Takeovers?

[Elder Drake]

I am a bit thrown that factions seem to be able to easily take both station and ships when said assets have advanced marines. Then when I try to retake it I have say a 3% chance or a Councillor with seize space assets can't do anything as it says he has no marines (when he in fact is on a troopship).

Is this a lame way for the AI to cheat as I am clobbering the factions bad and suddenly they are just stealing ships literally as they leave dry dock.

[Captain Conundrum]

Looks like today's update allows marines to do their job for takeovers now

[Elder Drake]

Originally posted by Captain Conundrum:

Looks like today's update allows marines to do their job for takeovers now

I am not sure if you are being sarcastic, not goading you either as I appreciate the response. The problem is every ship and station I have has a marine compliment. I am so far ahead of the AI due to some luck RNG that I am the only one with ships atm. So my warships (plural) decided to what, let some random dude onboard a military ship? The station with a 3% chance was taken by an agent that appeared in one turn, took it, took multiple ships, and I am the only guy flying besides the aliens.

I love this game but thank god for mods because the way it is I nearly canned the game over this as it takes a long time to get to building warships just in time for apparently Superman to fly over and jack my ship, that or all my marines were hired from an opposing faction...

[The Haney]

I believe that the Servants in particular and the Protectorate occasionally have the ability to use alien assets to insta-cap some assets.

[Captain Conundrum]

Originally posted by Elder Drake:

Originally posted by Captain Conundrum:

Looks like today's update allows marines to do their job for takeovers now

I am not sure if you are being sarcastic, not goading you either as I appreciate the response. The problem is every ship and station I have has a marine compliment. I am so far ahead of the AI due to some luck RNG that I am the only one with ships atm. So my warships (plural) decided to what, let some random dude onboard a military ship? The station with a 3% chance was taken by an agent that appeared in one turn, took it, took multiple ships, and I am the only guy flying besides the aliens.

I love this game but thank god for mods because the way it is I nearly canned the game over this as it takes a long time to get to building warships just in time for apparently Superman to fly over and jack my ship, that or all my marines were hired from an opposing faction...

Unless I am misunderstanding, the notes on yesterdays update include this line

- increased difficulty of Control Space Asset mission. The presence of Marines now make a difference against uprisings (but not a guarantee, they may change sides too if they decide they're meat for the machine, beltalowda)

[wmslone]

I'm a bit confused by how this mechanic actually works. I had one of my stations taken over by the protectorate, and it was immediately "protected" as well. I sent my best agent up there to retake it, he has 25 persuasion, and I have influence to spare to boost his mission to the max, but even still it only gives me a 6% chance of success. So I thought I'd surveil the area to see if I can spot the enemy agent "protecting" the node, no luck, but I was able to get a protectorate turncoat instead. So I still don't see whoever is protecting the station, despite having intel on their faction, but I start just assasinating all of their councilors to hopefully draw them off the node and make the job easier. No luck, I've assasinated every councilor except for my spy in their ranks, and they still have the node protected. Moreover, they have nodes in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, South Korea, Benelux, Turkey, and Egypt (just that I've noticed) protected at the same time with no apparent councilor on them. I'm confused as to how they can protect all these nodes at once with no councilors, and why my success chance for retaking my station with as stacked of a councilor as possible is so low as to make it functionally impossible.

Anyone know what's going on with all this? I felt like I was playing the game well and understanding things fine, but now I'm just scratching my head feeling like I actually have no idea what's going on lol.

[KingMidas]

Originally posted by wmslone:

Anyone know what's going on with all this? I felt like I was playing the game well and understanding things fine, but now I'm just scratching my head feeling like I actually have no idea what's going on lol.

The way they are protecting their assets is using Defend interests interactions, it triggers almost instantly in the cycle. Basically what it does is defend Country/Hab from crackdowns controlling a space asset, all that jazz. It basically defends it for a year or so when its done. No matter what happens to the councillor after they have done it, works the same way for you. I imagine you might be confusing it with the other guard interaction, which is only for a single cycle.

[wmslone]

Originally posted by KingMidas:

The way they are protecting their assets is using Defend interests interactions, it triggers almost instantly in the cycle. Basically what it does is defend Country/Hab from crackdowns controlling a space asset, all that jazz. It basically defends it for a year or so when its done. No matter what happens to the councillor after they have done it, works the same way for you. I imagine you might be confusing it with the other guard interaction, which is only for a single cycle.

Oh damn, I didn't realize defend interests last for a whole year? I've had a councilor camped in the USA the whole game just repeating the mission every other cycle because I thought the councilor had to be on site to actively maintain the mission. So I can effectively just rotate a councilor around each of my nations doing defend interests and keep them all defended then, that's very handy. But yeah no confusion on which mission I'm talking about, I understand the difference between protect target and defend interests, just confused on how it works apparently. Thx for the clarification though!

Still have no idea why my chances at retaking the station are so low though. I've had no problems running purge on defended nodes even without crackdown first, just having the right councilor and investing enough support into the mission. But even with maxed ability and max support the highest chance I've seen to retake this station is 12% (which I tried anyway and promptly got my councilor captured).

Edit: so I guess size of station jacks op the difficulty quite a lot. It's just a docking station (2 solar panels, a dock, and a supply depot), but that coupled with the base difficulty of the mission makes it almost impossible to retake with the control space asset mission. It's potentially spammable but only at immense cost due to having to max out support to even have a spam-worthy 1/10 chance, not to mention the risk of losing your best agent in the process (lost mine on first attempt). It begs the question how they captured it from me in the first place if my maxed out agent's chances are so slim, unless it's just crazy rng. But even still, why would the ai attempt something so unlikely, where it's more likely they'll lose their agent than succeed? I guess I'm just still feeling like there must be a mechanic at play that I'm missing, something that would make it make sense for the ai to be able to take it and for me to be unable to retake it, other than just basic cheating which I haven't seen or noticed elsewhere in the game to this point. So far TI usually makes sense and is consistent across the board, even if it's often obtuse coming to grips with it, so I'm just trying to understand the calculus behind this a bit better at this point, as well as hoping I will eventually have a viable way to get my station back.

[Mistfox]

If you worked through the game, you'll hit a point where it tells you that the aliens use a variety of phenocyte viruses spread through the air to make human beings very pliable to "suggestions". That should tell you a bit on how they are doing it.

For the pure human factions, what happens is that you're not really the government or the owner of the assets, you're the shadowy group pulling the strings behind the scenes. What this means is that none of the crew has ever seen you before or even know that you exist. So what happens when some smooth talker comes aboard with "Official" orders from the actual government to "promote Mr X to a more prestigious post groundside"? Mr X being the only guy on the station that knows your faction exists and is the guy relaying your orders? Bye bye asset!

Welcome to the wild wonderful world of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

[wmslone]

Originally posted by Mistfox:

If you worked through the game, you'll hit a point where it tells you that the aliens use a variety of phenocyte viruses spread through the air to make human beings very pliable to "suggestions". That should tell you a bit on how they are doing it.

For the pure human factions, what happens is that you're not really the government or the owner of the assets, you're the shadowy group pulling the strings behind the scenes. What this means is that none of the crew has ever seen you before or even know that you exist. So what happens when some smooth talker comes aboard with "Official" orders from the actual government to "promote Mr X to a more prestigious post groundside"? Mr X being the only guy on the station that knows your faction exists and is the guy relaying your orders? Bye bye asset!

Welcome to the wild wonderful world of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

For sure, I get that but that's also conceptual, not concrete in terms of how the mechanics are actually working. For instance, my councilors have maxed or nearly maxed loyalty, which is something that's under my control and helps to prevent them from being too "suggestible", but is there then something like that for stations as well? Something that I have some kind of control over? Or are stations just intended to be muteable assets throughout the course of the game, and if so why then are they so difficult for the player to regain control of while the ai seems to be able to go on an asset taking spree.

For the record, not complaining, just trying to understand the gameplay around this mechanic and what kind of viable counterplay there is to ai asset-jacking.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by wmslone:

Originally posted by Mistfox:

If you worked through the game, you'll hit a point where it tells you that the aliens use a variety of phenocyte viruses spread through the air to make human beings very pliable to "suggestions". That should tell you a bit on how they are doing it.

For the pure human factions, what happens is that you're not really the government or the owner of the assets, you're the shadowy group pulling the strings behind the scenes. What this means is that none of the crew has ever seen you before or even know that you exist. So what happens when some smooth talker comes aboard with "Official" orders from the actual government to "promote Mr X to a more prestigious post groundside"? Mr X being the only guy on the station that knows your faction exists and is the guy relaying your orders? Bye bye asset!

Welcome to the wild wonderful world of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

For sure, I get that but that's also conceptual, not concrete in terms of how the mechanics are actually working. For instance, my councilors have maxed or nearly maxed loyalty, which is something that's under my control and helps to prevent them from being too "suggestible", but is there then something like that for stations as well? Something that I have some kind of control over? Or are stations just intended to be muteable assets throughout the course of the game, and if so why then are they so difficult for the player to regain control of while the ai seems to be able to go on an asset taking spree.

For the record, not complaining, just trying to understand the gameplay around this mechanic and what kind of viable counterplay there is to ai asset-jacking.

The best way gameplaywise is apparently just not keep anything near Earth since it's way too easy for councilors to get to the station and mess the place up. This is also why there are military reserves like Diego Garcia in real life.