Jumping in at the deep end

[Jtownsend]

Heya,

New to the game and starting a MP game with a mix of cutthroats and new players in the next few days. I've been cramming, and although I haven't played this sort of thing multiplayer since I played (sucked at) VGA Planets and toyed with Stars!, I do have a lot of Moo1 time clocked, at any rate.

A few things:

It's been difficult for me to tell which 1.41 era bits of advice and warning are still relevant, and spaceempires urls don't work, which rules out a lot of "helpful advice" and other links.

I know enough about the nature of online gameplay to decide I want a specialized strategy and a minmaxed race. I appreciate the moral decrepitude of this position, but I want every edge I can get as a newb among the wolves. I've optimized a non-racial minmax with advanced storage (I know someone is shedding a single tear on a hillside for innocence) but I'm unsure if, for example, cultural traits are still broken. Are the production cultural bonuses (and the other ones that didn't work) still broken in 1.91? I see that Berzerker's seem to be popular with min-max crowd - perhaps this is because its -production bonus doesn't work? Or is it because all of the bonuses do work, like the combat one that used to not? All so confusing. I was also considering a scientist, since it doesn't have drawbacks and the cumulative tech bonus would be heading into Moo1 Psilon territory. (Well, not really. Moo1 psilons were absurd)

So, eh, help? I've read the minmax guide, which is in a post on this forum but not at the site where it is most often linked to. But I noticed in the same thread that opinion seemed to go against the Hardy Industrialist part of it, and the arguments convinced me, despite my inexperience at, eh, anything beyond turn 2.

Also, one thing about the "Harmony" that Stony seemed to emphasize so much - it seemed to be about not wasting minerals, by using excess mineral production but not eating into stockpiles. But, what is the disadvantage (apart from having less produced goods) to having a mineral surplus? Is the empire stockpile capped at a low level?

[Suicide Junkie]

The stockpile is limited by the number of storage facilities you build, plus 50k as a starting amount. Everything above that spoils away.

Note:
Storage facilities do not need a spaceport.

Although you do need some storage facilities to handle massive retrofits and other fluctuations in usage rates, each storage facility is taking up a slot which could be producing minerals, research or other valuable things.

PS:
To see your current limits, look on the budget screen at the very bottom.

[Jtownsend]

Ah, well that makes clear the need for harmony! And the cultural traits? Ought my drearily predictable minmax be scientists, or Berzerkers? Or at least, which bonuses/maluses are or aren't working?

[Combat Wombat]

I believe they all work correctly

[douglas]

Minmax guide? You mean this (http://www.spaceempires.net/home/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1)?

For a minmaxed race in the stock game, berzerkers is essential for its combat bonus. Aggressiveness and Defensiveness at at least 120% are also critical (exception: religious races, see below in racial techs section). Without super-high racial combat bonuses, your ships will get creamed.

Next in importance is maintenance aptitude, which should always be at least 110%, preferably higher if you have the points. Maintenance aptitude is unusual in that you actually get more benefit out of each extra point as you raise it higher. You see, the real benefit of maintenance aptitude isn't how much you save on maintenance; it's how many more ships you can afford to maintain. 110% compared to 100%, for a 10% difference you can support 67% more ships. 120% compared to 110%, for a 10% difference you can support THREE TIMES as many ships, or FIVE TIMES as many as with 100%.

Next up, take advanced storage. 20% more facility space is like a 20% bonus to ALL production.

Next up, construction rates. To really take advantage of high maintenance aptitude, you'll have to be able to build all those ships quickly. That means high construction aptitude, usually with hardy industrialists added on. Note that hardy industrialist is worthless if you don't also raise construction aptitude, since you can get the same effect for planets and a greater effect for base/ship space yards for the same cost by raising construction aptitude to 125%. If you do both, however, they stack and you have effectively raised the threshold of increased cost for construction aptitude by 20%.

After that, increase intelligence and mining aptitude as much as you can afford. None of the other characteristics are really important, and you can lower them a lot without much concern. Refining aptitude and, depending on your play style, repair aptitude should be dropped less than the rest, and be careful not to lower the combination of environmental resistance and reproduction so low that you get 0% population growth. Typically, drop environmental resistance to 51% and raise reproduction a few points to compensate.

Racial techs:

Deeply Religious:
If it isn't banned and you expect the game to be fairly long with some time to develop before first contact, ALWAYS take this. If you do, you may want to drop aggressiveness to 80%, or even 75%, as it will become irrelevant as soon as you research Religious Technology 4. Doing this is a bit of a risk in games with smaller galaxies and earlier encounters, though, as it will really hurt before you get the Talisman, and give an extra incentive to take you out early.

Crystalline:
Take it if you feel like it. If you do, ignore the weapons and just get the crystalline armor. It's almost as powerful as shields for protection in the late game, and is a lot cheaper. It's also highly vulnerable to shield generator destroying weapons, so watch out for anyone using those.

Organic:
Can be good. Weapons aren't powerful, but they're cheap and cost mostly or all organics, which speeds up build times. The armor is very good until you get decent phased shields, then it becomes obsolete. I take it mainly for the replicant centers.

Psychic:
The system-wide training facilities can be good, not much use otherwise.

Temporal:
Weapons rip through shields astoundingly fast, but they cost much more radioactives than standard weapons. Temporal space yards are great in the late game for really fast construction.


About stockpiles, don't worry about them in the early game, but once you get resource converters or start doing a lot of retrofitting, remember that both of those can only use what's in storage.

[Fyron]

So, eh, help? I've read the minmax guide, which is in a post on this forum but not at the site where it is most often linked to.

Eh? Are you refering to the following article?

http://www.spaceempires.net/home/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1

I am not aware of it being on the forums anywhere...

I can not possibly stress the importance of Berzerker culture enough... those 10% combat bonuses are crucial. Combat bonuses are of utmost importance in SE4. You must get as many as possible from traits and culture, then from training, CS, ECM, stealth armor, etc. Do not forget training! 40% penalty to offense and defense is going to make you lose.

The only other culture that can really try to compete is Merchants, and only then if you take 115 maintenance aptitude (to get the minimum 5% maintenance rates for your ships) and hefty construction bonuses. The idea is to spam the Berzerker enemy with as many ships as you can... Scientists is a rather weak culture.

[Jtownsend]

(removed 10 foot url) "Re: PBW Strategy Guide (Help Please)" is the thread. It may be as old as the hills, but Spacebadger did repost the substance of the article.

For the record, I went with Berz and minimums on Physical Strength, Cunning, Farming, and Repair, with 81 on ER and Savvy (likely to be trade in this game.) 120 intelligence, attack, defend, construction and maintenance, and 105 on reproduction. Advanced Storage techniques.

I was shooting for generic. I appreciate that the 80s are probably not optimal choices with good gameplay, but there was nothing else I quite wanted enough to sack them, given that most of my boosted abilities were at 120.

Anyway, many of the players will be new which is a wild-card factor anyway, so I hope it will suffice. Thanks for the help, all. Any other suggestions happily accepted.

[Fyron]

Ah. The copy on SpaceEmpires.net that I linked to is slightly updated from the one in that old thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Good luck on PBW. And remember, there's no such thing as being surrounded. It's just a target-rich environment. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Jtownsend]

Ok, a few more questions if folks are bored enough to answer -

1. An emergency build 11 colony ships - wise? These will have to be 3 engines only with my 120 construction, afaik.

2. Early research - I understand I want minelayers for the near sides of warp points? And there is a tech bonus on turn 1? What might I want to spend that on? My ideal fleet "shape" from what I've read, is destroyers/light cruisers with direct fire weapons and some PDC. How do I get there? I'm sorry to be a bit RTFF, but I'm not getting that great a grasp of the tech tree even with future techs made visible with the game mechanics.

3. Early facility builds - is there sort of a basic rote for the 1-5 facility colonies and then another basic rote for larger, wealthier colonies?

I likely have to start today, and I've been working too much to do any reading or playing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I'm sure I'll pick it all up, but I'd rather get clobbered as little as possible in the interim. Thanks for the help thus far.

[Fyron]

Jtownsend said:
1. An emergency build 11 colony ships - wise? These will have to be 3 engines only with my 120 construction, afaik.

You can either retrofit them to add the rest of the engines, or you can take the Hardy Industrialists racial trait. I prefer the latter myself.


2. Early research - I understand I want minelayers for the near sides of warp points?

Mines are good in the early game. As are Point Defense Cannons. Mines are available from Construction tech, then Mines. PDC are available from Military Science, then Point Defense Weapons.


And there is a tech bonus on turn 1?

Yes. some extra research points, depending on game settings.


What might I want to spend that on?

Whatever you want to get first. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Construction or Military Science is usually a good idea.


My ideal fleet "shape" from what I've read, is destroyers/light cruisers with direct fire weapons and some PDC. How do I get there?

Light Cruisers are available with Ship Construction 4. Due to mounts, you do not want to build any warship Destroyers after you get Light Cruisers, except possibly as missile ships or boarding ships. But direct fire weapon ships should all be Light Cruisers. They do 50% more damage than Destroyers due to Large Weapon Mounts.


3. Early facility builds - is there sort of a basic rote for the 1-5 facility colonies and then another basic rote for larger, wealthier colonies?

Depends on what resources you need to produce more of, really. Minerals and research are quite important. Some of those colony ships you build should travel to semi-distant systems, colonize small worlds, and build Space Yards. They will then start building new colony ships.

[Suicide Junkie]

1) You may want to spend some of the last few turns building spaceyard bases in orbit of your homeworld, thus permanently increasing your total build rate. Such bases are handy for repeat building units, while the planet builds the ships to carry them.

By the time your E-Build year is up, you should have new spaceyards operating on the first colonies, and can build more colony or war ships from there.

2) In the game setup, starting resources are set anywhere from 20k to 100k.
This applies to minerals/organics/rads and research as well.
Whatever you would have normally researched is good.
Some people will use it to complete one of the large theoretical techs early as well.

It is hard to justify a 50k theoretical when you're only producing 3-5k of research a turn, but the bonus can make it easier to think about doing it to get at the techs it unlocks.
In the end, you're still going to get and spend the same amount of points, so the choice depends entirely on your needs at the time.

[Jtownsend]

I believe the game is starting at medium tech, with a 100k bonus on the first turn. It may also be a crowded universe, with 3-4 systems per player. That considered, and with my non-HI race, I am considering doing without EB and making a faster colony ship, every second turn.

I'm leaning towards Stoney's idea of a transport ship with 2 mines early on, to stake out as many likely border warp points as I can. Continued advice along the veins already given here is much appreciated.

EDIT: Bit of important information - the game will be medium galactic edge, unless the players top 10 or 12, in which case large. The players start out with a bonus 100,000 on the first turn, and 3 good planets! Which rather alters my worry about having to have a cheapie colony ship if I did a land rush. On the other hand, given the size of the universe and the three starting good planets, I'm not sure EBing 33 colony ships would be very sane either. Brilliant advice?

[Suicide Junkie]

Consider the number of nearby planets too, and don't worry too much about the slow build time.

If you don't have many colonizable worlds in your homesystem, then you'll probably want to go with the faster colony ships.
If you've got 5 or more colonizable worlds, then with the 1-turn colony ships, you'll have your homesystem colonized in the first year, PLUS a bunch more colony ships exploring through the closest warppoints.

You may want to slip a fast 1-turn scoutship into the mix, to peek in the neightbouring systems, and keep your slower colony ships from exploring dead-ends.

[TurinTurambar]

This is an EXTREMEly useful "newb-thread." Will post a link to it in. "Gameplay Tips and Tricks."

Turin

[Jtownsend]

A thought - I realize that things like fleet design depend very much on circumstances. However, assuming all things are as generic as possible, is there a "semi optimal" sort of fleet design within each "fleet era," IE the pre-capship era of escorts, then the small capships, etc?

If I were playing with normal tech I'd ask "what is a good turn 25, 50, 100, 150 ship or something like that, but I suspect 3 planets with medium tech and good quality with 100k to start is a bit ideosyncractic.

I'm curious as to whether, with 3 good planets, I should specialize at the get-go into 3 different roles, or build colony ships with all - and of course, whether to emergency build. If I were to emergency build, I could get 3360x1.5x3= 15120 minerals worth of construction on turn one, which would be 5040 minerals that wouldn't evaporate on turn 2 from lack of storage capacity. On the other hand, in a crowded universe it might be better to accept my 3 colony-ships-per-2-years - 1.5 a year, except all in the same year - expansion rate.

[Jtownsend]

Not to egregiously self-bump, but does anyone have early-ship design ideas for a medium tech start on 3 good planets? Or perhaps advice on which of the weapons lines to research or avoid. I'm not planning on developing missles, I'm unconvinced on drones (but am willing to be wrong on that) and I can't decide what to splurge on in the first turn with a 100k bonus. I could pick up Adv. Military Science and get training facilities, but then I'd be researching all the other early techs without my turn 1 bonus.

I'm also a touch unclear - why bother with ship training facilities if I could train "ghost" stacks with single ships in orbit, then merge these with my frontline fleets? Are there potential perils or drawbacks to this method?

As well, in a fairly amateur-level game with 3 starting systems and 8-10 players crammed in a medium galaxy, might it not be a good idea to turtle in my three systems if they are loaded with planets and have relatively defensible warp geography?

I don't really want to waste early fleets getting blown to smithereens when I'm not even sure of basic ship design principles. Meson blasters, or energy stream weapons, or DUC? I can see on the tree that, for example, energy stream weapons have a longer tech tree, but in the meantime are they adequate weapons?

Also, in trying to simulate a drone-ship vs. direct-fire ship battle with the simulator (we're playing simultaneous turns, obviously) I made a red and blue simulation with a fleet of ships with drone launchers, a fleet of weaponized (rather than suicidal) drones and an opposing fleet of beam-and-PDC vessels. The beam vessels one, but I couldn't get the opposing, putatively drone launching vessels to close along with their drones - whatever orders I gave their fleet, they fled into a corner of the battlefield and waited for certain death.

Now, I don't really want to bother fiddling with drones in my fleet, so I was just as glad to see the drone side lose. But it's hardly a fair test when the drone-launching ships didn't close to add their direct-fire firepower. Is this an oddity of orders, or was I simply putting orders in wrong?

My first turn is (presuming no laggards) due tommorow. At the moment I am planning to do standard (non-emergency) builds of the best colony ship I can make with 3x3350 production over two turns.

[Zereth]

Jtownsend said:
I could pick up Adv. Military Science and get training facilities, but then I'd be researching all the other early techs without my turn 1 bonus.


Make it up by capturing ships and anaylzing them for the tech.

I'm also a touch unclear - why bother with ship training facilities if I could train "ghost" stacks with single ships in orbit, then merge these with my frontline fleets? Are there potential perils or drawbacks to this method?


Because you A: need the ship training facilities to train those ships in the first place, and B: because relying on Neural Networks showing up in a ruin _And_ you getting to it quickly isn't a very good strategy?


I don't really want to waste early fleets getting blown to smithereens when I'm not even sure of basic ship design principles. Meson blasters, or energy stream weapons, or DUC? I can see on the tree that, for example, energy stream weapons have a longer tech tree, but in the meantime are they adequate weapons?


DUC cannons are the best early-game weapon, while Phased Polaron Beams are good after that, especially if your opponents aren't using phased shields yet, and Anti-Proton beams finally pay off somewhere around level 10.

I'm not exaclty a veteran, of course, so somebody who's been playing longer might have more insight.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
Not to egregiously self-bump, but does anyone have early-ship design ideas for a medium tech start on 3 good planets? Or perhaps advice on which of the weapons lines to research or avoid.


Let's see, I just checked what medium tech gives you, and it appears to be just level one in all theoretical techs plus two levels of energy stream weapons and energy pulse weapons in addition to what you get regardless of starting tech settings. I'd say you have two good options for early weapons tech research. Either spend your first turn bonus on Physics 2 and research Phased Energy Weapons to the max, or go straight into Energy Stream Weapons. Personally, I would go with Phased Energy, at least until everyone has phased shields and your research is well into the multiple hundred thousands per turn. Normally, Projectile Weapons would be my first choice for early game, but they eventually become obsolete and you already have a head start on the late game best weapon.

Jtownsend said:
I'm not planning on developing missles, I'm unconvinced on drones (but am willing to be wrong on that)


Neither are worth getting.

Jtownsend said:
and I can't decide what to splurge on in the first turn with a 100k bonus. I could pick up Adv. Military Science and get training facilities, but then I'd be researching all the other early techs without my turn 1 bonus.


Training facilities are good, but if you're going to spend the turn one bonus on that kind of thing, I'd go for one level in each of sensors and combat support instead. OTOH, mines are critical for early defense, and troops can easily compensate for 50% happiness, and you can get level 1 in both with the bonus. There's also Physics 2 for Phased Energy Weapons if you go that route.

Jtownsend said:
I'm also a touch unclear - why bother with ship training facilities if I could train "ghost" stacks with single ships in orbit, then merge these with my frontline fleets? Are there potential perils or drawbacks to this method?


The single-ship "ghost" fleets are useful only for fleet training. Each individual ship still needs to be trained to get ship experience, and fleet and ship experience stack.

Jtownsend said:
As well, in a fairly amateur-level game with 3 starting systems and 8-10 players crammed in a medium galaxy, might it not be a good idea to turtle in my three systems if they are loaded with planets and have relatively defensible warp geography?


If you actually have three separate systems and they have considerably above average planet loads, that could work. I'd still say you should at least try to get a few more systems, though.

Jtownsend said:
I don't really want to waste early fleets getting blown to smithereens when I'm not even sure of basic ship design principles. Meson blasters, or energy stream weapons, or DUC? I can see on the tree that, for example, energy stream weapons have a longer tech tree, but in the meantime are they adequate weapons?


DUC is strictly an early game weapon. Anti-proton Beams tend to lag one-three levels behind DUC in damage, but their cap is much higher and they reach DUC's cap reasonably early. With a medium-tech start, don't bother with DUC's. The other good choice is Phased Energy Weapons. Just five levels in addition to Physics 2, and you have the damage of an APB XII and you ignore non-phased shields. The only downsides are two less range and greater cost, particularly in radioactives.

Jtownsend said:
Also, in trying to simulate a drone-ship vs. direct-fire ship battle with the simulator (we're playing simultaneous turns, obviously) I made a red and blue simulation with a fleet of ships with drone launchers, a fleet of weaponized (rather than suicidal) drones and an opposing fleet of beam-and-PDC vessels. The beam vessels one, but I couldn't get the opposing, putatively drone launching vessels to close along with their drones - whatever orders I gave their fleet, they fled into a corner of the battlefield and waited for certain death.

Now, I don't really want to bother fiddling with drones in my fleet, so I was just as glad to see the drone side lose. But it's hardly a fair test when the drone-launching ships didn't close to add their direct-fire firepower. Is this an oddity of orders, or was I simply putting orders in wrong?


You had the fleet's strategy set to break formation, correct? That's good, but it also means that each ship uses its own strategy. To change ship strategies, go to the ship design screen, click the "Stats/Strategy" button, select the design, and click the arrow beside the default strategy.

Jtownsend said:
My first turn is (presuming no laggards) due tommorow. At the moment I am planning to do standard (non-emergency) builds of the best colony ship I can make with 3x3350 production over two turns.


With that construction rate, you can emergency build the same ship in one turn. If you then turn off emergency build the next turn, you effectively get the ship one turn early and get a free turn of slow build construction that you can use, for example, for police troops or mines. Besides, even in a crowded galaxy, grabbing lots of land and settling it quickly is important, so I'd go ahead and go all out emergency build until borders are firmly established.

[Kevin Arisa]

The problem with the drone carrier running from battle is probably because you dont have the strategy for it's design set. You need to open the design window and click the stats\strategy button to change it's default strategy. This will always revert to game default when you upgrade or copy the design so you have to remember to set it back.

[EDIT] Darn. Douglas beat me by 2 minutes. I need to type faster. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[douglas]

Kevin Arisa said:
[EDIT] Darn. Douglas beat me by 2 minutes. I need to type faster. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


And I did it with a much longer post, too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

[Jtownsend]

Appreciate the footwork, guys.

I didn't realize fleet training required ruins... Still wrestling with the tech tree, although finding one in PDF format with actual visual branches was great.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
I didn't realize fleet training required ruins


http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif Unless you mean something entirely different from what I think you do, you're completely wrong. Fleet training facilities are available from Advanced Military Science research, just like ship training. No need to find any particular ancient ruins and colonize them to get the tech.

[Jtownsend]

I was going by Zareth's comment - but perhaps he didn't know I meant a medium tech game and was just thinking it was an outlandish early tech to strive for. Basically, I was just struck by the importance of training, and didn't realize both ship and fleet training counted seperately and stacked. Thinking they were redundant, I figured it would be much better to research fleet training and create "cadre" fleets which I'd then send to the front - not a bad idea, but apparently only half of what training constitutes.

I'm still not sure about how to spend the 100k research. Granted, a single huge tech gets itself out of the way in a hurry, but really, the same techs need resarching whichever order I do them in, and it would seem that the most urgent priorities are really things like getting minelayers out ASAP unless I plan to gank a neighbor with an energy pulse weapon without having other foundation technologies. And then, the first levels of that weapon aren't too decisive, right? So maybe something dull like Frigates - Armour - Mines - Shields - something or other? I get the 100k spent whatever I do, and it doesn't really give me an advantage vis a vis the other 8 guys with the same 100k to spend.

[Fyron]

Zereth was refering to the strategy of only training a few ships (still train the fleets) and relying on Neural Combat Nets (a ruins tech item) to get the ship training bonus for all of your ships.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
I'm still not sure about how to spend the 100k research. Granted, a single huge tech gets itself out of the way in a hurry, but really, the same techs need resarching whichever order I do them in, and it would seem that the most urgent priorities are really things like getting minelayers out ASAP unless I plan to gank a neighbor with an energy pulse weapon without having other foundation technologies.


Correct. Nifty weapons won't do you a bit of good if you run into a minefield you can't sweep.

Jtownsend said:
And then, the first levels of that weapon aren't too decisive, right?


Actually, with Phased Polaron Beams, they can be. You get 6 range from level 1, and at level 2 they match a DUC V's damage out to range 4. They also skip normal shields from the very beginning, making any research anyone puts into shields worse than useless until Shields level 6 at least.

Jtownsend said:
So maybe something dull like Frigates - Armour - Mines - Shields - something or other? I get the 100k spent whatever I do, and it doesn't really give me an advantage vis a vis the other 8 guys with the same 100k to spend.


Don't bother with shields until you can get level 7 or 8 in as many turns of research. In a medium tech cost game, that means at least about 250000 research points per turn. Armor is a good choice, and something you should continue to research at least to level 4 immediately for stealth armor (free level 1 cloaking), and eventually to the max for the extra defense bonus. Frigates aren't a great deal more powerful than escorts until you have a bit more tech that's "essential" equipment on everything. A better weapon will make much more of a difference early on in how powerful your ships are. I'd say go Mines - Armor - Physics on turn one, and repeat the Armor until you've got level four, then finish off Physics 2 and start on Phased Energy Weapons. You should have Armor 4 and Physics 2 finished on turn 6 or 7 with this research order and three good homeworlds.

BTW, a few things you should know about mines: planets can build and launch mines without a space yard - given one turn of peace to build mines, a new colony can render itself almost invulnerable in the very early game; minelayers can lay mines while cloaked - you can use this in the early game to arrange some very nasty surprises for anyone who attacks you.

[Jtownsend]

I'm pretty satisfied with that tech order, actually. I must have missed the substantial range on the PPB.

As Armor and physics are likely to be the two things queued for a while with about ~26k research iirc, would you advocate even points or letting the armour techs finish first one by one, as would happen otherwise?

[Fyron]

It is definitely better to finish tech areas sooner, rather than splitting research into multiple areas. ALWAYS disable "divide points evenly." It makes you waste a lot of research points...

[douglas]

Keep putting armor back in the front of the queue each time you gain a level, and definitely turn off "divide points evenly". Besides any issue of it being better to get one tech at 2 turns and another at 4 than getting both at 4, the divide evenly setting actually wastes points each time you finish a level in a tech. The amount allocated to the tech is ALWAYS an equal share of your total, regardless of how much is left to do, and any excess just disappears.

[Zereth]

Imperator Fyron said:
Zereth was refering to the strategy of only training a few ships (still train the fleets) and relying on Neural Combat Nets (a ruins tech item) to get the ship training bonus for all of your ships.


Correct, although it was mostly an unessescarily sarcastic and obtuse way of saying "Becuase that doesn't work".

However, everyone's making comments about spening your first-turn bonus on things like Phased Energy Weapons or Advanced Military Science. I must be missing something, since isn't it impossible to add those to the research queue until you've researched thier prequistes?

[Fyron]

Zereth said:
However, everyone's making comments about spening your first-turn bonus on things like Phased Energy Weapons or Advanced Military Science. I must be missing something, since isn't it impossible to add those to the research queue until you've researched thier prequistes?

If you use Low Tech Start, yes. But if you use Medium Tech Start, which the game in question is using, you start with 1 level in most of the theoretical tech areas. AMS and PPBs are impossible to research on turn 1, since you need level 2 in the theoretical reqs. But you can get them a lot sooner than on a low tech start, as you only need to research level 2 instead of both level 1 and 2.

[Zereth]

Ahhh, okay, I was worried I was missing some way to set it to research level 1, then go direclty to level 2 when it was done. Glad to know I haven't been shooting myself in the foot.

[Jtownsend]

I've sent off my first turn in accordance with what we've discussed. Unfortunately, it's looking like a very crowded game and my 3 system empire has 6 "border" warppoints not including internal ones. I'll send the first colony ships out praying for dead ends, but there's nothing obvious that way (although I suppose there's no way of knowing.)

Although this clearly gives me a disadvantage at turtling, my tech aims (PPB) seem to accord with that strategy. So, next turn I'll be designing (if not sending out) minelayers.

The design I noticed in the FAQ was a small transport with 2 layers and cargo space. This struck me as a lot of cargo-to-laying ratio for a defensive minelayer. If I am near to my mine-producing worlds - in system - wouldn't devoting more space to laying components and less to cargo make sense? I'm not sure if advanced storage has an impact on this particular cargo issue.

EDIT: Also, I can put 1 or 2 small warheads on my 10kt mine. Would putting one in to get more (harder to sweep) or two for a harder hitting mine make more sense in the early game? Some players are smart enough to sweep, but on the other hand, simply annihilating wayward visitors also has a certain appeal.

As well, although I realize this would most often depend on what one discovers in neighboring systems, how early should I start slipping other constructions into my (EB) queues on the three homeworlds? Space stations for extra construction would be done in one turn, as would most any ship I could design.

There are some things I don't know when I'm meant to start with - mines, troops, weapon platforms - well, units, really. I am a peaceful 81 ER 102 Hap Berzerker race, so I don't expect my people to be naturally despondant. But I've also not experienced an in-game reverse to know how many troops I need and when.

[Zereth]

Doesn't a basic mine layer hold exactly as many mines as it can deploy in a turn? If you've got them near your colonies on repeat orders, you probably want to have it jsut full of layers. (Differnet story for sattelites, though, as those can drop... four a turn, IIRC, but only hold one.)

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
Although this clearly gives me a disadvantage at turtling, my tech aims (PPB) seem to accord with that strategy. So, next turn I'll be designing (if not sending out) minelayers.

The design I noticed in the FAQ was a small transport with 2 layers and cargo space. This struck me as a lot of cargo-to-laying ratio for a defensive minelayer. If I am near to my mine-producing worlds - in system - wouldn't devoting more space to laying components and less to cargo make sense? I'm not sure if advanced storage has an impact on this particular cargo issue.


That seems like a rather imbalanced design to me, too. My first minelaying design is typically a small transport with 5 layers, 2 cargo bays, and stealth armor. This allows laying 10 mines per turn, gives 40 mines worth of cargo space, and allows cloaked deployment. You'll be getting stealth armor soon enough that I'd recommend waiting for it.

Jtownsend said:
EDIT: Also, I can put 1 or 2 small warheads on my 10kt mine. Would putting one in to get more (harder to sweep) or two for a harder hitting mine make more sense in the early game? Some players are smart enough to sweep, but on the other hand, simply annihilating wayward visitors also has a certain appeal.


Fill your mines full with warheads. Enough of the cost is in the mine hull itself that it really isn't worth cutting their explosive power in half just to get a little bit more numbers. Also, I forgot to recommend getting Explosive Warheads 2 on turn one. Put it in the queue between Armor and Physics. It will double your warheads damage with only a minor increase in cost.

Jtownsend said:
As well, although I realize this would most often depend on what one discovers in neighboring systems, how early should I start slipping other constructions into my (EB) queues on the three homeworlds? Space stations for extra construction would be done in one turn, as would most any ship I could design.


Well, with a pretty crowded galaxy, you'll probably establish your borders before your homeworlds run out of emergency build. Once borders are established, build a base space yard or two at each homeworld and start them on mines and minelayers. If your neighbors get off to a slower start and your borders keep expanding, keep on building colonizers until the last two turns of emergency build, then switch to the base space yards, and maybe put in a minelayer too. Note: you actually get 11 turns of emergency build before you're forced to stop. Once your homeworlds are on slow build, have them work on mines.

Jtownsend said:
There are some things I don't know when I'm meant to start with - mines, troops, weapon platforms - well, units, really. I am a peaceful 81 ER 102 Hap Berzerker race, so I don't expect my people to be naturally despondant. But I've also not experienced an in-game reverse to know how many troops I need and when.


Well, in the really crowded galaxy you're describing, it would be a good idea to have each colony put as many mines as it can build in one turn in orbit, but hold off on building for minelayers until you have your base space yards ready. With your happiness settings, troops shouldn't be necessary for quite a while. I usually don't bother with weapon platforms at all. You need too many of them to make a real difference, especially if the enemy can afford enough minesweepers to sweep your biggest minefields.

[Jtownsend]

As it so happens, I accidentally loaded a testbed turn and played it instead of my normal turn. The actual game is in a large universe, but as my empire happened to be a bit dispersed and the geography a bit kinder, I can probably block off 6 ok systems at a cost of 7 external warp-points to guard. If I stretched, I could make it 7:7, but it would involve risk and my only breathable in the 7th system has lousy stats.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
As it so happens, I accidentally loaded a testbed turn and played it instead of my normal turn.


Well in that case, add Explosive Warheads 2 to your turn one research queue before Physics.

Jtownsend said:
The actual game is in a large universe, but as my empire happened to be a bit dispersed and the geography a bit kinder, I can probably block off 6 ok systems at a cost of 7 external warp-points to guard. If I stretched, I could make it 7:7, but it would involve risk and my only breathable in the 7th system has lousy stats.


http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif How do you know about that? Did you take Ancient Race, is the map available to everyone for viewing, or what? (Edit: never mind. I forgot that multiple planet starts also give you a few extra system maps.) And do those "lousy stats" include size? If it's medium or larger, maybe even small, it's values don't really matter as far as how valuable it is. Good values = good resource producing planet. Bad values = good research/intelligence planet. You need plenty of each. What really matters most for how valuable a planet is is how many facilities you can put on it.

[Jtownsend]

I just meant min/org/rad values. It has some largish ones, when I get different colony types in trade hopefully. I actually may gun for 7 systems / 7 guarded warppoints. It is a 10 person, 74 system galactic edge, so that's really just my fair patch of turnips. The 10k for warheads struck me as a bargain and is done. The planets are working doubletime on colony ships. Meeting the neighbors is next, I guess.

[douglas]

Don't settle for your "fair share" if you don't have to. If the random placement gave you some extra room or your neighbors are slow expanding, take full advantage. The more territory you control when initial borders are established, the better.

[Jtownsend]

Hey - things are going fine. Not much contact now, but I lucked into ruins that had Fighters on them - thanks, 100k research item!

One thing I'm curious about - it is looking like Gas Giant colony tech will be hard to come by in this game. I can still capture existing gas giant worlds with troops, right?

[Alneyan]

You can capture anything with troops: planet type and atmosphere are irrelevant.

[Fyron]

Develop Ship Capture tech, available with Military Science, and build boarding ships. Capture some gas giant colony ships and analyze them for the technology. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Atrocities]

Imperator Fyron said:
Develop Ship Capture tech, available with Military Science, and build boarding ships. Capture some gas giant colony ships and analyze them for the technology. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif



Or trade the AI for the technology. They often give it up pretty easly. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Jtownsend]

There's no AI, (10 players on a medium map I think) and only one identified gas player, who may not be near me very soon. I'm hoping to luck into an amenable gas player, if there is one.

I have 4 pretty good systems blocked off and colonized, I've stopped my EB at turn 9, have PPB3s, PD, stealth armour and thanks to a set of ruins, Fighters 1. This gives me (with the end of my EB) 3 light carriers which are probably the finest in the galaxy owing to heavy mounts. My useless worlds - I built too few shipyards, not reckoning with the impact of my limited expansion - have been churning out pretty basic fighters that will hopefully make good warp point fodder while I build more CYs, SSYs, and PPB escorts.

Only one contact thus far, and I'm looking to expand into an adjacent colony I didn't notice before, which will not add any extra warp points if I can grab it and hold the other side. Not sure if it was visible at the start - if it was, it was an oversight not to colonize it immediately.

[Alneyan]

The heavy mount of Light Carriers isn't so much of an asset (if memory serves, it deals 12.5% more damage per kt than the Large Mount, but is bigger and can be more easily damaged), but the hull itself is sturdy enough: compared to a Light Cruiser, it has 420 more hitpoints, all the cargo you will ever need, but is slightly more expensive and lacks the 10% defence bonus of the Light Cruiser.

Light Carriers also make impressive minelayers due to their high basic cargo space: you can focus on the minelayers components themselves, since your fighter bays can carry 42 small mines already. Add the Stealth Armour, and you have a nice vessel able to lay twenty mines a turn or so, while carrying 60 and able to avoid detection. Of course, the problem is to avoid running into enemy minefields... but that's what scouts are for, or fighters. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Jtownsend]

I don't think my initial carrier design was the greatest, to be truthful. I didn't think to go with mines - to be honest, since I fluked into fighters I've kindo of lost my yen for mines. I can appreciate the benefits, but anywhere that can be building mines now can be churning out 3 or 4 zippy little no-maint system pickets. Mind you, a PD escort could probably wipe out a few million of them.

I'm putting my 27k or so research towards Light Cruisers at the moment. It might be a bit of a big research project as sensors aren't yet completed, but I think at the level of the game's skill level and with a pretty huge fighter swarm building on each chokepoint, mostly owing to my shortage of shipbuilding (being remedied) I might as well have a hull worth building when I have the shipyards in a turn or two.

[Jtownsend]

Update - Turn 18

No hostile contact beyond a blasted colony ship - R&T alliance with that player now

20 colonies in 5 systems, 4 borders, each guarded with a few capships and a mess of crude fighters - fighter tech being a freebie as I've mentioned.

Score is 212k, ranking is 2nd, 52 tech levels, 29k research per turn, 15.1b pop, 314 units (all fighters, I've been lazy about mines because fighters move themselves instead of me picking them up) 21 ships, including 5 or 10 PPB3 light cruisers and 3 PPB light carriers, 3 starbases around my homeworlds.

The only major threat I'm aware of in the wider universe is my relative isolation, a lowish number of SYs, my resources are still not being balanced - and one player who is playing a very fleet-heavy mercenary-mongol game and allegedly has 80 ships. I'm just about done researching intel and will soon set up a few facilities and start on counter intel projects, my only use for them.

Mid-game or late-beginning tips are very welcome.

One particular worry is that fleets don't seem to be "pooling" supplies as I would expect. Instead my capships are 55/3000 and so on while my fighter groups in the same fleet are often 2/3rds full. What's up with this? How do supply pools work, what is the easiest way to deal with supply when fighters are in space draining them, and any info on supply mechanics generally is greatly welcome.

[Fyron]

Jtownsend said:
One particular worry is that fleets don't seem to be "pooling" supplies as I would expect. Instead my capships are 55/3000 and so on while my fighter groups in the same fleet are often 2/3rds full. What's up with this? How do supply pools work, what is the easiest way to deal with supply when fighters are in space draining them, and any info on supply mechanics generally is greatly welcome.

Fighters and ships do not share supplies. This was done to prevent an easy exploit of launching fighters, fleeting them to gain supplies, then recovering the fighters. Launch them again and they have full supplies.

Also, note that supply sharing only happens after you hit end turn. The supplies are not shared during the middle of the turn as soon as you add ships to a fleet.

[Jtownsend]

Ok, interesting. A few more questions:

So, my fleets are sharing each turn? So I should wait till a few CL's I'm building get into the line then assess my supply problem? Or will I want some supply ships regardless?

And the fighters. So recovering and launching will replenish them, but will it cost the carrier? And how can I make sure the one fleet that is currently yellow will be recovered rather than others? I have an awful lot of the miserable things.

Also, how do you manipulate the base fighter units, the groups, beyond putting them into fleets? Do they merge on their own? I have some in groups of 2 and some in groups of 11, and I'm not quite sure how it's happening.

[Suicide Junkie]

Adding some supply ships to your fleets always helps. Adding some now means you'll reduce your current supply woes and you won't need to add as many later on when your fleet gets bigger.

Launching fighters does not cost any supplies.
Fighters have full supply when launched.
Its when you have the fighters in the same fleet as ships, that you lose supply.
Use shift-click to make the fighters move with the fleet when you need them to.

To control the grouping of fighters, you can use the strategies to launch in groups of 5,8,10, etc in combat.
Outside of combat, you'll have to launch one group, move them away, then launch your next group. Otherwise they'll all bunch up into one huge stack.

Any fighters launched (outside of combat) while there is a fighter group in the sector will be added to the existing fighter group.

[Jtownsend]

I'm still perplexed about fighter management. They group as they're launched, I gather, but where did these 11 fighter units come from? I don't recall missing launches, and even then it's an odd multiple. Do the groups merge under some circumstances?

Good to know that I need to seperate fleets between fighters and capships. What about ideal fighter group size? And if I transport the fighters from one system to the next in a carrier and launch them, will they be in one big blob? Is that bad?

[Suicide Junkie]

They stick onto existing groups when you launch them.

You may have had a stack of 3 sitting around after battle losses killed them down to an odd number, and then tried to launch 8.

Those new ones stick onto the first fighter stack they see.

---

If you load fighters up and relaunch, they'll all end up in the same stack.
You'll have to launch, move, launch, move...
They can only stick to existing stacks in the same sector, after all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Jtownsend]

That sounds sufficiently irritating not to be worthwhile, though... Multiple turn operations just to split up stacks? Anyway, good to know I guess. Would there be advantages to having a lot of different stacks from a PD perspective? I've not done enough combat to understand PD, because my chief use of fighters is on WPs so they don't have so much approach time, but it's very hard to set up a simulator to show a close-engagement with multiple stacks of fighters, so I've not done much testing.

Heh, it'd have been easier if I'd never gotten fighters from ruins http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Jtownsend]

It's now turn 25. I'm in first place, 5 settled systems. I have built a 40ish ship fleet, of which about 2/3rds are PPBIII light cruisers.

Thing is, I've faced off the fleet-heavy number 2 player, I've long had peace with number 4, number 7 or 8 is likely to be soon cutt off by number 4, and the only other opening pases a 3-way nebula system that is likely to be a mess to expand my empire through.

I have some moderate hopes for tortoising and using my comparitively good position and race design to build up safely.

What are some powerful research directions to move in at around turn 25? I am still on engines 2, PPBIII, sensors 1, light cruiser construction. I have fighters, mines, and thanks to a ruin, Massive Shield Generators, although I'm not sure with my large number of planets if that's practical.

For the meantime I'm backfilling and I'll probably pick up a few backward techs like my engines. But direction is much appreciated.

[NullAshton]

Hehe, it was funny in a PBW game, when 2 colony ships with no weapons attacked each other. My colony ship won http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[douglas]

Better sensors are good. Combat support for ECM is also a must. You should get point-defense cannons up to at least level 3 or 4. If you went through with the plan to get armor 4, go ahead and get 5 and 6 as well, and start putting one of each specialty armor on every combat ship. Your other main priority at this point should be military science 2, followed by advanced military science for the training facilities. Oh, and finishing off the last two levels of PPB is also a good idea.

Edit: Massive shield generators are never worth it in stock. You can get more protection for less cost from weapon platforms.

[Jtownsend]

Good to know. I've gotten MS2 and will have mil science when the current turn is processed. Is there a significent next step in ship construction I should worry about beyond light cruisers? I know people like them, but I don't know what the next "good level" is, if any.

The fact that I might be in a peaceful situation for a while makes me wonder if economic choices might be best. I'll have to read up on whatever monoliths are, and I'm thinking of getting the atmosphere changing facility I, if it is adequate, since I'm unlikely to capture breathers. Other 'economic' techs developments would be good to know about. I'm browsing the complete tech tree pdf for the stock game, but it's a bit confusing since one only gets the tech names. I've been busy with work and I'm starting to experience the almost amusing sensation of having outplayed my research - that is, I've done very well and gotten very comfortable with my opening game, taken nicely from the book and you folks' kind advice, but I'm suddenly looking at each turn and going, "Oh crud, now what?"

EDIT: Now that I check again, I see that the planetary change techs start with climate control rather than atmosphere changing; I'd confused the two. Drat.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
Good to know. I've gotten MS2 and will have mil science when the current turn is processed.


I assume "MS2" is Military Science 2, and you just forgot to put "advanced" in front of "mil science". The difference is quite important. Anyway, Advanced Military Science is a very cheap tech field and very powerful. Research it at least to level 4, for the best training facilities and the cheapest to research and build cloak-detection sensors. When you get the training centers, build them on the planets with the most moons that you have. Multiple training facilities in the same sector but on different planets stack, making planets with two moons the best training sites available in stock. Assuming you don't have none breathers, make one place concentrate on ship training and another on fleet training. The main planet should have both, but domed moons only have room for one.

Jtownsend said:
Is there a significent next step in ship construction I should worry about beyond light cruisers? I know people like them, but I don't know what the next "good level" is, if any.


Going strictly for combat utility, light cruisers can last you a good long while. Cruisers are necessary for mobile space yard ships, but aren't really a big step up for fighting power. The next major step in ship construction is level 7 with battleships, which are large enough to get the heavy mount.

Jtownsend said:
The fact that I might be in a peaceful situation for a while makes me wonder if economic choices might be best. I'll have to read up on whatever monoliths are


Monoliths are all-in-one resource extractors. In the long term, they produce much more total resources than standard resource extractors, but they cost a great deal more, both in resources and time, to set up. I wouldn't recommend them until later in the game, but if you really want them, research Stellar Manipulation. I highly recommend getting Space Yards 3 first, however. Also, they're only really useful on planets with multiple high resource values.

Jtownsend said:
, and I'm thinking of getting the atmosphere changing facility I, if it is adequate, since I'm unlikely to capture breathers.


Don't. Atmosphere converters take a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to research, and another LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to give any benefit. You need Planet Utilization level 7 for the level 1 facility, and that takes 30 turns after construction to do its thing. They're just not worth it unless you have a huge amount of research or it's very late in the game.

Edit: Also, who ever said you have to capture other breathers? Try to arrange trade deals with your neighbors who have different breathers than you. You can each just load a transport with some population and then trade the transports.

Jtownsend said:
Other 'economic' techs developments would be good to know about.


Computers. Computers is the single most important economic tech in the game. It gives you facilities that give across-the-board 10%/level (max 30%) bonuses to all resource production, research, and intelligence on each planet you build them on. Levels 4-6 give the same thing, except it affects everything in the whole system, and one system facility stacks with one planet facility on each planet for a combined 69% bonus (no, that's not a typo, they multiply together like so: 1.3*1.3=1.69). Besides that, minerals extraction levels 2 and 3 are good. Beyond that, it just gives you minerals-only versions of the computer facilities that take a great deal of research to get any better than the computer facilities.

Jtownsend said:
I'm browsing the complete tech tree pdf for the stock game, but it's a bit confusing since one only gets the tech names. I've been busy with work and I'm starting to experience the almost amusing sensation of having outplayed my research - that is, I've done very well and gotten very comfortable with my opening game, taken nicely from the book and you folks' kind advice, but I'm suddenly looking at each turn and going, "Oh crud, now what?"

EDIT: Now that I check again, I see that the planetary change techs start with climate control rather than atmosphere changing; I'd confused the two. Drat.


You still haven't even come close to maxxing out most of the techs you've started researching. Keep going in ECM and CS all the way to level 3, get adv. mil. science 4, finish off PPB, get good PDC, finish off armor 6, get at least computers 3 (the higher levels may be too expensive for now), and you should consider getting the other colonization techs sometime. After that, space yards is a good choice (get levels 2 and 3 back-to-back; no need to upgrade all your space yard facilities twice), and you might consider larger ships. Once you've done all that, then you can come back here and ask what you should research next.

Edit: Oh yeah, another nice thing to get is Stellar Harnessing. The first three levels give solar collectors which generate supplies, useful for long-range ships and fleets, and 4-6 give solar sails for bonus movement.

[Jtownsend]

Excellent. Just the sort of advice I was looking for, thanks.

EDIT: In purely combat terms, how important are battleships with their heavy mounts, and are there improvements on them? I'm asking becasue of the emphasis people have put on the CL's 10% bonus and someone having mentioned that the heavy mount on a carrier is large and vulnerable in combat - and in simulator battles my carrier wasn't much of a fleet-conquering hero.

EDIT2: I know a methane breather who is likely to oblige - there's a lot of Oxys in this game - Do I need to remove the existing population of my domed worlds? This would be something of a project, I'd think.

[Renegade 13]

Yes, you must remove the old population before you can get the benefit from the new, breathable population. Personally, I just space the old population. But I'm a rather evil ruler http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

As for battleships, they allow more spaces for armor and/or shields which in are much, much better than LC's in the end. But wait until you have good shields before going for Battleships, because their extra room for shielding is, IMHO, one of their best attributes. The heavy mount does more damage per kiloton of space used, so yes it's an advantage over the LC's large mount, but takes up more space per component which renders it more likely to be destroyed first in the event of a battle. Wait on Battleships until you get more important techs, like full PPB's, ECM, and combat sensors. Stellar harnessing tech too.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
EDIT: In purely combat terms, how important are battleships with their heavy mounts, and are there improvements on them? I'm asking becasue of the emphasis people have put on the CL's 10% bonus and someone having mentioned that the heavy mount on a carrier is large and vulnerable in combat - and in simulator battles my carrier wasn't much of a fleet-conquering hero.


Actually, the greatest benefit of battleships is the extra tonnage - 200 kt more than battlecruisers. The heavy mount is just a nice extra - unless you're going up against large heavily-crystalline-armored ships, in which case it's essential.

Once you get light cruisers, ship construction just isn't a very important tech for quite a while. The step up to cruisers is only an effective 80 kt with the extra CQ/LS requirement, and comes at the cost of the 10% defense bonus. Battlecruisers get you another 100 kt, which is nice but isn't as big of a deal as ECM, CS, and good weapons and the specialty armors. Battleships are the first really major improvement in combat power with a full 200 kt extra, but you need good stuff to put on them to really make good use of them, and better engines and solar sails are highly desirable to offset their lower number of engines.

Jtownsend said:
EDIT2: I know a methane breather who is likely to oblige - there's a lot of Oxys in this game - Do I need to remove the existing population of my domed worlds? This would be something of a project, I'd think.


For a planet to be undomed, all of the population on it must breathe its atmosphere. However, there is no requirement that you dispose of the previous inhabitants in a humanitarian manner (i.e. moving them to other planets), and just stationing a transport in orbit for one turn and repeatedly transferring population and jettisonning it out into space until only the breathers are left has no negative effect besides the actual loss of population. It doesn't even lower happiness on the planet you do it on. In stock, compared with the bonus from suddenly having 5 times as many facility spaces on the planet, the population loss is inconsequential unless the planet was very highly populated. So what if you lose a 2% production bonus for having 40M population? That's nothing compared to the 400% bonus the extra space gives you.

[Fyron]

The heavy mount is just a nice extra - unless you're going up against large heavily-crystalline-armored ships, in which case it's essential.

I would have to disagree. The following are calculations of Damage Percent / Tonnage Percent to show the increase in the damage ratio compared to the unmounted version of the weapon.

Large mount: 200 / 150 = 1.33x base damage
Heavy mount: 300 / 200 = 1.5x base damage
Massive mount: 500 / 300 = 1.67x base damage

Now to look at increases in damage between mounts:

Large mounted weapons do 33% more damage than unmounted weapons.
Heavy mounted weapons do 12.7% more damage than large mounted weapons.
Massive mounted weapons do 11.3% more damage than heavy mounted weapons.

While the increase from large to heavy mount is smaller than the increase from unmounted to large, it is still 12.7% more damage than you would do from a battlecruiser. This is quite significant, and should not be underscored. In my assessment, heavy mounts are most certainly not just a "nice extra," but are as necessary to use ASAP as large mounts are.

[Jtownsend]

I take it on a largish world it's going to take a good long time even to, eh colonize space? My cargo is handled atm by 2 cargo hold minelaying destroyers. So, one ship's worth per turn?

[douglas]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif I'm not sure what you're asking about. Please clarify.

[Jtownsend]

Spacing the non-breathing pop points. In a simultaneous game, that'll mean turn after turn of moving pop to orbiting ships and then jettisoning cargo?

[douglas]

No, you can do it all in one turn for each planet. You just have to use the cargo transfer screen rather than the load population order. This requires that the cargo ship be at the planet at the start of the turn. Both transferring and jettisoning cargo happens instantaneously rather than waiting for turn processing, so you can repeatedly transfer and jettison as much as necessary all in one turn.

[TurinTurambar]

Hey, no one's mentioning any repeat orders strategy. Get a fleet of transports automated to move population off your homeworlds and out to your new large "breathers." Having 3 or 4 Huge planets full of pop. when it's time to build Stellar Manip ships is pretty major.
Also, I do believe a Large size breather full to 4000M will turn out a sophisticated Light Cruiser every 2 turns.

Edit: Let me know if I need to "i.e." that strategy for you.

[Jtownsend]

It seemed pretty clear, but I'm not sure if I'll have a heavy-enough cargo fleet when I get my breathers for it to be worthwhile - unless repeat orders means something more complex and evilly brilliant than having the computer do ferrying for me over time.

Incidentally - the word is out that I'm fielding PPBs. Do Phased Shields make PBBs really sad, or do they simply act like normal shields, making PPBs like normal weapons? The damage on PPBs is quite adequate for my needs, but if phased shields actually make them useless that'd be good to know.

And on that note, what is next after PPBs for direct fire weapons? High Energy Discharge? Seems a bit far off, although the numbers look tasty. Need more research.

[Fyron]

Phased shields cause Phased Polaron Beams to act as normal weapons.

Note that every single shield point on the ship must be from phased generators, otherwise they will count as normal, non-phased shields.

Anti-Proton Beams (energy stream weapons) are the most powerful general purpose weapon. Far cheaper to build than Phased Polaron Beams, and they have one of the highest damage ratios in the game. Combined with long range (8), they are killer. Very expensive to research, but well worth it.

Wave-Motion Beams are very weak weapons. In situations where you are only going to get one shot, they are ok. But for combats that last more than 3 rounds, Anti-Proton Beams are vastly more powerful. Damage ratios (damage / kiloton (size) / rate of fire) are a very important comparison tool.

[Jtownsend]

Ah! Good point, I had actually failed to give thought to weapon size differing.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
Ah! Good point, I had actually failed to give thought to weapon size differing.


Don't forget rate of fire, too. There are only two weapons I would recommend in most circumstances as an improvement on PPB's: APB if you have TONS of research and your opponents have phased shields, and shield depleters if your opponents have phased shields. Neither one is worth concentrating on before getting maximum CS/ECM/scattering armor/stealth armor/training.

[Jtownsend]

Ok, more good thoughts, although I do tend to sometimes shift my research around a bit - back off APBs back onto PPBs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif It's hard to tell if my PBB design coming out in a recent skirmish will actually lead to phased shields being very common in the level of game advanced-ness we have.

Facility upgrades - I'm wishing I had more research and being outpaced by some people with TRs and uncrippled trade. I have a TR with a harmless seeming partner, but I have that crippled all the way. With upgrading, do I want to get research III and upgrade I -> III or is that possible?

It can be tricky, without the feel of experience, to know precisely what economic/shipaccessory/scientific/weapon tech to focus on over time. I want to keep my fleet up to date, but it may be that the only player strong enough to pose a serious threat has agreed to permanent peace out of a desire not to grind himself down against his strongest opponent. So I'm left in a bit of a cold war sitution hoping he doesn't use his greater free space to win, or gobble up the colonies of smaller neighbors.

Still number 1, but a generic figure like that isn't too reassuring.

[Fyron]

douglas said:
Neither one is worth concentrating on before getting maximum CS/ECM/scattering armor/stealth armor/training.

I'd say these things are worth getting before PPBs even. Having DUC V and more advanced CS/ECM is generally better than PPBs and less advanced CS/ECM. PPBs are very expensive weapons...


Jtownsend said:
With upgrading, do I want to get research III and upgrade I -> III or is that possible?

Facility upgrades will always be to the most advanced type available.


Jtownsend said:
It can be tricky, without the feel of experience, to know precisely what economic/shipaccessory/scientific/weapon tech to focus on over time.

This is when the game is still fun. When you know the tech tree inside and out, it becomes boring and repetitive. This is where mods come in. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

You could also make some ships with high speed equipped with Ripper Beams, they're smaller than APBs and very powerful over short range. You can use your fast attack ships to dart in and pick away at an enemy, then get out of pointblank range before he can return fire.

One of the things I usually do first is build up to 5 bases full of cargo storage to fill with pop. Sometimes the vast amounts of pop that I put on the stations will cripple my HW's reproduction and construction, but usually I will keep the pop level minimized at about two thirds of max. The extra pop in the stations is handy to use when I want to colonize a new world (especially Large/Huge, and breathable) so that I immediately have a large amount of pop present there to speed up the initial buildup of the colony. Also, having approx. 4000M or more pop in stations is handy when building Sphereworlds.

This from a guy who has only read the last 5-10 posts, so I don't know if this was in any way helpful or if my comments were totally off topic.

[Jtownsend]

Well, the game has progressed nicely and is now in the 80s turn-wise, at a turn a day, more or less. There were two dropouts, which unfortunately did tend to affect the play balance, as people were using stock AIs which tended to die abruptly playing against humans, even semi-inept ones. The leaderboard has turned out to consist of me, a warlike race to my southeast, and oddly enough my neighbor, quite new to the game, who I was originally kind of trying to support as as proxy against an aggressive AI player. He did a lot more than survive, and conquered the entirety of that AI and was well on his way against another - the two dropouts, in other words. I have been the number one empire for the entire game; this has a certain calming affect. I also had agreements with all of my neighbors - TRs with the two normal states, and an off the books, somewhat tenuous cold war with the warlike neighbor.

I tend to honor agreements, and at any rate didn't trust any of my allies enough to turn my back on them and deal with the warlike state, which I had seen as the greatest threat. I believe he has now fallen to either the third rank, after a long-time spot at number 2, or else 4th place. Meanwhile, I had to cancel my TR with the AI-conquering ally, to try and forestall his taking an economic lead.

On the advice of other players in the game I didn't focus a great deal on economic facility upgrades earlier, which was a bit regretable. I believe that between racials, ship design, and attention to stats and training I have probably always had the best fleet, and one unmatched in numbers - but fleets don't give you much return on investment in peacetime, except for peace of mind, of course. For most of the "cold war" I had about 30% of my fleet on the warp point with the cold-war neighbor, but slowly began shifting to a balanced deployment as the rankings changed.

My initial thought, because I had agreements with everyone, was to research SM, close all of my warp points, and set up warp points from one central fleet mustering-and-training world to each of my systems, for the best possible 'interior lines' in the event someone opened a WP into my empire. I've also secured a house rule against black hole generation using one system's sun to destroy another, so hopefully people would have to put more work into blowing me up than that.

However, relations with the former TR ally began to become strained - I didn't really want him to leave our frontier unguarded, because that let him conquer the second AI faster, which was no help to me. So I wanted to cultivate a little paranoia, but not enough to bring about a war; it struck me as bad form to stab an ally. I realize that's a bit 'carebear' to use diplo terminology, but I have a reputation as an honest ally in games, and it seems like good policy. At any rate, what I was afraid of came about a turn or two ago - he moved into the lead. Now, I have researched Monoliths III, and moved on to research better research facilities. And it's only 80/250 turnwise, so I could possibly do very well with a monolith economy and ringworlds, especially since most of the other players aren't all that experienced with the game. However, he started asking me not to attack him in a way that made me quite uneasy - like someone saying nice doggy and looking for a rock. From the number one empire, that didn't strike me as healthy. If I got part-way into a high-end stellar manipulation path without researching better fleet techs, building ships, etc, I could find myself a low tech, underproducing victim of the big boy or big boys.

So, somewhat regretfully, and with less premeditation than he's likely thinking - he seemed to think I've been preparing for war since I broke the TR - I've moved into his space. Although he has two empires conquest worth of experience, he also doesn't seem to have done a lot of online reserach into things - so, while he has twice as many worlds (around 80) as I do, and a good sized fleet apparently built on battleships, he apparently didn't know about weapon mounts. I haven't engaged any of his decent ships yet, just blew apart a shipyard ship that must have just reached his frontier.

I've only got 40 or 50 ships moving in, which is less than his total - but they are also fully fleet trained, indifferently ship trained (I had them on garrison duty, ship training is hard), with very high combat racials, and with ECM/Comp III, PPBIV. There are a few BBs into the mix with the same type of technology, but we're talking maybe 8 with more on the way; the rest are light cruisers, but all updated to the 2 latest designs. Most have one Solar Collector 2, I never got around to better and wasn't sure how many resources to waste on that when I wasn't conquering stuff.

The real disadvantage I'm facing right now is total inexperience - I noticed in the one battle I've fought, my "Break Formation/Wall" setup led to the BBs being left in the dust by the light cruisers; is this a problem? Is there a solution that isn't worse than the problem?

I'm in 3 fleets, moving into 3 systems, if all goes well glassing a half a dozen worlds when the next turn gets run. I would dearly like to be conquering instead of glassing, but as this isn't a premeditated strike I had (rather stupidly) economized by scrapping all of my transports ages ago, and I had no combat troops that weren't very old. I've never dropped troops before, and don't even know how many I need to beat a usual planet's militia. There are minesweepers on the way, transports and BBs on the rails, and 5 or 6 extra fully fleet trained ghost fleets massed in one of my systems. I'm moving reinforcements through that world and picking up ghost fleets as I go.

Again, as it wasn't premeditated, a lot of my industry is going into switching to monoliths and just now upgrading to better research. All of this is perhaps a bit poorly timed now that I'm in a major war, but I'm loath to terminate projects before at least the existing construction is finished, since the ships won't arrive for a few turns anyway. Propulsion tech is Counter-Terrine 3, perhaps a bit low but comperable with my current foe.

Diplomatically, I should be ok. My opponent made a bit of a gaffe by very angrily threatening to surrender - before he fired a shot, as the number one empire - to the number three power. I can see how this is a clever tactic for blackmail in a sense, but very much against the spirit of sportsmanship. It has apparently irritated the third place player, the one I was long in a cold war with - and we had at any rate agreed to a reasonably comforting policy of mutual non-aggression. If that holds there should be no realistic threats to my rear, which is still home to half my fleet or so. The game mod ruled that such a surrender was inappopriate and said he'd rewind the game if it was tried. I have yet to hear from my opponent - who I couldn't have a civil word with, really - so I don't know for sure if he'll quit, or be replaced, or what.

If his ship design indeed includes no mounts, and depending on his training and support/sensor use, it may be a walk. I have very strong space combat racials and he has none - in fact, I don't like his design much at all and will probably seed his worlds with my people whether I conquer them or recolonize. I would very much prefer to conquer, but if it becomes a walk it will be very disconcerting to leave good worlds in my rear while I chase down his ships... for now, at least, I am leaving planets on the target list, as I can afford to glass a few.

My warp closer ship is 3-4 months from completion, my warp opener is more than a year away. Both are the first level of development. Anyway, this has been quite a book, but I haven't posted in a long time, and it seemed interesting to me at least, and perhaps useful to lay out and think about as I was writing it. I credit my position in large part to having read up on the game here, and to the very useful help of Douglas, SJ, and several others. Thanks again. Further comments could be crucial! I may always be overlooking the painfully obvious; to wit, I only have level 1 shields. I just never had a research priority for them, and I was sitting on my own shipyards, with which I figured I could repair armoured ships. I'm aware that shields are very good at high level, and that Grav protection against SM stuff is at level 10... But so many things to reserach. I'm at about 130k reserach off the top of my head. I should likely have upgraded from (cringe) level 1 facilities a long time ago... But I used to be a very well developed empire, back when my rivals didn't have twice as many worlds. I colonized and rebreathed comparatively earlier than my competition, and my lead is only now vanishing.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
My initial thought, because I had agreements with everyone, was to research SM, close all of my warp points, and set up warp points from one central fleet mustering-and-training world to each of my systems, for the best possible 'interior lines' in the event someone opened a WP into my empire.


Good idea. I always do this as soon as I have the tech for it, and not just for fast response time to invading fleets. Even in an offensive war, it can greatly speed up getting new ships trained and to the front.

Jtownsend said:
However, relations with the former TR ally began to become strained - I didn't really want him to leave our frontier unguarded, because that let him conquer the second AI faster, which was no help to me. So I wanted to cultivate a little paranoia, but not enough to bring about a war; it struck me as bad form to stab an ally. I realize that's a bit 'carebear' to use diplo terminology, but I have a reputation as an honest ally in games, and it seems like good policy. At any rate, what I was afraid of came about a turn or two ago - he moved into the lead. Now, I have researched Monoliths III, and moved on to research better research facilities. And it's only 80/250 turnwise, so I could possibly do very well with a monolith economy and ringworlds, especially since most of the other players aren't all that experienced with the game. However, he started asking me not to attack him in a way that made me quite uneasy - like someone saying nice doggy and looking for a rock. From the number one empire, that didn't strike me as healthy. If I got part-way into a high-end stellar manipulation path without researching better fleet techs, building ships, etc, I could find myself a low tech, underproducing victim of the big boy or big boys.


I'd recommend not going for ringworlds unless you're certain you have resources to spare, and I really doubt monoliths will start paying off soon enough to make a difference. I would, however, recommend getting at least Stellar Manipulation 4 for the best planet creators and warp openers with decent range. Converting asteroids to planets can be a HUGE economic boost, especially if you have any asteroid ring systems in your territory. Asteroids can have values all the way up to 300% sometimes, and those values are preserved when they become planets.

Jtownsend said:
So, somewhat regretfully, and with less premeditation than he's likely thinking - he seemed to think I've been preparing for war since I broke the TR - I've moved into his space. Although he has two empires conquest worth of experience, he also doesn't seem to have done a lot of online reserach into things - so, while he has twice as many worlds (around 80) as I do, and a good sized fleet apparently built on battleships, he apparently didn't know about weapon mounts. I haven't engaged any of his decent ships yet, just blew apart a shipyard ship that must have just reached his frontier.

I've only got 40 or 50 ships moving in, which is less than his total - but they are also fully fleet trained, indifferently ship trained (I had them on garrison duty, ship training is hard), with very high combat racials, and with ECM/Comp III, PPBIV. There are a few BBs into the mix with the same type of technology, but we're talking maybe 8 with more on the way; the rest are light cruisers, but all updated to the 2 latest designs. Most have one Solar Collector 2, I never got around to better and wasn't sure how many resources to waste on that when I wasn't conquering stuff.


Hmm, max fleet training, some ship training, berzerkers + 120% agg./def. IIRC, and max ECM/CS (that is what you meant by "Comp", right?) with an excellent weapon vs no racial bonuses, no mounts, and probably no knowledge that training exists... should be a cakewalk. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if you can beat 3 or 4 or more to 1 numbers without breaking a sweat. Especially if you remembered to get stealth and scattering armor 3.

Jtownsend said:
The real disadvantage I'm facing right now is total inexperience - I noticed in the one battle I've fought, my "Break Formation/Wall" setup led to the BBs being left in the dust by the light cruisers; is this a problem? Is there a solution that isn't worse than the problem?


The only perfect solution is to give your LC's bad enough engines that the BB's can keep up. However, if you follow my strategy advice, this shouldn't be a problem at all. Set all your combat ship designs to the Maximum Weapons Range strategy. Then, go to the Empire Status(F11)->Strategies screen and edit Maximum Weapons Range to have primary/secondary movement strategies of Maximum Range/Don't Get Hurt. On the Firing tab, the default settings for this strategy are quite good, which are Has Weapons/Nearest/Most Damaged/Strongest and Do Not Use Type Priorities. Double check that it is set to break formation. Using this strategy, your ships will all try to stay at the edge of maximum range, which will result in the first ships on the scene falling back ahead of the enemy's advance while the rest of your ships are still getting there - but that's just an incidental benefit; the real benefit is that the extra range will drastically hurt his to-hit chances while not affecting yours very much proportionally.

Jtownsend said:
I'm in 3 fleets, moving into 3 systems, if all goes well glassing a half a dozen worlds when the next turn gets run. I would dearly like to be conquering instead of glassing, but as this isn't a premeditated strike I had (rather stupidly) economized by scrapping all of my transports ages ago, and I had no combat troops that weren't very old. I've never dropped troops before, and don't even know how many I need to beat a usual planet's militia. There are minesweepers on the way, transports and BBs on the rails, and 5 or 6 extra fully fleet trained ghost fleets massed in one of my systems. I'm moving reinforcements through that world and picking up ghost fleets as I go.


It might be a bad idea to not wait for the minesweepers. Without them, any minefield is Bad News for your fleets, and could quite possibly halt your entire offensive for a long time.

For a typical colony with low (<50M) population and no armed defensive troops, 10 small troops armed with ground cannon 1's will do just fine. The only thing you have to do besides loading the troops on the transport is make sure the transport's design has the Capture Planet strategy.

Jtownsend said:
Again, as it wasn't premeditated, a lot of my industry is going into switching to monoliths and just now upgrading to better research. All of this is perhaps a bit poorly timed now that I'm in a major war, but I'm loath to terminate projects before at least the existing construction is finished, since the ships won't arrive for a few turns anyway. Propulsion tech is Counter-Terrine 3, perhaps a bit low but comperable with my current foe.


Finish current construction and upgrade all your research facilities, but let further monolith construction wait.

Contra-Terrene engines are good enough for quite a while, but get Solar Sail 3's asap. They require Stellar Harnessing 6 and give 3 bonus movement points.

Jtownsend said:
Diplomatically, I should be ok. My opponent made a bit of a gaffe by very angrily threatening to surrender - before he fired a shot, as the number one empire - to the number three power. I can see how this is a clever tactic for blackmail in a sense, but very much against the spirit of sportsmanship. It has apparently irritated the third place player, the one I was long in a cold war with - and we had at any rate agreed to a reasonably comforting policy of mutual non-aggression. If that holds there should be no realistic threats to my rear, which is still home to half my fleet or so. The game mod ruled that such a surrender was inappopriate and said he'd rewind the game if it was tried. I have yet to hear from my opponent - who I couldn't have a civil word with, really - so I don't know for sure if he'll quit, or be replaced, or what.


Surrendering to an ally (or enemy of an enemy) just to annoy an enemy is VERY unsportsmanlike and an excellent way to completely ruin a game. I'm glad the game host ruled against it.

Jtownsend said:
If his ship design indeed includes no mounts, and depending on his training and support/sensor use, it may be a walk. I have very strong space combat racials and he has none - in fact, I don't like his design much at all and will probably seed his worlds with my people whether I conquer them or recolonize. I would very much prefer to conquer, but if it becomes a walk it will be very disconcerting to leave good worlds in my rear while I chase down his ships... for now, at least, I am leaving planets on the target list, as I can afford to glass a few.


In the absolute worst case, your better racial combat bonuses are a substantial advantage. In an only slightly better case (no training for him), they render you almost invulnerable in combat. Assuming your ships average 10% trained, if he doesn't have training (quite likely IMO), he will have at most a 30% chance to hit at point blank range, 1% if you have stealth and scattering armor 3. If he does have full training, that goes up to 70% (40% with the armors), and goes down 10% with each additional square of range (which is why I recommend max range strategy) and another 10% against your LC's. You OTOH will have an 85% chance to hit at point blank even if he has ECM 3, scattering and stealth armor 3, and maximum training, going down to 35% at maximum range in this absolute worst case. Without training for his ships and fleets, that max range chance to hit goes up to 75%.

If you don't have any population that breathes his atmosphere yet, you should leave at least some of his planets intact until you can capture them. Otherwise, go ahead and glass. BTW, captured population takes on all the characteristics of the new empire except atmosphere breathed, so disliking someone's racial design is not a reason to engage in genocide.

Jtownsend said:
My warp closer ship is 3-4 months from completion, my warp opener is more than a year away. Both are the first level of development. Anyway, this has been quite a book, but I haven't posted in a long time, and it seemed interesting to me at least, and perhaps useful to lay out and think about as I was writing it. I credit my position in large part to having read up on the game here, and to the very useful help of Douglas, SJ, and several others. Thanks again. Further comments could be crucial! I may always be overlooking the painfully obvious; to wit, I only have level 1 shields. I just never had a research priority for them, and I was sitting on my own shipyards, with which I figured I could repair armoured ships. I'm aware that shields are very good at high level, and that Grav protection against SM stuff is at level 10... But so many things to reserach. I'm at about 130k reserach off the top of my head. I should likely have upgraded from (cringe) level 1 facilities a long time ago... But I used to be a very well developed empire, back when my rivals didn't have twice as many worlds. I colonized and rebreathed comparatively earlier than my competition, and my lead is only now vanishing.


You're welcome. Since you're still relying on armor, you should build some repair ships to accompany your ships. Some dedicated supply ships may also be useful, just make sure they have enough supply storage beyond what your warships have to hold at least one turn's worth of supply generation from the solar collectors. Whether you should go for shields now depends on what else you still need to research.

Hmm, I've got some time to spare, I'm curious, and it would allow for the best possible advice - why don't you clear your password temporarily and send me the save game? My email is gtg078h (at) mail (dot) gatech.edu.

[Jtownsend]

Sure enough, when the turn arrived tonight one of my fleets found my first minefield - ouch. Quite decent damage. My sweeper fleet is on the way, but in economizing, I really only had 100-mine clearance capability for one fleet. I could perhaps go system by system with one sweeping fleet, but that cuts my conquest speed by a third, against an imposing foe economically. I've also neglecting giving orders to one fleet, I'm pretty sure, and I'm just realizing that I need more Hyper-Optics ships - I had a real scare before I did the replays, because I thought he has cloaked some of his BBs from last turn and sent them in to lay waste to one of my systems. Should be quickly fixable.

EDIT: Comp does indeed mean 'combat scanner,' because my excessive regard for Moo1 has rotted my brain. Anything performing the function that CS performs in SEIV is a battle computer to me, in spite of there actually being computers that do something else.

[douglas]

Email sent.

I wouldn't worry too much about the opposition's strength. Not only does he have no racial combat bonuses, but his maintenance aptitude is merely enhanced. If he has twice your resource production, you can still support twice his military by size, and your ships will be much more powerful for their cost.

[Fyron]

The real disadvantage I'm facing right now is total inexperience - I noticed in the one battle I've fought, my "Break Formation/Wall" setup led to the BBs being left in the dust by the light cruisers; is this a problem? Is there a solution that isn't worse than the problem?

With half of the engine classes, battleships and light cruisers move at the same speed in combat. When the light cruiser has an even amount of strategic movement points and the battleships have an odd amount, they get the exact same combat movement rate. Research more propulsion and stellar harnessing (for solar sails), if you haven't already. With maximum levels in these areas, LCs will be able to have a strategic move of 12 and combat move of 6, and BBs will have a strategic move of 11 and combat move of 6.