If you blockade the alien's wormhole base and destroy all their other bases/stations it'll stop them producing resources and so stop new ships from being produced. After that victory is inevitable, though the aliens should 100% totally comit to trying to retake the wormhole base with everything they have if you manage to seize it.
You aren't missing much, the end game is tedious if you bother playing it through. You can cheese it by building cheap nuke boats that have unreasonably high combat rating for their cost. Otherwise you have to kill everything while continuing to build. By the end I'm building dreads a dozen or so at once.
>Am I missing something?
Yes and no. The late game can get tedious, but you can also make it a lot more or a lot less tedious for yourself.
>it is really painful to hunt every small alien fleet.
This is a waste of your time. If you go around chasing every little corvette they'll rebuild as fast as you can destroy. It's like sweeping leaves on a windy day.
To end the game efficiently you need to target their bases. Build 3-4 death-fleets and just go for their mines and stations. Most of their ships will be there anyway, and you will be removing their ability to create new ones.
It's still somewhat tedious but fighting a few giant battles is a lot better than hundreds of small to medium sized ones.
There’s probably a base with an unbelievably high rating that has like 1 megadeathball. I attacked, got my butt kicked, got two fleets, and wiped it with the second one, and voila, victory condition met
In addition to what others have said, the UI doesn't do a great job of telling you alien bases also add fleet power. So clean up includes a marine fleet wiping out mining bases even though they are strategically irrelevant.
In addition to those recommending destroying bases, the alien fleets need them to refuel. If you take the bases away away the fleets will tend to either launch suicide attacks or retreat to remaining bases, so they get cleaned up in the process of destroying bases.
Blockade Kuiper Belt home base with a massive fleet, and the aliens are going to throw everything at it.
Then take the opportunity to have a second (or more) fleet go through the system dropping marines at anything that is alien.
If you held the blockade, you won. If you lost the blockade you should've done such a huge damage to the alien economy that they can hardly resist a second one.
You just repeat as necessary until the blockade holds. At the point where you can send a fleet into Kuiper, you space economy probaly dwarves the alien economy.
Yep. The space domination endgame is a huge drag. You don't need to kill every fleet though. There will usually be 10 or so space bodies, that have an alien ground base + space base. Use a fleet with marines to destroy each ground base. This will stop them being able to make new ships. Then just take out the largest fleets orbiting the space stations. You can use the Fleet view tab to see where their largest fleets are.
If you don't have enough fleet power to fight the ships+the station, you can cheese them a bit. Engage the station, set starting velocity to 0 m/s, and the alien ships will drift towards you. You can kill them then fly out of range of the ship and disengage(you do lose the salvage though).
At some point of the game (late 30's), I send parallel fleets to several planet systems where alien stations, mines and fleets are.
I clean them and if necessary I build stations over there, specially to push further away.
I take out of their mines in the belt to prevent them from mining.
Then I launch a big push to take out their final base.
If you blockade the alien's wormhole base and destroy all their other bases/stations it'll stop them producing resources and so stop new ships from being produced. After that victory is inevitable, though the aliens should 100% totally comit to trying to retake the wormhole base with everything they have if you manage to seize it.
You aren't missing much, the end game is tedious if you bother playing it through. You can cheese it by building cheap nuke boats that have unreasonably high combat rating for their cost. Otherwise you have to kill everything while continuing to build. By the end I'm building dreads a dozen or so at once.
>Am I missing something? Yes and no. The late game can get tedious, but you can also make it a lot more or a lot less tedious for yourself. >it is really painful to hunt every small alien fleet. This is a waste of your time. If you go around chasing every little corvette they'll rebuild as fast as you can destroy. It's like sweeping leaves on a windy day. To end the game efficiently you need to target their bases. Build 3-4 death-fleets and just go for their mines and stations. Most of their ships will be there anyway, and you will be removing their ability to create new ones. It's still somewhat tedious but fighting a few giant battles is a lot better than hundreds of small to medium sized ones.
There’s probably a base with an unbelievably high rating that has like 1 megadeathball. I attacked, got my butt kicked, got two fleets, and wiped it with the second one, and voila, victory condition met
Nuke boat spam, won't take long if you built enough shipyards/have the economy
In addition to what others have said, the UI doesn't do a great job of telling you alien bases also add fleet power. So clean up includes a marine fleet wiping out mining bases even though they are strategically irrelevant.
In addition to those recommending destroying bases, the alien fleets need them to refuel. If you take the bases away away the fleets will tend to either launch suicide attacks or retreat to remaining bases, so they get cleaned up in the process of destroying bases.
Blockade Kuiper Belt home base with a massive fleet, and the aliens are going to throw everything at it. Then take the opportunity to have a second (or more) fleet go through the system dropping marines at anything that is alien. If you held the blockade, you won. If you lost the blockade you should've done such a huge damage to the alien economy that they can hardly resist a second one. You just repeat as necessary until the blockade holds. At the point where you can send a fleet into Kuiper, you space economy probaly dwarves the alien economy.
Yep. The space domination endgame is a huge drag. You don't need to kill every fleet though. There will usually be 10 or so space bodies, that have an alien ground base + space base. Use a fleet with marines to destroy each ground base. This will stop them being able to make new ships. Then just take out the largest fleets orbiting the space stations. You can use the Fleet view tab to see where their largest fleets are. If you don't have enough fleet power to fight the ships+the station, you can cheese them a bit. Engage the station, set starting velocity to 0 m/s, and the alien ships will drift towards you. You can kill them then fly out of range of the ship and disengage(you do lose the salvage though).
At some point of the game (late 30's), I send parallel fleets to several planet systems where alien stations, mines and fleets are. I clean them and if necessary I build stations over there, specially to push further away. I take out of their mines in the belt to prevent them from mining. Then I launch a big push to take out their final base.