I Just Failed Humanity

"Thanks for Playing."  That's the crushing message that greets you after you've just led the Terran Federation to it's doom in Halcyon 6:  Starbase Commander.  I just learned that the hard way after ten hours of attempting to curb the Chruul infestation.  I'm a little sad--firstly, because I knew the situation was getting downright futile but also because I haven't felt that sting of defeat from a game in quite awhile.  That failure makes me want to jump right back in though.  Well played, game.....well played.

When I first saw Halcyon 6:  Starbase Commander pop up on the Steam top sellers chart I was surprised and skeptical.  Whenever I see pixelated games I am always a little wary--it's been done and it's been done to death (*this is where my brain should have kicked in and made me remember how much I genuinely enjoyed Stardew Valley).  Rather than think about my skepticism I decided to watch the trailer and see if this wasn't just some weird fluke.  Nope.  Not fluk-ey.  The game actually looked like fun--a perfect storm with aspects of XCOM base management combined with Final Fantasy inspired combat.  Since it was on sale I decided to snatch it up and then regret it later.  The regret never came and I've been having fun commanding my pixelated crew to their unfortunate deaths.

But where did I go wrong?  One of the very important skills I seem to have missed was the ability to multi-task.  Not only do you need a fleet of powerful ships to combat the Chruul in the region but you need multiple crews that can carry out tasks and work on your starbase.  My tunnel vision and enjoyment of blasting Chruul ships into oblivion meant that I sunk all my time and resources into one fleet.  By the time I cobbled together a second fleet things were starting to get chaotic.  New structures called "spires" were spawning many Chruul ships that I just couldn't handle quickly enough.  I had to take them down AND continue to collect resources and expand my base.  It was just too much.  I managed to barely fend them off but the crisis became dire when I realized I didn't have enough crew members to crew tier 3 ships.  An uber-Chruul ship was heading toward my base and I had no options for quickly cobbling together a fleet of tier 3 ships.  Once the Chimera arrived it immediately blasted my base into pieces.  Game over.

I've learned a few things from my failure that might help some others avoid the same fate so here are a few handy tips.

Tip #1--Colonies are important.  Don't neglect them or they will get destroyed and then you will lose the resources.  I lost all but one colony that was generating crew members.  It's important in the early game to establish outposts on those colonies.

Tip #2--Train more officers ASAP.  It wasn't my first priority and by the time I had another batch they were too low-level to do much good.

Tip #3--Use your re-rolls.  Having a set of officers with a wide variety of combination options is vital to success.  I did not use my re-rolls and ended up with some weak combat options.

Tip #4--Gather those resources.  Don't let them waste away on planets.  Make a plan for having at least one ship that is dedicated to keeping you supplied.

Tip #5--Build the next tier of ship hangars quickly and have enough resources in reserve that you can immediately start cranking out more powerful ships.  This might be a little bit of wishful thinking and is really difficult, but I think it's possible.

I plan to start my new and improved game 2 soon.  We'll see if I really learned any lessons from my first round of failure.