New player struggling

[Growltigga]

Andy, I suspect this argument will go on and on and on.

Personally, I have only played against the v1.49 AI and a particularily daft friend (sorry khanuk). We all know the AI is a bit lacking sometimes so I make a point of not using fighters or mines or massed warp point defences against them - it just gets a bit sad

I dont use battlestations or even space stations at warp points for a lot of the reasons Gryphin goes into. A static defence is no way to win a war and you need mobile units to win the fight anyway.

I research advanced military science ASAP and build a sizeable fleet of say, light cruisers, which actually have very few components in them. When war breaks out, I retrofit these ships to the design spec I need (PDC heavy versus the Krill or Norak for example) and bingo, you have a modern, sizeable, hard hitting fleet.

The advantage of building the hulls first is that you can take advantage of your ships/fleets being trained up as per the ship training/fleet training facilities you have built by now.

Mac is right too, you need to diversify your construction capability and also expensive, spaceyard equipped spacestations over your planets are extremely important if not vital!!
I generally will have say 4 spaceyards orbitally Growltigga Prime before 12-15 turns have passed!

Back to defence, fighting the AI, I dont defend warp points, I defend planets with weapons platforms, satellites, defensive troops etc, sometimes fighters too if the enemy is using them. Make them a hard nut to crack and also you can continually upgrade your fortresses to the latest tech with your planet and space-based building modules

I do built bases in planetless nexii as you can use these guys as resupply depots (bases have infinite supplies)

[Andy Watkins]

Growltigga,

Thanks for the reply you have raised a few points and I have learnt a few things...

Building empty ships and then retrofitting them. I don't understand this, how do you retrofit or upgrade an old ship??

I am building them and then afterwards scrapping them and building newer models.

I haven't built and spacestations with ship yards near planets at all yet this seems important to you, what do you tend to do with them, I normally have more ship yards than I need because of limited mineral mining.

My one clever thing I am doing which someone here told me to do, I have built two ships with space yard facilities. taken them to a system full of asteroids and am building robo miner equipped space stations over each asteroid. Currently bringing in over 20,000 minerals per turn, probably costing a quarter of that or so in maintenance etc.

Biggest problem I have with fighters and in fact building in general is that I have one space yard on EVERY planet and about 25 planets. Plenty of capacity but it is all over the place so difficult to remember where everything is, particularly when you have to build fighters and carriers on seperate planets and bring them all together

Andy

[Growltigga]

Andy,

To retrofit a ship, highlight the ship on the main system screen, then click on the 'green triangle' like icon on the order bar and this should bring up a list of spaceships in that sector, together with a list of options, the main ones being scrap, retrofit and mothball.

Retrofit allows your ships to be remodelled and upgraded to a different design. The only caveat is that you cannot retrofit to a ship which costs more than 50% of the base design.

So, what does this mean? - as soon as I have advanced military training and have built ship training facilities, I will build light cruisers/destroyers with my current tech. When I have reached a major milestone in tech development, or bump into something 'orrible on the starlanes, I will upgrade my base design to incorporate all new kit and will then retrofit existing ships to that design.

Also, you can swithc designs should you rapidly need escort cruisers or planetary assault ships or whatever

makes repair modules very important

With regard to your management problems, try using waypoints (from the empire status window) for setting where newly built vessels marshal once you have built them, re the rest, it is probably just experience

[PsychoTechFreak]

@Andy, note to retrofits: In simultaneous game you do not get a confirmation in the retrofit screen, you just can see what is going on in the next turn (vehicle retrofit log).

[Growltigga]

Andy, thinking about it, the only tip I can suggest about empire management (and is only a reflection of what I do rather than any right or wrong answer) is to centralise my building programme in each system.

What I mean by this for example is that if I have 3 habitable planets with shipyards in one system, I may use them to build carrier vessels whilst say in another system, the shipyards there will build fighters. A transport will carry the fighters by way of a shuttle run to a central fleet base. The carriers will be instructed to go to that fleet base when built and then you should be able to marry up carrier Groups to their respective carriers.

This is probably inefficient, but it is the only way I keep track of everythig going on round me.

Good luck!

[Andy Watkins]

Growltigga,

Thanks for feedback, this retrofit thing is new to me, I'll have to give it a try in my next game, sounds good.

Your approach of building fighters in one system and carriers somewhere else and meeting up, that's kind of what I am doing just not very efficiently.

Recently I found the "Cargo" sub button on the Colonies screen, this is very useful for scanning through for satellites, troops and fighters you've built somewhere and forgotten to pick up.

I'm winning heavily at the moment, and ALL the other players have gone from firm allies to war overnight. I shall need to build up my forces, secure my frontiers and kick everybodies arse.

I tend to view Research very heavily, I have about 3 times more research points than any AI player.

One of the problems with research is I never really know which one to research to get what I want. There are some obvious ones like "Missiles" but some are less obvious.

If I built 4 base stations above my home planet and set them all building for example fighters, are the fighters stored in cargo on the base station or the planet below?

I am guessing on the base station and you need a shuttle transport to store stuff down on the planet, OR put lots of cargo on the base station.

Presumably all you bother with is a spaceyard module and cargo, not worth trying to arm them??

Andy

[Growltigga]

Andy, the cargo button is very useful indeed!

As all the AI have declared war on you, it sounds like you have gained 'Mega Evil Empire' status. This is a default option which makes every AI irrevocably declare war on you at the same time. It is triggered IIRC when your points get a certain percentage above the points score of the 2nd placed player.

IIRC, you can turn it off by going into the settings.txt file and where it says Mega Evil Empire typing False instead of True - I may be wrong so dont try this uunless one of the modder gurus have confirmed this

Heavy research IMO is a human thing and as to what to research, that is the fun of trial and error

Retrofitting is CRUCIAL - try it out and get the hang of it - you will get whomped without it

Re spaceyards, any units built by a spaceyard will be AUTOMATICALLY stored on the planet, no shuttle transport is needed - a spaceyard built say at a warp point will need internal cargo bays to hold the stuff unless it is launched

Re components on a spaceyard, I just do bridge, life support and crews quarters and 1 spaceyard module, if I am under attack or at war, I may upgrade them to include 1 missile or a couple of point defence cannon - depends what is going on and how I feel - to quote the TV show, the choice is up to you