Hello,

I have a planet in a system far away from the AI, (2 or 3 systems away) and it says "Danger of Invasion", is this from pirates? Because colonised planets closer to the AI are not in danger from invasion.

Kind regards

Oliver

I was wondering, too, why there is so little activity here on the GOG forum of Polaris Sector. One part of the explanation might be that there is lot to be found on the Steam forum of the game.

People there have described PS as something between Distant Worlds and games like Stellaris, Endless Space, GalCiv, etc. Not because PS is realtime, while the other games I mentioned are turn-based, but because of the degree of micromanagement required. DW and PS are prepared to take away a lot of micromanagement, DW more so than PS, but you can also retain as much control as you like (and again, DW more so than PS). This is not saying that DW and PS are similar. In DW you have free movement in all directions, so you worry about controlling the disk around your empire, while in PS your movement is restricted by star lanes, so you focus on the structure of the star lanes and its choke points. In DW you do mass production of everything, resources permitting, in PS to build or research anything takes quite long, and I think you'll never have a lot of ships (but lots of colonies, eventually, I guess). You find similarities between PS and other 4X games all over the place, ship design reminds me of Ascendancy, movement of Ascendancy again, Pax Imperia, SoTS (star lane races), etc. - I'm not quite sure of research, which appears unique to me (but perhaps I'm not yet familiar enough with PS - there are some remote, possibly superficial similarities with Space Empires, the distinction between Pure and Applied Science, for example).
I myself have played a couple of hours meanwhile, and I like the game. If you are unsure, look at one or two of the guides on the Steam page of PS - starting a quick game with default settings might be frustrating (in my first 2 or 3 games of this kind I ended up with a colony in a small star region with 5 to 10 stars and many planets, none of them colonisable., and no idea what to do - luckily I consulted a Steam guide then, which helped me along).

I leave it at that - you find (diverse) reviews and Let's Play videos elsewhere.

I could be wrong, but I think it's the relative strength of the garrison of the planet versus the relative strength of rival empire forces in the vicinity. Because planets further from the front-lines are unlikely to have a defensive garrison, they're at higher "danger of invasion". The fact that there's a defensive blockade preventing any hostile fleet from reaching these locations doesn't seem to matter. I think it got overshadowed by the release of Distant Worlds at the same time. Given time constraints, I only could pick one of the two to play (I might snag Distant Worlds, but I'm doubtful I'll have time to play both games to a degree that gives them justice). I decided to go with the more obscure of the two.

So far I've played three short games of Polaris Sector and am part-way through my fourth game. In my first game I made a bunch of mistakes which left me in a very precarious defensive and economic position; my economy ground to a halt due to lack of planning. I decided to go for a fresh start using what I'd learned. Games 2 and 3 involved me expanding so voraciously in the early-game that I won a domination victory without having to conquer anything, as I'd staked claim to the majority of the galaxy before anyone got to it. I just had to sit back and backfill, and so long as I kept my front-lines suitable defended I was okay. In my current game I decided to ensure this wouldn't happen by having a complement of 8 empires on a much larger galaxy. My economy and technology level is vastly more advanced than on any of the previous games, and I have begun to wage war against the weaker empires of the galactic core to secure it for my own.

My experience so far is that defenders have a very sizeable advantage over attackers in the early-game. Most early-game ships have extremely limited fuel reserves, and require a relay chain of refueling stations to move from your industrial centers to your front-lines. Orbital battlestations, on the other hand, can be manufactured in your homeworld then shipped to your fledgling colonies in freighters where they're quickly reassembled. This makes it way easier to get defenses on the front-lines than invasion fleets. I've also found carriers to be remarkably ineffectual early-game, which means defenders usually have a strong fighter advantage. Even if you can win the fleet battle, you still need to win the ground battle, which involves building invasion ships and ground forces, which is easier said than done.

Speaking of invasion forces, they are tedious. Orbital bombardment is a war crime and the other empires will get angry at you if you do it, so you're forced into huge slogs to beat down the surface garrison. And the AI builds massive surface garrisons. When I continue my current game tonight I'm going to triple the number of invasion ships I have and see if I can just get a steamroll going. It may just be I've been under-investing in invasion forces when my fleet is already overkilling it.

The game has automation for the economy, which is really helpful since even a small empire will easily have dozens of planets. There are a lot of options, and I've never had a problem with the AI's selection in light of the specialization I chose for the planet. With that said, I do find the AI is overly restrictive on population growth. It will often institute population control edicts when the planet has zero citizens available for new task, meaning that as soon as the current production job completes the planet's production will stall because the AI has to turn off population control so new citizens can be born. No new production job can begin until enough citizens are born to complete the current job. This is especially egregious if the empire has a massive food surplus, or if the production queue is full of colonization ships. Sadly the only way to override population control is to switch to manual control of the planet.

There is an option to automate colonization, which I found somewhat useful late-game when I'm just backfilling straggler planets that I never got around to capturing, but largely useless in the early game. When you're still actively exploring, it's very common to find a better planet for colonization and reroute your colony ships (which is annoying to do when they're automated). There's also an option to automate invasion ships, but I've found it behaves really weirdly. For instance it will ignore a huge force of marines waiting to be ferried to the front lines 2 jumps away, and instead make a 30 year round-trip to some backwater of my empire to pick up some police officers instead. I've also seen it route through the territory of other empires. Let's avoid diplomatic crises by not having loaded invasion ships violate the borders of a neutral empire...

The tech system of fundamental vs applied sciences is somewhat interesting, but at this point I don't know the technologies well enough to make much use of it. With one exception: I have found the atmospheric dome tech to be worth prioritizing immediately at the start of the game. The first empire to be able to capture planets without atmospheres has a massive advantage, able to snag key choke points. You can do nasty stuff to the AI's like blockade their colonies by surrounding them with your own. Thanks to the defender advantage I mentioned earlier you can get really brazen with this. So long as you can quickly get defensive fortifications in place, there's not a whole lot the AI seems to be able to do about it.

Overall I'm having fun so far. The game certainly has its flaws, but it has more than enough interesting points to make up for it. I haven't touched the higher difficulties yet, so my experience my change vastly on my next game when I start ratcheting it up. If you're on the sidelines, I can definitely say this game is worth trying at the very least.

Due to the currently financially very attractive offers for these games, I would consider getting them both, even when you can't or don't want to play them simultaneously.