Jumping in at the deep end

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
Ah! Good point, I had actually failed to give thought to weapon size differing.

Don't forget rate of fire, too. There are only two weapons I would recommend in most circumstances as an improvement on PPB's: APB if you have TONS of research and your opponents have phased shields, and shield depleters if your opponents have phased shields. Neither one is worth concentrating on before getting maximum CS/ECM/scattering armor/stealth armor/training.

[Jtownsend]

Ok, more good thoughts, although I do tend to sometimes shift my research around a bit - back off APBs back onto PPBs It's hard to tell if my PBB design coming out in a recent skirmish will actually lead to phased shields being very common in the level of game advanced-ness we have.

Facility upgrades - I'm wishing I had more research and being outpaced by some people with TRs and uncrippled trade. I have a TR with a harmless seeming partner, but I have that crippled all the way. With upgrading, do I want to get research III and upgrade I -> III or is that possible?

It can be tricky, without the feel of experience, to know precisely what economic/shipaccessory/scientific/weapon tech to focus on over time. I want to keep my fleet up to date, but it may be that the only player strong enough to pose a serious threat has agreed to permanent peace out of a desire not to grind himself down against his strongest opponent. So I'm left in a bit of a cold war sitution hoping he doesn't use his greater free space to win, or gobble up the colonies of smaller neighbors.

Still number 1, but a generic figure like that isn't too reassuring.

[Fyron]

douglas said:
Neither one is worth concentrating on before getting maximum CS/ECM/scattering armor/stealth armor/training.

I'd say these things are worth getting before PPBs even. Having DUC V and more advanced CS/ECM is generally better than PPBs and less advanced CS/ECM. PPBs are very expensive weapons...

Jtownsend said:
With upgrading, do I want to get research III and upgrade I -> III or is that possible?

Facility upgrades will always be to the most advanced type available.

Jtownsend said:
It can be tricky, without the feel of experience, to know precisely what economic/shipaccessory/scientific/weapon tech to focus on over time.

This is when the game is still fun. When you know the tech tree inside and out, it becomes boring and repetitive. This is where mods come in.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

You could also make some ships with high speed equipped with Ripper Beams, they're smaller than APBs and very powerful over short range. You can use your fast attack ships to dart in and pick away at an enemy, then get out of pointblank range before he can return fire.

One of the things I usually do first is build up to 5 bases full of cargo storage to fill with pop. Sometimes the vast amounts of pop that I put on the stations will cripple my HW's reproduction and construction, but usually I will keep the pop level minimized at about two thirds of max. The extra pop in the stations is handy to use when I want to colonize a new world (especially Large/Huge, and breathable) so that I immediately have a large amount of pop present there to speed up the initial buildup of the colony. Also, having approx. 4000M or more pop in stations is handy when building Sphereworlds.

This from a guy who has only read the last 5-10 posts, so I don't know if this was in any way helpful or if my comments were totally off topic.

[Jtownsend]

Well, the game has progressed nicely and is now in the 80s turn-wise, at a turn a day, more or less. There were two dropouts, which unfortunately did tend to affect the play balance, as people were using stock AIs which tended to die abruptly playing against humans, even semi-inept ones. The leaderboard has turned out to consist of me, a warlike race to my southeast, and oddly enough my neighbor, quite new to the game, who I was originally kind of trying to support as as proxy against an aggressive AI player. He did a lot more than survive, and conquered the entirety of that AI and was well on his way against another - the two dropouts, in other words. I have been the number one empire for the entire game; this has a certain calming affect. I also had agreements with all of my neighbors - TRs with the two normal states, and an off the books, somewhat tenuous cold war with the warlike neighbor.

I tend to honor agreements, and at any rate didn't trust any of my allies enough to turn my back on them and deal with the warlike state, which I had seen as the greatest threat. I believe he has now fallen to either the third rank, after a long-time spot at number 2, or else 4th place. Meanwhile, I had to cancel my TR with the AI-conquering ally, to try and forestall his taking an economic lead.

On the advice of other players in the game I didn't focus a great deal on economic facility upgrades earlier, which was a bit regretable. I believe that between racials, ship design, and attention to stats and training I have probably always had the best fleet, and one unmatched in numbers - but fleets don't give you much return on investment in peacetime, except for peace of mind, of course. For most of the "cold war" I had about 30% of my fleet on the warp point with the cold-war neighbor, but slowly began shifting to a balanced deployment as the rankings changed.

My initial thought, because I had agreements with everyone, was to research SM, close all of my warp points, and set up warp points from one central fleet mustering-and-training world to each of my systems, for the best possible 'interior lines' in the event someone opened a WP into my empire. I've also secured a house rule against black hole generation using one system's sun to destroy another, so hopefully people would have to put more work into blowing me up than that.

However, relations with the former TR ally began to become strained - I didn't really want him to leave our frontier unguarded, because that let him conquer the second AI faster, which was no help to me. So I wanted to cultivate a little paranoia, but not enough to bring about a war; it struck me as bad form to stab an ally. I realize that's a bit 'carebear' to use diplo terminology, but I have a reputation as an honest ally in games, and it seems like good policy. At any rate, what I was afraid of came about a turn or two ago - he moved into the lead. Now, I have researched Monoliths III, and moved on to research better research facilities. And it's only 80/250 turnwise, so I could possibly do very well with a monolith economy and ringworlds, especially since most of the other players aren't all that experienced with the game. However, he started asking me not to attack him in a way that made me quite uneasy - like someone saying nice doggy and looking for a rock. From the number one empire, that didn't strike me as healthy. If I got part-way into a high-end stellar manipulation path without researching better fleet techs, building ships, etc, I could find myself a low tech, underproducing victim of the big boy or big boys.

So, somewhat regretfully, and with less premeditation than he's likely thinking - he seemed to think I've been preparing for war since I broke the TR - I've moved into his space. Although he has two empires conquest worth of experience, he also doesn't seem to have done a lot of online reserach into things - so, while he has twice as many worlds (around 80) as I do, and a good sized fleet apparently built on battleships, he apparently didn't know about weapon mounts. I haven't engaged any of his decent ships yet, just blew apart a shipyard ship that must have just reached his frontier.

I've only got 40 or 50 ships moving in, which is less than his total - but they are also fully fleet trained, indifferently ship trained (I had them on garrison duty, ship training is hard), with very high combat racials, and with ECM/Comp III, PPBIV. There are a few BBs into the mix with the same type of technology, but we're talking maybe 8 with more on the way; the rest are light cruisers, but all updated to the 2 latest designs. Most have one Solar Collector 2, I never got around to better and wasn't sure how many resources to waste on that when I wasn't conquering stuff.

The real disadvantage I'm facing right now is total inexperience - I noticed in the one battle I've fought, my "Break Formation/Wall" setup led to the BBs being left in the dust by the light cruisers; is this a problem? Is there a solution that isn't worse than the problem?

I'm in 3 fleets, moving into 3 systems, if all goes well glassing a half a dozen worlds when the next turn gets run. I would dearly like to be conquering instead of glassing, but as this isn't a premeditated strike I had (rather stupidly) economized by scrapping all of my transports ages ago, and I had no combat troops that weren't very old. I've never dropped troops before, and don't even know how many I need to beat a usual planet's militia. There are minesweepers on the way, transports and BBs on the rails, and 5 or 6 extra fully fleet trained ghost fleets massed in one of my systems. I'm moving reinforcements through that world and picking up ghost fleets as I go.

Again, as it wasn't premeditated, a lot of my industry is going into switching to monoliths and just now upgrading to better research. All of this is perhaps a bit poorly timed now that I'm in a major war, but I'm loath to terminate projects before at least the existing construction is finished, since the ships won't arrive for a few turns anyway. Propulsion tech is Counter-Terrine 3, perhaps a bit low but comperable with my current foe.

Diplomatically, I should be ok. My opponent made a bit of a gaffe by very angrily threatening to surrender - before he fired a shot, as the number one empire - to the number three power. I can see how this is a clever tactic for blackmail in a sense, but very much against the spirit of sportsmanship. It has apparently irritated the third place player, the one I was long in a cold war with - and we had at any rate agreed to a reasonably comforting policy of mutual non-aggression. If that holds there should be no realistic threats to my rear, which is still home to half my fleet or so. The game mod ruled that such a surrender was inappopriate and said he'd rewind the game if it was tried. I have yet to hear from my opponent - who I couldn't have a civil word with, really - so I don't know for sure if he'll quit, or be replaced, or what.

If his ship design indeed includes no mounts, and depending on his training and support/sensor use, it may be a walk. I have very strong space combat racials and he has none - in fact, I don't like his design much at all and will probably seed his worlds with my people whether I conquer them or recolonize. I would very much prefer to conquer, but if it becomes a walk it will be very disconcerting to leave good worlds in my rear while I chase down his ships... for now, at least, I am leaving planets on the target list, as I can afford to glass a few.

My warp closer ship is 3-4 months from completion, my warp opener is more than a year away. Both are the first level of development. Anyway, this has been quite a book, but I haven't posted in a long time, and it seemed interesting to me at least, and perhaps useful to lay out and think about as I was writing it. I credit my position in large part to having read up on the game here, and to the very useful help of Douglas, SJ, and several others. Thanks again. Further comments could be crucial! I may always be overlooking the painfully obvious; to wit, I only have level 1 shields. I just never had a research priority for them, and I was sitting on my own shipyards, with which I figured I could repair armoured ships. I'm aware that shields are very good at high level, and that Grav protection against SM stuff is at level 10... But so many things to reserach. I'm at about 130k reserach off the top of my head. I should likely have upgraded from (cringe) level 1 facilities a long time ago... But I used to be a very well developed empire, back when my rivals didn't have twice as many worlds. I colonized and rebreathed comparatively earlier than my competition, and my lead is only now vanishing.

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
My initial thought, because I had agreements with everyone, was to research SM, close all of my warp points, and set up warp points from one central fleet mustering-and-training world to each of my systems, for the best possible 'interior lines' in the event someone opened a WP into my empire.

Good idea. I always do this as soon as I have the tech for it, and not just for fast response time to invading fleets. Even in an offensive war, it can greatly speed up getting new ships trained and to the front.

Jtownsend said:
However, relations with the former TR ally began to become strained - I didn't really want him to leave our frontier unguarded, because that let him conquer the second AI faster, which was no help to me. So I wanted to cultivate a little paranoia, but not enough to bring about a war; it struck me as bad form to stab an ally. I realize that's a bit 'carebear' to use diplo terminology, but I have a reputation as an honest ally in games, and it seems like good policy. At any rate, what I was afraid of came about a turn or two ago - he moved into the lead. Now, I have researched Monoliths III, and moved on to research better research facilities. And it's only 80/250 turnwise, so I could possibly do very well with a monolith economy and ringworlds, especially since most of the other players aren't all that experienced with the game. However, he started asking me not to attack him in a way that made me quite uneasy - like someone saying nice doggy and looking for a rock. From the number one empire, that didn't strike me as healthy. If I got part-way into a high-end stellar manipulation path without researching better fleet techs, building ships, etc, I could find myself a low tech, underproducing victim of the big boy or big boys.

I'd recommend not going for ringworlds unless you're certain you have resources to spare, and I really doubt monoliths will start paying off soon enough to make a difference. I would, however, recommend getting at least Stellar Manipulation 4 for the best planet creators and warp openers with decent range. Converting asteroids to planets can be a HUGE economic boost, especially if you have any asteroid ring systems in your territory. Asteroids can have values all the way up to 300% sometimes, and those values are preserved when they become planets.

Jtownsend said:
So, somewhat regretfully, and with less premeditation than he's likely thinking - he seemed to think I've been preparing for war since I broke the TR - I've moved into his space. Although he has two empires conquest worth of experience, he also doesn't seem to have done a lot of online reserach into things - so, while he has twice as many worlds (around 80) as I do, and a good sized fleet apparently built on battleships, he apparently didn't know about weapon mounts. I haven't engaged any of his decent ships yet, just blew apart a shipyard ship that must have just reached his frontier.

I've only got 40 or 50 ships moving in, which is less than his total - but they are also fully fleet trained, indifferently ship trained (I had them on garrison duty, ship training is hard), with very high combat racials, and with ECM/Comp III, PPBIV. There are a few BBs into the mix with the same type of technology, but we're talking maybe 8 with more on the way; the rest are light cruisers, but all updated to the 2 latest designs. Most have one Solar Collector 2, I never got around to better and wasn't sure how many resources to waste on that when I wasn't conquering stuff.

Hmm, max fleet training, some ship training, berzerkers + 120% agg./def. IIRC, and max ECM/CS (that is what you meant by "Comp", right?) with an excellent weapon vs no racial bonuses, no mounts, and probably no knowledge that training exists... should be a cakewalk. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if you can beat 3 or 4 or more to 1 numbers without breaking a sweat. Especially if you remembered to get stealth and scattering armor 3.

Jtownsend said:
The real disadvantage I'm facing right now is total inexperience - I noticed in the one battle I've fought, my "Break Formation/Wall" setup led to the BBs being left in the dust by the light cruisers; is this a problem? Is there a solution that isn't worse than the problem?

The only perfect solution is to give your LC's bad enough engines that the BB's can keep up. However, if you follow my strategy advice, this shouldn't be a problem at all. Set all your combat ship designs to the Maximum Weapons Range strategy. Then, go to the Empire Status(F11)->Strategies screen and edit Maximum Weapons Range to have primary/secondary movement strategies of Maximum Range/Don't Get Hurt. On the Firing tab, the default settings for this strategy are quite good, which are Has Weapons/Nearest/Most Damaged/Strongest and Do Not Use Type Priorities. Double check that it is set to break formation. Using this strategy, your ships will all try to stay at the edge of maximum range, which will result in the first ships on the scene falling back ahead of the enemy's advance while the rest of your ships are still getting there - but that's just an incidental benefit; the real benefit is that the extra range will drastically hurt his to-hit chances while not affecting yours very much proportionally.

Jtownsend said:
I'm in 3 fleets, moving into 3 systems, if all goes well glassing a half a dozen worlds when the next turn gets run. I would dearly like to be conquering instead of glassing, but as this isn't a premeditated strike I had (rather stupidly) economized by scrapping all of my transports ages ago, and I had no combat troops that weren't very old. I've never dropped troops before, and don't even know how many I need to beat a usual planet's militia. There are minesweepers on the way, transports and BBs on the rails, and 5 or 6 extra fully fleet trained ghost fleets massed in one of my systems. I'm moving reinforcements through that world and picking up ghost fleets as I go.

It might be a bad idea to not wait for the minesweepers. Without them, any minefield is Bad News for your fleets, and could quite possibly halt your entire offensive for a long time.

For a typical colony with low (<50M) population and no armed defensive troops, 10 small troops armed with ground cannon 1's will do just fine. The only thing you have to do besides loading the troops on the transport is make sure the transport's design has the Capture Planet strategy.

Jtownsend said:
Again, as it wasn't premeditated, a lot of my industry is going into switching to monoliths and just now upgrading to better research. All of this is perhaps a bit poorly timed now that I'm in a major war, but I'm loath to terminate projects before at least the existing construction is finished, since the ships won't arrive for a few turns anyway. Propulsion tech is Counter-Terrine 3, perhaps a bit low but comperable with my current foe.

Finish current construction and upgrade all your research facilities, but let further monolith construction wait.

Contra-Terrene engines are good enough for quite a while, but get Solar Sail 3's asap. They require Stellar Harnessing 6 and give 3 bonus movement points.

Jtownsend said:
Diplomatically, I should be ok. My opponent made a bit of a gaffe by very angrily threatening to surrender - before he fired a shot, as the number one empire - to the number three power. I can see how this is a clever tactic for blackmail in a sense, but very much against the spirit of sportsmanship. It has apparently irritated the third place player, the one I was long in a cold war with - and we had at any rate agreed to a reasonably comforting policy of mutual non-aggression. If that holds there should be no realistic threats to my rear, which is still home to half my fleet or so. The game mod ruled that such a surrender was inappopriate and said he'd rewind the game if it was tried. I have yet to hear from my opponent - who I couldn't have a civil word with, really - so I don't know for sure if he'll quit, or be replaced, or what.

Surrendering to an ally (or enemy of an enemy) just to annoy an enemy is VERY unsportsmanlike and an excellent way to completely ruin a game. I'm glad the game host ruled against it.

Jtownsend said:
If his ship design indeed includes no mounts, and depending on his training and support/sensor use, it may be a walk. I have very strong space combat racials and he has none - in fact, I don't like his design much at all and will probably seed his worlds with my people whether I conquer them or recolonize. I would very much prefer to conquer, but if it becomes a walk it will be very disconcerting to leave good worlds in my rear while I chase down his ships... for now, at least, I am leaving planets on the target list, as I can afford to glass a few.

In the absolute worst case, your better racial combat bonuses are a substantial advantage. In an only slightly better case (no training for him), they render you almost invulnerable in combat. Assuming your ships average 10% trained, if he doesn't have training (quite likely IMO), he will have at most a 30% chance to hit at point blank range, 1% if you have stealth and scattering armor 3. If he does have full training, that goes up to 70% (40% with the armors), and goes down 10% with each additional square of range (which is why I recommend max range strategy) and another 10% against your LC's. You OTOH will have an 85% chance to hit at point blank even if he has ECM 3, scattering and stealth armor 3, and maximum training, going down to 35% at maximum range in this absolute worst case. Without training for his ships and fleets, that max range chance to hit goes up to 75%.

If you don't have any population that breathes his atmosphere yet, you should leave at least some of his planets intact until you can capture them. Otherwise, go ahead and glass. BTW, captured population takes on all the characteristics of the new empire except atmosphere breathed, so disliking someone's racial design is not a reason to engage in genocide.

Jtownsend said:
My warp closer ship is 3-4 months from completion, my warp opener is more than a year away. Both are the first level of development. Anyway, this has been quite a book, but I haven't posted in a long time, and it seemed interesting to me at least, and perhaps useful to lay out and think about as I was writing it. I credit my position in large part to having read up on the game here, and to the very useful help of Douglas, SJ, and several others. Thanks again. Further comments could be crucial! I may always be overlooking the painfully obvious; to wit, I only have level 1 shields. I just never had a research priority for them, and I was sitting on my own shipyards, with which I figured I could repair armoured ships. I'm aware that shields are very good at high level, and that Grav protection against SM stuff is at level 10... But so many things to reserach. I'm at about 130k reserach off the top of my head. I should likely have upgraded from (cringe) level 1 facilities a long time ago... But I used to be a very well developed empire, back when my rivals didn't have twice as many worlds. I colonized and rebreathed comparatively earlier than my competition, and my lead is only now vanishing.

You're welcome. Since you're still relying on armor, you should build some repair ships to accompany your ships. Some dedicated supply ships may also be useful, just make sure they have enough supply storage beyond what your warships have to hold at least one turn's worth of supply generation from the solar collectors. Whether you should go for shields now depends on what else you still need to research.

Hmm, I've got some time to spare, I'm curious, and it would allow for the best possible advice - why don't you clear your password temporarily and send me the save game? My email is gtg078h (at) mail (dot) gatech.edu.

[Jtownsend]

Sure enough, when the turn arrived tonight one of my fleets found my first minefield - ouch. Quite decent damage. My sweeper fleet is on the way, but in economizing, I really only had 100-mine clearance capability for one fleet. I could perhaps go system by system with one sweeping fleet, but that cuts my conquest speed by a third, against an imposing foe economically. I've also neglecting giving orders to one fleet, I'm pretty sure, and I'm just realizing that I need more Hyper-Optics ships - I had a real scare before I did the replays, because I thought he has cloaked some of his BBs from last turn and sent them in to lay waste to one of my systems. Should be quickly fixable.

EDIT: Comp does indeed mean 'combat scanner,' because my excessive regard for Moo1 has rotted my brain. Anything performing the function that CS performs in SEIV is a battle computer to me, in spite of there actually being computers that do something else.

[douglas]

Email sent.

I wouldn't worry too much about the opposition's strength. Not only does he have no racial combat bonuses, but his maintenance aptitude is merely enhanced. If he has twice your resource production, you can still support twice his military by size, and your ships will be much more powerful for their cost.

[Fyron]

The real disadvantage I'm facing right now is total inexperience - I noticed in the one battle I've fought, my "Break Formation/Wall" setup led to the BBs being left in the dust by the light cruisers; is this a problem? Is there a solution that isn't worse than the problem?

With half of the engine classes, battleships and light cruisers move at the same speed in combat. When the light cruiser has an even amount of strategic movement points and the battleships have an odd amount, they get the exact same combat movement rate. Research more propulsion and stellar harnessing (for solar sails), if you haven't already. With maximum levels in these areas, LCs will be able to have a strategic move of 12 and combat move of 6, and BBs will have a strategic move of 11 and combat move of 6.