OK I am not gonna reply to all of you one at a time because of too many Posts. So I will reply on strategies.
Yes, enough beam weaps will do alot of dmg. But when I do use them I mix them with shield accelerators for max dmg. I prefer to use tachyon cannons because they have a better dpt (dmg per turn) in
most cases.
Organics: Yeah they are a pain, but temporal tech also has armor skipping weps
. I could also just use null-space (which I keep at least one of on my designs to knock out engines/weps) or I could use weapon destroying weps, which go through armor
. Organic is not the end-all be-all of SE4. Tried it, didn't like so much
If you keep the dpt up, you can easily beat organics with their fancy armor. Plus, quad dmg weps still do 90 dmg with one hit, so they are not useless against those
Troops: Still don't like them at all when playing end game. I would rather scorch earth. My 5 systems are usually twice the size in population and production than their 20-30. Plus it creates a nice buffer zone when playing against ai.
Tactical: I almost always do tactical combat. 9 times out of 10 I am smarter than letting the compie do my grunt work. Wormhole weapons are a godsend for tactical. It's called crowd control (learned from everquest, believe it or not). I can concentrate my fire while their ships have to keep coming at me from 20 sectors away
I can usually use smaller fleets to accomplish bigger goals.
PBW: I would probably never play. I am a tactical player to the end! I don't trust computer skirmishes (see below post about losing 45 well designed ships).
So there ya go. Keep telling me your opinions!