Full scale war

[GodMan]

Ok, so I'm in deep shi right now. It's 2037 and I'm basically half a year into full scale war with the Aliens as the Ressistance. Tbh I wanted to wait few years more, but the Earth was really plagued by alien flora and the aliens started to make their nation. The actual war started kinda by mistake, as they sent a fleet onto my defence force in orbit and got wiped which triggered the red zone in alien agression.

Few months were kinda peaceful but now they started to bomb my colonies, first asteroids and now they are trying to take over Mars which is defended by a small force of few escort ships and space stations.

On Earth I started taking over their established nation which didn't have enough time to grow, whiping both of their armies and soon their last province which is in the middle of africa.

Any idea on how to defend from the alien bombardments? My largest fleet which is around 300 strength can match them but is waaay to slow to be going around the system. For now I'm fine with resources, but not sure how long its going to last if they start killing my Mars bases.

[GodMan]

I give up then

[Pawleus]

The main difference in the Skirmish is that the alien designs often have alien laser PD instead of alien particle PD so they substantially underperform against projectiles and missiles. Don't be fixated on the names or even sizes and choose for a skirmish alien ships that have similar loadout to alien ships in your game.

I already feature-requested changes to the Skirmish some time ago that would address (if implemented) also the issue you encountered.

[Asuzu]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von GodMan:

Ok, so I'm in deep shi right now. It's 2037 and I'm basically half a year into full scale war with the Aliens as the Ressistance. Tbh I wanted to wait few years more, but the Earth was really plagued by alien flora and the aliens started to make their nation. The actual war started kinda by mistake, as they sent a fleet onto my defence force in orbit and got wiped which triggered the red zone in alien agression.

Few months were kinda peaceful but now they started to bomb my colonies, first asteroids and now they are trying to take over Mars which is defended by a small force of few escort ships and space stations.

On Earth I started taking over their established nation which didn't have enough time to grow, whiping both of their armies and soon their last province which is in the middle of africa.

Any idea on how to defend from the alien bombardments? My largest fleet which is around 300 strength can match them but is waaay to slow to be going around the system. For now I'm fine with resources, but not sure how long its going to last if they start killing my Mars bases.

I'd say this is way too early for full scale war and you're effed in the a, but you can try to push forward in epic Hollywood struggle :)

Normally, I restrain from any action against allys and Servants until I have:
(1) inner system covered in bases and mined hard, i.e. Mars, Ceres, Mercury
(2) researched and deployed at least 4 Dreads with coilguns + point defenses + 100 nose adamantine armor + triton reflex engines to secure my mining/research colonies

Normally I never bother settling asteroids - too annoying and too expensive to defend. A shipyard station and 6 Dreads in orbit of a planet is much better deterrent to any issue instead of a crappy point defense on a crappy asteroid mine.

The only way you really lose the game is if allys kick you out of outer space, so by having multiple shipyards defended by serious brutal force is a way to secure that. And you can reliably do it while staying under 100 MC cap not to trigger any ally response.

There is a bunch of key events that happen anyway, so:
(1) alys always bomb your first Moon base no matter what. either make 2 bases or don't bother. Normally I save ALL my boost for Mars and settle ALL of it as soon as my probe hits. obviously, research high speed probes nd reduction to launch MC cost asap
(2) You have to kill, and then capture ally operative, which raises your threat level, so keep that in mind and don't annoy them to keep threat low
(3) built a trash decoy research station in Earth orbit, doesn't matter what it is, if allys are angry they bomb it, dump threat, and leave you in peace, instead of going to bomb your Mars miners for example. i.e. give them a way to dump on you without sacrificing key resources.
(4) there are 2 alien assaults landing, and you can cheese allys from NOT creating alien nation at all. All you need is to have 2 20 CMD operatives to meet and greet those, with maximum effort researched (to max success chance with influence) so you got 10% chance to delete them upon landing and savescum the ♥♥♥♥ out of it. If you want to play fair, just take it and deal with them with your ground forces later.
(5) In general, don't touch allys and Servants until the above mentioned orbit defense fleets are up. You can still tickle them, e.g. turning Servant agents and stealing their orgs doesn't raise threat, but assasinating them does, so play safe. If allys set up a base structure you have to delete those, and it raises threat, so keep it cool and delete those and then drop off your threat again. Don't forget AI factions also get in trouble with allys, so let them take the most of it. Alys will happily fly around deleting Humanity First bases all over asteroid belts, while you keep it cool and build up.

[Pawleus]

@Asuzu, why do you again advise a player to repeat your mistakes?

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Asuzu:

I'd say this is way too early for full scale war and you're effed in the a, but you can try to push forward in epic Hollywood struggle :)

Really? 2037 is "way too early"? How inefficient your gameplay must be when eg. I have no problem with conducting total war since 2027 on Brutal? (up to the second half of 2034 no hab lost and 4 combat ships lost out of 300 built)

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Asuzu:

Normally I never bother settling asteroids - too annoying and too expensive to defend. A shipyard station and 6 Dreads in orbit of a planet is much better deterrent to any issue instead of a crappy point defense on a crappy asteroid mine.

Yes, I see why you think it's expensive when you need 6 Dreads to defend a planet while eg. in 2034 I have only 5 Escorts defending Mars (2 of them are still only Viper AdvPulsar) and I haven't used more than 3 of them in a combat.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Asuzu:

There is a bunch of key events that happen anyway, so:
(1) alys always bomb your first Moon base no matter what. either make 2 bases or don't bother.

Not true, eg. in my current game in first combat I had to defend Mars orbit in 2026 using Pulsar Drives while my Moon bases where not bothered at all even without any defense there, then.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Asuzu:

(3) built a trash decoy research station in Earth orbit, doesn't matter what it is, if allys are angry they bomb it, dump threat, and leave you in peace, instead of going to bomb your Mars miners for example. i.e. give them a way to dump on you without sacrificing key resources.

Also outdated - it doesn't work like this anymore.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Asuzu:

(4) there are 2 alien assaults landing, and you can cheese allys from NOT creating alien nation at all. All you need is to have 2 20 CMD operatives to meet and greet those, with maximum effort researched (to max success chance with influence) so you got 10% chance to delete them upon landing and savescum the ♥♥♥♥ out of it. If you want to play fair, just take it and deal with them with your ground forces later.

Why do you not even consider taking them out in orbit? Ah, I remember, your Dreads are too expensive to build.

[GodMan]

good strategy with escorts or not, I'm at the point that the Aliens have already formed a fleet 3k worth of strength and they now send mostly 2-3 battleships around with very heavy point defence. My attempt of destroying even the 3 battleships with my 9 escorts with lanceheads and flare drives resulted in total failure ending only in damaging one of their battelships. Although the new drives made my escorts really maneuverable, the rockets at this point seem already outdated and I'll either have to amas more of them (which will cost no small amount) or outfit them with new phaser green lasers that I've finished researching

[GodMan]

Suprisingly though there haven't been any invasion forces yet and its already 2041. The only events that have been happening were crashed alien ships and few alien bases scattered around the world, I guess at least I did a reasonably good job at containing the Servants as the only significant hold they have is Iran and its basically between my two controlled countries (EU and China) so any force landing there will be squashed. That gives me hope that I have some more time to gather more forces

[Pawleus]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von GodMan:

My attempt of destroying even the 3 battleships with my 9 escorts with lanceheads and flare drives resulted in total failure ending only in damaging one of their battelships.

How many Particle PD such a battleship has? With one PD per ship (in my current game even Dreads have only 1 PD) it should be easy to destroy 3 Battleships without screen using 9 Lancehead Flare Escorts - I would usually send 6 such Escorts against them even having more at hand and if I had to even 3 should suffice but they would probably not survive this fight (I had a similar fight against 3 alien Destroyers yesterday and I lost 2 out of 3 Escorts while winning). Perhaps you need to work more on your high-velocity tactics.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von GodMan:

Although the new drives made my escorts really maneuverable, the rockets at this point seem already outdated and I'll either have to amas more of them (which will cost no small amount) or outfit them with new phaser green lasers that I've finished researching

The Flare Drive makes Escorts a little too expensive for my taste but I wouldn't agree that missiles are outdated at this point. They might seem so only with wrong tactics. When they are right you will need much more expensive fleet (more and larger ships to create an effective PD wall) to be equally combat capable while using lasers (small ships won't survive getting so close as to make their small lasers effective) - try your designs in the Skirmish and you will see.

[GodMan]

I don't exacly remember how many PDs their battleship had but when it came to swarm them with missiles I tried focusing 3 escorts per battleship, shooting full volley at each. Ending result was as previously stated as their PD totally anihilated my missiles (I dunno, maybe I should have just rushed their ships at full thrust but it really didnt occur to me that time).

Either way after that I reloaded and built few of my own battleships with phaser green lasers, merged them with about 15 escorts, and the battle resulted in my victory against 2,8k alien fleet in the lower earth orbit but right after that they sent 2 of their 10k and 15k fleets that were near their stations at which point I just ragequit the game lol. Not sure what happend in this playthrough but seems like the Aliens were much more aggressive in space when I played as Humanity First and expanded very quickly vs my first Ressistance game when I didn't know what I'm doing

[Pawleus]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von GodMan:

I don't exacly remember how many PDs their battleship had but when it came to swarm them with missiles I tried focusing 3 escorts per battleship, shooting full volley at each. Ending result was as previously stated as their PD totally anihilated my missiles (I dunno, maybe I should have just rushed their ships at full thrust but it really didnt occur to me that time).

Performance of missiles is highly dependent on how much you can help them by maneuvering your ships - just making a numerous swarm is not enough, especially now when AI can entirely avoid them (probably not by Battleships but PD is much more effective during avoidance maneuvers - just kinematics at play).