The most impressive part of any factory production game is the rhythm. You are just barely getting anything going, and then boom, a near perfect production chain just works and you can watch it run its magic. It’s like if each factory had it’s own voice, and you could see them sing. Ok, maybe that’s just me?

Following that analogy, each piece of the factory has it’s own specific sound, and when you can get enough of those voices working together, it’s extremely impressive to watch. To point, entering the late game means warpers, which require green science (Gravity Matrix). Each one of these requires over 120 pieces of something collected, which are processed at just under 20 different stations. Which if we’re talking main production lines, is going to be about half of a given factory. So half of everything you own is going to have a part in building this 1 thing. And by the time you reach end game, you’ll be producing a few hundred of these per minute. 

All that to say you’re going to be running rather impressive production chains across multiple planets, and the need to harvest from many locations.

Ground Stuff

The last post talked about ground bases, which in truth are rather simple to manage. 8 Missile Turrets with pretty much anything in them will destroy any base that has a Signal Tower close by. The only issue is that the Dark Fog will continually create NEW bases, which are all but impossible to defend against given the power/material requirements to fully protect a planet. This needs a rather significant balance pass.

Space Stuff

A disclaimer that the devs have stated that the space portion is not complete, and space stations should be coming.

The first post mentioned that you should not attack space relays (the thing in the sky connected to ground bases) because that turns the space fleet against you. This remains true for the duration of the game, as even if you had 50 turrets on the planet, they’d take a whooping from any space attack… that means battlebases to keep them all repaired, which is more wasted energy.

And currently, there are no star system based options for attacking space fleets, aside from you piloting up there with some smaller ships. Which has the following issues:

• The size of the fleet (# of ships) is very limited until the late game due to research requirements. Even at late game, with ALL upgrades, you are going to blow through 500+ ships to take out any hive above level 5.
• The ships themselves require a significant amount of resources to craft, which are not available in bulk until well into the late game.
• The power/durability/attack speed of the ships is dependent on a rather substantial amount of research.
• Your own power levels continually decrease while your ships attack, meaning you need late game upgrades to power levels/charging/deuterium rods

Even at end game research levels (e.g. all “colored” research complete), you will go through a double stack of space ships to take out even a level 1 space base. Which you will be required to do as the Dark Fog is continually sending “seeds” into star systems to generate space bases, which you cannot defend against.

Sulfuric Acid + Unipolar Magnets

These two items are only available in late game star systems, which prior to Dark Fog wasn’t much of an issue. The Sulfuric Acid is available in infinite supply (and essential to alleviate some oil production chain issues), and will generate a bottle neck in the late game. Unipolar Magnets are a very limited supply, and only used in end game.

By the time you unlock the ability to find these items, those systems will have Dark Fog present, with multiple ground bases and a space base. To actually clear all this out, you need a Missile Turret blueprint (6 or more turrets, a storage container, a signal tower, and belts to feed it all) and some really basic power generation. Take out one base, install a thermal plant for a new power source, and move the turrets next to it, and a space station to ship extra missiles. This should allow you to install mining equipment, put a signal tower to defend it, a battlestation base to repair any damage, and harvest all you need. A sort of back door harvest I guess. 

Overall Thoughts

I think this is a great first pass at scalable enemy AI. They are logical, the threat levels are manageable, and the attack patterns are defensible. I never felt like I was fighting an exponential curve that required diverting too much material. But I’ve also played this game for 200+ hours and know how to optimize. I also didn’t generate a space attack until I was ready. No joke, a space base attacking your planet before late game will pretty much mean a full restart, it is that strong. 

The ground portion generally works, though the material provided from combat is clearly just placeholder for now. It makes no sense to “farm” ground bases for material at this point. But it generally works. I don’t quite understand why you’d run laser towers, or cannons though, as missile turrets are infinitely better in absolutely all cases. New power distribution options will be required to support planetary shields as well, as this is the first time you truly need to use the entire planet’s surface (space stations?) And there are simply too many things to build on the ground to have true value (laser turrets are a great example)

The space to ground portion is not yet balanced. Protecting a planet from new bases requires too much power and at the absolute most optimal 10 towers (connected with 100+ poles), which makes no sense before end game. Having the ability to have orbiting space stations may do the trick. It really changes the end-game portion to wars of attrition, which I don’t find terribly interesting.

Net result is that the initial star system is cleared of Dark Fog, and 2 others (to get all the rare material). Those last 2 were multiple attack runs with nearly 600 ships destroyed. And now, every 30 minutes or so, a new attack happens in those systems because it’s not possible to protect a system, only a planet. So, play session complete until the space portion is in.