Sins of a Solar Empire goes gold! [Archive] - Page 3

wisefool

02-14-2008, 12:05 PM

Finally got around to playing it the last 3 sleepless nights. I've been playing a few 1v1 and 2v2 medium. On the 2v2 I was having a lot of fun as a mercenary, selling my fleet's services for credits and xp.

Fun gambits I want to test:

Human tec guys: Start with carrier. Run carrier to homeworld. Steal credits, get rich. Run after a few minutes but by then you'll have stolen 2000-3000 creds.

Klingon guys: 3 civil factories split between one asteroid and homeworld. Go for salvage, run missions. Fill out 2nd cap ship, then go for mil tech.

I really like the Ion Bolt cannon because it prevents the blasted AI from fleeing. Die cap ship die!

Chris: It's not that the more diverse ships aren't more powerful - if you had the same 5000 credits/metal/crystal to spend, the diverse fleet would do better. However in smallish maps tech investment has to be carefully considered imho. You spent 30% of your resources just to research more ship types. Then your enemy has twice the amount you have. LRMs are supposed to be great against frigs, maybe using cap + frig + lrm will beat cap + frigs?

EvilIdler

02-14-2008, 01:14 PM

I think the answer is the splash damage technologies.

That, damage over time and as many capital ships as possible (build them
all and check out their abilities!) has helped me. I had a small force, the
enemy had a cap and a cruiser with 50-60 smaller ships, but for some daft
reason hadn't researched any military techs. So, I just unleashed it all on
their cruiser+capital ship and got them out of the way. When my fleet of
4 cap ships, ~30 frigates and ~10 drone cruisers was dead, they had a
handful of shield ships and frigates left. After that, the only pain was to hunt
down their colony ships. Thank goodness for scouts on auto-explore+probes :)

IndridCold

02-14-2008, 01:31 PM

Too bad the games take so long to play that I will never be able to play a MP game and a pitboss type of feature is not available.

I'm fairly certain you can save multiplayer games and load them back up later...if that's what you were implying by a 'pitboss type of feature'.

Raife

02-14-2008, 01:45 PM

That, damage over time and as many capital ships as possible (build them all and check out their abilities!) has helped me.

It also helps to know which capital ship types the AI targets as a prority. For example, TEC priority targets are Dunovs followed by Akkans. The AI may target another type of capital ship if it's in range or has already been weakened, but those two are priority targets. Why? Probably because one of the Dunov's abilities is shield reinforcement and one of the Akkan's abilities improves the accuracy and range for all other ships. Because of this, I always use Dunovs in pairs and pay particular attention to shield strengths of both Dunovs and Akkans.

Quitch

02-14-2008, 02:19 PM

One feature I'd like to see added is capital ships enabling autocast on their abilities button if you've maxed three of the four abilities. No need for me there once that has happened.

Really fun game, though I think Normal is a little too slow, I find I have quite a lot of time to check the happenings around my empire, watch battles etc. I want more to do.

The game really fails at explaining some of the mechanics like trade, or WTF the differences between the races are.

Tom Chick

02-14-2008, 02:37 PM

Quitch, there' a speed slider hooked to the +/- buttons. Just boost the speed to zip past those slow stretches.

I like the pace for the most part, but I do wish there were alternate victory conditions to circumvent that overlong mop-up slog that ends every game...

-Tom

Adam B

02-14-2008, 02:38 PM

It's easy enough to right-click the abilities to toggle autocast.

Tom Chick

02-14-2008, 02:42 PM

I think he means the button to select your skills. And, yeah, I'm pretty sure you can rightclick to set that to autolevel.

It's telling that these threads contain loads of requests for features that are already in the game. A perfect storm of good UI and bad documentation! :)

-Tom

Unicorn McGriddle

02-14-2008, 02:48 PM

Has anyone been on the bad end of that mop-up slog and managed a comeback?

Quitch

02-14-2008, 02:49 PM

Yes, you can right-click, but since there's no point in manually handling skill choices when there are no longer choices to make, it'd be nice if it just switched itself on.

Thanks for the +/- tip. Man that end game drags out, I couldn't be bothered to finish by huge 5v5 game, even for the achievements, because the mopping up would have taken another couple of hours.

Raife

02-14-2008, 02:50 PM

It's telling that these threads contain loads of requests for features that are already in the game. A perfect storm of good UI and bad documentation! :)

Some of it is my fault because I've probably spent all of 60 seconds looking at the PDF manual. That said, I do think most of this should be covered in tutorials.

Tom Chick

02-14-2008, 02:51 PM

Has anyone been on the bad end of that mop-up slog and managed a comeback?

Not against the AI, which is pretty unspectacular at this point. But I've had a couple of games against humans where my team kicked ass, and then took names, and then lost the game. w00t!

-Tom

Adam B

02-14-2008, 03:12 PM

Ah sorry, misunderstood.

Also, the manual isn't terribly useful, sadly. There's probably a heap more info in this thread than there is in there.

Sam Jones

02-14-2008, 03:39 PM

Ctrl+shift+Z

One of my favourite things in this game is turning up to an enemy's homeworld with a tricked-out uber fleet and just turning off the HUD and watching the carnage. It's glorious.

Thrag

02-14-2008, 03:48 PM

One of my favourite things in this game is turning up to an enemy's homeworld with a tricked-out uber fleet and just turning off the HUD and watching the carnage. It's glorious.

In my last game after winning I played on to create an uber fleet to take out the pirates just so I could watch an epic battle without having to keep zooming away from it to check on other things.

EvilIdler

02-14-2008, 03:54 PM

if that's what you were implying by a 'pitboss type of feature'.

Pitboss is a server program for Civ4. You start it, and players log in and
play a game as normal. If anyone needs to log out and do other things,
it reverts to PBEM-style gaming. Very useful in epic games. Not sure how
it would work in SoaSE, though, being real-time rather than turn-based..

http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/pitboss.htm

Ranulf

02-14-2008, 09:26 PM

I just love how the AI will attack me at the same time, each of them having 2-3 cap ships against my 2-3. Do they attack each other? Hell no, I dont seem to see them being allied either.

Thrag

02-14-2008, 09:30 PM

I just love how the AI will attack me at the same time, each of them having 2-3 cap ships against my 2-3. Do they attack each other? Hell no, I dont seem to see them being allied either.

They will attack each other. In one of the random medium games I played (normal AIs) after watching the replay I realized how lucky I was that two AIs were actively warring over a world right on my border. If not for that I think I would have been overrun since my big fleet was away conquering on the other side of the system for a long while before I had adequate defenses set up on that border.

Chris Nahr

02-15-2008, 12:24 AM

Chris: It's not that the more diverse ships aren't more powerful - if you had the same 5000 credits/metal/crystal to spend, the diverse fleet would do better. However in smallish maps tech investment has to be carefully considered imho. You spent 30% of your resources just to research more ship types. Then your enemy has twice the amount you have.

So you're saying that research is only relevant when the maps are big enough and the game is long enough that research expenses are vanishingly small compared to fleet building expenses? And that on "small" maps (which still means ~13 planets!), spamming basic frigates is indeed an unbeatable strategy?

That would totally suck and probably kill the game for me. If a single set of statistics doesn't work for all map sizes then the game should automatically adjust relative costs and/or ship power so that research is viable on small maps. In the meantime, are there data files that I could edit to change the cost and/or power of the basic frigate type?

Unicorn McGriddle

02-15-2008, 12:54 AM

Ah, but consider the fleet caps. If you tech up, you can fit more power in your 250 supply or whatever, with less of your resource income garnished for fleet upkeep. You come out ahead.

Here's one variant on "spam basic frigates" that I've tried with moderate success against the AI: spamming Advent Disciples in a capital ship-heavy fleet and researching Steal/Transfer Antimatter. It has its perks, but not only does it call for research, but also those Disciples are fragile and don't exactly serve the same purpose as tougher fleets.

Chris Nahr

02-15-2008, 03:32 AM

Ah, but consider the fleet caps. If you tech up, you can fit more power in your 250 supply or whatever, with less of your resource income garnished for fleet upkeep. You come out ahead.

That's what you might think but this plan doesn't seem to work very well in practice. Better ships need more logistics points on top of initial research and more resources, and once a fleet has a numerical superiority of 3:1 or so (assuming the same number of capital ships), the ship types just don't matter.

Okay, that's not exactly true if all the ships in the smaller fleet were heavy cruisers, but those are extremely expensive in every respect. Any other type of frigate and cruiser that I tried just went down in no time before that wall of primitive little laser frigates. The more expensive types don't seem to be cost-effective at all, unless you're playing on a gigantic map and actually max out logistics research.

Sam Jones

02-15-2008, 04:12 AM

So you're saying that research is only relevant when the maps are big enough and the game is long enough that research expenses are vanishingly small compared to fleet building expenses? And that on "small" maps (which still means ~13 planets!), spamming basic frigates is indeed an unbeatable strategy?

I don't agree with this - I've beaten the AI on five separate 14 planet random games and while it does like spamming light frigates, a decently upgraded and selected smaller force will chew through them. You need to have a couple of capships complementing each other and the fleet, and you cannot ignore the race's support cruisers (e.g. the Advent's main combat Cap, plus a progenitor mothership for shield renewal, plus a handful of Iconis Guardians are a good base to add a bunch of combat ships to in order to create a killer stack). I've had a Vasari capship use its AOE nuke (can't remember which ship) and destroy a stack of ~50 swarming pirate ships in one go.

Adam B

02-15-2008, 06:38 AM

My rule of thumb is to pump out the no-crystal cheapies to fill up my fleet cap when I'm busy using my crystal on other things, and then worry about LRMs and carriers and such once I've got my economy and tech reasonably established. Works excellently so far, since what else are you going to do with that crazy credit/metal surplus?

IndridCold

02-15-2008, 08:21 AM

Pitboss is a server program for Civ4. You start it, and players log in and
play a game as normal. If anyone needs to log out and do other things,
it reverts to PBEM-style gaming. Very useful in epic games. Not sure how
it would work in SoaSE, though, being real-time rather than turn-based..

http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/pitboss.htm

I think it also allows you to save a multiplayer game and pick it up again later (with or without the original players). My response was to Jack Black, who was complaining about not really being able to realisically play multiplayers games - presumably because the typical game length is prohibitive.

While I haven't actually tried it, I think SoaSE allows you to save multiplayer games the same way as pitboss. My only multiplayer experience so far has been with an office colleague. We didn't finish the game, only saved it, so I know at least the saving works. A restore hasn't been attempted yet...has anyone else tried this?

Jab

02-15-2008, 09:47 AM

I finally beat the hard AI yesterday as the advent, something I noticed that the AI's strategy was to build nothing but capital ships and light frigates. My army consists of disciples, illuminators, a few crusaders and shield ships and 2 capital ships and I managed to beat it every time. One other AI quirk the AI would not fight me even if our forces were even in number and kept running away all the way back to its home planet.

The pirates became a pretty big deal when our bounty almost hit 10,000 and they wiped out 2 of the AI planets for me. One problem, during combat or if alot is happening on screen, I could not hear the message that the bounty was raised against me, and since the picture doesn't change in the event log I didn't really notice it. Maybe have the event outline glow if the same event happened again so I know that a change happened.

edit: Something that really bothered me about that game, how the hell did the AI have enough resources to not only buy at least 4 capital ship techs, but also had enough resources to get them built? We were pretty even in controlled space until I started to make my move.

Jasper Phillips

02-15-2008, 10:15 AM

That's what you might think but this plan doesn't seem to work very well in practice. Better ships need more logistics points on top of initial research and more resources, and once a fleet has a numerical superiority of 3:1 or so (assuming the same number of capital ships), the ship types just don't matter.

Okay, that's not exactly true if all the ships in the smaller fleet were heavy cruisers, but those are extremely expensive in every respect. Any other type of frigate and cruiser that I tried just went down in no time before that wall of primitive little laser frigates. The more expensive types don't seem to be cost-effective at all, unless you're playing on a gigantic map and actually max out logistics research.
Just picked this up, and in my first game had no problem facing this strategy on a medium map against normal AI. I spent most of my time stumbling around ah hoc as I learned the ropes, and yet still managed to smack down my opponent's hordes of light frigates. I did build about 10 light frigates + 5 replacements, but only right at the start; I felt they died too easily for their cost/punch/5-command-use.

Also, how is your enemy getting a numerical superiority of 3 to 1? Those fleet capacity increase techs are expensive... Maybe your battle woes instead stem from not generating enough income?

Tman

02-15-2008, 10:50 AM

A friend and I last night could not get a MP game going on Ironclad. Both of us had our ports forwarded, no firewall and yet the message "Ironclad has determined many players will have difficulty joining your game". We finally gave up after an hour and went Hamachi which worked like a charm, but would like to understand how to get it working with ICO.

Interesting that Ironclad points people to Portforward.com in it's FAQ but SoaSE is not listed in the games at Portforward...

Chris Nahr

02-16-2008, 01:25 AM

Just picked this up, and in my first game had no problem facing this strategy on a medium map against normal AI.

Fix the bolded part and get back to me, will you? :) I had previously won a bunch of games vs medium AIs, and on that level I never noticed how overpowered the basic frigate type is, either. Also, the AI is much more efficient in resource gathering on hard level.

So I finally managed to win a game vs one hard AI on a small map. This time, the AI decided to mix ship types and it was me who tried the all caps + default frigates approach.

Guess who won this time? Me.

I barely researched anything, other than the two essential colonization techs, hangar defense, and command/logistics upgrades. Just pumped out basic frigates like mad. And won.

When I did try to mix in some missile boats eventually, they got killed almost as soon as they entered a battle. I had similar experiences with carriers, flak frigates, and support cruisers. Apparently the hard AI specifically targets all ships that aren't basic frigates which makes them even more like expensive cannon fodder, moreso since the tactical model does not allow effective protection of ships "in the rear".

I really don't understand the balancing of this game. The basic frigates are not only by far the cheapest ships (no crystals, no research, fastest build time) -- they are also the most useful! If they are in fact supposed to be the mainstay of a fleet they need to be much more expensive. They should cost a bunch of crystal to bring their cost in line with their power and early availability.

TurinTur

02-16-2008, 01:34 AM

I am playing right now against the hard AI , a 2vs2. Now the AI mixes his army much better, it still spam Siege Frigates, and i am speaking about groups of 25, always nuking between themselves, but never doing progress.
Also, it still too slow expanding and upgrading their economy, that's the reason i can win him in the end. I have a better beginning which in the end gives me the economic edge.

Quitch

02-16-2008, 03:23 AM

Last game I won, a 5v5 Huge which went on for 6 hours with Hard AI, I wandered the galaxy with my massive fleet of cruiser carriers. Damn they were good. You could put them by a star, which acts as a natural bottleneck, then nuke enemy fleets as they came in with no respect for the distance between you.

Sucked at planet duty, but when they have no fleet it makes no difference how long the planet takes to fall.

It did teach me though that one mega fleet isn't enough on the big maps, because combat takes too long and so the overkill that fleet presents is wasted. It also takes you longer to move around due to the formation forming and what not.

Chris Nahr

02-16-2008, 03:35 AM

I maintain two fleets even on small maps. There's never just a single choke point to guard.

Sam Jones

02-16-2008, 05:48 AM

I maintain two fleets even on small maps. There's never just a single choke point to guard.

I'm playing one right now. The pirate base is the single chokepoint between my half of the system and the enemy's.

Chris Nahr

02-16-2008, 07:40 AM

That's a funny map. I never got so lucky with the random map generator...

Rob O'Boston

02-16-2008, 08:47 AM

So I finally managed to win a game vs one hard AI on a small map. This time, the AI decided to mix ship types and it was me who tried the all caps + default frigates approach.

Guess who won this time? Me.

I barely researched anything, other than the two essential colonization techs, hangar defense, and command/logistics upgrades. Just pumped out basic frigates like mad. And won.

When I did try to mix in some missile boats eventually, they got killed almost as soon as they entered a battle. I had similar experiences with carriers, flak frigates, and support cruisers. Apparently the hard AI specifically targets all ships that aren't basic frigates which makes them even more like expensive cannon fodder, moreso since the tactical model does not allow effective protection of ships "in the rear".

I really don't understand the balancing of this game. The basic frigates are not only by far the cheapest ships (no crystals, no research, fastest build time) -- they are also the most useful! If they are in fact supposed to be the mainstay of a fleet they need to be much more expensive. They should cost a bunch of crystal to bring their cost in line with their power and early availability.

I'm about to wrap up my first win against the Hard AI which used the light frigate strategy and my fleets didn't suffer many defeats. My cap ships with around 10-15 upgraded Assailants (who came up with that crazy name?) and 4-5 drone carriers won battles against a similar number of cap ships and between 25-40 light frigates (depending on the battle). The AI would often retreat the light frigates when they lost a cap ship. I don't think the light frigates do enough damage to unbalance the game (but what do I know). Any time the giant light frigate fleets caught me with a smaller force I would run them back to my systems. I think it helped that I was playing very offensively in the latter half of the game.

The fleets of siege/purge ships gave me a lot more trouble until I figured out the AI's favored paths and set up small fleets in their way. They ping pong around a lot when you do that.

I dig the WW2 Pacific War feel of Sins. I wish there were Marines style units that I could drop off on asteroids that would prevent the enemy from rebuilding refineries (it often takes too long to bombard a planet) until they go in and scrape off my Marines. I don't know how this would be balanced, I'd just like to have a Marine Corp.

The Vasari Marauder is a fantastic raiding ship, as it increases the movement speed of its fleet (might need tight formation though). I ran that around with the planet busting Desolator and the Hard AI's economy crumbled.

Chris Nahr

02-16-2008, 09:37 AM

Were you micro-managing your battles? I usually let the AI run the battles, and I suppose it's possible that it's just the tactical AI that cannot handle massed basic frigates.

Funkula

02-16-2008, 10:23 AM

That's a funny map. I never got so lucky with the random map generator...

I would dispute that as "lucky." One of my friends had that happen in the first game he ever played. The pirates choked him off and kept him in a tiny chunk of the map, maybe a quarter, and his single opponent was able to colonize the entire rest of the system. I think he ended up winning it simply because he had to build such a massive high-tech fleet just to punch through the pirates. Even so, it was a multi-hour slog that didn't look fun at all.

JoshV

02-16-2008, 10:35 AM

I've played some games vs the hard AI, and found the light frigate could get really annoying. Like 130 light frigates per AI, with the AI being allied up. Zooming in would cause some major chuggage =)

The Vasari and TEC, if you spam Missile frigates with area effect weapons, will be more effective. The trick is that the AI will attack whatever enters the system first, so just make your beefy ships go first, then warp in the fragile frigate swarm. Also the Vasari battleship hero gets a big area affect damage + reduce damage output of everyone hit effect that just destroys the lil things.

The Advent is somewhat screwed against hordes as they have no area affect tech. The closest they get is their cruiser that does 1.5 damage a sec, but it doesn't stack with other cruisers, so its piddly.

I'd definitely rank the races Vasari > TEC > Advent, especially late game.

Jack Black

02-16-2008, 10:49 AM

The Advent is somewhat screwed against hordes as they have no area affect tech. The closest they get is their cruiser that does 1.5 damage a sec, but it doesn't stack with other cruisers, so its piddly.

I'd definitely rank the races Vasari > TEC > Advent, especially late game.

I'd actually reverse that ranking for myself. The way the Advent have shield techs and the ability to have 1 tech, 1 building for trade/refining, their carriers are cheap and have low supply means you have literal HORDES of carriers makes it easier for me to use. Also the seeker antimatter syphon lets you use your capital ships abilities ALL the time.

Rob O'Boston

02-16-2008, 01:27 PM

Were you micro-managing your battles? I usually let the AI run the battles, and I suppose it's possible that it's just the tactical AI that cannot handle massed basic frigates.

I only closely monitored my cap ships health and sent them running if one looked like it might die. In this particular game I think I had a cap ship advantage in most of the major battles and that was what tipped things in my favor. I had two fleets, each with 2 cap ships and some assailants and transporters (that is a confusing name for a carrier btw), and I was behind enemy lines, but I only stood and fought when both my fleets were together. The AI came in with 3 or maybe 4 cap ships and the horde of light frigates. My ships hung tough, but I'm not sure where they were focusing their fire. As the AI would begin to lose a cap ship it would retreat, usually too late to save the cap ship (bombers are really good at chasing down fleeing ships). This was repeated in 2 or 3 battles. I won't be able to finish this game until tomorrow night, but I'm fairly certain looking at the charts that the AI is on its last artificial leg.

Unicorn McGriddle

02-16-2008, 03:27 PM

You want area effect from the Advent? I think the Progenitor Mothership's Malice ability fits the bill. The catch, of course, is that for Malice to work, you need to be doing damage in the first place. I think there's also a Retribution ability that damages any ships attacking the capital ship in question, but A) this damage is easy enough to avoid, and B) that might be the Vasari who have that.

Chris Nahr

02-16-2008, 11:03 PM

The trick is that the AI will attack whatever enters the system first, so just make your beefy ships go first, then warp in the fragile frigate swarm.

Is that true? That would explain why my missile frigates always get killed within seconds whenever I decide to add a few to my fleets. But that really sucks. Light ships going first is the default when you don't use group jump -- I would have thought the whole point of this function was to prevent light ship suicide!

roguefrog

02-17-2008, 12:15 PM

Question: Is there anyway to increase Allegiance after your capital gets orbital bombed to the brink of death.

Population and Life slowly regenerate but Allegiance is stuck at like 5%

TurinTur

02-17-2008, 12:53 PM

Allegiance raises up (and also go down in a case of hostile culture) slowly, 0.5% a minute or something like that. You can always choose another planet as capital.

Vincent_GC

02-17-2008, 02:39 PM

Lately I have been playing the SP game as Vasari in hard difficulty. The AIs and myself have the map evenly split 4 ways, and nobody is really moving anywhere. If I attack green, Pink attacks me on the opposite side of my territory, and vice versa.

I have been combating this by making two fleets. One is my main fleet, with 4 cap ships (one of each type except the carrier one) and the bulk of my military (around 100 ships total, 50% light frigates). I name the 4 caps ships after the 4 horsemen, and this fleet generally causes any military to flee instead of fighting. My second fleet is carrier based (20 carriers or so), lead by two capital ship carriers. This fleet mainly patrolls my boarders and assists my static defenses in repelling invaders.

Last night I ended up almost crippled by forgetting that I researched the ability for the vasari jump gates to warp in reinforcements from time to time. This put me at negitive in my pool for logistics and I never was able to reinforce my main fleet. After a few battles with green, Pink invaded with the largest force I have ever seen the AI muster (6-7 Cap ships, 100+ units). I warp in my army and they get steadily beaten, and while I watch frigate after cap ship die off, my pool is still going into the negatives so I can't rebuild. I sent in my carrier force and after about 3-5 min of fighting, Pink left, but only after killing 6 cap ships and reduced both my fleets to about 1/3rd thier size.

After that I remembered about those ships warping in through jumpgates, turned off that from autocasting, and gathered all those ships that warped in to my main fleet, rebuilt my horsemen, and chased down Pink. That's where I am at currently.

God I love this game.

Quitch

02-17-2008, 02:54 PM

I'm trying out my first FFA. The diplomacy is... interesting. AI demands bear no resemblance to reality. The guy who is taking a whooping is making demands. The person I'm allied with demands I destroy seven ships of the guy who has less than that in all of space.

Jab

02-17-2008, 03:33 PM

I'm having a hard time understanding culture. I have one culture line at one of my enemy planets, but his allegence is not dropping but getting higher. I have another planet with a culture station and yet my culture is barely moving. I have the first 2 culture techs completely researched as well.

EvilIdler

02-17-2008, 07:02 PM

I think 15 minutes is too little to perform any mission, especially when I, within 10 seconds of starting the game,
get a mission to shoot down 5 enemy ships. In a gigantic map of two solar systems. Guess where the target was..

Jasper Phillips

02-17-2008, 10:40 PM

There's no penalty to not finishing missions, until you've actually started finishing some -- you can't go below 0%.

Brad Wardell

02-19-2008, 01:36 PM

Rorschach

02-19-2008, 02:00 PM

roguefrog

02-19-2008, 02:03 PM

Raife

02-19-2008, 02:13 PM

So can someone go into more detail on damage mitigation? Is the reduction based on number of ships or number of weapons firing on a target? It seems to max out around 50% to 60%, is there anything that changes that upper limit? I can understand you get better overall DPS if you spread out your targets, but is it worth it to focus fire anyway to take out ships (esp. capital ships) more quickly and remove their damage dealing capability from the battle?

I usually let them auto-target enemy ships, which blow up just fine. Whenever I try to micromanage the targeting for anything but abilities, I usually end up causing more problems. I do use manual targeting for structures because who the hell knows what the logic is there?

As for shield mitigation factors, maybe cap ship experience level has an impact? I've know seen it at 65+%.

JoshV

02-19-2008, 02:15 PM

I'm finding that my strategies are not necessarily ideal.

I am usually pretty good at making money during the game. It's the battles where I just get creamed.

Last night, my fairly equally matched mega TEC fleet went up against an Advent fleet and got massacred. I think my mistake was focus firing on their capital ships.

Yeah, in fact, i hate that the default fleet AI will tend to do this if you don't override it. I wish there was a way to set up its priorities, or you end up having to baby sit a fleet as it will tend to default back to the cap ships after killing one light frigate.

A toggle in the same menu as formation maybe?
something like Target Default / Frigates / Cruisers / Siege / Civilian Ships ?

(i'd probably never use the last toggle, but ah, what the heck, you never know ...)

Woolen Horde

02-19-2008, 02:17 PM

Ok, I'm clearly not playing the game right. I got housed pretty bad by the AI on EASY.

I expanded across 2 planets and 1 asteroid and had a nice economy going and was able to pay the pirates off every time. I had a capital ship and about 6 or 7 frigates on the most outer rim planet when the AI launched a massive attack on the outer rim planet. Their very first attack, which wiped my capital ship and frigates out. I also lost the planet and my will to carry on so I quit the game. But now I'm left wondering what the hell I did wrong.

Any early game tips? I "thought" I was doing pretty good.

You need to seize as much territory as possible before settling down to expand the economy. Planets = population = money = buying technologies, resources, and fleets.

Max out your fleet size. If you have fleet supply left over, you're playing inefficiently. When you upgrade your logistics, you're paying a flat rate for increased supply. So if 20-percent of your economy is being devoted to the fleet, 20-percent will always be devoted, even if you have 100 or 200 points available in the fleet supply. You're spending the money for it regardless, so might as well max it out.

Get capital ships out. They're the gods of the battlefield. Get them blooded and rank them up, but be careful. Don't lose them.

NowhereDan

02-19-2008, 02:51 PM

I'm finding that my strategies are not necessarily ideal.

I am usually pretty good at making money during the game. It's the battles where I just get creamed.

Last night, my fairly equally matched mega TEC fleet went up against an Advent fleet and got massacred. I think my mistake was focus firing on their capital ships.

Really? In most of the games I've played, targeting the capital ships is the only way to win. Unless you're playing against TEC, of course, in which case you've got to take out the Robotics Cruisers first, or they'll perpetually repair the capital ships until you've been totally wiped out.

Unicorn McGriddle

02-19-2008, 02:54 PM

Last night, my fairly equally matched mega TEC fleet went up against an Advent fleet and got massacred. I think my mistake was focus firing on their capital ships.

The Advent have nasty abilities to punish that. Iconus Guardians can transfer their shields to other ships, effectively tanking for them. Vengeance causes every ship that deals damage to a target to suffer a percentage of that damage, with a top percentage well over 100%. Advent capital ships are pretty maneuverable and -- in my experience -- better at withdrawing than their TEC counterparts. (The Vasari Marauder is still the king, though.) And of course the Advent have heavy shields and lots of techs for improving their shields. Their culture bonus is an increase in shield mitigation.

Edit: But the TEC have advantages of their own. As NowhereDan says, the Hoshiko Robotics Cruiser can do roughly what the Iconus Guardian does in terms of increasing capital ship survivability. The TEC has some economic edges, such as earlier trade, that can help them outproduce opponents. Strength in numbers. Numbers in strength. Adjust your tactics to the tricks that the Advent are relying on -- kill the Motherships to stop them from using Malice on your Javelis fleets, for example. Don't let your whole fleet fire on anything that has Vengeance active.

roguefrog

02-19-2008, 04:06 PM

You need to seize as much territory as possible before settling down to expand the economy. Planets = population = money = buying technologies, resources, and fleets.

Max out your fleet size. If you have fleet supply left over, you're playing inefficiently. When you upgrade your logistics, you're paying a flat rate for increased supply. So if 20-percent of your economy is being devoted to the fleet, 20-percent will always be devoted, even if you have 100 or 200 points available in the fleet supply. You're spending the money for it regardless, so might as well max it out.

Get capital ships out. They're the gods of the battlefield. Get them blooded and rank them up, but be careful. Don't lose them.

So focus on the fleet tree first and pump out mad frigates and capital ships, take over a dozen planets, all before building an economy?

Woolen Horde

02-19-2008, 04:18 PM

So focus on the fleet tree first and pump out mad frigates and capital ships before building an economy?

Not quite, because you still need to balance economy building in order to get the money and metal to buy those frigates.

Look, first thing you do is build mines on the asteroids in your starting system. Churn out 3-4 scouts, send them to autoexplore. Get a colonizer built. Get a capital ship factory built and get one out ASAP (the first one is free). Then build as many frigates before you exhaust the population cap.

Conquer the nearest asteroid next to you (you almost universally start with an asteroid next to you). It has a couple of defenders, but more importantly, you can double your metal and crystal production quickly. Make sure to upgrade the civilian infrastructure immediately, because it'll drain 2 credits/second at a time when your home planet is only making 10.1 credits/second. It's a 20-percent drain until you upgrade the planet.

By now, your scouts will have mapped out the local group of planets. Identify the ones you can colonize quickly (desert, terran, asteroid) and go for them. By the time you have your second or third planet, build a single civic or military lab and start the basic research. Look at what is hindering your economy (depending on resource conditions, you might be short of metal or crystal or credits). Research the basic upgrades that help you where you need it. Need more money? Do the basic terrain research to give a slight boost to your population. Need more metal? Research the metal improvements. Need crystal? Then figure out what worlds have crystal available, and research/build what you need to seize and colonize them. Then research crystal improvements.

I like to spend early and get the last civic infrastructure on your home planet. boosting the population by 100 million easily increases the tax revenue on your prime world by 50-percent.

Usually you have a shortage of crystal, but if you're building population and trade ports and researching metal upgrades, you should have plenty of money and metal. Basic, frontline frigates only cost money and metal. Not crystal. Spam those out and bulk up your fleet.

At a certain point, you're going to need to research the fleet upgrades to incraese the size of your fleet and the number of cap ships at your command. This is a tricky line to tread, because increasing fleet size takes a larger chunk out of your economy. But yeah, by about three or four planets you should really think about getting a second capital ship out. You can use it to build a second battle group to defend your growing empire, or pair it with your existing capital ship and create an offensive battle group and start harassing your enemies or clearing out neutral planets for you to colonize. Or you can have one battle group play defense while the other goes out for easy kills, (thus gaining experience.)

Quitch

02-20-2008, 01:23 PM

How are people finding the racial differences?

Brad Wardell

02-20-2008, 03:50 PM

Really? In most of the games I've played, targeting the capital ships is the only way to win. Unless you're playing against TEC, of course, in which case you've got to take out the Robotics Cruisers first, or they'll perpetually repair the capital ships until you've been totally wiped out.

Yea, in the game I got wiped out in, the ending graphs all would have made someone think I had "owned" everyone.

But in reality, my mega fleets just kept getting chewed up. I think it has something to do with the Advent being really good at dishing back damage or something. I'm not sure.

I would probably have been better off letting the unit AI do its thing. I'm so used to just concentrating all my fire power on those super star destroyer type things. :)

Chris Nahr

02-21-2008, 01:05 AM

How are people finding the racial differences?

I'm hoping that someone will make another nice chart for those, like the one Tom posted about the secret ship damage relationships.

schurem

02-21-2008, 04:30 AM

busting up countless NPC's in EvE online has taught me that you always decrease the incoming dps in as quick and expedient a manner as possible. This means the small ones with the big guns go first, then go the ones that keep the big ones alive and you finish with the big ones. its all about the hp to dps ratio. So next time a cap jumps in accompanied by a flock of missile frigs, try killing off the missile frigs first. if there are flak frigs, those should go on top of your list, and you set your strike craft on the far away carriers or missile frigs. the quicker they die, the better are your odds of pwning that cap. If you go pell-mell for the big battlewagon, all its little friends will chew away at your fleet and neutralise your bombers. that sucks.

TurinTur

02-21-2008, 04:45 AM

How are people finding the racial differences?

I made a big post about this, after studying the three tech trees for hours... in a spanish forum :P. Here, if you know spanish:
http://zonaforo.meristation.com/foros/viewtopic.php?t=982612&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60

Goonch

02-21-2008, 05:27 AM

How do you take out enemy metal/crystal extractors within an asteroid field?

Every time that I try to destroy one, it tells me that it is invulnerable or something like that.

Chris Nahr

02-21-2008, 05:34 AM

I recall that I once managed to take them over with a colony ship that was using the "crew extractor" technology, but for some reason it never worked again. Was something changed in a patch?

TurinTur

02-21-2008, 05:35 AM

You have to capture it, with a colony frigrate or in case of the Vasari, a scout.

Chris Nahr

02-21-2008, 05:40 AM

Would the Vasari scout ship capture those asteroids automatically while on auto-exploration?

Goonch

02-21-2008, 05:51 AM

You have to capture it, with a colony frigrate or in case of the Vasari, a scout.

I'm playing as the Advent. I will try a scout tonight after work, when I resume the game. Thanks!

TurinTur

02-21-2008, 06:27 AM

I'm playing as the Advent. I will try a scout tonight after work, when I resume the game. Thanks!

Tip: read again my message!. I said a colony frigate or if you are Vasari, a scout.

Goonch

02-21-2008, 06:57 AM

Tip: read again my message!. I said a colony frigate or if you are Vasari, a scout.

Ok...got it...thanks!

espressojim

02-21-2008, 07:08 AM

schurem

02-21-2008, 07:48 AM

Do you know how shield mitigation works, and how it affects focus fire?

nope, not an inkling of an idea. care to enlighten us?

Lake

02-21-2008, 07:54 AM

Would the Vasari scout ship capture those asteroids automatically while on auto-exploration?

I think the auto-explore overrides the auto-capture.

Adam B

02-21-2008, 08:04 AM

Quitch

02-21-2008, 02:09 PM

I made a big post about this, after studying the three tech trees for hours... in a spanish forum :P. Here, if you know spanish:
http://zonaforo.meristation.com/foros/viewtopic.php?t=982612&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60

Care to summarise?

espressojim

02-21-2008, 02:18 PM

nope, not an inkling of an idea. care to enlighten us?

Sure. There are two sets of hitpoints, one for the shield, and one for hulls. When you wear down the shields, you then start hitting the hull. However, the shield mitigation prevents some damage to the hull. What's interesting is that the more (DPS? #weapons?) firing on the ship at one time, the higher the shield mitigation climbs. Click on an enemy ship to see it's shield mitigation, then focus fire on it. That mitigation will climb up, effectively making the ship take less damage per strike. This can lower your entire fleet's DPS to 1/2 of what it currently is (from a 15-65% mitigation, for example.)

I haven't done any in depth studies to see how many ships you need to focus fire to raise up the mitigation, so I'm not sure how exactly how you can best combine focus fire against mitigation, but there's a trade off between focus fire on each ship sequentially, vs. a more parallel approach.

I think the intent was to punish extreme micromanagement, so people didn't feel forced to manually select each and every target to win (which I think is great.) You may decide to focus fire when you really want that cap ship dead but if both parties are staying at the table, you may do better not focus firing.

If I'm really bored, I'll have to set up some simulations. :)

espressojim

02-21-2008, 02:21 PM

Shield mitigation actually works in favor of taking out smaller ships first as far as I can tell -- whereas on a cap you have to burn through a few thousand HP at 57%+ mitigation before you reduce incoming DPS at all, smaller ships have a few hundred HP to burn through at higher mitigation levels before they blow up.

Still, taking out a cap has plenty of reasons to recommend it, particularly against the relatively cowardly AI.

If two fleets are locked in battle and not running, I tend not to focus fire too much if I think I have the advantage of numbers or appropriate damage types (exception for cap ships and cap ship killer units.) If the other fleet runs (and when does that ever happen?) and I'm not going to chase them to the next system, I'll focus fire to kill off as many ships as I can, instead of leaving them wounded.

Brad Wardell

02-23-2008, 08:46 AM

Thrag

02-23-2008, 09:00 AM

One of the things I've learned is the fleet management to get your ships to stop in place and let them do their thing.

I've seen some people suggest that it's better (aesthetically) if the ships move around. But tactically, it's a disaster. :)

If they are moving they aren't firing as effectively. However some movement can be good. If you notice one of your ships being targeted moving just that one ship causing the enemy to pursue and thus disrupt the enemy formation is sometimes useful. Like the trick of moving in a colony ship to get the enemy to chase it before jumping back out. Moving a cap ship with a area of effect ability so that more friendly or enemy ships are in range is of course good to do.

Brad Wardell

02-23-2008, 12:13 PM

http://www.draginol.com/images/SinsscreenshotsfromGameNight_CFD4/20080223_1344_thumb.png (http://www.draginol.com/images/SinsscreenshotsfromGameNight_CFD4/20080223_1344.png)

One of the things that's nice is that because mutiplayer games are saved, I can go back and see what went right or wrong. Someone coming at you with a hoard of one unit ships can definitely win if you don't use your combined arms well.

Quitch

02-23-2008, 01:38 PM

How the hell did you manage a resource surplus? I'm always strapped for resources :)

Brad Wardell

02-23-2008, 02:41 PM

LOTS and LOTS of trade ports. I usually build at least 1 per planet. I also am very aggressive about upgrading planet infrastructure.

Funkula

02-23-2008, 02:51 PM

For me, it's about the stage of the game. Once I reach the tipping point where I've got more than half the resources and I'm conquering enemy holdings, I tend to not build much other than to replace losses. Well, that and queuing up a bunch of research every time I notice it's run out. I can easily rack up surpluses in that neighborhood, though I'm not sure I've ever reached six digits of credits.

I tend to build one trade port per planet as well. However, I actually built my first refinery just a few days ago. They just don't seem as great as any of the other things I could fill my logistics cap with.