Terra Invicta: Early Game Fleets (version 0.4.xx)

Back to the Drawing Board...

There are a lot of improvements in version 0.4. The devs have made the AI much smarter, in particular, by improving how other factions colonize space. They will rush to Mars, competing for the best mining spots, and then rapidly colonize asteroids as well. Factions also seem to be doing a better job of developing their countries, fighting wars, and choosing more appropriate priorities. They are not better than a reasonably smart human, but AI is hard to code, and a perfect AI is not ideal anyway.

There have also been some important bug fixes. They fixed the problem where an interception fleets would attempt to follow an alien fleet that changes course, but not having enough DV itself, would end up out of fuel, and derelict. And the issues regarding bombardment seem to be largely resolved - bombarding works on weak habs, but they will do some damage from time to time (as shown below), while the much stronger alien habs will tear up your bombarding fleet.

They hit me!

The aliens are also smarter in some ways. In my latest campaign, they colonized Ceres and Vesta before I could get there, and they’ve been fielding more varied and effective ship designs. I am not certain of this, but it also seems like their ship designs are dynamic - for example responding to my choice of weaponry (lasers) by stacking more armor on their ships.

I responded to losing Ceres and Vesta by putting more colonies on Mars, and by stealing many of those spots from other factions. While this didn’t make up for Ceres, it wasn’t debilitating. And I responded to the improved alien ship designs by switching my own designs, and by rapidly building my first fleet. Instead of using 2 Shipyards at Earth and Mars, I built 5 and 4 respectively, and thus created a large armada at each planet in 2 build cycles.

Unfortunately, this seems to have won me the game. The aliens are still not aggressive enough - or not consistently aggressive. Large fleets of aliens will descend upon Earth only when you are weak (or seem to be weak). If you can field ~1.5K in firepower, and manage to destroy a couple alien fleets, they will back off. In my current campaign they are completely ignoring both Earth and Mars, both of which have strong guardian fleets (Earth: 15 destroyers with 2.1K, Mars: 12 destroyers with 1.7K). The lack of alien aggression is probably the biggest flaw in this version of Terra Invicta, because it gives the player all the time in the world to build up an invincible Armada. On the other extreme, the alien AI could be coded to throw everything they have at Earth before you are prepared - perhaps making the game impossible to win. Proper balance is of course somewhere in the middle, and right now the porridge is a little too cold.

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Back to the Drawing board…

In my first attempt at version 0.4.xx, I built the same early game ships that I used in version 0.3; they were mercilessly pummeled by the aliens, and I restarted the campaign. And that was great. I’ve had a ton of fun re-evaluating ship design, and my navy buildup strategy.

Before I get into the details, I want to go over how I did my research. Instead of reading through the new tech tree, or getting tips off of the internets, I decided to use the console command to give myself every technology, then build test ships and test them against alien fleets in the skirmish mode. Cheat coding all the techs took about five minutes - using the Terra Invicta Wiki: Console Commands section. Then I spent several hours sifting through all the various drives and other ship components. This was just as much fun as playing the actual game, and I strongly recommend trying it out yourself. To test ship designs follow these steps: save your ship design; also save your game; go back to the main menu and select skirmish mode; scroll all the way to the bottom of the ship selection control box to find an option to upload your ship designs from a save game file. And that’s it.

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Some comments on tactical balance

The problem with those early game coil destroyers is that they never made it to coils - the necessary techs were much further away in the revised tree. (Also there are fewer beakers to be had in 0.4). Choosing kinetic weapons means fighting with railguns for a longer period of time, and railguns are not quite trash.

And so going back to the drawing board, I decided to try Green Arc Laser Cannons as my primary offensive weapon. These tested very well in skirmish mode, and they are more accessible on the tech tree. In the long run, it is definitely worth researching both laser and kinetic technologies, and so the only real question is which tech to go after first. The answer: Green Arc Laser Cannons.¹

Another problem with my old ship design was that Advanced Pulsar drives were nerfed considerably, and no longer have the superlative combination of dV and combat acceleration. In fact, I didn’t find any early game drives that could enable a destroyer to dodge enemy fire. Even with powerful fusion drives it is hard to build a viable dodgy ship because that design requires stacking side armor (to defend against lasers), and side armor is heavy (and I believe even heavier in 0.4). I actually like that side armor is heavy - every ship is thus vulnerable to flanking fire. The problem is that attempting to flank your opponent requires exposing your own ship’s side armor; and that is utter folly.²

It seems to me that one solution to this problem would be the creation of a new armor type. There should be some sort of reflective armor, or reflective armor coating, that is both cheap and light, and could bolster the existing armor allowing it to temporarily defeat lasers, but which would degrade under continuous fire. This would give flankers a chance.

The lack of fast drives combined with the perils of flanking (not to mention the difficulty of manually piloting ships) has compelled me to completely embrace the tactic of just floating forward. And that means using ships with nose armor, good PD, and big guns. While this approach is perfect for the novice fleet commander, it is far too simplistic, and universally effective. Ideally, small fleet actions should be more gamey, with a greater variety of effective combinations of weapons systems and maneuvers. That being said, I don’t want to micro manage large fleet actions - and I really like how the vulnerability of side armor encourages rigid fleet formations against heavy fire (floating High Wall forever!) Ideally, small fleet actions should feel like a wild west shoot out, while large fleet actions should feel like the inevitable consequences of decisions long past.

Anyways, here is my new design…

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Starting Ship Design

TECHs Required:
Green Arc Laser Cannon
Helicon Drive
Solid Core Fission V 
Tin Droplet Radiator
Nanotube Armor 
Sodium Heat Sinks 
Point Defense Arc Laser Turrets 
Salt Water Batteries  
Laser Engine
Targeting Computer
Rail Cannon Mk1

This is a really successful ship design right out of the gate. In late 2029, this design was murdering enemy craft and taking very few casualties.

I chose the Helicon drive (very likely to unlock, though not 100%) because it is one of the most efficient drives in the game, and still very accessible. However, it is slow as molasses. In combat, it won’t do much at all. With the Helicon drive your fleet is going to take one pass at the enemy, and then watch as wounded enemy ships float off - and that’s fine. You can re-engage a few hours later.

The rail cannon MkI is mostly a placeholder (it won’t be very effective against undamaged targets). I chose it because it upgrades well. Later on it can be swapped out for the MkIII railgun battery, then the coil MkII/MKIII - and those will prove to be an excellent complement to the primary laser cannon.

The Targeting Computer is also a placeholder. It will not be useful in the early game, but I’ve heard many other players complain that the new ECM mechanics are somewhat oppressive later in the campaign, and that the Targeting Computer is a great help for that. Alternatively, you can stack another laser engine. That will mean your ship is not going to upgrade as well - but maybe that’s okay (ships get destroyed, decommissioned, assigned harbor duty, etc.)

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Asteroid Range Ship Upgrade

Because I was unable to colonize Ceres before the aliens, I determined to build a fleet that could take it from them - not as hard as it sounds, even in 2032. Below is the upgraded ship design I came up for that purpose.

Additional TECHs Required:
UV Arc Laser Cannon
Rail Battery MkIII
Adamantine Armor
Molten Salt Fission Reactor II
Super Conducting Coil Battery
Fission Platform Kit (Not pictured)

Other good options/goals:
Lithium Heat Sink
Lithium Spray Radiator

The key upgrade is the 23 propellant tanks which provide 170 dV - enough to get to Ceres in a few months. This is super efficient for the early game. The Helicon drive is the most important component here, then Adamantine Armor - everything else is only nice to have.

I took 18 ships to Ceres, planning to build even more once I set up a station. To build that station, we need to research the Fission Platform Kit and bring along one or two ships with that component. The station should immediately build a construction module so that you can build habs from space, rather than waiting for them to travel from Earth.

Once the station’s dock was online, I bombarded some Servant habs on the surface of Ceres and replaced them with my own. Bombarding the alien hab was not an option, as it requires far more armor and fire power than my little fleet possessed. To take out the alien hab I needed to assault it with marines and that required me to construct another small fleet for this purpose. Here is the primary ship design I used to raid the alien hab:

Additional TECHs Required:
Resistance Rangers (sub Elite Marines if not playing Resistance)
Coil Cannon MKIII
Lithium Heat Sink
Lithium Spray Radiator

I’ve heard that 320+ attack power is enough to guarantee victory when assaulting alien habs, and so that has been my target force level, and it has worked for me.

When raiding a hab, only the ships with marines will matter, and so it is best to leave your other ships out of the action (if you deploy your whole fleet, and leave your station unguarded, the aliens will destroy it).

The next step is to take down the alien station, and that is far harder. The marine assault ships above, were build so that the could also assist in space battles - note the coil MkIII nose cannons.

But to add a little more punch, I also used the design below:

The Heavy Siege Coiler MkIII throws much larger shells, which are harder to destroy with point defense lasers. While the low velocity makes these weapons weak against enemy craft, they are quite strong against stationary targets.

Against an alien station, a large fleet is still going to take significant casualties. I sent in 26, and lost half of them. The enemy ships guarding the station were positioned well in front of it, and so the battle was actually 2 different engagements back to back, as opposed to one continuous fight. If the enemy fleet had stayed near the station, it probably would have ended in defeat.

1. Laser Cannons are far superior to Laser Batteries. The range at which Laser Cannon fire will defeat armor is much shorter, and this makes all the difference. Laser Batteries are good at providing fleet wide PD, but don’t provide much kill power.

2. The alien gunships that attempt to flank my fleets are getting crushed by laser fire. In fact, any ship maneuver results in exposing side armor to laser fire, and so any alien vessel that tries to steer a new course ends up being mostly disabled by laser fire before it can do anything.