Galactic War Difficulty, Adding More Maps, and a Total Overhaul

• Introduction
• Difficulty
• System Size
• Factions
• Loadouts
• Adding More Maps
• Installing
• Using the Mod
• Adding Map Packs
• Checking the Contents
• Adding Your Maps to Galactic War
• Galactic War Overhaul
• Installing
• Using the Mod
• Difficulties
• Factions

Introduction

Galactic War is a roguelite campaign for Planetary Annihilation. Starting with only a small amount of tech you battle your away across the galaxy to uncover more, fighting increasingly tough and numerous opponents until you defeat the three enemy factions. Defeat bosses in specific systems and you’ll unlock new starting loadouts which you can use in future campaigns.

This guide will help you pick the right difficulty, explain the factions and unlocks, and also guide you through adding more maps.

Difficulty

The higher you set the AI difficulty the greater its eco modifier, economy handling and general intelligence will be. Normal uses a different set of maps from the other difficulty levels, with far less multi-planet systems.

			Easy	Normal	Hard	Relentless	Absurd
Threat assessments			Terrible	Terrible	Bad	Best	Best
Micro			None	OK	OK	Best	Best
Scouting			OK	Best	Best	Best	Best
Factory build delay			Long	Some	Tiny	None	None
Expansion delay			Extreme	Long	None	None	None
Avoids eco float			No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Commander retreats			No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Maps			Simple	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard
Difficulty ramp*			+0.005	+0.01	+0.01	+0.01	+0.02
Slow expansion			Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Targets weakest Commander			No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
T2 delay			Yes	No	No	No	No
More commanders			No	Unlikely	Unlikely	Possibly	Likely
Base eco modifier			x0.4	x0.5	x0.5	x0.7	x0.8

*The increase applied to the AI’s base eco modifier for each planet you travel from the starting point

System Size

Size	Number of Planets
Small	18
Medium	24
Large	36
Epic	54
Uber	78
Vast*	108
Gigantic*	144
Ridiculous*	186
Marathon*	234

*added by the Bigger Galactic War mod

Factions

• 

• 

• 

• 

By choosing a colour in the lobby you are choosing a faction. The faction you select will not appear in your war. The only difference between the factions are their boss systems and loadouts, so choose a faction whose boss you wish to avoid, or whose loadouts you have already unlocked.

Loadouts

Your starting loadout determines what units you have access to from the start of the war. You start with one loadout unlocked: the Vehicle Commander. Seven loadouts remain locked. You will unlock them by defeating particular faction bosses.

Each faction has multiple possible boss systems. At the start of a war, one system is selected for each faction. You may not always encounter a boss tied to a locked loadout.

Faction	System	Loadout Unlocked
Legonis Machina	Kohr	Artillery Commander
	Entara	Bionic Augmentation Commander of Neutralizing
	Agoge
	Tau Leporis
	Poseidon’s Wrath
Foundation	Atlas	Air Commander
	Patagonia	Assault Commander
	Xylcor
	Blogar’s Fist
	Zeta Draconis
Synchronous	Cupru	Bot Commander
	Platina
	Fier
	Safir
	Apa
Revenants	Alenquer	Orbital Commander
	Xianyao	General Commander
	Epiphany
	Varthema
	Chernykh

Adding More Maps

Once you’ve played a lot of Galactic War you will have seen all the built-in systems more than once. You might fancy a change, have particular systems you’d like to see, or just want more multi-planet than you get out-of-the-box. To achieve this we will use Shared Systems for Galactic War, a mod which lets you load in TITANS systems, your systems, and systems out of any map pack you lay your hands on.

Installing

Go into Community Mods from the main menu. Click the Available tab and search for “gw”. Select Shared Systems for Galactic War and choose to install it.

Using the Mod

When you go into Galactic War you’ll notice something different.

In the bottom left you now choose what systems to load into Galactic War. By default, it has selected the PA category, which are the systems that ship with TITANS. Below that is My Systems, which would load any systems you have created or imported. Default Systems and onwards are categories on the Shared Systems server. These are areas which anyone can upload to (default systems) or are restricted to specific individuals (everything else). I recommend against using these categories for two reasons:

1. Many of the systems are old and out-of-date
2. The Shared Systems server is often offline, or when online is slow to load the systems

In the screenshot above we see a 0 next to Default Systems and the Go To War button is greyed out. This is because the systems from Default Systems have not completed loading. Given the count of 0, I would assume the server is offline, but even if it were online you wouldn’t be able to play until hundreds of random systems had been loaded.

So how do we add more systems? Simple. Map packs.

Adding Map Packs

Return to Community Mods on the main menu and this time search for “map”. Select the ones you want and click install for each.

Checking the Contents

If you haven’t used these map packs before you might want to check out what you just installed. The easiest way to do this is to go into the System Editor from the main menu.

Each map pack consists of one or more categories which are displayed as tabs. In addition, you will see My Systems, which are ones you’ve created or imported, and PA, which are the systems that come with the game. Shared should be ignored.

If you want to get an idea of what you’ve added just browse through the selection here and click on a system to get an overview. You’ll be able to see the number of planets, the number of starting locations, planet size, etc. You can always load them in the editor if you want to go in-depth, but this overview should give you an idea of which categories you want to add into your war.

Adding Your Maps to Galactic War

Now everything is loaded all you have to do is pick which ones to use. On the Galactic War screen, you’ll see that it’s not a list of map packs, rather it’s a list of the categories you saw in System Editor.

Each category displays a system count, in addition, once you select a category the number of multi-planet systems in that category will appear in brackets.

You are free to mix and match the system categories as you wish to get whatever Galactic War experience you want. The important thing is that you should now have a wide variety of exciting systems to play on.

Galactic War Overhaul

Once you’ve played enough Galactic War you might want to increase the challenge, or simply inject more variety into your game. The Galactic War Overhaul mod adds the following:

• Faction personalities
• Customised enemy/sub-commanders
  • Unique model
  • Unique personality
  • Unique colour
  • Fight according to their faction’s preferred style
• Eight new difficulties suitable for anyone from a new player to a veteran of the game
• Reduced sub-commander power so they won’t carry the game for you anymore
• Adds the possibility of multiple factions in a system and an FFA occurring
• Add support for shared army enemies
• Bosses are distinctly more difficult than surrounding systems
• Added planetary intelligence to allow you to make meaningful decisions on the galactic map
• Randomised spawns so maps remain fresh on replay
• Uses all game modes:
  • Bounty mode
  • Land anywhere
  • Sudden death
• You can give the enemy tougher commander units
• Option to give yourself more starting neutral systems
• The AI uses tech card buffs
• Guaranteed loadout to unlock every war
• 13 new loadouts
• Unlocks Galactic War’s biggest planetary systems
• Adds a new faction
• 109 new tech cards
• Multiple AI opponents to choose from

• 

• 

Installing

Go into Community Mods from the main menu. Click the Available tab and search for “gw”. Select Galactic War Overhaul and choose to install it.

Using the Mod

In the Galactic War lobby you’ll find you have new difficulties available to you:

Difficulties

Where an item is greyed out it means the setting is specific to each Commander, not the difficulty level.

The difficulty in Galactic War Overhaul scales higher than the base game and higher difficulties assume you have unlocked better loadouts. The number of enemy Commanders will scale much higher than in the base game, so if you select a large galaxy make sure your PC is up to the task.

This mod introduces an option called Easier Start, which allows you to add more neutral systems at the beginning of the war to increase the amount of free tech you receive.

	Casual	Iron	Bronze	Silver	Gold	Platinum	Diamond	Uber
Threat assessments*
Micro	None	OK	Best	Best	Best	Best	Best	Best
Scouting	OK	Best	Best	Best	Best	Best	Best	Best
Factory build delay	Small	None	None	None	None	None	None	None
Expansion delay	None	None	None	None	None	None	None	None
Avoids eco float	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Commander retreats	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Maps	Simple	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard
Difficulty ramp**	0.05	0.075	0.1	0.1	0.15	0.175	0.2	N/A
Slow expansion	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
Targets weakest Commander	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
T2 delay*
More commanders	No	Unlikely	Possibly	Likely	Some	Several	Plenty	Loads
Base eco modifier	x0.35	x0.425	x0.5	x0.6	x0.7	x1.0	x1.2	x10

*Specific to each commander not the difficulty level

**The increase applied to the AI’s base eco modifier for each planet you travel from the starting point

Factions

Play as whichever faction you find hardest to beat so that you don’t have to face them. Remember that your sub-commanders will play according to faction preference, so make sure to provide them with the necessary tech.

While each faction has a preference in how it plays, each Commander within that faction will play slightly differently.

Legonis Machina

• Focuses on land units
• The closest faction to the skirmish AI

Foundation

• Focuses on air and naval units
• Can often be the easiest faction to face early

Synchronous

• Uses a balance of all unit types
• A jack of all-trades but a master of none

Revenants

• Focuses on orbital units
• Harder to beat on multi-planet systems

Cluster

• Focuses on basic units
• Features different commanders