Durikkan

[quote]I just watched two advant bombers doing 20 damage each every 3 seconds... Every time I counted volly was shot and another 40 damage came off the planet. And those WERE unupgraded.[/quote] I don't know what to say, I ran the test earlier with TEC sieges and I'm 100% positive they were hitting once every 10 seconds, for 20 points of damage. Normal Game speed set, at 1x multiplier. Edit : looks like game speed doesn't affect fire rate, my only guess is that t

[quote]You know what... change the AI to use them differently... the AI should not be raising and throwing away fleets of those... it achives two things. 1. It is incredibly annoying to me to fight that. 2. It guarantees that I will win because I spend the money on real fleets.[/quote] Generally, I've found if you have more than a few turrets, the AI won't even bother to send in siege frigates at all, he generally only sends them if he knows they will be effective.

[quote]Planet killers do way more then 2 damage per second to a planet. more like 20. [/quote] Unupgraded, each one does 20 damage every 10 seconds, which gives them 2 damage per second. 15 sieges to kill a 6000 hp planet takes exactly 200 seconds. In my games against the AI, I rarely ever bother to build them, because their cost far exceeds their usefulness. I could build 3 capital ships for the same cost, and they would, of course, take longer to bomb the planet (unless

BigbadB: scroll up to reply 56 in this post.

For a game that aims to be as complex as this does, it feels like a pure % for fleet maintenance costs is too simple and limiting of a factor. Maybe a system where ships cost credits to maintain, and you can lower their max health by not paying all the upkeep costs or something. It also feels very unrealistic when you don't have any ships that needed crystal in their construction, but you still lose a percentage of your crystal income...

[quote]20 turrets should be able to deter a single Cap ship. As things stand they have less DPS than an average rebel fleet surrounding Desert or Terran planets.[/quote] 20 turrets in a cluster can easily kill a level 10 capital ship if it's by itself...

Cyclo : Depends on Shield mitigation, I forgot that mechanic somewhat encourages small fleets.

[quote] A fleet twice the size won't cut through the defenses in half the time, making it simpler to capture a truly massive fleet like that and just grind it to meat. There's a point where it's not really useful to have more ships in a fleet, but rather more useful to have *more* fleets, which is the real crux of the problem.[/quote] With the exception of travel time, a fleet twice as big cuts through defenses in *less* than half of the time.

[quote] Yes but at a certain point in these big games, what good do those few extra credits do? With this current system, any empire, no matter what size it is, can field the same size fleet as the largest empire (assuming they pay for the fleet upgrades and up front cost of each ship). 3 Empires of maybe 4-5 planets each could easily overwhelm an empire made up of 40-50 planets. Isn't there something wrong with that? [/quote] Well, the guy with 5

[quote] It doesn't really scale linearly like that. If you have a fleet of size X, then it doesn't follow that a fleet of size X*2 will take twice as long to defeat, assuming you bring X*2 forces as well. I'd just like to be able to field fleets of approximately the same size in more places than I currently can to supplement the hard-locked static defenses. [/quote] If both forces are double in size, the battle will last approximately the same duration, so you're righ

[quote] And that is exactly why this Fleet % system is flawed. I only have to pay 3 cred/sec to field my 400ship fleet just because I only make 4 cred/sec? And since outter planets far from my capital make next to nothing, then you're saying the only purpose they really serve is fodder? Because that's really the only advantage I see to having more planets since corruption and distance makes their income essentially nonexistant. [/quote] As far as

[quote] It's taken two days of play sessions to push my way into 3 planets, because I simply can't defend all the places they attack. [/quote] Raising the fleet cap would only make this problem worse. Let's say the fleet cap raises by 50%, so then you have 50% more defenders at all your planets. But.. the Enemy force is also 50% bigger, so your odds of winning are exactly the same (less actually, because your defenses count for less with more units)

Well, 4 Vasari sieges would be 9.2, 4 sieges from Advent or Tec would only be 8.0

[quote] Firstly; asteroid. [/quote] So? An asteroid would still have a minimum of 1500 hp, and thus, take over 3 minutes for 4 siege frigates to kill [quote] Secondly; tax income. [/quote] Considering you said asteroid above, asteroids really don't generate tax income of any significant amount [quote] Thirdly; how many minutes till the frigates arrive? [/quote] Considering it's the beginning of the game, your fleet should only

Okay, here it is, greatly simplified for non math folks. 30% phasing against a 60% mitigation target is 1.45 times normal damage, on average. (60% is the normal max) 30% phasing against a 70% mitigation target is 1.7 times normal damage, on average (70% is a high level capital ship, or advent units with the culture and shield upgrades) 30% phasing against a 80% mitigation target is 2.2 times normal damage, on average (80% is a high level advent capital ship

[quote] 4 siege frigates can neuter you early game [/quote] Lets see, siege frigates do 2 dps to planets, so 4 of them would be 8 dps, assuming the planet has the minimum level of hp, 1500, that would take 1500/8 = over 3 minutes of bombing to take down. Two light frigates can kill all 4 of them before you lose the planet - Enemy loses 2000 credits, 280 metal, 240 crystal, you *spent* 500 credits and 90 metal, and those units are still alive, so you lost nothing, except credit income.<

Very helpful to me, thank you very much.

[quote] Words can't describe how much I agree with you. One of the greatest things about Civ IV is that almost all game mechanics are throughly explained either in popup windows or in the civelopedia. [/quote] Well, Civ 4 has its share of semi-hidden data, too. I had to turn to the internet to learn a lot about civ4, the civopedia basically says 'fighting causes war weariness' [They don't tell you that fighting on your own terrain doesn't cont

All right, I'll be honest Diplomacy : Not the greatest right now, but it's bound to improve, all the stuff you'd expect is in though, trading, line of sight sharing. Research : It's a different type of research than civ 4, all of civ 4's research is aimed at allowing new buildings and units. In Sins, research is primarily aimed at improving all aspects of your empire (trade, resource collection, armor, damage, shields, intel, etc.) City Building : I can't really put

Well, for now, you can jury-rig a solution. You would start as two empires, he does all the expanding and you have two or three systems that are heavily fortified (you need to have enough systems to get 8 military researches and a bunch of shipyards). He runs the economy of all his planets, and can give credits metal and crystals to you as needed, and you can handle all of the military stuff. Essentially you'd end up as sort of one empire, no money lost or anything, although both of

Occasionally I've gotten missions that aren't even possible, like killing more of his tactical structures than even exist, that one's just mean. Kill 3 of his turrets! (but.. he only has 2)

[quote] if the AI has no visual on my fleet, then why does it run as soon as I initiate phase jump to reinforce my planets? [/quote] They tend to have scout ships everywhere. [quote] why do I never get to force AI players to give ME money for loyalty? [/quote] Maybe you hadn't noticed, but doing other missions, like the kill missions causes them to give you around 1000 credits, 500 metal and 250 crystal, so you can eventually earn far more than your mon

Maybe your alt key is getting jammed down (maybe not literally but the computer might think it is?) Try pressing alt next time that happens and see if it does anything.

[quote] Well, I started a little bigger table. Initial png: [/quote] What Race are all those ships based on, I don't see it listed in there. Edit: Nevermind I see it's TEC

I think trade ships are free, but losing them would just lower your income by the fact that you're missing some.