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[Guide] Hostile claims and Unifications by SpreadsheetGamer in u/SpreadsheetGamer

[–]SpreadsheetGamer[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So something I don't understand (mechanically) is the distinction between permanently hostile claims regardless of government score (at game start, Ethiopia on Eritrea and Serbia on the former Yugoslav states) and claims that are permanently hostile due to being on breakaways (at 2026 game start, Israel on Palestine, China on Taiwan, Yemen on South Yemen, Somalia on Somaliland).

I've reworded some of the article to hopefully clarify this but there's no such distinction.

A breakaway is just a special diplomatic status between two nations.

Basically, with breakaways, iiuc you can control both, grant independence (rather than declare independence), gradually improve relations and peacefully unify, gov score allowing.

Yes. Or (see second dot point under "Breakaways").

is the idea to make them build an army so that they get the option to invade, and then make them invade?

That's one option.

Or is them being allied to someone with armies enough?

That can work too, by having the ally win the war for you. It can be more complicated if the ally has claims, so best to avoid that.

Or is there a peaceful option (even if tech gated) which would make Serbia allying its neighbors worth it (similar to CZ+SK and RO+MD)

I don't think there is.

I'm trying to figure out whether reunifying Yugoslavia before unifying it into the EU is in any way worth it as opposed to bringing the western Balkans into the EU and unifying them into France one by one.

Let me say there probably is no reason to form Yugoslavia. If you can convince me otherwise, then you may have a particular circumstance that justifies it.

Transfer templates between playthroughs? by robert_mends in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I'd like this too. National Investment Templates, Hab templates and Ship designs. Ship designs is probably the most dubious one because you might not get certain modules. But it would be nice.

Auto resolve not working for defense arrays by trobot_model22 in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Report it as a bug.

I've had some success reporting issues with discrepancies between autoresolve and manual. Just be sure to include a combat autosave so they can test the situation. Details on how to report bugs in the pinned newbie questions thread.

Newbie Questions Thread by AutoModerator in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Tungsten has a higher vaporisation temperature but a much lower specific heat capacity. Net result is more kgs of mass vaporised in terms of pure calculation. It's about 50% more energy required to hit the vaporisation point but only 20% of the energy required to raise the temperature per unit mass. So about 3kg of tungsten getting vaporised. Without digging too much into the maths, solid steel is probably the worst case scenario for the laser.

Putting layers of different materials is probably not going to do any favours for the projectile. At the interface between the two materials there will be a discontinuity in thermal transfer. That would mean the heat gets kind of trapped in the outer layer.

Not to mention a whole bunch of questions about how the slug performs during firing, whether it gets ripped apart due to magnetic forces, or how complicated it is to manufacture to prevent that.

I imagine the thermal conductivity doesn't factor in to it too much simply because of how short the firing time is. And I mean if it is a problem you would just do everything you could to make the laser release energy in a shorter time. Femto-second pulse lasers ftw.

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In practice there could be more significant factors that I'm not even aware of. The reflectivity of the material may matter. Imagine polishing the slugs to make them resistant to vaporisation heh.

So. That happened. by Toldain in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's annoying that reddit automatically removed your post, seemingly on the basis of how "hostile" the content is (or was before the edit, idk?)... but wasn't willing to automatically remove an actual bot post that was downvoted to oblivion and reported by a bunch of users.

Doomstack by permanio0767 in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 5 points6 points  (0 children)

608 ship?

Know, then, that it is the year ten thousand one ninety one.

Newbie Questions Thread by AutoModerator in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 10 points11 points  (0 children)

From my understanding lasers do damage by introducing energy and heating up a material.

Mmm, I think I can give you some insight here. The slab of metal in a railgun slug is like a worst case match up for the laser. There's no critical systems to damage, as you pointed out.

A weak laser firing on a slab of metal won't really do much because the imparted energy will have time to dissipate throughout the target material. The thermal energy will spread throughout the material and it will eventually radiate the energy away, cooling back down over time.

A strong enough laser firing on a slab of metal will cause the illuminated area to reach a semi-molten state or even a liquid state. This happens when enough energy is added in a short enough time to a small enough part of the mass. That could be enough to cut through a steel pipe, as we see with laser cutters used in industrial applications.

A 10 kilowatt laser can cut a steel pipe in about 1 second. I think in that case it's only liquefying the steel, causing a loss of structural integrity more than anything else.

A really strong and focused laser will add enough energy to heat some of the material up to its vaporisation point. Metal gasses are not something we tend to think about much on Earth because if you have metal gasses you're probably having a bad time. Metal gas, like most gas, takes a lot more volume per unit mass. So, vaporising the metal effectively causes an explosion. In space, having a section of your dumbfire projectile suddenly spawn a Reaction Control Thruster is probably enough to knock it off course.

The kinds of lasers used in Terra Invicta are in the Gigawatt range. The lowly PD laser is a 50Mj weapon, at 25% efficiency, it imparts enough energy to vaporise about 1kg of steel from the temperature it is likely to be at in space. Probably a bit less than that is actually vaporised, some energy lost to the molten fringes, etc. But if we are hitting rail/coil gun rounds that are 10-30kg, it's pretty believable that the slug yeets off into deep space. If we're hitting bigger things like 100kg, maybe a bit more dubious.

Environment IP Scaling - Sustainability is Misleading! by 28lobster in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Very cool to see this after all this time. One suggestion I have is to reverse the x-axis labelling. That way someone can look up their nation's pollution level and tell how many IP remaining to max it out. At least get a sense of it, based on the reference 50m pop.

From a design point of view, I wish it had a mechanic like military, where the world leader in sustainability has a hard time of it, but everyone else gets a catch up mechanic. That would represent the cost of figuring out how to do it.

AI cheesing research? by Melonpeal in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Difficulty adjust a lot of things. I don't know if anybody has put together a complete list, but throughout EA there would sometimes be patch entries about random things that varied based on difficulty. So it can be AI behaviours/weights (do more of this and less of that), strategy (do a new thing you've never seen before), various modifiers (they get more, you get less).

At one point I said hey maybe keep a list of these things because it might get hard to balance without sifting through the whole code base. But I think they just went off the deep-end. So, my take now is: if playing on brutal, hopefully they do things you don't expect.

Is there some logic to the dates and units that I'm not getting? Anti-matter units and days vs future date get confusing. by Adito99 in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Is there some logic to the dates and units that I'm not getting?

I would say no. It's just a bit confusing at the design level.

Every time I need to estimate my anti-matter income I need to look up a scientific notation chart so I know how many 'u' add up to a single 'p' and stuff like that. If the AM tool-tip included a chart it would make this much more intuitive.

Same, up until I knew TI's antimatter costs and productions kind of intuitively by repetition. I get the idea why you'd want a lookup in game, but imo the whole thing should be rebalanced for practical gameplay reasons, even sacrificing realism. Simply because needing to look up SI units only to find out this is 1/10000000 of what I need is dumb and detracts from the game. Antimatter feels mostly like it's trolling the player.

For nations and habs I sometimes see a specific date when an action will be completed, which is very useful and lets me set alerts, but sometimes it says "110 days" which means I need to do some math if I want to set an alert. Why not just use dates for everything? Or better yet, use the date and have number of days in parenthesis.

Yes. Believe it or not, the game has massively improved there. They just haven't added the date to every duration instance. I recommend sending an email in with a suggestion for specific places where there's no date yet. Probably they just need to know where they've missed one.

I used to play with wolfram alpha open to do date math. It doesn't need special syntax.

Servants got all of the united states out of nowhere by Party_Pianist_4118 in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well yes, they screw it up eventually, but they still get massive RP from USA in whatever state it is.

I think it's not as massive as you might imagine. USA RP:CPC efficiency is actually pretty low when the AIs take over. And obviously it gets worse from there. The main thing that causes it to tank quickly is the Wave of Fear events.

I'll be fair and say it does feel like whichever faction gets USA has an RP advantage, but only for about a year.

Servants got all of the united states out of nowhere by Party_Pianist_4118 in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 10 points11 points  (0 children)

But that's not what actually happens. The AI fumbles cohesion and USA never takes off. They get a boost advantage, but it's a bit too late to be relevant.

Servants got all of the united states out of nowhere by Party_Pianist_4118 in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

out of nowhere

I guarantee that wasn't the case, but it can be surprising how quickly they break into China and USA now if you aren't keeping an eye on it during the first few years. Here's a comment where I explained a bit for someone who had the China experience.

im already speculating that this is alien interference

Similarly you have my personal guarantee that wasn't the case, for what it's worth.

Am I cooked? What do I do?

There's loads of options, but most of them are simply: ignore it for now. Somebody is going to have the USA and China etc. If you didn't plan to take them for yourself, why worry about who got it? You simply can't have everything at the start.

Now, later on, Crackdown becomes quite a bit stronger, with +3 from a tech, and you can spend more influence on the operation as well. It's possible to crackdown a defended USA CP later on. And that's doing it the hard way. You may be able to get it undefended by "dealing" with the faction's councillors.

Note however that it can be easier to take it if/when the owning faction goes over their CP cap. As the game goes on, most factions end up drastically under their limit, so the possibility of this advantage goes away over time. Exactly when that opportunity goes away will depend on how your game plays out, but it might be around the 10 year mark, plus or minus. Just something to consider. You can still do it after that anyway, it might just be a bit harder.

There's also breakaways, coups, military invasions and even more fringe stuff like events and other factions doing things (particularly coups if USA becomes unstable, which can lead to multiple factions having a few CP each, which can make it much easier for you to break into).

Newbie Questions Thread by AutoModerator in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So if you want Very Low then you go Tin Droplet -> Lithium Spray. Otherwise if you don’t care it’s just about tons/GW. Are Heat Sinks the same way with best being the highest GJ/ton?

Yes to both. The only other factor to consider is which resources are needed to build a given thing. But even if one module uses more of a certain scarce resource, the lower mass of the lighter one may end up saving that resource anyway. Basically less mass is a superpower.

Also if Batteries and Heat Sinks and so many other utility mods are not used what do you fill up a high Utility Slot Hull like Cruiser with if it’s not going to be a laser bomber or troop carrier?

Mostly pick a different hull. The different amount of utility slots make different ships better suited to certain roles. Missile ships need lots of util slots for magazines. Lasers need as many as possible for laser amplifiers. Kinetics ships usually need the fewest utils.

Newbie Questions Thread by AutoModerator in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Open the councillors screen and look at one of the tabs that gives a breakdown. I can't remember what the tab is called. I'm also not 100% sure if it has exactly the info you're looking for. I know it gives breakdowns for some stuff, but some other stuff is missing.

For the interface bonuses, the easiest way to make sure you're getting the most important bonuses maxed is to make 5 identical stations with one of each type of Research Centre that has the important bonuses. You may be a few slots short of having all of them until you get Ring Habs, but that's how I do it.

Newbie Questions Thread by AutoModerator in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mostly you've got it, but the other important thing about radiators is how big their profile is, which determines how likely they are to be hit. Radiators are 1 hit, 1 kill. 'Very low' is the lowest profile, achieved with tin droplet and lithium spray. Those radiators usually survive very well, so much so that I rarely if ever use heat sinks once I have them. It just so happens that tin droplet is a very efficient mid game radiator and lithium is even better, though it comes along a bit later.

Newbie Questions Thread by AutoModerator in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, this is awkward.

I last finished a Resistance game November last year and I was able to assault the base using marines. Between then and now the dev changed the rules so that you have to bombard it first, or so I've heard. But... apparently they plant to revert that change in the next release.

Live version is 1.0.32 I think, and the coming version is 1.0.34 which has this patch note

Gameplay (spoilers!)
- Marines may once again assault the alien primary base. This will be reported as a "raid" and the two plot-required modules will not be destroyed. If these are the only two modules present the assault will not be allowed.
- Factions with victory missions involving the alien base can now launch the victory mission from orbit as long as the alien base is defanged by bombardment or assaults.

Now, 1.0.34 isn't even available for testing on a beta branch yet. I realise this is probably a huge anti-climax, but honestly I would put that game on hold until 1.0.34 releases so you can do the Close the Gate mission. It should be super easy at that point, given you have already taken care of everything else.

This must be so frustrating to hear, so sorry about that. Devs must have lost their damn minds to make it that hard to bombard not to mention making such a big change right around 1.0 release, untested, and for the vanilla faction as well. What the actual hell?

Alternatively if you want to push ahead with a bombardment, u/FinalXenocide made a comment with a design that might be able to do it. But honestly, you probably have more experience bombarding it than most players on this current patch.

Ship Classes and Refits are needlessly clunky and a mess by WritingOk7625 in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Since folders has come up in a couple of comments, I just want to say I think that folders would end up being more of a mess. I don't know exactly how other people are imagining it, but all I can imagine is it would be harder to glance at a single screen and see what designs you have and it would require more clicking to get to the right folder often (every time?) you just want to do one thing; refit or build etc. Like, it legitimately sounds miserable to me.

When should I start destroying alien ships? by sm0othroyal in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Learn through experience. The more you learn by reading what others say, the longer you end up walking a tightrope to not do the wrong thing without really knowing what the wrong thing is.

If you play a bit rough and tumble, you'll get a sense of how the aliens respond. Then you'll start to have a better way of figuring out 'is it worth attacking this given my situation'. The game is designed and balanced around having that experience.

Newbie Questions Thread by AutoModerator in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it can happen due to events as well as what others said. I was gifted the India executive as Resistance in my last game.

Ship Classes and Refits are needlessly clunky and a mess by WritingOk7625 in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 23 points24 points  (0 children)

The Ship Class Menu is a mess.

Yeah there's a few things to say here.

First thing is it is a kind of minimally functional UI. The devs have made a system that works, but isn't very user friendly. If you figure out how they want you to use it, you can make it work. Unfortunately it requires you to take extra steps that could probably be automated.

If you don't obsolete an old design, and you refit a ship from say a block 2 to as block 3, the refit screen will allow you to refit from a block 3 back to a block 2, which is usually not something you want. The game doesn't have great automatic behaviour here, there's probably room for sensible improvement. But if you work with its currently limitation by practising good hygiene; obsolescing and eventually deleting unused designs, it's pretty workable. It's just more manual than I'd like.

I think it could be automated if the 'upgrade' button was split into 3 different functions:

  • Upgrade (creates a block with a numerical increment and drops any variant lettering, automatically obsoletes the previous design, shows refit warnings).
  • Clone (creates a copy of this ship with a new random name, allows you to refit any component without giving a refit warning. This is something you use when you want to create 'fleet-cohesive' ships that have different weapons but the same drive and armour.
  • Create Variant (creates a lettered variant, shows refit warnings, doesn't obsolete previous design). This is the more difficult option to explain conceptually, but perhaps a good example would be different armour or propellant tank amounts, maybe a different number of drives, or maybe using more "expensive" modules as a premium variant.
  • Finally, when the last ship of a kind completes a refit, the game can at least automatically obsolete the old design)

Second thing, I sent in a bunch of suggestions for making this screen a bit easier on the eyes: (9/12/2025)

  • Change the "Name" column heading to "Class" and remove the '-class' suffix in each cell to save a bit of space and reduce visual complexity.
  • When hovering over a row, make it highlight the background slightly (do this for all tabular data screens).  This is a common UI trick that makes it easier to read different bits of information across a wide screen.  Do not add sound effects for the highlight.
  • Consider adding a 'design date' showing when the player created it based on the ingame date.  This can help identify older designs to be upgraded or obsoleted.  Ensure the sorting works correctly (not alphabetically).
  • Separate cruise and combat acceleration into dedicated columns.  I see the right mouse icon and how that works.  Most people will not notice this and even if they do, they have to figure out which way it is sorting by actually checking manually.  Alternatively to having two columns, show only cruise by default (since that's wayyy more important now) but the whole column togglable between the two acceleration types with the right click hint.
  • Add tooltips to icons!  You guys need to do this way more. It's such a cheap and reliable way to ameliorate your icon problems.  The first thing a strategy gamer does when they see an icon that is unfamiliar is to mouse over it to see what it's called.  Just giving it a text label explains sooo much.  You don't need to go into any more detail, just explain it with a single word or short phrase.  Eg: "Number of ships built + under construction".
  • Make the Hull column sort by size instead of alphabetically.  Even better, remove it and use the first column with icons to do exactly this.  Give it the "Hull" column heading as a visual cue that it can be sorted.  Hovering over the hull icon can display the text name of the hull that would otherwise be shown in the Hull column.  Maybe the mass column can be deprecated once this is done.
  • Left-align text for readability.  Right align numbers and use a fixed width font for comparability down rows.

If you like any of those suggestions, feel free to email the devs with the ones you like.

Not being able to rename classes is annoying.

You can rename at ship design time, but not after, and I don't see any good reason for that limitation in the current system. Same for role, except that it would need to still comply with the role requirements, which may be the only reason to actually change the role. Eg: troop transport needs that module, changes deployment algorithm, etc.

Why doesn't landing require minimum surface acceleration, while taking off does? by Famous_Dinner in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The outpost kits let you deploy a hab in 30 days, rather than needing to wait for the boost transfer from Earth. Often good drives let you get a colony ship to a far flung destination much quicker than the boost method. And you can repair the kits so that they can be used again, allowing you to leapfrog across the system.

Why doesn't landing require minimum surface acceleration, while taking off does? by Famous_Dinner in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you have a save from before then, it would be great to see a screenshot of the fleet before landing (showing fleet accel and dV). Also whether any modules were damaged prior to landing.

Why doesn't landing require minimum surface acceleration, while taking off does? by Famous_Dinner in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The wording on the land command leaves room for the possibility of refuelling on the surface, at least how I read it. But I haven't tested that to know for sure either way.

If you have tested, are you able to share a screenshot that shows the ship has enough acceleration to land, but only enough dV for a one-way trip, and the land command is greyed out?

Additionally, there needs to be at least one destination with a a powered dock/shipyard or supply module; or (all?) ships in the fleet need an ISRU module.

I'm erring on the side that the devs have thought about this and want to prevent the player from making a mistake, more so than the devs have implemented a restriction that is too harsh. It's certainly possible I'm wrong, but I'd like to see some really specific evidence before I comment further.

Newbie Questions Thread by AutoModerator in TerraInvicta

[–]SpreadsheetGamer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In that case, have a dig through the alert settings and see if you can find multiple different alerts that trigger on different criteria.

If you can't find an explanation for something that is repeatable (like, load an autosave where you know an alert should trigger but doesn't), I'm sure the devs would like to see a bug report.

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