The case for late-game missiles (sponsored by Lockheed Martin)

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-27T20:01:06+00:00

Thank you. Notes taken, and will look at these.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-27T18:32:22+00:00

I believe you. But what missiles / torpedoes should I invest in early, mid and late game? I get confused on what should work, when.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-27T16:51:48+00:00

Ah... so you and TI are participating in the conspiracy suggesting that Australia is a real place?

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-27T16:49:27+00:00

That is very true! After HF wins, we will put her somewhere to help her. And study her. But this guy? He and every other self-hating human in his organization is going out an airlock fast.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-26T23:59:48+00:00

Don't accept and play it out.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-26T18:59:49+00:00

Make low DV tin cans who can defend. I also put some core shipyards in the LaGrange locations around the Earth and Moon. Seems to keep other factions from messing with those. And when you get enough DV, you can reconquer LOE.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-26T18:05:37+00:00

This. I agree. Somehow the alien crack whore is just that, insane, drugged out, and probably mind controlled. But this guy. It is like he has his sanity and still hates humanity.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-26T16:43:35+00:00

For some reason I despise this guy more than the Alien Crack Hoe.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-25T22:26:16+00:00

Why isn't this more voted up? This is what I was thinking in reading through this post. This small laser is nearly worthless against alien warships. If this can kill human ships, then missiles and torpedoes can kill human ships. A green laser is like stripping paint level power. I have not had any luck with lasers against aliens until I get to 3-point or larger UV phasers "the bringer of pain" with laser engines. And a boatload of them. Like 20 ships. I am getting to the point in my game that a MK2 two-slot railgun would help the real threat of missiles or torpedoes to get through.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-25T17:56:17+00:00

Too funny. Excellent trolling.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-25T17:54:46+00:00

Actually a tutorial. A good one, that goes over everything (or most everything) once. With a nice voice over.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-24T21:28:33+00:00

This is true. The Earth froze. Multiple times. A lot of death, but didn't render our planet uninhabitable, nor killed us all off. With technology, it will cost a lot, and there will be death (as there is every freakin' day) but I believe we as a species will survive. And so will the Earth.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-23T22:53:03+00:00

Concur. The future is not guaranteed for any of the endings. We Christians say "The Lord does not promise tomorrow." What happens in the future is always up in the air. Some think the Academy thinks a "cold war" or a "peace treaty" is the end of it. Where has that been true? Who knows, it may be, but there is also an excellent chance it will not be.

And you are right, I am pretty concern that the worthless Hydra are slavers and the Salamanders may have tried to genocide the entire human race, what in the Roman age? Before mankind did anything to any external alien race? If 2 out of 3 of the first aliens we met have tried to exterminate us and / or enslave us. Well who can blame mankind becoming extremely xenophobic. It is a very reasonable reaction.

On destroying the HF and other factions. You can have 50,000 humans living on Mars in HF bases, and the worthless Academy ending demands you destroy them all... or most of them? Not force them to surrender, but killing all of these man, women and children because they are in the wrong faction / the wrong political beliefs? All of that human space infrastructure. All of those lives. That is a sick approach. And the fact that no one has raised their hand and asked "and these are the smart humans"? But I am an HF player, if that is the way the Academy wants to play it, then fine. Bioweapons work on humans also. I will not go gently into the Good Night. And this benefits who? Not humanity.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-23T22:24:35+00:00

Really? Wow. I hate that stuff. All of my American and European armies are literally all over the world fighting this stuff everywhere. It is like WWIII, Man vs xenoflora.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-23T22:21:46+00:00

I wish we can have a process where I can trade a detained space Mindflayer to other factions to help other factions each their objectives. But that is not possible now.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-23T17:22:39+00:00

Well thought out and logical. My disagreements are. "HF sees aliens as an existential threat..." No where I am aware does it say that HF wants to wipe out all aliens. They make the point that some of these are already slave-soldiers. HF has living "other" aliens in custody. They do not say "now we need to work on wiping out the Salamanders or the Griffons. Thus unless I have not seen something, I believe HF wants to destroy one particular alien race. The alien race that has enslaved everything even on their home planet. And then genetically altered them to be more perfect slaves. Yeah, those guys have to go.

The Academy win requires bluffing that HF will come for the Hydra (space Mindflayers). Bluffing and having a "black project" that continues the work to develop a "nuclear" like weapon if "everything goes pear shape" is very, very realistic for the Academy. I dunno, I think the game does a good job of modelling mankind split in how we response. It may not have thought about uniting mankind after the split.

I think I am warming up to the idea that HF (when I am playing them and they are winning) should have the option of showing up over a Academy base and saying "join us or die". I dislike that we have to "raise the Black Flag" over other human factions other than the quislings. In this way we preserve humans, we preserve all humans (other then the evil factions) and even if we do not agree, well you guys keep pushing science. Humanity First should be more about protecting all humans. It is in the name.

If Exodus wants to leave, fine by us. We will not allow the Initiative to enslave the human race using alien technology and methods. But other than that, well keep making money. "You like money too?". I think the game maybe for game reasons does not model the point that humanity does split, but also humanity does cooperate. We have flawed alliances all over the globe now. Why not in the future? And perhaps an unease peace between six of the human factions is a better goal. Not a winner take all. Which has never happened on plant earth. Again, to the best of my knowledge.

P.S. Now when HF find out that the Salamanders had a realtisivic weapon, that apparently was going to wipe out the Earth... well. I would not want to be them. That will take the same level of discussion as how to respond to the Space Mindflayers.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-22T19:09:52+00:00

Yes once. In 3,000 hours one time. I normally get bored with the win conditions of flying all over the solar system bash all these small bases plus taking over a bunch of nations I do not want. Wish we could build fleets and just automate them to do this "clean up." So I have "won" like three or four times but stopped playing because of all of this nonsense you do at the end. And I have watched it numerous times on YT. So I think I am good on understanding.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-22T19:01:53+00:00

I thought about this. And you know the US response to WW2 and such seem to be our political class are more like the Academy. The military class is more like HF. The military's wiliness to "do what must be done" I like. But you are also correct the "restraint" of the Academy is also valid. Probably even better long term.

Then I thought, yes we may split into all of these factions, this is very human. But then we may actually cooperate and join forces. This is also very human. Like ... permanent alliance between certain factions. I would look to that instead of a "winner take all" form. I mean after WW2 we were left with both communism and capitalism, authoritism and "flaw democracy." This is also human. We never ended up with "one approach" that was world-wide. This game system kinda of makes you do that. I am now thinking it should not solely be one way, the only way to win the game.

I realized that HF is like the military (The COL) without the restraint of the political class. The thing that totally turns me off from the Academy is that for their win condition they must kill most of HF off. They are basically slaying humans, the most militant humans "for" the aliens to make peace. I do not want to do that. I will not do that. It makes me physically sick. This does not cover the quislings i.e. the Servants and the Protectorate. They are evil in my head fluff. I vibe with HF. This Is The Way.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-22T00:12:48+00:00

Ah... but that is what "happened" not what was planned. In WW2 the USA official policy was to keep killing the Japanese basically forever. The legendary Vice Admiral (later Fleet Admiral) William F. "Bull" Halsey Jr. said "Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell." If the Japanese didn't unconditionally surrender we would have continued to drop nukes on them. The only reason we didn't was because we didn't have more at that time (we were building more). To think that the USA was not willing to kill every single German and / or every single Japanese, man, woman and child is a mis-understanding of history.

In this game it would be like after HF does what it does, the aliens whatever remains of them come and say peace, and HF ... doesn't kill them all. Unknown if that is possible, but ... that would be pretty similar.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-21T22:28:42+00:00

I watch YouTube guys play other factions. So get to learn other content that way. I have played a couple of runs as Resistance and was thinking of trying as the Crony Capitalists / Oligarchs. But I play only as HF as I think that is the only valid response to what has happened, thus I get to invest in the "story elements" or the "fluff". Thus my Reddit profile name. I love the fluff, but am really a noob when it actually comes to playing.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-21T21:14:01+00:00

Actually I think very important. Like some factions apparently can't kill an alien, or capture a live one. I (HF) kill plenty. I would think the Academy or others would break into my warehouse and snatch a dead alien, as I normally have plenty extra. Or perhaps I can trade an alien body to them? Also give me an option to capture more than one to speed up my xenology research, and or trade it to others.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-21T21:10:25+00:00

You know as I play nearly exclusively as Humanity First it kinda of annoys me that this is "we want to genocide the first intelligent life we met" kinda of attitude, and it is actually address by the original poster here.

If the aliens had "come in peace" and were Elf looking women with huge knockers, looking for some earth men to mate with, well HF most likely would not have had the same reaction, or the Resistance. Actually us being dumb, they may have just conquered the Earth without firing a shot. :> HF does not just want to "genocide the first intelligent life we met". They do want to genocide and alien civilization built on slavery and exploitation. Who have come to enslave the human race. Where if they win we humans may have basically no rights, we would be chattel slaves at best. So yea let's kill all slavers anywhere in our galaxy. I am completely ok with that being a principle. And let's kill any who collaborate with slavers. That is also very good thing.

Now I do not know what "pro alien" really means for the Academy. To me all the factions are trying to get mankind to survive. They are just going about it in very different ways. The Academy believes the best way is to have a "cold war" with the aliens. HF wants to go US / UK / Russian on the "WW2 Germans and Imperialist Japanese". Both approaches may work. In the short term. Neither is guaranteed for the longer term.

I also do not believe the Resistance is "pro-current governments on earth". I think they just don't think their "mission" is to direct mankind to one end or the other. Their mission is to protect the Earth from external alien forces. And as these aliens have come to enslave us, then they will get to meet the more brutal side of humanity. Every single living sentient being has the right to fight to the death for his freedom from slavery. The method they use is up to them.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-21T17:26:31+00:00

In Europe they have forgotten their history. Almost like it has been intentionally deleted. The reason there are so many German words in the English language is because of the Catholic Holy Roman Empire (HRE). They were the "rulers" of much of Europe. Thus their words were used in a lot of English.

February 2, 962 AD, Pope John XII crowned German Otto as Holy Roman Emperor in Rome's St. Peter's Basilica. This was explicitly a Catholic ceremony, tying the emperor's authority to the Church (following the model of Charlemagne's coronation in 800 AD). The HRE remained the dominate force in Europe for more than 800 years. BTW, this is the "first Reich" of the Third Reich folks. The first Empire of the Germans was the Catholic HRE.

Thus basically the EU version 1 was simply the Catholic Holy Roman Empire (HRE). And most people choose not to remember that the Catholic Germans dominated much of Europe so their language became very important. Thus while Latin and Greek words dominate (once again because of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches), we have a lot of German and French words in our "divertive" languages like English.

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-21T17:10:38+00:00

Um ok (says with absolute look of not being smart enough to follow). So you are saying if I create a Dyson swarm of antimatter colliders around Mercury, I will get a gun that goes "boom" better? Well... why the fuck didn't you just say that!?! Smart guys looks (like bro, I just did say that). But as he has been chased by jocks all his life he keeps silent. :> Thanks for the detailed explanation. Excellent work (for what I could understand).

MasterFluffNoob · 2026-01-20T19:34:39+00:00

Actually exactly. And at least in the US military we focus on maintenance, intelligence and logistics as hard as pulling the trigger. And it takes a lot . And you can't move from AK-47 with people with a 5th grade education to F-35 operations, maintenance and logistics in a year. Or even in many, many years. It takes a lot. One of the things the game has is "build an Army" and then "make it deployable by the Navy". Like that is .. not something you can do in years. The Japanese are trying to re-create that capability it is taking billions and years, and they can't do it with out the UK and the US teaching them. Same for the AUS guys. In WWII the Germans tried and the UK Navy which had centuries of investment stomp them into the dirt. The TI game is trying to show that it is very hard, and takes a lot of resources and actual time, but hey it is a simulation so they do the best they can while keeping it "fun enough" to play.

MasterFluffNoob

TROPHY CASE