Source
r/TerraInvicta•
Snuffls

Don't Poke the Bear

Alright, so I've had to restart my second, ~100 hour, campaign.

I may or may not have blown up a mothership, blown up a >!landed UFO!<, went on an assassination spree on Servant councilors, and beat back an >!alien invasion!<, all before I had torches or even coilguns.

You see, while I knew what I was doing was somewhat dumb, I didn't realize exactly HOW bad it was. Until I noticed a fleet heading for Earth. Comprised of 2 motherships, six dreadnoughts, and a fuckton of escorts. Which then proceeded to completely obliterate the fleet I built to kill the mothership (I managed to kill one of the motherships through sheer luck, though, so I call that a win). Then all my orbitals. Then my lunar mining base. Then my martian mining bases. I got steamrolled, completely obliterated.

I kept trying at it, you know, figuring the aliens would eventually calm down and let me try to build a space economy, but nope, still pissed. Still brutalizing my habs and orbitals before they're even done building.

So, yeah. Don't poke the bear until you have a gun big enough to kill it.

Posted Nov 8, 2022, 9:26 AM UTC

2015
WillWKM:resistance: XCOM•

By the way, it sounds like you triggered total war. I've heard the Ayys will stop eventually but only once ALL your space resources are destroyed. So you either need to rebuild fast to fight them off, or wait for them to clear EVERYTHING before trying again.

9
JumpingSwap•

I think that is indicated by the alien meter (top right) turning all red.

8
WillWKM:resistance: XCOM•

Yeah, the latest update made that a lot clearer.

5
Viperions•

Yep. "Total War" state - how soon it can happen is dependent on difficulty level. Once it triggers, they never lose hate.

3
Swedelicious83•

Did not realize that existed... 🤔

1
artrald-7083•

So I believe that by design there is a period around 2038-2042 where if you do not poke the bear, the bear just eats you. And the goal of the midgame is to get Operation Beartrap (I'm stealing that name) up and running by 2040.

I wish I'd made a save at 2030 with a good position to start my runup. As it is, I'm considering my first run a throwaway. I will be entertained even if I lose. I have many mistakes, but none have been irrecoverable. So far, just blundering onwards has kinda worked for me. (I had to look up where Strategic Deception was on the internet, and I'd been spoiled on the dyson sphere being a bad idea by Potato McWhiskey).

9
Viperions•

"Total War" is what the state is called, and its dependent on the difficulty level for the minimum time its reached. Minimums from start: >!25 years for cinematic, 20 years for normal, 10 years for veteran... 0 years for brutal!<

2
artrald-7083•

Even before total war, though, if you don't kill the Ayys they will just conquer the world.

1
Tristan_Gregory•

My sense of the game is no doubt skewed by my longest playthrough having started right on EA release, so whatever behavior changes that came after that didn't necessarily affect my game as strongly - but there have been several times when I thought my game was lost and I somehow managed to survive. They've wiped out my space fleets I don't know how many times and blown up quite a few platforms, but because a lot of my stuff is heavily defended I always managed to keep some space mining (and selling exotics has kept me in the black money-wise for quite awhile as well).

Year is now 2051, still don't have coilguns or torches. Just got arc lasers which are helpful. Aliens own china AND the EU (damn resistance just let 'em walk in the door...). I as the USA have had to nuke myself and allies several times to stop alien invasions, though the last couple of assault carrier fleets have been entirely or partially stopped before landing, thankfully. It's been a helluva ride.

At this point I'm not giving up until I literally have no moves left.

5
Swedelicious83•

Fight them on the beaches, and in the streets...

7
adeon:resistance: XCOM•

Never give up, never surrender!

3
Volgrand•

Same here. I finally did move towards mercury to rebuild both economy and fleets. They didn't attack me there, but for almost 10 years i was unable to build anything else in LEO

3
Swedelicious83•

Yep. They mad.

2
OrderlyPanic•

You kind of have to beat back the alien invasion, AA is very bad.

2
adeon:resistance: XCOM•

I'm getting very close to the point where I need to decide if I'm ready to poke the bear or not. I've got some decent tech but I'm also sitting right at the MC cap for Brutal so it's a case of deciding if I want to try and tech up a little bit more or bite the bullet and just start spamming missile BBs to give me a defense force that can hold them off while I move to a total war footing.

On the plus side while the Aliens have landed they just took over Thailand and didn't bother to move, just a half-dozen alien armies sitting there.

1