In order to beat the Brutal X 4 level, there are a number of picks that need to be taken, almost all of the below.

Negative picks:

1) Slow Breeders - 4 points
2) Shoddy Engineers - 2 points
3) Ponderous Spacefighters - 2 points
4) Timid Warriors - 2 points

These add up to the maximum negative 10 picks for negative traits and they have the least detrimental effect of all the negative traits that I could find. Once you have cloning vats population won't be an issue, decreased hit points and weapon damage are easily overcome just by dint of the fact that you'll be fielding Titans right away and ground combat has become essentially obsolete with the most recent updates.

Positive Picks:

1) Titan Quest (on Pg 2) +4 points
2) Literally Tree Hugger
3) Subterranean
4) Resourceful
5) Rich Homeworld
6) Holy Land

These add up to 20 points in total. Titans will allow you to very quickly (possibly within 55 turns of starting) field a missile Titan that can stand up to anything at this stage of the game, including Antarans. Tree Hugger allows you to ignore a lot of pollution, thereby maximising production. Subterranean allows you to immediately have 3 population Ultra Rich Asteroid belts which can churn out Titans. Resourceful is cheap at twice the price because it allows you to get the resource bonus after owning just 2 of one type of resource. 2 is fairly easy, 4 is very difficult. The last 2 picks can be switched out with spiritual to give an empire-wide bonus. Keeping these last 2 though means that homeworld production is maximised right from the start.

As far as race goes, they're mostly the same, except for the experimental techs. The best 2 races I've been able to find with the best special techs, are the Humans and the Draylok.

https://stardrive2.fandom.com/wiki/Technology -

Credit to this community page listing all the technologies.

CAMPAIGN

Choose your race first. I suggest customising it as above and then saving under a special name, so that you don't need to re-customise every time. Then click continue.

EMPIRE COLOUR, (dealers choice), EMPIRE COUNT (up to you, I prefer all 8 opponents), DIFFICULTY (start off maybe with Hard to test out these strategies, but eventually you can go up to Brutal X 4), EMPIRE NAME (your choice) and RACE NAME. (also your choice)

For the bottom options we have, RANDOMISE PERSONALITIES (up to you), DISABLE ATTACKS (I seriously suggest not choosing this because then you don't fight the Antarans), ENABLE TUTORIALS, (up to you) and the 3 VICTORY CONDITIONS. (I personally just unselect all 3)

Lastly the right hand side options, SYSTEM COUNT (I prefer 200 so you're not too close to your enemies), SYSTEM DISTRIBUTION (I prefer clusters), GALACTIC FERTILITY (suggest leaving on classic), GALACTIC RICHNESS (I suggest rich or Ultra-Rich), HOSTILE THREATS (this increases enemy count in enemy stacks and Antaran attacks) and GAME LENGTH (I prefer Epic)

Assuming you have chosen the picks outlined in part one, what you need to do is to immediately colonise an Ultra Rich asteroid belt, even if there's a fantastic system with great resources. Unless you really get lucky, you'll be needing to contend with pollution and so can't use the entire production capacity to build ships.
1) Send your initial coloniser to colonise an Ultra Rich Asteroid.

2) While it's doing that, probably 2 - 5 turns, build a few Freighters as fast as you can. My picks should be able to create the first in 5 turns. The first is to be able to support your Ultra Rich Asteroid Belt with food from your home world and also transport an additional 2 population to your asteroid Colony, 1 at a time. This will leave your homeworld shouldering most of the burden of feeding everyone, but it also means you can have a Missile Titan build by about turn 60.


Here's a good example of a starting Titan, decent armour, 40 missiles, reasonable laser defence and flares for enemy missiles:

3) Your asteroid colony should immediately build a starbase, then a missile titan. Once the first one is built, it will have some breathing room and can build a few Colony ships.

4) Research Automated Rover Bay then Research Lab then Aeroponic Farm. After that make any shield tech a priority. Xeno Mine and Imperial University are better in the long-run, especially on bigger planets, but they're slower to get going and cost more production to build.

5) Crazy Eddy (https://stardrive2.fandom.com/wiki/Krazy_Eddy%27s_Technology_Emporium - Credit to the Stardrive 2 community)

In my current game I pretty much had to neglect science until turn 61, but I have 1 Missile Titan built, with another in 19 turns, I have 6 planets colonised, with 2 Ultra Rich Asteroids and 2 Breadbox planets. (both ocean) Admittedly I had a pretty good start, but any regular start with no special resources can have similar results by turn 80 or 90. I already had my first titan built to handle the initial pirate attacks, though usually starbases can handle them alone.

When you have 2100 credits, buy the Data Crystals. Once researched they will yield 7500 credits, plus a little research, enabling you to buy other things from him. I suggest first DESTROYED MAGAZINE 700 credits (Dual mass Driver, best weapon for the next few hundred turns), COMPLEX FACILITY 1600 credits (Armoured Ordinance Supplier), QUANTUM SCHEMATICS 1000 credits (Quantum Fusion Reactors), and SMALL SHIELD CAPACITOR 500 credits (Delta Shield) With these few techs you can create a very powerful Titan that can take on whole fleets of ships and/or Antarans. 8 of them can probably take out the MASTER OF ORION 2 ship.


This example costs 4000 odd production. It has 20 Dual Mass Drivers (1000 capactor storage necessary for those), 8 Flak Cannons (72 capacitor), 12 Point Defence lasers (24 capacitor), 20 Laser Cannons (180 capacitor) and 10 rockets (10 capacitor) = 1286 capacitor storage necessary.
It has 11 Large Quantum Fusion Reactors, 4 armoured ordinance suppliers, 750 fuel capacity, 3 large basic engines and 138 Delta Shields. (also 2 NeuroToxin Bombs for planetary bombardment)
These shields are allocated as follows: 24 in the front and back = 43 200 shield strength each, 20 on each side = 36 000 shield strength and 50 in the centre, which protects the entire ship = 90 000 shield strength. So it's got great missile defence, pretty decent shields (though upgrade to MK 2 as soon as possible) and it's got teeth.

Basically 5 purchases from Crazy Eddy's, plus starting equipment and you have a ship that can wipe out most opposing fleets singlehandedly. You'd need maybe 4 of them to take on the largest Antaran fleets that they will throw at you and typically just 2 or 3 together to invade and completely wipe out an enemy faction.

Crew protocols 250 credits, Scented Engine Core 1500 credits, Silver Fluid 3200 credits are all nice to have, but they can wait.

GEAR HOUSING and METAL DEBRIS can both be ignored. Once you have shields, armour becomes irrelevant and the Phoenix Cannon supposedly doesn't even fit on a Titan anyways. Much better weapon alternatives, even if they can go on a Titan.

When I refer to Titans, I'm pretty much just referring to using the CITADEL TITAN. It can shrug off up to 1000 damage, it's got a lot of space, much more than any of the race Titans and it's comparable in price (even though it should be 15% more expensive) to outfitting a regular Titan. Basically don't waste your time, just use that one chassis and outfit it with the latest technology.

One little secret to this Titan, there are 6 blocks that are essentially overlap and you can't see that you can put stuff there. Top right and top left in the engine section, vertical line of 3 blocks that you can see in the engine area, but those same blocks can be occupied by equipment in the right and left hand sides of the ship.

Very strange exploit, often, upon colonising a new planet/asteroid belt, you are left with a coloniser afterwards. It is an exploit yes, but since it's so prevalent and happens so often, it's up to you if you use it.

Don't edit any ship while there are ships in the refit queue with the same name, it will default to full cost instead of refit cost, as if you're manufacturing a whole new ship. Just call the upgrade something else to avoid this expensive problem.

If a ship is badly damaged and is taking too long to repair, just take it to any planet and refit it to the same design that it already is. This will only cost 10 production and the ship will come out the other side in the next turn fully healed.

Because of Command Points, it is seldom possible to have enough ships fielded to deal with every possible attack. Simply put a finished titan back into a refit queue (at the very bottom of your production queue) so that it can be quickly finished when you need it.

Micromanage your population by looking at the white bar next to the population bar towards the very top. When the white bar is full you can send one of its population elsewhere and you'll have it back the next turn.

If you decide to wipe out a planets population to make room for your own, preferably with Neuro Toxin Bombs, just focus on the civilian population.

Red Crystal mission is broken and doesn't ever look to being fixed, so just station a titan by the crystalline belt where the red crystals come from to avoid them destroying your colony ships etc.

Especially on higher difficulties, diplomacy is a joke. Colonise 1 planet, even in your own backyard and another race that previously liked you can go right to absolute hate. Once you've got your Ultra-Rich asteroids up and going, just use them to make hundreds of spies and just use spies to steal techs from your enemies.

Even on higher difficulties, enemy races can be intimidated into any deal, just threaten to declare war on them. They will sometimes call your bluff, but then you just declare war, nuke a few of their planets and declare peace when they cry uncle. The next time you ask for tech they are unlikely to call you a chump and call your bluff.

It can actually be a good way to keep enemy races unhappy in their own civ, by forcing a deal that makes them go over their tolerance level, assuming that enemy races have to abide by the same rules as the player, which I doubt.

Some races, like the Monocle Owlewok enslaver Opteris will literally give you all of their tech with just a threat of war, making that a key tactic in playing on Brutal X 4 level. On that level all other races will totally outstrip you in technology production, no matter what, but it doesn't really matter. You can get the basic techs you need for a Dual Mass Driver, Shielded Titan and be able to take out their entire fleets with just a few titans. Threatening enemy races and spying gets you all the other techs that you need.

Wiping out all of the enemies planets, except for one, where you can station a Titan, allows you to keep them subdued and gradually take all their remainig tech using spies, then wipe out that final planet.

I suggest taking Subterranean plus Literally Tree Hugger for the simple reason that the Asteroid fields will be initially fantastic producers for you, early to mid game, but your huge planets with huge reductions on pollution can become late game production powerhouses. Get a few of the right resources and you can reduce pollution all the way to -100%, which is only possible if you have the initial Literally Tree Hugger Perk.

Anemenon race are great because they call sell you the shield 2 tech for 2500 credits. Once you have those you can take on anything. (central shields affect the whole ship, so I usually put lots there, plus quite a few in the front, but then just a few sides and back)

Most minor races are usually worth keeping around to buy things from, like tech, hurmglub lobsters. You can invade them or wipe them out if they've served their purpose and are no longer needed.

In order to make the most money as fast as possible, I have experimented with mass producing Titans and then immediately selling them, thereby getting 1/3 of the production cost. Really though, just raise the tax slider to 50% and you should have tons of credits in no time.

It's also possible to constantly buy and research the data crystals, but that's an exploit. Same goes for the silver liquid if you want your ships going super fast.

The pirates etc attack around turn 50 - 60, but even a lone unshielded starbase can take care of them initially. Antarans on the other hand typically open their pink wormhole around turn 125 and then attack every 75 turns after that. Their numbers are increased by the initial threat level set during game creation and each successive attack has more ships requiring more Titans to counter.

One thing which is not spelt out properly, but should have been is capacitors. I was making massive ships with 35 Dual Mass Drivers, which then would not fire in combat and would not tell me why. The ship creation screen will lie to you and tell you everything is fine and dandy with your designs, even when they're not. So, here's what you need to do -->

Count the number of various weapons, add up the power cost (blue bullets) of these weapons only and make sure you have around that much in capacitors. In others words, one Dual Mass Driver requires 75 energy bullets and 2 solid ammo. If you're going to mount 10 of them on your ship then your capacitors need to total at least 750 energy. Not power generation, Capacitors. You probably want a little more if you've got some close combat energy weapons and point defence.

If you have a random event that refers to some strange signal scanning a star, ignore it until you can field a few Titans loaded for bear. Giant alien pyramid ship that has a death star beam that shreds ships in one hit, to the tune of about 100 000 damage per hit. A very well armed fleet could destroy it without losses though, because it fires only every 30 seconds.
In my experiment dealing with this particular event, as soon as you engage you set things in motion and you'll fairly soon have to destroy it within 10 turns or it will destroy the star it's orbiting, plus all the planets and ships in the system. On a positive note, once you do destroy it, you get a special project that allows you to build your own, plus you get a massively energy gulping death star beam of your own to mount on your own ships. If you just ignore it, I've gone quite a while now and the event stays in place, plus the star doesn't get destroyed, so ignore it till you can destroy it.

Found a simple way to use "insta-enemy" races that get angry because you settle a planet or spy on them. (even though they continually spy on you) I found this out playing on Brutal X4, because they weren't accepting any deals with threats at that point, or at least it would have cost me too much. What you do is get some decent Titans with Toxic Bombs. They only kill population, no buildings, and they don't cause pollution like nukes do. Get your Titans/s right on the opponents border, then declare war on them. Use your Titan/s to wipe out their planets, for several reasons. It reduces any enemies strength, clears the way for you to occupy those planets, especially if they're special in some way and lastly, after a while of this the enemy will ask for peace. Accept, but include some things to trade as well. Gold is the cheapest thing to offer, tolerance-wise, if you don't have too much tolerance with that particular enemy. If you combine this with planting moles, you'll soon have all of that enemy's techs, then you can finish wiping them out if you like, or keep them around to research more tech for you.