I've just researched destroyers, and might build some missile, I think monitors.
current fleet was about 4 gunboats with IR lasers I built as station defense and maybe enough to do the counter destroyer mission, who are all currently being refitted to green laser cannons. fission pulse, so all about 10 kps, so only local eath/mars defense fleets.
That's not bad for the year. Though gunships, a bit small to be survivable. I've found that the smallest ships die quite often in space battles.
Active fleet is 2 marine ships, which I've used to take out the defenseless servant station as part of my mission to try and neutralize the servants as a serious threat: get rid of more of their assets, build up mine. They're still relatively contained to India, though trying to make break outs in Europe and Russia, and I had turned one of their councilors and have a max command agent so for a while was able to assassinate their agents more or less at will.
Frigates have 4 utility slots, so i'm trying using them as marine secondaries while being perfectly good combat ships, what else i'm gonna do with 4. Heatsink, optional magazine if using missiles, hydrogen storage...
Yeah, assassinating enemy agents once they get too good is necessary to get anything done.
Goes double for aliens. I'm enforcing a full suffer not the alien policy on Earth as soon as i have the means, they just generate too much trouble on the map to keep cleaning it up, they are worse than a veteran servant agent. Left them to roam for some time to not provoke aliens and all i got was most of the map covered in xenoforming. Still got Africa and South America covered, though they aren't mine, so screw whoever runs them, of course they won't clean it up because AI is dumb.
I'm putting a layered defense module on all my space colonies, so hopefully that's a bit of deterrent as I keep building up to fleet.
Planetside the main threat, besides aliens who I'm researching up to the capture mission on, is the Protectorate: they've announced their manifesto and win conditions of orbital dominance by alien aligned forces (96% currently, not unexpected), and controlling the surface, which there much further from, about 8% I think.
Consolidating the Russian holdings had freed up control points, so I'm using my coup agent to go around and take out any protectorate territories that are vulnerable. They're main stronghold though is America, which is going to be much more difficult to resolve. I could have a sacrificial nuclear war between the US and Russia if necessary, Russia is not particularly valuable after all the damage the servants have done to its economy, but I'd prefer to avoid that if possible.
USA and Russia are the one nuclear war you don't want. Had a Russia-China nuclear war and it was bad enough. There is an easy way to change USA control, between high democracy and way less population than China, you absolutely can do public campaigns there, and once you get support, you can do crackdowns or unrest easily.
So, current plan to to continue to loot the servants, contain the Protectorate, and research up to more effective space and build up unification: I'm about half way to the Pan-Asian union and control most of it: Once I can merge my China and Japan control points, let alone the rest of it, should free up several more control points, along with other control point research and some Africans unification I've done to consolidate there.
Watch out with consolidating holdings too much. You will lose investment points and research points even more so. Armies can lose tech levels, and you really want high democracy countries if you like having research points. Japan often makes almost as much research as China.
Also control points seem like the right focus early on, but once more xenoforming, nuclear exchanges, few unifications and such happen, 2-3 factions with 400-500 of them will be able to hold everything worthwhile. I'm at 450 or so now and i'm struggling to find places worth controlling (research, nukes, amphib armies, mission control) that aren't already controlled by frenemies (AI of even ideologically closest factions gets hostile for any reason or no reason at all, that needs fixing) or me.
That should give me the control point freedom to move against the protectorate and Servant remaining strongholds politically. Maybe I'll even have techs which will make a military conflict against America less suicidal. Assuming the War doesn't come to me: I get the sense the Protectorate are less nuke happy, but...
If you can't hold them, neutralize them. That's what unrest is for. Control-abandon combo is also viable if you are over control limit, then some faction you don't mind might grab the place. As i said, campaign-unrest-coup\crackdowns is the best option for USA. China can be a bigger problem because good luck with public campaigns there if they don't already support you, and without support from public opinion, good luck with anything else.
India can be also a pain in the ass with its population.
My Resistance run, as you can see between few events and Servants blowing up a few facilities i have a bit of a mission control crisis, habs on Mercury with ops to address that just began construction.
Also this is the successful multirole frigate build i'm using, pair them up, fly them close for mutual PD, add a couple escorts just to be sure, and they handle 1-2 usual alien ships destroyer or below pretty reliably, sometimes they may lose an escort but no worse than that.
Also no need to use the expensive mobyldenium radiator, gonna replace it with a cheaper, lighter nanotube one in newly built versions.
