Beat the campaign on Hard as Solarian

[asmithesq]

I very rarely post on the net but I beat the Krahen on hard as Solarian and was pretty chuffed, and beforehand was a little surprised about the lack of info on how to do this so thought I'd share a few thoughts.

I would say the key point is that its not the most planets that matters its the most population and secondly the fact the first two planets appear to be guaranteed to get a lot of traders.

Opening movies...
-Restart if you don't get the random event to take a pirate planet (i.e an alien invasion occurs instead) I hate to restart / reload and rarely do but this is lost cause otherwise.
- The first things I did was sell fighters, sell space factory, buy trade port and trade centre. Turn off trade centre unless traders come (think I got centre / port right way around).
-When a decent destroyer for the price comes on the market buy it. Also but 1 tracked cannon tank. If the destroyers are super cheap better to get 2.
-Take pirate planet. There fleets are tough and it is hard not to lose destroyer but I managed - a) they will have a destroyer with more firepower than rest take that out first and b) if one of your destroyers is nearly done then retreat then one across the map, theirs will follow it.
- Set tax to zero on home planet and pirate planet. build up to 3 trade centres and bank on both (when pop can support them) and try and build the population buildings before they are needed. These are going to 22,000 pop so you need 3 houses, 2 food, 2 bars, 3 hospitals, 1 police.
-Turn off the trade builldings unless a trader is actually about to arrive. You should be rolling in cash shortly. These first two planets are special and seem to get a lot of trade.


Mid game...
-Once you start gettting spare cash after the above you want to colonize a planet or two and research machine gun fort. Note it is inefficient to have research buildings left on when not in use. i.e. its better to have 3 of each type on one planet than 3 of each type on different planets (saves on power plants and you can reserch more).
- If a colony hub finishes then set its tax to zero until it gets to 22k as per above.
-Get a machine gun fort on each planet, although you should only have 3 - 4 planets.
-Now you are going to get declared war on about now. Firstly they can't take your planets if they have machine gun fort. Next they overestimate the strenghth of their fighter based fleets. Buy several more heavy destroyers from the trade port. you shouldnt have built any or done any research on ships except whats needed for machine gun fort. You will have one level of lasers to upgrade on starting existing destroyers so do that. Then wipe out their fleet. Use satellites and take their easy planets first. Then build a trade port and the front and buy enough tanks to take the planets with any defenses.
- Once your first race is done its all downhill. Another race will declare war soon, if its very soon use same tactic, unless you have a bit longer and can build better ships and tanks.
-Always keep some spare cash and keep and eye on whats for sale, you can get instant colonizers cheaper than they are to build.

Later game..
Colonize more planets, but its more important to get the pop to 22k before turning on tax than it is to colonize more planets so dont overstretch.
-Reserch laser fortress asap then you should get mafia event which will give you heavy fortress making planets much safer.
-Avoid actually fighting the enemy fleets if you can. Its better to take their planets and outrun their fleets than it is to fight. The ground is where ultimate victory lies.
- For tanks you want tracked with rocket turrent 1 and range extension, then when you can anti-grave and rocket turrent 2.
-Don't let the krahen attack you, if poss have heavy fortress on each planet and some decent tankes, find out where his fleet is then from as far away from their fleet as poss start taking his planets and putting a heavy fortress down on each one. Avoid their fleet.
-Once you are about 2 third way through stop the 22k pop thing and just make sure each planet has a heavy fortress.

[Saracen26]

I still remember back in the day going toe to toe with the Kra'Hen on the hardest difficulty. Coming together for the first time in a Massive Space battle with tonnes of ships and being almost equal in every respect. Scraping a victory with 2/3 destroyers left. Then having to rebuild hard and fast for several smaller but equally devastating battles.

So many memories of this game. Every one of them absolutely fantastic.

[ilenfautpeu]

One important thing that was not said here is that IA is too dumb to divide a fleet. Each race will most of the time have only one fleet with all of their spaceships. So if one of these fleet (for example kraken) tries to chase your fleet, just divide it and send it in three different directions. The AI will pick one so you can reunite the other two and do your business while you keep the AI occupied, by continuing to divide your fleet. Ultimately you may end up with loosing one ship while having earned a lot of time.

I even remember that one time I won over the super strong fleet (about 100x more powerful than mine) only because they were too far from a defenseless planet when I conquered their last colony (when the case happens they loose if they don't take it back within two monthes)

Another thing I wish to mention is about spying. Having good spies is key to success. Won't be effective againts kraken though, but any other will. when you manage to steal the amiral staship plan you are so glad!

There is a lot of other general tricks that are useful to know, that are due to game or AI limitations. For example you can copy the design of your preferred tank 20 times with 20 different names. Then you build 1 of each, and 20 of the last. When you land on the planet, tanks will stack up by name, meaning you will have 19 tank with a stack of 1 and one tank with a stack of 20. That last one will OS the fortresses

[machaiping]

One thing about the starting Pirate mission is that you actually don't need to waste money on the extra tank to beat their ground force. The pirate on Hard Mode has 3 machine gun wheeled tanks, which your 2 starter machine gun wheeled tanks can beat by abusing choke point and AI pathfinding that waste time trying to get all 3 tanks through that choke point for a while before it gives up and find another route. And then, when the rest of their tanks get around as you killed the first tank, you can abuse AI's target fixation on the low health tank to run lap around the Colony Hub while you place the high health tank at the crossroad to get potshot on pirate's tanks that run passed until they die.

Granted, you probably need to reload a save game to pull this off successfully because pathfinding AI of ground units is atrocious and can easily screw you over as you used it to screw over the AI as described above. But if you can pull it off, you saved quite a bit of money from buying extra tank to attack the pirate which is crucial in the early game when you have tight budget. That, and the tanks you get from Black Market cannot attack other faction's planets that has Machine Gun Forts anyway, you'd need at least half a dozen of Anti Grav Tanks (Tier 3 tank) with Improved Rocket Turret to reliably beat them.

[Dray Prescot]

The Pirates at the start of the Game are easily handled
First unload all Tanks to the ground so none of them can be killed in the first battle with the Pirate ships
Second, build several of the ground to space guns on your starting World.
Third keep most of your ships at HW, but you can send out out one or two to get basic information on the Stars nearby.
Fourth. When the pirates attack you, keep your warships close to HW, and the ground to space guns should help you kill the pirates with no lost ships.

After that, pull your warships together, load up your tanks and invade the Pirate base. You might have to fight a 2nd pirate fleet but it will be weaker than the first. (Don't forget to depower the Guns after you no longer need them)

If you are playing on Hard difficulty, you might want to build a Tank Factory and build a few more tanks, on your HW to give yourself a stronger invasion force.

After you capture the Pirate Base, The Merchant Ships will start visiting you. If you take too long to capture the Pirate Base, the Merchants will tell another Empire about it, for them to attack it. You definitely want to capture the Pirate Base, doing so will give you the Tech for a new Building Type. It will be a very useful new Colony.

Hint: the main story line (for a Human/Solarian Player) requires you to rescue a captured Human Scientist to solve a threatened volcanic eruption on one of your Colony Worlds. This Colony MUST be on a Volcanic World- DO NOT TERRAFORM IT FIRST, before colonizing it- that will cancel the event Chain. You need that Scientist for at least one later Event in the Game for a Human player. He will also give you an nice ship design that you can build, but that can NOT be upgraded. You will need a Spy to find him and the Alien Race group of ships transporting him. You will have to defeat that group of Alien Race warships in battle to rescue him.

This Volcanic World should be your first colony that you do after capturing the Pirate Base. Look for a Volcanic World that has a high bonus for building ships there

https://steamcommunity.com/app/490370/discussions/0/1636418037460018670/

Also read this thread and the thread it points to about having a lot of Trade Centers in order to generate a large cash flow from the Merchant Ships.

The key to success in this game is micromanaging your populations and change them to running different buildings on the planet's surface. i.e. you have more buildings such as ground to space guns, Trade Centers, Research Labs, Tank and Ship Factories than you have the population to run. Just turn off the power to a building and use the population to run a different building that you power up. You should have more buildings than you can power+ provide labor for, at the same time.

For instance most early Research Projects only require 1 type (out of 3 types) of Research Labs to be running. So only power up that type and turn off the power to the other types. And use the labor to run those other Buildings. Higher level Research Projects can require several types of Research Labs to be running at the same time in your Empire

It requires a LOT of cash to build lots of extra buildings, so read closely my Thread about getting the most income out of Trade Centers and Merchants.

Trade Centers can be turned off most of the time, just turn them on, i.e. power and labor, just before the Merchant Ships land at the Space Port. Leave the Space Port ON always. Then depower them after the Merchant Ship leaves. The Space Port is what attracts the Merchant Ships. The Merchant Ships seem to favor visiting certain planets and not visiting other planets. So build up the Trade Centers on the Worlds that they visit regularly. Trade Centers require a lot of labor to run. So you have to take the steps needed to increase the populations there. A world with at least 30,000 population could run about 4 Trade Centers, with a Bank building (I think it will take 22,000 population just to run the 4 Trade Centers and 1 Bank IIRC), you could be collecting 30,000 cash for EACH Merchant Ship Visit to that World. (see my thread mentioned above). IIRC it will cost 60,000 to build the 4 Trade Centers and 1 Bank (more Banks are worthless on a World) plus the buildings to support the population to grow to that size. It takes time, research to unlock new Buildings to support large populations, and the cost of building and running those population support Buildings to reach populations over 30k on a World, just so you can have the 4 Trade Centers and a Bank ( and a Trade Port) to get lots of income from the Merchants. Merchants can also be killed by Pirates

Another hint: Merchant Ships come from and head towards other nearby AI controlled Empires, so that tells you what directions to look in to find those Empires.

When you are not building Tanks, Fighters, or Ships you can turn off the power and labor going to the Factories producing them.

Another useful hint, If you build a 2nd City center building on a World, it will double the speed that new buildings get built at that World.

You can leave your ground defense and space defense buildings turned off most of the time, just power and labor them up when you see a threat coming in.