It seems to me that the Campaign can be divided into eight different phases, each of which call for different build/combat stragegeries:
Phase 0. The Proto-Campaign. Conquest of Rana and Keeshamun. Easy, but watch out for the counterstrikes. At this point, lose a battle and you’re toast.
Phase 1. Extending the boundaries to Argoshka. Hard.
Phase 2. First defensible perimeter: Dayemun/Ryemir.
Phase 3. The push to Secaras/New Darwin. Ability to produce fighters beyond Dayemun.
Phase 4. Driving to Metagoros/Monirian. Defensible position, cash.
Phase 5. The capture of the Kappalaxx corridor. Production, cash.
Phase 6. The push to Qualkat. At the end, production and more cash cash cash.
Phase 7. Mopping up. If you’ve made it this far, you can’t lose.
Of course, the map can be edited, but for what we have now this seems the best division/organization/analysis.
Actually, i just realized i’m doing all my tests on a modded map, where all enemy fleets are twice the default size just for shits and giggles.
Anyway; depending on how good your fleet is, the same tactics can be reused. That technically is what i consider the requirement for gamebreaking, that i can use basically one ship model for everything.
I haven’t tweaked the map yet, but have considered it for the purposes of creating a new campaign dynamic (fewer bottlenecks and cul-de-sacs), as well as re-naming the systems with more conventional stellar names and adding an additional star or two.
Cliffski has previously commented that keeping large fleets directly on your border tends to attract an aggressive response from the AI. Of course, this means that in the early campaign, until you get to Argoshka (assuming that you’re starting from the default homeworld), you have no way to hold your fleet back from the border, and are thus constantly provoking attacks. So save up cash, crew and pilots before you start to construct a fleet, and then build quickly and move fast. In reality, for your builds each turn to occur away from the border, you need to establish a defensive line at Dayamun and Ryemir, screening Argoshka and Sullogobah from “detection”. Because Dayamun is a “fighter-free” zone, even if you are trying to use fighters as the backbone of your fleet, this means that you will have to have a second fleet of frigates and/or cruisers to take and “hold” the Dayamun position (in reality, taking the system and then pulling back to avoid attracting the AI’s attention any more than is absolutely necessary). Note that even if you make the decision to bypass Dayamun, or cut it off by coming up through the “Kappalaxx corridor”, enemy fleets can still pop into existence at Dayamun and attack you…
Well, based on recent developments I’m not sure I know anything about the game anymore. At least on Admiral setting, I cannot find a strategy that works at all, and I have tried to re-run every successful approach that won for me in the past. At this point, all roads lead to disaster right around turn 70. I think my division of the campaign into easily digestible segments is still valid (although I might postpone the attack on Dayamun until after I get the cash from Monirian in my pocket, except that I can’t even get past Argoshka anymore). Last game I didn’t even make it that far…the AI started dumping 40K fleets on me from two different directions as soon as I got to Besustine. Before I could attack Argoshka I had to go back to re-take Sullogobah, and then when I was repositioning to resume the offensive I got hit at Keeshamun and Besustine simultaneously, and after I got done fighting off that, I had no money left to rebuild my fleet, which then had to go back to re-take Sullogobah AGAIN, except that it failed and I died. The rest of the games have been just about as much fun as that. My all-time favorite was in a similar situation, where I was moving to Keeshamun to go after Argoshka, but got attacked at Besustine, Keeshamun, and Sullogobah simultaneously with about 80K worth of ships. My entire fleet at that time was worth about 5K…
Captain level might still be playable, but I haven’t tried it since my Admiral games started crashing and burning on a regular basis, so who knows?
Yeah, Admiral is ridiculous. Even when abusing the most overpowered aspects of the Uni-T (drones, range 1800 weapons), I still had to use regular manual quit + reload in order to get past the ridiculous waves of fleets, and in the mid-late stages I sometimes got attacked in 4-5 places at once. Seriously, when the goal of the campaign is supposed to be developing balanced fleets, it seems rather counterproductive to set you up against fleets that can only be defeated by one-trick pony forces, if even that.
Honestly, I think the campaign would be better if it ditched the whole “use challenge fleets” idea and just had a slew of stock ships that it tracked on the map, and which are deployed via a modified auto-deploy algorithm. That way, you at least aren’t getting hit with fleets that can only be stopped by focus on a specific counter, and can actually build balanced fleets like the game is supposed to be about.
what does it mean when it says {missing scenario file…\src\SIM_Scenario.cpp 250} i have tried redownloading and reinstalling it but it still does not work would like to play the campain please help
Just tried Campaign mode again, after the patch for balance (making it easier) and additional maps. Unfortunately I bounced off it again. I think I’ve put my finger on the problem, in my case, in that campaign mode kills experimentation - which was the part I enjoyed about GSB.
For actual fights (rather than walkovers where I either retreat on seeing their fleet, or clobber them with no significant losses), the mechanic of seeing where you could improve your fleet against your opponent is gone. If you lose, you can’t make changes and try again, and if you win, you can’t see if you could do it with fewer losses, or with a smaller fleet or whatever makes you happy. In fact, losing my fleet has so far always meant losing the campaign, which means I don’t dare join any fight that would actually be interesting.
I don’t think it’s just a case of me not being good enough at the game - from my point of view, no matter how good I was there would still be battles I was certain to win, battles I would immediately retreat from, and interesting battles which could only be played one-shot. That’s where the “GSB fleet-optimisation” appeal is lost for me.
Yeah, that’s the primary reason why I don’t play campaign.
It’s not that hard to win with Tribe CL spam + hybrid fighters/painter with an anti mass fighter decoy. The problem is you are stuck with what you have. So the thinking process stops once you have a fleet. From there on it’s just pure grind.
It’s more fun for me to think about how to beat 10 known fleets with a single one under the same budget constrain.
123: I’m just curious…what level were you playing on?
The campaign offers the opportunity to play a wide variety of fleets. The difference is that you are frequently outnumbered, and the pace of engagement is determined a lot by the strategy and pace of one’s advance. More challenging than actual challenges, in my opinion.
I am not saying there isn’t a large variety of fleet, but that you can’t exactly change your fleet to compensate for it like normal challenges. If you bump into a fleet you cant beat, then all you can do is retreat, and push another fleet up if you have it. Playing NEC on the other hand is all about changing your fleet continuously until it beat all the previous fleets, so it involves more active designing.
Although, between Tribe CL and mass fighters, the only fleets that cause problems are the occasional mass fighters that severely out credits you. And so long as they are unleashed they can be lured into hitting 1 cruiser with 12+ armor, a light shield, and 4 tribe repair. Fighter spams will be severely harder if they have 1 decoy frigate to set escort to.
I was only asking because, after the last couple of updates, I haven’t been able to survive on Admiral no matter what the heck I tried. I don’t play Tribe (just don’t like 'em), but previously was generally able to eke out a victory on Admiral level after a long period of hammer-and-tongs battling which finally resulted in a breakthrough. Now the pressure just keeps getting worse and worse until I get crushed like a bug.
Admiral is a problem when the other side’s fighter spams get so huge you can’t keep up even with the best AA in the game.
And I find that there are A LOT of fighter spams in campaign nowadays.
Besides, it doesn’t make any sense to expect anyone to cumulatively beat multiple unknown fleets severely larger with a single one, when a single good challenge online could have beaten you on the first attempt. In theory you only need to run into 1 good fleet that counter yours before you die.
You make an excellent point. I still like the campaign, but it only takes a couple of bad fleet encounters to ruin your day.
In the pre-1.55 update era, I would generally start the campaign with a frigate/fighter mix (biased towards fighters). Then, after getting an economic base established, I could add cruisers and more frigates, shift my emphasis away from fighters, and fight a balanced campaign.
Now, no matter the combination, eventually I run into a couple of tank-heavy fleets that start to take a toll (i.e. 10% losses per battle). A few of those, and pretty soon your fleet is so run down and the pace of new attacks is so fast that you simply cannot keep up, and fight a series of losing battles at more and more terrible odds, until finally you can’t successfully counterattack at all.
I like a challenge, but I can recognize a no-win scenario when I am in the middle of one. Turn after turn of attacks by hugely superior fleets , with no letup, simply isn’t a winnable situation.
I also assume that the campaigns will get progressively harder since they are build by real people. Eventually it will get to a point where there won’t be anymore efficiency to squeeze out. If every fleet look like those from the SAC/NEC, mix with the occasional mass fighter spams, I think even Captain Mode would not be beatable, and even Cadet will take a significant amount of skills to beat.
True. Although the fleets built by real people will still be created for a range of differing purposes (things they like to see, to defeat a specific opposing fleet in the challenges, to test a theory, etc.), so there may still be an opportunity to survive. Over time. Which you don’t have when the computer is attacking your every other turn with vastly superior fleets at opposite ends of your empire.
Perhaps the restriction that should be imposed on the campaign is some sort of a maintenance limit.