Random Thoughts, Observations, and Questions...

[bearclaw]

SE2 had an intro movie of sorts.

"Calling all ships, the time has come to spread out into the galaxy."

[Renegade 13]

Parasite, I see the AI throwing around baseships all the time. At least, the TDM AI's do. Recently I faced a fleet of about 100 ships; 84 of them were baseships.

In stock, at max tech, Baseships aren't significantly slower than Dreadnoughts. A dreadnought can travel at speed 9, and a baseship at speed 8. The advantage of the Massive mount and an extra 500kT of space outweighs the slight speed disadvantage (in my opinion, of course).

[Phoenix-D]

Yeah, I hardly ever use Dreads. Either BCs or BBs for speed, or Baseships for firepower.

[Wade]

-----Request for Game Play Advice: Should Monolith Facilities obsolete regular facilities or are the regular facilities still good for cheap specialization? I'm thinking that this is the right idea.

If, on a planet, I have one high resource value and the other two are low then should I specialize that facility but still build some monoliths as well?

[Suicide Junkie]

You should build the regular facilities first, since you can do them in one turn each.

Then replace them gradually with monoliths, since the monoliths take a while to build.

[Wade]

Thanks. I had that in mind too but are all those steps neccesary ecspecially if my empire is rich?

A "regular" Facility 2 is taking .1 year. A Monolith Facility 1 is taking only .5 years.

[Wade]

-----With the sudden influx of new players that Space Empires V will bring I think that 'Strategy First Forums', being the official site and where they'll go, might become our "hangout" more so than Shrapnel Community.Com.

If only 'Strategy First Forums' could set theirs up like this one with number of views, last poster, have the standard setting begin with "show all topics", etc.

[Renegade 13]

Wade said:
-----Request for Game Play Advice: Should Monolith Facilities obsolete regular facilities or are the regular facilities still good for cheap specialization? I'm thinking that this is the right idea.

If, on a planet, I have one high resource value and the other two are low then should I specialize that facility but still build some monoliths as well?

Usually in games I play, I only ever get the chance to fully use Monoliths if I'm playing against the AI (don't last long enough against human players )

What I do, is once I have fully developed my empire and have a few well defended chokepoints, I slowly scrap all my 'traditional' facilities and start replacing them with Monoliths. Simultaneously with this, I smack Atmospheric Converters on the planets that need them. After all, by scrapping the min. miners, org and rad facilities, I have space for the converters. Then, after the converters have done their thing, I slap a few of the facilities that add planet value by 3% per year (should remember the name, can't at the moment) so that the Monoliths that I'm building have more and more to work with the whole time, and my economy will be increasing steadily even if I don't physically expand my empire into any more systems. Once that's all done in my entire empire, I start building sphereworlds and methodically wiping out the AI's, who are usually ahead of my by now in score and number of ships, but who can't penetrate my warp point defenses (though the Aquilaeians came close in my current game, they threw over 100 ships at me, 84 of them baseships...).