Hi,

Just a question for you. Actually I stop playing until update 2, but since now I've been testing on normal difficulty, and rest of parameters in average settings. One problem I had is dealing with early blockades on my outposts. sometimes after colonizing a system, while in outpost stage, a fleet from a minor, other faction or quest, stays indefinitely over my system, completely stopping its growth. As sometimes it happens to first system I colonize, ATM I only got another fleet with my first scout, which sometimes can rival another faction scout, but never with a minor/quest corvette/destroyer, not to say if there are more than one of them in this fleet. this stops my outpost growth, and sometimes it even gets negative food and disappears.

this is specially punishing with Lumeris if I try to expand quickly in early game by buying outposts like mad, there's always a little one I can't avoid it happening. Happens less with UE or Sophons, which build colony ships, and Vodiany seems unaffected due to all that Arks thing. Not played Cravers yet.

IMO this is not a fail design, and nothing has to be changed on devs side, may be except for avoiding too early and too power fleets in some quests (discussed in another thread), but loosing and outpost or having this growth crippled this way is my fault.

Actually my way to deal with this is to rush the Era I destroyer/corvette tech and build an early 2/3-ship + scout fleet to kill the blockading fleets, but when I have to do it, I think I'm loosing opportunities to grow taller quickly in my home system. Have to recognize this always worked to me, as in this stage, normally the quest/minor ships can't deal with this fleet, but the drawback of this is that it slows my early game progression.

So, how are you dealing with this? NAy new good idea? Or I'm just doing what everyone does, and there's not much other option?

[Side note to admin/devs/moderators: if you think this thread goes better in help section, just move there] 

Minor factions fleets usually set of fand fly away. 

AI fleets should get destroyed. That's what you'd do to a real living opponent anyway, right, you have to protect your investitions with force? Redesign your ships for better battle capabilities, this can save you some time.

An option is to let them camp the outpost and coonize someting else. You are spending resources on a colony ship, they are spending resource son guarding fleets.

VulpusAlbus wrote:

Minor factions fleets usually set of fand fly away. 

Not sure what settings are you using in galaxy generation. Not mentioned, I normally play in small sizes (personal liking). In this sometimes they have not much places to go, and seems to mi that minors tend more to blockade your outposts. In larger galaxies have not tested much, but seems exactly what you're saying. Suppose is not a programming think, but that the fleet has not much places to go.

AI fleets should get destroyed. That's what you'd do to a real living opponent anyway, right, you have to protect your investitions with force? Redesign your ships for better battle capabilities, this can save you some time.

Yea. Made ships with guns and no engines to protect inversions near my homeworld. But takes them lot of time to get to not-so-distant places. This also not sure if work with Lumeris quick expansion, as you'll need lots of them.

Also the initial explorer has not much slots to fill with weapons, and the costs to retrofit at this game stage seems too high to me.

An option is to let them camp the outpost and coonize someting else. You are spending resources on a colony ship, they are spending resource son guarding fleets.

Same as first statement. Sure your tactic works well with larger galaxies, but with smaller you have few places to colonize and they have few places to go.

Anyway thanks for your response. I take notes, and probably rethink some of my ideas.

About the galaxy sizes - yep, it may be the reason.  I'm mostly playing medium with average amount of connection lines with max AIs. Still lots of places for roaming fleets to go. And this gives some options for colonization.

In this case - early war action seems to be the logical answer. Little planets = little resources = more reasons to fight for them asap.

If galaxies are small there is no need for fast trave for your ships. Load them with firepower and protection and focus on getting control on what is near you. And cheaper ships in early game mean you can produce them faster, sending out your fleets earlier, which should compensate for slower travel speed. I personally use engines only for colonizanional and exploratinoal purposes.

Average galaxy size, average number of major/minor factions. Same problem as you, especially when playing on higher difficulty, and like you I don't have a super-effective counter to it. For the most part, and as long as the blockaded outpost is not going to die anytime soon, I focus on other things. Explore more, expand with new colonies elsewhere, and opportunistically blockade their outposts. When I have spare fleet capacity I go over and liberate my outpost, but it can take a long time.

Experience has shown me that unless I rush the Era 1 hull tech and quickly build several fleets of 3 ships to harass enemy ships and purge outposts, I will lose the early expansion game. While it is effective, it has downsides. It's something I've only been able to effectively use against one opponent. My research, system development, and expansion (to a certain extent) suffer compared to other factions. I enter Era 2 worse off than all but one rival. There doesn't yet seem to be much of a diplomatic effect but I'm sure that will change. The Dust deficit persists until later, narrowing my actions.

On the plus side, if you beat an empire in the expansion game and have early air superiority, you can blockade their home system for a relevant amount of time with little additional investment.

TheTakenKing wrote:

Average galaxy size, average number of major/minor factions. Same problem as you, especially when playing on higher difficulty, and like you I don't have a super-effective counter to it. For the most part, and as long as the blockaded outpost is not going to die anytime soon, I focus on other things. Explore more, expand with new colonies elsewhere, and opportunistically blockade their outposts. When I have spare fleet capacity I go over and liberate my outpost, but it can take a long time.

Experience has shown me that unless I rush the Era 1 hull tech and quickly build several fleets of 3 ships to harass enemy ships and purge outposts, I will lose the early expansion game. While it is effective, it has downsides. It's something I've only been able to effectively use against one opponent. My research, system development, and expansion (to a certain extent) suffer compared to other factions. I enter Era 2 worse off than all but one rival. There doesn't yet seem to be much of a diplomatic effect but I'm sure that will change. The Dust deficit persists until later, narrowing my actions.

On the plus side, if you beat an empire in the expansion game and have early air superiority, you can blockade their home system for a relevant amount of time with little additional investment.

Very well put. Similar to my experiences. I don't think there is a super-effective counter for this though. Even if you invest a lot in to military it will hurt your development in other places, so one way or the other you will probably be disadvantaged. Early on (the first two eras) the game always feel like I am trying to stage a comeback (especially on the tougher difficulties) unless I get very lucky with my nearby systems. I might just be a bad player though, who knows.

Just send a scout at them and auto combat.  Basic scout vs basic scout in almost every matchup ends in a 50/50 draw, but they'll retreat after that(or they might just choose retreat automatically from being attacked).  Then go heal your scout (especially if it's close to your empire) and you'll be ready for the next one.

More detailed:

Voydani- your colonies defend themselves and spamming leechers is something you should be doing anyways.

Cravers- i think they start with a frigate and the frigate tech, so defending your early expands should be simple enough.

Everyone else- I generally grab an extra scout early to help defend my territories and will prioritise early frigate tech as it is since they're useful and running into an early craver can be a huge issue anyways.

Lumeris- as they can do the most expanding i may grab even more early scouts while I wait for my frigates to enousre I can keep my systems from being blockaded. 

Have you tried just murdering everyone that dares to set foot in your system?

Afer reading @VulpusAlbus settings I thought it was due to galaxy size, but from @TheTakenKing's post seems is not the case. Actually I'm using same strategy with same downsides, so it seems a common problem. Still it feels to me that this is not a design fail, but one of the things us, players, should solve if want to win.

Thanks for your ideas. Actually seems there's not a specific and exceptionally good tactic here.

Not sure about @Romeo's suggestion.

I tend to Sophon but my usual technique has been to re-fit my scouts for combat and just spam them and hammer any fleets that try to blockade any planets.  I keep them cheap, no extra engines, so they build quickly right from the start and I can get numbers to overwhelm without too much economy suffering.  After a few colonies are established, then I'll do proper Era1 combat ships while continuing my expansion.  Not sure if that will work in your scenario.  It's a bit unavoidable on a small map though.

CappinCanuck wrote:

I tend to Sophon but my usual technique has been to re-fit my scouts for combat and just spam them and hammer any fleets that try to blockade any planets.  I keep them cheap, no extra engines, so they build quickly right from the start and I can get numbers to overwhelm without too much economy suffering.  After a few colonies are established, then I'll do proper Era1 combat ships while continuing my expansion.  Not sure if that will work in your scenario.  It's a bit unavoidable on a small map though.

I go with a similar tactic, though it's not of a such big issue on big map sizes, tbh. Neutrals will harass you at some point, but one to two small strengthened scout ships do all you need. Frigates are available pretty soon, anyway.