SEV early game battle strategy vs. SEIV

[StarShadow]

Hmm, I would guess that mounts aren't properly working in that case. Planets get a 30% combat bonus by default, plus combat sensors (if you use them), and a 200% defense penalty, it's hard to miss something as big as a planet.

Combat works much differently now, ships/planets/etc, are set to evaluate weapons use vs targets. I think an example would explain it better:

You have a ship with five meson blasters and two targets.
You go into combat and let the computer do the fighting.
2 hits will kill each ship (assuming both hit). The computer (fighting on your behalf) will fire 4 at the first ship and 1 at the second. The weapons are evaluated at half damage (ie the comp fires twice the damage amount needed for a kill), to maximise the chance of hitting.
If one target is in range, while one is not, the computer will (possibly) unload completely into the one availible target, which is bad, because that second ship might be within range 2 seconds later...while your missiles will need 4 more seconds to reload.

My suggestion, build (at least) twice as many WPs as think you might need.

[tmcc]

I agree with doubling WPs, at least. I think I might try puting some in the cargo hold of my colonizers because you can't build them fast enough on a new colony to stop a determined attacker that is established and wants you out of the system. This was usually not a problem against the AI in SEIV.

TM