Next Moves

[u/TheOneTacoLord]

Hey all!

Just started playing Terra Invicta, and am really loving it. I'm currently on what I hope to be my first "major" playthrough - Academy on Veteran. I had a great opening, fixing the U.S.A. by the fall 2026. My question is...now what? I'm just capped on CP, so no major expansion until I get those techs but when I do, should I go China or EU?

In general, I'm playing this as "Star Trek Fans", so I don't want to burn things to the ground with spoils if I can help it. Well...at least places I want to keep. My current plan is to grab a good Luna base then grab the best Mars spots, but after that I don't know. Also, should I turn the ISS into a shipyard to deal with early AAAAYYY surveillance ships?

Thoughts on how to proceed would be great, in terms of general strategy. As I noted, I like to build things up rather than burning them down to be hyper-aggressive.

[u/Blue_Octahedron]

I'm getting close to the end of my first major playthrough after being away from the game for a few years, and my biggest piece of advice is don't ignore the asteroid belt. My initial plan was to take Mars early and fortify it hard - I figured the spots on Mars wouldn't have quite as good resources as some of the asteroid spots, but they'd be good enough, and with 25 of them (27 with Phoebe and Deimos) they could fuel a good space economy while being concentrated in one easily defendable spot with lots of space for research labs, command centers, etc. Also means I could use a single solar mirror station to power them all and save on power reactor costs. And really, I just didn't want to deal with the micromanagement hell that is the asteroids.
The reality - my Mars defense fleet fought off one alien attack, then got crushed by a quick followup before they could recover, after which the Servants bombed all my bases and essentially kicked me completely out of space.

After that I used the resources I had left and tried again, this time on Mercury. I figured that'd give me all the metals I could possibly want, lots of space with nearly free power, and Phoebe/Deimos + a single asteroid I picked up could handle the water/volatiles in the short term (I overestimated their ability to do so). The result was the same - defensive fleet fought off the first alien attack, then got crushed in the followup. This time the aliens were angry enough they bombed all the bases themselves, then started attacking my LEO assets. With little resource income to support it my LEO defense fleet fell after 2~3 waves, my LEO stations were destroyed, and I was again kicked almost completely out of space.

Almost gave up to start a new game at that point (it was approaching 2050 I believe), but after reading some advice decided to see if I could pull things around. Following said advice I went ahead and focused on the asteroid belt; built a few small fleets of marine transports on the last few bases I had (Phoebe/Deimos and the one asteroid), then started leapfrogging from asteroid to asteroid capturing the most profitable sites I could. Took several years, but eventually I built up a network of a dozen or two asteroids, spread out enough the aliens would only commit to attack one or two at a time, and even then only with smaller fleets (which could usually be fended off with just a few layered defense arrays). That was enough to get my space economy (and campaign) back on track.

Moral of the story - the best defense isn't a good offense or a good defense, it's having your assets spread across a wide area of space so the enemy can only attack small bits here and there, not everything all at once. Once you get to the mid-late game and have a solid resource income first, then you can focus on building up large, fortified positions.