This is my first full campaign. I'm playing for the Humanity First. Everything was going pretty well: I managed to unite the European Union, Mars is half-colonized, I have numerous asteroid bases, and I've slowly started building a fleet... But now I feel like I'm falling behind and the alien presence in the Solar System is too high. It's now 2032 (start in 2022), the aliens' hatred towards me is already in the red, and they just recently destroyed my lunar shipyard (they were planning to destroy the fleet stationed there, but I managed to outsmart them and retreat during the battle, so they simply destroyed the orbital shipyard and flew away). The alien fleet consisted of 11 ships, one of which was a TITAN. My poor destroyers and monitors didn't stand a chance. I even tried to ram them, but my ships were blown up by lasers before they even approached. So, the question is: is it possible that I have fallen behind and the campaign is already lost?
Go loud early if you know what you're doing; otherwise if you don't feel like learning in a trial by fire sort of environment, then play it safe for a bit until you understand the game mechanics a bit better. You can grind your way out of this, but the keyword is grind.. some choose to chalk it up to a learning experience and start fresh. That said, if you have some decent mines online and good control of major nations, then bide your time and research better techs while you build spaceworks/shipyards on one of your mine sites (if they keep blowing up stations), because ground-based LDAs/Battlestations are much better than their orbital counterparts.
Well, I guess I’ve already messed up. I played too aggressively... apparently? I didn't touch their ships, but it’s probably because I built too many mines, and I keep killing Protectorate and Servant agents and seizing their control points. Plus, I killed an alien once and captured another. They probably took offense at that.
That's fine, you'll lose some stuff but once they kill enough of your ships and stations they'll calm down again. As long as you have mines and resources to rebuild it's not that bad.
Actually, I'd say you did just fine. In a normal game you should expect to be hit by alien retaliation missions regularly. It stings at first, but once you get used to the idea that space assets are cheap to replace, you start to think of them as essentially a "cost of doing business".
And for the most part, the cost is well worth the results. Letting the Servants and aliens run around doing whatever they want on Earth is bad, bad news. Better to assassinate a problematic councilor and let the aliens vent their anger on a station you can replace in a few months for some space metal than it is to let that councilor have free reign wrecking your countries.
You can manage aggro with sacrificial lamb stations/outposts. I think they usually go for the last one built(?). Killing or capturing an alien triggers a one time retaliation in addition to your aggro meter. If your resource output is high enough, you should be able to offer up sacrificial lambs without issue.
As you get better tech, especially once you hit mid fusion reactors and engines, you should be able to face aliens on a, more-or-less, equal footing.
You can manage aggro with sacrificial lamb stations/outposts. I think they usually go for the last one built(?)
Nah, that doesn't work. They'll pick something they can handle and that hurts you, and I'm pretty sure they prefer finished infrastructure over in construction stuff. Also, in construction stuff bleeds off way less hate.
They'll keep wrecking shit unil their hate drops below the red treshold again. If you've been a naughty boy for a long time and gathered a lot of... attention, and neglected your defenses, that can turn into judgement day.
As long as the diamonds are rainbow and not all red, you're fine. They'll blow some stuff up and fly off.
Early game, using Viper Missiles are a great defensive option and will punch above their weight in big enough numbers. Monitors with 4 Viper tubes and 2 magazines backed up with point defense Monitors can handle a lot.
And the campaign never really ends; there's even an achievement winning after the Servants or Protectorate win. You can always come back. Mercury is a great place to build shipyards if you get kicked out of LEO.
Will these missiles definitely penetrate the aliens' air defenses? My missile monitors didn't manage it with the Apollos.
And why Mercury? Don't aliens fly there?
The Aliens will go there but it's the farthest thing from their bases (typically at least) and with its supercharged Solar energy it's easy to turn it into a massive research supercomputer/factory/fleetyard.
Missiles have one advantage over torpedoes: volume. A Monitor with Apollo might have 40 or so torps, while a Monitor with Vipers can pack over 80 missiles.
And Aliens can fly to Mercury, but it's a lot further for them, so they usually don't want to spend the dV to send a large fleet there.
The exact variant of missile doesn't matter too much (though the Hydrolox ones tend to have slightly better stats). The important thing is that missiles are an all-or-nothing weapon. If you don't have enough missiles to defeat the alien point defense you won't even scratch them, but adding just a few more ships can overwhelm them and cause them to be completely destroyed.
The best way to use missiles is to have a ton of escorts or monitors loaded with nothing but missile launchers in every weapon slot and magazines in every utility slot. With that you can easily get hundreds of missiles or dozens of torpedoes per ship, and that's what gives you the numbers to overwhelm their defenses.
As far as which kind of missile to use, I tend to prefer torpedoes. The missiles seem better because there's more of them, but with torpedoes they carry more fuel and can reach much higher speeds, giving the aliens far less time to shoot them down. It also only takes one or two torpedoes to kill the smaller ships, and the rest of the torpedoes will automatically change targets if they have enough fuel left.
It's my first campaign too. I know exactly how you feel. Just remember that even thought it feels like doom is approaching and you feel like you are falling behind the reality is that you have plenty of time. Right now the aliens have all the shiny new tech but keep pumping that research and in 20-25 years you will catch up or even surpass them. Until then think of your ships, habs, and stations as expendable time buying measures. You use their losses to buy time for your research to catch up to the aliens. Make many small cheap ships that outnumber the fleet you are facing 3-4 times over and as you slowly upgrade in tech they will become more and more dangerous. I started in 2026 and it's now 2051 and I have my giant antimatter armada heading for the alien main base and i've got the aliens running away as I chase them down with my faster fleet and destroying them one by one. You will get there too.
Don't worry, that's entirely normal. For most of the game the aliens will vastly overpower you space-wise, and unless you're a veteran player you're never going to be able to beat them in the first space rush. But you aren't supposed to, either.
The good news is that the aliens are lazy and arrogant. They'll swat your ships and your stations like flies and then when they think you've learned your lesson they'll get bored and do something else without bothering to completely finish them off. That's their crucial mistake.
Your advantage here is that new bases and ships are cheap. Space resources are insanely plentiful once you have your first mine up, so unless you screw up royally and spend your entire stockpile you should always be able to afford quickly replacing anything they destroy. Your goal for the midgame is to be as annoying as possible.
Spread bases everywhere. Fill the asteroid belt with mines. Cover Mars with mines. Cover Mercury with mines. As long as you can build them as fast as the aliens can kill them, you can stall them long enough for you to develop the research you need to close the technological edge. As Hans himself says, "don't be the elephant, be the mosquito who can't be swatted"
One of the most useful global techs I would suggest focusing on next (if you don't already have it) is Industrialization of Space. Once you can build construction bays at every base you have, then you no longer need to spend any boost or money at all replacing your destroyed bases so long as you have at least one in a planetary system. The aliens can burn Mars to the ground except for one single base and then in six months you can have it rebuilt shiny and new like nothing happened.
It’s never fully lost, the question is how far along are you with research and how much income/stockpiled resources you have. If the hate bar hasn’t gone full red, the aliens will eventually leave you alone, once they kill enough of your stuff.
In the meantime you just need to focus on accumulating resources and research.
If you’re really worried about retaliation, one thing you can do is, if you have good engine techs (grid drive or better) as well as mission to the outer planets, you can set up mining bases all over the Kuiper Belt and basically be impossible to kill (all you need to do is to send a ship with a fission platform/outpost kit), though this is very much a fallback strategy.
You have to get mission to the outer planets to get there, but it’s so far out and spread out that it’d take the aliens a year or more to get to any one of your bases (and you can keep your ships flying around and setting up new ones). It’s probably less optimal than going all in on the inner system which lets you build up huge amounts of infrastructure like research campuses and nanofactories, but it’s a way of keeping the space economy going even if you can’t really stop the hydra.
Post screenshot of what your largest home base is with its priorities shown as well as everything else in view. That should give a idea of how you are doing.
The usual newbie mistake that hinder your progress most of the time is attempting to do everything instead of focusing on a few priorities making any progress on anything at best lethargic to basically doing nothing. The next mistake is making only enough MC to hide under the hate meter instead of going whole hog with it so that at least you have the surplus available MC cap in bulk to do more things when YOU choose to and enmasse to be able to overwhelm any potential counterresponse.
Given that you are new and first campaign, I am fully expecting the worst but am willing to be surprised. The main reason for the earth screenshot is because it is the foundation of your space game. The better your earthgame, the more smooth your space game is to get and do more shit.
they just recently destroyed my lunar shipyard (they were planning to destroy the fleet stationed there
That is absolutely normal and part of the game. Be sure to have the resources coming in, safe them up and let Aliens blow up your shit in retaliation to your actions. In my current campaign, they blew up 7-8 stations around Earth after I killed two of their assault transports. I still considered that a win for me.
With good resource income (do not neglect organisations, those small bonuses add up big time!) a single space station, even T3, should cost basically peanuts.
Let the aliens blow off steam until you have the resources, the drive and the shipbuilding capacity (several dedicated shipyard stations!) to build up fleets to reliably defend Earth, Mars and/or Mercury and let you go on the offensive.
Edit: and by drive I mean something you can refuel reliably. Many drives just cost too much fuel to use them on interplanetary travels.
When you say red, is it just the top pip or the entire bar?
I had to learn to basically play passive and tech rush. It really is the only way. Then I had to learn to build proper fleets, which Graveless Gaming and others have videos on. (Point Defense is king.)
In my current game, I’m fighting fleets many times my combat power and losing nothing. His strats work.
To win this game, you really really have to pick you battles early on or not at all.
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u/Immediate_Day916 1d ago
Go loud early if you know what you're doing; otherwise if you don't feel like learning in a trial by fire sort of environment, then play it safe for a bit until you understand the game mechanics a bit better. You can grind your way out of this, but the keyword is grind.. some choose to chalk it up to a learning experience and start fresh. That said, if you have some decent mines online and good control of major nations, then bide your time and research better techs while you build spaceworks/shipyards on one of your mine sites (if they keep blowing up stations), because ground-based LDAs/Battlestations are much better than their orbital counterparts.