I think what I was really missing was the jobs. Between that and not being so lazy about building habitats towards the end.
I’ve conquered AI starbases and found them 100% anchorages: this made me re-think how I did stuff and started copying them.
One thing that came up in this game: I guess close borders doesn’t really impact a crime syndicate? They were still establishing themselves on my planets, requiring precinct houses and anti-crime campaigns to root them out.
@KevinC thanks for pointing out the Amazing Space Battles mod.
Yeah, traditional MegaCorps will need a commercial pact with you to build branch offices on your planet from what I recall, but criminal syndicates have no such restriction. If they’re anywhere within reach of you, I think you can wardec them to force them to shut down their hives of scum and villainy. Otherwise, trying to keep crime low as you described eventually will shut them down, at least that’s been my experience.
Glad you’re liking the ASB mod. :)
Anybody else almost never use Fortresses / Strongholds? Like somebody else mentioned, the cost of losing a building slot is high enough that I prefer anchorages for expanding naval capacity. And if I feel a planet’s at risk, I’d rather garrison an army there than build out soldier jobs.
The only time I’ve built these have been in weird cases where I have a planet that’s very cut off from my civilization, like a planet that unexpectedly defected, and I need give my fleet time to get over there when war inevitably breaks out.
It’s tagged as 3.1 but the author said it should work with 3.2 and I didn’t experience any issues with it.
The latest posts in this thread have encouraged me. I used to check this thread and all it was were posts ragging on the game, now I am interested in playing it for the first time in a long while.
Qt3’s been an outlier with how much it was disliked, but the game has definitively come a long way!
You guys have me reinstalling. It’s been awhile - I’m going to have to finally figure out that new planetary interface. Did anyone ever put together a clear guide for that?
Do you also give up slots to hangar bays to deal with piracy? Or how do you tend to deal with that?
This is going to be an incredibly short getting started “guide” just to get you going:
- City districts unlock Building Slots and provide the most Housing.
- Yellow/Red/Green districts provide 2 jobs and 2 housing for that resource (energy/minerals/food).
- Blockers are things that prevent you from building an otherwise available district. Remove them via the Features button.
- Decisions are actions that can be taken on that specific planet. Some are temporary buffs, others are permanent enhancements that you can acquire. An example is the Mastery of Nature ascension perk that allows you to build additional districts on the planet for a one-time cost.
- Resources come from jobs. You can click the Population tab and flag certain jobs as favorites to give them a higher priority for your population to be working on.
Amazing Space Battles disables achievements, I think, unless you choose the watered-down version of ASB. That’s why I haven’t tried it yet. I have all of 15 achievements, but I’d like to get a few more. ASB sure does look awesome!
I just got to 4400. No sign of any crisis. (I’m not sure how they work, but I guess I’ll find out.) I’ve now made my neighbor a protectorate. My bird ruler died and finally, after 100-plus years, humanity has a human president again. Every human pop is now psionic. I have psionic shields on my ships. I’ve sorta reunited my empire, thanks to gateways. I’m in 3rd place, not likely to win, but having fun.
So my protectorate and I are now fighting a war against the evil Pelx-Credonian Confederacy of birds, one of whom led my empire for a century. That leader recently died (in a hunting accident, I’m thinking), and then the birds declared war – coincidence?
Anyway, this is my first real war, and I’m not sure how to “take” territory. I defeated an enemy starbase, and I now occupy it with 1 hit point. I can’t seem to build anything on the starbase or effect repairs. Do I need to land troops on it? Edit: the answer seems to be no need for troops, and it may self-repair. I do have a claim on the system.
Also, when it comes time to take a planet, I assume I’ll have to land ground troops via transports, but I dunno how to do that either.
When you build offensive armies, they come with transports. So you order the army to space, fly them to the target planet and order an attack. As long as you bring enough, it should be fine. Don’t let them get caught by enemy fleets.
At least that’s how it worked last time I played.
Thanks for the explanation. Now I’ve got bigger trouble: an extradimensional fleet of vast power suddenly appeared one hop from Earth and is now decimating everything in its path. It’s like the Borg! I guess this is one of the Crises I keep hearing about. It’s 2413. I wonder if I can persuade my neighbors to put our war on hold…
I ended up doing a bit of reorg, and dropped some gateways down, then have a citadel fully kitted out with hangar bays to do piracy suppression, and then a citadel full of trade hubs hooked up to the network as well.
The 2nd awakened empire finally decided to go after the fanatics, and has been going to town on them pretty well. The fanatics are losing a lot of ground, but they keep sending me the fleets from the relic which is nice of them.
I sponsored a Senate resolution to focus on the Unbidden, and I called in favors and thought I had the votes – and then I lost at the last minute. The rest of the galaxy would rather focus on market conditions! I guess they don’t have an Unbidden anchor one hop from their home system! GAH!
I did paste the Unbidden once, at Alpha Centauri. But now they’re taking their revenge. It’s about 2435, and things don’t look good. I’m basically tied for 3rd place with my former war rival, which at least had the sense to call a truce. We’re both behind the two Fallen Empires, one of which is in a Federation with me now.
It’s really been a memorable endgame. This chaos is far more entertaining than painting the map my color, or just hitting end-turn for a score win. But things are rather dire!
The guardians finished mopping up the fanatics in my game, and so it is pretty much over at this point unless I want to declare war on the guardians.
@Spock any chance of taking out the portal so they can’t get reinforced?
That is depressingly realistic.
Yeah, there may be a genocidal invasion under way, but that must wait until the Senate completes its crucial work on regulating the finer points of the galactic stock exchange.
@vyshka I still have a shot at destroying the portal. My Federation allies and I tried and failed once. I’ll try again soon. But I didn’t realize how important this target was until I’d lost several key star bases. I thought just killing the enemy might get me somewhere, as the quest screen lists those numbers. Now it may be too late.
Do you all have any recommendations on how to organize fleets? Should I have ships of one type in their own fleets, to maximize speed? Should every fleet be filled up to the command limit? Should I not bother with ships below battleship once I’ve researched that? I’ve never used the reinforce button or paid much attention to the fleet manager.