It is December 2029, and the accumulation of resources continues. But, when to start fighting the aliens ? I did recently kill an alien counselor and autopsied it, which is opening up more research I have not completed. I know I’m waiting for a couple of events.

  • Scripted Invasion. Around 2032 the aliens will take over a country somewhere on Earth. The straightforward way to deal with it is to nuke them.
  • Megafauna. If you let the xenoforming keep growing eventually it becomes huge creatures that require armies (or nukes) to deal with. You want to kill one, that lets you study it and progress something.
  • Ship destruction. At some point, if you kill an alien ship, you will get some alien technology – and it’s around this time.
Doing OK with income. I have a lot of fissiles, I think, and many more mines coming online next year.

I really dislike watching videos but Youtuber Perun is doing a good set and explaining how the game works. This video taught me a lot about designing a ship(s) that I have not been able to find documented on the internet. I also learned a few simple and interesting things.

  • Suggestion : Build a ship, because you need to solve a problem. Maybe it’s because a problematic faction has one. Or the above mentioned kill a destroyer.
  • Trying to figure out how to successfully kill one alien, floating around Earth, has a strategy of a Copperhead armed missile frigate along with a monitor class “survivor” ship. That one is interesting. You build a ship with the specific objective of making sure it survives the battle.

I move forward, doing research and trying to get EU + Russia merged. At some mysterious point, I can absorb “The Stans” and so I do (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan). I’ve also moved up to three pips on the “Alien Danger” chart.

How dangerous the aliens think you are.

I am hoping level 3 is there because I killed the alien counselor, not because of too much mission control. So far, there is no hint on the interwebs that Cinematic difficulty has an MC “hate cap”. At various difficulties, there are caps – and when you go over them you get more pips on this marker. I suppose I might at least confirm if these exist on this playthrough. Typically the lowest is level 2.

In case anyone is as dense as I am – you can directly control the allocation of points. You don’t HAVE to use the priority planners.

Click on any dot to increase it. Click on 3 dots to set it to zero. I can’t believe I missed this for two months.

But I let years go by, and we reach Jan 2032. A couple of important things happen.

  • I check my “List of goals” which includes destroying a single alien ship. I don’t remember any pop up about this one.
  • I succeed in the “Steal Project” mission for the first time – and it appears what I stole, did not get given to me. How sad, it’s a bug.
  • I successfully detain an Alien Councilor. This opens up many story points and seems to be significant.
  • I build ships according to the Perun video and move them towards each other.

Next game, my task is to blow up the Alien. Will I succeed ?

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