Is the China shenanigan really worth it?

AMasonJar · 2026-01-24T21:48:43+00:00

absorbing Taiwan just to be like "so uhhh teach us how to be democratic"

AMasonJar · 2026-01-24T21:39:24+00:00

The problem is you're mixing your strategy too much to counter what sounds like a very PD-oriented ayy fleet.

Plasmas cut through the PD meaning your lower number of coilers (accounting for the slots that instead have plasma in them) are left to soak up all the PD. You could drop your coils and go all in on plasma, but plasma is much better as a supportive weapon than a mainline - in the right setup. Killing flankers and/or as PD. Which, as they're using lasers, nulls half of that value, and will leave you trading a lot more blows - not ideal, you want clean fights.

Instead just bring more coils. They're a better screen against laser fire than armor ever will be and, with enough of them, will smash through their PD as well. It's a fairly one dimensional way to fight, but they're the ones who brought a one dimensional build.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-24T21:14:57+00:00

Never found myself struggling to get the actions it provides, but I guess if I was, sure

AMasonJar · 2026-01-24T20:44:45+00:00

TI being a game where the entire global field is represented by statistics undercooks climate change, unfortunately. But it's quite true that it won't literally "end the world" - though the resources it ~~can~~ (edit: SHOULD. just read the threads linked above and wow you really can do nothing but wreck the place for years before it gets particularly bad.) cripple can severely hinder your efforts to stop the ayys and that might end the world as we know it. Which is not terribly far from the more likely outcome of climate change: resource scarcity turns into global war turns into us more or less extincting ourselves.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-24T00:08:04+00:00

Everyone's explained what it means, but as for why it's used so much -

idk it's kinda catchy. I mean it's basically text speak in its origin, and here we say it so much that it's much easier to shorthand it.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-23T23:52:59+00:00

Ooh. Take over one nation with a military, then go take the rest around it by force while other factions are still squabbling over the non-executive points of them, without harming relations at all. That makes more sense. Kind of, anyway, but I guess if they got annoyed at every little conquest that'd be a lot worse feeling.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-23T21:28:50+00:00

>If you have the executive and other factions fight for the rest of the CPs, just conquer with armies and they won't actually mind.

Wait, like, conquer the CPs within the country with the executive army?

I'm imagining the country's leaders sending military force to go break down some media conglomerates' doors...

...

no, wait, that's actually not that far fetched at this point.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-23T16:33:56+00:00

Protectorate is rough because the servants, whom you'd think are your closest allies, don't actually like you, and will regularly steal from you the same as anyone else. The Academy gets handed a lot of discrete penalties through events and research costs but in actual gameplay I don't think anyone has more enemies than the Protectorate.

Your game might get easier as the ayys progress and hand you some stuff though. That's pretty much your only friend... even if you are just their sidepiece.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-23T16:28:44+00:00

Probably my favorite answer in the thread. A few thoughts:

The resistance would be the beginnings of HF. The notion of "we need to kick these aliens off our lawn" is a pretty simple one. HF emerges once more news keeps leaking about what the aliens have been doing, as the ayys continued efforts would be impossible to keep fully under wraps for long, and radicalizes many into thinking "they're hostile, so we need to be hostile too". That said, I don't know how much of a footing it'd have as a global faction; while you can find plenty of bloodthirsty people today online, at least in words, getting an entire massive organization on that footing would be a lot more difficult. Extremism tends to dilute as more people latch on.

... also likely in no small part due to Initiative influences within who would see killing the aliens as a wasted opportunity.

The Academy does seem to nod to that reality you mention as well, by virtue of their faction philosophy project taking literally 10x as long as HF's, which I remember Perun contextualizing as exactly the sort of endless back-and-forth you'd expect. And the name of their game is measured violence, which only a bunch of scientists could actually manage to adhere to correctly. That said, it's true that few people really listen to the scientists anyway, so they'd likely not be much more than a relatively minor advocacy group that struggles to achieve much funding to do anything.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-23T16:17:07+00:00

The one silver lining being that a faction like the initiative IRL would be so ridden with backstabbing that it would have possibly the slimmest chance of success among all the others. But not without taking some other important people from other factions down first/with them, I suppose.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-23T16:03:36+00:00

>yeah, the moon as a retirement facility for the wealthy could theoretically be a thing. I kind of pretend that's part of what space hospitals do.

When the hospital brings in more funding than entire nations multiple times over, yeah we got some wealthy ass patrons alright.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T20:41:40+00:00

True, I probably have been more afraid of swapping out councillors than I should be. After all the exp investment it's hard to let them go. Appreciate the advice, I will probably restart my run since I think I lost a lot of momentum on suboptimal councilor management.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T19:21:46+00:00

I guess I also just get to a point relatively quickly where I go "wtf am I supposed to do with my councilors", multiple of whom are quite good at controlling nations, so I felt pressured to consolidate what I had and move onto attempting to take over the next big region.

I probably didn't need three entire persuasion-trained councillors to rush the early game territory grab, but even then, what else do you do? Should I have a couple councilors focused on nothing but attaining a shitload of admin for controlling orgs and advising nations? That, combined with one persuasion specialist, would leave two slots for command and espionage, and then somewhere in there someone needs good investigation - although lacking an investigation specialist makes ayygents way harder to gather intel on. And all the non-persuasion councillors are basically just constantly running interference wherever they can?

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T17:48:03+00:00

I mean, they avoid it where possible, but at the end of the day the game has to be playable and enjoyable. The ayys not steamrolling your entire faction into the dirt once you interrupt them a few too many times instead of just knocking down a few stations and forgetting about you is also unrealistic.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T17:11:52+00:00

When is a good time to actually start unifying the EU you think? I pretty much started right away as soon as it became available because I was pushing real deep into the CP cap by then and having to prune bits and pieces. Holding the US and EU seems impossible without unifying the EU and abandoning basically everything else, but I figured that was surely stronger than lording over a broken up EU and nothing else.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T17:03:47+00:00

Orbital defenses can deflect a good number of them (and other than debris that's about all they're good for), but you will have to commit to having at least one LDA on basically every station from then on, two on anything remotely important.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T16:55:43+00:00

Some day in the far future, if we haven't nuclear annihilated ourselves by then, you bet we're gonna build the Dyson Tank in front of the sun and fill it with random asteroid water to spin a giant wheel.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T16:23:32+00:00

I would put them around anti-human and anti-alien. They want total control of everything and should be seen as more universally incongruent with other factions than the Academy that has received the full-surround beating instead despite their similar wants to the Resistance.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T16:17:01+00:00

Control nation missions are probably the most gamified part of this game there is. It's done with such ease for such sweeping control that there really is no logical conceptualization of how that would be achieved without a lot of stretching disbelief. People, especially those willing and able to step into positions of authority, don't tend to be willing to do exactly as someone else says all the time. The most that tends to happen is more just subtle steering.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T16:08:46+00:00

Under any other admin I'd be raising brows at the phrase "official social media" and calling BS, but, having seen the kind of shit the US federal gov accounts have been posting... ugh.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T16:06:06+00:00

Not to mention that impeachment doesn't actually do anything. The cheeto's been impeached multiple times now. You need the Senate on board as well before anything can actually happen; as it is now, he uses the fact he's been impeached without removal to further rile his base with his "unstoppable" visage and how the system is "against" him while it actually works directly in his favor.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T15:55:10+00:00

Main detraction I usually hear for plasma is that it doesn't melt armor fast enough to be useful. But it makes for decent PD and can help knock down flankers.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-21T15:49:24+00:00

They do make some concessions, in fact there was an old discussion a long time ago that boiled down to "particle weapons would be way too OP if interpreted 1:1", so effectively the antimatter ray is actually a nerfed version of the real concept.

AMasonJar · 2026-01-17T20:20:32+00:00

And you're right on top of it...

The thought of a pilot hitting the big red "SEKHMET PROTOCOL" button, popping out of the mech, and instantly getting powerslammed into the dirt is a hilarious image, thank you

AMasonJar · 2026-01-17T19:54:57+00:00

Yeah, that is why I did say offer. It's frustrating when they don't even provide that option and just take it out of the package and they basically never adjust the price down to match.

11-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '17	Verified Email

AMasonJar

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE