1Tiberius1

I wonder if a 10% increase to the cost of crystal for LRM's would slow the tide enough to make them easily managable, or at least make it hurt to spam them early on?

He seems to be referring to a subsection of the military research screen. While research amounts are small individually, usually a 5% bonus per level, they do indeed add up as you progress through the game. Even limiting yourself to level 1 hull and armor bonuses gives you a bonus that gets better and better as you build more ships. Research at the lower levels is useful when a game gets going and you have income rates that allow you to recoup resources spent on research in a minute or two.

For the TEC and Advent, you must build a colonizing frigate. For the Vasari, their scouts have the capture ability.

Thanks, I couldn't remember at the time I posted the last message. :)

Well, its true that repair loses some ability on lightly armored units in the late game, but it still helps for units with 8 or more armor, and many ships with repair also have other abilities that they can employ. If the opponent has a handful of heavy cruisers, definitely disable them. If he's uses large waves of bombers, toss 10 flak frigates into your fleet. You should always be scouting your enemy can keeping an eye on which units you see being built, and there is no excuse to

Also, the info card indicates that friendly ships in the targetted gravity well get a damage bonus(similar to the Vasari fighting under their own culture). That shouldn't be overlooked during a pitched battle. Hopefully someone can confirm the exact percent bonus from the game files.

Also, if you tell the AI to attack a planet, and have your own ships in the area, the AI will dutifully(or sometimes irritatingly) wait for you to advance first. By this I mean you have to order your fleet to move to the attack target, then they will respond alongside you. The AI is willing to help you, but won't do all your dirty work for you(a nice touch).

Aye, refineries max at 3 per extractor(this includes all extractors both in the gravity well with the refinery and all extractors in gravity wells directly attached to the gravity well with the refinery) for inhabitable systems, and 4 per extractor for uninhabitable areas. The exception is the Advent. They can 'convert' a trade center to a percentage boost to extractors, in the same gravity well only. But this doesn't seem to have a limit. A great tactic might be to convert four trade center

For the Novalith cannon, scout his planets for locations with 3,000hp or less. The TEC scouts get sensor probe, giving you a view of most enemy locations. Or if you can build several cannons, put them together in a Ctrl-group and fire on his home planet. Goodbye 10credits/sec of income. Every time the opponent rebuilds the planet they have to leave it in a weakened state, or spend 1,000's in credits and 100's of resources to get it back to its previous state. Killing a colony every 5 minute

The pirates start with a full defense compliment of 19 turrets and usually 1.5-3 dozen ships. But after every raid the surviving pirate ships add themselves to the defense force. In large games its totally possible for the pirate base to have several hundred ships, including 30-80 ships worth of their version of the Kodiak heavy cruiser. With that many ships even large fleets can be torn to ribbons. You'll want to look for abilities that target multiple ships(combining th

The AI still does weird stuff at times. Since the AI never moves it's home planet, it should defend it to the death. Bombing planets usually gets the AI to respond, but if their fleet is too weak they simply turn back around and wait at the next gravity well for reinforcements. Meanwhile I'm busy tearing stuff up and moving to the next target. By keeping a large fleet at major chokepoints, and having a small smattering of defenders at areas where the AI sneaks in siege frigates(an amazing wa

Fleets make ships follow the flagship around. But its better to use the Ctrl groups for your fleets because assigning orders simultaneously makes them move together in formation, great for phase jumping.

Pillagers are siege frigates. Reapers are flak frigates. Rogues are light assault frigates. Cutthroats use the carrier cruiser model, but are a unique ship that uses its antimatter to steal income IIRC(I'm not absolutely sure on that). Corsairs are heavy assault cruisers. Unless I've mixed cutthroats with rogues, those should be the accurate name/type pairings.

~Nevermind, I'm off my rocker on this...~ ;p

It is imperative to keep the pirates off your back. If the pirates attack you, almost every AI faction will try to strike simultaneously with them. In general, focus the pirates on the strongest AI faction in your system and you're free to abuse the AI as you see fit. Remember that you don't have to bid high on the pirates, just keep watching the screen and bid often. The computer is like the last few minutes of an Ebay auction. They'll bid 250 over your bid every minute or so.

Go back to the main menu and go to Load Game, reset the options as you see fit and load the game that way. If you do a load mid-game the options will reset. This is a known bug and will likely be fixed in the next patch.

Yeah, I understand that three factions is the optimal number for game balance. If you keep it that way, you can totally unbalance the force threatening the Vasari, which stays true to the lore. The campaign thing is good news. I hope to see more of that great 'universe' art that emphasizes the scope of power for the factions. I also hope that many of the realistic features make it into the expansion: promoting a high level capital ship captain to Fleet Admiral for gravity wel

Can you ALT select them and then use Tab with the hotkey to just click-click-click through the group? That wouldn't take more than a few seconds, or do you have to wait for each ship to finish placing the explosives before being able to send in the next one?

Well, the TEC capitals are weaker because their base ships are so strong for the cheap cost. But they certainly don't all suck. One thing that shocked me was that he said Ion Bolt sucks. Really? At level 3 its so spammable that those 7 seconds become 35-56 seconds of an enemy capital ship being completely helpless. When you're focus firing on a crippled ship, that can make all the difference in the world. Fighting in your own culture makes it near permanent spam. The Akk

Yeah, tradeports are like half the cost of refineries. In exchange the Advent have to research both their tradeport and the conversion ability, though why you wouldn't research tradeports is beyond me...

It seems that people who expected a pure 4x game are the few who are disappointed with the game, and among them they are almost universally disappointed in the game. Apparently juggling a fleet with planet research, military research, civilian research, orbital structures, a pirate system, a black market system, and a diplomacy system aren't enough for some people. :( I'd like to address the '2D board' comment with a bit of science, namely the phenomenon of objects pulled in by gravit

Returning Armada, the Vasari tech which, at 8 empire labs, is their true ultimate weapon, summoning a free army of mixed units(heavy cruisers, flak frigates, carriers, long range frigates) every few minutes.

In regards to your question, and not to dump on refineries, which are indeed too slow for anything besides huge multistar games, the Advent get a tech for their tradeport that allows it to convert its output from credits to resources. I haven't tried it though. Revisiting refineries a bit, they're decent next to volcanic or ice worlds with several phase lanes that lead to points with resource satelites. Depending on the allegiance of the area, you can up to 1.8 resources a second fr