Are you tired of galactic war threads yet? (story time! Skip to the bottom for a TL;DR) So I finally managed to get to a faction leader fight in G.W. without crashing, there were 3 commanders, 1 on my planet, 2 on another. I had 3 sub-comms, 2 on my planet, one on the other. And the one on the other planet just happened to be in a glitched spot (love you too, metal planets...) However this wasn't a big problem because there was an asteroid in the system, so my mission was pretty clear, bait the commanders onto the asteroid and then lock it down. Simple enough, right? Well, there was a slight... miscalculation. I forgot that you don't get avengers by default, so just as I detected the commander coming to the asteroid I realized "Oh crap. This isn't going to end well." And uh... actually, it didn't end at all. To leave a long story slightly less long, one of the two commanders was destroyed, the other one went back to his main planet. Okay, fair enough, just get a teleporter down and send some vanguards in. Aha! This is going to wor-- OH GOD. BOMBERS. EVERYWHERE. Combining this with the infuriating server lag and it was just terrible. Eventually I came to a horrid realization... There was no escaping it... Yes indeed... It was a stalemate. Any attempt at making anchors was shut down by avengers, any attempt at invasion was bombed and shot down by planes. I didn't have the technology to make halleys, there simply was no way to win. So anyway, I know this is kind of a roundabout way of saying it, but... I guess the whole point I'm trying to get across here is... (TL;DR) Avengers need to be a default unit. Being unable to be offensive in the orbital layer without a completely random card is an EXTREME disadvantage, especially in multi-planet game play. I don't mind leaving advanced orbital a card, but leaving it up to luck to be able to conduct an orbital attack is simply ASKING for galactic war to end in stalemate. What do you guys think?
Here's how I invade another planet. I build at least 100 Astraeuses. I fill half of them with anti-air units and the other half with fabbers, several of those fabbers being advanced fabbers if you have them. Land all of them at once in an area that has as little base/metal spots as possible. Build a teleporter as soon as you land and as soon as the teleporter is built, link it with the other teleporter you have in view on PIP. As soon as their linked, swarm units through, and make sure there's plenty of anti-air vehicles/bots ready to come through. With the fabbers that just finished building the teleporter, build air factories if you have them, anti-air missile launchers if you don't have air factories. Now you have massive amounts of anti-air bots/vehicles swarming through to take care of the bombers, and massive amounts of T1 units swarming through to destroy everything. It's an intense and stressful moment – but it's exactly what the invasions are supposed to be. That being said... it's well worth considering making the Avenger a default unit.
Also, factorys can be ordered to have their units automatically go through a teleporter. so 3 or 4 factorys dedicated to AA are wonderful things.
They're very useful. When their price was drastically reduced a few patches ago, they can now be used as drop pods for massive invasions. It's epic. I'm so glad we finally got drop pods.
They are... a little frustrating at times. They have to align themselves into a perfect little grid before flying down to the planet, which can make invasions difficult if they have orbital defenses. But the Astrauses actually flying down to the planet is a huge step forward. Now they just need further improvements. Such is playing an incomplete game. Post 5,000 btw! so. uh. it should be epic or something. uh... I got nothing. ... So here's my favorite gif.
I don't get though why OP didn't just send a small army of T1 anti air vehicles in first. Was in about the same position, and a mere 30 AA secured the beachhead long enough to build factories. (Or to go for massive bot spam since the AI is unaware of the concept "armies with more than 20 units".) Also as mered4 said, sending more than 1 orbital fab helps a lot. 5 orbital fabbers, 4-5 anchors and then you can do whatever you want. And if you don't have advanced orbitals, Astreus spam is also sufficient, since the AI is just way to slow. And what more to note? Well, if the AI was smart (hint: it isn't) it would place Avengers at the orbital entry nodes and keep them there. It doesn't. So there's no risk involved in sending massive amounts of orbitals, just as you act within 30 seconds or so after entering the orbit. No matter how heavily fortified the planet is, since the mobile defenses are usually half a planet away.
The game shouldn't be so stupidly easy that you can't come up with strategies on the fly, that's where the fun of RTS comes from, overcoming the impossible. Like predicting planet slams and baiting an asteroid to the planet your commander isn't on
I ran into this situation when I faced the final faction leader. There were 4 AIs and 5 Planets, as luck would have it, we each got our own. I had orbital tech, which helped clear the orbits before sending in the invasion. I built up an army of around 200, easily 80 of them were mobile AA. Built a teleporter from orbit and sent in my army. I lost most of the army, but got a base started and killed off the entire airforce. It took 2 or 3 of these invasions before the final one was able to stick and deal damage to the planetary infrastructure. Overall, it is very possible to do vs AI. Just requires trying out different things and knowing that just because the first attempt failed, doesn't mean the 2nd or 3rd will as well. Mostly because of attrition. I love the idea of hundreds of landers dropping off units from orbit. Do you have to load them up individually or can you group load all 200?
This might be old news, but my trick for this is to send the astreii to the planet, shift order them to move just a foot next to where I ordered them to go, and then order them to unload. If you just order them to go to the planet, then queue up an unload it doesn't work. If you order them to go to the planet, move slightly, THEN unload, they work flawlessly. As long as you're not moving them yourself. Lord help you if you've moving them and trying to rapidly drop your units
been there done that.... with about 200 dropships. Thing is if you don't get this strategy to work EARLY and the AI gets orbital and ground based laser defenses up it doesn't matter how many units you have ready, or how fast you try and build a portal..... there's just no landing on that planet :/ The stalemate gameplay issue must be broken. uber'll get it taken care of.
I also attacked to what seemed like enemy home planet, without having orbital tech card. Even with the orbital card in previous games that i did have, i was ever able to build 1 ship - that transports units. So i was given new card that would reduce build time and metal cost of units over 25%, so guess what i chose Anyway, after clearing my home planet it was time to realize that enemy is on other planet. So i built transport attack waves 4 times, and by the time of my units die repeatedly, he had strengthened his army to the point he was invincible. All he attacked with to my planet was some tiny 1 transport attacks with some builders in, that got easily destroyed. Once i managed to land over 40 land units, of which half were anti-air and i built a teleporter. I even did manage to get most of my land army through like hundred of tanks, but they all got wiped out at the teleporter by what i guess is orbital cannons or something... and i'm playing on normal (lowest) difficulty for note. Game is now not giving me a chance to retreat from the planet so my save is doomed to fail. He was building Tier 2 everything when all i had was T1. Last attack with transports got destroyed in space already.. 50 of them and not 1 had a chance to land.
