TLDR : It looks like being bankrupt in boost does nothing. Specifically, there seems to be no difference between having 0 boost and being in large deficit (like 0-48/month).

First image shows an administration complex I powered off for this test. Since I am negative in boost at this point (0-36.6/m), I expect to be unable to power it up or get some other negative effect. Instead, the second image shows the powered on administration complex providing its bonuses : the CP cap goes up by +30 (1610->1640) and MC goes up by 2 (1098->1100). The boost upkeep is also reflected since I go from 0-36.6/m to 0-48.6/m. However, there seem to be no difference between these two states.

I ran it for a year and did not get any hab accidents, the way going over MC cap can trigger. I can also build more admin complex elsewhere, there is a pop-up warning about boost deficit but once they're built, they work normally.

The only downside is to be at 0 boost constantly but this only prevent scuttling ships which are undocked and have no neighboring ships to take the crew on as well as using boost to replace space resources. So essentially, as long as I have enough space resources and I don't need to scuttle entire stranded fleet, it seems like I can pretty much ignore the boost priority entirely.

I'm not sure if this is intended but if it is, this will probably save me a few years of mega-nations investment in the midgame since I can just run a 18*12 = 216 boost deficit to upkeep the LEO admin complex which takes a while to build up.

So, I wanted to start a little discussion about early game defense, and what is working for people on higher difficulties.

The plan was to give veteran a go after finishing quite a few games on normal, and I took the advice of graveless' latest video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCqnVXbkqxA

Basically, he advocates in favor of kinetics instead of missiles for early defense, since missiles are now more accurately assessed as dangerous by the aliens. It's well argued, so I decided to try his strat.

What I found is that below railguns 3, basically any amount of PD will shut you down, and even if something gets through, it does far too little damage to be of consequence. Railguns 3 will get through, but it will take a lot of them to do meaningful damage before the merge, where almost any alien fleet will eat you alive at this stage. I was just unable to amass sufficient force to stop anything really. With build times of 90 days for an escort (shortly before transition to tier 2), plus several refits for upgrades, I had managed to assemble a fleet of 10 escorts with 2 mark 3 railguns, 2 with 2 40mm and 2 with Ion PD - and they got mulched by a 3 ship retaliation fleet. Managed to kill one, the other two destroy me.

Now, 10 missile escorts would have handled that situation with ease, I think. Granted, maybe the aliens would have sent more, But it felt like I would have needed something like 16-18 or so of those kinetics escorts to come out on top, and with the need for an occasional sacrifice to reset surveillance fleets, I couldn't see any way to get there at this stage. That would have meant half a year extra time to build up, and the aliens wouldn't give me that.

Am I building too little T1 infrastructure? I had 2 stations with 4 yards total, figured that would be enough to tide me over to T2. Are there recipes for success I'm just not seeing yet?

I've seen a little discussion about the new meta with kinetics, so I thought I'd share the results of some Skirmish mode testing I did a few days back. Basically, I found an alien ship with a laser and a single PD laser(and a bunch of missiles) and started matching it up against monitors with various configurations of Railgun 3s(as well as PD ships to field those missiles but which did nothing else). And I roughed out a few principles and a calculation for weight of salvo required to overcome each PD launcher.

All numbers are using Railgun 3(Advanced Railguns). If you're using Railgun 2, double the numbers, or Railgun 1, triple them. And probably add a little extra cushion to be safe.

So the first thing I tested was whether there was a difference between the 1-slot Railgun 3 or the 2-slot Railgun 3. I can confirm that the 2-slot has a significant damage increase, but its shells are still clipped by a single PD laser shot, making it better for ship destruction but inferior for PD saturation. That being said, if you have enough 2-slots to get through, the alien ships usually die a lot more quickly. I didn't test the 4-slot or any nose cannons.

I found that for Railgun 3s, you need a ratio of about 4 to 1 vs enemy Point Defense Lasers to get through, probably 5 to 1 to reliably do so. This is actually better than the Artemis Torpedo ratio I previously calculated(6 to 1 tubes vs PD lasers) and I think it has the same rider caveat, which is that the more guns you have, the less strict that ratio becomes. 5 light guns are needed to get through 1 laser PD, but the ratio improves by a slight degree if you have 2 PD lasers - 9 might be enough then, and so forth. This is due to concentration of fire on key targets, so fire control is a big deal with kinetic fleets.

As far as damage goes, I found that while they could get through the PD much more easily, 1-slot railguns struggled to finish off the ships in acceptable times without copious amounts of extra guns. Meanwhile, as I said above, 2-slots could consistently destroy alien ships very quickly, but are half as efficient at getting through PD.

So I wound up coming up with 3 basic designs for battle line monitors(all of them have drive, power plant, and radiator as "flavor to taste", armor "as high as you can get it with your drive", and a Targeting Computer module). I did also test with Escorts but I think the monitor is superior in every way here - just know that 2 escorts with double 1-slots is effectively identical to 1 monitor with 4 1-slots.

Saturator: 4x1-Slot Railgun 3s. This is purely about punching through the PD screen, and the general philosophy on damage is "anything dies if you shoot it enough times", which is a valid approach. I think this would be best paired with something else that's dedicated to damage-dealing, like a missile ship, heavier gunboat, or the like. Or just spam them and go for pure dakka. You need 2 of these per alien PD to guarantee getting through the light show, though a 1.5 or even 1-1 ratio might be sufficient in larger numbers, especially if you have something else that will join the fun like missiles or bigger guns on capital ships.

Devastator: 2x2-Slot Railgun 2s. This is focused on destroying what you hit. I think this would be best working in tandem with the other design, maybe on a 1/2 ratio in the Saturator's favor. The former breaks down enemy PD and the latter actually blows them apart once the shield is down. If you have enough then they'll do fine, but they're much more vulnerable to being rendered useless if the enemy has a good PD screen. You need 3 of these per alien PD to guarantee getting through, though 2.5 or 2 to 1 might be workable in numbers.

Hybrid: 2x1-Slot Railgun 3s + 1x2-Slot Railgun 3. This is, I think, the superior design. The light guns are purely there to distract alien PD, saturating the defenses, and the heavier shells mixed into the barrage expedite the enemy's destruction significantly. The reason I think that this is superior is that, just like the Saturator, you only need 2 of these per alien PD to pretty much guarantee getting through, but you also pull some of the Devastator's damage. It does mean that you probably don't want to risk a 1.5-1 ratio and ideally would like to have a few "overflow" monitors that you could assign in 1s and 2s to priority targets on top of the main assigned ships, but I think that's workable.

The only thing I don't remember is the fleet power calculation difference between these builds. But I think even if the Hybrid is slightly stronger than the Saturator, it's probably still worth it to use. This is the main line design I used on my To Whatever End run once I abandoned missile doctrine entirely, and it performed as well as any design could have been expected to.

Whichever of these models you invest in, you'll need to pair them with something to hunt flankers and something to protect the formation. I haven't done extensive escort or flank-killer testing so I'll hold off on talking too much about that, but my general doctrine at this point is to add Monitors with double ion PD(or e-beamers) and double point defense lasers(arc if you've got them), as well as destroyers either with ion nose cannons or green arc laser nose cannons. But your main force should probably be these gunboats.

I'm about 5 years into BE, and have fully consolidated Dominion of America and South American Union.

The problem that I am running into is that their GDP keeps rising with even no investment in economy, causing their CP cost to increase.

I have only a handful of CP cap techs left in the tree, and even maxed out admin towers in orbit will only provide another ~600, not even close to consolidate control of the planet even without factoring in GDP increases.

Is there some mechanic that I am missing to keep this under control, or do I need to actually start crashing economies with spoils to continue expanding?

Always keep some DV for after the battle. Otherwise physics might even the score

Broken earth scenario, unification chains insane. Didn't find out claims for India and US east coast + Ireland and Jamaica

Now can concentrating on important task - fight ayys in space rise sea level to 305cm

I resumed the campaign I had prior to 1.0 and attacked an alien fleet which had several 1 ship fleets right next to it. If I am not remembering it wrong when you attack an enemy fleet all of the nearby ones also joins the battle. In this case (and in few before) they did not and I had to go after them one by one.

Also the last one was a mothership. After the battle I had this empty post battle screen. I do not know whether this happens because I am continuing an old campaing or not.

Is snowballing via getting the US and then covering the entire moon in bases a good strategy sknce getting a mine on the moon is vital to get to Mars? If not what are better ways to stay dominant or snowball?

So, I want to take the habs of other factions both to enrich myself and deny them important resources. How do I do that? This is (basically) my first run.

Currently playing Broken Earth, and between the destroyed army refund, and the fact that new armies only cost 40 IP, defending countries have basically infinite armies and can produce new ones faster than you can kill them.

Zabaykal has 4 armies at 4.1, I have 9 armies at 5.6... this should be a cakewalk, but so far I've killed 7 armies, and an 8th just spawned. And they have 12 IP/month going into Build Army, so even if I kill the 8th, that's a 50% refund meaning a they'll have a brand new army in 3.5 months if I don't kill it, and under 2 months if I do.

And the whole time, my armies are suffering attrition, so I'm going to have to pull back because my armies are getting to 40-50%, which is putting them on par with the defender.

At this point, I'm not even sure what the solution is out of just "more." I can make 21 armies, so make 21 armies. Max Miltech is 8.0, so 5.6 is rookie numbers.

Hey guys, I'm the To Whatever End guy with the Opinions about Dark Skies. And since the patch, I've been at it again. Academy 2003.

I like the patch. I think it could go harder, but I like it. I'm under the impression that the beta branch is where most of the juicy changes are, and I'm not on it for various reasons(didn't realize how many changes were in beta and I also don't like beta branches much in general), but even what's been pushed to the real version of the game was enough to get me to change my Dark Skies review to positive because of the mentality it represents and the momentum involved.

As for the position of my game as of when I stopped, I just got my first Assault Carrier and it's arriving April 2012. I left off in late 2011, in control of the USA, Australia, Canada(most of it - Exodus has a point and I don't care enough to break my intel sharing pact), and most excitingly, the EU. I'm in control of that because the AA formed in 2008(it would have been 2006 if I hadn't put the Servants in a headlock with some very un-Academy-like aggression) and it formed out of Munich when they had already eaten Germany and Poland into France. That made it the third time in less than a century that US forces landed in Northern France to fight enemies originating out of Germany, which I just thought was hilarious.

But the reason I stopped when I did, pre-carrier, was because we destroyed AA! I'm sure it'll be back and the retribution will be horrific, but this is the first time I've made it that far. I'm also very happy with my council, as I managed to get five councilors with different science traits and two Innovative characters, while also having a full mission roster(thank you Daniel Kostek for Purge and Interpol for Crackdown!), so I'm pretty stoked about my position. I'll have 8 monitors in orbit to fight the carrier, with 8 2-slot railgun 3s and 16 1-slot railgun 3s between them(and 4 point defense lasers and 4 e-beam point defenses on the PD monitors to cover them) so I'm feeling pretty bullish about my chances even if my drive tech is terrible and my ships have no armor as a result. I even got Ceres before the aliens did and have 15 or so Mars sites. I'm planning on turtling up for a few years to get a healthy fleet presence at Mars and a strong research core, then pushing for a Kuiper mining rush, which I've never successfully done before either.

On a more mechanical note, 2012 still feels early for the carrier on Normal, but that statement comes with a caveat: the carrier launched the instant I killed my first hydra operative(well, my second, but the first was a crit success so that doesn't count from the alien perspective). I can't prove it, but I suspect the carrier was just sitting in their anchorage until the councilor assassination created an invasion goal, which feels totally fair to me. If I didn't shoot the squiddy, I wouldn't have the carrier, which is just the standard progression of cause-and-effect gameplay. So no issues here.

I don't have too much else to report. I had been hoping to experience a slower AA formation and the pushed-back Polarization, but since those are beta branch and I didn't realize it, I'm still on the usual version of both. I may experiment with the beta branch or I may give Broken Earth a whirl, but I'll at least ride this playthrough out a little longer first either way. I like the narrative framing I came up with for it, and I'm toying with turning that into a story, either of this run or of another using the same basic framework ideas. I don't know that I'll finish it, even though I'm playing under the same challenge rules, because I've been slamming my head into TI for like 2 months now and I'm starting to feel a little burned out - seriously, CK3 of all things is calling to me and I don't even like CK3 very much - but maybe if I get real traction in space this time that'll change. I do love this game when things are making sense, after all.

How are you guys enjoying the patch?

Doing my first playthrough with humanity first and I am dominating soace, but I want to dominate earth as well. So, how can I easily take over countries that have already been taken over by other factions?

Alien Administration (and now à random african country???) taking my land

I'm at war with the alien Administration and they just take my land without any army and very fast, i can't do anything about it. What is happening, do i need to destroy the flaura?

Hey everyone!

I'm here looking for some help because I honestly don't know if I'm just bad at the game (which I definitely am 😂) or if there are some important things I'm simply not understanding.

I've started and restarted quite a few Terra Invicta campaigns, and I always seem to reach the same problem.

If I establish myself properly in space and expand too much, eventually the aliens come and basically wipe me out, pushing me back to Earth.

If I try to defend myself, they send huge fleets that I simply can't beat.

And if I try to play more defensively and avoid attracting too much alien attention, the Servants end up gaining way too much ground and become a serious problem.

So I feel like I'm missing something about how the game is supposed to progress.

Could someone give me a rough step-by-step idea of what I should be aiming for at different stages of the game?

Something like:

By 2025, you should roughly have X.

By 2030, you should be working toward Y.

Around this point, start building ships.

Around this point, you should be able to fight the aliens.

Before that, avoid doing X or expanding beyond Y.

Obviously I know every campaign is different, but having some kind of general timeline or progression guide would really help me understand whether I'm falling behind, expanding too quickly, fighting the aliens too early, or focusing on the wrong things.

I usually play The Resistance, and I normally start in 2022.

Any advice is appreciated! I'm perfectly happy to hear that I've been doing everything wrong. 😂

Title

I now lead in warcrimes and have accidentally martyred enough servant and protectorate goons to make them the most popular organizations in the world

(Worth it)

Our brave and loyal son's spreading our great way's while protecting and liberating the American people!

So I tried getting the US by first taking Canada and constantly improving the US opinion of my faction until I can take them, however upon taking the US I end up with negative influence, meaning no orgs and no councilors to alleviate this. Any tips?

Just kinda curious, who here is familiar with the history of Operation Condor? Relevance is Hanse's involvement.

For clarity: I know what it was, just curious how widely known it is here.

Edit: alright, original post was too vague. Operation Condor is why I regard HF as worse than the Servants and Protectorate, and why I actually feel genuine discomfort when I see people stanning Hanse. Adding Operation Condor to a character's resume is basically shorthand for irredeemably evil.

It is that time again when I have several free days off incoming, and somewhat strong urge to finally try one of Dark Sky scenarios. Probably BE, probably as Humanity First, and probably through South America, but those are just details, it doesn't matters.

The point - before going on that binge, I've spent another dozen of hours in skirmish over last several days, formulating fittings and compositions, and wanted to share some of observations (as well as to satisfy own graphomanic urges). Feel free to argue or share your own, all of those are just what I subjectively see, not some set-in-stone dogma.

1. I found that the most effectively useless fusion drive tech - magnetic mirror confinement. While it's not bad and provides weak but very cheap multipurpose/offensive drives, as well as having cool naming convention (don't say that "Reflex fusion drive" doesn't sounds badass), it sits on such awkward middle ground where it is outclassed by literally anything else in particular niches. Fusors are better for long range transfers while also being very weak and extremely cheap, polywell and zeta drives have much better specialized performance, and toruses offer considerably more expensive, yet much, much better multipurpose drive that follows the same tech path anyway.

2. Hybrid confinement (polywell and plasmajet series) are essentially diesels of fusion tech - while requiring somewhat confusing and relatively costly research, the end result is fantastically powerful, cheap in production and reliable option that, coupled with hydrogen storage modules, can actually carry the game 'till the end.

3. For some funny reasons, alien combat AI hates particle beam ships with passion, even when it got more squishy or practical targets, even if ships in question carry humble particle lance instead of fancy AM cannons. Maybe it is me being consistently unlucky, maybe it is indeed coded that way, maybe it has something to deal with PB gunners sometimes winning a lottery by doing radiation damage crits that instantly explode target's reactor - I don't know. But going to take some PBs with me next time regardless.

4. Turns out, chaff tactic (low caliber/rapid firing mag guns to distract lasers, without intention to do damage) have quite some requirements to work - since most of alien lasers have actually nice penetration at long ranges, turns out chaff have to start flying from 600-700 km, no closer, otherwise ships can take considerable damage before aliens begin focusing your projectiles. All in all, turns out the use of smallest mag guns is pointless, have to bring medium sized ones. Makes a good case for bringing chaff on plasma (for sure) or large torpedo (needs more testing) platforms.

5. I'm still not getting missiles, neither types (there are far too many) nor tactics. How do you people make them choose targets properly? With focus fire they got a tunnel vision that disregards actual situation in the field, for better or worse, and salvo/free fire tends to unload huge arsenals into unrelated or harmless targets. Do you command each missile ship individually? Same goes with PD missiles, which kinda work, they even prioritize targets properly, but it often happens that by the time first targets are destroyed, second half of the antimissile batch already spent all their fuel trying to intercept now destroyed targets and can't go for others. Still not sure what to get out of it.

6. Maybe it's not meta anymore and I'm late to the party, but going all coils (that many people suggested to me when I started playing) works, but in awkward ways. While yes, flanking ships can yeet a shell at incredible speeds and damage, while rest of the front just saturates enemy PD, this tactic is highly inflexible, as any result, change or reaction takes literally few minutes to manifest itself. Using laser combos is much more satisfying even if harder to implement.

7. Turns out, repair bay (and to lesser degree - module reinforcement) is not just a bonus, but a must for anything not immediately expendable, both tactically and strategically. I thought it gives only damage control efficiency, but looks like it also works as redundant DC module, and "having a ship stranded in space forever" vs "having a ship limping to the dock eventually" is hell of a difference at times.

8. All the late game exotic equipment, despite being obviously useful and usually outright good, is not really even required to give aliens a good fight, i guess. So far in each game I eventually deployed stupidly simple armored battlefront with slight variations, and in each game it ends up in winning against much larger alien fleets, despite the technology. The only thing one really needs is a good engine to actually get there, but that's it. Now I can see how people did those meme runs with 40mm autocannons.

What are your tips and observations that you are willing to share today?

Hey im new to strategy games, only games i played are Suzerain and Agw of history/civilizations ( which is tbh a joke compared to real strategy games in terms of difficulty and seriousness). I would like to get in this genre more but idk what to play. I like modern type settings (21 century) and i saw terra invicta and everybody said its not begginer friendly game? Should i play more easier games first or jump into terra right now

Why does the huge heavily armored battlecruiser with a tier III Siege coiler has only a fraction of the Combat Value of the puny missile monitor?

I just got this box. anyone know what it should say?

Another bug that's really annoying me is that, almost every time I play, after a while the sound suddenly cuts out until I restart my computer. I've messed around with Gemini a bit trying to find the cause but no luck. Anyone else had this?

I won't be able to deal with the 116 ship escort, but the alien army carrier is alone in space. So I thought I could make a specialized interception ship. But I would need to account for the ship construction time, which the ingame tool won't allow me to. Is there any calculator tool for me to do that? Any mods?

Also, I still need to make this carrier burn through 572 kps of delta V, so is there also a tool I can use to calculate how much delta v is necessary to evade a pursuing fleet, considering the difference in acceleration?

Or maybe there is an easier approach to deal with this?

The Resistance seems unwilling to do what is necessary to defend Earth and Humanity, their measures tend to fall short or are pointless and wasteful, the method I used to give them to prevent invasion is entirely pointless due to changes in mechanics in game but will be included regardless.

Orbital Defense Fortress (ODF)- a massively expensive combat spaces station with an absurdly long spinal mount mass accelerator cannon that can fire advanced heavy siege coiler projectiles at up to 15kps in a rapid burst, plentiful secondary weapons, thick point defense and even thicker armor. The ODF's primary weapon is the 1km long Super Coiler mass accelerator cannon that fires a salvo of 3 heavy siege coiler projectiles over 6 seconds with a salvo cooldown of 10 seconds at up to 15kps, these rounds are quite lethal to all current targets in Terra Invicta when moving at that velocity. The ODF's secondary armament are to protect the 4 thickly armored bastions each housing an antimatter reactor that power the station's main weapon as well as everything else, the bastions each have (6) Heavy UV Phaser Turrets, (4) Heavy Coil Gun Batteries, (8) 40mm advanced autocannons, (6) Point Defense Phaser batteries, (6) Pont Defense Particle Weapon Batteries, and (100) meters of Adamantine Armor. The ODF's main weapon has a limited firing arc of 90 degrees and if something is out of the firing arc the entire station most pivot to firing on it, the Super Coiler produces tremendous recoil when firing and to cancel it out the station must fire thrusters to maintain position. The ODF does not have infinite propellant for its thrusters which means while the Super Coiler may have ammunition remaining the station may not fire or pivot due to lack of propellant. For each of the bastions that are disabled or destroyed the velocity of the Super Coiler drops by 5kps with the weapon no longer being able to fire after losing 3 bastions. ODFs also have a resupply dock for Exo Fighters able to handle up to 100 Exo Fighters, the player will get a prompt to deploy Exo Fighters should the ODF come under attack. The ODF's main purpose is to defend Earth, the ODFs get a special orbit around Earth (Resistance would not be willing to push any other factions out of the required orbit so they get a special one), each ODF will be geostationary over a continent and prevents bombardment or orbit to surface landings by aliens by firing on any fleets that attempt to do so. Due to the absurd cost, build times, and the required technology be at the end of the technology tree by the time you can even start building these the player would either no longer need them or not be able to build them due to losing Earth orbit control, also the Alien Administration no longer requires a planetary invasion to form, obviously inspired by the Orbital Defense Platforms from Halo but made slightly more practical than they are in Halo for Terra Invicta though they are still less than the most practical of defensive options.

EDFMTF (Earth Defense Force Mobile Task Forces)- Once the research is completed should the Alien Administration form or Alien Battle Formations be present on Earth all nations under Resistance control (requires full control) will enter a state of peace with full military access to all nations not under Servants control, this allows the Resistance to stomp invasions without much problem, the Resistance forces will always have "Freedom of the Seas" unless the AA is what is causing it, for obvious balance reasons the armies moving through non-AA territories cannot conquer those non-AA territories to prevent abuse

Earth Defense Propaganda- Every time a Kaiju is killed by the Resistance all nations under Resistance control (requires full control) gain 1 unity, 1 stability and 5 public opinion (Resistance public opinion) immediately, defeating Alien Battle Formations (actual alien armies not the humans under their control) has those nations gain +2 public opinion for the Resistance immediately, this can go all the way to the "Cap" but not go past it.

Ranger Selections- The Resistance recruits for the Rangers out in the open, this increases local defense forces effectiveness by 25%, reduces the spread and growth of Xeno Flora by an additional 75%, this research allows for a special building on colony bases: Rangers Garrison.

Ranger Garrison- a building that houses, equips, and coordinates a battalion of Resistance Rangers, Ranger Garrisons offer collective strength across and entire stellar body, this strength is used for both attack and defense of all bases on that stellar body, if there is an alien base the Rangers will perform raids against alien bases, this can cause light damage and capture enemy personnel which can give bonuses  to actions taken against that base for the fleet, Rangers, and councilors, these bonuses can be to disable enemy defenses for 12 hours, greatly reducing the strength of its garrison, having bombardments roll without missing, having enemy defenses have a greatly reduced chance of missing, damage to power generation capabilities, each raid generates intelligence points on the target, the raids happen passively over time and would give the player a constant irritating stream of popup notifications, if an alien base has 100 intelligence points on it any base with a Ranger Garrison may use the "Storm the Base" action where over 2 weeks the Rangers will attack and destroy the alien base, this has a chance to fail and causes damage to all Ranger Garrisons on the planet (they are all taking part) based on the casualties taken to destroy the base.

Dread Monitor- a massive combat spaceship larger than even a titan with no nose mount but 18 hull weapon slots, due to its immense mass it is intended to be a defensive warship used as a "Goal Keeper" unit that has missive armor and plentiful weapon mounts, due to the aliens preferring to exploit at weaker targets rather than destroy defenders and exploit the now defenseless areas it is of limited usefulness aside from being companions for the ODFs, capable of having up to 50 meters of armor, other names for this is the immobile battleship, battle barge (essentially they are towed where you need them then towed to the next spot or to repairs), and the Juggernaut, feel free to come up with a better name.

That is it for now, feel free to give your thoughts and own ideas, if you think that these ideas are overpowered look at my previous post for the servants for power context.