Technology Tree Overwhelming

[ButSam]

Excuse me for being totally naive, but how do you capture ships? I just keep destroying them.

[TerranC]

1. Build a ship with at least one boarding party component.

*you might want to include Sheild draining weapons if you can*

2a. Set the ship strategy to capture enemy ships, send it to the nearest enemy ship and engage Strategic Combat.

2b. send your ship to the nearest enemy ship and engage tactical combat.

*If your boarding ship has no weapons whatsoever, it's best to send in an escort ship that can drain sheilds fast*

3b. after the shields on the enemy ships are at 0 *or no more blue bars left on the enemy ship* move your boarding ship as close as you can to the enemy ship.

4b. if you have at least one point of movement left, click ship orders and click Capture ship.

5. enjoy your newly captured ship by analysing it, scrapping it, retrofitting it, or repair it and use it against your enemy by sending it to the nearest space yards.

[Suicide Junkie]

Edit to 4b: You do not need movement remaining. You just need to be beside the ship, and have intact boarding parties.

[Mudshark]

Andr�s do you mind if I add your latest to my site? for that matter is it OK that I added your previous work? It is not my intention to take credit from other peoples work, just to help out with new players.
I will of course remove with no hard feelings. I just hope I did not cause you any discomfort by posting without asking!

By copy this goes to the rest of the forum as well!

[Kin-Chan]

Wow, after all that playing, I have finally finished a game. Unfortunately, it was finished by the Eee as their heavily shielding dreadnaughts crushed me to goo.

Is there any easy way to deal with the shields? I couldn't find any shield piercing weapons, and I could never do enough damage (even with my entire fleet amassed at my homeworld) to stop their dreadnaughts, or even to kill one.

Most of the ships I use were outfitted with that living armor thing.. I forget the name, and some seeker parasite thing, as well as some acid attack.

[dmm]

Dealing with shields:
1. Be Temporal. They have weapons that bypass shields.
2. Be Psychic. They have powerful weapons that can punch through shields. Even better, use Mind Control which takes over the enemy ship, then bLast him with his own ship. If the enemy counters with Master Computers, you can counter with Computer Virus.
3. You do know about weapon mounts in the design area, don't you? Larger ships can mount larger weapons that give you "more bang for the buck."
4. One word: Wave Motion Gun.
5. There are shield depleting weapons. If you get lucky and find the special tech called Massive Shield Depleter, use that.
6. Shields don't work in minefields. (Apparently ships can't travel with their shields up.) So mine your warp points and planets.
7. There are special weapons that attack only engines or only weapons. I think these ignore shields and armor (but you'd better check that, I never use them).
8. When Organic, use lots of armor, not just one or two pieces. Your ships become virtually indestructible, except by Crystalline which has armor-skipping weapons. Even if the enemy destroys your ship, he will use up all of his supplies in the process. Organic missiles are great, but, as with all missiles, you can't do it half-heartedly. You have to have enough to overwhelm the enemy's point defense, or else they are a waste.
9. Maxxed-out planets should build defenses: mines, sats, fighters, platforms. This is especially good strategy for Organic, which has better-balanced resource use. Every one of your planets should be a killing field, requiring a concerted invasion.
10. In the final analysis, though, much of the game boils down to your economy. You can have great tactics, but without resources you will eventually be ground down. And economy is determined by grand strategy. Enjoy!

[Andr�s]

Mudshark,
Ok post it, I recently added it in my site (not just in the temp folder), so if you want to can copy the link.