I built SB's in my home sector and they got killed.

I don't know what exactly gets tougher on tough (I'm on normal), but I'm building some big sensor ships...cargo hulls...and some small, fast fighters with 1 laser. And I just research up the engine line to Warp drive. The sensor ships spot what the DL's are doing, and the fighters intercept any transports. It's tough & monotonous, scouting the northern route & trying not to piss off any DL ships, and sometimes the fighters have to go on kamikaze missions to intercept the transports, but it's working. They haven't landed on my planets yet. And I'm down to the last Drengin homeworld (the Yor are dead).

Completed the mission on Normal after 2 days of constant fighting. LOL

My winning solution was similar to Tetleytea's idea, I built cheapo fast interceptors on every planet that I conquered and colonised to intercept all incoming DL transports. Problem for me was keeping the interceptors alive long enough to spot the incoming transports. I managed to do it all though with only losing 1 planet to the DLs. I lost another to the Yor but later took it back no probs.

Trick is to see what the DLs are up to... That helps a hell of a lot, you also need to remember some key advice here, ships attack ships, transports attack planets, transports tend to be undefended. You don't need to build up a uber fleet really you just need to defend all your rushed colonised worlds from transports. This means keeping enough money to rush build if necessary. Don't try to go toe to toe with the DLs till you have the upper hand.

Ok lets spell it out for you exactly the ideal plan for victory on normal.

Strategy:


1. Race picks - Economy / Max Speed / Moral & Government - Federalists

The key pick here is speed, the DLs will out run most ships every as but if you can beef up your speed it will seriously help you. You can sometime outrun them, intercept them and rush them. This will help you more than any other pick you can have.

2. Rush colonisation, get all you worlds to rush build starports and colony ships, screw constructors and fighters at the start. Send everything you got to the star ASAP, send the constructors to the top left head corners of each sector to boost range, BUILD military / influence SBs to boost power in those sectors.

3. Rush build Starports on ALL colonises and then farms and industry, you want a viable colony ASAP.

4. Design a small fighter with a sensor module and stick them near the north edges of your space, you want to see what the DL's are up too at all times. Build a cheap 1 laser interceptor and build on all planets.

5. TRADE all tech with your allies. Build all bonus SBs in your home sector only, the rest will only get creamed by the DLs. Use the planet Primus as your MAJOR industry base, it as good bonuses on it. DO NOT let the DL's or anyone else to take this planet.

6. You will most likely not get to the last planet near the Yor in time, I'd actually wouldn't ever try. In fact let the Yor build it up for you and then invade it. The most likely world to fall to the DL invasion is the most northern planet below the DL's sector. They will bum rush that world for sure, by building colonies the DL's attention will be focused on you to start off with. But its only the transports you need to be concerned with. Remember life is cheap in space and losing a ship isn't a problem, its a planet thats a big loss.

7. Build up your tech while watching your allies fight the DL's and you protecting yourself against DL transports. Remember a major flaw in the game means the DL's get a tactic advantage over you in terms of attack. Because you are south of the DLs they great an extra sector of movement over you. Meaning they can attack a range of 5 SQs in a single movement, but you will have to take 2 turns of 5, and 1 to interceptor them. This is due to the stupid notion that all ships must lunch southwards from a planet, this of course means you are 2 SQ further from your target. This also mean your enemy if placed northwards ALWAYS gets an extra movement southwards.

In my last gme this caused me no end of grief.

8. When you hit plasma 3 tech / miniaturization 2 you know its time to hand the DLs their arses. But a medium hull with 6 plasma cannons on it. This will give each ship +12 punching power skip all other components they will only increase the economic drain of each ship. Now build LOADS of them, and I mean loads. A logistics rating of 12 is REALLY essential for a good fleet. Group 3 together to form your first anti-DL fleet. These guys will take down all but a DL battleship if you get the initial attack. You will most likely loose a ship in each engagement but the XPs each surviving ship gains is clearly to your advantage, NEVER try to take on more than one DL or a DL BS. Not yet anyway, after each engagement withdraw to your home sector and assign a new ship to the fleet. This will help the surviving ships gain better XPs and more HPs.

9. Rush research into Phasors. Believe me they will turn this war around for you, up to now defensive technology is bloody pointless. When you get hit for 30 damage on a ship with 16 hps, having -1 defence is just not cost effective. Focus on weapons, more weapons and you initially attacking means the DLs go down faster and means they don't get the chance to fire back. Time your attacks so you have able to get the drop on the DL's if they attack you, you will lose the fleet. With phasors 1 you can upgrade your current design to replace all plasmas with phasors. Trust me it is worth it. All those ships with XPs now armed with Phasors, you wil start to see the actually running from you. They did me.

10. Rush research rapid invasion, you should have at this point already impulse 1-3. They are very very useful on your Interceptors. Build 3 rapid invaders and assign a fleet of Phasor armed mediums hulls to them, now in stead of trying to go directly to the Yor, go via the southern sectors and then when you are beneath the planet head northwards, this may take longer, but guarantees the ships get there in one piece. Trust me I lost no end of ships to the DLs and Yor. Once you are within a Sector distance south of the Yor send in the fleet only, you want to get the Yor to engage you in a chase to lead them away from the planet. NOW this is important, once the Yor defence ships are a good way from the planet and I assume they have no planet in orbit, send in the invaders.

11. The invaders should move in one at a time and a SQ at a time, you want to see what is there before you send all the ships in. Now all rapid invaders should have a speed of 8, thats HALF a sector of space. You can so out run the DLs and the Yor if you have to BUT you need to see them both coming first. Thats where the invaders are very weak, fast but blind. Once the coast is clear RAPIDLY send in all the invaders into orbit, group 2 and invade, using information warfare and you will fail first time, thats why you have 3 invaders there, invade again and you'll win HOPEFULLY!

12. This should pretty much be repeated for all the other worlds. In about a 30 weeks all but the DLs should fall before you.

Hope this helps people.

J

I completed this after a few tries on Normal.  My strategy was to increase the populations as much as possible and then a few troop transports with a strong research in the soldier plusses.  The trick was to take back the plannets once they had been taken from me.  The attacking soldiers receive a much larger bonus attack and once you have defeated the DLs you receive one of their techs. As a result I was able to group fleets of 60+ attack reasonably quickly.  Once you have this then the game is yours.  It however relies on a very fast troop transport as they need to invade the planets quickly while they are vulnerable.

I played on Normal and chose the porcupine route!

1) Build a military starbase immediately and upgrade it's ship offensive/defensive systems
2) Build a small fighter (I called them Gnats) with one point in offense and one in defense(optional).
3) Repeat 2 until you have fleats of 3+

The starbase bonusses really crank these little fighters up, and they're low maintenance.

4) ALWAYS attack first, that way the DL high offense isn't a factor since with your starbase enhanced fleet you'll take out single ships on the initial attack

Now you have time to stabalize your economy and research up to a medium hull with enough weaponry to handle them. I built a swarm of constructors and leap frogged across the galaxy with high strength military star bases.

Took a lot longer than neccesary, but slow and steady won the race! Would have been easier if the "Trade" tech tree were enabled. Getting a stable economy with just market centers etc.. is rough.

Rod

This battle is insane. I thought I had a good solid strategy on this one. I started by purchasing factories, labs, markets, space stations on all three starting planets. I then purchased colony ship after colony ship sending them out to the uncharted systems. I was able to capture both Mark planets and one farther to the left. Mark I was a power house with a thousand boost to production. Mark II had 200 percent increase in technology. I maxed out my spending and kept purchasing social buildings and I built two military starbases repeatingly upgrading them with constructors. I built up Three fleets of 'angels' (2 attack 0 defense). At first this worked, I was able to fend off fighters, escorts, scouts, and even a few frigates. When my planets built up my research was extremely quick. I researched everything focusing on anything that was quick. This was probably my problem. Soon DL battleships started showing up and that was that. They blasted my fleets out of the sky (i engaged them) and then blasted my two starports with ease. I had made sure to build planet defenses on Mark I and II. They held on for over a dozen invasion attempts. But in the end both fell. After the initial Battleship sweep I could never recover and push them out of my sectors. My fleet was constantly hunted down (as if they new where all my ships were).

My allies? I gave them everything, and took what I could with trades (tech). They both fought some, but were both slaughtered as well. The Yor gave up and gave their planets to the Dregen(sp?). The Dregs were never touched by the DL. They wanted me and no one else. They invaded MY planets, no one elses, They hunted MY ships down to even the sw edge of the galaxy, while only attacking everyone else when they were around my planets. Sigh... I want to defeat the DL completely, yet even on beginner I was mauled. Talk about a difficulty curve in the campaign. jez... I guess the only way to win this one is transport rush and take the goal planet. booo

Whew... just got done with this one. Managed to crack it on my first try, on Tough, but it was close. Real close.

I went for racial +2 speed, and started rush building 2-engine colony ships (I'm starting to wonder why I'd ever do otherwise, except maybe for variety or extra challenge). I sprayed those ships all over the map, and ended up with (I think) all the planets you can hope to get. My allies had one each, the DLs had one, the Yor had 2, and the Drengin had their one. I dumped all three of my constructors in an economy resource by my core worlds (probably a stupid choice in hindsight).

I rush built a couple factories on each planet until I was getting down to around 15k in reserve. Then, I went hard into social development and infrastructure techs until I had a really groovy economy. Naturally, each tech brought in some cash from my buddies, so my cash wasn't going down all that fast.

Once the DLs started cruising the galaxy a bit, I realized that I wasn't going to stand much of a chance in an open fight. I built a couple of sensor boats to spot for fast, cheap sniper ships, which was just good enough to keep my planets from falling until near the end. The rest of my planets started cranking my preferred high-speed "Humper" transports and heavy fighters.

Here's where it got really hard. I think I waited too long to switch over to military production, because the DLs were really cutting loose now. They had an 11-speed (!) escort ship that was sweeping space for my sniper ships, resulting in a couple transports getting through and my northernmost planet falling. Dreadnaughts were patrolling my space as well, so I had to loop all my stuff around the hard way to approach the Yor from below.

My first group of transports and fighters poached the first Yor world, and then fell just short of taking the second. Unfortunately, dreadnaughts had gotten in between these guys and my second wave (dreadnaughts who, over the course of the game, passed within a square of Altairan, Arcean, and Yor fleets without bothering to engage even if my ships flew out of the DL sensor range).

What followed was an insane combination of end-arounds, multiple feints, and a few agonizing ship sacrifices (using spare transports and unfleeted fighters to wall in a dreadnaught, for instance). I learned a LOT about how the AI selects targets, how to train stuff around, and how to maximize advantages in speed/sensor range. In the end, I had to lure a big Drengin fleet a few squares away from its homeworld, which I finally poached with four fighters (two near death) and just enough transports. The DLs were rampaging totally unchecked at this point, so further reinforcements would have been impossible.

Awesomest mission ever. Thanks, Stardock. Though I must say, I had one complaint: You gave me allies, and they just sat there the whole game puttering their fleets within a couple squares of their homeworlds. WTF?

Dont even worry about your home planets. I beat this first try on Challenging. As soon as the DL showed up and were invading planets, it was obvious they were going to kill everything in the sector. So I rush bought at the lowest downpayment rate 2 fleets of fighters, and 8 troop transports. I then just trucked across the very bottom of the map hugging the edge the whole way, then used my flagship to lure the Yor away from their home planet . i then flew in with both squadrons and 4 of my 8 troop ships to take the planet. THat game me the range to get to the drengin home world.. I just repeated the same tactic to lureing them away and then swooping in with two full fleets to mop up the 3 or 4 defenders. My troop ships then swooped in and took the planet for a win.

BTW, at this time the DL had smeared my entire right side of the board except for one planet, and the interest I had to pay was going to bankrupt me in 4 more turns.

This tactic also requires that you have fast ships designed with a premium on engines.