The campaign

[Gazz]

So in general, if you pick up a new game you run through the campaign to get familiar with the game mechanics.

I tried that and my first encounter with an enemy ship was a 200k hover/spaceship thing that fired doomsday missiles at me.

Is THIS campaign to be played only AFTER you have a large portfolio of huge ships that can survive something like that?

[Dunhill]

Definitely after. Play designer first, make a few craft that work and try them out in combat against enemies while still in designer.

To be honest, the campaign sucks ass and I've spent the vast majority of my playtime in designer.

[The man, the myth, the leg]

after
the building mecahnics are quite complex and you will struggle to properly learn them with the time pressure of the campaign

you dont necessarily need a large protfolie, just a checklist of some necesary vehicle types
the most important being:
spy sattelite
cargo transport
recource collector(can be combined with cargo transport)
fast, cheap interceptor(mostly for capturing terrain
brawler

for your main porfolie i would reccomend waiting until you actually start doing the campaign to see what you meet and what you need to coutner that. most factions fight diffrantlky and thus have diffrent counters. you can always pause the campaign and start building
if you actually plan on doing the campaign, whihc most FtD players dont

[Dakota]

Generally it goes:
-tutorial
-designer
-missions
-campaign

In designer you only really need to make one craft if that's all you wanted, as long as it fills all the roles of combat, resource collection, scouting, and building.

[Gazz]

Originally posted by The man, the myth, the leg:

you can always pause the campaign and start building if you actually plan on doing the campaign, which most FtD players dont

This is the weird kind of game where you spend most of the time not playing the game. =P

I don't think building all the "support" would be an issue.
The one thing I struggle with is that I'm expected to start the game with a highly advanced fighting ship since there seems to be no power scaling as you would expect from a game.
The first enemy ship I encountered was 200k+...

I don't even think I'm terrible at this. I now have one 140k-ish destroyer type that (under AI control) wins more often then not when going up against 200-300k non-subs.
It's smol so obviously it cannot deal with things like PAC where the only counter seems to be "Oh yeah, just be bigger"

[The man, the myth, the leg]

Originally posted by Gazz:

Originally posted by The man, the myth, the leg:

you can always pause the campaign and start building if you actually plan on doing the campaign, which most FtD players dont

This is the weird kind of game where you spend most of the time not playing the game. =P

I don't think building all the "support" would be an issue.
The one thing I struggle with is that I'm expected to start the game with a highly advanced fighting ship since there seems to be no power scaling as you would expect from a game.
The first enemy ship I encountered was 200k+...

I don't even think I'm terrible at this. I now have one 140k-ish destroyer type that (under AI control) wins more often then not when going up against 200-300k non-subs.
It's smol so obviously it cannot deal with things like PAC where the only counter seems to be "Oh yeah, just be bigger"

Designer is the game for most of the playerbase
What difficulty did you start with
Getting out costed 2:1 doesn't sound normal for easy or medium
Meeting PAC early on also doesn't sound like easy campaign stuff

Did you properly use the bonus resources from diplomacy?

[Dragon]

For your first campaign, play on custom settings and configure it so AI factions don't use the nastier craft too often. Diplomacy don't give you much options but if you have to go to war, focus on the DWG first and conquer Eriwick as you grow. Dump the commodities you get from diplomacy options right away, it helps a lot, you can accumulate commodities later once you're more established.

DWG with simpler craft is pretty easy and good for learning the basics. From there go for OW, they're the bulky, slow lot so it's easy to monitor them and track their movements. LH is also a good early faction to take on if you want to observe skimmers, hydrofoils and energy weapons in action.

Also, use strategic radar satellites early on. They're easy and cheap to put together and gives huge coverage to clear fog of war. Tonnage war also works, use a fast craft to target enemy transports and have enough storage space available to pick up salvage after destroying them. This will disrupt their resource income (they can't build big stuff if they can't afford it) and the materials you get from salvage helps a lot in the early game.

EDIT: I also spend more time in designer but I built craft specifically for use in campaign. And it can be very rewarding seeing your craft perform well in an actual war scenario.

[The man, the myth, the leg]

neter is not that hard to need custom configs
while some craft are scary, a lot of them(even godly tier are old and quite unoptimised) and the game will try to avoid sending in the scaries stuff on lower difficulties unless you are really stomping the enemy

as for actually countering PAC
that is true, you dont. the whole idea is that as a weapon type it does not have hard counters, but for that it gets horrible inefficency
the main thing to think about against PAC is redundancy. A good pierce gun WILL hit your internals. you just have to make sure your ship can fight after that
Other PAC damage types are not really something you should specifically worry about

[Carolus Magnus]

Originally posted by Gazz:

This is the weird kind of game where you spend most of the time not playing the game. =P

The one thing I struggle with is that I'm expected to start the game with a highly advanced fighting ship since there seems to be no power scaling as you would expect from a game.

There's a lot of subcommunities within the FtD playerbase; some of them would argue that the designer is the main hub of the game, not the game modes where you put your designs to use, like the campaign or adventure modes. And within that group, there are those who powergame and those who focus on hyperrealistic paper tiger replicas. I myself firmly believe the campaign is the main focus, and all my building is done with campaign play in the back of my head. But the whole of From the Depths outside of the pure engineering aspects is a bit raw, and the campaign is no different.

In regards to your second comment, the game has been in continuous development since late 2014 and the playerbase has never been that large, with as many people dropping out as hopping on board (aside from an anomalous explosion in popularity caused by Robbaz). I don't really interface with the community as much as I used to, but I've been on board since those first days, which offers some perspective on the whole. I'm sure there are other early adopters here too.

The point is; because of this (and the elite few having most say in the direction of developments nowadays), the game and the community at times trend towards a form of seclusion or inward focus which can feel like a detriment (or even hostility) to new players who are ... quite out of their depths when first getting started.

I'd say, don't let it discourage you and try some easier settings at first. If Neter proves to be too hard, there's also two specialised campaigns in the forms of Glao and Ashes, focussed on small specialised units and tanks respectively. I don't know how those are balanced nowadays, but Glao used to be a safe starting point. The unit roster is far smaller and you can really specialise your own small builds into experimental niches or synergies.

[Gazz]

I just now learned how campaign battles even work. =P

I figured that to deal with larger ships I could just bring 2 of my destroyer types as "a fleet".
But no. You enter 1v1 battles in a conga line which makes smaller craft pretty useless.
So... back to the drawing board to build the One Big Ship that can actually win a fight.

And yes, I do like the *idea* of a campaign because it adds consistency and a strategy layer.
I'm not yet convinced that it's a great one but it exists. ;)

I did build satellites but those have a horrible tendency to drop to the ground while OOP - even while stuck in zero g without any thrusters whatsoever so that it CAN not go anywhere.
(yes, I set their waypoint "high" but they still flop to the ground eventually)
And they seem to straight up disable their satellite coverage while OOP. /sigh

[The man, the myth, the leg]

Originally posted by Gazz:

I just now learned how campaign battles even work. =P

I figured that to deal with larger ships I could just bring 2 of my destroyer types as "a fleet".
But no. You enter 1v1 battles in a conga line which makes smaller craft pretty useless.
So... back to the drawing board to build the One Big Ship that can actually win a fight.

And yes, I do like the *idea* of a campaign because it adds consistency and a strategy layer.
I'm not yet convinced that it's a great one but it exists. ;)

I did build satellites but those have a horrible tendency to drop to the ground while OOP - even while stuck in zero g without any thrusters whatsoever so that it CAN not go anywhere.
(yes, I set their waypoint "high" but they still flop to the ground eventually)
And they seem to straight up disable their satellite coverage while OOP. /sigh

You can increase the battle size in the bottom right corner
By defaults it's very small
It's there for performance, so larger battles don't end up as unplayable lag fests on weaker PCs. probably less relevant now that the game has been out for...10 years
You can also include vehicles in a different order to choose what spawns first

Space is also very weird
Gravity reduces up to a certain zone where it is 0g, after which it starts increasing again, soon being more than 1g

[Prisoner 76561197992841073]

Originally posted by Gazz:

I just now learned how campaign battles even work. =P

I figured that to deal with larger ships I could just bring 2 of my destroyer types as "a fleet".
But no. You enter 1v1 battles in a conga line which makes smaller craft pretty useless.
So... back to the drawing board to build the One Big Ship that can actually win a fight.

i dont think so.