Temporal Strategy

[Griffin Cloud]

Oh I forgot. One of my dreads took out 4 other dreads of the enemy ai. Depending on the race it's usually 2-4 one of them can handle It's a really nice design I think. I call them "Eden" and I usually name my fleets "Beware the Garden" or something like that. LOL that comes from Homeworld, another great space game. Anyone remember the Gardens of Cadesh? That is what I call my starbases The only snags I come up against are again, maxed out beam ships... 7 of those took out one of my Cadesh starbases. It was the only time the enemy AI won against them *sigh*

Also, about expensive ships. When you have 3 ringworlds and 20+ breathable colonies all using monolith IIIs and value improvement plants, you don't worry about resources too much. Remember, I started end game.

Bring on the opinions!

[bearclaw]

In regards to organics, I also agree that they aren't all they are cracked up to be. I played against an Organic player on PBW and he relied heavily on baseships heavily armoured with organic. But what he didn't do was put any shields on. I took out a major fleet of his with nothing more than a fleet of heavily shielded boarding ships! Don't think I had a single weapon in the entire fleet. It's been a while now so I can't quite recall.

[Fyron]

Don't forget about Ionic Dispersers! If you have no shields, they make mince meat of your fleets. The enemy can set their ships to max range. They will fire, knock out all engines, then fall back. Your ships that can not move are not able to keep up! What is worse is if you do not include a supply storage or quantum reactor component. If your ship has 0 supplies, it can not fire its weapons.

[Suicide Junkie]

Note:
Ships with no supplies can still fire weapons that use zero supplies per shot!

Point Defense Lasers in P&N, for example.

[Cyrien]

I also enjoy the Temporal trait in my games. And while APB12 are the best weapon in a max tech game Temporal is still a great trait, even weapon wise. The Distortion Burst and the Accelerator are both great weapons even in an APB ship design. They can take the place of the shield depleters and offer either more regular damage plus good shield depletion for the Distortion Burst or even more shield depletion at better range for a little extra cost.

Production wise extra cost is nothing for temporal because of the temporal spaceyards. Cost wise... most of the cost in temporal weapons is in radioactive. I don't know about anyone else but I can count the number of times I have run out of radioactives on one hand (or anything other than minerals for that matter).

The advantages for the Temporal are much improved production, good weapons that can Last clear to the end game and a scanner built right in with everything. And of course nice happiness controls built in as well. The weakness of temporal is higher costs and mostly it only improves on things that can be gained normally anyways.

Like all the extras I would argue that it is worthwhile but not so dominating that if you have it you win and if you don't you lose(I think that title could only possibly goto advanced storage techniques).

But that is just my opinion.

PS: I never play tactical combat even in single player. It makes it too easy. I actually find it quite satisfying to develop strategy orders for the AI that make it fight effectively without direct intervention. It's also good practice for PBW.

[PvK]

Temporal has some good things in it. Like all racial tech areas, if they didn't, they wouldn't be worth paying for. The minimaxer munchkin's question then becomes whether they are worth the 1500 points or not. Fortunately, the game is varied enough that non minimaxer munchkins can enjoy the game and win with a variety of techs and techniques, especially against the unmodded AI.

I find it interesting that almost every "praise Temporal" message I've seen ignores the things that look best about it to me. I tried to use it once in a tough PBW competetive game, and lost, mainly because I was playing against a top-ace player, and because I was basing my strategy on a Temporal ability that doesn't work as well as I thought it would (which is a good thing, because even though misleading, it'd be a bit overpowered in some situations).

PvK

[bearclaw]

I enjoy Temporal too. In fact, if I ever play a racial tech empire, I always choose Temporal. I just can't justify any other race over Temporal Shipyards.