[quote who="Derek06" reply="2" id="2665594"]Bottom line is the skirantra is extremely over powered and desperatly needs a nerf. One level 3 skirantra (using scramble bombers) equals 18 bomber squads. Nothing in this game can properly counter that[/quote] Well, nothing of similar fleet supply.
Overseers and the Skirantra can account for the hull repair. As for the shields, it's the Kortul's Power Surge, which will recharge its own shields at 25/35/45 per second.
Now throw in the number of trade ships running around once Trade Ports come into play and you've got an even worse situation.
Increasing game-speed tends to bring with it a decreased framerate. Quickstart was a feature introduced with Entrenchment, so Diplomacy has it, but Vanilla Sins does not.
One extra note about trade routes: in Vanilla Sins, trade routes automatically consider uncolonizable gravity wells (stars, wormholes, asteroid fields, etc), but in Entrenchment/Diplomacy, it is necessary to construct a starbase with a trade port upgrade in order for an uncolonizable gravity well to be considered when calculating the longest trade route.
How aggressive are you at colonization? It is a good idea to grab as many planets as possible at the beginning of a game (within the limitations of your current resources). This way, you will have more resources at your disposal. In the early game, long range frigates (known as LRF) are the best ships in terms of damage for the credits/resources you paid for that ship. Carrier capitals are also a good pick as a first cap.
Advent mines pose far more of a challenge, since their homing range is just a bit shorter than the range of the decloaking ability on the scout. Yes, its possible to clear them without losses, but its a very time consuming process as you have to manually control which mine to decloak first, otherwise the scout triggers other mines and it gets blown to pieces.
They attack the player with the highest bounty at the time the raid is launched .
Capital-wise, the Akkan is arguably the best colonizer capital as of the most recent patches, giving 1/2/3 free extractors and a 33%/66%/100% temporary bonus to extraction rates with its Colonize ability. As it stands, carrier capitals are fairly powerful, each in their own respect. For the Sova, this means having 3 to 4 Missile Platforms out at the same time (which will help to bolster your fleet), or denying your enemy of the credits of one of their planets.
Abilities you know that you want to be activated ASAP you can leave on autocast (examples include the Sova's Embargo, the Kortul's Power Surge, and the Skirantra's Scramble Bombers), although if you find you need to reserve your AM, definitely leave them on manual control, otherwise your caps will burn through their AM pretty quick (which the Kol is notorious for).
With regards to the Deliverance Engine, it can be of great help to an attacking fleet. Depending on the flavour of the game you're playing, your ships get a damage bonus (15% for Vanilla, 25% for Entrenchment/Diplomacy) on the affected planet and you can temporarily deny the enemy their cultural bonus (and possibly give your own ships the Advent's shield mitigation culture bonus).
If you have the Diplomacy expansion, with appropriate research, you can issue your own missions to AI players, and eventually, the Pirates as well. If not, well, the only thing close to issuing a mission is to Ping your ally. To do this, select any of their ships, and if you have a Cease Fire (or Peace Treaty) you will see three options on the bottom right - one is an attack request, another is a defense request, and the last cancels your last request. When you click, you will be able
Asteroid Belts lower the accuracy of your ships (the penalty is 20%), hence lowering their overall damage output. It cuts both ways, and the only way to mitigate this penalty is through the Akkan's Targeting Uplink. Gas Giants have an Explosive Gas Pockets ability where if a ship in the gravity well is destroyed the resulting explosion damages nearby ships (I think the damage is like 80). Think of it as everything in the gravity well being afflicted with the Kortul's Volatile Nanites
In any case, the full cultural bonus is only applicable to a gravity well whose connected phase lanes are ENTIRELY filled with friendly culture. Even filling one lane with opposing culture will reduce the bonus granted.
AFAIK, there is no print material that contains any more details than the manual. The expansion packs add new content to the game as well as modifications to some of the existing elements of the game (typically ship abilities). Entrenchment beefs up the tactical structures from Vanilla Sins as well as introducing mines and the Starbase. Diplomacy (which requires Entrenchment) is fairly self-explanatory: it expands on the diplomatic side of the game, allowing you to issue other players
The position of a research subject in the research tree already denotes how many labs are needed to research it (and in the case of ships and structures, maintain your ability to build them). You could also simply mouse over each research subject and the infocard at the bottom right will tell you what is needed to begin research (number of labs, any prerequisite research, credit/metal/crystal required).
The Recharger only ever recharged frigates. What you might have witnessed was the Recharger giving antimatter to Disciples, which used Transfer Antimatter on a structure (so you could indirectly transfer antimatter from the Recharger to other structures via Disciples). Problem with that is that the Disciple's Transfer Antimatter requires 100 AM to use in order to donate (I think) 25 AM over 5 seconds.
Lots of contrast between each faction's field repair abilities: With one cast, the Domina comes out on top with 1000 hull repaired, Hoshi next with 300, and the Overseer last with 250. Hoshi has the shortest cooldown (3 secs), Overseer 4 secs, and the Domina with the worst (60 s) Overseer replenishes hull pretty much instantly once cast (well, you could consider its repair to be 62.5 hull/sec, which is 250 hull divided by the 4 sec cooldown), the Domina next at 25 hull/sec, and
Uh, get over it? I seriously doubt there are many out there who actually care.
[quote who="SliderFury" reply="9" id="2546091"]I suppose if you could manage to get up the cash you could stick two fairly upgraded starbases in say your home system and really bring th pain.[/quote] The problem is that you're limited to 1 SB per gravity well (exception is stars, where you can place up to 4). The last added weapon for SBs is the long(er) range weapon (TEC has missiles, Advent has Psionic Surge, and Vasari has Phase Missiles), which have a greater reach than it
If you're playing on Entrenchment/Diplomacy, you'll also have to deal with the asteroid having 40% less maximum population (this is also temporary, but takes a lot longer to wear off).
It is actually necessary to have an SB with the Trade Port upgrade in Entrenchment/Diplomacy in order to make your longest trade route go through a star. In Vanilla Sins, trade routes automatically consider neutral gravity wells, but in Ent/Diplo, it only considers neutrals with an SB with the Trade upgrade. This also has the effect of making Magnetic Clouds pretty much useless in Ent/Diplo.
I've only seen a "-0.00" for Rejected Missions, probably because its a negative value too small to be shown with two decimal places. As to how Envoy Bonuses can be negative, I'm at a loss.
To offer missions to the Pirates, you need a tech higher up in the Diplo Tree that specifically gives you the ability to issue missions to the Pirates.
The available fleet supply is scaled according to the setting. Normal fleet sizes are 100, 250, 400, 550, 820, 1090, 1360, 1680, and 2000. For small, each value is scaled down to 80% of the normal value (so you max out with 1600 fleet supply) and for large, each value is scaled up 25% (so you max out at 2500 fleet supply).
