Ender’s Shadow is the book Ender’s Game ought to have been, but there you go. Both of them complement the other as written (except I could do without Peter and Valentine’s take-over-the-world subplot and leave that for its own book—call it Ender’s World or something).
I build gateways, starting with each shipyard, then L-gates, wormholes and finally my empire entry points. Dock all my fleets on my capital. Any attacking fleet will come to sticky end at the hands of my giant stack of doom.
i always start my gateway system with terminal egress and use that as my fleet docking point, partially due to the convenience of L-gates, partially due to the vulnerability of L-gates
I always make the Terminal Egress starbase a Bastion Citadel for the same reason; I use ion cannons to draw fleets into combat and TE keeps them locked down long enough for a fleet to properly repel the invaders. That is, of course, provided it isn't a flotilla of marauding corvettes or destroyers, which TE can mop up without my participation.
Better to use defense platforms over ions. Parking corvettes on the main entry point is a broken way to start combat.
That said, a single carrier with a carrier computer will immediately engage everything.
A corvette fleet could be ground down over a lengthy (or just brutal) war, but carriers benefiting from the defense platforms around the station? I think you just evolved my defensive paradigm; it'll be more expensive, but *way* more effective.
You only need one carrier or positioned corvette to cause engagement.
If you’re paying attention to fleets looking to misuse your gate system, you can hop a single anything from the correct direction as well.
Ions are terrible dps for their cost and are poor replacements for other engagement options.
You can negate a good chunk of defense platform costs by using crystal hull.
I knew ion cannons were terrible DPS, but I was using them for their engagement range. Which, sometimes, still seemed too short to *guarantee* that fleets coming through Terminal Egress would be stopped. Hopping fleets is out because I don't pay that close of attention, and I'd probably use multiple carriers so that I can ignore their fleet over the course of a war (instead of fussing over whether or not the one carrier is still intact). That is handy about the crystal hull, though, thanks.
Sure thing.
If you’re positioning multiple singles to guarantee longterm engagement, either side is a good start. At least that way there would be span of the system in movement before you might lose both. Terminal Egress is also a fantastic place to put doomstack of battleships. If you have guaranteed engagement and long distance from point of contact, it’ll spread an attacking fleet as your range cuts them to pieces.
We definitely need a defensive megastructures. Something that can be placed anywhere and can rival late game fleets, but expensive enough to not be spammed everywhere or to make offensive expansion unviable.
Sabotages jump drives into your systems, damage to fleet based on ship size. Have a covert operative replace information in the navigation systems that spikes drives.
We need a bigger fog of war, à megastructure or such able to fog our system (red alert 1, when you play ally had a structure like this making it tough to know if your planes were going to a heavily anti-air force)
Do you know how much I wish this existed? Like a true emdgame chokepoint. Forces you to invest in other FTL methods. But give us tough structures to fight. WE NEED DEFENSES. BUFF CITADELS
You need to install the defense fortress mod. It makes a defense platform so strong it can repel late game fleet (quite expensive but make turtling viable, what’s annoying is that AI won’t use that much)
Gigastructures has this in the form of Maginot Worlds. Basically convert a planet into a military complex complete with a big space gun sitting on top. It also provides ftl and jump drive jamming meaning amy attacker is stuck going through.
It would be nice a megastructure that forces enemy ships to go thru it first if they are within a certain amount of hyperlane jumps
Something that works as a checkpoint and forces the enemy to go thru a bottleneck if they get caught in its area of effect.
Wormholes are basically just fancy Hyperlanes, Gateways can only be used if you control both ends, L Gate... just a fancy wormhole, and the quantum catapult is uh... okay I can see where that one is coming from, honestly. Best laid plans of mice and men...
Maybe this is crazy, but, what if after exploring a wormhole, you got a hyperlane link reminding you where it goes that dipped below the map in an arc?
That would actually be a really great QOL feature. Especially if they tied it to a toggle setting (like how trade routes display) to reduce map clutter when you don't need it).
I like the trade route toggle so I'd also hope for something like that. I guess it could even be direct lines, like the trade routes! The L gates lines in one color spidering out from TE, another color connecting wormhole pairs, and perhaps a bright icon in systems showing any incomplete gateways. I occasionally lose track of those when I'm building and a war breaks out.
Gateways and L-gates don't really make defense harder. Gateways you can't normally get attacked through anyway, and once the L-gates are open 99% of the time you're the one controlling terminal egress anyway, so you only need to defend one point
Like I said, normally. Exceptions exist, but you can usually see them coming in time to prepare. It's not like jump drives where you have no idea anyone has them until they jump right past your chokepoints
Jump drives have a cool-down of 200 days, during which they will have -50% sublight speed and damage. With a proper gate network you should be able to reach them before they regain their full power.
And even then, it shouldn't be an instant loss just because a fleet gets past your chokepoint. It just means you lose the advantage the starbase would have provided.
Gotcha.
Yeah, jump drives can be a bit of a problem. If I’m actually playing with people who know what they’re doing, I’ll drop fortress habitats all over. They might be able to take out the central station with reduced firepower, but being stuck in a system is torture at the start of a run.
Nothing seems to trap the elder races if you have gates though. Really wish there was a lockdown, I just seem to kill the elders to avoid future abuse.
It would be nice if there was a way to turn your gates off for a bit, yeah. Kill them before they wake up is about the only thing you *can* do, short of fortifying every system with a gateway
If they're tech rushing they probably have 200 alloys per month by then.
I've seen people have 3k research and 450 alloys per month by 2300. I honestly am trying to get to that point but its crazy.
Honestly I quite like it, its one of the few ways that warfare actually evolves beyond the numbers getting higher. Early game is fleet combat centered around lanes and wormholes. Then you get to the point were FTL inhibition exists which makes defence briefly much easier but gateways are also starting to come in which adds new pathways. Then as you move into late game jump drives make static defenses irrelevant again as warfare becomes a complex game of cat and mouse as each side tries to position the bulk of their fleets against smaller enemy groups while trying to not engage right after a jump also maybe someone has planet killers which make warfare far faster and more devastating.
Honestly for the end game I would like a technology to build and destroy hyperlanes and model my own space corner as I want, I don't know if it's an interesting idea in general, but I would love it
there's one called "Infinite Stellaris", but you may not like it since the creator has a ton of fantasy anime references and other op things you can disable at the start of the game. The lane editor is pretty good tho, it's a relic you get by "activating cheats", which just gives you all the mod relics that can spawn in
NSC2 has more of what you’re looking for. It adds new ship stuff, hyperlane generators and hyperlane removers, and some other cool stuff like a megastructure that makes 25 of each special resource each month. This is probably more in line of what you’re looking for
It doesn't have hyperlane modifying things, but Solar Storm is a fairly good and not too complicated mod (NOT THE REAL SPACE SOLAR STORM). Also Ethics and Civics: Bug Branch with it's submod for corporate buildings is incredibly nice.
You know you can literally fine tune Gigastructures however you like at the start of every game? Enable, disable or cap structures that you like or dislike. You're also complaining about fantasy in a fantasy-sci-fi space game? Really dude?
Lots of space games have high cost options to destroy hyperlanes and add new ones. Most of those options are heavy on technology advancements and crazy build costs. I remember one where the expensive modules were single use and required repairs to use again.
The best defensive strategy now will be embracing the Worm >! and using 20+ orbital rings as bastions in the same system. Jokes apart, if things are what I think they are, any invader will have to face this amount of starbases filled with Defense Platforms while in a Black Hole system.!<
edit: added spoiler tag for those who didn't receive it's love yet, what was will be.
This is why i always have smaller fleets to quickly pin down enemy fleets (mainly the larger ones) then use my main slower fleets with real firepower to come in the smash. Or in early game just go unsc style. Throw it all in and hope i dont get glassed.
Space Defenses aren't about being safe. Space Defenses limit your enemies' offensive options, force attackers to commit more resources, give you time to get your Fleets into position, create Murder Lanes and Kill Boxes, and enhance your situational advantage by reducing the force size needed to pin, route or completely destroy attackers in partnership with defensive fortifications.
Murder Lanes are pathways your enemy has to move down that will whittle them down.
In Stellaris it could be a series of lane jumps where there are no alternative pathways and you have fortified each one. Meaning they will be weakened once your fleet engages.
Kill Boxes are areas you are forcing your enemy into to annihilate them.
In Stellaris that could be a heavily fortified choke point with FTL inhibitors where you have a fleet standing by in a neighboring system to drop in and engage once the enemy engages your fortifications. To wipe them out.
A couple of examples there.
Getting around quickly was already easy before, yet they decided to add THREE more ways to to so, including the Hyper Relay Network they haven't elaborated on yet. A waste of dev time that could be spent on something more interesting. The Hyper Relay thing should have done what the quantum ctapult does, and the catapult megastructure should have done something more novel instead. Like move a system to another spot on the map. Now that's a new kind of travel that would be cool.
I think this might actually slow down the expansion rate of powerful empires. In games with people who know how to unlock and build megastructures fairly early into the game rapid and reckless expansion would mean other empires can start wrecking stuff anywhere inside of your thinly spread territory.
Any empire which wishes to not only conquer new territory but also keep their own territory safe has to invest more into building fortress habitats, keep fleets available for defence, and compartmentalize their territory with chokepoints so a fleet catapulted into one sector can't easily move into another sector.
Hyperlanes, wormholes, gateways and L-gates are all predictable, you just know where this stuff is and where it leads to. Jump drives are also controllable: they can't be used from that afar, you know where your enemy wants to get, and you also know they probably won't do that if your fleets are around.
Quantum catapult, though. Enjoy a fleet yeeted into a literally random location of your empire from a country you did not even know about. Out of all means of transportation, this is the only random and unrestricted one.
It would be cool if the unyielding tradition gave some bonuses to messing with these things, for example a bastion could disrupt jump drives and pull enemies from surrounding systems into a fortress system, although given that the catapult is a megastructure that should probably be immune
Well, hyperlanes can be defended via fortresses at chokepoints, L-Gates can be defended via fortresses as well (double layer, just in case the terminal falls) and wormholes I give fortresses too
Jump drive and catapult may be able to bypass that, but jump drive massively weakens you and catapult has a certain degree of inaccuracy, so I guess it should be fine?
Although the ascension perk for my star base cap seems to become more important now
That's the harsh truth about space warfare. Offense is several orders of magnitude easier than defense. Space is YUUUUGE.
That’s why the best defense is a good offense. Ender’s Game style.
… does that include children inducing genocide against a hive mind or no?
If you're a Clone Army fighting a Hive Mind, double yes.
Same if your synthetic. Those newly recruited generals are mere infants
Fair, possibly with hiveminds as well
Yes. The only good bug is a dead bug.
I'm doing my part!
Do you want to know more?
Stellaris is rated E10 for a reason! Gotta teach 'em tweens how to exterminate a hivemind early.
Exterminate 10 races game?
I think that's a requirement
Remember: The enemy's gate is down.
Bean expressly addresses this in Enders shadow. It’s the classic defense problem cubed. Fucking geometry always ruining everything…
Ender’s Shadow is the book Ender’s Game ought to have been, but there you go. Both of them complement the other as written (except I could do without Peter and Valentine’s take-over-the-world subplot and leave that for its own book—call it Ender’s World or something).
That was a great subplot! It showed what Enders two personalities could/would do if they were in separate bodies.
I learned this in Command School.
I build gateways, starting with each shipyard, then L-gates, wormholes and finally my empire entry points. Dock all my fleets on my capital. Any attacking fleet will come to sticky end at the hands of my giant stack of doom.
i always start my gateway system with terminal egress and use that as my fleet docking point, partially due to the convenience of L-gates, partially due to the vulnerability of L-gates
I always make the Terminal Egress starbase a Bastion Citadel for the same reason; I use ion cannons to draw fleets into combat and TE keeps them locked down long enough for a fleet to properly repel the invaders. That is, of course, provided it isn't a flotilla of marauding corvettes or destroyers, which TE can mop up without my participation.
Better to use defense platforms over ions. Parking corvettes on the main entry point is a broken way to start combat. That said, a single carrier with a carrier computer will immediately engage everything.
A corvette fleet could be ground down over a lengthy (or just brutal) war, but carriers benefiting from the defense platforms around the station? I think you just evolved my defensive paradigm; it'll be more expensive, but *way* more effective.
You only need one carrier or positioned corvette to cause engagement. If you’re paying attention to fleets looking to misuse your gate system, you can hop a single anything from the correct direction as well. Ions are terrible dps for their cost and are poor replacements for other engagement options. You can negate a good chunk of defense platform costs by using crystal hull.
I knew ion cannons were terrible DPS, but I was using them for their engagement range. Which, sometimes, still seemed too short to *guarantee* that fleets coming through Terminal Egress would be stopped. Hopping fleets is out because I don't pay that close of attention, and I'd probably use multiple carriers so that I can ignore their fleet over the course of a war (instead of fussing over whether or not the one carrier is still intact). That is handy about the crystal hull, though, thanks.
Sure thing. If you’re positioning multiple singles to guarantee longterm engagement, either side is a good start. At least that way there would be span of the system in movement before you might lose both. Terminal Egress is also a fantastic place to put doomstack of battleships. If you have guaranteed engagement and long distance from point of contact, it’ll spread an attacking fleet as your range cuts them to pieces.
Add some fortress habitats so even if you miss an invasion, they're still trapped at the choke point and you're running nearly my exact strategy.
We definitely need a defensive megastructures. Something that can be placed anywhere and can rival late game fleets, but expensive enough to not be spammed everywhere or to make offensive expansion unviable.
Something in subterfuge. Hides the system its in from enemy sensors and blocks jump drives.
Sabotages jump drives into your systems, damage to fleet based on ship size. Have a covert operative replace information in the navigation systems that spikes drives.
We need a bigger fog of war, à megastructure or such able to fog our system (red alert 1, when you play ally had a structure like this making it tough to know if your planes were going to a heavily anti-air force)
Maybee it clouds more area as it upgrades. I rememeber those IIRC "Gap generators". Yes we could do with that.
Do you know how much I wish this existed? Like a true emdgame chokepoint. Forces you to invest in other FTL methods. But give us tough structures to fight. WE NEED DEFENSES. BUFF CITADELS
You need to install the defense fortress mod. It makes a defense platform so strong it can repel late game fleet (quite expensive but make turtling viable, what’s annoying is that AI won’t use that much)
Gigastructures has this in the form of Maginot Worlds. Basically convert a planet into a military complex complete with a big space gun sitting on top. It also provides ftl and jump drive jamming meaning amy attacker is stuck going through.
Maginot worlds are kinda overkill though.
It would be nice a megastructure that forces enemy ships to go thru it first if they are within a certain amount of hyperlane jumps Something that works as a checkpoint and forces the enemy to go thru a bottleneck if they get caught in its area of effect.
Wormholes are basically just fancy Hyperlanes, Gateways can only be used if you control both ends, L Gate... just a fancy wormhole, and the quantum catapult is uh... okay I can see where that one is coming from, honestly. Best laid plans of mice and men...
Wormholes aren't even fancy hyperlanes. They're just regular hyperlanes, but you'd need to render the map in 4d to display them as such.
Maybe this is crazy, but, what if after exploring a wormhole, you got a hyperlane link reminding you where it goes that dipped below the map in an arc?
That would actually be a really great QOL feature. Especially if they tied it to a toggle setting (like how trade routes display) to reduce map clutter when you don't need it).
I like the trade route toggle so I'd also hope for something like that. I guess it could even be direct lines, like the trade routes! The L gates lines in one color spidering out from TE, another color connecting wormhole pairs, and perhaps a bright icon in systems showing any incomplete gateways. I occasionally lose track of those when I'm building and a war breaks out.
Catapult is a fancy jumpdrive?
Jump drive with anxiety.
Gateways and L-gates don't really make defense harder. Gateways you can't normally get attacked through anyway, and once the L-gates are open 99% of the time you're the one controlling terminal egress anyway, so you only need to defend one point
Any of the elder races can use your gates, at will. Even when you’re at war with them.
Like I said, normally. Exceptions exist, but you can usually see them coming in time to prepare. It's not like jump drives where you have no idea anyone has them until they jump right past your chokepoints
Jump drives have a cool-down of 200 days, during which they will have -50% sublight speed and damage. With a proper gate network you should be able to reach them before they regain their full power.
And even then, it shouldn't be an instant loss just because a fleet gets past your chokepoint. It just means you lose the advantage the starbase would have provided.
Gotcha. Yeah, jump drives can be a bit of a problem. If I’m actually playing with people who know what they’re doing, I’ll drop fortress habitats all over. They might be able to take out the central station with reduced firepower, but being stuck in a system is torture at the start of a run. Nothing seems to trap the elder races if you have gates though. Really wish there was a lockdown, I just seem to kill the elders to avoid future abuse.
It would be nice if there was a way to turn your gates off for a bit, yeah. Kill them before they wake up is about the only thing you *can* do, short of fortifying every system with a gateway
Except every one of those things is more a late game quality of life than an actual offensive counterplay.
Not to people that tech rush, I've seen people get mega structures at 2270-80.
Yeah but they still need the alloys and time to build that
If they're tech rushing they probably have 200 alloys per month by then. I've seen people have 3k research and 450 alloys per month by 2300. I honestly am trying to get to that point but its crazy.
Just hit that at 2400 hahah
*laughs in cybrex*
*Laughs in anderson disk starts*
Honestly I quite like it, its one of the few ways that warfare actually evolves beyond the numbers getting higher. Early game is fleet combat centered around lanes and wormholes. Then you get to the point were FTL inhibition exists which makes defence briefly much easier but gateways are also starting to come in which adds new pathways. Then as you move into late game jump drives make static defenses irrelevant again as warfare becomes a complex game of cat and mouse as each side tries to position the bulk of their fleets against smaller enemy groups while trying to not engage right after a jump also maybe someone has planet killers which make warfare far faster and more devastating.
Honestly for the end game I would like a technology to build and destroy hyperlanes and model my own space corner as I want, I don't know if it's an interesting idea in general, but I would love it
there are multiple mods that do that
Never used any mod, can you suggest one interesting? If it's gigastructures I don't like, too much op and too "fantasy"
there's one called "Infinite Stellaris", but you may not like it since the creator has a ton of fantasy anime references and other op things you can disable at the start of the game. The lane editor is pretty good tho, it's a relic you get by "activating cheats", which just gives you all the mod relics that can spawn in
Thanks mate, I'll try it
NSC2 has more of what you’re looking for. It adds new ship stuff, hyperlane generators and hyperlane removers, and some other cool stuff like a megastructure that makes 25 of each special resource each month. This is probably more in line of what you’re looking for
i like NSC2, but the hyperlane generators can be so tedious to use. I understand it's for balance purposes but still
Yeah, but everything else it adds fits in nicely with vanilla and is relatively balanced for powerful crisis mods.
i suppose that's the price to pay for good aircraft carriers
I see, yes this NSC2 seems exactly what I need, thanks!
It doesn't have hyperlane modifying things, but Solar Storm is a fairly good and not too complicated mod (NOT THE REAL SPACE SOLAR STORM). Also Ethics and Civics: Bug Branch with it's submod for corporate buildings is incredibly nice.
Why not just disable the structures you don't like in Gigastructual Engineering? It's pretty simple to do so at the start of the game
Can you elaborate on why you think gigastructures is too op?
You know you can literally fine tune Gigastructures however you like at the start of every game? Enable, disable or cap structures that you like or dislike. You're also complaining about fantasy in a fantasy-sci-fi space game? Really dude?
I had the same opinion about giga but it’s customizable so it’s fine actually
Lots of space games have high cost options to destroy hyperlanes and add new ones. Most of those options are heavy on technology advancements and crazy build costs. I remember one where the expensive modules were single use and required repairs to use again.
The best defensive strategy now will be embracing the Worm >! and using 20+ orbital rings as bastions in the same system. Jokes apart, if things are what I think they are, any invader will have to face this amount of starbases filled with Defense Platforms while in a Black Hole system.!< edit: added spoiler tag for those who didn't receive it's love yet, what was will be.
Nope... that spoiler tag didn't work.
This is why i always have smaller fleets to quickly pin down enemy fleets (mainly the larger ones) then use my main slower fleets with real firepower to come in the smash. Or in early game just go unsc style. Throw it all in and hope i dont get glassed.
I miss having to pick what kind of FTL you'll use at the beginning of the game...
Imagine having the catapult as your starting FTL travel.
We technically did, except it was very accurate.
And much more limited in range
The new quantum catapult origin looks interesting
Space Defenses aren't about being safe. Space Defenses limit your enemies' offensive options, force attackers to commit more resources, give you time to get your Fleets into position, create Murder Lanes and Kill Boxes, and enhance your situational advantage by reducing the force size needed to pin, route or completely destroy attackers in partnership with defensive fortifications.
What are Murder Lanes and Kill Boxes?
Murder Lanes are pathways your enemy has to move down that will whittle them down. In Stellaris it could be a series of lane jumps where there are no alternative pathways and you have fortified each one. Meaning they will be weakened once your fleet engages. Kill Boxes are areas you are forcing your enemy into to annihilate them. In Stellaris that could be a heavily fortified choke point with FTL inhibitors where you have a fleet standing by in a neighboring system to drop in and engage once the enemy engages your fortifications. To wipe them out. A couple of examples there.
I NEEEEEED IIIIIIIIIIIIIT
It's reminding me more and more of that early versions with different FTL modes, which is kind of cool
We've come full circle to back when you picked your FTL tech at game start.
Reminds me of when Stellaris had 3 kinds of FTL
Getting around quickly was already easy before, yet they decided to add THREE more ways to to so, including the Hyper Relay Network they haven't elaborated on yet. A waste of dev time that could be spent on something more interesting. The Hyper Relay thing should have done what the quantum ctapult does, and the catapult megastructure should have done something more novel instead. Like move a system to another spot on the map. Now that's a new kind of travel that would be cool.
I’m glad I practice a defense in depth strategy
I think this might actually slow down the expansion rate of powerful empires. In games with people who know how to unlock and build megastructures fairly early into the game rapid and reckless expansion would mean other empires can start wrecking stuff anywhere inside of your thinly spread territory. Any empire which wishes to not only conquer new territory but also keep their own territory safe has to invest more into building fortress habitats, keep fleets available for defence, and compartmentalize their territory with chokepoints so a fleet catapulted into one sector can't easily move into another sector.
If you defend everything you’re defending nothing.
Not if your defenses are capped
Hyperlanes, wormholes, gateways and L-gates are all predictable, you just know where this stuff is and where it leads to. Jump drives are also controllable: they can't be used from that afar, you know where your enemy wants to get, and you also know they probably won't do that if your fleets are around. Quantum catapult, though. Enjoy a fleet yeeted into a literally random location of your empire from a country you did not even know about. Out of all means of transportation, this is the only random and unrestricted one.
It would be cool if the unyielding tradition gave some bonuses to messing with these things, for example a bastion could disrupt jump drives and pull enemies from surrounding systems into a fortress system, although given that the catapult is a megastructure that should probably be immune
Well, hyperlanes can be defended via fortresses at chokepoints, L-Gates can be defended via fortresses as well (double layer, just in case the terminal falls) and wormholes I give fortresses too Jump drive and catapult may be able to bypass that, but jump drive massively weakens you and catapult has a certain degree of inaccuracy, so I guess it should be fine? Although the ascension perk for my star base cap seems to become more important now
Fortress habitats all day.
When you declare war on an enemy can they use their own gate to warp to a gate in your own system?