Gameplay tips & tricks
 

This thread was inspired by another thread:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...31&fpart=1
where I learned something that probably everyone else knew except me even after my playing this game since it was released. So I decided to post some of my useful tips & tricks (a lot of which will be redundant if you read the FAQ) for SE4 gameplay. If others do the same then it's quite possible some of us may learn a trick to relieve a headache or two.

1) This one I learned from another user here on the forum. If you want to have a built-in reminder on a given planet when a build queue is done, such as you just finished building all your miner-II's (because they can be built in 1 turn) and now you want to upgade to miner-III's, you can do this. First create a dummy ship/unit of some kind. I like to use a small mine, but it doesn't matter. Just make sure you name it with your reminder as its name such as "*upgrade". Make sure you use a * as the first character (or other character which is alphabetized before the letter A). Now, each turn, review your construction queue and click the column header on the right. This will sort the list alphabetically by the names of the things under construction. Queues with the * as a starting character will be at the top of the list and you conveniently can see all your construction queues which need action. Just delete the dummy unit and issue the next order.

2) I kinda stumbled on this one by accident. I was frustrated that you couldn't add ships to a planet queue unless you had a spaceyard already built. Well you can. First add your ship to another planet's queue then save that queue. If you want to see the procedure for this, see the FAQ. Then you can add the spaceyard to your current planet followed by ships or bases using this technique. This will NOT allow you to actually build ships/bases without a spaceyard, but it sure saves time.

3) The "repeat orders" command can be very useful. I won't go into all the different ways to use it here but I'll cover 2. First for simultaneous games, you launch mines, sats, or fighters from planets automatically by using this command after the first launch. Second, you can automate collection of units. For example you can have every planet in a system making fighters, then using a small/medium transport, you can automate picking up the units from all the planets and dumping them at the largest planet. Then with a larger transport or carrier, you can stop off at the large planet to load full of fighters while it is on its way to the front lines.

3) At your training planets, make lots of fleets. Initially you should make as many 1-ship fleets as possible. That way if you neet to pump out a ship/fleet in a hurry, you can put it into one of these fleets for an instant 20% bonus. If the ship can wait there to be fully trained, it can get a 20% + 20% = 40% bonus. This may be a little cheezy, but you can even make 1-ship fleets with mothballed ships. The ship won't get experience but the dummy fleet will eventually max out. You can then make specialized super fast small ships to ferry these "fleets" out to your front lines if necessary.

4) Use the memo pad for keeping notes. Just right-click on the galaxy map in the lower right then left-click on a system to make notes. I use the system notes to keep track of system-wide things like if I have a satellite with anti-cloak sensors, or if I have a system-wide research computer, etc. For empire-wide notes, I use the scratchpad in my home system. Undocumented: you can insert a carriage-return in the scratch pad by using CTRL-M.

5) If I ever get another empire to surrender, how the heck do I make sure I adjusted all his planets? Easy. Bring up the colony report and first sort by Name, then click the Races tab on the right. You will see all the systems sorted in order and the races are shown. Easy to pick the newely acquired planets out.

6) How the heck do I capture more than one planet per turn in simultaneous games? Using your Capture Planet Fleet: "attack planet 1, load troops from planet 1, attack planet 2, load troops from planet 2, etc" for orders

7) I know that moving captured or different breathing population around is a pain, but how do I easily find the best planets to undome? Easy. Bring up the Colony report and click the "General" tab. Next sort by "Pic" which sorts by planet size, then sort again by "Atmosphere". Next click on the "Races" tab on the right. Now you have a list of planets sorted in increasing size by atmosphere and you can see what kind of race is on the planet. Concentrate on the largest planets first for undoming.

8) I am running a resource defecit but which construction queues should I shut down first? First check out which resource you are shortest in by using the empire status report. Then bring up the construction queue, click "usage" on the right then sort by the usage column. This will show the most usage planets first using the total per turn for each planet M+O+R. The highest using planets will be at the top.

9) What things will I produce on the next turn? Easy. Bring up the colony report, click on "construction" tab on the right. Next sort by the "time remaining" tab. scroll down to see all the things that only need .1 years to build.

10) I've got too much resources coming in each turn and all my spaceyards are already building something and I don't have enough storage. I don't want to lose the resources, so which planets have the most empty cargo room for building units? Bring up the colony report, click on the cargo tab on the right, then sort by "space". Sroll to bottom to see the least filled planets. BTW, build more spaceyards and/or storage!

11) Use Waypoints. If you only use 1 waypoint, make your homeworld waypoint 1. I usually transform my homeworld into a training center at some point in the game. It is very convenient to click on a ship and then hit CTRL-1 to send it to my homeworld for training. If I make another training world or fleet rally point, it is easy to use another waypoint for that one too. You are limited to 10 waypoints, but I have never needed all 10. You can also make spaceyards automatically send ships to a given waypoint. Also, rename your waypoints to give them descriptive titles such as "home", "defensive chokepoint 1", etc. I haven't tried this, but I believe that if you move a waypoint, all the ships which have orders to move to that waypoint will automatically go to the new location. This might be a good way to have a "rolling" fleet staging point.


That's 11 things that I find useful for now. I may add to this later.

Slick.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

All below does not take cheesiness into account, and merely states what is possible to do that does not sound so obvious (it does not include anything involving abusing allies or the like).

3') Use fighters for your fleet training needs. They travel on their own, do not need a SY, and so can be built at that useless one facility planet without wasting SY-time. Fighters also do not cost anything at all to maintain, unlike ships.

12) Drones can have strategies of their own, including not automatically ramming anything within range. If you like to use them, it might be a good idea to use decoy drones to soak up PDC fire (especially if you would like to do something different for once).

13) Most actions involving Stellar Manipulation can be done in the middle of the turn. For example, send your Warp Opener to another system, and order the vessel to open a wormhole there. Or put a Star Destroy over a star, order it to pull back for one sector, and then to come back to the star to destroy it, giving your fleet time to escape. That one may be quite obvious, but I have played for several months before being told about it.

14) When playing with a harsh ship limit, and/or having resource shortages, you might want to put vessels in your queues, and hold their construction one turn before completion. It will cut down your resource expenses will still allowing you to have backups under your hand. (The answer to your question Alarikf is: yes, the Polymer People has such reinforcements standing by)

15) Not exactly a trick, but something worth reminding. When using Resource Converters, never put the planet on Repeat Orders. Ever. Failure to do so will result in headaches, massive economical shortages, and general despair within your Empire.

16) Much like Slick's first suggestion, you can use dummy units to mark planets fully developped. Make a satellite, put it in the queues of all your developped planets, and put the queue on hold. This way, you can sort planets by construction queue, allowing you to see which planets are currently doing nothing.

17) Are you bothered with having people spy on your ship count? (Namely by checking the numbers after your designs) You might want to consider doing a very minor retrofit then, where the original vessel is "This is not a warship" and the updated one "This is still not a warship". Once your ten "This is not a warship" warships have been retrofitted, the next such ships will not take the numbers after 11, but will cycle back to 1. Someone too confident might actually believe you have fewer ships than in actuality, as after all your design name remained the same.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

18) You can upgrade a single facility at a time on a planet that has lots of the same facility. Find a planet with just one obselete facility built. Add the Upgrade Facility X item to the build queue. Click on Fill Queue, then Save the queue with an appropriate name by clicking on Add Type. Now, go to the previous planet. Use the Fill Queue button to add the single facility upgrade order. You can naturally have "Upgrade 2 X" or "Upgrade 3 X" fill queues by finding planets with 2 or 3 facilities to upgrade, respectively. Using this method, you can upgrade large Groups of facilities in small batches, thus allowing some to be upgraded immediately and begin functioning sooner than it would take for all to be upgraded at once.

19) You can use the hotkey ctrl + t to manually add a minefield marker to a sector, and ctrl + r to remove one. These can be used to mark certain sectors, such as damaging warp points, as no-fly zones. Your ships will avoid the sectors marked as minefields, trying to find a safer route.

20) Your exploration ships do not have to stop when entering an unexplored system. You can order them to "move to" a random sector in the system, such as the far side or center, after the "warp" order. The ship will merrily continue on it's way.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

21) To give a bunch of ships in the same sector the "sentry" order, shift-click them all, then manually left click one of them and give it the "sentry" order. For some reason, the Sentry button doesn't light up when shift clicking multiple ships.

13') you can use this "stagger step" to time out lots of combinations. Stellar manipulation is a great one to practice with, but you can use your imagination to time out other complicated routines in a simultaneous game turn.

19') Strategically placing minefield markers can also be used to "funnel" ships to move over a Resupply Depot.


Slick.

p.s. Fyron, for 18, I had thought many times about doing this, but I didn't think it would work. Thanks!

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I made this a sticky for a bit. To give it a chance to draw in readers. Will unsticky it later.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Hey Slick, you're giving away all my cool tricks! Soon I will not be able to win any game any more! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

2) I do not have verified it yet, but I think I have noticed after the Last patch that ships in queues on a planet without shipyards are automatically cleared when the turn is executed.

6) Never could make attack / load troops work reliably. I always use attack, move one sector away, load troops from previous sector. This works always. I do not know why the load order is often ignored otherwise.

10) Too much income, too little spaceyards? Retrofit series are your friend! Roughly doubles your shipyard capacity. Save cost and time by training while retrofitting.

15) Always build at least one resource converter more than needed. Nothing more crippling than a conquered resource converter if it is your only one. One class III converter can only convert a maximum of 1,365,000 resources into 955,500 of a different type per turn. If you try to convert more, the orders will be queued into the next turn.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Huh. I have never had a problem doing this. The only time a problem arises is if I have a ship survive with so much damage that it can't move much if at all, but that just stops the fleet entirely...

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I've also had this problem. If I tell ships to attack, then load troops, very often the ships will just move on without reloading the troops, and thereby glass the next planets. I also attack-move one sector-load troops from previous to make sure that it actually loads my troops

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Does this happen in sectors with multiple planets? I find that if I order the fleet to attack every planet in the sector, then one load troops order, it works fine. I don't think I have ever had a problem with my fleets not picking up the troops on the move. Is the ground combat requiring more than one combat? This isn't very likely in stock SE4, but could be an issue...

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I usually attack multiple planets first, because after the load order it might be that only 1 transport may be loaded with troops, and the fleet be able to capture only single planets. About 90% of the time, the load order didn't work unless preceeded by a sidestep move of one sector which I routinely do now.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

As you all can tell, I finally got a weekend off! Worked 7 weeks straight and the 2nd thing I did on my day off was play SE4 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Anyways, all the good ideas here will eventually make it to the FAQ.

There has to be more good ideas out there. What I would really like to see are neat or subtle interface tricks, special strings of ship orders, and the like. Unique planet or system setups that you find useful are also welcome. Any good multiplayer tricks are also good (keep the good ones secret if you want, but throw us a bone!) If you have had a headache with a certain part of the game and later found a workaround, post it here. Chances are good that others haven't found the trick yet.

Slick.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Do you send your transports out with full cargo loads? Troops are rarely lost in ground combat in stock SE4, except in the odd situation where some player filled their planet with troops (which I have never seen done myself...). If so, then all transports should be filled back up, as the first transport can't load everything. Of course, if you use a lot of carriers, losing fighters might skew the results... But then, in most situations fighters aren't really worth using in stock SE4.

Strange. I have never seen it fail.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I have only seen the order fail very rarely. I usually only use a single Troop Transport in my fleets, though. Could it have to do with multiple transports?

Yeah, Yeah, I know...use more transports. Old dog, new trick...

Slick.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

22) If you disable Condensed View when designing a ship, you can stagger the placement of weapons to control which will fire first and in what order. This can be useful for using Ionic Dispersers, for example. You might want to put first 1 Shield Depleter, then 2 Anti-Proton Beams, then 1 Ionic Disperser, then several more Anti-Proton Beams. The purpose of this is to try to get all of the shields knocked out before the Ionic Disperser fires. If there are shield points remaining, the Ionic Disperser will be unable to do its damage to the engines. The Anti-Proton Beams do not care what they hit, shields or hull. Placing a few of them before the Ionic Disperser helps improve the chances that all of the shield points will be gone before the Ionic Disperser fires. You migh consider placing the Ionic Disperser Last. If you do this, you might create situations in which the Anti-Proton Beam shots get lucky and knock out some engines, thus wasting damage points overall.

23) One hit from a heavy mounted or two shots from large mounted Ionic Dispersers will wipe out all of the engines on any ship. This will eliminate all supply storage on the ship, thus rendering it unable to fire any weapons. All further weapons from the enemy fleet will now ignore your useless hulk and target other ships. So, you should always add a Supply Storage component to all warships (certainly of Light Cruiser size or larger, possibly Destroyers, but those tend to die very quickly anyways so the benefits are reduced). Later when you get Quantum Reactors, the Supply Storage component should be replaced with a Quantum Reactor. This will allow the ship to still have some supplies after all engines are knocked out. So, it is still a threatening target. Enemy warships will continue to fire weapons at it until it is disabled (all weapons destroyed) or utterly destroyed. This, fewer ships of yours can be disabled in a given round with the same amount of enemy firepower. At 20 kT, a Supply Storage component is almost trivial in size (especially once you get Battle Cruisers and larger sized ships), and has the added benefit of increasing the operational range of your fleets by 10-20%, depending on other factors.

Note: A Solar Collector is _not_ a viable replacement for a Supply Storage component! Surely, it provides greater benefits in terms of range, but it will not prevent your ships from being unable to fire at all if they are hit by Ionic Dispersers.

24) Computer Viruses are the bane of Master Computer equipped ships. For larger ships, you might consider adding 1 Bridge, 1 Life Support, and 1 Crew Quarter component in addition to the Master Computer. 1 of each is all you need to maintain full command and control of the ship (ie: no loss of movement). Surely, adding the extra C&C components is more expensive in cost and size than just the Master Computer. However, on larger ship hulls, it will still be cheaper than using no Master Computer at all and relying on normal C&C components. If the Master Computer is knocked out, you still have the required command and control components, so your ship is fully functional. It will still be protected from Allegience Subverters and Mental Flailers, even with a damaged Master Computer. Against Psychic races, you get immunity to Allegience Subverters and immunity to disablement from Computer Viruses. Against normal races, you still get the immunity to disablement from Computer Viruses, and can save a lot of space and resources on large ship hulls.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I have been using 2 troop transports to conquer planets with a moon in the same turn, and using the move to next planet trick, to great affect in the PBW game P&N on PBW, take 2. Yes, it is using SE4 1.49, so it is possible that some bug appeared in a later Version. I have a lot of carriers, due to fighters being useful in P&N Mod, and I haven't seen any of them load the troops up rather than the transports. I do occasionally have problems with all troops going on a single transport, as it is actually possible to lose troops in ground invasions in P&N Mod, so I only attack a single sector with 2 planets once per turn to make sure I don't glass the second moon. But other than that, I have had no problems at all conquering 3-7 planets in a turn (depending on system layout of course). The only time a problem occurs is when my invasion forces are unable to defeat all militia in a single combat (once again thanks to P&N Mod, this is actually possible). If there is just one planet, the second transport drops troops and it is usually enough. If it isn't, the fleet will do nothing further, as it will be unable to load troops. It will _not_ continue on it's merry way, leaving the troops behind on the embattled planet.

This is, of course, not the only game I have done such things in, but it is the one that I am doing it in currently. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Instead of building resource storage facilies, you can also build insanely expensive bases, and mothball them. When you're lacking in reserves, scrap a few. Becomes a lot more efficient with recycling facilities. It is also a perfect excuse for keeping hundreds of sunkillers around.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Try fighting real opponents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif. Yes, some of my enemies are so eager to deny me their planets that they build their police troops with weapons. Also, if you have the standard -50 ground combat racial trait, planets with higher population, i.e. nearly every planet when fighting against an organic enemy, will cause heavy losses from the militia. My transports only have about 500kt space, being heavily armored so they are able to advance alone against shipless planets. 2 x 50 troops are worn down to 1 x 50 (or less) troops after very few turns when fighting against an enemy who has the impertinence to make your victory as slow and fruitless as possible - hi Teal, hi Alneyan http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Very old and outdated game Version..... Tried this with the latest game Version?

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Do not fret Roanon, for the might of the Continuum will not keep your invading troops at bay for much longer. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif The previous player built more troops than I know what to do with, and these have been reconverted to the noble purpose of forcing you to glass my planets (you won't get free happiness from me!). I did build a couple more troops here and there, but my happiness collapsed before I could manage to fully protect all my planets.

Speaking of troops: the Shield Depleter is the most powerful weapon for troops in the regular game, as special damage does not matter for troops. Only cost and damage per kt have any incidence, and the Shield Depleter is the best by a fair amount in these two fields. It makes very little sense, so use your own mileage to determine whether it is a legitimate design or not. The writer declines any responsability for the mishandling of Small Shield Depleters.

A few reminders worth mentioning:
- The Crystalline Armour effectively works as a beefed up Emissive Armour, as it is able to negate weapons doing 149 normal damage or less (with 10 Crystalline Armour III per vessel, and at least 150 points of shielding). Adding more Crystalline Armour or more regular Armour only helps to increase the survivability of the ship. It does not go above 150 because the Crystalline Armour has a damage resistance of 150 points. So if you are fighting such a vessel with DUCs doing 120 damage points per turn, do not be surprised to see you have dealt no damage whatsoever to the enemy fleet.
- Unlike the Mental Flail (I am not sure of the exact name of this weapon... It is the Psychic weapon increasing reload time), the Energy Dampener is not countered by anything at all, including the Master Computer. These weapons do not pop in often, but be warned of their properties if you are fighting them.
- The War Shrine and the Temporal facility providing the same ability only affects offence (by +15% and +30% respectively at level III), and do not give any bonus to defence, contrary to what the description seems to imply.
- Never, ever, cloak a minesweeper. Minesweepers do not work when cloaked. For the sake of safety, not putting any kind of cloaking device on them would seem to be a good idea; unless you have perfectly accurate intelligence that is.

I do not know if it is really on topic, but I have taken the liberty of pasting a lengthy explanation on how damage really works in SE4. The quote comes straight from Dubious Guide, and has been posted on these Boards in 2001 by Zanthis. The only change since then is that Organic Armour no longer regenerates before being damaged; the rest remains valid with the 1.91 patch as far as I can tell. If it is irrelevant to your idea for this thread Slick, feel free to tell me so and I will cut off the quote below.

"In order to better understand how damage is dealt, I did some extensive testing with the simulator. Here are my results, in FAQ format:

1. How is damage assigned?
First, ignore shields for now (see Question #2). Now, every time you hit a ship, a random component is selected on the target. If the target still has armor, the random component will be a piece of armor. Now, if the amount of damage you've done with that hit equals or exceeds the damage resistance of the component, it is destroyed. If you have left-over damage, another component is randomly selected. Repeat until a component is selected for which not enough damage remains to destroy. This extra damage is stored by the target for use later.
Now, next time the target is hit, the first thing that happens is any extra damage (from previous hits) is added to your weapon's damage. Then, the selecting of components to be destroyed occurs as described in the above paragraph.
As you can see, this means components do not have "damage done to them." I have not been able to verify it, but it is likey that when a component is randomly selected and not destroyed, it is remembered and automatically selected in the future until destroyed. This would give the appearance of a single component taking damage. However, I do know that if you change damage types (say from normal to armor skipping) a new component is randomly selected.
That means, if you modify Armor III to take 400 (instead of 40) damage to destroy and change the Shard Cannon to do only 1 damage (it skips armor) and then hit a ship with one Armor III for 300 normal damage (which cannot destroy the piece of Armor III and so sits around as extra damage) and then hit the target for only 1 point of damage with the Shard Cannon, 301 damage will be randomly targeted at components inside the target's armor!!! This is why Shard Cannons and Null-Space Projectors sometimes really gut ships, especially those using high-resistant armor (Organic, Crystaline, etc).
Of course, the reverse is also true. If you hit with armor skipping damage but fail to destroy a component, you just generate extra damage. Future hits may apply that extra damage toward armor, even though it originally skipped armor.

2. Ok, so how do shields fit into this?
I'm glad you asked. First, don't mix phased and non-phased generating components. If you do, you get non-phased shields. That is, until all the non-phased shield generating components are destroyed; then suddenly, in the middle of battle, your shields will become phased.
Ok, otherwise, shields work just like you expect. Damage from weapons gets taken off your shields first. However, remember above where I told you extra damage is added to your weapon's damage before being applied? That happens before your weapon's damage is applied to shields. That means, hit a ship with normal shields and some Armor III with a PPB (skips non-phased shields) for 35 damage (not enough to destroy a piece of armor) and then with a Meson BLaster (normal damage) for 30 and the extra damage (35 from the PPB) is added to the Meson's 30 for a total of 65 damage delt to the target's non-phased shields!!!
This gets even more fun with shield regeneration. See, if you get some damage passed their shields without destroying components (so it's still extra damage), but the regenerators bring the shields back up, that damage you got passed their shields gets pulled back out and has to go through the shields again next time the ship gets hit.
As an added bonus, destroying a shield generating component drops your current shield value to your maximum shield value (assuming your current value was greater than max value) but it does this before the component is destroyed! This means, with 3 Shield V (900 shields), if you get hit by a PPB that kills one of the generators, your shields will be 900 out of 600! If a second hit kills another generator, your shields will be 600 out of 300.

[Snip: Zanthis was discussing the pre 1.49 Organic Armour in question 3]

4. Do I really want to know how Crystalline Armor works?
No, you really, really don't. But here it is. Let's do this by example. Assume a ship with 0/300 shields and 4 Crystalline Armor III (150 damage resistance each , 15 dmg converted to shields each) and no damage inside shields yet. This ship is hit by a Meson BLaster (normal damage) for 30. The CA regenerates the target's shields by 30 (it could have done up to 60, but the weapon damage was only 30). This shield regeneration is done after the weapon damage is applied against shields, so it doesn't block this hit. Now, the 30 weapon damage becomes extra damage since it cannot kill the armor (that takes 150). So, we now have 30/300 shields and 30 extra damage.
The target is hit again for another 30 damage. First, we added extra damage to this, so we get a hit doing 60 damage (see Question #1 if you've forgot about that ). Now, the shield blocks 30, so 30 damage is left which causes the CA to regen another 30 shields and the ships extra damage to be set to 30, again. So, we now have 30/300 shields and 30 extra damage. Look familar?
That's right, if you cannot, in a single hit, do either 150 damage OR more damage than the CA can convert to shields, you will NEVER hurt the ship without armor skipping weapons (see Question #1 for how much fun you can have sneaking non-armor skipping damage inside a ship with armor-skipping weapons).
Don't believe me? Ok, example continued, but doing 60 damage this time. Adding extra damage makes it 90, shield blocks 30, 60 points of shields regen'd and 60 points to extra damage. Now we have 60/300 shields and 60 extra damage. Hit again for 60, plus extra damage is 120, shields block 60, 60 left, regen shield 60 and extra damage becomes 60, leaving us with 60/300 shields and 60 extra damage? Fun, isn't it?
Again, 65 damage though. Add extra damage, 125, shield blocks 60, 65 left, regen shield 60 (max for 4 CA-III) and extra damage set to 65. Hit again for 65. Add extra damage, 130, shield blocks 60, 70 left, regen shield 60 and extra damage set to 70. Hit again for 65. Add extra damage, 135, shield blocks 60, 75 left, regen shield 60 and extra damage set to 75. As you can see, the extra damage slowly creeps up, and once it hits 150, it will kill a piece of CA. At which point only 45 damage can be converted to shields and doing 65 a hit, the ship will begin to die faster.
Now, here is the scary part. We're 60/300 shields with 75 extra damage and no CA destroyed yet. You've been slowly chipping away with 65 damage weapons. Guess what happens if you hit is for 60 or less damage? Hit for 40. Add extra damage, 115, shield blocks 60, 55 left, regen shield 55 and extra damage set to 55. Now we're at 55/300 and 55 extra damage. That's right, the ship has effectively healed 20!!!
Moral of the story, once you've got his shield almost down, fire *only* weapons that do more damage than he can convert to shields (or do 150+ damage). If you must use lower damaging weapons, fire only your highest low-damage weapon until his shields equal the damage that that weapon does. Then, switch to your big guns. This maximizes the amount of damage applied to his components. If your "big gun" happens to be armor skipping, even better. This will suck the extra damage from your weaker weapons right past his armor into his internals. Also, armor skipping also does not trigger CA's shield regeneration. This makes it the ability of choice for taking out crystalline armored ships.

5. And how do fighters fit into all this?
First off, a lone fighter works exactly the same as a ship...almost. You cannot fire only one of multiple identical weapons. All DUC-III's on a single fighter fire at once or not at all. In fact, you must unhighlight all of them or they all fire.
Further, all identical items are combined into a single super-weapon. DUC-III normally do 15 damage each. Mount four on a fighter and you almost have one weapon doing 60 damage. I say almost, because there is a separate roll to hit for each weapon. So if you have only a 50% to hit, your quad-DUC3's will normally behave like a single weapon dealing 30 damage, although it could do either 0 (all four miss) or up to 60.
Incidentally, DUC-III and DUC-II count as different weapons and do not combine in the above described manner. Also, this combining effect is not bad, and can be good. That means you normally don't want to mix weapons on your fighters.
Once you start grouping them, things get more confusing. Like lone fighters, all weapons of the same type combine, but across the entire group. To avoid firing your DUC3's in a squad of fighters, you must unhighlight all of them. Leave even one highlighted and ever fighter will fire their DUC3's.
It should not be surprising that this means larger fighter Groups rip up crystalline armor easier, not to mention help you bypass emmisive armor. Of course, larger Groups are easier to kill due to damage streaming.
If it weren't for how crystalline armor currently works, I'd say the combining effect of fighters is unimportant. It doesn't really effect how things play out. But with CA the way it stands, you might want to consider using larger Groups when dealing with ships protected by lots of CA."

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

It's a well known strategy, but I'll mention it nevertheless:
If you want to achive maximum efficiency in ground combat, it's worth to design 3 types of troops: Defender, Offender and Leader.
Defender's design include small shields (or armor) only. Offenders are armed with you favorite weapon (ground cannons or small shield depleters) and nothing else. Leader is equiped with shields plus small combat sensor and small ecm components.
Produce them in 3:6:1 proportions (rough numbers). Now, then filling your troop transport, place Defenders first, then Offenders and Last Leaders. Being dropped to a planet, Defender will play a meat shield role, Offenders will stay behind Defenders unharmed and wipe out militia (or hostile troops) and Leaders will provide attack and defense bonus to the whole stack of troops.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

WOW and the light goes on!
I had excess materials, I wanted to have stupid tiny worlds at home do some sort of building, so I used precious planet slots making a cargo storage so I could buildup stockpiles of mines or drones. And sats/ftrs before I saw something here about autolaunch.

BUILD STORAGE BASES! They can be emergency resources as mentioned above, allows for full use of the planet building up possible use items, and if things get tight in that area the base can be retrofitted some something with weapons/shields.
And they have only .1 more build time than a cargo facility (in the check I just made YMMV)

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

DOes that strategy carry over to other things? Fighters? Drones? Satellites? Ships?

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Aiken: for simultaneous games, how do you make sure the troops are loaded right after the initial load? If you attack,load,attack,load, etc, don't they get all jumbled up?

Slick.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Gandalf, it's a general rule for units: first loaded - first deployed, second loaded - second deployed. Note, that you can't store ships in cargo.

I tested deployment of multiple unit types with load/drop cargo orders: loaded 4 types of troops to transport and then ordered it to move to planet, drop troops, load troops, move to next planet ... There were 4 destination points (my planets). Next turn, placement order of troops in cargo was the same as initial one (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th). I'm not sure about real planet assault, though. I'll make a test game to check it, and post my observation here.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Huh. That is your problem, you have poor troop ship designs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif My designs are capable of dropping as many troops as possible, and even with 50 physical strength and against planets where police troops are armed, I never lose any... Even the militia of filled huge worlds have never been an issue (as by the time huge worlds are filled, I have large transports and large troops)...

I have not had the opportunity recently to conquer planets with moons, but I have indeed successfully conquered multiple planets in one turn without issue in 1.91.

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In my experience, they remain in the originally loaded order when you use Attack and Load Remotely orders. Even when you just move the fleet into the sector with the planet(s).

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I could test this myself later I guess... but does this mean that such a tactic would work for fighters and drones? Ive been using # of engines to try and add some control to attack sequence.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

It should work. I used such tactic with 2 types of fighters: first I loaded carrier with rocket pod fighters (1st wave), and then duc fighters (2nd wave). They were launched in the same order as loaded.

edit: but I don't actually remember, if they were recovered in proper order or not. need to test it again.

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Just don't bother trying to get your fighter stacks to each have 3 of one fighter type, 1 of a second and 1 of a third... If you can even manage to do it once, losing a single fighter will screw up the ordering and future launches will have the stacks out of wack...

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What about using more than 1 Troop Transport. I can't see how the order would stay the same after some troops get lost with the added variable of not knowing which transport will pick up the troops.

Slick.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Hey! A friend of mine mentioned that he may have figured out a way to overcome the "cloaked minesweepers don't sweep mines" problem. I'll be testing this before I post the results.

Slick.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

That would definitely be a cheating exploit, as cloaked minesweepers do not sweep mines for balance reasons... You should definitely email the bug exploit to Malfador if it works.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

A small thing perhaps worth mentioning: red nebulaes grant you the best kind of cloaking, which cannot be bypassed by *any* sensor. This can be used to help your natural paranoia, or to have a nice secure system when striking against another Empire.

On the topic of game mechanisms: happiness is one of the most important factors of your Empire, and keeping it as high as possible should be one of your priorities. Happiness works as follow: all your planets have an happiness value (from 0 to 1000) expressing the number of unhappy people on this planet. If you have an happiness value of 0, nobody is angry on this planet, whereas a value of 1000 means everyone is out asking for your blood. These values are expressed in tenths of percent, so 540 means 54% of the inhabitants of this planet are unhappy. From the Happiness.txt file, the various levels of happiness are as follow:

Population Anger (in %) Descript. Resource Modificator
75 - 100 Rioting 0%
60 - 74 Angry 80%
45 - 59 Unhappy 90%
30 - 44 Indifferent 100%
15 - 29 Happy 110%
0 - 14 Jubiliant 120%

So what modifies happiness? The following means can be used to reduce your population anger values, thus improving your happiness. Note that most of the values are given for the Peaceful happiness type, by far the most common. For other happiness types, please replace the numbers as needed.

*Empire wide positive changes:
- Colonising a planet decreases unhappiness by 1% per planet colonised.
- Likewise, capturing an enemy planet decreases unhappiness by 3% per planet captured.
- Enacting certain treaties (Trade Alliance and above for peaceful) decreases unhappiness, from -2% for a Trade Alliance to -10% for a Partnership. This bonus is only applied when accepting the treaty, regardless of any previous treaty you had with the particular Empire.

*System wide positive changes:
- The Urban Pacification Center, the Fate Shrine and the Temporal Vacation Service improve happiness within a whole system. At levels III, the UPC and the Fate Shrine reduce population anger by 3% (a value of 30) per turn, and the Temporal Vacation Service reduces unhappiness by 6% every turn.
- Having ships in a system decreases unhappiness by 0,3% per ship. Having a big fleet within a system is thus an effective way of quenching unrest.
- Winning a battle in the system decreases unhappiness by 2% per battle won.

*Sector or planetary changes:
- Winning a battle over the sector decreases unhappiness by 5% per battle.
- Every troop on a planet decreases unhappiness by 0,2%, regardless of the strength of the troop.
- Friendly ships decreases unhappiness if they are over the planet(s) in question, by 1% per ship.
- Building ships and facilities should decrease unhappiness by 0,5%, which only affects the planet in question to the best of my knowledge (this bonus is fairly weak, and I have yet to see it play a major part, so I gather it is only planet wide).

And now the more annoying part, why you are losing happiness. It goes as follow:

* Empire wide happiness losses:
- Losing a planet (where the planet is destroyed from orbit) increases unhappiness by 5% for the whole Empire. This is the main reason why happiness collapses if you are fighting a defensive war (where your planets are being glassed). Losing your homeworld thus increases unhappiness by 10%, which may or may not stack with the regular happiness loss.
- Losing a ship increases unrest by 0,1% per ship lost. I believe it applies to the whole Empire, but may be wrong on this one; feel free to correct me if required.
- Having a planet captured increases unhappiness by 3% per planet captured.
- Specific treaties lower your happiness, such as War, Non Intercourse, and Subjugation/Protectorate when you are the dominated party. Again, this is only for the Peaceful happiness type.

* System wide happiness losses:
- The presence of enemy ships increases unrest by 0,5% per ship.
- Losing a battle in the system increases unrest by 2% per battle.
- Every ship lost in the system increases unrest by 0,2%.

* Sector or planet happiness losses:
- Losing a battle in the sector increases unhappiness by 5%, while having a battle without a clear victor increases unhappiness by 1%.
- Every ship in the sector increases unrest by 0,8%.
- Every one million settler killed increases unhappiness by 0,1%.
- Enemy troops on the planet (in the case of long ground battles) increases unrest by no less than 20%.
- Having a plagued planet increases unrest by 20% as well.

The following can improve or decrease happiness:
- Points above 100 in the Happiness characteristic gives you a small increase of happiness for your whole Empire, whereas points below 100 decreases your global Happiness. Note that this effect has little impact on the game, because of the Natural happiness decrease.
- The Natural decrease is of 2% every turn, regardless of whatever else may happen. This will push happiness towards the Indifferent level if you are between Jubilant and Angry, by 2% every turn. So if you have a planet with a Jubilant status, this will be a decrease, whereas it will actually increase happiness for an Angry planet. Natural decrease does not allow you to "undo" a riot on a planet however.

Since the 1.91 patch, there is an effective cap for happiness changes each turn. This is set at 20%, either positive or negative, and means you cannot increase or decrease unhappiness by more than 20% every turn. So if all your planets were Jubilant, you could not fall immediately to Riots in a single turn (you would need between four and five turns for it to happen). Before the 1.91 patch, this cap was indicated in full percents, and so was set at 200% (twice as much as the maximum anger value), hence resulting in immediate massive riots if you had lost enough planets in a single turn.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Hold your horses. I said I'm testing it. I also assure you that, if this does in fact work, it is NOT an exploit and I will post the method here. At this point, I won't say any more. It may or may not acutally work. The person who told me about it is a newbie so I wanted to test it before posting it. It does sound to me like it might work though.


Slick.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Every enemy ship, that is.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

When I'm playing as an evil empire, which is most of the time, one of my favourite tricks is to ally with two (AI) opponents who are sharing a system with each other. I then park a small fleet over Empire A's planets, and declare war on Empire B. When Empire B's ships attack mine, I destroy them, but first capture the planet belonging to Empire A (my ally). Obviously this doesn't work against human opponents, but you can sometimes get quite a few planets this way.
I once had a game where I had fleets parked over 10 huge planets across 3 systems that belonged to my 'ally'. When I declared war on the other empire, he attacked all 10 fleets in the same turn (with 2 destroyers against 15 DNs. Go figure). I went from being ranked 6th in that game right up to 1st in one turn. Pure evil sweetness.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Let's keep things that are obviously bug exploits, such as conquering an ally's planets, out of the list...

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Well, I dunno. Last game I played against a human (which was AGES) ago, I did something similar to one of my friends and just told him the enemy conquered his planet and I took it back. Course things got ugly pretty fast when I decided not to give it back. ;-)

In terms of 'legitimate' strategies, I've put quite a bit of thought into fighter combat strategies. One thing I find works quite well for keeping your fighters alive is to have your carriers escorted by a few Missile Ships. As the name implies, these are ships (usually CRs or BCs) loaded to the gills with CSMs (With my modified ships sizes a CR carries about 18CSMs and a BC does 30). When in combat, I have them spread their fire across as many targets as possible, and send my fighters in about 1-2 squares behind them. The AI uses up all their PDCs on the missiles, and the fighters can swoop in to attack unmolested. Each fighter usually carried 4 Rocket Pods so 400 damage potential per fighter (again, modified sizes, but the principle is the same), and a Heavy carrier can launch about 250 fighters. So 250x400=100,000 damage points. And that's a lot of hurt in anybody's books.

Using this tactic, I usually send out hunting packs of 2 heavy carriers, 3 Missile BCs and one spaceyard ship with cargo comps to ensure my carriers are always fully loaded. It works brilliantly against the AI, but not so well against humans, since I haven't figured out how to use the 'Missile Screen' tactic in Strategic Combat.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Just a small trick, that while obvious, i did not see much people using it:

When colonizing distant systems, create a fleet with the Colony Ship and a small ship full of supply components and solar panels (an escort or frigate is enough) so the colony ship can have the supplies needed to reach the system...

I normally retrofit my old escort and frigate ships to these "booster ships" when new hull sizes make them obsolete in the line of battle...

Other use for obsolete frigates is to add a repair component to them and make them repair ships that still can be useful in the line of battle.

Another use for obsolete escort and frigates is to add cargo components and use them as troop transports or faster trasnports for units, since they can have more engines than the traditional transports (while the traditional transports are more cost-effective, these "fast transports" can help you to transport badly needed units faster to the front)...

i don´t know if these hints are really usefull against human players, since i mainly play against the AI, but i just wanted to add my 2 cents....

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I like to make the all in one support ship

A ship that has cargo for troops, Mine sweepers and Repair all built into one. ( Plus it is also the EM scanner ship ) This helps with making the ship very useful in 3 rolls... Add a q.r. or some supplies as well to finish it off. As all ships should have spent 20kt on the supply bay.

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Another small item:

You don't actually need fighters on a planet to issue the "launch fighters" orders. All you need is one unit of any sort. (For me, this usually mean riot troops.) This allows you the issue the build order and launch fighters order at the same time thus avoiding the eventual "no storage available" log entry.

Does this mean a ship armed SD, NSP, SD, NSP,... would be an awesome ship?! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I do not know Grandpa Kim; the part about shielding goes well beyond my understanding (a similar idea works fine for Armour, and would be much better if singular armour components were bigger).

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I don't think so. If you've knocked out a targets shields with shield depleters and then hit it again with another shield depleter, that damage will simply be ignored rather than stored and added to the next shot. If you then hit it with a null-space projector and another shield depleter, any damage from the NSP that didn't completely destroy a component would become shields-only damage and be discarded.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

A minor point but might be of some value.

I found by accident that the ship/base that has a SY does not have to have cargo space when building units if there is any other cargo space in the sector. I use this for warp point defense. Build a cheap base with a sat bay/mine layer and have a SY ship (or base) in the same sector. The SY ship is set to repeat build sats or mines and they are automaticly placed in the launching base which is also set to repeat launch. If needed the SY ship can be moved and return or whatever else is needed. with larger sizes this is of small concern but it does allow for mobile unit production with a cheap SY ship and anything else with cargo space wherever is needed.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I finally have one to add. I hope it has not already been added.

Tip: You can sort the planets by min, org, or rad values simply by clicking on the word "Values" above each in the Planets Window. The window you use to send colony ships.

This is a very useful tip if your running low on minerals, you can sort prospective planet by mineral value and then deploy your colony ship to that planet. The same goes for Orgs and rads.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

TIP:

On your home worlds build troops, weapon platforms, satellites, mines, fighters, and weapons platforms.

Design a colony ship using a larger hull size and add lots of cargo components.

Transfer a small amount of population to the new colony ship along with some troops, fighters, weapons platforms, mines, and satellites. When the ship colonizes the planet, presto, you have instant fortifications. I normally only use this TIP in the earily part of the game when I know there are hostiles about.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

11. When encountering a new race, first destroy his ship, then offer him a treaty. This is called Gun Boat diplomacy.

From the Evil Ruler Hand Book and E.R.A.S.E.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

Here's one I learned from Spoon: (this applies to the stock game)

There's no need to use colonizer hulls. Instead use small transports, since they're the same size, have the same cost, and it's not immediately clear to your enemies whether the ship is a colonizer, minelayer, troop transport, etc.

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

A few more "oops, what did go wrong?":
- When using Carriers, never, ever, forget to check their ship strategies. They usually default to "Don't get hurt", even if they happen to carry enough firepower to slaughter a whole civilisation.

This is fairly awful for carriers used as gunboats, and a disaster if you intend your carriers to keep up with the rest of your fleet (while launching some fighters). As such, it would be best to keep a close eye on their ship strategies, before running into such problems.

- Along the same lines: I believe a retrofitted ship keeps the ship strategy of the first design. At any rate, I would advise you to set a similar ship strategy for the basic and newer designs, just in case.

Likewise, copying designs do not copy the ship strategy, so you will have to set it again for any copied design. Otherwise, you will find yourself with ships running away from combat, which isn't perhaps the purpose of your warships.


And one more actual tip: do not overlook Emergency building, since it can be quite useful to speed up your growth. Emergency building results in an increase by 50% of your construction rates, at the cost of one turn of Slow build (at 25% of the standard construction rate) per turn of Emergency building.

Contrary to what might be believed, Emergency building can Last for eleven turns, for only ten turns of slow build. Construction is checked eleven times between the turn when you switch Emergency build on (0.0 year of Emergency build) and the tenth turn (1.0 year of Emergency build), when it will be switched off. Nonetheless, this Last turn still has the increased construction rates.

Besides emergencies, Emergency build can be used for the following purposes:
- To fully develop a planet with few facility slots. For example, if you want to build one Spaceport and four research centers, switching Emergency build on will allow you to build the Spaceport in two turns rather than three, at virtually no cost; the nine remaining turns will be more than enough to build your four research centers. The same could be used for Atmosphere Converters (done in five turns with Emergency Building, leaving you six turns to fill up the five remaining slots at best) among other facilities.

- To speed up the construction of expensive ships, aka Stellar Manipulation vessels. When the ETA before completion shows 1.6 year, Emergency building can bring the delay down to 1.1 year, which will be completed before Emergency building wears off. A net gain of five turns might be just all you need to close that wormhole before the invading fleet warps in, rather than crashing on said fleet.

By the same reasoning, spaceyards only expected to build a single item can use Emergency building to gain five turns of construction time. For example, a spaceyard base intended to build one remote-mining starbase would use Emergency build to get the starbase completed five turns before, resulting in a very significant gain by allowing the remote-mining operation to start five turns before.

- A common early game opening is to build eleven colony ships at your homeworld, in order to expand as quickly as can be done. By the time the homeworld goes back to very low construction rates, you should have at least one or two spaceyards somewhere else to carry on with the production, while your other colony ships do their best to give you a lead in expansion. You might need retrofits to manage this however, especially with average construction rates and/or a Medium-sized homeworld or below, which gives me the perfect opportunity to speak of retrofitting.

* Retrofitting allows you to "transform" a ship of a certain design into another, at a higher price. The targetted design can only be 50% (or less) more expensive than the original design, all resources added. For instance, a basic ship costing 15,000 minerals could be retrofitted to a design costing 10,000 minerals, 2,000 organics and 10,000 radioactives (total 22,000 resources, while the limit was 22,500 resources).

The added cost of retrofitting is +20% per component added (so adding a component normally costing 400 minerals will cost 480 minerals), and 30% of the cost of any removed component. You will also have to pay maintenance for your ships being retrofitted, although the total maintenance should be lower than for the full design.

Any added component will be "broken" when added, though having broken components does not affect retrofitting in any way. Lastly, retrofitting does not allow you to add spaceyards or colony modules to a ship not having any such component to begin with. If your ship had an Ice module, you would however be able to retrofit it in a Gas coloniser.

* Once again, retrofitting has several uses:
- It helps speed up the construction of these expensive ships, namely Stellar Manipulation vessels. Building one of the cheaper Stellar Manipulation components (the Matter Gravity Sphere, or the Ionic components if possible) to retrofit them into Warp Openers or Planet Creators is a very effective way of getting these ships more quickly, especially in conjunction with Emergency building.

Be warned that the actual retrofit is very expensive, generally around 80,000 minerals and 60,000 radioactives to retrofit a Planet Creator into a Warp Opener. Because of this, you should have a few storage facilities and a balanced economy before attempting any massive Stellar Manipulation project.

- Retrofitting is also used to virtually increase your number of spaceyards. In other words, you would create a cheaper design, built one turn earlier than the full ship, and would "finish" the ship through a single retrofit in orbit. This does not usually result in ships being completed earlier, but increases your construction abilities. For example, if the original ship required four turns to build, but the retrofitted Version needs three turns, you can build 33% more ships than before.

This will require you to have at least decent repair abilities, and some resources to spare since it is somewhat more expensive than the regular way. It remains quite useful as a temporary adjustement of your construction abilities however; if you have too many resources, you can thus boost your construction rates, while waiting for more spaceyards to come Online. And when/if you lack resources, simply go back to the original design not requiring any retrofit.

- The Last main use of retrofits is for retroseries, where a given ship is retrofitted several times before being "finished". This way is the most expensive in resources (although by the time it is widespread, you should not have too many problems with economics), and requires some micromanagement as well. It will significantly improve your construction rates however, as such ships can often be completed in half the time originally needed.

My apologises if any of the above is unclear or vague; I find retrofitting and Emergency building to be fairly complicated processes to explain, although they are important in a game. If you are left puzzled and with a headache after reading the above, please say so and I will do my best to give a more thorough explanation (or leave this task to someone actually able to get herself understood).

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

That is a lot of excellent info there. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Gameplay tips & tricks
 

I have found it useful to not use the "send colony ship". Its good for new players since it wont forget to load up with population first. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
But (at least in solo play) I like to send my colony ships to the planet and then decide whether or not to colonize there. By then I have many times learned something which makes me prefer to change the orders.

Along the same line (again solo play) I have often found it useful to send a ship to the warp point just BEFORE where it is supposed to end up. Again I might have learned something new. In many cases I will wait one turn to make sure it has full movement before I enter the warp. This gives me options to try and jump quick to the planet if there is company there. Or to jump back into the warp and try somewhere else.