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[Megas]

I think planet skills depends on 1) finding great worlds and 2) finding and willing to use alpha cores.  If sector generation does not give you nice convenient system with nice worlds, and you cannot get an alpha core quickly, then planet skills are required.  On the other hand, if you get a great system and/or get extra cores (possibly keeping the one from that mission), then you can get by without them.

Me, I find them very handy if I want to set up a waystation colony so I do not need to spend so much time traveling and exploring the fringe.  If I wanted to go to the red planet without my string of waystations, I probably would need two Prometheus and other stuff.  If somehow along the way, I get an alert that threatens my main colony, I need to stop what I am doing and deal with it, and it is much more convenient to plop down a waystation and get supplies and stuff.

Also, having extra colony slots is nice for temporary tech mining.  Suck them dry for the free items, then abandon colony when finished.

At first, I did not know having multiple colonies in one system was a great way to defend against invasions.  The system with my 175% gas giant had four other planets with 150% rating and decent if not great resources.  I would need to smash the Domain Nav relay and build a makeshift comm relay in its place for all-important stability and convenient intel updates.  On the other hand, tying all of my colony slots in one system means fewer waystation colonies when I want to explore... or set up a military base to launch raids from.

[Draba]

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.

No need for that, I wrote exactly what I meant.

Once you know what you are doing colonies defend themselves just fine:
- don't start below 300K extra money
- only build mining/farm/techmine(if available) in the first round
- prioritize upgrading orbital/patrol stations the moment previous step finished, they give stability anyway
- pump growth incentives at least until lvl 6 (all the way to 10 when you have the money)
- strat building heavy industry/orbital works when you have at least battlestation and military HQ
- once orbital works/battlestation are done and size is at least 5-6 add light industry/refining, enable free port, add fuel if you have a snychrotron

It might be theoretically possible to get raids that could be stronger but I didn't see a single one in my last playthrough.
Did help in destroying 2 task forces to get conquests.

[Typo91]

I dont know if this has been said, and this is already a long thread.... but my 2 cents on this whole issue...

Expeditions in general are just dumb.  Especially from allies. "The Hedgomeny has taken all your AI cores from X"  wtf?!?!?! (I proceeded to commit genocide to all their planets after that one)

We have no way of returning them, or doing the same thing back with our forces. Or really shutting them down. Or even profiting meaningfully when we crush them.

And if we start wiping out the planets sending them, we get hated on for killing planets by everyone. 

I once killed every populated planet in a the core hedgemony system, even the independents (they hated me now anyway).  And fleets of a solo fuel frigate would still attack me to say "hey your transponder is off!" even though I had killed all the fleets and this guy's enter home planet, and all his friends... he is still flying up to me in his fueler, attacking me...

I feel like we should be able to lock systems down or something, or dispatch fleets to wage war, or tell those sons of *** that if they send one more fleet into our space we will bomb them back into the stone age!

[Wyvern]

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.

No need for that, I wrote exactly what I meant.

Then you're wrong - or, at the very least, your experiences do not generalize as well as you think they do.  I did, as it turns out, follow exactly the listing you specified - I was a little bit slow on getting the station up, which led to troubles with a pirate raid, but after that?  Just the tech mine prompted constant expeditions from the major factions.  At size three.  If I hadn't had the credits to buy them off, my colony would have been flattened; it wasn't even -close- to being able to fend off expedition fleets by itself.

[Thaago]

I mentioned before but I'm not sure if it was in this thread:

I think a BIG help would be to just make the AI faction's economies better (upping their production, giving them administrators, etc) and in turn raising the threshold for when they get *** off by production.

As an example, in my current game I decided to "lie low" on a nice low hazard world that I colonized very early. I didn't have any ore or rare ore, but it had plentiful organics (+1) and the +1 farming so I plopped down mining and farming to give me a bit of income (like 25k). Unfortunately the Organics production started to attract (weak) persean league fleets when the colony size hit 4 (I believe I had an admin skill at this point, so 6 organics outputted). If the Persean League had a better economy and the threshold were higher, this wouldn't have been as much of  problem.

[Wyvern]

I mentioned before but I'm not sure if it was in this thread:

I think a BIG help would be to just make the AI faction's economies better (upping their production, giving them administrators, etc) and in turn raising the threshold for when they get *** off by production.

Especially I'd like to see this vary by faction.  Like, say, the Hegemony has administrators everywhere with at least one skill, sometimes two, and maybe a few scattered uses of gamma-grade AI cores.  While Tri-Tachyon doesn't have quite so many skilled administrators... but is perfectly happy to use beta-grade AI cores, maybe even a few alpha-grade on their favorite planets.  Sindrian Diktat has a single skilled administrator that handles every planet they control (Because really, the Diktat feels a lot like what a player might build).  Persean League varies by planet; some have nothing, some have administrators and AI cores both.  Independents will use AI cores you give them... and then eventually lose them to a Hegemony inspection fleet.  And so on and so forth.

[Draba]

Then you're wrong - or, at the very least, your experiences do not generalize as well as you think they do.  I did, as it turns out, follow exactly the listing you specified - I was a little bit slow on getting the station up, which led to troubles with a pirate raid, but after that?  Just the tech mine prompted constant expeditions from the major factions.  At size three.  If I hadn't had the credits to buy them off, my colony would have been flattened; it wasn't even -close- to being able to fend off expedition fleets by itself.

Egg on my face, it is possible to get overwhelmed early.
Sidenote for that scenario is what was mentioned earlier: you can bribe the stronger expeditions if you do not want to babysit.

I mentioned before but I'm not sure if it was in this thread:

I think a BIG help would be to just make the AI faction's economies better (upping their production, giving them administrators, etc) and in turn raising the threshold for when they get *** off by production.

Yep, the core worlds having better output would be a great improvement.

[StarGibbon]

Coming at it from the other side, Expeditions are unfair and exploitable in the player's favor as well, once a player knows what to expect.

When prepared for them ( has an orbital battlestation to tank for them), expeditions are easily farmable from very early in the game for high end ships that would be difficult to purchase or capture otherwise without a commission. I went from being a struggling, vulnerable early-mid game fleet to a terrifying end game power virtually overnight once these invasions started. I now have a storage full of Onslaughts, high end midline cruisers, and every flavor of phase ship, all delivered to me by the AI for free, or rather, for a few points of reputation loss for taking part in the battle ( and salvaging whats lying around after).

If only I could figure out how to get Tri Tach angry at me, I'd have almost everything I could want, and the ship pokemon appeal of a SS playthrough would be mostly over for me.


I have no idea how to fix this. Remove valuable ships from expedition fleets, they become toothless. Remove the ability to salvage them, and anger players further by breaking the rules again.

[Megas]

Never mind other factions.  Once you start producing good ships and weapons of your own, you can loot stuff from the remains of your own faction and get free stuff that way too instead of paying for production costs.

[SCC]

If only I could figure out how to get Tri Tach angry at me, I'd have almost everything I could want, and the ship pokemon appeal of a SS playthrough would be mostly over for me.

They once went after me because of... ore. Only once, though. They're rarer than Luddic Church expeditions!

[StarGibbon]

Never mind other factions.  Once you start producing good ships and weapons of your own, you can loot stuff from the remains of your own faction and get free stuff that way too instead of paying for production costs.

I'll assume this was directed at me. Producing good ships and weapons of my own is dependent on blueprints. I dont have any of the blueprints for the ships the AI is giving me for free. Now I dont need them.

[StarGibbon]

If only I could figure out how to get Tri Tach angry at me, I'd have almost everything I could want, and the ship pokemon appeal of a SS playthrough would be mostly over for me.

They once went after me because of... ore. Only once, though. They're rarer than Luddic Church expeditions!

One just popped. They're enraged by my meager market share of...domestic goods.  Hi tech superpower furious over blue jeans and throw rugs.

Looks like Christmas is coming early!

[Vind]

It seems real production of colony is not matters. Created 3 poor colonies with 1-2 exports each - got 2 expeditions once they hit level 4. So it is all or nothing if you go in and colonize - prepare to defend from 2 expeditions. As you cant really explore once colony is created question arises - why create colony at all? If you have already explored and got all techs and cores it is no longer needed and if you created it early it is useless and you got no time to seek blueprints and improve it. It is a trap without purpose - by the time i can manufacture paragon i got 5-7 captured in storage. Expeditions must have some real reason to attack - persean league attacked after my starting colony got 2% market share of metals - yeah right - real profit. So now im basically sit is system and whack all "guests" without pause as once i leave game will create new threat and so on. Talk about wasting time. Simply trading drugs is less hassle and more profit. In short low-tech low-output colony is unsustainable as it cant defend by itself or be ignored by sector core powers and this is very bad.

Interesting bit - independent mercenaries  will help you defend station vs expedition.

[The Ender]

My 5 cents on this:

I agree that they are not fun; either I work towards a game state where they are completely invaidated (...so what is the point of them?) due to concentrated overlapping system defenses, or I don't do that and end-up babysitting when I want to be exploring. Repetitive fights that yield no meaningful rewards against forces that aren't a challenge but are a nuisance isn't, IMHO, a great game experience. It also doesn't feel immersive (where are the hostile factions getting all of these apparently completely disposable battleships? Why are they throwing them in futile waves against impregnable defenses? Why can't I issue ultimatums or sign treaties after stomping what are clearly premiere combat fleets? These people are all completely fearless fanatics?), and I don't understand the play space these encounters are supposed to be filiing. If I want a lot of combat, the bounties are right there on the Intel tab - I thought the new industry & colonization systems were supposed to create a Starsector experience for players more interesting in building / exploring?

If the point of them is to encourage me to create a game state where they are invalidated, then they are (as implemented) flying in the face of the Starsector principle that there should never be just one answer to a given problem (by pretty severely restricts how a player ought to develop their colonies).

[Reinhark]

If only I could figure out how to get Tri Tach angry at me, I'd have almost everything I could want, and the ship pokemon appeal of a SS playthrough would be mostly over for me.

They once went after me because of... ore. Only once, though. They're rarer than Luddic Church expeditions!

One just popped. They're enraged by my meager market share of...domestic goods.  Hi tech superpower furious over blue jeans and throw rugs.

Looks like Christmas is coming early!

TT has a single, highly profitable light industry in Eochu Bres(due to free port status). So most light industry product: Drugs, domestic goods and luxury have pretty good chance of triggering them.
Alternatively, Ores(...Yes, they have sent paragons for space rocks that are literally everywhere)
TT is highest exporter of Ores by tiny margin compared to other factions.