Yeah, the randomness factor is goofy at times. Often it sort of evens out, but sometimes it doesn't. I've had random maps where my allies had a terran/volcanic within 1-2 jumps of their capital, and I had clouds/gas giants/dead asteroids. It's a lot of work to make do with botched territory, but when you have teammates it's easier at least.

I agree on the home planet to star problem, but i dont like it to become too symmetric.

The player will have to change tactics according to the environment.

Lets say one has a desert and the other has a volcanic with more or less the same amount on asteroids.
The desert player will have the option of more logistic points, so he can actually have more trade which can lead to faster and higher technology's, or more research stations or even a much better culture attack.

The volcanic player will have a more fleet points which leads to more ships.

If that is going to be changed I think an option for 'Realism Random' should be allowed, so that sometimes you just have to deal with what you are handed. I think it adds interest to the setup.

unfortunately those extra 85 mil points are not easily overcome, I played a map exactly as you were describing in which my enemy was able to more or less just spam missile frigs. no matter how I filled out my fleet points he was able to crush my numbers. I was able to defend for a while, but even with a greater economy I was taking far more damage than he was and I couldnt sustain the damage for too long.

I am speaking of course, in the fact that I had maxed out all planet upgrades related to military and economy, and I had maxed out that asteroid's defenses. the thing was that on this small map I had such few ships and he was easily able to pull off a continuous stream of extreme damage. I'm surprised I didnt fall much earlier.

like I said, he mostly flooded missile frigs, I engaged with every color of the rainbow INCLUDING my own flooding of missile frigs, capital ships, the skirmishers, combined forces and the devastators

nothing, worked. or rather: everything worked, but VERY innefficiently, even with a much more expansive economy I got wasted away very quickly. I had to rebuild my fleet from near scratch at least 4 times.

frankly the way to fix missile frigs is easy: make them do less damage, or give more weapons AOE damage standard. what the issue with the game is that one person can have an extreme advantage in random maps.

Maybe your fleet setup was all wrong. Ive even fought a battle in a locked 3 player FFA game. All 3 of us meet at one grav well, with equal numbers on all sides, just different setup's. I were able to beat both players and the enemy defences on the dead asteroid.
First beating one player while the other was on hold position, so after he was losing most of his fleet he retreated. Then the other player came for me and i kicked most of his fleet too, then he also retreated what he had left. So i just had to clean up the defences I survived with something like 1/3 or 1/4 of my fleet.

It really comes down to how you setup your fleet, and most important HOW you use what you got.
So what i did is my secret and for you to find out

anny I doubled your missile frigs with skirmishers and that failed

yes, you had other ships, but they were en tangle with my caps. I admit it was the most effective tactic, but it still failed. in battles of 30 ship averages an extra 13/14 missile frigs is an unnacceptable advantage

that being said, nice game.

and please, for my sanity, do not quote adaptation as my mistake. you kept with something that worked (not that its bad or anything) I never had that advantage, even if I copied you (which i did) my numbers dropped me like a stone. I tried everything, missile frigs, teching out my ships, skirmies, devastators, cap ships swarms, even with 5 healing platforms the number of your missile frigs killed anything in a matter of seconds.

aren't they called devastators? either way yes: they failed miserably.

ok, let me reitterate this: I tried half a dozen different fleet setups, none of them did even a dent against his missile swarms (even my own missile swarm) and barely did they ever take down a cap.

when he has enough "free" missile frigs to already snipe any level cap in a head on engagement in a 1v1, its not exactly a fault of my strategy that I lost.

so with 3 of those at a proper level (say 3) thats 18000 credits and a buttload of crystal and metal for something that will take out simply the 15 ship advantage you have because of the volc planet, and then die miserably because of the other 30 ships you have that will tear through my fleet in an instant. then look who just lost a serious investment, and who still has a ton of their ships

no, that never would have worked. marzas with their infinite targets, MAYBE, but thats even more of an investment, and I have no way of getting them to level 6.

keep in mind this is assuming one volley will take out all 5 of your ships, which adds up to maybe 300 crystal 400 metal and only 1500 credits, thats a fraction of the investment it took to make the ship under absolutely ideal circumstances.

No, it wasn't the fleet points, missile frigates are just superior after a point. It's a classic fault in rts games, the higher ranged unit becomes increasingly uber as numbers increase due to more units dying before they get a retaliating shot off. Splash damage compounds the problem. You can kill a hell of a lot of ships with 50 missile frigates fully upgraded, regardless of the enemy fleet size. He did it to me when I had him down to just a home planet. Killed three fleets of ships including high level capital ships(a little staggered to be fair, they were already in the defenses because some tard forgot to set stand ground) and I had a combined fleet far larger.

Vastly improved shield mitigation increases could be very beneficial, although a bitch to balance out at this stage perhaps. It would help with the steamroller tactic in general as well, when twice as many ships is only a slight advantage because they're bumping the mitigation up to 80% on their targets instead of 40% and focus firing on the enemy capship gets you a 90% mitigation, people will use tactics and more diversionary forces to kill things and missile frigate spamming wont work real great.