a colony and all I had to do was move my ships in their direction and they faded back into the black. That was
pretty early, I only had my original defenders and explorer. Was that a scout mission for them? Were my colonies
now discovered and the Xenos switching over for the invasion?

I think I read somewhere in a future release when we discover a star it will stay on the map, That is important to me
either way I hope to see it happen soon. Stars don't fade from view into an empty void civilizations do.

At any rate it's 7:35 am here and I'm starting another easy difficulty, small map game with more precise notes
for a new thread. 

[d34thspawn]

Is there somewhere to see a ship maintenance budget or am I blind?

[John Robinson]

May 15, 2014 17:20:16 GMT -5 d34thspawn said:

Is there somewhere to see a ship maintenance budget or am I blind?

I think I found it. Tap the two heads on the main screen to reach the Empire Summary. The last two lines on
the left hand side show all the ships and maintenance costs total.

For a specific faction. On the Empire Summary tap the "Factions" button top right hand side of screen.
Now you will see a scroll list of the three Syndicates, choose one by tapping on it.

On this screen you will see the number of ships and how much money the Syndicate, De Valtos etc is spending
to maintain them.

I don't know if it is possible to display ship maintenance cost for a single colony.

[contributor]

To go a little further with this thread. I've got a game that is in the more advanced stages. I'm actually pushing back the Xeno and looking forward to eradicating him. Here are two things I've noticed though.

1) I don't see a difference in planets that have defenses and planets that don't. When a WK attacked a planet that had and FDF garrison I think that maybe the first turn it didn't do anything. After that he was reducing population and quality by 1 (and maybe sometimes 2) every turn. How do FDF and Chancellery help you? "Defend X upgrade levels" is not entirely clear, especially since the Xeno always seems to attack population and quality. It's great that all of my buildings are still there but the population is gone and quality totally sucks now.

2) Are the Aliens using a realistic IA in this Alpha? In the previous version I invaded a planet on the turn after the Aliens landed a colony ship and it already had 20/20 pop and 7 upgrades already. They must have some nice colony ships. It seems like every Alien colony has this configuration though, which makes taking and holding ground extremely difficult. I need to get 1 or 2 invasion ships to hover over one of their planets for 10-15 turns. They need to get one WK to one of my planets for 1 turn to wipe it out because all of my planets on the frontier have 1 (maybe 2) population. Given that they colonize every last planet it makes defending very difficult because the "front line" effectively stretches all the way across the map and WKs can potentially come from everywhere.

[shapcano]

May 16, 2014 5:48:33 GMT -5 contributor said:

I invaded a planet on the turn after the Aliens landed a colony ship and it already had 20/20 pop and 7 upgrades already. They must have some nice colony ships. It seems like every Alien colony has this configuration though, which makes taking and holding ground extremely difficult. I need to get 1 or 2 invasion ships to hover over one of their planets for 10-15 turns.

Dam straight. When my biggest core worlds have 8 pop max, his colony worlds are at 20/20. I can't maintain a credible defense fleet AND 2-3 dropships AND escorts for said dropships, and that's with an empire where I made mines a huge priority for every world.

[Officer Genious]

That is nuts!

[Cory Trese]

1) There was a bug, you would have needed very large numbers of defenses.

I have added a X/Y value to the colony screen for Defense, so you can see how much you have vs. need.


2) No, some of the Terrox AI were cheating rampantly using a "Colony +20" module.

[Brutus Aurelius]

Those cheating Xeno bend the rules at every turn...

[Cory Trese]

May 16, 2014 15:08:45 GMT -5 Brutus Aurelius said:

Those cheating Xeno bend the rules at every turn...

Together, we will put them in a box.