Temporal Anomalies

[AngleWyrm]

Just noticed this clearly last night: Combat close to the enemy's home gives them a technology advantage (unless you are close neighbors), by the difference in however many turns of development it takes to get ships over there. The further away that your main combat is, the more outdated your technology will be.

SEV, with it's three-tiered tech tree (Theoretical, Applied, and Level-Enhancements) made this more visible.

[Caduceus]

This has been true all along, I think. The further you send your force, the more likely the enemy will upgrade their technology before you get there (or be able to counter your initial attacks).

[Baron Munchausen]

This is what forward bases are for. Get a planet close to your enemy equipped with a space yard, build orbital space yards. Build fleets closer to the combat.

[Suicide Junkie]

Or, retrofit up to the latest equipment just before you attack.

Of course, you also have to be wary of counterattacks catching you with your pants down and your weapons not yet installed...
Don't retrofit ALL the ships at the same time

[Raapys]

I've always thought colony, population and technology development goes way too fast in this type of games. I'm not sure how I'd rather have it, though.

[Caduceus]

No, no by all means, retrofit ALL of your ships at the same time.

[Fyron]

Cloaking storms are your friend.

Raapys:
You can slow down SY rates and the research points generated by research facilities to slow it down with minimal effort. You can slow down pop growth by increasing Reproduction Check Frequency in Settings.txt, to make pop grow every X turns.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Wyrm: You should read "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman.

[Randallw]

Then perhaps the "Forever peace". I'll tell ya that book really goes off. It's finished with the time stuff but then it starts rewriting physics. Oh and don't forget to take your pill

[AngleWyrm]

Thanks, that was a fun read! Little section from "The Forever War" on their twisted life:

Eight months or nine years before, we'd had a tremendous advantage: they had seemed not quite to understand what was going on. As belligerent as they had been in space, we'd expected them to be real Huns on the ground. Instead, they practically lined themselves up for slaughter. One escaped and presumably described the idea of old-fashioned in-fighting to his fellows.
But that, of course, didn't mean that the word had necessarily gotten to this particular bunch, the Taurans guarding Yod-4. The only way we know of to communicate faster than the speed of light is to physically carry a message through successive collapsar jumps. And there was no way of telling how many jumps there were between Yod4 and the Tauran home base-so these might be just as passive as the last bunch, or might have been practicing infantry tactics for most of a decade.