JamesP81

[quote]Yeah that is what is bad about demolition bots, I think your suggestion would be good one. I find it that unless you disable repair, the hoshikos waste all antimatter repairing and never use demolition bots.[/quote] Additionally, I find that even when I disable repair, the Hoshikos tend to use demo bots on less than optimal targets. They seem to want to go after light carriers, which might be because their standard laser weapon is effective against light carrier's armor type. N

For the purpose of reducing micro management, I'd like to be able to issue standing orders to a group of ships that would control their overall behavior. When I play as TEC and get robotics cruisers with demolition bots, the robotics cruisers tend to use the demolition bots on ships that don't matter, such as light carriers or light frigates. I'd like to be able to order my robotics cruisers to use their demolition bots on LRMs and heavy cruisers without having to individually order every robo

You're observations are correct. You're better off building extra tradeports than refineries. Refineries can enhance extraction from asteroids around the planet it's built at and it can also enhance extraction from asteroids at neighboring planets. The only time a refinery *might* be a good choice is if you can build it at a planet where it can reach a whole slew of extractors. I would consider building one if I had a location where it could enhance at least a dozen extractors. Sinc

I know that the developers intent is to keep micro management as close to a minimum as possible. I think what would help that is the ability to issue blanket standing orders to groups of ships. I thought of this a few days ago when I was playing a game as TEC. I had a large fleet with around 40 robotics cruisers, and I had researched demolition bots for them. My intent was for the robotics cruisers to use demo bots to disable the weapons on my opponents heavy cruiser

[quote]Oh, I just thought of this as I hit the post reply button... Maybe I am blind or something, but is there any way to tell how much of a drain it will be on my resources BEFORE I colonize? Or is that just something I need to figure out by trial and error?[/quote] It's a little different depending on planet type and a few other factors, but it generally comes out to between 2.5 and 3.5 credits per second lost. IIRC, it's higher for volcanic and ice planets than for Terran, Desert,

[quote]1. Ship Upgrades (offensive). Thoughts on this? Worth its salt? (e.g. the Illumi Beam Upgrades (to30%))[/quote] They are worth the money, but only at the right time. Early game when your fleet is small, you increase your firepower more by simply using the money you'd spend on upgrades to buy more ships. This changes when your fleet gets large enough. It's kind of a balancing act. You don't want to get the weapons upgrades too early when they won't help as much as more ships,

Sounds like you might not be upgrading your civilian infrastructure on planets you colonize. An easy mistake to make at first. When you colonize a planet, make sure you go into the planet development menu and upgrade your civilian infrastructure. You newly colonized planets will actually cost you money until you do.

The AI is not too smart with abilities on autocast. I'd definitely not have that on autocast. I've used this ability exactly twice, but it worked fine both times. It only works if one of your capital ships has been destroyed. If you lose a capital ship, you use resurrection on a new capital ship you build to replace it, and the experience of the destroyed capital ship goes into your new capital ship.

I can't give you hard numbers, but I know from having used it that it can best be described by its effects. In conjunction with Malice and intelligent choice of which ship to fire CB at, it does severe damage to nearby cruisers and absolutely rapes frigates. The last time I used it, an AI sent a capital ship and 56 disciples after my dozen or so Illuminators, Radiance, and Progenitor. I maliced the enemy formation and fired CB at the cap. Admittedly, it was a near ideal situation as the Disc

[quote]Actually, some people said Kol looks like Warlock-class battlecruser (I might be wrong on the class type...) from Babylon 5... I guess that since many of human spacecraft in sci-fi are boxy, there are bound to have some similarities between them...[/quote] Warlock class destroyer: [IMG]http://i29.tinypic.com/25kiias.jpg[/IMG] Definitely some similarities there. But I think the Kol is even better.

My two favorites are the Kol and the Radiance. The Kol has that beefy "I'm gonna mess up your face" look to it. It looks sturdy and has the feel of a ship that would be sturdy and reliable in combat. The port and starboard auto cannon turrets give it a WW2 battleship kind of feel to it. It also resembles one of the B5 capital ships, which I've always thought were good looking ships. The Radiance is cool because it almost has an 18th century ship of the line feel. It has its heavy chaser we

I did a test game against an unfair AI using Advent. I intentionally let it build up and waited for it come to me just to see what it is about Advent that's toughest to defeat. You have to stop his Guardians. Remember that frigates and cruisers max their shield mitigation at 57%. Add on the 33% reduction the Guardian's shield ability gives, and the Advent player is getting an effective shield mitigation of 90%. That means a Kodiak that normally does 18 dps is now doing 1.8 dps. Und

[quote]Ruthlessness. One of the upgrades for the Destra Crusader (the heavy battle cruiser) is ruthlessness. How useful is it and is it a passive ability or does it consume antimatter and require microing? Does a single Crusader's ruthlessness ability damage only a single enemy ship at one time or all enemy ships within a certain area of effect? Is Ruthlessness additive? If five Crusaders are within range of an enemy ship, will the enemy ship receive ruthlessness damage from just one Crusad

[quote]But at the time I noticed that his ship gets repaired faster than I can inflict damage (duh!) I had lost 2 of my cap ships and his other 8 caps there had gained quite some experience.[/quote] Overseer cruisers. They can build up the hit points of a friendly ship very fast. Use anti matter disrupting abilities to shut down the Overseers, or focus on destroying them first. You have to do something to take them out of the battle.

[quote]If you have one trade port per planet already as you say you do, then your statement is correct, but Trade Ports are only linear once you have your longest chain established.[/quote] Naturally. I would never start building additional trade ports on a planet until all my planets had one.

I like the pirates. Pirate ships are free experience points for my newly built, inexperienced capital ships. Frequently, you'll find that there is a small cluster of worlds that the pirates will normally attack when they come after you. Put static defenses in these systems and park a new capital ship there. The cap gets some easy leveling.

[quote]Top 3 underused TEC abilities: Sabotage Reactor, Demolition Bots, Designate Target![/quote] I don't know. Sabotage reactor sounds nice in theory, but it's mounted on a Cobalt which tends to die easily late game to HC's and LRM type frigates. Furthermore, the amount of micro required to make it work well is ridiculous. There simply isn't enough time to micro your cobalts into sabotaging the majority of the enemy's subverters before he stuns 2/3 of your fleet. That is one abili

[quote]Flak Frigates are STRONGLY countered by the tier 1 assault frigates, so any serious carrier based armada needs to have a good number of these.[/quote] The problem with this strategy is that Cobalts, Disciples, and Skirmishers die in prodigious numbers to LRM type ships and heavy cruisers. As things stand now, a fleet of LRM + flak will destroy a fleet of carriers + light frigates. If you're going to use this strat, wait until you can field heavy cruisers in place of lig

[quote]Don't target the mothership first in the early game[/quote] In general, in the early game, it's a bad idea to FF on caps. Most of the opponents firepower is in his more fragile frigates and cruisers. Capital ships don't become truly dangerous until they get to higher levels that they won't have early game.

[quote]More than two choke points and I'm toast early game.[/quote] Every time I've tried to take more than three, that tends to happen. One or two chokes can be dealt with, especially once I get a pair of Radiances up to lvl 6.

[quote]And, you would think that there would be more than one squadron on a carrier...[/quote] I actually whipped a quick mod where the light carriers had two squads and it was way OP. I think the solution would be to make the carriers themselves a bit cheaper but otherwise leave their stats alone.

[quote]You want Homeworld.[/quote] I own a copy of every Homeworld game ever made. Great games, especially Homeworld 2. However, we're comparing apples and oranges. Even excluding the finer command and control of strikecraft you get with HW, they are still inherently more effective in HW. Primarily because the flak frigate in HW isn't nearly as lethal to fighters as the one in Sins is.

In terms of DPS per supply point, bomber strikecraft actually compare favorably to heavy cruisers. Firepower isn't the problem. It's fragility and command and control. Bombers are massacred by interceptors. Using your own interceptors for protection is problematic, though. Interceptors by default go after other bombers, leaving your bombers unprotected. Also problematic is that interceptors can be neutralized by flak very easily, leaving your bombers unesco

Truthfully, I find that carriers are too costly for the amount of firepower you get. The same resources spent on LRMs or heavy cruisers usually yields better results. That said, if you're going to use strikecraft, the fighter to bomber ratio you choose will be dependent on what kinds of forces your enemy is fielding. If he's going in for LRM spam, I'd have the majority of my strikecraft squadrons be fighters, since fighters are good against LRMs. If your opponent is anchoring his fle

[quote]Big trade lanes give trade bonuses, so i am a fan of 1 trade port per planet. Any more than that per planet and you are pulling resources from your fleet, which will help you get more planets, therefore only hurting your longterm trade income anyways.[/quote] Gotta disagree there. Trade ports stack indefinitely in a linear fashion. I start by having one trade port per planet, but once I've got all the labs I going to need, I fill the remaining logistics slots at all my planets