Control points protection is worthless

[FAIR]

So I go through the process:
- propaganda until you get supporters
- crackdown
- purge
- protect interest

And suddenly, from thin air, "you lost a control point". Repeat until you lose the country.
If I try the same "crackdown chance 0%"???

Has the AI some cheat mechanic to steal control points that are protected?. I can't keep playing the game like this. It takes too long to secure a country to lose it in a second without any explanation.

[dhitch89]

Was this control point given to the Servants, by any chance? Because as the alien's abduction numbers increase, particularly from surveillance ships orbiting Earth, their special 'enthrall' missions become easier to force various things about a country in favor of the Servants (or sometimes the Protectorate, if they're winning instead).

As a pro-alien faction, this helps you, but you want to stop this as any other faction by killing/capturing the aliens (and intercepting their surveillance ships, even if it's just a suicide attempt; any combat resets the mission for 6 months).

Because once this starts happening, it generally snowballs from there; these missions bypass normal defenses by design for story reasons.

[FAIR]

Yes, it's mostly the Servants and the Protectorate. This mechanic is not explain anywhere!, so they bypass everything and this is because there is a surveillance ship in orbit?? did I get it right?

[AgaresOaks]

Originally posted by FAIR:

Yes, it's mostly the Servants and the Protectorate. This mechanic is not explain anywhere!, so they bypass everything and this is because there is a surveillance ship in orbit?? did I get it right?

There should be popup events with bright orange text in them telling you about the mechanic. (there's the remote possibility you've COMPLETELY neglected the storyline objectives, but if the protectorate are getting CPs that seems unlikely)

[dhitch89]

Originally posted by FAIR:

Yes, it's mostly the Servants and the Protectorate. This mechanic is not explain anywhere!, so they bypass everything and this is because there is a surveillance ship in orbit?? did I get it right?

They bypass everything if it succeeds; these enthrall missions still operate like the others, in that there's success/failure chances.

Their chances start low and go up with abduction numbers. An individual alien's abduction mission is limited to a single country and won't too make much difference by itself, but a surveillance ship mission causes abductions in every country - the latter adds up rather quickly, which is why if you're not a pro-alien faction, you want to stop that ASAP.

In addition, certain Servant/Protectorate projects being completed increase the abduction/enthrall mission chances, at least when playing as them. Aren't sure if it's universally the case, yet.

[Vuyek]

event driven ayys intervention with pheromones

there is a solution to this. it is a bit final.

murderize servants councillors. often. do same for protectorate (although in my games they actively fight the servants, so maybe not)

definitely murderize ayys on Terra. as often as you can afford to.

[Wokelander]

It's definitely not

[Nats]

Maybe the news items / popups should explain it all a bit better, so the player knows he is not doing anything wrong, and that its a special mechanic with the Servants or whatever that is causing them to lose control points even when well protected.

[" THE BLOODY-NINE "]

You really cannot allow the Alien destroyer surveillance ship to complete its mission in 2025 or so ( the first one )- its worth countless abductions and wrecks you long term. So best to redo yur game from there ( call it " live and learn" or in yur case get comfortable being enthralled by the aliens whom now own you and pistol whip you daily for pleasure ;)

[tntcraze]

The easiest way to counter these enthrall missions is unification, enthrall gets significantly harder the higher the population in a country.

[db48x]

FWIW, the alien mechanics are laid out quite explicitly in the Codex, once you unlock the relevant techs. Most of the Codex pages are pretty bare so I think that people flip through it at the start of the first game and conclude that there’s nothing useful there. Then they never go back and look at the new pages that they’ve unlocked.

Basically Alien Xenoflora, Abductions, Terror, and Alien Facilities all help the aliens take over countries. They can gift those control points to the Servants and Protectorate, or they can use them to create the Alien Nation once things really get rolling.

Here’s a little hint: having aliens running around giving the Servants and Protectorate control points means that they’re almost always above their CP cap. This gives them a penalty to defending their control points, and forces them to abandon control points in order to try to stay close to the cap. Having a few aliens running around in Africa or Asia or South America will help you consolidate elsewhere. You can let the Servants gain control points in a European minor, for example, then kick them out and take over once they are forced to abandon it. Even if the former owner was your friend they won’t hate you for doing it, and ultimately it makes you stronger. Try to use the chaos to your benefit, when you can.

[FAIR]

Originally posted by db48x:

FWIW, the alien mechanics are laid out quite explicitly in the Codex, once you unlock the relevant techs. Most of the Codex pages are pretty bare so I think that people flip through it at the start of the first game and conclude that there’s nothing useful there. Then they never go back and look at the new pages that they’ve unlocked.

Basically Alien Xenoflora, Abductions, Terror, and Alien Facilities all help the aliens take over countries. They can gift those control points to the Servants and Protectorate, or they can use them to create the Alien Nation once things really get rolling.

Here’s a little hint: having aliens running around giving the Servants and Protectorate control points means that they’re almost always above their CP cap. This gives them a penalty to defending their control points, and forces them to abandon control points in order to try to stay close to the cap. Having a few aliens running around in Africa or Asia or South America will help you consolidate elsewhere. You can let the Servants gain control points in a European minor, for example, then kick them out and take over once they are forced to abandon it. Even if the former owner was your friend they won’t hate you for doing it, and ultimately it makes you stronger. Try to use the chaos to your benefit, when you can.

This is not what is happening. There are no aliens events in the country and suddenly secured control points are given to the Servants. Someone explained this is because there is an alien ship somewhere activating this mechanic. There are too many hidden critical mechanics, the game is a chore, sorry, it has a good concept but there are so many layers of obnoxious things that is hard to go play again, moreover it takes forever to get anything done. Blame me for not reading page number 431 of the codex, who cares.

The game loop is fast forward until mission assignment. You perform 6 (if you have all councillors) actions and then you fast forward again. You spend years building a base in space, then the smallest alien ship arrives, destroys everything, sure. The tech tree has hundreds of techs, no way to tell what is useful. I couldn't find a way to create ground units to invade countries. I've changed the policy and that did nothing. I have 1 "tank" my neighbour has 5. No clue how this works either. Mission objectives... "Take a neighbour control point" this assume there are free, non-taken, control points. This objective blocks progression because after a few year there are no available free control points, no way to unblock this objective. Ship design.... click "auto-complete"-> ship won't leave the orbit, ship doesn't have enough thrust, ship doesn't have enough delta-v.. Zzzzzz, nothing works. Alright I need thrust and delta-v, let me see... yeah you need 50 missing techs to get there.

I really tried to like the game, and I am sure around the 60 h mark in a single play-through things become a little more satisfying but... it's a massive time investment to get there. Will most likely play again somewhere in the future but... it has 200 active players and I can understand why.

[dhitch89]

Originally posted by FAIR:

This is not what is happening. There are no aliens events in the country and suddenly secured control points are given to the Servants. Someone explained this is because there is an alien ship somewhere activating this mechanic.

Well, alien events are just what's visible. The alien councilors, as stated, have their own missions that they perform - or try to - every turn; sometimes you see the results, and other times you don't.

Control points being gifted are what happens if the abduction numbers have gotten high enough. The orbiting ships they hover over Earth helps a lot in that, but given enough time, alien 'events' could eventually get there too with alien councilors running over Earth.

And I might add for the objectives list, those general ones - like 'control the Earth', build your councilor team', etc - are just there as an overarching goal. They can't ever be 'completed' in the traditional sense, as far as I've seen, because they'll always remain visible. Ie, you can ignore them in practice.

Beyond that, this is definitely a game that takes (at least) a dozen playthroughs (or attempts) to really get what you're doing. I know I went through at least that many in my first dozens of hours, and I'm still learning more stuff at 200+ hours as-of-this-writing.

[Nats]

Originally posted by db48x:

FWIW, the alien mechanics are laid out quite explicitly in the Codex, once you unlock the relevant techs. Most of the Codex pages are pretty bare so I think that people flip through it at the start of the first game and conclude that there’s nothing useful there. Then they never go back and look at the new pages that they’ve unlocked.

Well that is because a Codex thing is probably seen by most people, me included, as a sort of game manual with hints. So I dont like to look at it. Because I never read game manuals.

I have seen messages on alien info being added but completely forgot about them. I dont even know where the icon is tbh. I think if this is a regularly updated dossier on the aliens and other factions, and needs to be used throughout the game, it should be prominently indicated on the game's UI and called something more obvious so players know to look in it regularly as providing useful info.

Tonight I will have to take a look.

[db48x]

Originally posted by FAIR:

This is not what is happening. There are no aliens events in the country and suddenly secured control points are given to the Servants.

No, there are alien _councilors_ walking around from region to region doing missions. They do one mission per turn, then walk to an adjacent region. They plant Xenoflora. They abduct people in order to study them and gain bonuses to future missions. They Enthrall the Public to change public opinion. They Enthrall Elites to directly capture control points and give them to a pro-alien faction.

As the game progresses and you research Xenology techs you will gradually gain more information about what is going on. Eventually you can detect the aliens directly. As your councilor skills go up, you research techs, and you build orbital infrastructure your ability to track the aliens improves. What was hidden will be revealed to you.

Originally posted by FAIR:

Someone explained this is because there is an alien ship somewhere activating this mechanic.

Yes, the aliens will also send ships to sit in Earth orbit and conduct surveillance. You can literally see them in the ship list, and it tells you when their surveillance mission will be complete. Then they fly off to one of their bases to resupply. When they complete a surveillance mission they gain exactly the same bonus to their operations as if an alien councilor had abducted people in every single region of the planet.

You really, really, want to build a ship and fight them off before the do that too often. Even with starting technology human weapons are capable of killing a single surveillance ship. Once you research missiles even fleets of alien ships are not much of a problem.

Originally posted by FAIR:

There are too many hidden critical mechanics, the game is a chore, sorry, it has a good concept but there are so many layers of obnoxious things that is hard to go play again, moreover it takes forever to get anything done. Blame me for not reading page number 431 of the codex, who cares.

This game isn’t for everybody. We’re just answering your questions. If you don’t want to play it that’s fine, but don’t argue with the people who are trying to help.

And no one blames you for not reading the new codex pages that were unlocked. It’s a mistake that every player makes!

Originally posted by FAIR:

The tech tree has hundreds of techs, no way to tell what is useful.

I disagree. The tech tree is a bit unwieldy, but all of the information is there at the start of the game. For each ship component you can see the stats long before you pick which techs to research. Those stats tell you what is useful, and unlike most games the stats are not unique to the game. They are the same stats that real life rocket components have, and your knowledge of real life rocketry will tell you which parts are useful for which missions.

People without knowledge of real life rocketry, who don’t already know what delta-v and ISP are usually bounce off the game pretty hard. Like I said, the game isn’t for everyone. You might also try playing Kerbal Space Program, which is a completely different kind of game that will give you a better understanding of rocketry.

Originally posted by FAIR:

I couldn't find a way to create ground units to invade countries. I've changed the policy and that did nothing. I have 1 "tank" my neighbour has 5. No clue how this works either.

Building a new army is expensive. You tell your country to build an army by putting pips into the “Build Army” spending category. Then each day that passes your country spends its investment points, spreading them out over all the spending you have decided on. Once the “Build Army” category builds up to 50 whole investment points an army will be created. That could easily take months or years; it mostly depends on how many investment points your country has and how many of them you dedicate to building the army. It’s a big decision.

And in this game, most territory will not be gained through warfare with other countries, most of the time. It can be played that way, but you can play without ever actually fighting other human countries too. Beyond the cost of building the armies, and the continual cost of maintaining them (one whole investment point per army per turn for as long as it exists, slowing the growth of your country for the entire rest of the game), warfare trashes the stats of the regions you conquer. It kills the people, trashes the industries, lowers the GDP, etc, etc.

Originally posted by FAIR:

Mission objectives... "Take a neighbour control point" this assume there are free, non-taken, control points. This objective blocks progression because after a few year there are no available free control points, no way to unblock this objective.

I have no idea what mission that is! Maybe the tutorial? Since the game is in early access I only play it once or twice a year, and I probably did the tutorial a couple of years ago. I can’t really help you with that, other than to say that running the Control Nation mission is usually what you do for the very first dozen to hundred turns of the game. It sounds like you should have been able to complete that step of the tutorial on the first or second turn.

Originally posted by FAIR:

Ship design.... click "auto-complete"-> ship won't leave the orbit, ship doesn't have enough thrust, ship doesn't have enough delta-v.. Zzzzzz, nothing works. Alright I need thrust and delta-v, let me see... yeah you need 50 missing techs to get there.

Yea, your mistake is thinking that you need to build ships that go places. You don’t! The Space Shuttle couldn’t leave orbit either, and we launched that a few times per year just for fun.

What you need to do at the beginning of the game is to defend earth from surveillance ships. Those defenders don’t need to go to Mars, because the aliens are not surveilling Mars. They don’t need to go to the Kuiper belt to fight the aliens, because that’s impossible at the current tech level. They just need to sit in orbit and intercept surveillance ships when they show up. Give them about 7 to 9 kps of delta-v (ΔV). Thrust is kinda important because it enables you to force combat. Usually 1g of thrust will get the job done. 3g would be better but might be out of reach, especially with the first nuclear engines. 0.1g (or 100 milli-gees) is probably the least you want to have in most cases.

In this game you will do ship combat at all tech levels. You’ll start with chemical engines and repurposed naval guns, then later graduate to rail guns and frickin laser beams and nuclear engines. Or fusion! Or antimatter! Later in the game your ships will gain the efficiency and power to actually go hunting the aliens, but at the start of the game you just haven’t developed that capability yet.

Originally posted by FAIR:

I really tried to like the game, and I am sure around the 60 h mark in a single play-through things become a little more satisfying but... it's a massive time investment to get there.

Next time I suggest playing an Accelerated Campaign. 60 hours should be enough to put you into the end-game, with hundreds of ships deployed defending your assets and attacking the aliens. In an Accelerated Campaign that should be more than enough to finish the game.

Originally posted by FAIR:

Will most likely play again somewhere in the future…

Yea, I suggest coming back once a year to see how it’s improved over time. No Early Access game is complete until they actually hit version 1.0 and actually release it for real.

Have fun!

[db48x]

Originally posted by Nats:

Well that is because a Codex thing is probably seen by most people, me included, as a sort of game manual with hints. So I dont like to look at it. Because I never read game manuals.

I have seen messages on alien info being added but completely forgot about them. I dont even know where the icon is tbh. I think if this is a regularly updated dossier on the aliens and other factions, and needs to be used throughout the game, it should be prominently indicated on the game's UI and called something more obvious so players know to look in it regularly as providing useful info.

Tonight I will have to take a look.

I completely agree. The button is just a little “?” in a box next to the date towards the top right-hand corner of the screen. It’s unobtrusive and thus very easy to overlook.