I haven't played the DL campaign for a very long time, since I first got the game. I loaded my "end-game save" for that mission, and I apparently played it on a fairly easy level. The way to win is with an alliance victory - either ally with the Drengin and Yor, or (the easier way) just wipe them out

The map has several economic resources near your corner, grab them and your economy won't be a problem. There aren't very many planets; I ended with twelve (which included all the ones I purged Yor and Drengin from).

I think the other races (Arcean, Altarian, etc) are listed as "team" players, in which case you shouldn't need to ally with them, just deal with the evil races.

Good luck

Siege is an easy one to win. I rushed to planetary invasions and took out their one world very early.

Apocalypse is where I stalled. Everything I tried ended up with the Dread Lords destroying all my ships and invading my worlds. Plus, when looking up strategies here, I read that Apocalypse tends not to complete when played in DA.

Was that in DL or DA?

I had beat Apocalypse quite some time ago, and left the DL campaign at Apocalypse, and am now working on advancing my sandbox play up to Masochistic, and dipping a toe into Obscene.

I took all the planets from the Weber system in the north to Markus system in the south, and began developing my economy and technology. I tech-brokered with my allies, giving preference to the Iconians. Soon after the colony rush, the Dreads began sending in 25-Gun Attack transports, taking me by surprise. I responded by buying some 6pc/wk 'Snipe' fighters with 1-Beam Attack, and used the tie-rule to blast 4 transports.

I sent my flagship in the direction the Dread transports had come from, and discovered that they had 4 worlds covered in Industrial Sectors. So as my economy improved, I kept placing more and more spies on their worlds. They tried to fight back by placing spies on my worlds, but I knocked them out with Counter-Espionage Centers.

The Arceans, Altarians and Torians did nothing at all to help(except for buy my tech and go broke), but since the Iconians were holding off the Yor and Drengin quite well, I even gifted them tech or some cash when they were going broke. Up in the far north, meanwhile, the Drath and Korx had become targets of the Dread Lords. The Dread warships were tearing apart every ship they built, yet they sent all their transports in my direction(which kept getting killed).

The Dread Lords then did something that was not too surprising by storyline, but quite surprising in the game: they signed a peace treaty with the Yor Collective! Upon seeing the peace treaty message, I initiated diplomatic negotiations with the Dreads in hope for some tech or temporary peace. They just laughed in my face.

After a while, when my population was up, and my research was going well, the Dread Lords sent more transports towards me. This time they brought warships along as well. I had awesome early-warning capabilities with my Eyes of the Universe, so I managed to snipe all the Transport, but I lost a few of my aging fighters as well. In response, I upgraded all my remaining fighters and built half a dozen extra new-spec QuickSnipe fighters with 4-Missile Attack and 10pc/wk speed. The Dread Lord frigates were left biting dust as their transports were torn down.

Now I had Mk.2 Photonic Torpedoes, Warp Drive 5, Expert Miniaturization, a Hyperion Shrinker, and Large Hulls. With this tech, I rolled out 5 new battleships(whose name I'm forgetting) with 46-Missile Attack and 6 pc/wk speed. The Dread Lords' frigates and escorts got a taste of the tie rule and I steamrolled ~7-8 of them without losing a ship. They brought in a frigate and 3 escorts as reinforcements from the Korx-Drath front, but they got killed as well. I beat them back to their base worlds and knocked out the remains of their military while my troop transports approached. They began building a few defenders with point defenses, but my troops stole the superior Mk.4 HD Spike Driver(!!!) weapon from the Dread Lords to blow their chances. I fitted these Spike Drivers on my battleships, shot down the Dread defenders, and the Dread Lords were soon overrun.

Question for PeskyFly and darkviking - how did you manage to kill transports with 1-attack ships? The tie rule gives the win to the transport in that match-up. A small early-game fleet can kill one while only taking minor losses, but one on one attacks by fast fighters with a single gun just don't work. Did you guys use fleets of your fast fighters for transport-hunting?

I also don't see how fleets of 46 attack value Large hulls are going to kill DL warships without losses. Kill, yes, but they should die at about a 1:1 ratio, I'd expect. Again, if the tie rule ever applies it will work in favor of the DL (according to the wiki, the formula is weighted towards attack and none of the posted ships come close to even a DL Escort in attack value). Could someone please explain what I'm missing? Thanks in advance!

At this point I'd also appreciate any thoughts on the rest of the DL campaign. Is it worth the bother of grinding out a win in "Apocalypse"? I'm fairly sure I can do it, but the tedium of moving all my ships to dodge DL ships every turn caused me to put this one on hold for now (playing the DA campaign instead). The Drath are gone, I have Medium hulls with 16 attack as my best ships, so it's going to be a *long* time before I make any progress... Adding insult to injury, since the game uses the DA engine, the only captured techs thus far are Space Mining II and Extreme Colonization.

Thanks! It's good to know how the game actually works. My Terran interceptors must have been rolling 0s a lot. Their Drengin counterparts in the DA campaign have been doing quite well for me lately. Still, I should do a redesign to get that precious 4 attack value.

I like the sound of that Milky Way map, I'll have to check that out when I'm done campaigning.