Help with part 3 of Campaign

you can beat them. those 800 points you see are mostly fleets of orbital defenders that will neve leave their planet. taking a look at the after action statistics, they managed to build a whopping 18 ships in the ~60 turns it took me to win. and most of them were probably constuctors ("favorite ship type"). according to that statistics screen, i destroyed ~500 drengin ships. so the vast majority of their stuff is already there at the start and each of their fleets you wipe out is wiped out for good. 

most of the drengin fleets are conveniently small enough so you can crush them with the crusader. if you lose some of her escort ships, just build a couple of large hull carriers to replace them (you have both techs from the start, so no special research required). carriers are better than battleships anyway. don't bother making other fleets. they'll probably be too waek to wipe out any of the larger drengin fleets. just support the crusader as good as you can.

you'll run out of troop transports after taking the first 3 planets, so make sure you create some more transports as you advance. 

try to trade for some advanced weapon/defense techs from the other AI factions - they all start with some higher level stuff that will greatly boost the assault fighters spawned by your carriers (they use the best tech automatically, no upgrade required)

I took my time and did many baby steps. Actually more then needed.

So it took me a few days.

Be patient, do not rush, for big fleets you may have to position multiple fleets by it. One is destroyed but the target is weaker so the second one destroys it.

RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH.

Last do not underestimate the power of the Bane and do not let the Crusader be destroyed.

Anyone know how to convince the "victory" panel that it is time to lower the shield. Drengin are gone, Yor are gone, etc. Crusader is next to planet, yet shield stays up, and Victory tag does not not acknowledge my other achievements...

Or, how do I submit a bug (the saved game, e.g.).

I can play it again I suppose - and maybe all will be well. But maybe someone has a great idea on how to convince the game that it is time to drop the shield

Make fun of the planet till it lowers it shields. After all earth is a shithole.

Make sure you move your fleet to the arrows to the southeast of Earth to bring down the shield

The main thing I do is research Carriers tech, and build a Hyperion Shrinker on one of the Caverns tiles.  This should let you build Large carriers with two carrier modules and an engine.  Their fighters regenerate after each battle, so put 2-3 of these in a fleet with the Crusader, and they'll crush anything the Drengin can thow at you.

Thanks, I'll try that. I just thought it was "Lots of influence" flowing into space. Guess I could have passed over occupying 7 or 8 planets

Update - worked like a charm. Only curious if I would have had more points if I had finished in fewer turns.

p.s. re: help with part 3: my approach was to increase logistics as fast as possible: traded some (just paid $$ for it as soon as it was possible) and researched it - happily being boosted with research by the surveyor. And, to increase the effectiveness of the transports - docking at the start port lets you eject and boost the population to 6M each - so only one transport is needed for the first three planets.

And the idea I read from someone else - to take a large ship, new design, and just add transport mod plus as much engine as possible shortens the construction time and increase the moves per turn - immensely.

In short, as logistics went up I was able to combine more ships into Fleet 1 and probably could have completed part three without ever building a new combat ship.

Many thanks, guys. I will try out your advice and come back in the unlikely event I have any problems.