Anon01/10/26, 19:52No.2319224
Played the first one with no expansions a couple times on difficulty 7.
Interesting concept but poorly handled.Bigger maps are tedious rather than hard, picking the right planets to take over is usually no brainer but the distance increases.Being able to reliably defend planets depends on enemy ships (bombers, anti-armor and plasma siege ships are the only real threat unless they have 1k+ ships in which case you probably fucked up).Contrary to what the tutorial teaches, small ships are pretty shit, only good for defending and a fleet full of starships can usually take over planets by themselves with minimal or no losses.
Not to mention that there's eyes and ion cannons which further disincentivize using them.Hacking is only worth it to get permanent mkIV or mkV ships and maybe a bit of extra knowledge for researching ships.
Most ships are functionally the same but with different damage/armor types.Micro management revolves around raids to destroy some specific structure then get out, otherwise you select the entire fleet and attack-move until everything is dead.All units have their separate ship-cap which removes any decision making when creating units, you'll simply create max amount of each unit and if you want more of a specific one, you research an upgraded version of it.
Riot control starships break that mold by being customizable but their purpose is to destroy ship engines, not deal damage and they're too fragile without a shield generator.