Just playing the purple boss battle, its simply impossible to get any unit landed on the moon as it just stacks fighters and bombers everywhere. and the unloading mechanic is just not cutting it. If I mass astreus with say 200 AA units, sneaking past the orbital fighters, they just don't land efficiently enough. it also seems air units are able to target the units loaded in the astreuses, even when in orbit... I advocate for enabling the avenger by default, and adding an AA satellite would help a great deal as well.
It's very easy to invade. Invading with 100+ Astraeuses is more than enough in my experience. Just send your Astraeuses to an unoccupied portion of the planet. The landing efficiency desperately needs to be improved though. An AA satellite is being considered by Uber though.
Well I just did it with about 140, but somehow all my units died when they reached the other planet's orbit (something shot them down, but nothing should have been able to target them). So when I landed all my astreus via surface move first, there where no units left. I also tried unloading them from orbit, but that just makes them spread out and wait indefinitely because they want to space out, which they cannot do, as there are so many. Also note that the other planet is a small moon, which leaves no unoccupied space. So I now need to wait till the AI derps out and sends their com in or something? Edit: added a screenshot, however the connection to the server was lost shortly after, so I now start over again (maybe for the better, so I can start on the moon instead possibly)
I found deployment gets problematic over 100 or so. I try to send them in smaller groups so they can get in and out. I queue up load, special-move, unload, special-move back. If small groups feel like insufficent force, assign them to control groups and queue up landings on multiple spots. Doing a military drop on one side to draw defenders away, and a fabber group on the other side worked out well for me once.
Do you have any idea how tempting it is to just post that picture again in response to what you just said?
I build teleporters in a sparsely occupied region, work's pretty well. Send AA units through as the first wave. Keep building more teleporters for higher through-put.
Yeah, I mean, anchors don't seem to do too well against structures, (and they shouldn't) but against units and air they seem to do just dandy.
They still are a nightmare if they're built over your base. I'm all around rather happy with the Anchor.
Problem is that the anchor and orbital fabricator are not available without the orbital technology... if you move towards a boss battle on the meta-game-campaign map, you have to fight that battle, even if you do not have the means to win, you can quit the game and fight it again, but you cannot change your mind and get some more techs first before fighting, meaning you basically lost the campaign. Maybe make retreating an option for boss battles? I also tried starting on the moon once, won there and then moved back to the main planet to land successfully initially, but the amount of bombers and units it sends at you right away (also you get scouted pretty much instantly) is just too much to handle. Basically the difference of difficulty between normal and boss battles is a bit off at the moment I think. The AI really responds really well to threats, but maybe a bit too well (and fast) on normal difficulty. To win the purple or red boss battles you will need either orbital tech, or 1 or 2 sub commanders respectively to have a foothold on other planets. For the purple boss battle there is one way to win though (without any orbital tech or subcommanders), just retry the battle till both AI commanders spawn on the main planet, together with you. That way you could win, even without orbital or tech2 units. There is also a similar problem, while not as serious, with not having naval tech on the same map, when their com just goes and turtles on the main lake of that map, luckily this can be dealt with by building torpedo defenses all along the shore, and most times the AI commander eventually comes ashore.
