|
Post by contributor on Apr 28, 2016 9:31:57 GMT -5
We always start with our three colony hives together. It would be cool to have a map or two where they start in different locations. It could create some interesting player decisions. Do you expand in such a way as to join up quickly, or do you go where the best planets are and let each faction fend for itself?
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 23, 2016 18:31:57 GMT -5
I picture it more like... Selen: En garde mon cheri! -mockingly laughs her head off- Kincaid: -sulking, under his breath- Freaking whore! If I had jugs like that they'd never see my blades either.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 23, 2016 16:21:53 GMT -5
It's funny, whenever I do a group with Kincaid and Selen dexy tanking it up front together, I always imagine them in a stiff competition for kills. They can really be so similar that it's hard not to see it. How many times has one landed three hits on a mob and failed to kill it, when the other comes up and crits with 1 AP remaining, finishing it off? I just imagine the laughter and the fury.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 23, 2016 13:30:31 GMT -5
I should try and get this thread back on track. I was over the hump on my Garden game on Crazy vs. 3. The early politics were actually very good to me. I was religious about not letting anyone get ahead on colonies or ships, which was hard because Cadar was outproducing everybody. Anyways, like I said, I got over the hump and had the core stabilized and was starting to make serious inroads against the xeno. I was pulling in around 5k a turn and was just about to 200k in the bank. My goal had been to have a 100k safety cushion, but it was still coming in faster than I could spend it. Having just unlocked heavy transports, I decided to create another invasion fleet and open up the third front against the Nyktos. At the same time my two fleets each that were attacking the Sidtax and Jyeeta had to make big jumps across open space to continue their offensives.
Politically I had been very stable, with lots of treaties unlocked and lots of EP I was pretty much spamming trade summits to add length to the three trade treaties I had going. So one of my treaties flipped to a Spy war. Not a big deal, I had the Rychart treaty that was a sure kill for a spy war. So the economy was negative for 2 turns, not a big deal. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but soon after I noticed my economy was still negative maybe by -2k. Trade Embargo, when did that start, took a few tries to get rid of that, but no worries, I had a lot of buffer right. Well of course, all along I'd been subsidizing all sorts of stuff for my new colonies and supporting something like 30-40 ships on long range attack in red squares. My cushion was already down to around 120k. Once a I got the embargo taken care of a Solar war pops up and suddenly my income is at -7k. Crazy swing. With a subsidized treaty the Solar war was taken care of pretty quickly, but by the time I got politics all positive again I was down to about 50k in the bank. Even with all positive politics, my income was still hovering around a 1k from all my war making and new colonies coming on-line. So it didn't sink me, but in probably 20 turns I burned through 150k in the bank. It was good I was well above my target of a 100k buffer zone.
Now the war machine has slowed down again and we're mostly operating out of green space. Income is back to about 4k and we've built a ton of mines in the last while on the new colonies which should help with stability. I'm still only at about 60k in the bank, but it could come up quickly if I stopped spending for a while.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 21, 2016 4:02:09 GMT -5
I honestly haven't played this game like some of the TB games, that is to say I haven't tried every possible combination yet, but am very happy with a cruiser and strike cruiser focused fleet. I've gone with the approach that it's best to do a few things well, so I've put all my research into these two types of ships. Currently I'm playing The Garden on Insane vs. 3. I think that three enemies might in some ways be as bad or worse than 6 enemies, because it allows for some very big, advanced xeno empires. Anyways, looking at the way things are now I notice that most of my fleets consist of about 3 heavy cruisers. Even where I am pushing back against the most advanced xeno I have two fleets of three cruisers with 8 invasion ships each in tow. The fleets aren't far from each other so the one can come to the aid of the other, but really that never happens because they're more than capable of dealing with the steady drip of enemy ships coming in.
My builds aren't very imaginative. I have Gunnies and Torpies which are pretty much focused on one thing each. The Gunnies especially have high armor so they tend to never die and accumulate a lot of xp (actually the only ships I've lost this whole game are invasion ships). My biggest ships are rocking the 8k reactors. I find myself wondering what a fighter based fleet would be like, but at the same time I'm pretty happy with the way things are. I'm now in the stage of the game where I'm pretty sure that the tide has turned decisively in my favor even though the enemy holds around 70 combined worlds. I'm looking at trying to wrap this up as quickly as possible so I'm not interested in rebuilding my entire fleet. I think one of the things I like most about cruisers is the small fleets. I can keep an entire fleet plus invasion ships on the print of a single planet and turns don't consist of endless directing of dozens of smaller craft.
Anyways I guess I'm curious about others experiences. What am I missing by neglecting fighters? What do your fleets normally look like?
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 20, 2016 17:12:54 GMT -5
Ok, gotta admit to a little face-palm here. I honestly haven't messed with boarding at all, so when I posted this I hadn't gone up the fighter tree and unlocked the "boarding" attack. So that's why I wasn't seeing it. I figured it out now. If there happens to be some other bug, then I'm guess I'm glad that my stupidity wasn't wasted.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 20, 2016 12:21:45 GMT -5
Though...it's a legimate, if morally awful, strategy, scorched earth anyone? Morals don't come into play when you're fighting the Xeno.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 20, 2016 12:21:02 GMT -5
Hmmm, I guess that it is good to eliminate exploits, but it seems like that one comes at a serious cost to the simulated realism of the game. With the current dynamics I'll almost never create dead planets because it is so much more difficult and costly than invading. Playing the Garden map that's a major hassle because I don't really want to colonize the remaining 70-some planets. In STRPG dead planets play an important role in the lore and dynamics of the game. Too bad.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 20, 2016 11:16:54 GMT -5
Stick with what you know =) In that case I guess I'll be starting the reincarnation of an insane Rychart Alien Hunter.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 20, 2016 11:00:59 GMT -5
Sorry it's being a bugger. I'm sure you'll get it right. You guys always do eventually, and that's why we love you.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 20, 2016 3:08:17 GMT -5
First I love the path tracing feature. It is a great add. However it has suddenly made me see how quirky the auto-pathing can be. I think I'm doing less of it now that I can see the actual paths, because most of the time I want my ships to fly straight to their destination and refuel when they get there. There are tons of examples but here's a pretty typical example. What could be an 8 or 9 (with fuel conservation) square journey becomes a 14 square joy ride. I see it happening so often that it's hard to pinpoint specific issues. I can post more screen shot if it helps. This on at least the two most recent version from Steam for OS X.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 19, 2016 16:51:50 GMT -5
Thanks elwoodps, I guess the strange thing to me is that the same ships can spam invade and clear out a colony of twenty xeno in 2-3 turns, but if I want to nuke the whole planet from orbit that's going to take way longer and I'm going lose ships just to get rid of 4 quality. Really Bombard should be much safer and easier than invading because you're raining ordinance out of the sky, but invasion would seemingly take a little more care and commitment of those heavy mechanized brigades onboard.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 19, 2016 14:15:21 GMT -5
This might my lack of understanding, but I can't seen to make a heavy carrier that has boarding training. I can put shuttles on it and I have warrior skill for my captain, but there no option to add the training to actually do a boarding attack. If I'm doing something wrong let me know. I'll be happy to fix it.
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 19, 2016 9:25:44 GMT -5
I guess it's been awhile, but is reducing planet quality supposed to be insanely hard?
|
|
|
Post by contributor on Apr 19, 2016 8:38:08 GMT -5
Were there some changes to bombard and the ability to reduce planet quality? In my current game I can't seem to get my ships to reduce planet quality with Bombard, or at least it's very rare. I just circled a quality 4 xeno planet for 4 turns with my newest Space Invaders and Bombarded every turn. I reduced the quality to 2 and population to 10 before my ships started blowing up. Maybe I'm doing something wrong in the design?
|
|