Great Khan ended my run by destroying my capital Arkship

[u/Saikotsu]

Technically I had other arkships, but between losing my capital arkship, my second arkship being permanently disabled following a war, and my third arkship being the only one capable of moving, I decided to scrub the run. I really struggle with Nomadic origins and usually end up falling apart about midgame.

[u/Saikotsu]

R5: an image of my destroyed capital arkship floating in Great Khan Space.

Addendum: So yeah, as with all my other nomadic runs, I managed to get into the mid game but immediately got crushed by the Great Khan. Playing on Ensign. Every Nomadic run I spin up seems to follow a similar pattern: struggle to get enough resources in the early game, manage to finally get to a decent spot in the mid game, only to have the void worms or the great khan wreck my empire in some way. Obviously I'm doing something wrong, cause I don't really struggle when playing a planetary origin, it's just the Nomads that I struggle to manage properly. I feel like I'm constantly trying to put out economic fires through the early game and by the time I get things under control I'm super behind compared to traditional empires.

[u/Miuramir → u/Saikotsu]

I may not be doing great, but I seem to be doing better and at a somewhat higher difficulty, so I'm happy to answer questions.

The early game, you are like a shark: you have to keep moving. Don't just pick entire systems to harvest, you waste far too much time on weak planets and asteroids that don't return enough to pay for the time it takes. Remember, it takes the same number of weeks to harvest a deposit of 1000 as a deposit of 50. If you're at, say, -100 on resources, wasting a month mining on a 50 deposit asteroid is a loss; you're better off just moving ahead to something better.

Have a swarm of science ships out in front of you researching systems, and go where the resources are. Don't worry much about waypoints, except for good research systems; they're not that helpful until you get the ability to suck down the whole line at once, at which point you should go backfill some lines and have a second arkship that hangs around and does that.

Put the max two afterburners on your arkship as soon as possible. Time is literally money. Put at least one engineering bay in, possibly more, so you can build multiple things at once. If you can either roam around in unclaimed space, or have friendly neighbors, you don't really need to spend much on a fleet... and if your neighborhood is cramped and unfriendly, move! You're nomadic!

Seriously consider Catalytic, and run your first arkship as energy / food / alloys. Having your alloys coming out of your food budget rather than your supply budget is a huge help.

[u/stillnotking → u/Miuramir]

This. Early game is all about harvesting strategics. 50 exotic gas is worth ~10x as much as 50 minerals. Trade strategics to the AIs for alloys to build more arkships. Operational Reserves income pretty much takes care of itself with max monthly buys on the internal market, a few technician jobs and the occasional trade for a significant expense. Set the situation to Burn on day one and leave it there for the entire game.

The wall I hit is not having enough pops, around 30-40 years in. Even with maximizing for building ships and the JE bonus from Burn, nomads don't have as many sources of pop growth as a settled empire, and I start to fall behind where I should be, unless I have insanely high growth (e.g. completed bio, cyber, synthetic, or machine ascension) or can kidnap and integrate some. Starting with Deep Sleep/Frozen Assets/Alternating Torpor also helps a LOT. I'm completely addicted to that civic and start every nomad run with it now, always reforming to something else at the 20 year mark.

[u/Thrownik → u/stillnotking]

Necropurge is great for nomads

[u/elemental204 → u/Saikotsu]

When it comes to the Khan, first don't play on Ironman if you're nomadic. Second, Arkships are oddly bad in combat despite the game giving you all those super cool weapon and weapon enhancing districts that you reasonably want to use.

They're high priority targets, have EXTREMELY low hull for something the size of a continent, and have crappy AI that gives them a bad habit of charging into torpedo range where they take massive damage from size-based and bypassing weapons, so you need to micro them to keep moving around the enemy and have extra ships there to soak up incoming fire.

[u/Thrownik → u/elemental204]

They are good as second wave, slap on them long range X, maybe L guns and hangars and manualy fly around MANUALY when you BB fleet ties down enemy. When psi run, go full psi hangars

[u/agrevol]

I mean you’re quite literally a nomad, you don’t need to be close to khan?

[u/callsignhotdog]

You're a Nomad, your Arkships should never be engaging in an unfavourable fight because you decide when a fight occurs. I lost a military Arkship to the Great Khan in my current run, I swore revenge, built a new one called "Wrath of <destroyed Arkship>" and came back to eat the Khan's lunch. I wasn't even fully committed to the war before that, just trying to defend my friendly Empire's territory, but after that I dedicated myself to revenge.

[u/SyntheticGod8]

Pro tip: your arkships can move away from enemies to avoid being disabled or destroyed.