Wrath89

Just had a successful run where I got my first trade port up by 6 minutes and had 3 by 8 minutes. Well, at least now I know that it's doable, even with the colony-cap rush strategy. The bad news is that it's only viable that early if there's only like 1 planet for your cap to colonize (and has to waste its time plodding towards the enemy in the star's gravity well, or in a long gas giant). I also didn't have to research any planet colonization until the 7 m

I've found that in a 1v1, I can almost always spot the pirate planet on sight even if the well hasn't been explored yet. So if there was a more general "avoid this gravity well" option, that would work too and save the scout (which could also be useful late-game).

Oh, right, I haven't yet mentioned that a key part of my early-expansion strategy is that my capital (colony) is always moving in the general direction of the enemy, no matter what gravity wells are on the way - I rarely feel I have the time to take even a slight detour, even if it's through a planet with nice resources, unless there's only 1 siege frigate. My reasoning is that side gravity wells can always be acquired later, but that if you don't grab that front-

All right. I've been practicing, and still have not been able to have enough funds to build a trade port until at least 10 minutes in, if I'm colonizing everything in sight. Planet research, development costs, and extractors are just too much. On my successful quick-expansion tries (which are extremely difficult for me to pull off perfectly), I was able to buy my first trade port at: 10 minutes / 5 planets (lots of metal, no crystal) 10 minutes / 6 planets (lot

The Sova's Embargo is excellent for attacking the enemy's homeworld, but very rarely does any damage of significance if the target is anything else. HW assaults are very common in the early game (in 5s at least) but somewhat more uncommon later in the game (and the target will probably getting more income from feed later)... and large numbers of LRF later would probably kill or scare out the Sova before it could do much... unless the defenders are poorly positioned.

There are a couple of tweaks which would make Explore's autocast much, much more useful. 1. Don't go back to dead-end planets or asteroids. If there was nothing there but neutral ships before, you aren't going to learn anything new. 2. Prioritize exploring (a) unexplored gravity wells (b ) closest to where the scout frigate is currently. ? ===== A ===== B ===== HW ===== C ===== ? All scouts at A and C should scout out their respective close unexplor

[quote who="Ryat" reply="1" id="2980523"]Format needs work. Can't understand what you are saying.[/quote][quote who="in-the-sun" reply="2" id="2980530"]Yep please reformat your post, it is unreadable right now, as we can't see the end of much lines...[/quote] This. Proper English would also be appreciated.

[quote who="Volt_Cruelerz" reply="22" id="2980365"]Well, the absolute maximum for vicious-level AI's and their more or less infinite funds would be immediately building enough military labs to build light carriers, and then start mass producing them. From there, it would simply send them through and with enough, by the time they'd get through the well, the SC would have eliminated everything. Send in colony frigates after that. Somehow the idea of giving the AI

Yeah, the AI should learn NOT to move into range of starbases/stationary defenses if it doesn't have the overwhelming advantage. If it's just anticipating fleet-to-fleet combat, though, if the AI builds units reasonably intelligently, I don't think there'd be that much of a need for a reworking on that front.

Something the AI is greatly lacking in is the understanding of how to expand quickly. If I could, I would program the Cruel and Vicious AI to expand at the maximum possible colonization speed (eg. 5 or 6 planets by 10 minutes if map is a random small 1v1) using the method I try to use. If the planet types and number of enemy ships can be processed through an AI program, it would be doable. The current AI's expansion rate is horribly slow, even on the harder settings - it o

Some other obvious improvements which shouldn't be too hard: the AI shouldn't queue up like 50 or so light frigates in a row at the very beginning of the game, even if it has the money (read: is Viscous/Cruel).

[quote who="Yarlen" reply="22" id="2980091"]It's not something we (Stardock) can address. Ironclad is going to look into it a bit, however.[/quote] They're going to consider it? Yay! The first 10 minutes of the game are the most important, but the super-speed is always present in those first few minutes, especially if there are a lot of humans playing - it makes good initial play much harder than it should be.

[quote who="AdmiralAckbar42" reply="14" id="2980319"]As for my own wishes, I want a feature where you can create AI "generals" that serve the same function as real life ones, you give them nominal control of some of your ships (which I can override at any time) and give them assignments (spread your ships to defend these planets, capture this planet etc.)[/quote] Doesn't sound like it'd be that different from auto-attack (and auto-colonize) behavior, after warping in...

[quote who="KrdaxDrkrun" reply="16" id="2980231"]The Colony frig has such a tiny DPS.[/quote] So does the scout, but a single one for each LRM can still kill them before the LRMs destroy the turret.

[quote who="Seleuceia" reply="14" id="2980187"]Cobalts and arcovas both use lasers, so any tech improvement to one of those ship's weapons will in fact help both...[/quote] He was asking "would that increase the efficiency of Cobalts to Arcovas?", which it definitely would (but the cost for the research would be much more than the benefit would be, at least early game) [quote who="Seleuceia" reply="14" id="2980187"]Personally I don't always like relying solely on scout

[quote who="KrdaxDrkrun" reply="12" id="2980105"]BTW, is it good to have scouts in MP games? Don't they die very quickly to Capships?[/quote] Having a whole bunch of scouts in backup (not with your main battle fleet) (like 20 maybe) can be very useful in fighting off enemy siege frigate swarms, and for doing quick raids on enemy colony frigates you spot, and also for killing enemy anti-structure cruisers. They can be a bit useful against a few enemy LRF but will die very quickly i

Anyone who does anything on multiplayer (like me and basically everyone in this thread, most likely) probably plays on Faster everything, and Random something... if this is a bad assumption, please correct me.

[quote who="BlackHawk141" reply="12" id="2979708"]And please Starnoob, The only time you tend to win games is when its either stacked in your favour due to DT noobs hiding under smurf names or when you cry for 'FEEEEEED'. I don't think you have ever won a game which didnt involve stacked teams or crying for feed.[/quote] If someone gains the advantage by asking for feed, and their team wins, it's a good tactic. I don't see the problem. That's what feed

I think the AI should be taught to counter enemy fleets better - eg. if enemy has X frigates of type A and Y frigates of type B, the AI should build Z frigates of type C to counter most effectively. So, if the human enemy spams LRF, the AI will plug the numbers into its formula and conclude that it needs to spam flak. I don't think it would be that hard to create a formula such as this. It would also be essential to fix the suicide-on-starbases tactic the AI always uses. I

It depends on how many siege frigates there are, but yeah, you need a lot of scouts. 1 siege, send 3; ---- 2, send 7; ---- 3, send 11. I used to hate building turrets as well. I justify it to myself now by saying: the choice is between a one-time cost of 250/75/35, and maybe being pushed back one more planet. If I get my capital ship to colonize, build a turret, and move to the enemy's front lines ASAP, and subsequently acquire one or two more planets than I would have otherwise,

Cobalts aren't a good choice for your first frigate units I think - your priority should be killing the siege frigates so your colony cap or colony frigate can colonize so that you can build a turret and move on ASAP. You should be building scouts instead. Light frigates have a 75% damage modifier against siege frigates (light armor) - scouts have a 200% modifier. I don't have much of a problem with the general how-to-expand strategy - it's that when I'm expand

Scrapping my cap factory is definitely an improvement I should be doing. In addition to trying to build/upgrade everything you noted, I've also been researching my first two Terran population capacity as soon as I can: it increases HW income from 19.3/sec to 20.2/sec and then to 21.1/sec (+0.9 credits per sec for each upgrade) and costs 400/0/25 and 500/0/50 - for each, cost is less than half a trade port, but with about half the income (trade ports give what, 1.8+/sec?) I th

1v1. One player is TEC. For them, which should be prioritized: getting 2 or 3 trade ports up ASAP, or colonizing everything in sight? With a colonizer cap going one direction and colony frigate / scouts going in the other direction, given the rate I try to colonize, I find I rarely have enough funds for even a single trade port until after I acquire and develop my 6th planet or so (11 ish minutes in), right when I'm starting to bump into the enemy. Is this a mistake? The problem, of cours

I think I remember someone saying something like not using Alloy means that games don't increase speed to compensate for lag. Is this correct or no?

[quote who="Darvin3" reply="22" id="2979233"] You could try focusing more on Crusaders mid-late game ... but if the enemy counters with bombers... This is still much better than the problems that LRF pose to early Advent. Use TK push to cover your approach to the enemy fleet, use the destras to clean up LRF, and swamp the carriers with disciples. Throw in guardians with repulsion to cut off retreats and some other capital ship abilities tailored to the enemy fleet