Hello. I'm having a lot of trouble trying to win Battle for the Core as the Empire on the hardest difficulty. Any generic tips for the Empire or specific tips to this GC for those who have completed it would be appreciated.

I wrote a bit of a novel, but as a TLDR, the core question is more or less how does an Empire player fight off huge Rebellion capital ship stacks without taking severe losses?

For context, I've only played this GC so far and with each faction. Winning as the Rebellion was pretty easy once I learned the mod mechanics as they have only three border planets. Winning as the Black Sun was trickier as they have 5 border planets after abandoning several starting planets and holding Ord Mantell. Still, I was able to win largely because the Black Sun level 3 space stations and level 3 SkyDagger defense platforms seem ridiculously strong. I was regularly able to repel doom stacks from both the Empire and Rebellion with little or no losses.

The Empire has 5 border planets as well assuming you give up Byss and take Carida. So we have to defend Carida, Fresia, Bilbringi, Corulag, and Cato Nemoidia. However, unlike with the Sun I've not found success in trying to turtle up on these planets. The Rebellion will eventually show up with a doomsday stack of capitals that I cannot successfully defend against in the same way I did with the Sun. The level 3 Empire shipyard only seems to give about 3-4 units in defense while the Black Sun station was giving a lot more free units. The Golans also feel a lot weaker than the SkyHooks/SkyDaggers, deploy less squadrons, and are even more expensive to build.

I've given a few tries at the GC and have gotten a decent cadence to things, I think.

Day 1 I sell everything that isn't an economic structure, a level 1 Outpost, Barracks, or Factory on Rendili. I downgrade the Outpost on Coruscant and Kuat to level 1. I take Jedah, Intersection, Corellia and Carida. Of these Carida is the only one I care about holding. The rest I give to the Sun without a fight.

Day1-10 I build nothing but economic structures and a level 1 space station at Carida. It takes up to week 10 to purchase all the economic structures that aren't on a border planet. Sometimes the Rebellion will attack Carida on day 1 or 2. If this happens I reset and try again. With all economy in place and before Golans/Ground-To-Space Turbolaser we make about 10k per day.

Day 10-12 I build a level 1 Outpost everywhere that doesn't already have one. I also start At-Pt production at Rendili. I want one At-St or At-Pt squad at each planet as a raid deterrent. I've found that a level 1 Outpost, and one of these squads is enough to repel raids. I've found that if I don't do anything the Rebellion will begin raids around day 14 and they will succeed against planets that have no Outpost and just the day 1 starting forces.

Next I start on Space Tech 1 and build two Advanced Medium Shipyards and one Advanced Light Shipyard at Kuat. As that is building I will build one Golan of highest level at each of the 5 border planets. As I am doing this the Rebellion is usually kicking the Sun's teeth in. As the Sun loses most of the south eventually the Rebellion will take Byss (which I am not trying to hold or investing defense into). Sometimes they will attack Cato Nemoidia and force me to fall back to Rendili.

Once Space Tech 1 is finished I build the now available Carrier/Frigate heroes at Corulag. At Kuat I build the newly unlocked Fleet Tenders (I forget the name), Gladiator Star Destroyers, and Escort Carriers. If I have spare credits, I'll build Arquitens somewhere or Drednoughts at Rendili.

I have Vader and Ozzel with the other starting units split between Cato Nemoidia and Carida because these are (hopefully) the only two worlds the Rebellion can attack. If the Rebellion takes and holds Ithor then surviving is a lot harder as they gain access to Corulag and Bilbringi as well and will usually attack me before I can build enough units for everywhere. I've found that the Sun will not attack me ever except to take the undefended neutral worlds I take on day one, so I don't bother bulking the defenses to worlds on Sun border, only Rebel border. Every campaign 've tried the Sun gets their butt kicked by the Rebellion (and so do I).

Eventually the Rebellion will take Ithor from the Sun, and Byss in the South, this opens up all 5 borders to Rebel attack. If I survive long enough to max my pop cap then I will build the rest of Golans I can on each border and a ground-to-space Turbolaser (with priority to planets on border with Rebellion and ignoring the other border planets until they become a border with the Rebellion). I will also build Space Tech 2 at some point and the Space Tech 2 heroes once available. After Space Tech 2 I try to get a Broadside and a Lancer at each border. Once all defenses are in place we are down to about 6k per day economy.

Furthest I've gotten is around day 80 where I had maximum defenses and 50+ galactic pop on each border planet, and it's still not enough to hold off the Rebellion. They show up with 200+ galactic pop fleets and even if I can kill more than half of it, it's not enough. Then if I try to stack up my other border fleets for a counterattack I can win, but at great cost and I end up in too deep a hole to come back while the Rebellion can replace their lost fleet very quickly and attack me again before I can recover.

One issue I've found with the Empire is a lack of fleet boosting Admirals. You only get Vader and Palps, except that I've been leaving Palps on Coruscant for his 200 credits per day and as a raid deterrent. So that leaves just Vader and 5 borders. You can build enough Fighter Tacticians for each border, and a couple of Frigate Tacticians, and a too expensive capital ship tactician, but you don't get any more global admirals. The Sun can get 5 admirals in this campaign and the Rebels get a bunch too. The Empire just has Vader, Palps, and the detrimental Ozzel. Furthermore, the Black Sun is constantly disabling the heroes which can leave you exposed.

I've found that the Sun always gets their butt kicked which is a blessing and a curse. It's good because I'm not worried about them attacking me. It's bad because it leaves the Rebellion completely uncontested as they take over most of the map and then eventually come to destroy me. I've noticed that the Black Sun operate on a similar economy to me whereas the Rebellion gets hundreds of thousands of credits, so it doesn't seem like the Sun are getting their free economy cheats to compete with the Rebellion.

When I played as the Black Sun the Rebellion also kicked the Empire's butt, so maybe the Rebellion AI is just really good on this map. When I played as the Rebellion the Empire also kicked the Sun's butt so maybe the Sun AI is just really bad on this map.

So that's sort of what I'm experiencing. If you notice any glaring flaws in what I'm doing or have any other general tips I would appreciate it. Sorry for writing a novel, and thank you for reading if you've come this far.