Planetary Invasion for REAL Men!

[J. M. Pescado]

Behold, planetary invasion for real men! Wussies need not apply! All I gots is a minibomb, 900 HP, and a bad attitude!
Part 1: The Attack Begins!
After I make it back into space, I repair, reload, and then...
Part 2: CONQUER!
At no point during this do I actually DIE. And remember, this is the REAL difficulty setting! None of that pussyass 10K HP shit! Seriously, how can you even DIE with that? You wussies on EASY have more hitpoints than my maxed out ship!

[jsalemi]

I take it you use the keyboard to guide your ship. I've got to practice that a lot more, because if I do use it I always overshoot my targets.

[EsotericPolarBear]

Your ship looks like the ship from Starflight.

[jsalemi]

It looks like he's using the Klingon D7 Gus made (found in another thread a few below this one).

[Gus Smedstad]

Darn, I wish I could see those.  I've tried in IE and Safari, and each time all I get is the sound once the clip starts playing.

 - Gus

[J. M. Pescado]

I take it you use the keyboard to guide your ship. I've got to practice that a lot more, because if I do use it I always overshoot my targets.

The point is not to worry about overshooting your target, this is a fly-by shooting anyway. Notice how I'm not actually picky about when I stop, I just get roughly over the target and drop some bombs.

[Zazazu]

I've been loading for three minutes on cable with just the Quicktime logo to look at. *cries*

[kutto]

I get a black screen with "[no video]."

[J. M. Pescado]

Bah, you're going to make me post it on Stupid Youtube or something, aren't you?

[kutto]

I wouldn't dare ask that of you. However, I would like to know what format the video is so that I may find out how to play it in my browser.

Updated Quicktime, and now it is loading, but is sure is slow.

[Zazazu]

My Quicktime was updated, but it was hella slow. I solved it the old fashioned way...by looking at something else for a second.

[witch]

I switched the rendering engine to IE and it is now loading. I only had the big blue Q before that.

[BastDawn]

I don't seem to have the plugins needed to play it in a window, so I used the handy download link it gave me instead.  Over 42mb, Pescado?  How unlike you!  The movies look pretty cool; I really need to get around to installing the game so I can try it myself.  The hit-and-run tactics look useful.

[J. M. Pescado]

And remember, this is invading like a REAL warrior! None of that wussy godmode-level HP! I have a nice, fair, measly 900! It is a good day to die!

[kewian]

Ok.. let's see you kill the Grox. YOu will be assimilated.

[J. M. Pescado]

The Grox are kinda in the center of the galaxy. It is a LOOONG way away. And Grox colonies are reportedly easier than homeworlds.

[kewian]

You think mini bomb is good.. try Mega bomb .    It doesnt take much for them to beg for mercy.

[Gus Smedstad]

I used to command a wimpy empire, pushed around by every Spodist in my spiral arm.  Then I got J.M. Pescado's Free Book on how to be a real man, and now I've invaded several enemy homeworlds without calling in allied mercenaries!

Really, just knowing that ship strength depends on the number of colonies in the empire has been very helpful.  Whittling away at the weak T0 colonies makes the T2s and T3s much easier when their time comes.  Choosing tag-alongs from the big empires has greatly improved their survival rate.  While it's true they aren't very useful for taking enemy planets, they do make short work of the interceptors that show up whenever you enter enemy territory.

It's true that the way to win is to concentrate on bombing and ignore just about everything else, particularly turrets.  Though taking out defending ships is worthwhile if you can do so quickly and without much effort.

 - Gus

[Marvin Kosh]

Here's a couple of useful keys that weren't in the manual:

Home zooms you up out of the atmosphere, or after just a couple of presses out of the solar system entirely.

End is basically the same but zooming in the way or down below the radar.

The Page Up and Page Down keys will pitch the camera up and down, but those aren't useful for getting in and out of bombing range quickly.

[J. M. Pescado]

It's true that the way to win is to concentrate on bombing and ignore just about everything else, particularly turrets.  Though taking out defending ships is worthwhile if you can do so quickly and without much effort.

It's really only "quick" and "effortless" to take out enemy ships if you have things like the megalaser and megaproton, or even antimatter, and your enemy ships don't have 1K+ HP. If you can destroy them in two or three shots, go ahead and take them out. If all you have is a minimissile and minilaser, forget it.

However, did you know that you can actually destroy even very big enemy ships with your BOMB? Yes, that's right, you can BOMB enemy ships. Occasionally, they can collide with the bomb (and be killed nearly instantly because the megabomb does 1.8K HP vs. the megamissile's 120, and even the minibomb does 300). Also, if you are very low when bombing, or the enemy buildings are very high, you can drop a bomb that impacts with the building immediately, destroying all enemy ships caught in the blast. I have killed more enemy ships with bombs while invading than I have with missiles or lazors.

Also, to get additional damage in a fight, use your lazor against enemies while the missile launcher is reloading. This is useful when defending a weak colony or trying to take out a pesky defender quickly so you can bomb unopposed.

[J. M. Pescado]

I find that as I play the game more, I grow increasingly less tolerant of the alien interlopers crowding my space and more inclined kill them. As such, my invasionary technique has improved: I can now kill alien homeworlds in my lousy 450-hp starting junker upgraded only up to the minibomb. No health or energy. What's more, I can take out 2 or 3 cities in a single pass, all WITHOUT DYING.

I should post a new video of "homeworld invasion on a noob ship" soon, since I have a game where I am about to do just that. If I keep improving at this, soon I'll be invading homeworlds with nothing but the lazor.

[Dopp]

I kill every spacefaring race I encounter, no talking and no mercy (except to decline the inevitable surrender offers). Primitives I leave for later. For some reason alien empires leave me alone if I don't do the 'contact an alien empire' tutorial, so it's easy to build up and then initiate first contact on my own terms, like a planetbuster on the enemy homeworld.

[J. M. Pescado]

That's both true to a degree and not true. Like most things, the game will only let you procrastinate for so long, but you CAN delay their expansion into your sphere by delibeately avoiding contact. However, contacting them can ALSO jumpstart your expansion, as their more developed economies seem to pay higher prices for spice (underdeveloped planets seem to have a lower probability of good prices), AND you can buy colonial supplies as low as half-off. Some of them are worth keeping around for that reason...others, well, others are destined for an ass-kicking.

[Zazazu]

My meanest race (which looks a bit like a t-rex) has let two empires live. One is getting uncomfortably huge and rings my central empire. But I let them and another small one live so that I have a cheaper place to buy uber turrets and colonies. Though I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be bombing things...I already have Empire 5 and Warmonger 4.

My strategy has been to do a quick survey of the empire first. Take out the T0, T1, and T2s, then get the T3. By the time I get to the T3, the enemy ships are sufficiently weakened that I can take two cities in a swipe, maybe three if my aim is good with the mega bomb. Getting a lot of initial travel space helps. I can have one or maybe two taken by the time the enemy ships catch up.

This race and another I have waiting in the wings are going to be taking on the Grox in concert.

[Dopp]

I played a T-Rex race too and hated the way the game forces you to play nice: tutorials getting you to make unwanted contact ('Oh Captain, we should find other intelligent life and make friends with them!'), only real way to make money is through trading, best discounts only found in foreign markets, extremely unprofitable to wage war, only way to get more ships is to ally, and they start you off right next to aggressive Spodists so you need to kiss their boots to avoid war. It's very different (and not in a good way, although perhaps more challenging) from earlier stages where you could slaughter your way to the top. Back when I first played the space stage, the Spodist empire I came across demanded 1 million sporebucks for peace, while the friendly merchant empire next door happily gobbled up every single profitable system in sight, leaving me with red and yellow spice worlds, and two other empires much further away immediately declared war on me. So now I never bother to talk at all, just exterminate. Everything is either food or target practice.