Wow! I 100% agree with this. These new unprecedented changes are in gross violation of how I want to play the game.

The increased amount of starting defenses was in part to help deal with the initial blitz phase in the early game as well as give less experienced players room to build up their forces. The slow down in the early stages of the game are indeed intentional. You may not like it but that was in fact the point of it all.

With that said, if you're having problems affording things I would highly suggest investing in your economy, if you're not doing that you're gimping yourself in the long term. A more robust economy can afford to reinvest back into itself to make more credits and thus allowing you to afford even more ships.

You're free to ignore the economy but you won't be able to avoid the consequences of doing so.

Personally I'm really enjoying the changes, and I agree with what the Lord Admiral there recommended (Early game economy investment is the way - it's a slower, more methodical start than previous versions), but if it's just really not jiving with you, or if you're struggling that much with ship losses, you could always tweak the mod to give you a little bit of a credit boost. I'm going to put the following in spoilers so folk can choose to look at it or not.

Find the mod's workshop folder (steamapps - workshop - content - 32470 - 1125571106 - data - XML), find the Planets xml, make sure to make a backup of it somewhere safe (Seriously), open it with notepad, CTRL+F find the capital of whatever faction you're playing as and change the planet's credit value to like double what it was or something.

I'd recommend that you give the mod as it is another try coming at it from a different angle than we've done in previous versions due to the intentional pacing changes the team have made with this version (And it's quite well done), but I certainly wouldn't judge you if you decide to tweak it. I REALLY wouldn't go too overboard with it though or you'll very quickly trivialise the game (Capital buildings and tax offices double or more the BASE income of that planet, which is what you'd be changing) which will kill your interest just as surely but in a different way, but at the end of the day it's your singleplayer experience, so tweak it how you like it.

Yeah "the games is broken and slow, but you can just cheat." No thanks buddy

In no way is the game broken, but it is slower than it was. I didn't present it as a 'fix' (Because you can only fix something that's broken, and this isn't - this is a matter of personal preference, one person's preference being no more or less valid than another's), nor did I recommend just rampantly cheating, all I did was provide an option to tweak the game more how you want it that anyone is free to use or entirely ignore in the interim at your own discretion.

I was only trying to be helpful and give people options because the changes that have come with this patch in terms of pacing were intentional, not bugs, and as such they're not going to change overnight with a hotfix.

If you can play the game at a half-decent level the changes literally don't matter. You still start with enough forces to roll over any starting defenses once concentrated into a single fleet. And while your initial forces are doing that, you can use your starting cash to start getting your economy up.

I think the game is still fine and enjoyable in later game, I just feel like you spend most of the game in the early game setting up your faction and your fleets and by the time you are ready to really start expanding, it is 5 eras later and you have missed most of the story events and time based events. I still enjoy the game and find it fun, it is just the early game that is really tedious in my opinion.

Originally posted by BigBacon:

If you can play the game at a half-decent level the changes literally don't matter. You still start with enough forces to roll over any starting defenses once concentrated into a single fleet. And while your initial forces are doing that, you can use your starting cash to start getting your economy up.

Bro has not played the game in a WHILE. Maybe true for Empire, but as any other faction the early game SUCKS. You also admit to beat the initial defenses you must combine all of your starting fleets to one. I did that as Eradu and I was forced to go back and forth between planets never having enough to stop all the attacks. This was not fun. It was tedious. The new economy system makes it so you dont have enough money to build a big fleet and you cant fix this problem by invading other planets because you dont have a big fleet. Instead you must wait AND WAITING ISNT FUN.

Originally posted by Googs:

Originally posted by BigBacon:

If you can play the game at a half-decent level the changes literally don't matter. You still start with enough forces to roll over any starting defenses once concentrated into a single fleet. And while your initial forces are doing that, you can use your starting cash to start getting your economy up.

Bro has not played the game in a WHILE. Maybe true for Empire, but as any other faction the early game SUCKS. You also admit to beat the initial defenses you must combine all of your starting fleets to one. I did that as Eradu and I was forced to go back and forth between planets never having enough to stop all the attacks. This was not fun. It was tedious. The new economy system makes it so you dont have enough money to build a big fleet and you cant fix this problem by invading other planets because you dont have a big fleet. Instead you must wait AND WAITING ISNT FUN.

Sounds like a skill issue, unironically little bro.

Originally posted by BigBacon:

Originally posted by Googs:

Bro has not played the game in a WHILE. Maybe true for Empire, but as any other faction the early game SUCKS. You also admit to beat the initial defenses you must combine all of your starting fleets to one. I did that as Eradu and I was forced to go back and forth between planets never having enough to stop all the attacks. This was not fun. It was tedious. The new economy system makes it so you dont have enough money to build a big fleet and you cant fix this problem by invading other planets because you dont have a big fleet. Instead you must wait AND WAITING ISNT FUN.

Sounds like a skill issue, unironically little bro.

nice. Is this a sign your wrong? LOL. Saying im bad. I pretty sure you work on this mod and I am 100% sure this is ♥♥♥♥ customer service. PS thanks for the 200 steam points loser.

Actually dont answer that. I already know the answer: your wrong.

Just started new imp campaign in phase 3 after a year's absence and as mentioned above yes there is a slowdown but nothing bad IMHO. Cycle 15 now on Admiral and I have 20k income and have integrated PA and taken Coruscant and secured my borders and cleaned up the rebel held islands within. Sometimes stopping to build more infrastructure i.e. when the counter goes down to 10ish but not so bad.

However, i did prepare by watching Coreyloses current 3.3 playthrough on YT as mechanics is new. After securing kuat and integrating Eriadu I'll switch to Cruel. If anything I find the golans to be a bit weak, compiling a 230 pop fleet with thrawn from the starting forces has trashed any opposition this far with only a few very minor ship losses but then again I have almost 2k hours in EAW. No reloads!

So far alot of fun - yes probably some other factions are now way more challenging ...however if you struggle as imps you are probably using a not so good strategy or having an immense portion of bad luck. Are you focusing early on to build tax agencies on high base income worlds ? Are you spawning in space a bit out from the golans to avoid fighting the garrison AND the golans at the same time? Do you have point defense ships placed so they can trash missiles and fighters ?

Only major bug so far is that I did not get three of PA's heroes when integrating, they stayed blue over one of my worlds they were sieging. Too bad, could have used that Tagge BC !

Also. If you think this is slow then never ever play AOTR lol !!

Originally posted by molchåmor:

Just started new imp campaign in phase 3 after a year's absence and as mentioned above yes there is a slowdown but nothing bad IMHO. Cycle 15 now on Admiral and I have 20k income and have integrated PA and taken Coruscant and secured my borders and cleaned up the rebel held islands within. Sometimes stopping to build more infrastructure i.e. when the counter goes down to 10ish but not so bad.

However, i did prepare by watching Coreyloses current 3.3 playthrough on YT as mechanics is new. After securing kuat and integrating Eriadu I'll switch to Cruel. If anything I find the golans to be a bit weak, compiling a 230 pop fleet with thrawn from the starting forces has trashed any opposition this far with only a few very minor ship losses but then again I have almost 2k hours in EAW. No reloads!

So far alot of fun - yes probably some other factions are now way more challenging ...however if you struggle as imps you are probably using a not so good strategy or having an immense portion of bad luck. Are you focusing early on to build tax agencies on high base income worlds ? Are you spawning in space a bit out from the golans to avoid fighting the garrison AND the golans at the same time? Do you have point defense ships placed so they can trash missiles and fighters ?

Only major bug so far is that I did not get three of PA's heroes when integrating, they stayed blue over one of my worlds they were sieging. Too bad, could have used that Tagge BC !

Also. If you think this is slow then never ever play AOTR lol !!

NO i agree imperials are easy. I never said it was harder JUST MORE ANNOYING. it takes longer to do the same thing. AND BY TAKES LONGER I MEAN YOU HAVE TO WAIT AROUND FOR 12 cycles before you have a fleet. No one said hte game is harder its jsut mroe boring.

Originally posted by molchåmor:

Just started new imp campaign in phase 3 after a year's absence and as mentioned above yes there is a slowdown but nothing bad IMHO. Cycle 15 now on Admiral and I have 20k income and have integrated PA and taken Coruscant and secured my borders and cleaned up the rebel held islands within. Sometimes stopping to build more infrastructure i.e. when the counter goes down to 10ish but not so bad.

However, i did prepare by watching Coreyloses current 3.3 playthrough on YT as mechanics is new. After securing kuat and integrating Eriadu I'll switch to Cruel. If anything I find the golans to be a bit weak, compiling a 230 pop fleet with thrawn from the starting forces has trashed any opposition this far with only a few very minor ship losses but then again I have almost 2k hours in EAW. No reloads!

So far alot of fun - yes probably some other factions are now way more challenging ...however if you struggle as imps you are probably using a not so good strategy or having an immense portion of bad luck. Are you focusing early on to build tax agencies on high base income worlds ? Are you spawning in space a bit out from the golans to avoid fighting the garrison AND the golans at the same time? Do you have point defense ships placed so they can trash missiles and fighters ?

Only major bug so far is that I did not get three of PA's heroes when integrating, they stayed blue over one of my worlds they were sieging. Too bad, could have used that Tagge BC !

Also. If you think this is slow then never ever play AOTR lol !!

I agree that empire is still very easy and manageable in the new update it is just the smaller factions and other imperial remnants that are punished by the new update. Playing Hapes consortium and Empire of the Hand just feel like most of the game is waiting on money to come in from your planets before you can expand your regime at all and start making significant money and ships. However new republic and Imperial attacks prevent you from sitting in your spawn and waiting for your money to pile up so you can invade something causing you to fall on a slippery slope for the rest of the game.

At least this is my experience playing these factions maybe the AI is just mean to me and does not want me to win.

Originally posted by Cryofyte:

Playing Hapes consortium and Empire of the Hand just feel like most of the game is waiting on money to come in from your planets before you can expand your regime at all and start making significant money and ships. However new republic and Imperial attacks prevent you from sitting in your spawn and waiting for your money to pile up so you can invade something causing you to fall on a slippery slope for the rest of the game.

At least this is my experience playing these factions maybe the AI is just mean to me and does not want me to win.

Hapes are very defensive by nature so it's not exactly the greatest argument for this. Hapes build slower on average compared to other factions however they have access to their full roster at every shipyard they own as an added benefit.

This combined with some heroes having good admin traits means you can move them from planet to planet and build a fair number of ships at a pretty good discount.

I haven't had time to start more than my current PA campaign this version but even there I didn't find it difficult to start expanding right off the bat. You get a very good set of admins which you can use to cheaply build new ships and expand your infrastructure and start making gains on your enemies.