Dealing with Alien Nation

[[BFs]Karaya 1]

I manged to kill the alien Nation, got my bruises afterwards for being so uppity and thought everything will be fine.

Then the servants just straight up established it in Pakistan, and then gave them India as well for free. Ive been at war with them for the last 6 or 7 years, grinding down their armies, slowly eating away at them because occupying takes absolutely forever even with 2 full points of mil tech advantage.

But whenever i get close to capturing their capital they nuke it and i get to start over.
Oh well, i was gonna grind them down eventually.

NOW the Aliens just landed the first of 2 waves of 5 assault carriers, that i cant intercept and nobody else is doing anything at all. If i nuke their troops, one army dies..if they nuke my troops, 3 armies die. Its just so annoying.

How does everyone else deal with it ? Good players apparently just ♥♥♥♥ out ships and bury the Carriers, but if there are groups of 5 plus a dreadnaught that seems...unlikely. And if i have that many ships, then my stuff gets continually attacked.

[AylaSelene]

missile escorts are very supply dense for the amount of hurt they can put on the enemies. as long as the carriers don't have too many escorts to soak the missiles you can relatively easily overwhelm them with numbers (this makes the aliens very angry, but not only keeps the armies off earth, but also prevents 100000 hydra from scampering out of the ship the moment it touches down, to then later be recruited straight on earth instead of having to fly there and crash land).

for the alien administration, the servants have an org (Alien Administration Transition Team) that allows them to give countries to the aliens.
if you permanently detain the councilor with that org they will not be doing that any longer.

[[BFs]Karaya 1]

I hadnt played in about 2 years, so i was extremely surprised to see how the Ai just absolutely SPAMS every single location they can with bases. So i had a little bit of trouble getting off the ground with my space economy, and i tried to keep it somewhat small so i dont get buried in alien attacks.

I dont think my shipyards near Mercury can build the ships and transition them in time. And even if, then all my stuff gets blown up. As long as i can keep my stuff alive i could probably outlast them with the 40 or so nukes my nations have compared to the 8 India/aliens have left. But then i also would have nuked half the earth probably and lost my 14 pan asian armies.... Hmm...

If they had landed them in smaller batches i probably could have beaten them in conventional warfare, but now it will be a slog.

Im guessing Coilguns get intercepted by PD too much to be worth it ? Also the hitrate is pretty poor against the drive performance of aliens.

[Fasalrod]

Current patch, human ship tech has been nerfed almost all across the board and aliens have improved drives and ship designs - no more dreadnoughts with only 5 armor. Missile boats are your best option early on but you'll need to micro so they don't waste missiles on aliens dodging, meanwhile their increased armor and missile damage/ DV nerfs mean vipers won't take down carriers. I never used anything but vipers, your experiences may vary but the poseidon torpedos are quite a lot better from what I saw in a fight with one of the other human factions. They will even use better drives than pulsar now, and can actually make dangerous ships if you let them. However due to the alien hat cap not changing and the MC cap halving guarantees that whatever faction you play are the only ones who will fight aliens now.

You should always have a shipyard with LDA's/battlestations in LEO because that's where the aliens send most of their ships and Earth is their goal, so you need to build, repair and resupply there.

Fighting the aliens on Earth without at least contesting control of LEO is a losing war. Alien surveillance ships average one abduction mission in every region on earth during their mission phase - abductions make all alien missions easier and only a very few things reduce abduction count slightly, otherwise it permanently strengthens alien operations in regions and nations. Eventually this lets them use enthrall elites on the strongest earth nations with 99% success chance even if you've been completing all research available to resist it. Realistically the only way to stop this is to at least contest control of LEO by shooting down surveillance ships and alien transports so they can't land any councilors to run abductions or enthrall elites. You don't have to shoot down all the fleets they send until they start sending surveillance ships in fleets and using surveillance dreadnoughts, but you'll need to expand research via campuses/universities during this time. Alien retaliations will destroy orbitals and habitats even with LDA's, but that is still better than letting the aliens do what they want on Earth. For their defense it's best to try to get to T3 colonies/rings and ultraviolet phasers as soon as possible as 2 battlestations each deters retaliations even on remote asteroids in the belt until the aliens build up much larger fleets - by then you should have large fleets of your own to start cleaning them out of the inner system.

Coilguns - these are better used against their larger ships that don't have the acceleration to dodge well, but as you saw you need a lot of them to overpower alien lasers and PD to punch through. Multiple small coil batteries is better for saturation than a large coilgun battery, but you also need the large coils to do the damage as alien dreadnoughts/carriers can sometimes tank several hundred small hits on the hull.

For their smaller ships or other high acceleration ships, you need strong lasers of your own to take them down. Coils can get lucky but not often. Coils force them to keep dodging and often keeps their nose weapons pointed away from your ships and that extra time alive will help your laser boats get the chance for a critical hit to take them out. Or you could simply micro them with Poseidon or Athena torpedos as they frequently break formation and move too far from each other for overlapping pd.

EDIT - As for alien nation itself, if one has formed then it's still much easier to take it down if you control LEO. Orbital bombardments will help damage their armies in battle. An enormous space force is needed to destroy their armies in their home regions. If its a nation like China though, you can accept atrocities by destroying commercial centers to destroy their economy - this makes it much easier to use unrest missions and possibly overthrow the government. Otherwise you can use disposable armies in low population regions like Lhasa to force them to waste their nukes and cause much more limited damage to total human population.

[dudeworthington]

Past a certain point in the game, you will want to keep the servants permanently infiltrated. That this is to say, periodically your double agent will get killed/inspired/found out/whatever and you need to immediately find a replacement and turn them. This isn't so hard if you have a 25 investigation and a 25 persuasion councilors. Also, you should kill or retire anyone in the servants who is a little to useful (i.e. high espionage with assassinate, etc). Keeping the servants infiltrated will give visibility of all the alien bases on earth. They can only hand over control of a nation until after an alien base has been built in that country. Destroying these alien bases is always a very high priority. Having a 25 command councilor with assault alien asset and also the salamander interrogation is useful for destroying these bases. I believe you can also lose your councilor on these missions if you crit fail, so having another councilor run protect target isn't a bad idea.

[[BFs]Karaya 1]

Yeah there are a few alien bases, but it spikes the threat so i was wary of it. I guess ill go build tons of ships after all. Its just that my metal income isnt up to rebuilding all my bases everywhere, but i do have at least 2 battlestations on each hab or colony. I cant just let them have free reign in space anymore i suppose. Its gonna get hard.

I got a decent Eurasian union, Calipahte and pan asian combine, so i was doing pretty well on earth. Whenever i see the results other people do they have what i have, just 10 years earlier or something :D .

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by BFsKaraya 1:

but i do have at least 2 battlestations on each hab or colony.

That's a lot of your shortage of Metals right there. Battlestations cost a LOT of Metals. Each one costs enough Metals to build several ships, along with a fairly high maintenance cost of 3 per month.

[dudeworthington]

Originally posted by BFsKaraya 1:

Yeah there are a few alien bases, but it spikes the threat so i was wary of it.

So that is a very real problem but the thing is that destroying the alien nation is even more provocative to the aliens. It is one of the most provocative things you can do, it generates even more hate than smoking the assault carrier in orbit.

[[BFs]Karaya 1]

Well, i got things under control, but i basically resortet to nuking like 10-15 times to handle most of their armies and then grind them down over the next 10 years or so. They only have 2 regions left, except for the nations they sometimes get given. But im sieging their capital, expecting it to get nuked once almost done.

Im finally in a position where i can intercept some of their fleets, but they have 2 inorbit with 80-100 ships each. I dont think im touching those for a while.

How does on deal with Alien Stations ? Ive not seen one of my battlestations fight, since they dont seemto attack them, but its probably prohibitive isnt it ?

[Flaming]

Originally posted by dudeworthington:

Past a certain point in the game, you will want to keep the servants permanently infiltrated. That this is to say, periodically your double agent will get killed/inspired/found out/whatever and you need to immediately find a replacement and turn them. This isn't so hard if you have a 25 investigation and a 25 persuasion councilors. Also, you should kill or retire anyone in the servants who is a little to useful (i.e. high espionage with assassinate, etc). Keeping the servants infiltrated will give visibility of all the alien bases on earth. They can only hand over control of a nation until after an alien base has been built in that country. Destroying these alien bases is always a very high priority. Having a 25 command councilor with assault alien asset and also the salamander interrogation is useful for destroying these bases. I believe you can also lose your councilor on these missions if you crit fail, so having another councilor run protect target isn't a bad idea.

I dont play much and while I already do that I find in servant or alien nations you conquer it’s best to destroy the alien bases left behind with your much more numerous armies if you’ve got em and they’re decently tech’ed up. They don’t offer as many exotics for taking them down with armies vs councilors but you have more. Use councilors for missions where it’s hard to get at the alien facilities.

Aside from that I absolutely agree on turning an enemy servant councilor. Also try to find the alien councilors and kill or capture them since they normally have to hand hold the servants and do all the heavy lifting for them.

[Rook]

Originally posted by dudeworthington:

Past a certain point in the game, you will want to keep the servants permanently infiltrated. That this is to say, periodically your double agent will get killed/inspired/found out/whatever and you need to immediately find a replacement and turn them. This isn't so hard if you have a 25 investigation and a 25 persuasion councilors. Also, you should kill or retire anyone in the servants who is a little to useful (i.e. high espionage with assassinate, etc). Keeping the servants infiltrated will give visibility of all the alien bases on earth. They can only hand over control of a nation until after an alien base has been built in that country. Destroying these alien bases is always a very high priority. Having a 25 command councilor with assault alien asset and also the salamander interrogation is useful for destroying these bases. I believe you can also lose your councilor on these missions if you crit fail, so having another councilor run protect target isn't a bad idea.

I lost a 25 com councilor precisely this way in my current game and it still hurts. I'll make sure to protect going forward.