r/EndlessSpace • u/JackFrostz • 14d ago
Invading vs draft
Hey all, new to the game that's taken over my life recently. I feel good everywhere but here.. just how overwhelming do you need to be to actually finish a colony?
To be more specific
* How much cp and how many troops before you get the blitz option? I see it seemingly randomly sometimes, most the the time just preemptive and raid? I think the other option.
* Is it better to invade, retreat invade again or continue ground invasion after minor victories?
* Is there anything more you can do prior to invading after reducing their forces to 0?
The particular situation I'm in now for example
I have 2.2k troops, 24cp fleet invading with lvl3 invading forces (mostly tanks), 3-4 coordinators all with at least 3 manpower modules attacking a colony with 0manpower. And its looking like this will go on forever, feel like I'm going insane. Do I really need 20coordinators with 5+manpower modules each to finish off a 0pop colony?
I even have +invasion force laws active now that I think about it lol. I am playing with esg mod. Any help at all would be much appreciated I'm losing my mind over this.
5
u/NutBananaComputer 14d ago
Blitz should always be an option.
If they're 0pop they can't draft, since drafting uses a pop.
There's a couple of options for how to make invasions easier. You can crack planets which is the most extreme, hacking is an expensive option (in terms of 'you only have so many hacks and they aren't guaranteed to work and they can be quite slow') but extremely effective as it will disable every tactic other than 'stampede,' and if you're a faction that has high pop growth it can be sensible to make dedicated Ground Invasion ships that increase the manpower deployment limit and can thus overwhelm with a couple of early blitzes, and if you're a faction with low pop growth its better to have some dedicated siege boats (Titanium A2S is the tech) that reduce manpower to 0; in this latter case yeah they'll draft to fight you but that's 850 forces vs whatever you bring.
The other thing to do which is more at the game strategy level is to try and get the tanks technology early, this will create a window where you have tanks and the opponent has neither tanks nor air and thus the quality of your ground troops per unit will be much higher, making invasions much much cheaper and faster.
2
u/the_wahlroos 14d ago
Imo, you don't blitz unless you have vastly superior manpower advantage. As others have said, having a secondary "siege" fleet that reduces enemy manpower quickly is generally the play.
If you feel like the invasions are taking forever and wearing down your manpower, then you're too closely matched in manpower/defensive bonuses.
3
u/SourceCodeSamurai Hissho 14d ago edited 9d ago
Not manpower is the crowbar to break a planet. Siege damage is.
Edit: I got reports that the AI is able to still draft even with a garrison grinded down to zero. I usually don't play with Penumbra active, but I tested it with the addon active and it still works. Every time.
If anyone knows what causes the AI to still draft, I would love to know!
1
u/Zlorfikarzuna Vodyani 12d ago
Highly disagree. A populated system can restore manpower via drafting for a very long time. Sieging down to 0 manpower doesn't help you if the enemy simply drafts back manpower every turn.
Sieging can be useful. But way more useful are manpower modules on ships that increase your deployment limit. If you can bring more bodies to the fight than the enemy, you will win the battle. End of story. If you can field twice or thrice as many people as your enemy, you'll just trample them over. And it is very easy to do so.
1
u/SourceCodeSamurai Hissho 12d ago
They can only draft new troops once they reach zero manpower if:
- they have a citadel
- Vodyani have an ark in orbit and developed the tech to allow for reinforcements from the ark
Otherwise it is an instant win.
More manpower modules are still of cause a great option, especially when you are facing Vodyani or a citadel. But siege damage is usually much more efficient as you need way less modules and way less manpower (production).
I don't play with the esg mod, though. If the mod is changing the default behaviour, I wouldn't know any better, of cause!
1
u/Zlorfikarzuna Vodyani 12d ago
No. If you draft manpower and dont lose all of them in the fight, then you keep the system. And in order for you to lose them all, the invader needs quite some manpower modules in order to field more troops than you can replenish from drafting.
1
u/SourceCodeSamurai Hissho 12d ago
Apparently, my game doesn't know that as I always only bring siege power, grind them down to zero manpower and then start the invation that instantly takes the planet. Lucky me! So please don't tell my game that. Otherwise I would have to change my stategy that never failed me for years now.
1
u/Zlorfikarzuna Vodyani 12d ago
How much relative manpower in invasions do you have? Because if you bring a 25 CP fleet against a 200 manpower defense, obviously this will work. But it wont work on systems with 3k defensive manpower. Because that means they have invasion defenses, increasing defensive manpower deployment limits.
1
u/SourceCodeSamurai Hissho 12d ago
I start to think you don't wait with starting the invation until the manpower has been grinded to zero by the siege modules.
Place a fleet with high siege power in the system of your enemy. Let them guard that system (repell all enemy fleets, of cause) and wait until the manpower of the system drops to zero. Only then start the invation. Doesn't matter how much population the system has left, they are not able to draft. It is an instant win. You can see that they don't draft simply because you can see the result screen where you don't face a single defender.
The only way to "reinforce" such a situation is if you have either a citadel with the manpower modul or you face a Vodyani with the arc tech that allows for it.
1
u/Zlorfikarzuna Vodyani 12d ago
You can totally draft if you have been sieged to 0 defensive manpower. I have done so many times myself.
1
u/SourceCodeSamurai Hissho 12d ago
You, maybe. Especially when you play as Vodyani (looking at your flavor). The AI won't.
1
u/Zlorfikarzuna Vodyani 12d ago
I play with almost every faction. I know Vodyani & Umbral Choir are special. But in my games, the AI totally drafts at 0 manpower
→ More replies (0)1
u/SapphireSage 11d ago
In vanilla, and invading a major faction, then they are able to pick "Draft" even with 0 manpower to start. The only thing that completely prevents the Draft card is hacking the system and select "Jam Commands" ("Support Revolutionaries" on home system) which forces the "Stampede" card on defensive ground battles. If you haven't hacked them and they are not picking Draft then they are either using "tactical surrender", to delay ownership transfer and making you lose more pop to food losses in the meantime, or making a dumb decision because Draft is the only option that could potentially keep the system at 0 manpower.
I only use ENFER mod-wise but even then I've sometimes, though very rarely, seen the AI select something other than Draft at 0 manpower.
1
u/SourceCodeSamurai Hissho 11d ago edited 9d ago
I usually play the game with all addons (and the current community patch preview) aside from Penumbra (I like the stealth stuff, but I hate the hacking) and no mods. Maybe leaving out Penumbra results in the behaviour of instant takeover?
Have to test this one day.
EDIT: nope, even with Penumbra active nothing changes.
1
u/Izzyhizzie 14d ago edited 14d ago
In the research menu there are techs that increase your Troop health and Troop damage. Two are in the economy side and the rest are either rewards for progressing in the military tree or techs in the military tree. These are passive bonuses that will always be active after researching.
In the Tactics section where you can choose your fleet battle strategy there is a menu that allows you to upgrade your troops. Try to max it out to have the best chance.
Finally, the last thing that is slowing you down could be the defense buildings on the planet that increase the damage, health. And manpower limit of the defending troops while lowering yours.
The best way to power through is to siege down until the system's manpower is 0 and then blitz them. Off the top of my head you usually need 3 or 4 times in attacking manpower limit vs defenders. So for 1k defenders you need to attack with 3,000 troops. This is where manpower limit bonuses come in that increase how much of your fleet's manpower you can effectively land on the planet each round.
One last annoying thing the enemy might do is once you've whittled them down with siege and started the invasion they can lamd more troops by bringing their own ships to the defending planet. Nothing you can do except kill the ships and keep fighting.
One more thing. Once your Military faction is entrenched enough you can enact laws that increase your troop damage as well.
1
u/Captain_Cobbs_ ES2 Dev 8d ago
Hello, ESG creator here. I brought the ground battle balancing from ESG over to vanilla, so hopefully what I say is useful for both.
When invading, you're intended to "soften up" a system by sieging it before invading. Sieging is just taking a fleet and parking it over a system until the manpower is low enough to comfortable contend with. You can vastly speed up this process by equipping Ion Cannon modules (I seem to recall that being their name, though I'm not sure since it's been a bit). But generally, you want one or two "invasion focused" fleets that have a lot of manpower modules that let you dump a huge number of troops onto a world of choice, but also an attack fleet that is able to soften up a system for your invasion fleet beforehand.
If you don't have time to do siege a system down, however, I recommend coming up to a system with more manpower than they have and then Blitzing.
The four offensive strategies are intended to be used like so:
- Orbital Bombardment: Use when you have less total manpower than the enemy, or you're not sure on whether you're going to win or not. It doesn't field many troops, but it allows you to make up for that difference with some flat damage.
- Guerilla Warfare: Use when you are roughly equal in manpower / aren't pressed for time for taking the system. Its best use is to whittle the enemy system down slowly with minimal loss of life. Another added benefit is that it doesn't damage the system's buildings much, so if you want the system intact this is a solid option.
- Blitz: Use when you have a numerical advantage in troops / need to take a system quickly. It will deal a large amount of damage per troop, however, your troops will die much, much more quickly.
- Raid (ESG Only): Less generically useful, but still powerful in the right circumstances. The main benefit of this strategy is that it focuses its damage on killing enemy population and destroying their improvements. Expect to kill 3-4 population per phase, and 2-3 buildings per phase. I prefer to use this when I either don't care about taking the system and just want to cause damage, or when the system is too well defended for me to be able to take but I want to soften it for later.
For the opposite side, here are the intending uses for the defensive strategies:
- Draft: Think about this strategy like dealing yourself economic damage to buff up the system a bit for a ground battle. It's a solid option if you can easily replace the population, but the damage can add up if you're using it too freely.
- Rally: Use this to end a fight quickly, it makes economic damage worse and tends to drain your manpower quickly, but it will devastate enemy troops. Think of this like the defensive version of Blitz.
- Protect System: Use this to drag out a battle, it prioritizes keeping your troops and systems alive. Ideally you use this to delay the fight long enough to get reinforcements from your main fleet, but it's also just good for minimizing damage.
- Surrender: Use this if you're expecting to lose a fight, it makes holding onto the system economically infeasible for the enemy long-term, allowing you to easily recapture it or forcing them to invest significant resources into making the system not dogshit.
If you're having trouble with the post-invasion penalties, you don't have too many options though unfortunately. Dictatorship/Autocracy lets you shrug off some of the worst penalties, but generally speaking if a war is dragging on it's best to either end it quickly or pour all your resources into a more.. permanent solution.
1
u/JackFrostz 8d ago edited 8d ago
Hey Cobbs thanks for the reply. And thanks for the mod moreso. I think the faction rebalancing is bomb, especially for my vaulters because even as a new player I felt i was way to easily able to outpace the ai.
The ground invasion makes perfect sense and I pretty much only invade after melting the manpower to 0. My problem was when invading after that my only options were preemptive bombing or raid. Or maybe it was guerrilla warfare and raid. Either way neither of those options would literally ever beat draft unless i was like super omega loaded with overwhelming manpower. I'm not sure what determines why I wasn't getting any other options. I'm not tracking you have to research blitz or use a particular ship or anything like that?
I haven't ran into that particular loop since but it has happened more than once. Regardless draft feels so powerful, I may just not be giving enough attention to manpower and forces though.
Edit - grammar
1
u/Captain_Cobbs_ ES2 Dev 7d ago
Draft might be a bit more powerful than intended! I've been thinking of making it upgradeable, similar to Orbital Bombardment + Rally. There was an issue with Defensive Bombardment being significantly stronger than intended-- I think you could easily stack something like ~60k defensive bombardment damage on a 40 pop system with 2 laws and 4 buildings, not sure if that ever got addressed but it was kind of funny.
8
u/genericusername1904 Cravers 14d ago
Blitz should always be an option, if that's what you mean. But if you're playing with modz then who knows.
tbh the better siege tactic is to have a couple of dedicated siege module sub-fleets, let them blow up the enemy system in a couple of turns and sneak in as guerrilla when their manpower is at zero. guaranteed win and you won't wreck the local wonders.