Jumping in at the deep end

[douglas]

Better sensors are good. Combat support for ECM is also a must. You should get point-defense cannons up to at least level 3 or 4. If you went through with the plan to get armor 4, go ahead and get 5 and 6 as well, and start putting one of each specialty armor on every combat ship. Your other main priority at this point should be military science 2, followed by advanced military science for the training facilities. Oh, and finishing off the last two levels of PPB is also a good idea.

Edit: Massive shield generators are never worth it in stock. You can get more protection for less cost from weapon platforms.

[Jtownsend]

Good to know. I've gotten MS2 and will have mil science when the current turn is processed. Is there a significent next step in ship construction I should worry about beyond light cruisers? I know people like them, but I don't know what the next "good level" is, if any.

The fact that I might be in a peaceful situation for a while makes me wonder if economic choices might be best. I'll have to read up on whatever monoliths are, and I'm thinking of getting the atmosphere changing facility I, if it is adequate, since I'm unlikely to capture breathers. Other 'economic' techs developments would be good to know about. I'm browsing the complete tech tree pdf for the stock game, but it's a bit confusing since one only gets the tech names. I've been busy with work and I'm starting to experience the almost amusing sensation of having outplayed my research - that is, I've done very well and gotten very comfortable with my opening game, taken nicely from the book and you folks' kind advice, but I'm suddenly looking at each turn and going, "Oh crud, now what?"

EDIT: Now that I check again, I see that the planetary change techs start with climate control rather than atmosphere changing; I'd confused the two. Drat.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
Good to know. I've gotten MS2 and will have mil science when the current turn is processed.

I assume "MS2" is Military Science 2, and you just forgot to put "advanced" in front of "mil science". The difference is quite important. Anyway, Advanced Military Science is a very cheap tech field and very powerful. Research it at least to level 4, for the best training facilities and the cheapest to research and build cloak-detection sensors. When you get the training centers, build them on the planets with the most moons that you have. Multiple training facilities in the same sector but on different planets stack, making planets with two moons the best training sites available in stock. Assuming you don't have none breathers, make one place concentrate on ship training and another on fleet training. The main planet should have both, but domed moons only have room for one.

Jtownsend said:
Is there a significent next step in ship construction I should worry about beyond light cruisers? I know people like them, but I don't know what the next "good level" is, if any.

Going strictly for combat utility, light cruisers can last you a good long while. Cruisers are necessary for mobile space yard ships, but aren't really a big step up for fighting power. The next major step in ship construction is level 7 with battleships, which are large enough to get the heavy mount.

Jtownsend said:
The fact that I might be in a peaceful situation for a while makes me wonder if economic choices might be best. I'll have to read up on whatever monoliths are

Monoliths are all-in-one resource extractors. In the long term, they produce much more total resources than standard resource extractors, but they cost a great deal more, both in resources and time, to set up. I wouldn't recommend them until later in the game, but if you really want them, research Stellar Manipulation. I highly recommend getting Space Yards 3 first, however. Also, they're only really useful on planets with multiple high resource values.

Jtownsend said:
, and I'm thinking of getting the atmosphere changing facility I, if it is adequate, since I'm unlikely to capture breathers.

Don't. Atmosphere converters take a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to research, and another LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to give any benefit. You need Planet Utilization level 7 for the level 1 facility, and that takes 30 turns after construction to do its thing. They're just not worth it unless you have a huge amount of research or it's very late in the game.

Edit: Also, who ever said you have to capture other breathers? Try to arrange trade deals with your neighbors who have different breathers than you. You can each just load a transport with some population and then trade the transports.

Jtownsend said:
Other 'economic' techs developments would be good to know about.

Computers. Computers is the single most important economic tech in the game. It gives you facilities that give across-the-board 10%/level (max 30%) bonuses to all resource production, research, and intelligence on each planet you build them on. Levels 4-6 give the same thing, except it affects everything in the whole system, and one system facility stacks with one planet facility on each planet for a combined 69% bonus (no, that's not a typo, they multiply together like so: 1.3*1.3=1.69). Besides that, minerals extraction levels 2 and 3 are good. Beyond that, it just gives you minerals-only versions of the computer facilities that take a great deal of research to get any better than the computer facilities.

Jtownsend said:
I'm browsing the complete tech tree pdf for the stock game, but it's a bit confusing since one only gets the tech names. I've been busy with work and I'm starting to experience the almost amusing sensation of having outplayed my research - that is, I've done very well and gotten very comfortable with my opening game, taken nicely from the book and you folks' kind advice, but I'm suddenly looking at each turn and going, "Oh crud, now what?"

EDIT: Now that I check again, I see that the planetary change techs start with climate control rather than atmosphere changing; I'd confused the two. Drat.

You still haven't even come close to maxxing out most of the techs you've started researching. Keep going in ECM and CS all the way to level 3, get adv. mil. science 4, finish off PPB, get good PDC, finish off armor 6, get at least computers 3 (the higher levels may be too expensive for now), and you should consider getting the other colonization techs sometime. After that, space yards is a good choice (get levels 2 and 3 back-to-back; no need to upgrade all your space yard facilities twice), and you might consider larger ships. Once you've done all that, then you can come back here and ask what you should research next.

Edit: Oh yeah, another nice thing to get is Stellar Harnessing. The first three levels give solar collectors which generate supplies, useful for long-range ships and fleets, and 4-6 give solar sails for bonus movement.

[Jtownsend]

Excellent. Just the sort of advice I was looking for, thanks.

EDIT: In purely combat terms, how important are battleships with their heavy mounts, and are there improvements on them? I'm asking becasue of the emphasis people have put on the CL's 10% bonus and someone having mentioned that the heavy mount on a carrier is large and vulnerable in combat - and in simulator battles my carrier wasn't much of a fleet-conquering hero.

EDIT2: I know a methane breather who is likely to oblige - there's a lot of Oxys in this game - Do I need to remove the existing population of my domed worlds? This would be something of a project, I'd think.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
EDIT: In purely combat terms, how important are battleships with their heavy mounts, and are there improvements on them? I'm asking becasue of the emphasis people have put on the CL's 10% bonus and someone having mentioned that the heavy mount on a carrier is large and vulnerable in combat - and in simulator battles my carrier wasn't much of a fleet-conquering hero.

Actually, the greatest benefit of battleships is the extra tonnage - 200 kt more than battlecruisers. The heavy mount is just a nice extra - unless you're going up against large heavily-crystalline-armored ships, in which case it's essential.

Once you get light cruisers, ship construction just isn't a very important tech for quite a while. The step up to cruisers is only an effective 80 kt with the extra CQ/LS requirement, and comes at the cost of the 10% defense bonus. Battlecruisers get you another 100 kt, which is nice but isn't as big of a deal as ECM, CS, and good weapons and the specialty armors. Battleships are the first really major improvement in combat power with a full 200 kt extra, but you need good stuff to put on them to really make good use of them, and better engines and solar sails are highly desirable to offset their lower number of engines.

Jtownsend said:
EDIT2: I know a methane breather who is likely to oblige - there's a lot of Oxys in this game - Do I need to remove the existing population of my domed worlds? This would be something of a project, I'd think.

For a planet to be undomed, all of the population on it must breathe its atmosphere. However, there is no requirement that you dispose of the previous inhabitants in a humanitarian manner (i.e. moving them to other planets), and just stationing a transport in orbit for one turn and repeatedly transferring population and jettisonning it out into space until only the breathers are left has no negative effect besides the actual loss of population. It doesn't even lower happiness on the planet you do it on. In stock, compared with the bonus from suddenly having 5 times as many facility spaces on the planet, the population loss is inconsequential unless the planet was very highly populated. So what if you lose a 2% production bonus for having 40M population? That's nothing compared to the 400% bonus the extra space gives you.

[Fyron]

The heavy mount is just a nice extra - unless you're going up against large heavily-crystalline-armored ships, in which case it's essential.

I would have to disagree. The following are calculations of Damage Percent / Tonnage Percent to show the increase in the damage ratio compared to the unmounted version of the weapon.

Large mount: 200 / 150 = 1.33x base damage
Heavy mount: 300 / 200 = 1.5x base damage
Massive mount: 500 / 300 = 1.67x base damage

Now to look at increases in damage between mounts:

Large mounted weapons do 33% more damage than unmounted weapons.
Heavy mounted weapons do 12.7% more damage than large mounted weapons.
Massive mounted weapons do 11.3% more damage than heavy mounted weapons.

While the increase from large to heavy mount is smaller than the increase from unmounted to large, it is still 12.7% more damage than you would do from a battlecruiser. This is quite significant, and should not be underscored. In my assessment, heavy mounts are most certainly not just a "nice extra," but are as necessary to use ASAP as large mounts are.

[Jtownsend]

I take it on a largish world it's going to take a good long time even to, eh colonize space? My cargo is handled atm by 2 cargo hold minelaying destroyers. So, one ship's worth per turn?