So in mission 9 I built an outpost on the copper deposit east and an hour or so later the pirate artillery suddenly starts shooting the outpost and completely destroys it within seconds. I tried loading an autosave to try to get there beforehand and destroy the artillery but given that any destroyed building is replaced by bots within seconds thats impossible. It's like playing against the cheating AI of Empire Earth back in the day, just stupid and annoying. What's the point of all this?

(ignore)

Hi. Believe me. The AI in the mod is even stupidiest then you think. You just need to understand, how to prevent to rebuilding enemy base.

These are the keys to beat them:
- scout the map
- the enemy will start building when you complete a certain task (which you are warned in optional objective) so you have a chance to disrupt them before they even build a defences.
- if you dont make it, you must do it in the hard way... destruction. To prevent to the enemy rebuilding is simple. Just block their path some other non-military structure. Enemy building ALWAYS in the same places
- also you have altilery from the start. It can help you.
- enemy do not follow you (except biters), the enemy building scheme is scripted. You just need to understand the scheme.
- if everything fails, considure to find resources outside of the enemy altilery range. Map is not limited and you do not need to be in the one place (again, scout the map)

I recomend to mine copper on the west. There are huge resource deposits.

Sorry, I actually meant west... The copper deposit where the train track and building remnants are.
I didn't realize the pirates actually build stuff, the fact that their bases look very static makes you play like they are just predefined enemy bases.
But what you're suggesting sounds like the best strategy is to NOT progress the story at all until you have an end game base and wiped all the pirates, which kind of defeates the purpose of having a story mission. I just don't think it's a good mission design to have enemy bases out of nowhere start shooting your bases with artillery, without any warning, or visible progress of the enemy, or train tracks to bases which would bring the artillery shells etc.

Like the north west base started shooting artillery shells as soon as I build the first thing in its radius, at least then you know and can play around that. If they just suddenly start shooting hours later and wiping your base that kinda just makes you want to stop playing.

Kind of, when you playing too fast, like completing the objectives without good preparation and you do not securing your suroundings, you are taking a risk of that enemy will suprice you eventually. Same as in the Witcher game. Without potions, you can fail pretty fast.

You are right, that it is good to build and research as much as possible from the start, but then you can also realize, you do not have access to everywhere, because mission will not allow you to take the certain resources if you do not complete any objective.

The maps are mostly designed like, you should not proceed too fast (like complete as much objectives as possible in 1 hour) but also, not to proceed too slow (more then 4 hours you are not doing objectives). Both ways cannot be good for you and you can end up with frustration, because you are constantly attcked by the enemy pirates or biters. This is why I created the difficulty levels.

Also, mission 9 should be one of the toughest. My mod is done with style of classic old strategic games like first StarCrafts or C&C games. Sometimes my mod will not taking you for your hand and you must find out for yourself, how to solve the problem correctly. Even if that mean, you will completely fail, because you focused on mass production and did not controlled your pollution, so biters evolved so much, that it is impossible to kill them with your current technology and it is even harder, when pirates comes to play with you. :D

I agree that the maps still need to be polished. I am doing that every month because of the feedback from people like you and I am glad for that. :-)
Even now I just thinking, how I setup the enemy research. Maybe I set it too fast, maybe is too low. Don't know. It is up to you to tell me what is happening and when is happening :D. I am mostly having feedback from people like: "We completed the missions and we want more missions" :D. So I expect, there are no problems and people beat the story missions without issue. :D

Like the north west base started shooting artillery shells as soon as I build the first thing in its radius, at least then you know and can play around that. If they just suddenly start shooting hours later and wiping your base that kinda just makes you want to stop playing.

If you can, send me some fotos, videos of your gameplay or your save.zip for analising ;-)

Well here is the save file about 4 minutes before the artillery starts shooting: https://we.tl/t-wwQ5lkRJth

I like the Witcher reference but I would argue that the difference is that in the Witcher you hopefully would have some knowledge of what to anticipate, whereas here you have absolutely no information about what's gonna happen and that the pirates will suddenly start shooting your base with artillery. And I don't like game levels designed such that you can only beat them after having failed them a few times because you are lacking critical information on the first run. I'd rather fail because I misjudged something known than through something unknowable.

So this is less about the speed of enemy research and more about the knowledge of what to anticipate. I think there should just be a better hint that the enemy bases progress and can eventually destroy your stuff. Trial and error is fine, but only to some degree.

Regarding the pace though, it's kinda hard to know how fast you should be progressing, because the objectives are largely independent of your base progress.

My mode of playing is kinda to use the existing base as much as possible and just upgrade as necessary, even though just flattening/abandoning most of it and building a huge new base would probably be more effective (but then why bother playing the mission instead of freeplay). And even more so because it's the base from the trailer :D

Hi,

I will check, what I can do to make things more clear. I agree that if you die because you didnt know is not what I actually want. I will add some more notes and hints to warn you that enemies are expanding and using artilleries.