Strategy Articles!

[Fyron]

IIRC, ramming drops the attacker's shields to 0

I recalled incorrectly, you know. Ramming does not affect the attacker's shields at all (unless a shield generator component gets destroyed, of course). A ship that rams (attacker, source) has it's shields remain at whatever level they were before the ram. All damage is done to it's hull, none to shielding. Its shields are not dropped to 0. The target ship, on the other hand, will have damage done to it's shields first before it takes any structural damage.

[Stone Mill]

Hey Dudes...

Any requests in particular for the next Article?

I've been kind of thinking about...
-Managing Your Economy,
-Partnerships and Trade,
and How to Win (including dirty tricks)... but I think I want to hold off on this one for a bit until I lose my title.

*********************
17 Strategy Articles (By Stone Mill, contributing writer)
17.1 Empire Design **
17.2 Early Economy and Exploration
17.3 Managing Your Economy **
17.4 Get the Most out of Fighters
17.5 Combat Strategies – Early, Mid, and Late Game **
17.6 Rock, Paper, Scissors – (Which weapons and strategies counter others)
17.7 The Early Kill **
17.8 Partnerships and Trade **
17.9 How to Win in SEIV by Machiavelli XLVII **
17.10 When To Attack **
17.11 Intel Operations
** under development

[Slick]

Strange that nobody has responded to this yet. I for one can't wait! Personally I would like to see "17.3 Managing Your Economy" next; although I eagerly await all of them and would be happy with any of them.

If you do 17.3 next, here are some of the things I would like to see your methods of doing:

- Could you include your methods of keeping track of things? Like how do you do it? paper? memory? notpad.exe? Specifically, I like to keep track using the system notes on the galactic map of such things as which system-wide facilities are built, if the system has cloak detection sats, and other system type info.

- The things I get bogged down with in the mid game are upgrading facilities once level III's come out. i.e. can't be built in 1 turn so I build level II's and upgrade later - but sometimes forget to upgrade when the Last one is built.

- Also, your methods for efficiently moving units & population around.

- Also, how many planets per system do you build spaceyards on?

- Do you use spaceyard bases to supplement spaceyard facilities?

- How do you tweak your production & construction so that you have no large defecits or surplusses?

- How many storage facilities do you build?

Sorry for rambling. I don't really think I do a terrible job at these things, but I would like to see your methods, which have been developed far longer than mine and are thus probably much better. Thanks.

Slick.

[Stone Mill]

Thanks Slick, 17.3, Managing your Economy will be next.

Your questions, ideas and suggestions are actually very good, and not necessarily different from mine. This game is wide open when it comes to play styles, and what I present will be what logically suits my style.

[deccan]

Does anyone use the Emergency Propulsion Pod, and if so, for what reason?

[Slick]

I use them on a few designs:

My planet maker Battleship, because I need repair capability any way, it has a huge maintenance cost due to its Matter Gravity Sphere component so I don't want to spend excess turns in transit to asteroid fields. Each turn I use the pod and the on board spaceyard repairs it making it ready for the next turn. Note that you don't need a spaceyard to repair the Matter Gravity Sphere (only a repair bay), but you do need a spaceyard to repair the EPP.

My Ambulance Destroyer (which has a Medical Bay, speedy engines, solar sail and lots of supplies) because I want to get any plagues cured as fast as possible. I don't have a spaceyard on the DD obviously. I build, then mothball usually 3 or 4 of these Ambulances strategically placed in the empire so that I can get it to any plagued planet in a few turns.

Slick.

[teal]

Last time I tried to use a Matter Gravity Sphere nothing would repair it after it was used. A repair bay wouldn't repair it and taking the ship back to a shipyard wouldn't repair it. I was quite confused and decided to give up on the whole making planet idea entirely. Any rampant speculation as to what I was doing wrong... ?