It does seem slightly silly that more phase stabilizers makes a difference. I mean, a phase stabilizer stablizes phase space...either phase space is stabilized or it isn't, right? Can it be made "more stabilized"? If so, why does this not make any difference to anything other than RA?
It is my view that siege frigates are largely crap. There may be an opportunity when you may find them useful, if you absolutely can't afford to use your battle fleet to flatten the planet, AND you can spare however many supply you need to do the job in equivalent time with an otherwise useless mass of siege frigates, but I somehow don't see it. The amount of supply you'd be wasting on siege frigates would get your battlefleet vaporized when your opponent spends it on LRMs. I suppose you could u
Someone bashed ION BOLT? Is this some kind of joke? Ion Bolt is awesome. Sure, the stun time isn't that great, but honestly, when are you really using these things? Generally when your opponent is running away, anyway. Ion Bolt has a very acceptable range, very acceptable refire time, and cancels phase jump charge-up, so you just peg him with it as he tries to warp out and keep on whomping on him. What does it matter if he manages to recover shortly and even fire a few pitiful shots back at you?
How exactly are you piloting this carrier that you managed to only take out 3 LRMs? Also worth noting is that it is VERY true that a level 1 carrier sucks ass, since it carries only two fighters, while a battlecruiser would already carry one. Carriers really don't come into their own until they're carrying 5-6 squadrons and have cooperative special abilities boosting their strength. Does this make carriers a shitty investment if you intend to play rush games where people start 2 hops from each o
[quote]Now, on the downside, if you run into another player early and they have brought a bonifide battleship it puts you at a disadvantage.[/quote] Well, the Evacuator performs pretty well in early one-on-one combat with its nano-disassembler, but frankly, in a one-on-one fight at that early in the game, it will only take about 40 days and 40 nights for anyone to actually DIE otherwise, so you can always just flee while building some frigates to reinforce you. If he gives chase, you'll have
[quote]Certainly, I manage my LRMs by parking them just within missile range of enemy ships, and let them choose where to fire.[/quote]That is most likely because of a slightly different priority in LRM management. When you're using LRMs, you are, more likely than not, more interested in keeping the LRMs firing out of range of the enemy than you are at optimizing the amount of pain they dish out: After all, it doesn't matter how fast you kill them if they can't kill you. If you ordered a manual
[quote]Instead, I'm pretty sure it's there so that a user can react when a ship gets injured and pull it out or activate a heal on it. This is so that the general pace of combat isn't too slow, but simultaneously units don't suddenly pop (or at least, not as quickly as a game without shield mitigation) when under FF.[/quote]I'm pretty certain this is pretty much the true intent of shield mitigation, by creating a "curve" to hitpoint-death rather than straight incineration. What PURPOSE this rea
[quote]But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. i had hoped that Stardock would have promoted good American values instead[/quote]Those who turn the other cheek get bruises on both sides of their face. "Good American Values" involves bombarding those who offend us with cruise missiles.
My take on backstabbing is simple: I don't do it. I *WILL* play the diplomacy board, and offer and end alliances of convenience, but I never backstab. However, I certainly don't expect anyone else to behave honorably. An ancient Arab proverb states, "Trust in Allah, but tie your camel!".
Planets in friendly culture gain allegiance up to their max. Being in friendly culture increases allegiance max by 10%. Planets in enemy culture lose allegiance until they die and become uninhabited. Planets in no culture neither gain nor lose allegiance. That's basically it as far as culture is concerned. If you can push your culture over the enemy's planets, then it is only a matter of time before those colonies die. If this happens to you, you'd better start spamming more broadcast centers f
35% is basically the "standard" allegiance level for outlying planets which are like 6+ hops away from your capital. There is nothing you can really do about it. The standard allegiance will be 25%, +10% for friendly culture, +10% for maxing the Advent allegiance tech. That's all you can do, short of moving your home planet to a more central location, which will just shift the issue around. More broadcast centers will not really help, it doesn't sound like you actually have culture problems. And
I'm not sure if this map has any specific trait, but how does "accomplishing their mission" not help? Normally, the AI always accepts a cease fire if relations are at 50% or better, which typically means you must accomplish two missions with no intervening hostilities: If you destroy any of the AI's ships, his happiness level with you instantly returns to 0, and he will not accept any deals (and will cancel existing deals). The AI's swarm waves, on the other hand, are par for the course. I sugge
I think people here are conflating "alliances of convenience" and their inevitable end with backstabbing. There is a clear difference between them. In an alliance of convenience, players agree not to attack each other and/or to work against one or more other opponents instead, with the expectation that once whatever prompted the alliance is resolved, the alliance will dissolve. In a backstab, one player has misrepresented the alliance and has intentionally abused it, doing something like using a
[quote]That way, you could raid someone for their bounty without necessarily engaging in a fixed battle.[/quote]You're missing the point: In multiplayer, you cannot just "raid someone for their bounty". Humans do not simply forget your actions the moment you stop doing them because they stopped being profitable. Once you attack another human player like that, you are most likely at war. In an FFA scenario, such an action means one of two things: Either you have committed a raiding fleet to flyin
The problem with siege frigates is that a bunch of siege frigates can completely level the planet before your defenses can do anything about them: Even if you have a massive armada of ships, 60 siege frigates will likely wipe out your planet before you can kill them. This led to massive siege-frigate-spam. Personally, I think the problem is that siege frigates are too hard to kill, not that they took up too little supply: They should be made more crunchy, less supply-intensive. The 12 supply cos
[quote]Their ships come at higher tech, their economy is high tech, and while their cap ships are durable, they generally have the lowest dps in the game.[/quote]Are we talking about the same Advent here? The one thing I *HAVEN'T* found lacking in Advent has been DPS. It's just a qualitative assessment at this point, but having played all 3, I've always felt the Advent did more damage than most anyone else, it's the armor department they were a bit short on.
[quote]Good point. Of course, defending against a Novalith is very easy.[/quote]Wait, what? Defending against a Novalith was easy? I thought there *WAS* no defense against a Novalith. You can't shoot down or intercept the projectile, and there's no structure anyone can build which specifically counters it. The TEC Planetary Shield only reduces the pain, and that's only available for TEC. There *IS* no defense against the Novalith other than to destroy it, and if you're able to casually blitz and
Bounty has basically zero influence on who I decide to attack. While manipulating pirate attacks with it has use, the actual bounty itself is rarely worth the hassle. For one, the amount of bounty paid per ship killed appears to be an absolute sum rather than tied to any kind of proportionality, as I eliminated an AI player that had some 122K bounty placed on him, and yet did not receive all the bounty despite having annihilated him utterly! I've seen, at most, maybe $250 placed on a given ship,
I think the Space Ponies are simply a useless planet special. I found it once, but I can't recall anything interesting happened.
I think it might get vaguely more interesting with Malice, IF the damage doesn't just get negated due to round-off, and IF it interacts with Malice. 1.5 damage dealt to 30 ships could mean everyone takes 12.75 DPS (1.5 + (1.5 * 0.25 * 30), which is not great, but not quite so pathetic, but it's possible that this damage is too small and gets ignored due to roundoff. It also requires that Ruthlessness damage is reflected by Malice and not rounded off into harmlessness, though. Anyone want to see
Did you ever BUILD any culture? It's possible that the planet you chose has been null-culture for a long time, so when you built your homeworld there, max allegiance went up, but your planet was still null-culture.
[quote]If the role of shield mitigation is to reduce the effect of focus firing, the fact that a numerically inferior force usually cannot focus-fire its way to victory seems to bear that out. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't focus fire much more tactically effective in other RTSs?)[/quote] Question: What effect does a lack of shield mitigation have? How many Cobalts, 8F vs. 9S, are left if shield mitigation is ignored?
[quote]I do like the fact that the engine will let computer commanded forces elect to run to fight another day.[/quote] "Let"? What is this "let" you speak of? I've never seen the AI do anything *BUT* run away.
[quote]8v8 Cobalts: FG wins.* 8v9 Cobalts, where the superior force is spread-firing: the larger force (SG) wins, with about 4 ships surviving.Does this hold with other group sizes / ship types?It seems that while focus firing conveys an advantage in equivalent-number scenarios, it doesn't give you enough of an advantage to win if you're outnumbered.[/quote] This isn't a convincing argument in favor of spread, though: How many of the 9 Cobalts would survive if they had focussed rather than s
I don't think sides-rear doing more damage necessarily makes sense against some ships: Many TEC ships fight with broadsides rather than head-on. In fact, I think only Kols fight head-on, every other ship I've seen seems to turn broadside when attacking. Several Vasari ships fight better at an oblique, and the Advent carriers also seem to do better broadside or oblique also.
