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[Vind]

Fleet size and quality is essential for defeating very strong expeditions. My single system colony with 537% fleet size can defeat very strong ones from diktat and tri-tachyon with ease but only 50/50 from persean league because they got high quality fleet due to pristine nanoforge. Without high quality ships you cant auto-defeat very strong expeditions unless you stacking colonies in the same system.

[Serenitis]

No kidding....

Threat update!:
My dear friends from the Persean League stopped by, and we had lots of unrequested fun.
Several rowdy groups turned up on my doorstep and started making a nuisance of themselves.

Spoiler

[close]

And proceeded to make quite a scene while completely overwhelming the invited guests and turning them into charming debris fields. How rude.

Spoiler

[close]

This time however, I actually managed to be present when trouble turned up and took action with my surplus of hammers.

Spoiler

[close]

End result:

• Station - Intact
• Colony - Untouched
• Defence Fleets - 95% destroyed
• Local Traders - 100% menaced
• Own Fleet - No losses - 5 recovered ships (no Conquests, got the doom tho)
• Reputation - Now standing at -3 with 27 lost! 9 separate engagements supporting either defence fleets or the station

A single world cannot stand alone.
Multi-world systems seem to be essential to autonomy at the moment, as a single fleet HQ just cannot form enough fleets to even slow these guys down, let alone repel them.
Hegemony still incoming.

[e]
H fleet was.... A lot of trivial ships + 5 Onslaughts.
Tried to avoid engaging at all this time. Fleets seemed to do okay-ish, but just couldn't keep up so some got through.
I really wish the patrols wouldn't all rush into battle at the first sign of the enemy, leaving the station to fend for itself.
So I hung back there to support it against what was left.

2 Onslaughts actually rammed the station. Burn drive right into it.
Did a fair bit of damage, but didn't manage to destroy it. Thankfully.
And I managed to 'lose' my flagship to being flanked by a battleship while paying attention to another. How embarassing.

Result:

• Station - Intact
• Colony - Untouched
• Defence Fleets - 95% destroyed (again)
• Own Fleet - 1 loss - 1 recovery - 1 salvaged Onslaught
• Reputation - Now at 40 with 3 lost. 1 engagement supporting station
• Dignity - Tarnished

And lol. Can't even turn off free port to try and reduce the aggro. -50K.
Guess I'm not going exploring then....

[StarGibbon]

A single world cannot stand alone.
Multi-world systems seem to be essential to autonomy at the moment, as a single fleet HQ just cannot form enough fleets to even slow these guys down, let alone repel them.
Hegemony still incoming.

Not even then sometimes. Even forewarned about these issues from reading the boards I settled two planets in the same system with patrols, tier 2 ground defenses, and an orbital battlestation up and running mere days before the Hegemony showed up, and the best my chances were rated at is "uncertain".  I was forced to intervene myself (made it there as the battle was in progress) and take the relations hit.

On the plus side, they did deliver a free Onslaught to my doorstep.

I'm sure it didnt help that the Hegemony force attacked at the same time as *two other factions*. Pirates and LC were also spreading my forces thin.

[Draba]

A single world cannot stand alone.
Multi-world systems seem to be essential to autonomy at the moment, as a single fleet HQ just cannot form enough fleets to even slow these guys down, let alone repel them.
Hegemony still incoming.

You are doing something wrong.
Single size 10 world with pristine nanoforge:
- doctrine 4 warship/2 carrier/4 officer quality/2 ship quality/max ship size
- prioritized conquest/falcon/mora/hammerhead (hammerhead + whatever I had first)
- star fortress/high command
- fleet size 344%

Didn't have to intervene since the start of the game, expeditions always lose.

[StarGibbon]

You are doing something wrong.
Single size 10 world with pristine nanoforge:


Didn't have to intervene since the start of the game, expeditions always lose.

I think this is the point. Colonies don't start out at size 10, or with a pristine nanoforge, but killer expedition forces start immediately.

[Daquan_Baton]

My fleets usually win against expeditions and profit isn't an issue after about 6 months because of how much the colony progresses in that time, for me at least, but I always settle on Alkali worlds, which almost always have extensive ruins and habitability. So what I'm thinking is that you are settling on fairly high danger worlds, and aren't able to rake in a good profit to speed up development in time before attacks begin. I focus on profit, getting the spaceport up asap, exploiting the planet's most abundant resources and defending the colony myself before I start assigning AI cores to places, which draws more attention to your colony.

[Draba]

I think this is the point. Colonies don't start out at size 10, or with a pristine nanoforge, but killer expedition forces start immediately.

Still, I intervened ~3 times total since playing the patch.
Expeditions were eaten up by defenses even on a smaller world, but 6-7 is very fast anyway.
Enemy fleets  probably do scale a bit, not sure but they certainly didn't do anything against no nanoforge lvl 2 station/patrol either.

[StarGibbon]

I think this is the point. Colonies don't start out at size 10, or with a pristine nanoforge, but killer expedition forces start immediately.

Still, I intervened ~3 times total since playing the patch.
Expeditions were eaten up by defenses even on a smaller world, but 6-7 is very fast anyway.
Enemy fleets  probably do scale a bit, not sure but they certainly didn't do anything against no nanoforge lvl 2 station/patrol either.

Neither of these extremes are particularly fun to me--getting your colony wiped in the early game if you dont babysit full time, or having invincible planetary systems on auto pilot. I think players should have to play an *occasional* active role in colony defense for extreme threats for colonies of any size. These threats should be less frequent than they are now, and less severe in the early going.  They should be a dramatic event, but not business as usual.

If anything, I think the current curve should be inverted so that reasonable investment in automated defenses is sufficient for most early colony threats, but eventually the player will need to assume a more active role in defending against extreme threats to late game large colonies. 

At no point should a player feel like they can never run missions out to the edge of the map without getting called back to defend the colony, which is the way I feel now.

[Draba]

Still, I intervened ~3 times total since playing the patch.
Expeditions were eaten up by defenses even on a smaller world, but 6-7 is very fast anyway.
Enemy fleets  probably do scale a bit, not sure but they certainly didn't do anything against no nanoforge lvl 2 station/patrol either.

Neither of these extremes are particularly fun to me--getting your colony wiped in the early game if you dont babysit full time, or having invincible planetary systems on auto pilot. I think players should have to play an *occasional* active role in colony defense for extreme threats for colonies of any size. These threats should be less frequent than they are now, and less severe in the early going.  They should be a dramatic event, but not business as usual.

If anything, I think the current curve should be inverted so that reasonable investment in automated defenses is sufficient for most early colony threats, but eventually the player will need to assume a more active role in defending against extreme threats to late game large colonies. 

At no point should a player feel like they can never run missions out to the edge of the map without getting called back to defend the colony, which is the way I feel now.

Didn't say anything about what I prefer, just that a single system with proper defenses will easily fend off attackers by itself.

[Sutopia]

Neither of these extremes are particularly fun to me--getting your colony wiped in the early game if you dont babysit full time, or having invincible planetary systems on auto pilot. I think players should have to play an *occasional* active role in colony defense for extreme threats for colonies of any size. These threats should be less frequent than they are now, and less severe in the early going.  They should be a dramatic event, but not business as usual.

If anything, I think the current curve should be inverted so that reasonable investment in automated defenses is sufficient for most early colony threats, but eventually the player will need to assume a more active role in defending against extreme threats to late game large colonies. 

At no point should a player feel like they can never run missions out to the edge of the map without getting called back to defend the colony, which is the way I feel now.

It's just obvious people falling into traps wanting to rush the colony progress and got instantly hammered for rushing.
The small size colony shouldn't produce as much and shouldn't get as much accessibility to even get a good share in market in first place, while ppl craving profits are doing so, they get those expeditions they're not ready for.
Mechanically it's a well-done design, but practically it needs more tutorial and explanation, like another tooltip when setting up first colony telling you should not produce too much to draw attention.

[StarGibbon]

Didn't say anything about what I prefer, just that a single system with proper defenses will easily eventually fend off attackers by itself.

Corrected  for accuracy.

It's just obvious people falling into traps wanting to rush the colony progress and got instantly hammered for rushing.
The small size colony shouldn't produce as much and shouldn't get as much accessibility to even get a good share in market in first place, while ppl craving profits are doing so, they get those expeditions they're not ready for.
Mechanically it's a well-done design, but practically it needs more tutorial and explanation, like another tooltip when setting up first colony telling you should not produce too much to draw attention.

"Obvious people"? You mean new/dumb/casual/anyone not me or armed with all my meta-knowledge-people?

Good mechanics are intuitive. It's not intuitive at all to get hammered for trying to make an efficient, productive colony or filling a colony's needs. Most other games you get rewarded for that.

I dont think a player should face a colony wipe just because they turned on Free Port to supply a need the game tells them the colonists have.  I'm not rushing anything, or using AI cores, and I have no idea how to optimize an economy.  But I do know that having to tie one arm behind your back and deliberately keep a colony small is not a very fun/intuitive way to play a colony building game.

[Sutopia]

I dont think a player should face a colony wipe just because they turned on Free Port to supply a need the game tells them the colonists have.  I'm not rushing anything, or using AI cores, and I have no idea how to optimize an economy.  But I do know that having to tie one arm behind your back and deliberately keep a colony small is not a very fun/intuitive way to play a colony building game.

I think they totally should for not even reading why the major factions want to F with them. If you think you can fend it off yourself go do it, if you can't and want to do something else you also can with "deliberately" keeping the colony small.
Plus, the very first few expeditions can be averted with reasonable small bill.
IMO it's more of a case ppl "deliberately" pushing productivity to maximum without knowing that will draw some serious attention until they literally got spanked.

[StarGibbon]

I dont think a player should face a colony wipe just because they turned on Free Port to supply a need the game tells them the colonists have.  I'm not rushing anything, or using AI cores, and I have no idea how to optimize an economy.  But I do know that having to tie one arm behind your back and deliberately keep a colony small is not a very fun/intuitive way to play a colony building game.

I think they totally should for not even reading why the major factions want to F with them. If you think you can fend it off yourself go do it, if you can't and want to do something else you also can with "deliberately" keeping the colony small.
Plus, the very first few expeditions can be averted with reasonable small bill.
IMO it's more of a case ppl "deliberately" pushing productivity to maximum without knowing that will draw some serious attention until they literally got spanked.

In my case, that "small" bill was 100k credits which I absolutely did not have, and by the time I did that option was no longer there. So let's not pretend that's in any way a reliable counter for a new player. If I had been 5 days late in getting my orbital up, I would have lost that colony even with my intervention. There has got to be some intermediate step ( a diplomatic warning?) between making a problematic decision, and a capital ship doomstack to allow players to course correct.

Players are trained by countless other games to build and produce with their colonies as soon as possible. Pretending that having to deliberately *not* do this to survive, against factions that you otherwise have good relations with, is in any way intuitive for a new player does the game no favors. This game is a commercial product, and having it get hammered by professional and user reviews criticizing opaque and arbitrary difficulty is in no one's interest.

But mostly, as per the thread title, it simply isn't fun.  I want to *build* my colony, and I imagine a great many other people will too.

[Sutopia]

Players are trained by countless other games to build and produce with their colonies as soon as possible. Pretending that having to deliberately *not* do this to survive, against factions that you otherwise have good relations with, is in any way intuitive for a new player does the game no favors. This game is a commercial product, and having it get hammered by professional and user reviews criticizing opaque and arbitrary difficulty is in no one's interest.

I think *THIS* is the issue. I never rushed for colony until, well, I feel I wanted to and sit on something like 500k, worried the payroll of crew killing my economy.
It's not that this game is not teaching but otherwise some other game kept giving some biased information and making player make terrible decisions not knowing things just work differently here.

[Histidine]

Players are trained by countless other games to build and produce with their colonies as soon as possible. Pretending that having to deliberately *not* do this to survive, against factions that you otherwise have good relations with, is in any way intuitive for a new player does the game no favors. This game is a commercial product, and having it get hammered by professional and user reviews criticizing opaque and arbitrary difficulty is in no one's interest.

I think *THIS* is the issue. I never rushed for colony until, well, I feel I wanted to and sit on something like 500k, worried the payroll of crew killing my economy.
It's not that this game is not teaching but otherwise some other game kept giving some biased information and making player make terrible decisions not knowing things just work differently here.

(emphasis mine)
I feel like the underlined phrases contradict each other.

Anyway: I've significantly played one other game where staying under the radar of the large opposing party as much as possible is a key game mechanic, namely AI War. That game makes a big point of informing the player to do this; IIRC the tutorial specifically explains it, and the "AI rage" indicator is one of the big GUI elements in the header bar where the player's economy resources are also displayed.
In contrast, the first indicator that you shouldn't grow too fast in Starsector or you'll get attacked is when the expedition planning intel message arrives.

It would be good (and far more believable) if, before sending any expedition fleets, the big faction sent the player a polite letter. "Dear Sir/Madam, We notice that you are now a significant producer of commodities including X, Y and Z. Be careful not to produce too much or we won't be responsible for the consequences." (Although the player would need new buttons to comply, since growth is currently automatic.)

I could also see a tutorial quest that first time players have to complete in order to found colonies (much like how the starting tutorial is mandatory on first run), explaining which planets to look for, how defences work and little things like the expeditions to watch out for.