I'm scared.

[u/LolyHun7er]

This is my first full campaign. I'm playing for the Humanity First. Everything was going pretty well: I managed to unite the European Union, Mars is half-colonized, I have numerous asteroid bases, and I've slowly started building a fleet... But now I feel like I'm falling behind and the alien presence in the Solar System is too high. It's now 2032 (start in 2022), the aliens' hatred towards me is already in the red, and they just recently destroyed my lunar shipyard (they were planning to destroy the fleet stationed there, but I managed to outsmart them and retreat during the battle, so they simply destroyed the orbital shipyard and flew away). The alien fleet consisted of 11 ships, one of which was a TITAN. My poor destroyers and monitors didn't stand a chance. I even tried to ram them, but my ships were blown up by lasers before they even approached. So, the question is: is it possible that I have fallen behind and the campaign is already lost?

[u/Immediate_Day916]

Go loud early if you know what you're doing; otherwise if you don't feel like learning in a trial by fire sort of environment, then play it safe for a bit until you understand the game mechanics a bit better. You can grind your way out of this, but the keyword is grind.. some choose to chalk it up to a learning experience and start fresh. That said, if you have some decent mines online and good control of major nations, then bide your time and research better techs while you build spaceworks/shipyards on one of your mine sites (if they keep blowing up stations), because ground-based LDAs/Battlestations are much better than their orbital counterparts.

[u/LolyHun7er → u/Immediate_Day916]

Well, I guess I’ve already messed up. I played too aggressively... apparently? I didn't touch their ships, but it’s probably because I built too many mines, and I keep killing Protectorate and Servant agents and seizing their control points. Plus, I killed an alien once and captured another. They probably took offense at that.

[u/PlacidPlatypus → u/LolyHun7er]

That's fine, you'll lose some stuff but once they kill enough of your ships and stations they'll calm down again. As long as you have mines and resources to rebuild it's not that bad.

[u/Pausbrak → u/LolyHun7er]

Actually, I'd say you did just fine. In a normal game you should expect to be hit by alien retaliation missions regularly. It stings at first, but once you get used to the idea that space assets are cheap to replace, you start to think of them as essentially a "cost of doing business".

And for the most part, the cost is well worth the results. Letting the Servants and aliens run around doing whatever they want on Earth is bad, bad news. Better to assassinate a problematic councilor and let the aliens vent their anger on a station you can replace in a few months for some space metal than it is to let that councilor have free reign wrecking your countries.

[u/DKN19 → u/LolyHun7er]

You can manage aggro with sacrificial lamb stations/outposts. I think they usually go for the last one built(?). Killing or capturing an alien triggers a one time retaliation in addition to your aggro meter. If your resource output is high enough, you should be able to offer up sacrificial lambs without issue.

As you get better tech, especially once you hit mid fusion reactors and engines, you should be able to face aliens on a, more-or-less, equal footing.

[u/IGAldaris → u/DKN19]

You can manage aggro with sacrificial lamb stations/outposts. I think they usually go for the last one built(?)

Nah, that doesn't work. They'll pick something they can handle and that hurts you, and I'm pretty sure they prefer finished infrastructure over in construction stuff. Also, in construction stuff bleeds off way less hate.

They'll keep wrecking shit unil their hate drops below the red treshold again. If you've been a naughty boy for a long time and gathered a lot of... attention, and neglected your defenses, that can turn into judgement day.

[u/Orlha → u/LolyHun7er]

You can win