Spatzimaus

So, I spent the last day playing the new beta of Entrenchment, and it's time for some feedback. This is going to be all over the place, so bear with me. For reference, I was playing a custom map (single star, lots of choke points), 6-player, 5 AIs on Random Hard, large fleets, fast everything. I usually wipe the floor with the AIs on that map; once you hit a point where you own 1/3rd the map and have a noticeable tech advantage, it's just mopup time. Last night, though

[quote who="KristusVoso" reply="14" id="2038716"]stil no caps on mines, i really like big maps, around 20 stars with 10-20 planets around each but i played it the other day an had two hard fortifiers an they built a silly amounts of mines around every planet, realy think they should be limited to an overall amount that wont slow down larger maps an promote their use for chocke points rather than every planet u go too, but dunno if they could make the AI use them that way.[/quote]</p

[quote who="Shadowhal" reply="12" id="2038702"]so ... does this change mean that starbases are weaker now? because I have no clue how they worked before, in particular how many, if any, targets a bank can attack and whether the unused dmg could add to more than 100%.[/quote] It's going to depend on whether they adjusted the damage ratings of affected weapon banks to compensate, and we just don't know yet if they did. I'm betting they did; I wouldn't be suprised if they reduced t

[quote who="Paul Kersey" reply="11" id="2038612"]I have to agree on the Vasari mines. I have not played Vasari in the beta yet but I'm going to assume those mines are free?[/quote] They cost antimatter (25 per mine?). Other than that, free, although according to the changelog for the next beta build of Entrenchment, they'll cost actual resources, and all players will have a hard limit of 150 mines per player per gravity well, regardless of race. Effectively the Vasari will

[quote who="Tridus" reply="1" id="2038472"]Fleets can also be pinned to the empire tree (I think it's off by default, but its in the settings menu).[/quote] I was pinning my pseudofleets manually anyway, so no change there, and I don't usually WANT new ships to autojoin fleets (as I tend to have 4-5 "battle" fleets plus several specialized squadrons, like a team of 4-5 minelayers that fortifies my systems for me, all created in the same place). Part of this, I guess, is that I a

[quote who="homefleet" reply="1" id="2037068"]First did they increase the number of squadrons for the capital carrier ships? If they did, then for the about the same number of support points, I would have twice as many squadrons for using carrier cruisers then I would for carrier capital ships.[/quote] Note that carriers now cost 14 support points, not 8, now that they carry two squadrons instead of 1. So it's more like 3:1, not the 6:1 ratio you were quoting. But eve

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="19" id="2038377"]This is not true for fleets, though. I'm talking about the actual 'fleet' entity that you create from the tactical menu, not just a selected group of ships. All ships in a created fleet follow the fleet leader.[/quote] Hmm, I wonder if I've ever used that Fleet mechanism, then. All I do is select the first ships in the fleet (the capships), press CTRL-1, then as I build new ships to add to the fleets I shift-click to add them and ct

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="14" id="2038327"]Well ideally, fleeted scouts should stay within the bounds of the fleet cohesion setting, so they should stick the rest of the fleet to spot for it. I doubt their new AI behavior will supercede the fleet's cohesion setting [/quote] Several problems with that: 1> In the absence of specific orders, ships do their own things regardless of where the rest of the fleet is. When I'd send a combined fleet into a system and leave

My opinions on the OP, most of which I disagree with: 1> Starbases should ALL move, but very slowly. Think of them as being towed from point A to point B, or overcharging their "station-keeping" engines (which they'd have to have to maintain orbit). Concept aside, they simply NEED to be a little mobile, or else they become tactically useless without an insane range increase. And there's no comparison to capships; bases are SLOW, and take forever to cross a gravity

I love it. So many good changes, and only a few that I wonder about. The best part, to me, is the AI prioritization (scouts always prioritize mineclearing, flaks prioritize fighters/bombers THEN mines, capship secondaries prioritize mines but primaries don't), since it looks like it'll make combats flow more "naturally"; mines will get destroyed, but they'll be limiting mobility AND tying up weapon banks that could be used to fight off attackers. The question is, though: will sc

I've played through a couple large Entrenchment games now, and I figured I might as well put my two cents in on the Mine issue. I like mines. I really do; between them and starbases, it REALLY helps slow the game down in a good way. In the vanilla game, I always played the Vasari because the other races simply couldn't react quickly enough to reinforce an attacked world before it was destroyed, but with these additions, chokepoint systems can finally be defe