Played beta entire weekend: my two cents

1. Known. It's reportedly getting an overhaul.
2. Only too powerful because the AI can't cope. About suitably powerful against players. You're far from alone thinking it's acting too quickly though, but this is my opinion.
3. It is .
4. You actually can (good), but not when building them (not so good). Hover your pointer over your ship and it will say the damage per second of the ship in question.
5. You missed it then. The trade posts are very effective credit generators. Also, if you didn't catch it, planetary infrastructure will increase the number of people and tax with it.

Look forward to killing you in multiplayer soon .

hey bovi,

thank you for your comments. I hope to kill you as well BUT I did build a trade post and my trade ships just sat there. Is it because I did not have any aliances?

Also, what i meant by ship statistics is being able to see which weapons each one has AND what damage it can dish out.

Sorry, one more question: is there any difference between bombers and fighters? Fighters are good for killing bombers and bombers are good for killing ships?

Nice cogent and concise feedback.

Oh and finally one more question: Is it just me, or most of the sound effects (weapons firing, ship confirmations, explosions etc.) are not included? Even when I zoom in on the action, I hear just the generic music and a VERY FEW sound effects. This particular aspec can be gretaly improved and can be a very powerful component of the game.

Trade stations trade with other trade stations... yours or allies... so build more than one next time (oh and each in a different planet)

thanks gauntlet03. good point.

Most of the visual effects are known to not be final and basically placeholders. You have to zoom in pretty close to hear frigate guns/missiles firing, capital ships are more forgiving because of their size.

I don't know how final (or not) the sound effects are.

In response to your fighter thing, theoretically fighters take out bomber/other fighters, and bombers are for ships. According to my findings though fighters do a bit my dmg and have less health and hte opposite is true of bombers, this could just a thing in which the fighters are firing anti-strike craft rounds and onyl really effective against other strike craft. At any rate, one thing of note do not let your opponent spam carriers. In this game thus far there is NO real counter to a carrier fleet. A fleet comprised of carriers will pwn you. So if you suspect your opponent is going for carriers, kill him/her now or spam carriers with more fighters them him/her. Others may disagree with me, but I know what Iam talking about.

I did the math and the math says that you should be able to counter them effectively, but the ai being what it is does not impliment the math. An enemy of mine spammed carriers, because I was being nice not BSing his fleet while he had fun with another player. Since I knew he was spamming hte carriers, I spammeed many anti-fighter frigs and light carriers with fighters. I then build a large number of heavy cruisers and missle boats. I outnumbered him 20 to one in ships (he being all caps and me being frigs and cruisers).

When our fleets met his fighters broke into to groups, fighters in one and bombers in another. his bombers were going after my frigs and his fighter, my fighters. Meanwhile my anti fighter frigs and fighters ran between both groups. While this was going on, my fleet ships where atting his missle batteries( he was TEC). Perhaps the game would have been different had he been Vas and not had though batteries but long story short, my boys werent fighting well. Because of the AI being what it is, you need to micromanage your a lot more which means if your enemy spams carriers your arn well forked in the late game.

Oh one note to you for Multiplayer games, don't be nice. If you are nice you will lose. For me it is a strategy that is harder to implement because I dont want to hurt anyones feelings, I want them to have a good time and attacking them while they are weak is mean, albeit effective, but still mean. I can't tell you how many games I have lost because of that lol. Anyhoo. gl mate.

Gee, what a really nice turn of phrase.

That said, he is (half) right: currently, flak and fighter squadrons will kill enemy strike craft, but they can't "interdict" them... which means that fighters / bombers will generally get their first rounds in before they can be destroyed, rendering them a little overpowered when unleashed en mass.

Yeah, a really nice turn of phase -- but one with a hidden gem.

Yes, be polite. Be nice even -- just don't go easy on the guy. I learned that one the hard way (lost, in essence, because I went easy on him instead of taking it to him until I'd "confirmed" that he was the Nub he claimed...)

Kill the carriers, jump out. Fighters/bombers die off on their own quickly enough with no supporting carrier, and the ships themselves are pretty easy to kill.

After the initial alpha strike, fighters and bombers take a while to fly their loops and come in for another pass, so you get more time.

At 8 a piece for one squadron I wouldn't call carriers themselves cheesy, massed sovas get there, assuming they are all level 6+. But what would you be doing letting someone get them up that high? Now hanger bays stuffed with bombers are another matter, those can dish out some serious damage and aren't a very vulnerable investment in comparison to carriers. You do not want to be bringing any capital ships into a gravity well with 9 hanger bays even if there isn't a single ship there and regardless of how much anti-bomber ships and shield restoration you have. The 18 carriers to match that can pull the same assassination moves, but you'll walk all over the guy with a 144 fleet point advantage in strength after the bombers are all dead by the fourth pass. If you jumped in with just your frigates first you wont even be down much.

I dunno, I lost a game the other day when my opponent spammed carriers. it was his 29 lights and 4 capitals vs my 30+ (vasari) flaks and about 25 - 30 "combat" frigs and 3 capitals. lost all my caps, but at the rate they were losing health there was nothing I could have done about it save for total retreat.

(a big part must have been my playin brain dead. I ignored his caps and thought I had to take out his carriers -> his caps creamed my ass)

- Ron
The difference between killing fighters and performing their intended task are two different things. An anti-fighter battery today is easily capable of eliminating fighters without much hassle. The US has the ability to counter this with stealth fighters but this is not the case with this game. You have standard fighters en masse attacking massed flak frigates. Note that in WWII this was not good for kamakazie fighters. The whole point to a flak frigate is to annihilate fighters and bombers. In the game I describe earlier the opposing force for most of hte game was cap carriers and fighters/bombers, mine was combat caps heavy cruisers light carriers and flaks. There should have been no contest. The flaks should have wiped out the fighters and frigs with no problem, remeber I had about 1 flak per enemy squadron and had a number of fighter squadrons of my own. My heavy cruisers and caps were targeting the enemy caps. the reason why my ships didnt get the kill the TEC carriers was because each carrier continued to pop out missile platforms. Those platforms annihilated my ships for some reason. I had a 3 or 4 to 1 advatage of Heavy cruisers over the missle platforms and lost. so even with that I should have still been able to overcome the carriers. My irritation with teh flak frigates is not that they can't kill strike craft, because they CAN - and I say that loosly kill them - just not very well.

anyhoo lesson learned I guess.

It may be you just need to change the way you use your flak frigs... When left on their own, flak frigs tend to sprint forward towards the bombers, while the bombers will take losses from flying by, that still leaves the bombers time to make 2 passes on your caps while the frigs are trying to get back. But, with the Frigs set to follow your cap, and left on "Local Area" stance, they stay put and attack fighters just as they come into range, then follow far enough to spank the fighters as they come around. Ive seen 1 flak frigate spank 3 full strength bomber squads before any of them could make a second run. Brought a tear to my eye.

So the issue isn't really that there is NO counter, just that the unit control AI is rather stupid about the orders it issues them.

Kilumanjaro, that's what I do and it's even easier with the new fleet option. I love watching the bombers pop!

ron you have a new tip to ad to your thread!

Eh, only once we actually get the new fleet option