The number on a research item indicating its level turns yellow when it can't be researched any more.

I have to say that i totally agree with Paradoxnt about the fixed Phase Lane method of travel. I was able to do exactly what he mentioned about fortifying key planets. By doing this you can pin down the AI making the AI opponent totally ineffective. If you have 2 gauss cannons by the enemy's entry point, a jump inhibitor, and a small fleet built in that system then nothing is going to get through short of a massive attack with battleships, and dreads. If you do this near the AI's home system then the AI has no hope of overcoming it, because you have effectively shut down the AI's economy. I can imagine how frustrating this would be in a multi player game.

It should be possible to phase jump anywhere on the map as long as there is a gravity well present, and your ships have the range to make the jump. There is a jump distance research on the research menu. Perhaps do away with the lanes altogether like Paradoxnt said, and make the jump range research a 4 tier research. 1st tier would be very short range, and your ships can jump to most of the planets near your capitol. Then progressively increase it until in the final tier your ships can jump anywhere within a solar system. Perhaps do an advanced FTL research after the the "in system" prerequisites are met to jump to another solar system for multi solar system maps. This should all but eliminate the "Porc" at a multilane system, because there are no lanes, and ships will be able to bypass it. This will also mean that you will be able to send in re-enforcements from anywhere as long as the ships being sent have the range to reach the destination. Keep the jump inhibitors because you dont want the bad guys leaving just when you are about to kick their @ss or have an option to disable the inhibitor if you DO want them to leave.

Doing away with the lanes, and reasearching jump range will open up many new tactical challenges, and will avoid the "Stalemates" that indeed do happen.

Another thing that could be interesting is a "gravity well" ship. A ship that can impulse very slowly to any point on the map and create its own well to jump to. Useful to stage a fleet just outside of a system hidden from view unless you have advanced sensors.

Dont you all fear it would end up way to easy to jump to the back of someones empiere and wreck havoc? even with the tier research for jump range? And as it is now its not like the gauss turrets are overpowered. And they have a rather short range. On many occasions i have been able to go to the back of a planet and bombard it from behind, out of reach from the turrets. The enemy was forced to respond but couldnt fight me in his gauss umbrella.
Also people make it sound like captial ships will be something rare. As it is now i usualy have about 20 of em at mid-late game, i also hope bigger ships will make it into the game as we move along. Secondly you cant judge the AI as it plays at this point. Im sure i read a dev say that the AI was far from done. Atleast i hope they arent done becouse the AI us sucky atm... its ofc ok since this is beta one, but i hope to see it better in the final relase   

Earlier builds of the game didn't use the phase lane system and it was pretty chaotic. The AI was essentially able to jump into systems with impunity and destroy everything in short order before the player could get his forces into place to respond. Basically the game was an immediate degeneration into whack-a-mole tactics.

But would that be the case if travel within your empire could be enhanced? This would give the defender time to muster a fleet to defend his planet, so any attack launched against a distant planet would be easily met with a defensive fleet.

You could for instance be able to set up spacelanes between the planets that you own (either with preset lanes like now, with self-made lanes, or maybe between any two of your colonies with the proper installation constructed). Travel using these lanes could be reasonably fast, while travel without them (which is what any attack would have to use) could be much slower. This way it would generally be a really bad idea to launch a fleet against a distant (central) enemy planet, since you would be irrevocably committing a large part of your fleet for a long time.

If you included tiered jump range research wouldn't that eliminate some of the "whack a mole" you mentioned? or can make it to where you can get jump inhibitors earlier in game?

On a completely different subject.. Has anyone noticed that when you create a game with 2 stars, and only 1 AI opponent that the AI opponent always spawns in the same star system as yours? I would think it would spawn in the other star system.

So far...the only strategies I see is certain systems acting as choke points and just building two huge fleets and you win. Most of the time use my fleet to concentrate fire on one ship at a time. Which is what happens when you don't have the following:

Make capitalships vunerable to when there are squadons of bombers
Make frigates vunerable to capital ships
Make fighters/bombers vunerable to frigates.

More fighters and bombers...seems like you can win the war with just capital ships and frigates.

Capital/frigates should have vastly different firepower when turning their flank towards enemy ships then shooting head-on (more guns on the sides). Have a tutorial that teaches this.
Fleet formations would be nice.
When selecting two groups of ships attacking an enemy group...a pincher attack should automatically be engage. Not where your two groups are moving closer together and forming one unorganized mass towards the enemy.

All ships should automatically withdraw to the nearest friendly planet/asteriod... when the odds against them is huge...like 20 to 1 unless the player enable suicide mode or fight to the death. Under suicide mode ships nearing death should automatically kamikaze to nearest enemy ship it can catch up to (pointless if a capital ship tires to kamikaze an enemy fighter than a enemy cap or building).

Blair has noted that the galaxy generator is set up in the beta to place players in a way that will create conflict early-on (IIRC this will probably be user-configurable later).

Yarlen is concerned that by removing forced Phase Highways, we will only have chaos (hehe whack-a-mole). I have to personally say that the idea of unlimited options for attackers is kind of appealing because it would actually be original and realistic But myself, DRavisher, Major Stress, JSInvader and others all offer valid ways of avoiding making game strategy 100% offense.

Jump ranges can be limited, with extremely expensive research tiers gradually reducing that limitation. The highest level research tier should offer unlimited range and the ability to reach other star systems.

Furthermore, Jump ranges outside of Phase Highways can be limited by speed.

Also, Phase Highways can still be a part of the game, just not the only part. So, if you build Phase Highways Projectors between your colonies, this will give the defender the enhanced travel speed they need to organize a proper defense when their backwater colonies are attacked.


Oh, and here are just some of the problems with multiplayer that forced Phase Highways are going to cause. Please note that this part is copied from the "Phase Highways in space is a bad game concept!" topic.

You could play Team games and never see or be able to reach your teammates. Imagine how the poor player who gets stuck between two hostile teams with no ability to expand or reach his own teammates is going to feel.

Even regular non-team multiplayer is going to suck with forced Phase Highways. One guy starts at the end of a highway, and has an opponent in the next planet over. This second guy just fortifies his homeworld a bit while expanding into other nearby empty planets/asteroids. Soon, he has enough over whelming force to turn around and crush the trapped first guy who never had a chance.

Alliances in standard multiplayer make absolutely no sense with forced Phase Highways. You have to go through your neighbor to get anywhere anyway, so why not just take him out. It is too dangerous to ally with him and leave him behind your lines. Otherwise, the guy allies with you, you go through his system to attack somebody's far off colony, and then he sends his fleet to take over your undefended colony that he is supposed to be protecting.

Gone are the usual multiplayer unspoken agreements of mutual non interference because they both HAVE to go through the other guy to get anywhere anyway.

Also, don't forget the threat of stalemates that forced Phase Highways offer us. Sure, weapon platforms aren't super powerful, but they add punch to a defensive fleet. Not to mention that the defending fleet will already be positioned properly to maximize their power. Also, defending fleets will be able to pick off the earliest attacker ships to arrive with massive focus fire since the attacker fleet never arrives at the same moment. All of this is to say that the defender will have the advantage = stalemate.

So, forced Phase Highway = bad, unoriginal and less than Epic. Something needs to be done so SoaSE can become this decades benchmark for Space Empire games.

They are. I make extensive use of bombers myself--in my current game, the AI sent a large fleet (the largest I've seen the AI send thus far, anyway--probably 8 or so caps and a mass of frigates) to intercept my attack on one of its planets.

As the fleet arrived and started moving towards my end of the well, I just selected all my bombers, queued up attack orders on each of his capital ships, and went on nuking the planet. A few seconds later, all AI capital ships were dead and its frigates were in full retreat.

An alternative to getting rid of Phase Highways is simply to design the highways well. For instance, never leave a player with just one way into the system; start players at opposite ends of the system; etc.

As it is currently in the game i do feel bombers pack a punch. And they are very good when upgraded. But if you keep some flak frigates near your capital ships then bombars are almost rendered useless in my experince. They get blasted out of the sky in no time.

As well as they should be. Flak Frigates should be about as effective as fighters at killing bombers. Still, I would give the fighters a bit of a speed dodge modifier so Flak Frigates don't kill them as easily as they do bombers.

In order to counter Flak Frigates, fighters and bombers need to be kept inside their hangars until the frigates are destroyed.

Also, standard capital ships should have even more trouble hitting fighters/bombers with regular weapons.

Thank you Blair for explaining the problems with the fully connected maps.

I really just needed to hear from you that Ironclad understands the problems that we are seeing with the present Beta 1 Phase Lanes. Now that I have a better understanding of what you are trying to achieve, I am sure whatever Phase Space system you finally implement will be fine.

**Here is my last suggestion about Phase Lanes that will actually satisfy EVERYONE:

Simply make it possible for us modders to tweak the game to run with the fully connected maps for our mods. This way, standard single player/multiplayer gamers will be happy with the standard maps AND modders will be happy with the modding potential offered by using fully connected maps.

EVERYBODY IS A WINNER THIS WAY AND SoaSE STILL ENDS UP BEING A BENCHMARK GAME! YAY!

I would like a vocal warning ("We lost a Frigate Sir!" or something like that) when you loose a ship, maybe not fighters and bombers.

meh frigates are cheap, I want a warning when a capital ship is about to go...

Yeah, that is really needed. Maybe when their shields fail or they hit 50% hull

There should be one and there should also be one if an ally loses something important. Must be bugged. Noted.

I was thinking that the Kol 'battleship' (and i use that term lightly) seems to be easily outmatched in firepower by the 'support' ship that has missiles.
I think that there should be a level 7-8 research to make the Kol's 'beam cannon' a really destructive weapon, as currently i do not know if it is affected by the laser upgrades or not. Also, is it possible to find out if shields are more or less resistant to certain types of attacks? (i mean does laser fire do more damage to shielding than autocannons) That way I would at least feel somewhat justified for adding scouts to my battle fleet for more than perpetual recon.

Also, i feel that it would be nice if the research updates, that is to say, next level benifits, would only show a price and upgraded stats IF you were able to research it, and had not just bought the highest level available. as it is, when you have purchased say advanced metalurgy 1 and 2, while researching lvl 2 it displays stats and a price for purchasing a lvl 3 even though lvl 3 does not exist. this goes away once lvl 2 has been researched though.

I have some suggestions; sorry if they were repeated but I don't really have time to keep up with how fast this thread grew:

1) The TEC seem to have no offensive frigate other than the scout frigate and the heavy frigate. The research required between these two frigates is a giant gap, forcing TEC players to spam (build a lot of) scout frigates to bolster one's fleet instead of building a more suitable unit. Capital ships are fortunately within easy access, but their cost prevents them from being utilized until late in the game. Is there a way around spamming scout frigates constantly, or do you, the developers, also have to generate a ridiculous amount of scout frigates? A suggestion that comes to mind is adding a "normal" frigate, something that bridges the firepower gap between the heavy frigate and the scout frigate. The scout frigate should be a specialized unit, like the seige frigate, or the flak frigate, not your main combat unit. I always wanted to send the frigate out scouting, but I knew if I did, my fleet would lose potential firepower. And I find it ridiculous that I must rely on my scout frigates as a basis of firepower. It might be pretty hard to implement a new frigate, balanced and all, but I would really like to phase the scout frigate out of main combat duty.

2) The left-handed system is way too complex. I saw a couple people point it out, but I have a suggestion: split up the tree into two parts, one on either side of the screen. The right side of the screen is dull fully empty, while the other three are filled. Keep combat-related units on the left, and module/structure (aka non-combat) related units to the right. I know you have a little dot system going on, where it's already split, but perhaps now that it is split up into seperate trees, you can use the dots to seperate the combat units further. Or, like somehow said, make each unit more identifiable. It's ridiculously hard to differentiate between a trade ship and a colony frigate, and even though I click the "combat unit dots", I still can't select the frigate I want because its difficult. Either way, you guys need to find a way to make selecting ships easier. Differentiating the icons is one way, but you can also have a list pop up when you click the "military dots" and then select the ships you want. Like, when you hover over the military dots, you see a list, how about keeping that list when you click on it, and then being able to select a unit from it? That would be really helpful.

3) I would like to have a "jump together" option when phase jumping. It's irritating when a scout frigate makes it first, and engages the enemy on the other sdie when your capital ships are still chugging along to the outer rim. Then your scout frigates get ripped up while your capital ships are just arriving. I find myself constantly putting ships near the edge of the gravity well, then jumping them all at once in order to keep formation. Please, include a jump together option somehow. Maybe if units are in an assigned group, they are forced to jump together.

That is all so far.

edit: I think the minimum number of planets in a galaxy is 20; please reduce this to something such as 8 or 10. 20 planets in a 1v1 can take hours. Or somehow set a system that requires at least three planets per player. So the minimum for 1v1 is 6, etc. Spending more than 5 hours for multiplayer is too much for some people such as msyelf.

Devs said in various threads that not all TEC ships are in beta 1.



Devs said a number of things will be going in to improve this, they are in various threads and i don't want to hunt them all down. The second beta batch already fixed the trade ship issue.


This already exists. Select your ships, right click movement button. This is group phase jumping. Be sure to turn it off if you are trying to retreat or they will get slaughtered.



Devs said these are single player settings, multi is different. The modders in another thread have already played with settings as small as you are looking for and up to 10,000 planets.

I just noticed a redundancy in the research tree.. or maybe they do different things.
The long jump research, 'jump to other star systems' right?

The jump drive relic, 'jump to distant star systems' ...

I just don't understand. Maybe a throwback to other travel systems? Perchance anyone could enlighten me to this?

One thing i would like to see, is a ship/weapon system that only damages infrastructure or at least does more damage to infrastructure than to population. That way you can subjugate the population for a faster colonization.

This has probably be answered somewhere but are the pirates going to actually have bases or something?

And will they ever actually attack a player if the bounty is high enough?