Orion's Folly

It doesn't act as a node until its antimatter pool is full. No idea why!

I've done some of this, but not all of what you're asking. I'll pm you the copy/paste of an old thread. Long story short, they're all worth it; it's just a matter of timing. Generally, don't build trade posts until there are no new planets to populate, and only research population beyond underdevelopment when you're being bottlenecked by credits. This most often occurs about 30 minutes into a game for me, but there are a lot of variables.

While I agree that it is nigh impossible to actually measure the effect of these upgrades, many thanks for doing a great job trying. We can just take your numbers, and apply our own criteria on top of it, which about as much as I ever wanted to do in the first place!

He's talking about Flux Field, but those are TEC ships. The Marauder is very good in big games vs AI, but it sounds like it doesn't fare well in PvP. The speed boost is great when used with 'all jump' on defense, and Phase can be used for several purposes. Desolators are weak by themselves, but 3-6 of them with a nanites cap will thrash fleets and raze colonies/orbital structures faster than just about anything else. They can also Disintegrate in unison and flatten a cap, or

I find the Revelation to be the worst overall capital ship. The Vasari carrier is also kinda meh, unless I'm underestimating the utility of Microphasing Aura. The Akkan is the weakest of the 3 colony caps, but Armistice is very good.

Plenty of good info in this thread already, so I'll try to keep it succinct. It's not easy, though. I want to say this was done against 3, but it was awhile go and I'm not entirely sure. It was actually a fairly leisurely game. First thing to know is, are you aware of tab cycling for capital ship abilities? If you select all capital ships, hitting tab will subselect the next ship, so you don't actually have to click on them to use abilities. This makes micro way easier, and allow

It will also show their target if you hold alt and select them. They basically just pick something that is at ~70% hull or less, as far as I can tell. They're very good if your capital ships are being focus fired, against random strike craft hits or AE effects, but rather useless against fleets of dps ships focus firing. They simply can't turn fast enough to use the heal, as they have to be facing their target directly.

The Kol battleship for TEC has an ability that regens hull very quickly for 60s, and another that reduces damage taken. The Hoshiko cruiser also has a heal over time, but it cannot stack with itself. However, it's most likely that you're fighting Vasari here, and they're using swarms of Overlords. These have a direct heal, which is most effectively used on capital ships. It looks like a white wave, and has a distinct noise. Focus fire things you can kill quickly.

Subliminal Manipulation is the title of the first fleet cap upgrade for Advent. I'm assuming you are using the non researched original fleet cap as 'level 1.' There is no research in one tab that directly requires one in another tab, afaik.

Here's an annotated game as TEC against 3 locked/aggressor hard AI. It's a testament to the deterrent power of turret clusters at frontline planets, and features several other AI tips & tricks. The default filepath for records for me was C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\AutoRecord-SinglePlayer [link="http://files.filefront.com/1v3+Hard+LFSC+Fullrecord/;10781479;/fileinfo.html"]1v3 Record[/link]

I disagree with buying crystal first, after doing some calculations on the effect/price of the Civ 4 upgrade. However, in the very early game, I don't think there's anyone who won't tell you to go for a capital ship right away. They need to level up, serve as tanks against the neutral ships, and cost only the price of the structure. 2) If it's a 1v1 game, just give up a planet or two and keep attacking, you'll kill them far quicker. This other info is given under the assumption tha

Similar reactions here. Light frigs perform pretty well against non HC cruisers. Not just for their antimatter abilities, but damage wise. They can take carriers/cruisers down pretty fast, have decent hp, are resistant to strike craft. The problem is that they are so [B]heavily[/B] countered by LRM frigs. This dynamic is far more significant than that of LF against cruiser, and just about every player is going to be using LRMs as a backbone of their non-HC fleets. Light frigs are a

The question of when (or if) to go for trade ports is wildly subject to context, especially whether you are playing against AI or playing against another person. I have no experience in multiplayer and thus can't offer any insight on that. I think a lot of the previous responses have good points about it, especially the one about scouting and offering your enemy a temporary advantage. It's easier to judge against AI, but depends on the size of the map/number of enemies. They're very good in

Yeah, I thought about trying small sizes too. The problem I have with that, is that a lower cap on total ships doesn't allow for any fewer ships in my defense fleet(s). They function in a very specific way. Nanites cap, Evac for gravity bomb, Marauder for the speed. 150 there no matter the fleet size allowed. It also takes around 25 enforcers to reliably 1 volley non-HC ships, which is also quite important in chewing through those fleets as fast/faster than they can replace them. By the ti

I dunno if you guys noticed, but he is talking about AI only. To say that static defense structures are 'monumentally useless' in multiple AI matches is about the most absurd suggestion I could fathom as a suggestion to improve chances of winning against multiple AI. There's either a misunderstanding about the playstyle here, (static def is indeed poor in multiplayer for obvious reasons) or a gross misunderstanding of how the AI behaves. This isn't WW2, and Patton wasn't talking about program

Kind of off topic, (sorry!) but how the f do people win 1v9 hard ai? Or 10 player FFA? Or locked 1v1^9? I mean, tactically, it's totally doable. I've tried it before as Vasari, and I made it to the late game with a managable econ and 2-3 very good trapping fleets. Then I tried to fight something, and my Crysis-capable rig simply fell apart. 1-5 fps, I couldn't even micro because most of the commands weren't going through, with all graphical detail on low or disabled. Am I unusual

I don't know if there's a way either, I really wish I did Tab targeting does work, if I'm reading you right on what you're asking. If you have a group of 20 ships selected, hitting tab will cycle your ability focus through the selected ships, which is particularly nice with groups of caps. Shift+tab goes th

This is kind of a tangent here, and only barely on topic, but I did a little estimation in regard to the capital planet level 4 civ upgrade. Depending on whether you estimate metal/crystal costs as bought or sold, the level 4 upgrade costs either 2775 or 1762 total credits. This is done assuming the 225 metal/crystal were bought at 450 or sold at 225 per 100met/crys, respectively. The population upgrade is not instant, your population raises by .1 per second (1 every 10 seconds) until

[quote]Should the Javeils be abandoned? They seem to die too quickly. Should I focus all of my ship caps on kodiaks and hoshikos? Are the command crusiers important?[/quote] If you're against AI, all frigate based dps should be phased out soon, other than flaks. Long range frigates have their use, and Illuminators might be good enough for late game fleets, but LRMs especially are quite poor. It's hard to even monitor their DPS progress due to the goofy trail of missiles and their trav

3 Kols should plaster any number of carriers, Flak Burst is crazy. You may have better results focusing your dps ships to all Kodiaks, 18 won't kill 75 carriers very quickly and the range difference vs missile ships will split them apart, making it harder to use Flak Burst. A ~30-40 count is where heavy cruisers start to become a fleet grinder. Use the Dunov antimatter bomb on their carriers, and keep the flaks to take care of the stragglers. I'd also recommend changing yo

Throwing my 2 cents in the ring here. To preface, I don't play online, so I wouldn't bank on this kind of econ against a human player. It's also highly dependent on the size of the map and whether it is randomly generated. Some will have choke points, some will have multiple stars, some will have neutral belts all over the place. These all affect how you should approach the early game, just as much as the race and number of your enemies. SoaSE early game is a lot like a 4x design.

Vasari is by far the best faction for trapping fleets. Build your own fleet with plenty of Enforcers, ~10 Subverters, however many Sentinels you think you need, an Evacuator, Marauder, and a Kortul. Warp in, zoom over with the Marauder's ship speed ability, gravity bomb the main pile trying to escape. While that ticks away, micro a few subverters to start their stun routine. Once one of those stuns lands, game over. Use Explosive Nanites, keep cycling Subverters, collect scrap metal. <

[quote]I'd just wait for the Marza's lvl6 missile ability to be fixed, which does 3000 damage to every target in range (spread over 25 seconds). Sure, the enemy fleet just can move out of the range - but if they don't, small things tend to die around the Marza[/quote] That will make a big difference in SP vs. comps, yeah. It's not nearly as significant in multiplayer though. Unlike Malice/CB or Nanites that only require an small time frame for instant application, the barrage i

The problem here is that one of the registry entries it's trying to access is wrong. For me, it was the PATH entry. A reinstall would probably work, I didn't want to go that far so I sought another solution. This is what worked for me: Go to Start->Run and type in "regedit". From there, find the folder that it lists when the patch fails. (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Stardock\Drengin.net\sins) If that folder really is blank, then you'd need to reinstall or find someone who

^^ To expand: Hover mouse over your credit number in the top right, and you'll see which planets are draining your econ. (the numbers will be in red instead of green) This is an underdevelopment tax, essentially a mechanism to prevent mass colonization in the first few minutes of the game. Buying the planet development 'Civilian Infrastructure' removes this penalty. Asteroids need level 1 and planets need level 2. Further levels of Infrastructure on planets are still usef