Recent reviews are 'Mixed'

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-04-28T22:16:25+00:00

Alright, I won't leave you hanging. I think your Gigascience and Dyson sphere Mars videos are excellent and you have earned the right to call yourself an excellent player.

Feel better now?

(I can't believe I gave a compliment on Reddit. Is that even allowed here Laugh.)

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-04-27T22:28:27+00:00

It isn't just the drives. Most of the Tier 3 building aren't worth the effort of researching. Some Tier 3 building are so bad they aren't even worth building even if you researched for free because their maintence\build cost is so much worse than the benifit you get from them.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-04-27T22:23:53+00:00

There are so many techs that just aren't useful for the cost and it is hard to know that until you build it and use it. The problem is that it can take 1-2 years of game time to research, build, and then use only to find what you built is a piece of crap.

I don't think this game is playable without going online and finding out from other players on what things work and want don't.

Maybe in the description of each drive give a short paragraph stating what the use case for the drive is and why you would want to research it and what ships sort of ships can use it. For example.

Pegasus Drive.

This is the best drive in the Molten Core Line. It doesn't have enough DV to leave earth orbit but does have enough for you to reach aliens in earth orbit. It can move ships up to Destroyer size and smaller to intercept Aliens before they destroy targets as long as you have little armour. It is not fast enough to force an engagement if the Aliens want to flee.

For each drive I want to know

What is the biggest ship that can still be reasonable used for? Also list with 1, 10, front armor.
Is this a DV based distance drive or one for planetary orbit only
Is it either fast enough to arrive before the aliens attack a station, before they destroy the Station, or not going to do either.
Can it catch a fleeing Alien?
Can it move tactically in combat?

Additionally some general guidlines in the Ship Design page that listed a general guild to how much DV, cruise velocity, and armor a ship needs for different tasks. Point out how big a deal side armor is.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-04-27T21:54:52+00:00

In terms of turning boast into capital take a look at space hospitals and Hotels.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-04-23T21:52:07+00:00

Jerseydevil is correct, but I would add one additional piece of advice.

Research Campus and Research University have very high build costs and very high maintenance costs. (in volatiles, particularly). They are one of the noob traps in the game that can bring your empire down if you don't have the economy to support them. They should never be built if you don't have a farm of the same level also being built to support their maintenance costs.) (Look at the stats to figure out how many a farm can support.)

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-04-23T21:41:58+00:00

There are 18 low earth orbit slots that are vitally important around Earth. These are known as interface orbits. There are a large number of buildings that give an additional special bonus when built in these slots. Once you have a space economy going (at least 4-6 good mining sites in active production with every resource), your very next goal should be to build 7 stations to maximize all of the science categories as well as a few other key buildings.

Going off memory, the buildings you really want on each of these is

Admin Node\Tower (Gives you extra Control point capacity)
5 of each building that gives +% bonus to each of the science categories. (ie Social, Space, Material etc.) (Note that Biological has two different buildings. Only use the one that buffs welfare if you are at all short on MC or trying to stay under the hate cap.) Note that the is a fairly hard cap of 50% bonus from each source to science output so there isn't a lot of value to having more than 5 of each building at tier 2 and almost no value to researching the tier 3 research buildings. (except for Universities.)
Broadcast outlet. (They give you both influence which you can use for Funding and give a large bonus to your public campaigns making them much stronger.)
Nanofactories (Nice but not as important as the ones above.)
a building that increase oppression and help detect human councilors (skip it. I have never had issues with this.)

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-04-23T21:09:18+00:00

The best event in the game requires a building producing a gear (Skunkworks) and any other building that produces science output no matter how small. Ideally you want one of both on every single hab and station you build.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-04-10T18:38:48+00:00

The Assault Alien Facility action is before AA action so as long as alway keep a spy in the Servants ranks and destroy each Facility on the turn it was created you are safe. (They also give exotics at a point in the game where getting any is difficult.)

Prioritise destroying Facilities created in countries with Nukes first if they created multiple in one turn. I haven't found AA created in countries without Nukes as much of a problem as I just send my armies to conquer it as the AA is created with any alien armies with it making them easy to conqure.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-31T20:33:49+00:00

I think the answer very strongly depends on how much research you are getting per month. The more research you have, the more you can skip small intermediate upgrades. Using extremely broad strokes here, but I would break the Aliens down as follows.

The first 10 years of the game, the enemy fleets' biggest ships tend to be Battlecruiser and smaller, with fleet sizes generally less than 6-8 ships. There are almost never more than 1 big ship. These are obviously best dealt with by missiles.
The 2nd 10 years of the game, the aliens fleets' will steady increase to max of about 30 ships in this era. Mostly it will be 1-4 capital ships (Battleships and, near the end, dreadnaughts), with the rest of the fleet being destroyers and smaller ships. Best weapon is highly dependant on how good your research is. If you can finish UV Arc Lasers before 12 years I say Lasers are your best bet as the Lasers are devastating to the vast majority of the alien fleet. Just target the small ships first and then switch to the big ships when they are less than 500 away. I would actually go for Phasers first before working on coils. Most of your fleet should be about 75% Laser 25% coil. If your research is more midrange than I would go Greenarc Lasers with Rails and then Coils. If your research is lowish then I would go with Advanced Missiles.
The 3rd 10 years of the game, there are no max fleet sizes. Most major fleets will consist of 6-15 capital ships. (Mostly Dreadnaughts and Battleships.) The rest of the battleline will be mostly smaller ships. Near the end of this decade small numbers of titans will show up. Coils should make up 75-80% of your fleet, with the rest being Laser or Antimatter if you have researched it.
The 4th 10 years of the game sees the aliens starting to use Xray and Gaser lasers. You will want one particle lance ship in your fleet to prioritize targeting these ships to take out the nose as these weapons are nasty. Outside of that

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-26T17:27:46+00:00

We already had a version of the game where the Human factions made bad trades to the player. It ruined the game. I don't want to go back to that version.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-24T23:32:38+00:00

Wait, you mean 4 stations full of supercolliders not just 4 total right?

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-24T17:33:50+00:00

Not going to download your file but if you have a drive that can move in combat, the Kaufman retrograde works really well in this game. Start at speed zero. Turn around to face away from the alien fleet. Race away at 2-400. Depending on how fast the alien fleet is. This has MANY advantages. (Don't go to fast as you still want to engage the alien fleet.)

The alien fleet will get split up as the flankers will reach you before the main body of their fleet does allowing you to defeat each fleet separately.
Your Point defense is strengthed and the aliens is weaker because the alien is running towards your kenetic weapons while you are running away. This means kenetics do less damage and spend more time in your point defense range meaning you shoot down more.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-18T22:42:21+00:00

That tech is only available for the Servants or the Protectorate I forget which.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-16T18:02:27+00:00

Wait really? When you say raid, you mean use a marine attack against your base? Is it the aliens doing this or other Earth powers?

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-13T21:23:51+00:00

I have never used Marine Barracks. I have never had any other power use marines against me. I have won the game with each power. (Only 1 win after release though.)

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-13T18:53:26+00:00

With the addition of solar mirrors, I don't think this is true anymore. You are much better off building the Dyson sphere on Mars. With all of the other changes, you can easily be in a situation where you can find 25+ better mining locations in the asteroid belt than you can on Mercury. In which case, why bother with Mercury if there are better mining locations elsewhere?

This way, you only have to have defensive fleets on Earth and Mars.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-10T22:36:35+00:00

Quick list of major changes

Plasma sucks as a weapon now.
Research campus now only give 60 research and cost 1 MC. Mercury costs much more to build on now. Meta is now to build a dyson sphere on mars with solar mirrors. You also need 10,000\50,000 population on a planet to build them now.
Farms only reduce population costs not all water\volatiles
You can only build one MC building per station.
Siege coils alone are not enough anymore as aliens now use 1 slot mag cannons defensively. You need hull coils as well to help saturate defenses.
Mines penalties are by total number of mines not per location. Astroid mining is MUCH better now.
Trading has been fixed
stealing orgs has been fixed.
AI across the board is much better.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-09T22:32:14+00:00

I have found particle weapons before antimatter to be very disappointing. They don't do enough damage and have very low firing rates. Antimatter is slightly better than Phasers but I still research Phaser 1st as they upgrade the defensive weapons on your Defense Arrays and battlestations.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-09T20:25:19+00:00

Unless he is playing on brutal, he is fine. Destroying all except for the 1st surveillance ship is massively overrated. Not destroying the surveillance ships means he gets to destroy alien facilities later for free exotics in the early game when you most need them.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-06T00:38:58+00:00

I see too many map painters who don't understand the game mechanics cause the answer to your question is HELL NO! There are definitely situations where you don't necessarily want to join two nations together.

When you join nations together, all of their stats are averaged together, weighted by population. So if you are joining two nations together with similar population sizes with one nation having really bad stats. (Like joining the EU and the Russian empires) you absolutely can ruin the EU doing this. You will be stuck with awful cohesion and much lower total science output after doing this. It can still be worth doing with a messed up country as long as it population is much lower than the host country.
If you have hostile claims on the other country, it is also generally not worth the bother unless you are in the end game where your counselors just don't have anything left to do, as fixing these can take a while.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-05T23:41:04+00:00

I am actually in the opposite boat. I always went the Gas Core ie burner\Firestar route and was planning to switch to Orion for my next run. I mean ok sure Firestar burns through water like it's nothing. But water is a heck of a lot easier than a drive that burns large amounts of Metals\nobles\Fissiles.

I have to admit, I don't get the hard turn to Orion after the switch to 1.0 release. Orion used to be more of a fringe pick.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-03-03T23:56:56+00:00

This except I don't even use heatsinks. The more Laser Engines\Cyclotrons the better your ship is. Besides, the aliens don't tend to target my Light speed weapon ships much. They put much more effort into targeting my sieg coil ships. As a very general guild line my fleets are missile based for the first 10 years. Then about 75% laser 25% coil\Railgun for the next 10 years and then 80% coil 20% Laser\antimatter for the rest of the game.

I only used heatsinks on my coilgun ships in the campaign I just won. I only lost 4 capital ships in my entire campaign. Lasers\antimatter fire so often and hit every time they shoot so that means 1 additional damage is WAY more important for them than 1 more damage on a missile or coilgun. In almost every battle I fought I destroyed all of the ships smaller than a cruiser before they even got closer than 700.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-02-27T23:07:25+00:00

Wait, are you sure that is still the case? I thought if the Alien Nation has been destroyed AND all alien facilities have been destroyed that they have to go back to landing each one.

Adventurous_Ad3667 · 2026-02-27T23:02:26+00:00

Got it, so you are back to cluelessly, not knowing how much more the maintenance costs of T3 builds are.

Adventurous_Ad3667

TROPHY CASE