Yeah, I think the pacing could use some tweaks.

Honestly, the mission cycle should be slower (I shouldn't be able to swing control of an entire nation in a month!), and UI improvements would speed up play (needs summary screens for targeting missions and stuff instead of scrolling around on the very pretty maps), but the biggest thing would be an aurora style event log+"skip to next mission cycle"+interrupts.

They already sort of have the event log (it summarizes the outcomes of your missions from the last cycle), and they already do interrupts in the form of autopause on certain events. Just need to be able to skip time as fast as your computer can compute and things would speed up dramatically (the max speed, 5x, is still kind of slow).

There is guide on the reddit that seems decent for those that do not like to watch videos, link to the first part:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/xq5che/guide_how_to_defeat_an_alien_invasion_in_10_easy/

Edit: There is actually part zero: https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/xpbhxq/guide_how_to_defeat_an_alien_invasion_in_10_easy/

Has anyone actually finished a successful playthrough of this game?

Not from what I saw on youtube and reddit.

Another way to reduce your reliance on boost is to start with a station at the planet you want to colonize.   You can send it as soon as you finish the unlock, before you have probe results.   then send it a construction module and power. .   and bob's your uncle.   I am very much enjoying Terra Invicta!

Yep, I wish I had known that. I sent a fission pile to Mars but didn’t have enough boost to send the actual mining facility. I ended up paying for about 9 months up upkeep on the reactor after it arrived, which was a lot more expensive than I had expected. Lots of mistakes to be made in ones first game

One thing to note about boost is that you are supposed to wean yourself off of it through the spaceconomy. Construction modules and outpost mines are your friend and you'll only need boost for the first hab you put into mars if you play your cards right.

Picking which nation to control is also important. I’m still working out how to spend to achieve the best results, but currently India fully supports the Resistance, and that gives multiple armies to handle terrestrial threats.

My biggest bottleneck is generating boost. No orgs so far that grant it, and nations should do better at producing it than they do. I imagine it’s something that will be tweaked more.

If your goal is a terrestrial military force, what you can do is do the perun strat of controlling mexico and canada so that you get enough bonuses in the US that it becomes feasible to take it over.

At which point you get 6 modern armies all with naval capability. Always fun to stage dive megafauna with the US armed forces.

I’m enjoying it as well. I went into it basically blind, so my first game has been some what slow with plenty of mistakes. I haven’t actually built any ships yet, but I have mines on the Moon, Mars, and 1951 Lick. Time to start designing that first ship!

Ceres is also important, because it has great water deposits. But there is risk if you expand too much that the aliens start to attack your outposts.

I've also been playing around wit the early access. Its an interesting game with a very slow start, and my first few restarts have been figuring out what I've been doing wrong and starting over to do better.

So far at least in the very early game, you want councilors with high persuasion so that you can take over control points far easier. Unfortunately, mine have been... less good at that. I also can't for the life of me see why you'd want a scientist early game.

Yeah councilors with good persuasion are good, but you are more limited with control point capacity than in the demo. And when you get over the cap, other factions will start to butcher your control points even when they are defended. I think that it is important to get good councilor that can hunt down enemy agents. If you kill them, they will have to get new ones with worse stats and start to improve them again. And when you start to hunt down alien agents, you will definitely need good councilor that can handle that.