The war aspect of this game is terrible

[resonance]

Planet gets invaded. I send a defence team. If I control the battle, units get focus fired and we both lose troops. If I let them handle it, they run away with a few minor injuries and the planet is then lost pretty much right away.

If I sacrifice my units to keep the planet, I have to rehire and that means a bunch of level 1s. Meanwhile the enemy gets new troops for free and they are high level already. Then the enemy just invades again and the process repeats until I lose all my good troops or all my planets.

Now there is a fortress I can research but it takes a lot to get there and requires a bunch of materials (it says), which I can't get since every time I find a mining planet, some one steals it before I can get enough influence to claim it for mining.

How am I supposed to escape this massively escalating downward spiral? I tried bringing two medics to just constantly heal each other every time they got hit, hoping that the enemy would eventually miss but that just didn't happen.

[SubTerra]

Just so you know, the fortress is a consumable that is destroyed after defending against an attack.

[resonance]

Originally posted by SubTerra:

Just so you know, the fortress is a consumable that is destroyed after defending against an attack.

Wow really? That is even worse. Well, at least I found out here from you rather than experiencing that shock and disappointment first hand. It does say it can be upgraded I believe. Does that make it last any longer?

[Maxime at Xeno Bits]

Factions will not get new units for free, just like you they'll need to hire and train level 1 recruits. You can keep track of how many teams they have and how many of them are ready for action by spying the faction.

The latest upgrades for the training room massively help to train new units faster.

The stronghold act like a team of gaters with similar level, so if you have a lvl 5 stronghold it will act like if you had a team of lvl 5 gaters to defend the sector. If the enemy is victorious the stronghold will be destroyed and the sector lost.

Body armors will also help to gain advantage during team fights against other factions.

I hope this helps! We'll keep a close eye on players feedback regarding this aspect of the game and make adjustment in due time.

[HangarPilot]

Full disclosure: I haven't played 1.0 yet so I can't promise my strategy is still current...

The strategy I found for planet defense missions was to take an Engineer and two Soldiers (all with body armor). The AI seemed to level up super fast so I was always the underdog.

Defense: Engineer builds modest group defense. When the AI starts trying to pick on one member, Engineer can provide a substantial defense for that one to keep them alive. Watch the icons and when as the defense buff wears off, re-apply liberally.

Attack: First few battles your Soldiers are likely way behind the AI ... use "focus fire" or you probably won't hit them. About the time you get to level 8+ you can do the heavy attacks with more success. It's counter-intuitive, but pick-off their Medic first. You won't survive a long battle and the Medic is prolonging it.

One thing with the Medic ... if you shoot them first they might just heal themselves. But if you take your FIRST shot at another member, THEN start shooting the Medic, the Medic will fixate on healing the other member and let you chew them to pieces over the next few turns.

For what it's worth, that worked for me every time. I've seen other strategies centered around taking a Diplomat who can talk them into surrendering. I tried the Scientist but like the Engineer defense better. I tried the Medic, but at least early on you're so outmatched you lose the war of attrition as the AI takes you down faster than the Medic can build you back up (as you've seen).

It can be really frustrating your first go. You try-reload-try and nothing seems to work. But once you come up with something that works for you it quickly becomes a non-issue. Once you get your Soldiers leveled up it even becomes a little fun.

Hope this helps.

[resonance]

Originally posted by Maxime at Xeno Bits:

Factions will not get new units for free, just like you they'll need to hire and train level 1 recruits. You can keep track of how many teams they have and how many of them are ready for action by spying the faction.

The latest upgrades for the training room massively help to train new units faster.

The stronghold act like a team of gaters with similar level, so if you have a lvl 5 stronghold it will act like if you had a team of lvl 5 gaters to defend the sector. If the enemy is victorious the stronghold will be destroyed and the sector lost.

Body armors will also help to gain advantage during team fights against other factions.

I hope this helps! We'll keep a close eye on players feedback regarding this aspect of the game and make adjustment in due time.

I was spying on them. They had 7/8 teams when I fought them and then 8/8 immediately after I killed half the one team. At which point they invaded the planet next to it. Admittedly, I didn't have any body armour, but the maglum planet was the second one they invaded so I was cut off from getting any and did not figure out how to equip the one armour I had made until my new game.

Oh, also shouldn't having more gaters than the other team give an advantage in the battle? If I have five and they have a team of three why wouldn't I have a numbers advantage in how shots I can take? Going them then me one at a time makes little sense here.

@HangarPilot: strategy sounds interesting. Engineer was the one class I hadn't seen the abilities of so I will have to give that a try next time.

[Grompen]

I had easy success with 2-3 soldiers and exactly 2 medics. I didn't always remember body armors, but I prolly had it sometimes. With 2 medics, you can heal every round if someone is weak.

So my main strategy was attacking once or twice with my soldiers, then healing until they missed, and rince repeat. Never lost a single troop (played on medium difficulty) and always chose "Pursue" so I could kill off the enemy team. At one point all the 3 AI's had less than 2 teams.

[SubTerra]

Originally posted by resonance:

Originally posted by SubTerra:

Just so you know, the fortress is a consumable that is destroyed after defending against an attack.

Wow really? That is even worse. Well, at least I found out here from you rather than experiencing that shock and disappointment first hand. It does say it can be upgraded I believe. Does that make it last any longer?

I think upgrading just makes it do more damage when defending, but that's just what I've noticed.

[floflo67]

Originally posted by resonance:

I was spying on them. They had 7/8 teams when I fought them and then 8/8 immediately after I killed half the one team. At which point they invaded the planet next to it. Admittedly, I didn't have any body armour, but the maglum planet was the second one they invaded so I was cut off from getting any and did not figure out how to equip the one armour I had made until my new game.

I think that 7 / 8 means that they have 7 teams active doing something out of their 8 teams total.

As for combat, I played on normal difficulty, and basically the tactic was 2 soldiers + 1 medic + 1 engineer. Enemies focus medic so heal + defense and then heavy attack during 3 rounds.
Rinse and repeat. All victories, 0 deaths.

[DNLH]

I am warming up to the 4X layer, but I still think it - and especially team combat - is a bit wonky addition. At least being able to automate it is a welcome change, fighting manually either feels hopeless or cheesy, with nothing in between.

[Broote]

I just spent what I thought was a LOT of resources, took ages to get, to get a stronghold on a planet i'm mining because i want to protect it. I got it to level 5. Thinking ok, not bad. Should help me when defending right?

World was attacked when miners were there, had to cancel the mining team. Stronghold disappeared. Sent my defense team and took it back manually. (was an enemy group of 5 level 8's) I thought it was a bug, where is my stronghold? How does it help? I search and find this thread.

So.... I have to dump a LOT of resources just to get a disposable chance at defense? I don't even know how that's supposed to defend anything, it was just gone. No message, no acknowledgement. Maybe a bug? What a waste. I was assuming it would make life easier, let me focus teams on other things. Looks like I need to keep a defense team available and manually defend. Its FAR more cost effective to just make body armor and call it a day.

[SubTerra]

Originally posted by Broote:

I just spent what I thought was a LOT of resources, took ages to get, to get a stronghold on a planet i'm mining because i want to protect it. I got it to level 5. Thinking ok, not bad. Should help me when defending right?

World was attacked when miners were there, had to cancel the mining team. Stronghold disappeared. Sent my defense team and took it back manually. (was an enemy group of 5 level 8's) I thought it was a bug, where is my stronghold? How does it help? I search and find this thread.

So.... I have to dump a LOT of resources just to get a disposable chance at defense? I don't even know how that's supposed to defend anything, it was just gone. No message, no acknowledgement. Maybe a bug? What a waste. I was assuming it would make life easier, let me focus teams on other things. Looks like I need to keep a defense team available and manually defend. Its FAR more cost effective to just make body armor and call it a day.

I think it just deals damage to the attackers.

[๖ۣۜPredator]

at my first run , my npc ally started war , enemy attack my planet and take my planet and my ally make peace , again and again till the enemy came to earth took two planets more and then earth .
2nd run i started in sandbox without factions. ervery some hours the game crash. u can hear the sound stutter and maybe quit quickly enough before.
scientists sometimes holding things in a hand (probes) and never lose them .
i wanted to rearange the boxes (deleted some and build some new) with the bulletproof vest , gravity boots ... and now the items laying on the ground and i wanted to destroy them but it just worked at some ,but some i can click and nothing happend not even the button get a clickanimation . (engis could take the materials and store them)
now the bots pick them up and drop them ,so they move them a little bit each time , but are around half my base by now

[Pinkeh]

The base building has been really fun. The exploration is probably the best. The war part of the game is not great.

I beat my first game with science/research victory, but struggling to win via domination.

[resonance]

Nah, it is easy enough to control now that I know what I am doing. Whenever you hire anyone, set their growth stats to full body and full class stat and everything else at zero.(you can mind strength if you want later) Then as your gaters train they will add stats to body as they go and have 150 HP at level 10. This makes team battles VERY easy. For your soldiers the class stat is perception which is what gives accuracy.

Then when you fight the enemy can hit your team and it will take five attacks just to kill one of yours, and you can have blind and shield and heal if you want to fix that.

I will say that I still don't really enjoy that aspect of the game as much as the rest, even if I can beat it easily now. It just seems like you either do it the main way or expect to die. Not a lot of room for variation.

[rwhill42]

This really is a big issue, wars aren't really winnable. I hope you all will spend some time working on this aspect of it. And once you lose a mining planet, you're locked out of improvements that could help you win in the future.