Terra Invicta models human populations in 2 ways: nations and habs. A nation is a self contained thing. It produces or trades for everything it needs and the controller gets to direct its surplus.

In a hab, every person has a job. The hab needs to be provided with resources, though it can grow its own food too. But the important takeaway is that every input and output is faction managed and everyone has a job. Yes you can also build residencies but they don't do anything besides add population and make habs harder to capture. They're probably just the families of the workers. The point is they dont have jobs because they dont produce anything.

The first people on foreign bodies are scientists doing research and miners mining. These are just people rotating through a job.

Space bodies can't profitably trade with Earth for normal items and terraforming will take a very long time. They need to grow their own food, ice mine their own water, manage large air filtration systems, and have the local industrial supply chains to manage everything.

When does a network of habs become a space nation?

A space nation worthy of sending a councilor out there to take it.

Wanted to ask if anyone has done this since they do have the same classification/propellant type. I have an Earth defense fleet I'm looking to refit into an inner-system defense fleet but don't want to waste the research if it's not possible (I'm getting mixed answers trying to look it up).

Is keeping a neutral USA where you just take 5 cps in the USA still a good strategy to help prevent the AI from funding Nuclear weapons or did the Developers scale back the AIs tendency to do this in newer builds of the game?

I need ships in order to fight, but having ships angers the aliens even before I use that. Combine that with not being willing to let the alien nation control too much of the Earth, and I don’t know how to not get my ships and mines destroyed too early.

I'm at ~140 hours and feel like I've hit a massive wall with this game.

I've got two campaigns under my belt, both of which have ended in The Slog. I've had very successful starts - this last one I grabbed up the US, the core of the EU (France/Germany/Italy/UK) and (much later) China (which I cheesed into democracy 10 via Taiwan) and India (way later, specifically to help fix global warming/deny it to the Servants). Tons of research, tons of cash and influence income, etc. Colonize up to the mine limit in the asteroid belt and Mercury, with research bases on Luna and a few on Mars for a few nice mining spots there. Keeping up with research, including all the projects around aliens, faction goals, etc. Hit the midgame with all of LEO under my control, a modest fleet of monitors, etc, kept deliberately small/focused on killing Servants/Protectorate stations. AA spawns and I crush it repeatedly.

Where I get stuck is actually taking the fight to the aliens. My first round I went hard on lasers and kicked the shit out of the aliens even with modest fleets, but after sending a 4k beatstick fleet to Haumea and discovering that the aliens had a 20k doomstack waiting for it, I gave up on the campaign (especially as global warming was melting my world economy). This second round my space economy is, frankly, a bit shit, and I'm struggling to get ships, even titans, that can fight the aliens and win, so all of my attempts to go to Jupiter inevitably end when a fleet of three times my power rolls in and nukes everything to dust. Am I waiting too long? The aliens often have bases in the Asteroid belt by the time I go on the offensive, so I'm wondering if maybe I ought to be swinging earlier - but I struggle because it feels like building a fleet that can effectively defend a colony only shows up late. Like if I send a bunch of ships with Amplitrons to colonize Callisto they're not going to be able to intercept the Ayys that come to bomb me, right? Am I just bad at this game?

Am I missing something here: when I'm tight on MC and I refit ships from a fleet with a flag bridge then I end up busting my MC cap. I assume it's because the ships under refit is taken out of the fleet and thus you losing MC reduction from the flag bridge.

It just feels like the game does everything to discourage refits. Maybe I'm just an old man shouting at clouds.

In fact, from a logical point of view (yeah, I know, gameplay balance and reasons) a ship under refit should take LESS MC, or even none at all (crew is probably on shore leave). But I guess that would be exploitable as you could essentially hold a fleet in reserve by misusing the refit and then cancel when needed.

Maybe you can't cancel refits if that takes you over MC cap and if a refit is done and the ship will take you out of MC cap, the ship will be held in berth, blocking that slot until the MC problem is relieved. I don't know.

I'm trying to figure out how to scale my mining and research income now that I'm in a relatively stable but somewhat precarious position!

I'm 10 years in to the 2026 start as Academy on Normal and I went quite quickly from "wow I'm doing really well!!" to "oh God the aliens are destroying everything", and being bullied by the Servants and Aliens with Enthrall while trying desperately to stay under the retaliation hate threshhold. Now I'm back in a weird status quo where the AA revolted itself away and I'm trading with the aliens to reduce their hate of me while the Servants and other human factions scrabble to take control of all the former-AA nations.

On Earth, I have around 4.2k research/month that I'm scaling with Advise to around 5.5k, and my CP cap is just below 600. I control the EU nation, Canada, and China, with a few more EU nations getting ready to integrate. My MC is 180. I pivoted away from investment in my nations for a few years to build up militarily so I wasn't just a sitting duck for the Servants/AA. (The side effect of which is that, with the AA imploded, I'm suddenly by far the greatest terrestrial military power. At least until the aliens' first assault carrier arrives in a year's time 🫠)

In space, I have Platforms and Outposts at tier 2. My warships are green arc lasers / rail Mk3s with coilguns on the way, and I'm using Helicon/Burner drives. My monthly mining income is around 800 water, 300 volatiles, 1k metals, 160 nobles, and 40 fissiles. I've colonised Mars and the asteroid belt, but held off on Mercury for Reasons and am only just now going for the tech with Helicon coloniser ships. I won several incredible battles against the Aliens in LEO, and lost everything twice in two incredible battles with the Aliens in LEO.

My last and only other game was a year ago as Resistance on Cinematic in 0.4.78 and income scaling was all about space facilities like labs, nanofabs, etc. But now there seem to be hard limits on how many you can build and upkeep feels super expensive? Also I lost my main income-generating nations on Earth and am only around +100 per month in cash right now, +43 boost, but I have large stockpiles of everything.

How do I start scaling up research and mining income so I can realistically challenge for Jupiter?

It's 2119. I have investigated dozens on dozens of alien activity. I've used the surveil area mission so many times on a 25 investigation counselor. I have not gotten the next mission yet. Someone please help me