[Master Belisarius]

Originally posted by teal:
From reading the forums and from my own (still very small but growing) experience, there seems to be a few general strategies.

1) Missles
2) Fighters
3) Drones
4) Kamikaze Ships
5) Direct fire ships

My observation is that the first 3 strategies work only if your opponent is not prepared with lots of point defense (possible exception being high tech drones). Since your opponent can retrofit his ships to include a few extra point defense cannons in a turn or two, this means that these strategies will only work *once* before your opponent adjusts and prepares for them.

I have not had much experience with strategy 4), Kamikaze ships, but I don't see the economics of this working very well.

Which means we are left with 5), direct fire, which has no quick counter and is a good general long term strategy.

This is all a large preamble to asking the big question. Is their *anything* which can effectively counter Bezerkers with high (or maxed) aggressiveness or defensiveness? Put another way, if your opponent has high defensiveness/agressiveness and you do not, what strategy can you adopt that is a good long term strategy and not doomed to failure once he retrofits a couple of PD cannons onto his ships? So far I can't think of anything. It seems possible that drones might work and/or kamikaze ships with your presumably better economy because you spent your racial points somewhere else... but this all seems kind of doubtful. This is kind of dissapointing because it means that their really is only once choice in empire design if you don't want to doom yourself to getting mopped up by the first beserker race you face. What am I missing?

Mostly agree with you.
Anyway, think that win or losse, also will depend of the opponent skills, starting possition, other players involved, etc, etc.

But yes, I think that great part of the game, is decided creating the *.emp file.
About how to play against Berzekers/High-Aggressivenes/High-Defensiveness races, well, you could play well, if doing your empire selected some of:

1) High Agressivenes/High Defensiveness.

2) Berzeker too!

3) Deeply Religious race, and hurry for the Talisman.

Of course that this options is also good, because you can save points in your Aggressiveness. The problem is that in small maps, not always is easy reach the Talisman before die!

4) Organic Race: the organic ships are more fast to build, cheap to build and cheap to maintan.
- The Seeker parasite is one of the best seekers, but also very cheap.
- The weapon for the fighters is one of the best.
- With the Organic Armor, you can build VERY good and expendable ramming ships (have you ever played against the United Flora???).

5) Temporal race. With the Temporal Predictor III (name?), your systems will get +30% Bonuses.

6) Psychic Race. The system training facilities are very good to train your fleets/ships.

7) Crystallyne Race. With this racial trait, you could get really very good fighters: using the Crystalline Lens III (name?), inside your systems you will get 60 points for every shield of every fighter!
Also, I have used the Crystalline Armor as Ramming weapon (the Tessellate, for example).

Finally, some things could help you to hit enemy ships (or avoid hits from them!).
1) Scattered + Stealth armors are a good thing to include in your ships.

2) Train your Ships/fleets. This thing always works, but of course that your opponent could train their ships too...

3) Boarding ships: because the shields are mostly useless until reach the Phaser-shields, sometimes the players doesn't use shields. I used with success, small boarding ships. Yes, the opponent could use self-destruction devices, but for example, you could destroy a LC with a simple FG.

4) If your direct fire ships can't hit their ships... well, try using Point-Blank tactics. Your ships will be dead meat, but at least you will be able to make some hits, and if you can build more ships than him, then, you could take advantage.

5) Use many many fighters / seekers / drones combined.
Always does exist the hope to overhelm their PDC ships... and your opponent will be forced to spend resources and time building PDC ships.
Please note that for every Big Fighter with 2 shields (120 points), your opponent will need 2 hits with PDC V to destroy it.

6) Yes, use kamikaze ships or Ramming ships. The Organic ramming ships are the best for this, but even ships with scattered armor would work.

7) Use the Neural Net, if you got it inside ruins.

8) Try to create massive fleets. After all, if he spent many points in Aggressiveness/Defensiveness, and you not, you should be able to keep a largest fleet or build ships with a fastest rate.

9) Sometimes, to slow down an offensive and get time to rebuild your fleets, try to ressist in the warp points and kill their support ships (sweepers, repair-ships, resupply ships).