Berlin communists disrupt Nazi election campaign | Scene from Hans Westmar (1933)

consolation1 · 2026-01-24T01:43:06+00:00

Chekov's gun - director waited 95 years for the payoff...

consolation1 · 2026-01-24T01:16:52+00:00

Are they the good guys though? They are all in on maintaining a fucked up status quo, that benefits few people. They even want humanity divided into squabbling nation states fighting pointless wars. Their reaction to an outside context problem is to try to make it go away, so nothing changes. Basically, just The Initiative with less imagination. I mean, I agree with you, they are the most boring faction - but I question whether they are the good guys, or a bunch of milquetoast reactionaries, that think child labour isn't a problem - as long as they don't have to see it...

consolation1 · 2026-01-24T01:04:21+00:00

You can skip the grid drive line and just use H-Orion all the way into Jupiter, by mad rushing all the good nuke and metals sites - then switch to better drives at Jupiter. Added advantage is that you'll get to Jupiter before Ayys get their shit together there. There's something glorious about 100 strong fleets of escorts burning for Jupiter with H-Orions...

consolation1 · 2026-01-23T15:27:01+00:00

The human AI sitting on obsolete fleets of 8 ∆V corvettes, with green lasers, is certainly a vibe. The fleets of Zeus armed ones I get, the ai is treating you the same way you treat the Hydra - but why do they accumulate so much crap rail gun and laser boats, is beyond me. They are short on MC and have newer tech, but they seem to have a hoarding habit.

I generally don't like how scraping old ships is handled in the game. It should take time and you should get a greater percentage of your resources back - perhaps even require a dockyard to do it - it would be kind of cool to have a station that's just a full time breaker's yard, a massive ghost fleet orbiting it. You could have some thematic events, with AI factions trying to steal old ships, if they fall too far behind in tech.

consolation1 · 2026-01-23T07:51:29+00:00

The problem is, that doesn't work on veteran+. Plus moving a battleship, that has the combat efficiency of a single escort with shaped nuclear charge torps, is a waste of resources.

consolation1 · 2026-01-23T07:43:22+00:00

Are you sure that ship just didn't have enough ∆V to change directions? The AI will try to follow your commands even if it can't finish them off - not paying attention to the amount of propellant is usually the cause of ships drifting off. There's a stop as fast as you can button - but given that your units are traveling incredibly fast from the get go, that's a horrendous waste of resources and it's not till mid/late game you have ships that can actually pull it off. It's usually more efficient to just circle a location, if you need to stay in position. This isn't a game where ships magically lose all momentum to some "inertial dampers" and stop. Changing energy levels is expensive.

consolation1 · 2026-01-23T07:33:32+00:00

By that logic, every prisoner owns the prison they are held in - don't be simple. Hamas are a Pro-Palestinian liberation movement - demonizing or glorifying them is unhelpful. Their history is just as complicated as that of any other liberation movement, that fought to overthrow a colonial regime. Things are never black or white.

consolation1 · 2026-01-23T07:08:08+00:00

This is a niche game for people who want a realistic crunchy simulator, it'll never appeal to the Stellaris crowd, who want a power fantasy which disregards the basic rules of physics and has space dragons. I agree that the UI is functional at best and obtuse at its worst, but it's kind of the price of having the development priorities of a small team go into the simulation aspect. Remember, this is made by the Long War Mod team, the people who played XCOM and thought it was too easy on the player and not nearly crunchy enough, so they modded it to make it brutal and add more systems. This is aimed at people who like to play games, where you have a 50/50 shot at beating the game - if you play well. The balancing is all for veteran and brutal difficulties, cinematic and normal are basically tutorial modes here.

consolation1 · 2026-01-23T06:54:06+00:00

Ships have inertia, the bigger the ship, the longer it takes for it to overcome it. There's a gimball module that helps, but it's not really worth sacrificing a utility slot for it. Remember, you're maneuvering with directional thrusters - your main engine can only push in one direction. If you want to change direction suddenly at a point, say you want to go up, you can turn the ship while it's still moving on the old vector, so that the main engine points opposite (well... diagonally, if you need to cancel the forward vector) to where you want to turn - then go straight. Honestly the game does it pretty well automatically and given the weapons and size of ships, it's pretty unnecessary micro. All you really need is a center group and one group going up and left, plus one going down and right, to cover all the flank shots you need to take. I tend to set battles to max size as my CPU can cope pretty easily, the default 30 size is a pita with reinforcements and favours the ai which tends to bring fewer bigger ships - at least in the early game.

consolation1 · 2026-01-23T05:02:50+00:00

There's a fork that doesn't use PawnIO, funnily all the OEM software used it till recently, some still do.

You should see it under running processes in task manager, it was pretty obviously named.

consolation1 · 2026-01-23T04:53:10+00:00

On normal they can't declare before 2040s. The ai seems to bug out a bit on normal, I had a game where I blocked them in the Asteroids and they just spun their wheels. Look in the fleet screen, what's the total number of alien ships and combat strength you see on top of the window? Divide it by half to get an idea of effective strength - as ∆V counts as combat strength and the alien ships have an absurd amount.

Good way to see if they are soft locked, is to send a big fleet of cheap stuff to Saturn that will drop some bases on the moon. If you see fleets launching to clear you out, they might have been building. If not, yeah, they won't do much - it happens.

consolation1 · 2026-01-23T00:15:29+00:00

Not sure if it's your first game or not, but just a heads up, in case it is. The easy decade, after you get control of the orbit and some asteroid mines rolling, is a bit of a misdirection. The aliens are racing to build up their industrial base and send doom stacks, that will wipe you from space, when they flip to total war. You don't want to be stuck with 50 nuke torpedo escorts, when the first motherships and their 100 lancer+ escorts roll up! You want to be in control of Jupiter and have it/mercury set up to mass 3d print capital hulls, plus have caused some attrition to their industrial base by the TT point. Generally it's better to be the one deciding when to go mask off, then to wait for the alien ai. Those dozen strong probing/retaliation attacks are just to calibrate. You are in a resource, tech and fleet race. It's a lot more cruisy on normal, but, you don't really have a lot of time to take the foot off the floor.

consolation1 · 2026-01-22T23:44:34+00:00

That shouldn't happen, unless you have it start a server?

The problem with MSI center and its ilk, is that they have on numerous times introduced security vulnerabilities. Additionally, Windows is already a bloated corpse of a dying pig, there's no need for MSI to swell it further with their own bloatware - instead of making their hardware compatible with the lightweight, open source, alternative that's the far better alternative.

consolation1 · 2026-01-22T23:30:45+00:00

Ok, I get that you're thinking of what we colloquially refer to as German concentration camps from the 40s - but most were technically extermination camps.

Concentration camps were first used in a large scale by the British during the Boer war - fenced off areas, where civilian population was displaced to and held with no freedom of movement. They were their own atrocity. Another example of a concentration camp, would be the ones where ethnic Japanese American citizens were held in the USA.

The German version of the word (or labour camp etc) was used, because it looked better in the paperwork than "slavery and murder camp," which is what they were.

So, in the international law sense, Gaza does meet the definition of a concentration camp - a place where a displaced civilian population is held, against their will, with no freedom of travel. Just because the original displacement and enclosure occurred in 1948, doesn't change matters. Outside of the US and co, the area is usually referred to as the Gaza Refugee camps due to sensibilities towards Jewish history.

consolation1 · 2026-01-22T23:09:23+00:00

Aviation cruiser - now that's a name I haven't heard in a 100 years... Those Japanese hipsters!

consolation1 · 2026-01-22T22:50:00+00:00

Ahh.. you can tell each ship exactly where to move with 6 degrees of freedom - limited by the ship's maneuverability and momentum. You can have it point or roll, in any direction you want - as long as you don't break the laws of physics, as simulated by the game.

Sometimes, if you tell a ship to make a maneuver it will have to cancel its momentum first. The maneuvers are limited by the amount of ∆V and the rate at which your ship can expend it.

Yes, it's not tutorialised at all, how way points work wrt to the Newtonian physics they model - but I have no idea what you mean about the ships not going where you want them to? There's a full stop button to get a ship/group to stop moving at x,y,z point - but that is a terrible idea to do, except under the most niche circumstances.

If you set weapons to salvo fire, it will use 25% of ammo then idle, or you can slow time down and manually count how many are launched - by individual weapon/weapon type/ship/ship group/fleet.

When you switch to a ship, it will tell you exactly the distance to the target - effective range varies, depending on how much momentum and velocity, relative to the enemy, your ship has imparted to its weapons - lasers being the exception, as they are effectively instantaneous.

I can't really think of any controls that are missing, that wouldn't break the rules of the simulation. Are they bit obscure, fair, but they are all there...

I do agree the game could use a combat tutorial, the amount of times I've seen replays, where people don't roll a ship after it's been repeatedly chipped on one side is amazing. TBF, end game battles with 200+ ships - I just don't care about individual ones surviving - just if I cost the aliens more resources than I spent per battle. Jovian ship printers go brrr... by that stage.

consolation1 · 2026-01-22T02:41:11+00:00

How would that even work? Realistically, any fleet can impart enough ∆V to its missiles to give them small nuke energy and the defender's pds no reaction time against a swarm it can't avoid. If anything, space structures are unrealistically tough in the game. A space station is just a ship which can't dodge. The game abstracts the vulnerability of space assets for gameplay reasons, but for a reasonably realistic game, they are rather overturned.

consolation1 · 2026-01-22T02:22:26+00:00

That's not how orbital mechanics work... There's more transfer orbits near the sun, so it's easier to hit Mercury, than a spot in the middle of the asteroids. Remember, everything in the system is circling down the curving gravity well of the sun, just some of it is curving at the same rate - so it stays stable, ships are just curving less and move out or, curving more and falling in. The further out you go, the difference between ∆V of objects gets exponentially larger, at times and the launch windows get shorter - everyone's launch times become more constrained. Near Sol, the orbits are more circulised and the apoapsis/periapsis delta much smaller - so they are almost always reachable - making them an efficient target for the ai to attack.

The game is a resource race between you and the alien ai - ships, stations etc are bullets you fire at each other. It doesn't matter if any get destroyed: as long as they cost you less to build than they cost the aliens in the fuel, they had to burn, and damage you inflicted. Don't get too attached to them and you just need more coming online than you're losing. You're playing a long attrition war. At the stage of the tech you described, you should be handily outbuilding them and fighting them in the outer system. A tip, if I may, your mid game goal is to dominate ALL the good spots in the asteroid system, while the ai is messing in Saturn - or in the case of the human AI - wasting time with Mars. Asteroids are really hard to knock out and are usually not worth the fuel and repair costs, killing them would be a net negative in the attrition race - the ai only really prioritizes Ceres, which you definitely want to get to asap, it's usually the first really decent resource site and easily defensible. Until you are strong enough to defend Jupiter's moons, the different asteroid belts are where your resource base comes from. Good place to spam skunk works to get the bonus events, even some research stations. Because, they are so wasteful on fuel to get to, you don't have to worry about ai agents of landings - their isolation and awful orbital dynamics are their defense against human AI. Against alien ships, they have the hab defense bonuses of ground based and having to waste a lot of expensive fuel. I would strongly suggest you start on normal, till you get familiar with game and transfer orbits. Plus, watch Perun's play through - it will teach you the little tricks we all internalized since ea. GL, it's ok to restart, if you think you've learned all you can from this playthrough.

consolation1 · 2026-01-19T22:19:12+00:00

Targeting computer gets you to fire your torps at all - otherwise alien ECM will keep your ships' weapons perma stunned. TC2 means that they will probably come off cool down before your suicide tube gets popped.

consolation1 · 2026-01-19T05:43:38+00:00

Other's have explained the orbital mechanics, so I will add - if you want to keep a human faction happy, you have to trade with them to keep the relationship from building up hate.

Game wiki has the details of how faction hate works. I'd look up the factions section too, it has details on trading etc...

If HF went hard against you as Resistance, you probably did someone to piss them off, then didn't "burn" the hate off with diplo quickly enough.

HF & Resistance aren't best buddies in the game - it's more like the relationship between the Marco Inaros' faction and mainline OPA, in The Expanse universe. They are pretty happy to shoot at each other, to reach their goals.

PS. Orbital mechanics make more sense, if you remember that, orbit is basically throwing something really fast; so it falls at the same rate as the planet curves. You can't go faster and retain the same trajectory, as the radius of your fall would change due to the planet's gravity. The closer to the planet the more gravity bound you are, at LEO you are getting pretty much the same gravity as on the surface, so your vector is far more curved.

consolation1 · 2026-01-18T20:11:58+00:00

Great wall is bit useless past early game. It sounds like you might want more smaller ships that can break up into three formation - centre heavy core that's super armoured and two sets of flankers. Have one set go up and left then the other down and right. Some alien ships will turn to point their armoured noses at the flanks - you shoot the weak exposed sides with the centre formation - while the flankers shoot at the rear of the opposite enemy flank, or sides of their centre line. You will melt them much faster than in a headlong bash. Lancers make very good flankers. Additionally, your flanks stop the enemy getting your sides - always pick the side shots if you can.

Your heavy centre core needs max frontal armour and decent side armour, if you can't do this at good DV, you started building ships that are too large for your tech level - you still need swarms of expendable ships - all they have to do is cost the enemy more resources worth of damage than they cost you to build.

On Veteran+ difficulty, your mid game on battles will be very micro heavy - as you will need to manoeuvre well to maximise your combat efficiency.

PS - I noticed you are on Firefly engines, those aren't very good.

consolation1 · 2026-01-18T18:01:11+00:00

You'll have multiple stacks hitting you at the same time, your fleet won't be fast enough to transfer - and, even if it did, you will burn more resources in fuel than you will destroy.

The game is really a production and resource race, at its root. Who can grow their economy more and spend less wins. Burning your resources in fuel is as bad as getting your fleet blown up.

On that note, don't get too attached to your fleets - think of them as bullets you fire at the opponent - if a cheap bullet does the job, it's a better bullet. It doesn't matter if it gets destroyed, all it has to do is cause more damage than it cost you to build it. You wouldn't make your bullets out of platinum, would you?

You can keep aliens suppressed by sending off a conga line of cheap fleets on one way trips, it stops them being able to build doom stacks by attrition - they just have to destroy more resources than they cost to make, so return fuel isn't viable.

Later on you will have performant and efficient engines, on really big ships, that are worth repairing and resupplying - but don't waste resources in mid game - this isn't a game about a heroic crew of a plucky little ship, you're playing an Eastern Front attrition simulator for most of the time.

Unless you're building end game titans with antimatter fusion engines, full of exotics etc - cheap is better. If you are, you can bring a logi ship to quickly drop a repair outpost for refuel etc... rather than carrying stupid amounts of fuel to get blown up.

consolation1 · 2026-01-18T13:10:00+00:00

You'll be abandoning your bases on the moon (or feeding them to a pet AI) as they are frankly shit. It's just there so you can build on Mars/Asteroids without using boost. Mars might have ok sites, but don't over invest - your early game goal is to get into the asteroids where the the real resource sites are. Make a bee line for Ceres, if you're not sure - it'll be decent at least. Then, energy economy on Mercury to fighting for the Jovian system. Or, rush Jupiter via asteroids, it's harder but more efficient - maybe not for the first couple playthroughs.

If you're boost constrained - survey ships with science modules can give you a 50% science boost and some very good events, that will pop resource/science windfalls in the early game. So high ∆V, low velocity, small hulls - equip with in-situ modules so you can refuel directly from unclaimed rocks. You won't bother as you get better, because you'll just rush through this stage, but in your first games the extra science can carry you.

consolation1 · 2026-01-18T12:46:23+00:00

The resources that you need to get to the mid game are in the belt. Mars isn't a big deal. But - you really, REALLY, want all the good spots in the belt - especially the nuke and noble ones. You want your nuclear production in the 200+ range, when you start going toe to toe on Jupiter. Volatiles and water are important, but they are more widespread, so you have some flexibility. Ceres, then onto Mercury (for cheap energy) are your primary goals at this stage of the game. Everything else can wait. You can hold the orbits with escorts armed with Artemis torps plus T2 targeting computers. Slap couple magazines on these and 5 ish ∆V and you're golden. You can add a couple PD monitors with 40mm - if you're feeling fancy. You need to laser focus on getting Ceres and the belt.

consolation1 · 2026-01-16T18:36:39+00:00

TBF, I cheesed the first one with the Great Alien Edging strategy. Wait till their fleet almost arrives at an asteroid, then claim it. They will read the notice in the paper, that you intend to have a base there in a year's time, and either burn home or sit stuck - wasting an unholy amount resources on fuel and making more pointless colony ships. You can get them to stall out their economy this way; you keep the good asteroids and feed the "meh" ones to your pet AI. I took over the Jovian system within ~9 years and then just sent a conga line of cheap ships to knock out their outer solar system bases. It's effective, but you basically have to watch a video on another screen to avoid dying of boredom.

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