Useless units and techs?

None so far, although there are definitely techs and ships that are fairly specific to certain situations or strategies, and so might not be needed in every game.

None are useless. None are required to win.

Phase jump inhiitors

Playing AI, i find inhibitors slow down scout ships trying to jump past my outer systems long enough for my in-system fighters to kill them. Never that trick vs players, but if he was trying to slip scouts through, it would probably still work. I agree that they're not exactly the most useful, but i wouldn't go so far as to say useless.

I have founf both PJI's and flak frigates to be useless. I won my last game without building a single one of either

Flaks are very useful against LRM and bombers spam.

In my games i find that the siege frigates just take to much supply to be worth building and because the ai spams them i find it very to easy to attack there planets and defend my own

A few(few!) siege frigs free up your capitals from planet bombing duty and let them pursue other goals.

Whats the point of a colozinisation capital ship?

Well, if you're playing Vasari, a lot. The evacuator has a great 6th level resource stealing/planet destroying ability, plus a great DoT + armor debuff ability. Why wouldn't you want it?

I'm just wondering, since most capital ships are ment 4 combat, support, etc, why make a colonizing capital ship. But I was just wondering.... I nvr got The Evacuator
to lvl 6.. thnx

Phase Jump Inhibitors need some tweaking, but aren't wholly worthless.

I find the non-terran non-desert population boost techs to be almost useless. The Vasari can research 4 techs to get a +30% cap on a 70pop volcanic planet. The 21 extra population will never pay for the expense of the research(2 lvl 4 and 2 lvl 5 techs).

I'd like to see the volcanic and artic +% pop techs changed to allow an additional level of Civilian Infrastructure built. If your race is so good at living in the those environments they should have a max pop closer to a desert world.

first and formost. A colony frigate looses lots of antimatter when it jumps. So you have to wait a few minutes for it to colonize a planet once its there.. it is also slow.

So a colonizer capital would instantly colonize, giving you an extra 5 minutes or so on the planet.

In addition they each provide benefits.
The advant gives you a 20/40/60% dicount to cost of buying structures. If you researched dousing then you can end up with free planetary exploration.
The vasari give you 20/40/60% faster build times...
The terran is the least useful in this regards giving you 0/1/2 free extractors, as long as there are open astroids at the moment of colonization (usually there arent cause it bombs before blowing up miners).

However the terran is the most powerful for combat of the three, it gives an area of effect passive boost to range and accuracy of all surrounding ships, and it has ion bolt which at level 2 can indefinitely delay a retreating capital ship (as long as you have enough antimatter). even at level one it can delay it enough to do serious damage.

The vasari one also has some powerful abilities. the abilities on the advant one are the least useful, but it's cost reduction is significant.

(we are talking about thosands of credit, metal and crystal saved per planet!).

I typically have a single colonizer capital ship and many frigates as my fleet.Frigates are more expensive and easier to pop, and they don't level, but they are much much more power then capital ships. their total health and their damage per second is much higher.
My advant one has a first priority to get coloinze to level 3... the other two will get 1 point in colonize and leave the other two for level 9 and 10... prioritizing combat abilities.



Anyways, to answer the question.. PJI is limited in scope, but can aid. Its only point is to allow you to give a pounding to an escaping fleet.
So.
1. It allows local bomber/fighters to take out passing scouts.
2. It allows your main fleet to do extra damage to an escaping enemy fleet.
VERY VERY nitch product, but has it uses.

Flak frigates are only useful when attacking an enemy position which is simple overflowing with fighters... its rare, but it can happen. I have yet to use it. (there one one situation where I should have, but i didnt have them researched so i couldnt) I suffered heavy casualties instead...

I don't like the "make less pirates attack you" tech... it decreases the experience gained from pirates, and its easy enough to fortify an outlying colony against pirates. (25 turrets... I am not joking... just build 25 turrents... or maybe 23 + repair facility)

Everything loses an equal amount of antimatter when phase jumping. You might actually have to wait more with the colonizing cap ship, since it's probably using its abilities on top of phase jumping, while the colony ship just sits one planet back waiting for the enemy ships to be cleared out.

Phase Jump Inhibitors I have great use for, they don't take up space and they are good at slowing Siege frigs from blowing past your, Also if you succeed in a space fight in the systems gravity well it takes them longer to jump out, and if you have your races Shut down skill(for capital ship) they will never escape(cool down is faster then jump out)


Any of the techs affecting AI happiness towards your, or pirate strength. The advent one that changes how much you gain is nice because you can invest in your enemy and then collect more from killing him then you invested

Well, for starters, you don't have to micromanage your colony ships. It's not like the only thing that they do is colonize, anyway.

I wouldn't be so sure about the ordering of terran, vasari, advent for the colonizers. The advent mothership abilities are just godly. Malice allows for a large area damage propogation which doesn't seem to trigger shield mit. Shield regen is pretty much a temporary invulnerability field. Maybe the terran and vasari colonizers work better for you in combat situations... but from reading other people's posts and my own experience the advent mothership is one of the top capitals out there... with or without colonize.

Colonizing Capital Ships have more antimatter reserves and regain their antimatter faster than Colony Frigits anfter a phase jump. Also, you don't have to have the capital ship's abilities on autocast.

From experience it takes 2-3 colony ships to match the efficiency of the mothership in terms of colonizing planets. However, colonizing ships also have the advantage of being able to capture neutral extractors... so fairly often I end up building a few of thoem anyhow, even though I pick mothership as first capital every time I play as advent.

The Vassari Coloniser cap. ship (evacuator) is very very good in a fight - Admittedly it was against the AI but last night one of these (lv. 6) with 10 skirmishers and 10 assailants took out 25 cobalts, 6 flak frigates, 3 siege frigates, 1 sova carrier (lv.3) and 1 akkan (lv.2) I had one skirmisher and one assailant left at the end, it took a while to get the carrier down and his fighters off the assailants.

I agree that PJIs seems a bit limited although they can be useful. There are also some techs there is little point researching if you play 1v1 as well - there is a vasaari one for increasing collected bounty? I think this is something to do with completing missions for allies but I'm not sure. In any case, you don't get allies in 1v1 matches so no point researching it!

units

Planetary bombardment Capital ship. Why? the planetary bombardment capital ships there nothing more the weak battleships with a small increase in planetar bombardment(without special abilities). But I find them replaced with less resources with a team of siege frigate. They can do the same job with no using a capital ship slot and with fewer fleet supply. Also the planetary bombardment capital needsa more support then any other capital ship.

tech (there is a list of them)

First Mobile Phase Detection (level 5) for the Servun Overseer. This is alomst replaced by highly attuned Sensors(level 8), which sees ever jump, while the mobile phase detection, only work in seeing ships jumping into the system that the Overseer is in. I do like the jump degradtion, both what the point of having a mobile detection system, when you can see ever jump in the first place.

Enslaved labor and optimized construction, mostly enslaved labor. 8% off is ok for metal and crystal, but for the 8% off for the credits from enslaved labor, it is too little.

Raider xenophobia: Reducing the pirate fleet results in less exp for the capital ships to feed on. Meaning it takes longer for the Vasari ships to level up.

Induced Leniency and skilled diplomats: I find this only good for use with AI. There should be something else that these thing could be good for, but I don't know what.

Insurgency: This is the big one, out of them all. High on the tech tree, at the end of the culture line for the TEC, and all it can do is give me 6 ships? Not only that, but the planet must be under your control, which is something the TEC is not strong in. Also those 6 ships attact all sides and act like a neutral faction, and even attacking you. There nothing more then a very very weak replacement for the pirates, if they are destroyed.

One tech of dubious use to me is that one that allows you to build planetary orbitals with more than one construction frigate, but the orbitals cost more money than usual. Since buildings are relatively fast I haven't felt a need for that.

There's always the option of going to the Pirate base, getting all the experience you want, and getting of there before you're dead. But that requires more micromanagement.

When they attack, you can focus fire on their capital. A good player will normally retreat it...but might not be able to get out in time.

If you want to get a planet up REALLY quick (like to establish a base behind enemy lines or a chokepoint or a factory planet...) that works great. Also works well for building the superweapon, although the advent superweapon is a bit weak.