Jumping in at the deep end
 

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?

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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?

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

I believe they all work correctly

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

Minmax guide? You mean this?

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

Eh? Are you refering to the following article?

http://www.spaceempires.net/home/mod...page&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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

(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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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?

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

Turin

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.
Neither are worth getting.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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?

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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...

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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?

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.)

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.
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.
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.
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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

Well in that case, add Explosive Warheads 2 to your turn one research queue before Physics.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

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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.

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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?

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.

Re: Jumping in at the deep end
 

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.