Requesting Advice for Expionage, specifically in Ancient Galaxy

[Guardian54]

I know how to defeat the Shakturi PKs one by one with fleets of resupply ships.

I know I probably should have refitted my older ships in my first attempt.

I know that I am under no conditions going to use the Xaraktor virus regardless of losing a planet or no, since I know my dreadnoughts (Resupply ships) can take on the Shakturi fleets just fine.

I have also come up with, for this second run, a dreadnought (resupply ship) fuelling (gas gathering) time gimmick in the form of building "dreadnought husks" with no weapons, shields or armor (in case of advances) but everything else, and sending them to stock up on gas while I go and rush up the techs for everything else (methinks crash researching to 1950 size and Meridian Shields should be perfectly doable with how much money I can scam off the AI). These are then refitted with latest techs and such once they finish gorging on nearby hydrogen gas clouds.

I however don't really understand the espionage system of the game. That is where I believe the big advantage for the human player in Ancient Galaxy lies.

Should I spam my spies on three-month tech stealing high-risk missions starting with Ikkuro for repair bots (do they even have repair bots to start? Not sure but I think they do given the tech level their repair bots are supposedly listed at) and then Sluken/Hakkonish after my scouts finally find them for Starburners/Compressed Fuel Cells (maybe even rob Novacore reactors from Quameno)? Or are year-long attempts more cost-effective? This depends upon how the Spy Academy actually works.

How good are those installations for making spies? Because I'm sure I can swindle a few million creds off everyone for galaxy maps and later a few mil more for techs. Should I crash research Stealth to get the spy school tech? I am reasonably sure I can levy enough taxes to crash research every tech I'll need and steal others if spy schools actually generate enough additional spies if you spam them on every planet.

On more general and non-spy-related questions:

Should I rush Assault Missile or crash research Velocity Shard Mk 2 and then Plasma Thunderbolts?

Does making the Dhayut go to war with me after they join the Shaktur Axis send me to war with the Shaktur Axis as a whole?

How many Shakturi ships do you need to kill/hijack to piss them off enough to declare war on you before their PKs are ready? I'm planning on hijacking at least one PK out from under their noses, completing it myself, and siccing 10+ dreadnoughts on each of the others, either to kill them or hijack similarly, I don't care. While completing the PK in question will be guarded by masses of normal ships (resupply ships are offense-only, they don't do squat in defence and will stand idly by and let a PK kill the planet they are orbiting without micromanagement). After that it will be a matter of sending in fleets of dreadnoughts to clear a planet's defences, then jumping the PK in and smashing it, to be repeated for every insectoid world in the galaxy.

Does defeating JUST the Shakturi in straight-up battle win you the scenario, or do you have to exterminate the entire Shaktur Axis? Because I will be all too happy to exterminate the bugs world by world...

...Though I'm also wondering if getting too bad a reputation will dismantle the Freedom Alliance.

[Guardian54]

...And I JUST realized that I can build my own planet-killers in Ancient Galaxy.

Le facepalm.

Still going to steal the Shakturi ones though, just because it should be much faster.

[Aeson]

Should I rush Assault Missile or crash research Velocity Shard Mk 2 and then Plasma Thunderbolts?

I would prefer torpedoes to missiles; torpedoes are good all-around weapons whereas missiles are only good for standoff engagements.

Does making the Dhayut go to war with me after they join the Shaktur Axis send me to war with the Shaktur Axis as a whole?

Depends on who declared. The game's alliance networks are built upon Mutual Defense Pacts; if you declared on the Dhayut, the whole Shaktur Axis should declare on you, but if the Dhayut declared on you then their allies will only follow suit if they happen to hate you enough that they'd have declared even if the Dhayut hadn't.

Also, as a warning, if you wage an undeclared war against the Dhayut to get them to declare against you, then it may damage your reputation to the point that you might lose Free Trade Agreements or Mutual Defense Pacts with non-Freedom Alliance factions, which can be damaging to your economy. Furthermore, damage to your reputation can make the diplomatic situation with neutral parties somewhat dicey.

Should I spam my spies on three-month tech stealing high-risk missions starting with Ikkuro for repair bots (do they even have repair bots to start? Not sure but I think they do given the tech level their repair bots are supposedly listed at) and then Sluken/Hakkonish after my scouts finally find them for Starburners/Compressed Fuel Cells (maybe even rob Novacore reactors from Quameno)? Or are year-long attempts more cost-effective?

It is my opinion that it is more effective to take the missions that have higher success chances than shorter durations, unless the agent is sufficiently skilled that the agent is likely to at least survive and preferably accomplish the lower-duration missions. If the chance of success is less than perhaps 70%, I wouldn't attempt it, and if the short mission's chance of success is at ~70% when the long mission's chance of success is at ~90% or better I still wouldn't take the short mission.

I would also advise against taking the risk of ticking off potential allies or trading partners by sending espionage missions against them. Ikkuro repair bots, Haakonish fuel cells and Quameno reactors are not such incredible components that I'd be willing to tick off the neighbors to get them when I'm already looking at a war against a powerful 5-member alliance that more or less rings my empire. NovaCore Reactors in particular are not a straight upgrade to standard components; they're largely comparable in output per size invested and storage per size invested to similarly-upgraded Fusion or Quantum Reactors (and badly outclassed in those categories by HyperFusion Reactors of any description), with their only major advantage being in the useful but not really essential category of fuel efficiency. Worse, if you can only acquire the unupgraded version in a timely manner, NovaCore Reactors may end up costing you as much or more in additional size invested into reactors as you save by reducing the number of fuel cells relative to what you'd have had if you'd built the ship with Fusion, Quantum, or especially HyperFusion Reactors. Likewise, unupgraded Ikkuro repair bots aren't actually that much better than upgraded standard repair bots (the unupgraded Ikkuro version has better damage reduction and lower size requirements but also takes more time to repair a component than the fully-upgraded standard version), and you cannot count on upgrading the Ikkuro repair bots whereas you can plan to have the upgraded standard repair bots. Haakonish fuel cells have the drawback that trimming back the number of fuel cells used on the ship is often not that useful; you need to have space in the power budget (and a lot of it in the case many mid-game or later weapons; Titan Beams each require 20 energy per second and upgraded Plasma Thunderbolts require 32) for the space you freed up by cutting a fuel cell to be useful, or you need to want to add passive components that don't draw power (e.g. armor plates, ion defense, or a spare hyperdrive; a few low-power components like shield generators or things that have a static requirement of 1 or 2 can also fit the bill, depending on just how tight the power budget is).

...Though I'm also wondering if getting too bad a reputation will dismantle the Freedom Alliance.

I bombed the Dhayut homeworld into submission and then spent an hour or two fighting a major but undeclared war against the Shakturi without the Freedom Alliance breaking up, and I'd bet that I could have gone longer if the Shakturi hadn't become fed up enough to declare war, though it did cost me several Free Trade Agreements (and I think a Mutual Defense Pact or two) with neutral parties and soured relations with the Mortalens enough that I started to worry that they'd declare war while I was busy fighting the Shakturi (for that matter, I was getting a bit concerned about relations with all of the neutrals; I don't think that I had relations better than about -10 with any faction not in the Freedom Alliance by that point). The scripted relations bonuses you get with your Freedom Alliance partners are quite large; while it's possible that becoming too 'evil' will break the alliance up, if your 'evil' is largely restricted to the Shakturi in particular and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the other bugs, I wouldn't be too concerned about it, particularly if the Shakturi get around to blowing up a planet. I'd be more concerned with the impact on relations with neutral parties; you're already looking at fighting a 5-empire alliance with only 2 allies of your own (plus potentially at least two enemies of your enemies, though if you let events play out rather than being proactive those enemies of your enemies may well be nonfactors by the time war comes to you).

[Guardian54]

Thanks Aeson

Turned out only 1 year missions were remotely viable (still risky though, and lost one of my two spies on the second run for Ikkuro repair bots). I wasn't counting on having enough time/money to crash research repair bots on top of everything else quickly enough, hence my annoying my free trade partner. It turns out I probably should have stuck to crash researching and focused on stealing Starburners instead since the stealing process is TOO DAMNED SLOW FOR SOME STUPID REASON (7.5% per success on a tech of that level is obscenely bad)

NovaCore was a total bust since it turned out I could rush to Hyperfusion with more than enough time to spare.

And I did end up picking torpedoes.

[Aeson]

the stealing process is TOO DAMNED SLOW FOR SOME STUPID REASON (7.5% per success on a tech of that level is obscenely bad)

The fraction of the tech cost that you get per successful mission is dependent upon the Espionage skill of the agent and the research cost of the tech (though how exactly I couldn't say; it could be as simple as that an agent with an espionage skill of x gets f(x) research points towards a given tech per successful mission, translating to f(x)/cost*100% of the tech per successful mission); I think species-restricted techs are also more difficult to acquire than similarly-expensive techs that anyone can research. If you have an exceptional agent (e.g. the Ketarov starting agent with the high initial espionage skill, especially if that agent successfully completes many missions), tech theft can go reasonably quickly even in the later stages of the game; if you don't, then it'll go slowly, to the point that it might be faster to just improve relations to the point required to allow you to purchase the techs you want (+30 relations modifier for standard techs and +50 for restricted techs, if I recall correctly). It might be useful to send the agents on easier missions for standard techs, galaxy maps, territory maps, or operations maps or leave them in the same location as an Inspiring Presence character for a while to train them up before you attempt to acquire the species-restricted techs.

[Guardian54]

Wow, that's valuable info.

Oddly this time the Shakturi only built 3 PKs the first time round, and since I made the grave error of forgetting to unfleet my resupply ships in time they wouldn't stay deployed, the two PKs I hijacked just before they were quite done (they still managed to fly around quite a bit before my 7000 boarders overcame the 1800 defenders though) ended up both having to fly all the way back to my turf at 8333 speed to refuel. Then I made the mistake of telling one to repair i.e. finish building at a starport.

Sad thing is since they managed to finish a PK and fuel it, the Shakturi did go ahead and declare on me complete with that funny screen they show you, along with all their bug allies, right after Boskarans called for peace and I accepted just becuase I didn't feel like fighting the Kiadians' war for them anymore. If I hadn't somehow missed that last PK I would have had peace until I finished refitting all seven dreadnought squadrons (even at size 1950 a dozen resupply ships still pack more than 15000 firepower rating now...) and started blowing up excessively fortfied planets (and invading non-fortified ones). Oh well, new objective for 3rd run later, when loading up this second run's start situation: Get Shakturi to not finish any PK before you blow them all to shit. Oh, and get my hands on them STARBURNERS (e.g. send a scout refitted with an Equinox drive to Sluken turf right away)!!!!

Holy fuck a PK is slow as shit to repair (somehow my empire is constantly short on HYDROGEN of all things... maybe I should have built constructors first thing instead of cranking out more dreadnought hulks than I kept count of--turned out to be 85, as I ended up with 6 fleets of 12 and one of 13--and then refitting them later once they're gassed up.). I'm leaving the other one on half shields and standard weapons and fuelling it before going back north to kill all the Shakturi worlds I guess.

Since I glassed the Boskara homeworld and a colony to 0% and near 0% quality (spotted a Kiadian invasion fleet that took care of the second case) I already have a reputation of Diabolical and literally everyone is furious at me (no one cancelled free trade agreements though) except the two Freedom Alliance members who are only around +10 each. I can't wait to see what will happen once I finish blowing up every single Shakturi world that wasn't former Atuuk (those I will conquer to liberate the Atuuks... who in this game have somehow not been eliminated yet).

Man these Shakturi PKs suck ballz in their design, SO DAMNED SLOW... Guess not everyone follows my design philosophy of "25+ cruise speed or GTFO, preferably 40+ for warships, so that sprint is mroe than enough to kite the shit out of enemies"...

[Guardian54]

So, I managed to eliminate the Shakturi... and the +80% victory condition bonus promptly crashed the game because it put me at 159% victory condition. I didn't even have to finish off the war against the Sluken and another war against the Haakonish to finish that...

Oddly, my reputation went back to positive for no apparent reason just due to continually beating down the Shakturi and their allies (elminated Dhayut and Boskara before sweeping through Shakturi space.

Next time I do this I will do it without using more than 10 of the super-micro-intensive dreadnoughts (i.e. basically to go around periodically blowing up Shakturi PKs to reset the progress toward declaration long enough to get size-1100 standard ships... though I strongly suspect I will just cheese again by spamming carriers instead, unlike resupply ships carriers actually behave normally... I think I will spam carriers with massive plasma thunderbolt banks and as few fighter bays as allowed to cheese the hull size advantage...) and actually use what I learnt this time about how to manage fleet postures to still trounce them.

It's amusing how the victory scene shows a Shakturi dying of, presumably, the Xaraktor virus, due to the lesions around the eyes and the popped eyeball, even if you beat them the old fashioned way using brute force.

The bug from going over 100% victory condition is also painfully hilarious.

This Ancient Galaxy game taught me a lot. For example, it made me decide I will play Ackdarian from now on instead of Quameno, since the added construction speed and increased hull size go perfectly with my design styles, and their engine is superior to everything before Vortex in my opinion due to high cruise thrust per unit space, since most of what makes or breaks a fleet is resupply and re-sortie time. I will miss the scientists bonus, but the ability to spam ships just couples so perfectly with my usual Bukkake Shipyards... er, Bakkuras, that I think a shift will be in order, even though I like the Quameno aesthetics.

[Aeson]

Oddly, my reputation went back to positive for no apparent reason

Reputation recovers over time if you don't keep doing things that damage it, and I have a suspicion that there's a trigger in the Ancient Galaxy scenario that disables reputation damage for bombarding Shaktur Axis (or perhaps just Shakturi) worlds after a certain event, or possibly treating the Shakturi as a pirate empire for the purposes of reputation changes.

their engine is superior to everything before Vortex in my opinion due to high cruise thrust per unit space

Actually, unupgraded StarBurners are superior to everything short of fully-upgraded Turbo Thrusters or fully-upgraded Vortex Engines in terms of both max and cruise thrust per unit size, and the first upgrade of the StarBurner makes it superior in cruise and max thrust per unit size than any drive component other than the fully-upgraded StarBurner.

[Guardian54]

ORIGINAL: Aeson
Actually, unupgraded StarBurners are superior to everything short of fully-upgraded Turbo Thrusters or fully-upgraded Vortex Engines in terms of both max and cruise thrust per unit size, and the first upgrade of the StarBurner makes it superior in cruise and max thrust per unit size than any drive component other than the fully-upgraded StarBurner.

I am aware of this.

However, since I will NEVER play Insectoid on principle, Ackdarian and Quameno seem best for me.

As a result, before I can steal StarBurners off the Sluken (hence why I make sure there's always a Sluken empire in my games), researching Ackdarian thrusters level 1 is head, shoulder and tits better than the conventional thruster tech tree.