Note: Sorry if i sound like i whine too much,. I play a lot of unfallen, and half of the playthroughs were 50 turn games to try and optimise my start. I just feel completely powerless against the problems i describe in the following text.

The problem on normal speed, endless difficulty, and hard pirates:

Entwining is extremely fragile, draws resources, and is still so slow, you can easily find yourself snipped by other major factions, therefore finding yourself forcing peace and having to take 1 or more uncolonisable systems to reach one you can take yourself. And it is all dictated by rng. Your early game ship designs are in no way able to deal with most other factions designs as they lack weapons, as well as deal with pirate fleets.

And this is not a "play on easier difficulty" answer case. The comparisson between difficulty and overall performance between the factions, is that unfallen are simply light years behind.

There is no 100% strategy to both protect your first vineship and entwining, as well as destroy the first pirate base RELIABLY, and even then as multiple pirate bases spawn you find yourself requiring more and more resources to simply keep colonising at such a pace, your competitors probably have gotten 8 systems by the time you have 4. RNG plays an extremely big role, and by that i mean, the rng of pirates deciding to not attack your vineships. Not galaxy rng which is something everyone deals with, but pirate movement, dictates your actions on the long term: Do i go to take the pirate base, or do i stay and def my vineship? That is my major issue with the race right now. Most of my games are "decided" in the very first and sometimes second entwining, as not dealing with the base means more resources for vine defense. 

Losing 10 turns on the entwining is IMMENSE. 

An example:

I have been using this very good guide on https://imgur.com/a/skqoq to deal with the space scum.

Screen Shot 2018-07-01 at 10.51.12 PM.png

What happened here was that the pirates spawned too far away to simply go and invade right away: if the pirate moved towards the vineship, i could not move back fast enough to defend it. So i had to stay and launch probes until i saw the pirate initial fleet move towards somewhere else. Eventually it did do that, and i managed to invate at T minues 3, the spawn of the next fleet. The base was osing the invasion BUT still had 3 troops when the fleet spawned. So they get reinforced. Next turn another pirate fleet from another region arrived reinforcing them even more. 

At this point i am economically suffering as i did not get a second colonizable planet on my capital and i have 2 choices:

1. Place hero on Koyasil and rush the tier 1 combat ships

2. Keep the hero for combat and try to endure the negative income by losing ships and replacing them to slow down bankruptcy.

The thing is, all this time i am behind others in number of bases, but ahead on main planet population.

It just does not make up for it. I need to get lucky rng on something as base as wether the pirate fleets ignore me or not, as well as the major factions not to decide to colonise valuable systems near me (i dont have ships to spare for blockading because the starting scout is single weapon loadout and the defensive value in no way makes up for it), and not get multiple pirate base spawns too close to me.

The only case i can "pull ahead" is if i get MULTIPLE minor factions, dump all influence and get lots of dust and science. But even then i still have to deal with the pirate issue.

Its just very little gameplay choice and too much rng on MOVEMENT, just galaxy circumstances but enemy fleet movement!

I feel i cannot compete, and am at the mercy of everyone else.

NOTE: I am not saying i cannot win a game, the ai is simply bad and does not take advantage of the situation to kill me. But there is no competition, i know i win because they did not bother attacking me. And that feels wrong.

I checked and you can take on first pirates easily with full T2 kinetics designs (gained after reasearching a single military technology).
You can also go an extra mile and use your extra influence to sabotage pirate lairs.
Not having a 2nd planet is a bummer, but no way a dealbreaker as you can - usually - get a second one colonizeable early.
You may find certain level of success in this forum thread, as it pretty much states everything you do and offers solutions including a playthrough video.

That is the very tactic i mentioned on my original post, without the hero its impossible to beat the first fleet.

And my issue is not necessarily with the vine speed, its how the slow speed+requirement to never interupt that makes it extremely  easily distrupted by the pirates. Hence why i focus on this: The need to both escort your vineships at all times, being able to beat any enemies + the need to root out pirate lairs to reduce the pressure.

Btw the vine speed used to be 10 turns. Now its 20. That is a RADICAL change, i dont know why you would mention the pre nerf stage, as if someone argued to do that. There are 9 numbers between 20 and 10, and right now their competitiveness on normal speed is simply a joke.

Regarding competitiveness, another faction can either deal with the pirates with a single fleet, or even ignore pirates as they never permanently siege outposts.

Unfallen need to constantly be able to protect their vines. That means either two different fleets fully capable of dealing it out, or the ability to go in, invade and move back to protect vines in time.  And all that to have simply much slower empire developement than the second slower contender. 

Again its not just rng of galaxy generation, its also rng of the type "did the pirates move to vineships or did they move to that dead end neutron star for no reason, giving me time to go take out the pirate base." i can't enjoy that "gameplay".

I honestly dont know who can be considered slowest, i think it depends on map rng, example being a vodyani with no minors and a single planet (get f*%t).

Current speed of vines is 20 turns per single ship, 10 for 2, 7 for 3 and so on. 

My problem is the very FIRST entwining, and how pirate and map rng can make it impossible to kill the first base before it spawns aditional enemies. The only solution to dealing with pirates right now is this:

Turn 6 start research on ubiquitious surveilance and start building 3 empty scouts.

Make 2 of them with missile-speed module-troop module

Make 1 with missile-speed module-probe module(for extra scouting) or another troop module (if there are few systems, and your hero probes cover all scouting needs)

at turn 11 assign hero on fleet and give him 3 missile+defenses +a probe (fun fact if you got no minor faction nearby and no guardian colonizable planet, you need an extra turn to pay the dust refit costs.)

The name of the game is "kill the pirate fleet, kill the base, without letting vineships open to attack"

Now you can start building a second vineship naked, the cost has already scaled up and you need about 6-8 turns (depending if you have colonizable planet or not). So the first entwining will still occur at 21 turns with perfect conditions, 24 is much more common (finding a decent at least system first).

Second entwining will happen at 35 at the fastest because you need to reinforce your basic fleet as the pirates upgrade over time.

Its not uncommon to see 4 fleets of 2 ships each by turn 35 roaming around, if you did not manage to kill the first base, or it simply respawned (happens all to often to respawn at same system, 2 turns after its cleared).

If the pirate spawned on a long lane distance, you CANNOT go and destroy the base unless you can reliably engage the pirate somewhere else. Because you risk him moving while you are in transit. 

That is my main issue with the unfallen. 

First entwine, first 25 turns of the game.

And by main issue i mean, main annoyance because relying on pirate fleet doing something terribly stupid so i can engage and kill him whenever rng did not place pirate base on a short lane, feels incredibly frustrating.

The fact that ANY other faction can easily take advantage and snipe colonies, snipe my vineship, snatch a minor i am building vines towards to and so on, is the balance component of my complaint.

If i were to propose changes i would rather take the direction of adding root defense modifers, so you can defend vineships, maybe a dedicated vine defender modifier/ship class/combt only spawned entity. An early game protector, that does not compete with later, tech scaled designs.

Honestly the complaint here is pretty reasonable. Vineships can somehow be compared to Arks in the way that they allow you to take control over the system, but Arks have ridiculous amount of defensive firepower while vineships are just super exposed civilian fleets. I think what devs could do is give your first vineship some guns so that it can protect itself against first pirates. 

jhell wrote:

Hi,

We have seen this thread and the other one about this issue, and we do want to do something about it so players can enjoy a more forgiving early game with the Unfallen. Like Daynen said in the next update we're going to have vine remanence on nodes ; ie. if you retreat your vineships the vines progress will take a few turns to disappear, but we'll also look into other solutions.

Thanks for your feedback, as always!

Glad to hear you guys are on this! I dont know if remanence is enough in itself but i guess it really depends on the number of turns, at the very least one can do a bit of back and forth to reduce the amount of wasted turns.

Are you guys ok with thins like Vaulter/Vodyani colonising mid entwining, and losing minor factions in a similar situation? I was thinking something along the lines of, after half the vine process is made, system becomes territory of the unfallen so it cannot be taken by someone else, and minor faction entwining taking less turns when you have maxed reputation - but maybe these are abusable/too strong.

Something else, irrelevant to colonization, do people who play Unfallen, feel they like the ship slot makeup? I feel they have far too many defense slots, on the expense of utility and offense, and that they suffer from this trade, both on the scout, basic and medium offense military hulls