racial trait +20% and evasive armors

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Do NOT do that! There's a great chance that even with emergency build on, it'll take more than one year to finish the thing, at after a year it'll be another year in which you have 25% efficiency in your spaceyards, perhaps even causing the ships to be completed after an even longer time than when you would have them built at normal speed.

[Ragnarok-X]

heh i know that Usually it takes me 11 turns to get planet creators, so i usually go emergency after the first normal turn.

[Alneyan]

Ragnarok-X said:
heh i know that Usually it takes me 11 turns to get planet creators, so i usually go emergency after the first normal turn.

Emergency Build lasts for 11 turns, not 10, so you can switch it on the first turn. Basically, if the ETA is 1.6 year, EB will drop that figure to 1.1 year, and it will be completed before EB goes off.

[rdouglass]

Are you guys talking about playing the AI here? I suspect you may not be dedicating 30 planetary SY's on emeregency build to produce these star destroyers when you're playing humans. If you are, you must be in a very strong position and able to outproduce with regular ships anyways.

Hey, let's face it, if you're thinking about a campaign of 15 or more star destryers, you're talking about a significant allocation of resources (not just minerals, etc. but SY production). You're sacrificing significant production of defensive support as well as offensive fleets here. You would leave yourself quite vulnerable to a decent human player IMO.

So IMO, that is probably only a wise tactic against the AI. A few "terrorist" strikes against a human opponent, maybe; but a large number against a human opponent is not going to be all that effective. Any respectable opponent would probably have Hyper Optics so your cloaking endeavors would meet only with minimal sucess.

Just IMO.

[Alneyan]

Nobody said the Star Destroyers should move unescorted: you could move them after the bulk of your fleet, as a "no counterstrike measure", or you could simply move them if you have accurate intelligence on what lies on the other side. More importantly, you can use them on your borders (on in your own systems), where you have a strategic advantage: even if your foe does head for the star(s) in your systems, a Sentried Star Destroyer can still do some damage.

The main problem is putting the Destroyer in the same system as an enemy fleet; that one usually requires you to have either a Stellar Manipulation dominancy (unlikely), or to have a central "hub" of wormholes allowing entry into your systems (or System Gravitational Shields, but those prevent the Sentry Destroyer from working). Alternatively, simply put one such Destroyer in every single system, especially if the enemy likes to use big fleets together.

Ragnarok can outproduce the enemy here, so there is no worry with SYs. Still, a large Empire in the later stages of the game should have a few hundred of planets, many of them with asteroid stats, other breathers under direct control, 70% resource conversion, and a rising Monolith economy. This stage should be reached around turn 80, more or less, depending on your trading/treaties and the specific circumstances. In a 2vs2 high-tech game, I ended up having about 300,000 minerals to spare turn after turn around turn 70, despite having about 150 SYs and a few Star Destroyers under production, plus a small fleet of 350 to maintain; since it was a warring game, my Empire was definitively not optimised: no Monoliths, only one breathing type, no asteroid planets.

In another game, Joachim had about 20 million points by turn 120 (NeGoC5), roughly 1,200 colonies, take or add one hundred, and a very sturdy (and studly) economy. Their fleet was *big* and had the Talisman, and he could still go on with pumping more warships. When you have this kind of Empires, putting a mere 30 SYs to Emergency Build is no worry: you should have quite a lot of SYs already, including Base SYs if needed, and your fleet should be sizeable to say the least. If you have the resources to spare, you could also build the basic hulls of your warships in the SYs, and do the rest of the work by retrofitting. It is more expensive and time consuming in micromanaging, but *much* faster, and the only limiting factor is how many resources you have. If your SYs can crank one Dreadnought every two turns (then retrofitted in orbit for two turns, perhaps three), you should be able to build as many warships as you need, and then some more, so long as your economy can keep up. And if you really need more SYs, you can add some in your colonies: scrap a Research Centre on all your colonies without a SY, and build a SY there.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

A few "terrorist" strikes against a human opponent, maybe; but a large number against a human opponent is not going to be all that effective.

You've never heard of Douglas's trick?

[douglas]

rdouglass said:
A few "terrorist" strikes against a human opponent, maybe; but a large number against a human opponent is not going to be all that effective.

I beg to differ. I wiped out three entire empires and severely damaged a fourth, all of them quite sizable, in the space of three turns with 30 star destroyers and 7 warp openers. Yes, this was on PBW and all four of my targets were being actively played by human opponents. It would have been just two turns, but one of my star destroyers took the wrong route and didn't manage to get to its target on the first turn.

Edit: Of course, such large scale destruction can have some unwelcome side effects. Due to a bug in the game, star destruction occasionally picks a few extra stellar objects to remove apparently at random. The 30 star explosions I set off resulted in at least two one-way warp points, 5 of my planets just disappeared, and I've noticed one system that obviously used to be trinary now has only two stars in it. I'm sure more such things happened outside of my space where I just wouldn't notice.

[Ragnarok-X]

pretty interesting that side-effect of stellar manipulation douglas just stated. Its a pity the galactic invasion 1 was game stopped, i would have loved to see both our empires at war.

[geoschmo]

douglas said:
Edit: Of course, such large scale destruction can have some unwelcome side effects. Due to a bug in the game, star destruction occasionally picks a few extra stellar objects to remove apparently at random. The 30 star explosions I set off resulted in at least two one-way warp points, 5 of my planets just disappeared, and I've noticed one system that obviously used to be trinary now has only two stars in it. I'm sure more such things happened outside of my space where I just wouldn't notice.

As obvious bugs go, I kind of like the sound of this one. simultanously blowing up half a quadrants worth of stars should have some unexpected consequences. It's like you broke the universe or something.

[rdouglass]

I guess I gotta' sign up for a few PBW's and experience this myself. I suspect some of you might be surprised (either that or I'll be dining on a substantial portion of crow ). Any suggestions as to a good game to join?