Ok...

[Fyron]

douglas said:
Combat sensors and ECM are CRITICALLY IMPORTANT techs. NEVER neglect them (unless you have the talisman; then you can ignore sensors, but ECM is still a must-have). Training facilities aren't as important, but they're still very powerful.

Wrong. Training facilities are just as critical. You can get a maximum of 60% from CS and ECM. You can get a maximum of 40% bonus to both from training facilities. If both races have CS III and ECM III, and only one race trained their ships and fleets, the fleets with the training will generally decimate the untrained enemy fleets, with nary a scratch (assuming other factors are relatively equal).

You can even use training to fill a gap in CS and ECM techs, assuming the enemy is not more advanced in both CS/ECM and training techs...

[douglas]

That's with neutral AI's and no AI bonus, right?

[douglas]

Very bad strategy. You should always keep colonizing new systems until there are no unclaimed systems left, and you should do it quickly so as many of them are yours as possible. I think you may also be researching the other colony techs too soon. They are very expensive at 500000 research points each, and should not be researched until you can either do it quickly (I'd say 3-4 turns each max) or you have no important techs left to research that aren't also rather expensive (depends on the situation and the specific tech, but I'd say typically around 200000, though sensors and combat support 3 at 225000 are an exception).

[Col. Mustard]

Thats another thing. These neural networks or whatever, and those ship training and fleet training things, I never use them. I rarely waste points on sensors either.

[Captain Kwok]

Col. Mustard said:
Thats another thing. These neural networks or whatever, and those ship training and fleet training things, I never use them. I rarely waste points on sensors either.

No wonder why you are getting destroyed so easily. Training and sensors are the best options for your ships. They vastly improve your ships ability to hit enemy targets. Without them by the middle stages of the game, your ships will rarely hit their targets while being struck by enemy fire almost 100% of the time.

[Col. Mustard]

Hmm... that kinda stuff seems stupid though. It just seems like it doesn't do anything, and takes to much time. Are you sure your not delusional?

[Arkcon]

Col. Mustard said:
Thats another thing. These neural networks or whatever, and those ship training and fleet training things, I never use them. I rarely waste points on sensors either.

If you build a fleet of half a dozen battle cruisers, use the training facility to get up to 20%, retrofiting to the best sensor/ECM and other components as you discover them while training is in progress, that fleet will completely pwn anything the AI can throw at you.

[Col. Mustard]

What do you mean retrofiting? Why not just build them with the best sensors in the first place?

[douglas]

Actually, 12% construction bonus is enough to do it with a good starting planet. 32% is needed for average. The race I posted has well over that at 44%.

[Arkcon]

Col. Mustard said:
What do you mean retrofiting? Why not just build them with the best sensors in the first place?

'Cause you won't have the best shields, weapons, and sensors when you build the first one. You have to have the hull size, you can't retrofit to a lagrger hull. The battle cruiser fleet should have a couple of battleship or dreadnought leaders, but this all takes time.

Now the rest of this thread has a lot of specific things to research, and that's important. But what you have to do, is focus your research. You seem to be losing the tech race, still having destroyers when your opponent has dreads, that's pretty bad.

I never research colonization tech. It's too expensive, even though it's so valuable. I always steal it. The stock AI uses slow defenceless colony ships, and will send them to the front. A destroyer with advanced engines and one boarding party will take them easily. Or trade with a neutral.

Well, I do sometimes research colonization tech, to hadicap myself. And I also have to research infrastructure technology (atmosphere conVersion, urban pacification, advanced resource extraction, computers). But I don't tie up my research queue unless I've colonized a couple of large planets and filled them with research facilities.

The most important thing to research is, for me, better research facilities. So everything happens faster. I'll even do that fairly early on PBW.