Strategy for experimental branch without early total war

[Premu]

I'm trying to win the game as Resistance without the early total war strategy. I mean all those technologies like strategic deception and pherocite defenses are there for a reason.

So my strategy is to "boom" and concentrate to build up as many mines early on as possible. I want to stockpile a lot of ressources for the moment I strike. Until thenI'll only have a small token space force to deal with other human factions. I plan to keep the alien provocation at a minimum and only do the killing/capturing aliens and shooting down at least one UFO to get all the useful tech.

After I research everything I need to build some truely nasty ships I want to build a lot of heavily armored dreadnoughts in parallel. I'll probably need three or four ring habitats devoted to be shipyards for that. These I'll need to break the siege force the aliens will place around Earth. I'll need a lot of those, though, and they need to be heavily armored to stand a chance.

With that I should hopefully have a chance to push the aliens back.

Did anyone try such a strategy with the newest version? Because I don't want to repeat the early all out war strategy in every game.

I started a new game and had a spectacular good start, and I'm at the point there I have to either go full in or not. So I'd love to hear tips or opinions how to pull something like that off.

[CommanderX125]

Yes, this strategy still works with the current experimental version 0.4.48. I just finished a game by doing exactly that and then destroyed everything the aliens had playing as the Initiative.

The key was to keep the hate meter at maximum 3 (better 2) and hope that no other faction starts a full war with the aliens. It happend to me once and that made defeating the aliens much harder because they had large fleets at all of their habs.

I was lucky with getting exotics because I was able to defeat two alien fleets that were trying to destroy my antimatter production hab. That seems to be a priority target for the aliens independend from the hate meter. They attacked this station when the hate meter was on green. So if you want to produce antimater, be prepared to defend that hab.

[Premu]

Thanks, these are interesting insights.

But how could you keep the hate-o-meter so low? Just having something like 20 mines and 10 space stations (which I'll need for the bonuses around earth) will most likely lead to a value close to four.

Also, when exactly were you able to start the war? Still, earlier should be overall easier, so I was planning this step around the end of the 30s.

[CommanderX125]

I killed only one alien and captured another one because it was necessary fot the story line. Other than that, I let them do their thing. Attacking the servants too often (including taking their control points) also increases the hate meter so I didn´t do that several times in a row.

In addition, I gave the servants resources like base metal to improve the relationship with them in order to prevent them from going to war with me.

That plus strategic deception should give you enought room to build up your space economy and research the technology to fight them.

I started building ships to attack the aliens at around 2038/39. They even had a hab in earth orbit which they never had in any of my previous games.

[Ericus1]

The surveillance station is absolutely part of the new features in the post 0.4.42 world.

[ArcticISAF]

The game I was playing, I kept the hate meter down with techs and minding my own business (Veteran difficulty). I was the only one besides servants with stations around Earth (2033), everyone else, their MC was skyrocketing high (over 100+). So they got constantly chased down by aliens. I had some BS ships up and stuff but then I got lost in restarting from start min-max fun (tech paths, country organization, exploring all that).

Situation was starting to degrade though, with a bunch of alien facilities on Earth, me taking them down. Aliens got pissed off and retaliate, but they were starting to go after real stations, defences sucked which I'm still thinking about... eh.

[CommanderX125]

As long as the servants don´t have the tech to hand over countrys to the aliens, there is not much advantage in taking down alien facilities. You get a few exotics but If you wait long enought, some of the other factions will do the job (and become a target of the aliens).

Another way to neutralize alien facilities is to take over the country that they are in. That also prevents the servants from handing over that country to the alien administration. Doing that pisses the aliens significantly less off than destroying their facilitys.

[ArcticISAF]

Good to know, thanks. I did not know that. I have always just gone straight into laser targeted 'See alien facility, it must die immediately' mode.