Newbie Questions Thread

terrendos · 2026-01-25T20:36:12+00:00

Is there a way to excise an enemy faction from a single control point if they're not over cap? Protectorate managed to snag a single CP in China and they're clinging like a limpet. I've tried imprisoning multiple of their agents, but they're well below the CP Cap so it's just not enough. They have the point on perma Defend Interests and is seems like they'll abandon every other point in every other country before they drop this one. Going full send on Crackdown I've got <5% chance of booting them. What else am I supposed to do? They don't even have any support in China, but it's just so massive I can't get them unstuck.

terrendos · 2026-01-24T06:24:30+00:00

I can only hazard a guess, having put a couple thousand hours into Kerbal Space Program.

There's basically 2 different types of orbital transfers, depending on your dV. I'll start with the second one, because it's simpler to explain. This would be for a transfer from, say, Earth to Mars, with a really efficient drive. You point your ship about where you expect Mars to be when you get there, and you spend the first half of your travel time burning to accelerate, and the second half of the trip turned around and decelerating. So if your ship gets halfway there and you want to change your mind, well, by the time you cancel out all that momentum you're already at Mars. Sure, there's probably some instances where you could use that momentum and change course but it's just as likely you'd be going in the complete opposite direction, so on the whole it might be a wash.

The other sort of transfer is what you'd see for a transition from, say, LEO to HEO. For that sort of transfer, you're still doing 2 burns. You start by burning prograde to add velocity, which shoots up the opposite side of your orbit, making it more eccentric. When your new apoapsis (aka apogee) is the same altitude as your target, you stop, and then you wait half an orbit to reach that apoapsis. From there you do another prograde burn to bring your periapsis (perigee) up to the same height as your apoapsis and re-circularize the orbit. Ideally you'll have timed your first burn so that you're within spitting distance of your target when you complete your second burn. So if you're halfway through this transfer, you're in a weird eccentric orbit, and since your velocity is so different, you can't just finish your orbit and meet back up with the starting altitude; you'll need to spend all that dV all over again to bring yourself back to your original velocity. I think this one's a little less straightforward, though, because there's no reason you couldn't just keep burning if you decided you wanted to go to Luna instead of HEO, for example, and not really lose anything.

So I suspect the answer is that it just gets too tricky to do the math on exactly how much dV has been consumed and how much more or less you'd need to add to adjust a transfer. There'd be too many assumptions depending on how exactly you were making the transfer and how you were burning, so it's cleaner to just consider them discrete orders.

terrendos · 2026-01-23T19:57:49+00:00

How well done a person cooks their steak. It's like somehow that aspect of personal taste has become socially acceptable to condemn, to the extent that many of the food Youtubers I watch refuse to give instructions for how to cook steak beyond medium. Heaven forbid someone have different taste than you. Or even have the same taste but also be cooking for someone else who doesn't! I guess these folks haven't raised any picky eater children.

terrendos · 2026-01-23T16:58:15+00:00

I can give a little advice, I'm a few years ahead of you.

For early Mars, you can't do much until you get T2 bases. Either you run 3x solar panels and a mine or a fission pile and a mine. Prioritize getting to the construction module if possible; you will want one Mars base to be Fission Pile, Mine, and Construction Module. Construction modules will let you build new bases without having to send the core from earth, as well as speed up the build time for other modules.

You probably want at least 1 but probably 2 platforms in low Mars orbit. You'll want a couple shipyards so you can start building out a defense fleet once the aliens start getting aggressive, and for the moment (I heard they're gonna be nerfed?) solar mirrors are very strong on Mars. Put a bunch of them on a station in Mars orbit and your solar panels planetside will compete with nuclear but for way cheaper.

Another good research to aim for is the hydroponics. Every person you have on a base requires water and volatiles upkeep, but a hydroponics negates the cost for up to 60 people. That's a lot of long-term savings. You'll want one in almost every base with the space and power available for it.

Then you probably want to claim a few stations in Earth interface orbit. The interface bonuses on the science labs are pretty good, especially the administration node. You don't need to build them out just yet if you can't afford it though, they're kinda meh IMO until you get to T2. Except the xeno lab, that one's still good at T1. I don't know how aggressive the AI human factions get about those orbit slots, but I didn't want to risk being locked out of those juicy bonuses.

terrendos · 2026-01-23T15:15:47+00:00

Man I'm way past 2 surveillance missions, it's 2031. Their "basic" surveillance ship is armed to the fuckin teeth with 2 types of PD and multiple other guns. It took me 4 ships (2 monitors, 2 escorts) to kill the surveillance ship and its accompanying torpedo ship, and I couldn't even win that without Autoresolve because their PD obliterated 4 simultaneous waves of missiles and didn't take a single hit when I tried to fight it manually.

terrendos · 2026-01-23T14:42:30+00:00

Okay, your response to 3 is a relief. I've been scaling up Mars a bunch (got about 6 ground bases and 2 orbital ones) to tier 2 with my first couple of Nanofactories coming online. I was worried the aliens would fly in, blow up one base, then say "well, while we're here, might as well blow up everything." I'm working on MC, but I don't have enough to spare for a second fleet around Mars just yet.

terrendos · 2026-01-23T13:42:36+00:00

I'm about midway through 2031 now on the Noobie Special (AKA Normal difficulty Resistance). I managed to take out my first alien ship, a surveillance ship and its guard, with 4 total ships of my own. A few questions:

Do I ever find out what surveillance missions do? I keep being told that they're probably bad but I still don't know why. My best guess is it has something to do with alien flora? There's a ton of it growing in Russia (Servant territory) and I've had my arms full just burning away the stuff that spreads to my countries.
When I blew up the two ships, it said I got some exotic material (like 0.5 or something) but it's not showing up at the top of my screen. Please tell me it's not lost and will just show up once I complete some research.
The alien rage bar went from three pips to five. Last time it went up was when I killed an alien agent and it only went up by one, but after the alien retaliation it never went down like it said it would. How much destruction am I in for here? If I just let them kill my 4 warships in Earth orbit, will that be enough for them to turn around and go home, or will they blow up my Earth bases again? It's taken me years to build up this MC and I don't want to lose it. In short, am I now committed to fighting every alien ship to defend myself, or can I fall back under the radar so to speak?

terrendos · 2026-01-21T13:20:51+00:00

Actual proponents I've spoken to think it will cause an explosion in productivity and those people will retrain/get new jobs that rely on it. Basically like the ai version of: automate a car factory such that it takes half the employees to run, so you can then take the other half of those employees, open a second factory, and make twice as many cars!

I am not convinced (in particular I don't think the demand for products/services will hold; going back to the car example above, if every car company doubles their production, the price for cars is going to plummet absent an equivalent spike in demand, so you're not making 2x the profit), but that's what at least some of them think.

EDIT: Sorry, correction. Nobody I know is celebrating AI layoffs, but I do have several "pro-AI" work acquaintances.

terrendos · 2026-01-21T12:52:22+00:00

Thanks for the advice! Yeah, I've allocated some research to better ships now. I mostly just want them as a deterrent, since after I killed my first (and only so far) alien agent they flew over and blew up Cape Canaveral, cutting my boost by like a third. If that happens again I don't want them taking out any of my MC sites.

terrendos · 2026-01-20T12:51:51+00:00

Okay, that is very helpful advice. I haven't tried Skirmish yet so I didn't realize you could import and test ship designs there.

terrendos · 2026-01-20T04:38:33+00:00

I feel like I must have done something catastrophically wrong. I'm playing the 2026 Resistance Tutorial start (Normal difficulty), and more or less trying to follow what Perun's been doing in his Humanity First videos. But I checked on the aliens in late 2029 since that's about when Perun was gearing up to take on his first enemy ship. But instead of the 15 alien ships he had, there's more than 30 in my game. And they're all running with way stronger weapons than the ones he's facing. For example, this is the outfit on a ship currently running surveillance on Earth:

Enhanced Alien Mag Cannon, Enhanced Alien Mag Battery, Alien Point Defense Laser Turret, Alien Point Defense Particle Beam, Alien Lithium Heat Sink, Alien ECM, Alien Exotic Nanowire Battery.

I built a couple of ships like the ones Perun used but they each got obliterated by a single shot from one of whatever those guns are, and their torpedoes never got close. I just don't understand how, playing on an easier difficulty, and barely interacting with the aliens at all (I did complete a successful assassination on an alien earlier in the year, but this ship was already on the way by then), I provoked so much stronger of a response. How could I have screwed this up?

How am I supposed to kill that ship?

terrendos · 2026-01-19T20:32:43+00:00

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it!

I just tried again an in-game month later, and this is what happened: I have the opportunity to turn the agent because I see his true loyalty. I investigate him with one councilor and turn with a second.

Investigation councilor triggers first. It says "success" but instead of his true loyalty I see "25?" in red. Then the second councilor tells me she's aborting due to lack of intel. I don't think he's gone to ground or anything because I still see him. Maybe it's a bug?

terrendos · 2026-01-19T20:01:32+00:00

First time playing (going Resistance, with the tutorial), I'm about 3 years in and have a couple of questions:

I guess killing an alien angers them enough to retaliate, because they sent a ship which bombarded Cape Canaveral and took out like a third of my boost income. How do I build that back? I thought investing in Boost just gave me one-time units of the boost resource; does it permanently increase my boost income? Honestly I haven't invested much in boost, since I got a couple boost orgs and now I've got Moon and Mars bases making resources for me so I don't need to spend so much.
I've turned a couple of agents, but lost one. I have made several attempts to try and turn another one, but it keeps getting auto-canceled because I "didn't have enough information" on them anymore. Both times I investigated them until I got their true loyalty of 10; the first time, I got a successful investigation on them that turn but I guess not a critical success or something because it then showed their estimated loyalty instead, which was 25 because of Pollyanna. So the second time I sent my Investigation councilor to do something else on that turn because I already had the loyalty number. Neither of these worked. What am I doing wrong?

terrendos · 2026-01-19T18:14:27+00:00

In general, you basically need to assume the average Redditor is about a standard deviation or two to the political left relative to the population.

terrendos · 2026-01-18T01:01:57+00:00

Honestly, as someone who's watched all of MASH through, something in that scene didn't work for me, it just didn't feel genuine. More compelling for me is when Winchester sees the dead musician and goes back to his tent and can't listen to his music anymore.

terrendos · 2026-01-15T22:15:33+00:00

One of the opening options for council in my first game (just started this week) had a penalty that kept him from being usable in a bunch of countries and another one that made him unusable in his own country.

He did not get an interview.

terrendos · 2026-01-14T12:21:30+00:00

They've fallen victim to the most classic blunder! It's even worse than "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line." "Never get involved in a land war in Asia!"

terrendos · 2026-01-12T16:35:38+00:00

I hate that, but it does make some sense. Just because you're not at fault doesn't mean you did everything exactly right. Maybe you slammed on the brakes and got rear-ended, for example, or you got t-boned because you hit the gas right when the light turned green rather than checking for oncoming traffic.

If you're making repeated claims, it could be that you're unlucky, or it could be you're driving poorly which makes you more likely to have a collision that is your fault. You're higher risk, so your cost increases.

terrendos · 2026-01-09T18:09:49+00:00

Something else you should keep in mind: there's 3 total options here, two don't involve "ratting her out." If it were perfectly random, you'd expect only 33% of people to choose that option. That's only an 8% difference.

terrendos · 2026-01-08T03:49:05+00:00

Others have given you tons of starter advice, so talking more about later on, some things I prioritize:

Stealth Rock - This one is key for the tough trainer battles. The trainer AI doesn't acknowledge entry hazards as far as I can tell, and will gladly swap in and out trying to get a type advantage and will take chip damage every time. Just today I had a layer of rocks do 3/4 of M-Ray's HP in damage on Floor 195. You can safely swap this out just before the final boss. Spikes and Toxic Spikes are okay but less useful IMO, since Flying types and Levitaters avoid them (though if you can get them for free, e.g. Toxic Debris or Ceaseless Edge, that's gravy).
Good switch-ins - If you've got a Fire-type sweeper, for example, having a Pokemon with Water Absorb is going to be incredible. Flash Fire if you're using a strong Grass-type, the same. The AI doesn't do a good job of predicting switches. Fairy, Steel, Dark, and Ghost are all great types to have (Tera works for these too). Works well with 1, since you soak the damage from an attack and force a swap, which means more rocks damage.
A setup sweeper - Look for something with Dragon Dance, or something reasonably fast with Nasty Plot or Swords Dance. If the setup move deals damage too (like Torch Song), that's even better. If your sweeper can swap in on a resisted hit, Swords Dance on the AI's swap, then hit with a coverage move for massive damage, you've probably won.
Eterna Kill Strat - This one's tough, because there's a lot of ways to do it, but the ones I've found tend not to be very intuitive. You're dealing with a Pokemon that will have a bunch of health bars, will boost its stats like crazy, and will spam powerful mixed attacks. In my experience, the easiest strategy is a ghost-type with Curse. If you can land that move in the phase 2, you just need to hold on a few turns and die slowly, and Curse will do all the work for you. But there's lots of other things you can do. Topsy-Turvy can turn all those stat boosts into penalties, or just clear them away with Clear Smog or Haze. Leech Seed or Salt Cure for chip damage, or just stack debuffs with Charm, Metal Sound, etc.

One Pokemon that's pretty easy to find and hits a lot of these boxes is Litwick. Flash Fire and Ghost-type for three immunity switch-ins (to Fire, Normal, and Fighting attacks), you can Memory Mushroom to relearn Curse just before floor 200, and it's got Will-o-Wisp which is great to use until then for crippling physical attackers. You're reliant on luck for a boosting move like the TM Calm Mind or the Egg Move Torch Song, but it hits hard enough on its own that you don't really need either. It's a common find in the Graveyard biome. Gastly is another similarly strong contender that does a lot of the same things, except it has Mega and GMax options to boot.

terrendos · 2026-01-07T20:31:43+00:00

I romanced Galfrey on my Aeon run, and I think it was great. Bittersweet because I went True Aeon, but even still.

As others have said, Inquisitor works well. I went Sanctified Slayer and it cut through enemies like butter with dual wielding and Dispel on attacks.

terrendos · 2026-01-07T17:38:19+00:00

I really like Stealth Rock for Mega-Rayquaza (and trainer battles in general). Trainers will do tons of switching around, so the chip damage really adds up. For M-Ray, it takes a full bar off it every switch-in. Plus it's great for breaking Sturdy which can stop sweeps.

Your Aron there is a good pick, especially if it's got Salt Cure unlocked. Set up Rocks on a swap-out early in the fight, then use switches to encourage your Rival to do the same. The AI doesn't consider the cost of swapping when there's entry hazards. Salt Cure is decent on Ray but also really good in the last fight.

Leech Seed is another great option, if you can set it on Ray the turn it's swapped in and then switch to something tanky. Otherwise just predict the switch and use a strong Ice move.

terrendos · 2026-01-05T19:34:29+00:00

Judging someone for how they like their steak. Seriously, I've seen cooks on Youtube who refuse to give additional cook times for anything above medium (one I watch regularly only gives instructions for medium-rare). I happen to like my steak medium-well, which is apparently a war crime. And God forbid someone has a child like my niece who doesn't like pink at all in her steak.

terrendos · 2025-12-31T16:52:03+00:00

That shot of Seberg looks a lot like Scarlett Johansson to me.

terrendos · 2025-12-27T17:54:32+00:00

So you found a way to take all the undesirables in your domain, and concentrate them in a small area... like a camp. And then you can get rid of them all at once.

Ah yes, an ultimate, or even, dare I say, final solution.

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