I’ve had no trouble winning the built-in GSB scenarios in the past, and done reasonably well playing against custom scenarios, but can’t survive two battles in cadet mode in the campaign. I cannot built enough ships to win more than one fight, and produce far too little to build up a fleet in what seems to be a reasonable amount of time. What am I missing?
it could be a few things.
Do you play many challenges? The fleets you’re facing are all player designed, which means they’re considerably harder then the AI fleets.
Also, you might want to post what ships you’re using. What kind of ships and tactics do you use?
The first time, I tried Federation utility cruisers - they had cruiser lasers, a beam weapon to pierce armour, a tractor beam each, good shields and armour, and decent speed. Ran into a trio of Tribes ships and was wiped out quickly. Two cruisers were all I could afford to build.
Second time, tried the swarm. Again, two cruisers, but built lots of laser fighters to back them up. The first fight was easy - I don’t even know what I ran into, but I ran over them quickly. Then I built up lots more fighters, and set off with my two cruisers to tackle a second planet. Ran into a Rebeal fleet with a similar number of fighters, but cruisers and frigates to back them up. Their fighters had mine for lunch, and though I hit retreat, the fighters still wrecked my two cruisers in no time - apparently retreat doesn’t mean what I think it does.
So, I’ve gone from winning scenarios (built-in and user-made) most of the time, to being hobbled by resources to the point that I’ll probably uninstall soon. There appears to be a steep learning curve, aggravated by a lack of starting resources - this is in no way fun.
Don’t get me wrong - I am a long-time fan of GSB, played it lots, bought each DLC release on release day, and still look forward to more. I just wasn’t expecting a campaign that felt like work after the joy that the single scenarios were. In most games, I can walk through the easy mode without much effort - which is nice when you are learning. I expected the same from GSB, but have found cadet mode to be far harder than the original game. This is mostly due to resources - when playing user fleets, I had the same resources the author did. In the campaign, I seem to have less than half.
If you have any advice on a good starting fleet (any race) that fits within the confines of the starting resources and can win at least a few battles, I would really appreciate it.
Am I playing wrong? In GSB, cruisers are king, but cost doesn’t really matter. In the campaign, it seems that cost is king - should I use fighter swarms, or frigates (which I rarely have used before)?
It looks to me like you’re trying to make your ships do everything. Fast+Cruiser laser or just Fast+energy weapons (there’s some fed cruisers you can try in the Lethality v Survivability thread).
make ur ships work together…
frigs can have reasonable survivability if used properly and has enuff speed
for example you can have frigs spamming frig missiles as decoys so bigger missiles (megatons or the like) can get through
or mix frig emp missile into ur missile fleet to significently weaken enemy firepower
or send a bunch of rocket fighters to overload scramblers and kill enemy frigs while the big boats concentrate of cruisers
remember: any and all attempts to make a ship all-purpose will instead make the ship non-purpose
also refer to 123stw’s guide for more tactics
gl hf
gunny
I think, the current state of campaign is a bit unbalanced. I started and pushed enemy over 7 planets on easy and then one of my planets was attacked by huge tribe fleet. When I retreatet and attacked back after a few turns, I was facing 2 swarm cruisers and a bunch of frigates. So my opinion is, that the enemy is very random and I am very disapointed by this. I thought, I will face the same enemies, that have taken my planets… And ofcourse the algoritm choosing the enemy is flawed. It let me fight a tribe fleet made of 10 cruiser that were the same hull and weapons… Hopefuly Cliff will fix this. Anyway, I like the campaign overall, but those bugs must be fixed soon.
That’s the point of the beta phase, I imagine.
I wish I had the problem of changing enemies that I had beaten. 
Huh… Just as I feared… Good thing I didn’t buy it I guess…
I just lost another one, this time a one on one fight between my tribes cruiser and a swarm fighter. I had to wait four turns just to build my one lousy cruiser (due to its 340 crew), and then watch it get picked apart.
Three tries in, I shouldn’t be struggling to win the first planet.
Damn it!
When I started Alpha testing (development testing, as some have called it) I lost several (like 5) before I figured out how to win.
This is a tutorial on how I started the campaign that gave me a winning (survivable edge).
Cliff (I hope you are reading), please fix this. I am not a rookie GSB player, and until today, I wasn’t a complete loser playing the game either. As of today, I can’t win for love or money. This isn’t a game getting harder as you get into it, it is a game being impossible to get into - the first planet should not be so hard that you can’t beat it in five tries on the easiest difficulty setting.
Obviously I’ll be re-balancing and tweaking the campaign during the beta. One major piece of advice is:
Don’t be too quick to race out from the homeworld to fight battles. You may need to take things slowly. Also be VERY careful where you attack, if you need crew, attack worlds with academies. If you need cash, attack worlds with factories. And once you take a world, hold it for a few turns and let the loyalty build up.
one question i have for cliff…
is it a random fleet every battle? or are the fleets persistant?
example:
I have 2 fleets, and an enemy fleet kills my lesser one
the next turn i send my greater fleet (now only fleet since the enemies killed my other one) to the same place to avenge their friends
would they find a completely different fleet?
or would they find their friends killers, albeit a number of ships fewer as they went down during the last battle?
thx
gunny
P.S:
I know this prob belongs in the suggestions tab but…
from what I heard you r supposed to hole up for at least a few turns and build up fleets first b4 attacking
y not make a quick start mode where you start with like 3 planets and a fleet?
it can cut down the beginning boredom VERY effectively
They are persistant
And i’ve never lost a world i didn’t mean to lose, never attacked and been killed
My suggestion is to make a frigate with 1 piece of armor and as many engines as you can, call it “scout” and send it to worlds
On the easy setting, I took over ~75% in under 4 hours. The trick i found is, push to the worlds with the first limits (the one that has no FT, and the one with no CR)
Build up a VERY large fleet of CR, and a very large fleet of pure dual-laser FT. I went rebel, 2 dual laser 1 power plant 3 and one engine 1. Speed of 1.46, this is the single strongest unit i’ve seen in teh campaign yet. I took out roughly 30-50% of the planets with JUST fighters. Sure it’s a longer path, but nothing really stands up to ~500-800 fighters swarming it to death.
Plus it meant i captured enough frigates to not have to build any to capture some planets in annoying places
I gotta say, the difficulty seems off. How is it that I sent it to the easiest setting and my first fight I’m outnumbered 3-to-1 by a vastly superior fleet? Shouldn’t the game save the fleets made by the real pros for not-the-easiest-difficulty?
I’ve played some more, managed to survive the early encounters, and think there is a great game here.
A few things:
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More starting resources would be welcome. If I click “next turn” repeatedly before starting, and am not attacked during that time, there is no difference than being given five turn’s worth of resources on turn 1.
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Scale encounters. It is not possible to predict how hard a given fleet is based on its orders, tactics or design - the game is too complex - but you can certainly look at one that is 3x the size of mine and say “that does not belong in the first third of the planets”.
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If the map shows the blocking points for ship types, I can’t see it. Either I am missing something, or this should be added. It sucks to build up a fleet of cruisers or fighters, then have them blocked from progressing, or have a mixed fleet show up with one type missing. These filters make the game harder, and are a great idea, but please make them really stand out.
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More shipyards would be welcome - its a pain building up a fleet and then spending several turns moving its components forward. A classic game I loved, Second Conflict, provided an automove feature, where you could build ships every turn and have them automatically routed to a destination. This would be great, and hopefully not to hard to code (stacking builds would also be good).
Pardon my earlier rants - I was expecting a buggy game that crashed regularly, not a stable game that was bloody hard to get started in. It reminded my of Syndicate’s add-on - the game went from challenging to impossible. Back then, I had no where to rant though.
There are icons to the right hand side of each world that has a spatial anomaly (such as blocking fighters), if that helps, but you need to mouse-over them to see which is which. I should possible try and come up with easily viewed differing icons for each anomly, instead.
Things were going great, until my largest fleet was hit (18000 HP) was hit by a cruiser fleet four times it size, and I could not flee before being annihilated.
This game too often puts me in unwinnable situations, often early in the game, and that sucks the fun out of it. This was worse than yesterday, as yesterday I was starting out, this time I played for two hours before being knocked out of the running. Not cool.
I know some people play games for the challenge and the feeling of accomplishment. I play them to blow of steam after work; this expansion is feeling more like work than fun.
If only for the cadet level of difficulty, please throw in a filter so that these random fleets sent our way aren’t 3x (or more) more powerful. The tribes are an exception - they tend to be HP-heavy, but vulnerable to fighters - but if a Federation fleet with 65000 HP (all cruisers) is thrown at a swarm fleet with 8 cruisers, there is no challenge here.
Combat sports have weight classes for a reason; perhaps GC should as well.