Jumping in at the deep end

[douglas]

Kevin Arisa said:
[EDIT] Darn. Douglas beat me by 2 minutes. I need to type faster.

And I did it with a much longer post, too.

[Jtownsend]

Appreciate the footwork, guys.

I didn't realize fleet training required ruins... Still wrestling with the tech tree, although finding one in PDF format with actual visual branches was great.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
I didn't realize fleet training required ruins

Unless you mean something entirely different from what I think you do, you're completely wrong. Fleet training facilities are available from Advanced Military Science research, just like ship training. No need to find any particular ancient ruins and colonize them to get the tech.

[Jtownsend]

I was going by Zareth's comment - but perhaps he didn't know I meant a medium tech game and was just thinking it was an outlandish early tech to strive for. Basically, I was just struck by the importance of training, and didn't realize both ship and fleet training counted seperately and stacked. Thinking they were redundant, I figured it would be much better to research fleet training and create "cadre" fleets which I'd then send to the front - not a bad idea, but apparently only half of what training constitutes.

I'm still not sure about how to spend the 100k research. Granted, a single huge tech gets itself out of the way in a hurry, but really, the same techs need resarching whichever order I do them in, and it would seem that the most urgent priorities are really things like getting minelayers out ASAP unless I plan to gank a neighbor with an energy pulse weapon without having other foundation technologies. And then, the first levels of that weapon aren't too decisive, right? So maybe something dull like Frigates - Armour - Mines - Shields - something or other? I get the 100k spent whatever I do, and it doesn't really give me an advantage vis a vis the other 8 guys with the same 100k to spend.

[Fyron]

Zereth was refering to the strategy of only training a few ships (still train the fleets) and relying on Neural Combat Nets (a ruins tech item) to get the ship training bonus for all of your ships.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
I'm still not sure about how to spend the 100k research. Granted, a single huge tech gets itself out of the way in a hurry, but really, the same techs need resarching whichever order I do them in, and it would seem that the most urgent priorities are really things like getting minelayers out ASAP unless I plan to gank a neighbor with an energy pulse weapon without having other foundation technologies.

Correct. Nifty weapons won't do you a bit of good if you run into a minefield you can't sweep.

Jtownsend said:
And then, the first levels of that weapon aren't too decisive, right?

Actually, with Phased Polaron Beams, they can be. You get 6 range from level 1, and at level 2 they match a DUC V's damage out to range 4. They also skip normal shields from the very beginning, making any research anyone puts into shields worse than useless until Shields level 6 at least.

Jtownsend said:
So maybe something dull like Frigates - Armour - Mines - Shields - something or other? I get the 100k spent whatever I do, and it doesn't really give me an advantage vis a vis the other 8 guys with the same 100k to spend.

Don't bother with shields until you can get level 7 or 8 in as many turns of research. In a medium tech cost game, that means at least about 250000 research points per turn. Armor is a good choice, and something you should continue to research at least to level 4 immediately for stealth armor (free level 1 cloaking), and eventually to the max for the extra defense bonus. Frigates aren't a great deal more powerful than escorts until you have a bit more tech that's "essential" equipment on everything. A better weapon will make much more of a difference early on in how powerful your ships are. I'd say go Mines - Armor - Physics on turn one, and repeat the Armor until you've got level four, then finish off Physics 2 and start on Phased Energy Weapons. You should have Armor 4 and Physics 2 finished on turn 6 or 7 with this research order and three good homeworlds.

BTW, a few things you should know about mines: planets can build and launch mines without a space yard - given one turn of peace to build mines, a new colony can render itself almost invulnerable in the very early game; minelayers can lay mines while cloaked - you can use this in the early game to arrange some very nasty surprises for anyone who attacks you.

[Jtownsend]

I'm pretty satisfied with that tech order, actually. I must have missed the substantial range on the PPB.

As Armor and physics are likely to be the two things queued for a while with about ~26k research iirc, would you advocate even points or letting the armour techs finish first one by one, as would happen otherwise?

[Fyron]

It is definitely better to finish tech areas sooner, rather than splitting research into multiple areas. ALWAYS disable "divide points evenly." It makes you waste a lot of research points...

[douglas]

Keep putting armor back in the front of the queue each time you gain a level, and definitely turn off "divide points evenly". Besides any issue of it being better to get one tech at 2 turns and another at 4 than getting both at 4, the divide evenly setting actually wastes points each time you finish a level in a tech. The amount allocated to the tech is ALWAYS an equal share of your total, regardless of how much is left to do, and any excess just disappears.

[Zereth]

Imperator Fyron said:
Zereth was refering to the strategy of only training a few ships (still train the fleets) and relying on Neural Combat Nets (a ruins tech item) to get the ship training bonus for all of your ships.

Correct, although it was mostly an unessescarily sarcastic and obtuse way of saying "Becuase that doesn't work".

However, everyone's making comments about spening your first-turn bonus on things like Phased Energy Weapons or Advanced Military Science. I must be missing something, since isn't it impossible to add those to the research queue until you've researched thier prequistes?