If anyone here wants to play a friendly game tonight (Sunday) feel free to post here or email me (you can see my email in a previous post in this thread).
I’ve played a couple games online, but the only one that went to completion I got my ass handed to me… but that is partly because my team mate dropped. I would love to play a game with a fellow doper, and what better way to learn the game then playing with someone else on your team.
Yeah well…I can already see that I won’t be playing with you guys anytime soon. Picked up the game Saturday (still in the back room at Best Buy too) and haven’t managed to win a single game. True I do tend to start over when I figured out I did something totally wrong. But I must suck more at RTS than I thought. On most games I’m able to beat the AI on “Easy”, and after I get the hang of it, move up to “Normal” and do ok. This thing kicks my ass just about every time. The pirates are what make it difficult. Start getting ahead of the game and making your fleet fairly large, and they swoop in and raid again. Sure I can beat them…but it costs to replace the ships they destroy.
So do you let the computer controll the ships during battle? Or do you override? I’m wondering if I let the computer do it if it’ll utilize the different kinds of ships better than I do.
After a bit of a rocky start myself I’ve won nearly every game since on both easy and normal (the only game I wasn’t able to win was the one with the poor resource home planet at the start).
I usually don’t use my fleet to go head to head with the Pirates myself. What I do is try and capture a strategic planet or asteroid in their line of march and then fortify it with fixed defenses. I usually use a series of fixed traps to lure in their planet attack craft. Those are the only one’s you really need to worry about. Once those are dead the rest will just sort of flail around in your fixed defense traps. If you have them designed right they should provide some rather nasty mutual support. I also like to put at least 2 hanger defenses with mixed fighters/bombers.
This will leave your fleet free to what it does best…go forth and pound the enemies home worlds, take strategic way points and generally sow hate and discontent amoungst thy enemies. 
Oh…and when you find the Pirate base burn that motha out.
I think I finally have a good handle on this game…ready to start playing the AI on Hard now. In theory at least. I won 2 games over the weekend on Normal and the last game I won pretty easily…it was never in question as my strategy seemed to dominate the computer who never could get it together.
Myself, I mostly let the computer handle combat. What I do usually is maneuver the fleet so that it is bringing the big guns to bear…and I keep an eye on the capital ships and withdraw them when they start taking a beating. The frigates and cruisers are pretty much throw away units the way I play (I just need to keep track of which types are getting destroyed so I maintain the fleet mix I want) but the Capital ships are definitely ones you want to keep if you can.
-XT
So far my experience of setting up defences is that the computer just runs through them on the way to somewhere else. I try and set up bulwark systems but they don’t seem to work as well as I’d like. So far I’m enjoying the game much more sans pirates - until stardock nerfs them I’d rather play without.
Interesting. My experience has been just the opposite. In the later stages of the game when my fixed defenses are maxes out I don’t even bother looking at Pirate raids. The only thing that could threaten my planets by then is a full court press by the other major power in the game (most of the games I’ve played have been 2 player games). Only then do I even bother with bringing in my mobile fleet…and even then sometimes I’ll let them pound away at the planet (as long as it’s not my capital or one of the Terra worlds) while just tossing up new fixed defenses in out of the way places while I send my fleet out to take one of their juicy worlds. Sometimes I’ll lose a desert or volcanic or ice world…but gain a real strategic world or location on the chain. And they will have a crippled fleet now.
-XT
Even without pirates I’m having a hard time keeping up with the AI. Right now I’m playing the “Derelict” map. Which has 4 star systems one of which can only be reached via wormhole. So I’ve gotten control over all the planets and resources in two of the other three systems. And I barely can keep a large fleet to match what the AI has. So how can he build all that with the limited resources that he has in his one star system?
I just finished a game in that system. Was fun (though I never found any technology or whatever in the wreckage gravity wells…not sure if you were supposed to or not but I found nothing).
In short as with all these kinds of games, the AI cheats. They get bonus resources and money and that’s what lets them build so much.
We get a brain in compensation. I really haven’t had much trouble dealing with the AI…it is pretty predictable. Once it attacks down a certain path that is pretty much the path it uses. Set traps for their fleet. Cut it up. Or, better yet hit their worlds that are less protected. I’ve noticed the AI doesn’t even make a token effort to defend everywhere. They usually have on massively defended world and where ever their main fleet happens to be…and pretty much nothing else. Go for the worlds that are less defended, attempt to cut up their fleet in a series of fixed defenses then decisively engage their fleet and wipe it out. Once you start really starving them for worlds you reach a tipping point where even if the fleets are the same size your technological advances will make the difference.
What are you researching? How big of a fleet are you initially building? What are you upgrading on your various planets…and what structures are you building in orbit?
-XT
Okay folks who actually got the physical game and therefore have the manual - I have a question: are there victory conditions other than simply annihilation? I can’t find anything from what I’ve got but so far that’s the only way I can see to win. I was wondering if maybe there was a cultural victory as well.
Help gratefully received.
I have a second hand Geforce FX 5200, new drivers and running on the desktop.
Cool.
I just went through the entire manual, and I don’t see anything about any other victory conditions.
Good to hear.
I still haven’t got it yet.
Just getting home. I haven’t found that cultural tech do much more than ensure that your own extra planet colonies don’t rebel. But then, I haven’t figured out any way to take a planet yet save burning it to the ground and then re-colonizing it. I assume there is another way (though I haven’t seen anything about troops or landing craft like in Gal Civ), but I haven’t seen it.
-XT
Culture will eventually cause enemy planets to rebel. I believe this will make them neutral to you and then all you’ll need to do is bring in a ship with the colonize ability to take over (although you’ll still have to deal with any defenses the enemy put in place).
However, there are currently no other victory conditions. The developers said this is something that they may add in a future patch.
Thanks everyone.
Yeah, at least in the games I’ve played the enemy AI never surrenders until you smack down their last planet or colony…and then the game is over. I’m hoping they do a bit more on the diplomacy side, though I guess this game is designed more for multi-player (I still haven’t played a multi-player game…anyone tried it yet?). I imagine the bounty system would make back stabbing a matter of course.
If you guys want to try and set up a 'doper game Friday evening we should set a time and maybe form some teams and see how it works. And if anyone has actually gotten on and played multi-player maybe you could give your thoughts and detail what we’ll need to do to create our own game.
-XT
I’m definitely in for a friday evening game. I’m taking the day off tomorrow, and only have some errands to run in the morning so any time is fine with me.
I haven’t tried multi-player yet, but I plan on tonight, I’ll recount my experiences after the game (it will probably be a brief retelling of my empire’s brutal defeat in record time).
Anyone gotten any interesting achievements yet? I’ve heard something about space ponies, but no solid information.
No achievements here though I’ve gotten a couple of powerful artifacts. I’ve been concentrating on how to balance military development with civilian development, along with what to up in your initial planets gravity well, how far to expand (and how quickly), how big of an initial fleet to make, how to build solid fixed defenses that free up your mobile force to go rampaging, etc. I’m pretty solid on the Normal level of the game to this point and have won every game on that level except the one in the resource poor map. I’ve tried a single game at the highest level and essentially got wiped out by pirates and the alien AI race constantly wearing me down…I never got beyond the first couple of planets outside of my home planet and could never really get rolling before it was constant attacks.
-XT
Any advice how not to suck at this game? I played two games one on an easy random map (no challenge) and one on a larger map 2 enemies (one easy one normal) and was completely overwhelmed almost right off the bat. An army about 3 times as powerful as I was simply showed up and bombed my only expansion planet and no matter how I tried to produce a counter force it was all over…this wouldn’t have stung so bad if I hadn’t thought I had built a respectable army to begin with and was balancing expansion/military quite well. Should you go all out military at first until you have a good section of the universe underfoot?
MMV. Myself I play more of a turtle type game. I build a capital ship manufacturing center first, then put out your one free capital ship and 4-6 frigates. Then I expand to the near by planets/asteroids…anything that is easy to take. Once I take one over I max out the population/infrastructure and military logistics slots (and the bombing one…can’t remember what it’s called) and start building fixed defenses immediately. I start off with civilian labs in my home world so while all this is happening I’m researching things like enemy detection and better metal/gem extraction methods and such.
This usually nets me 3-4 extra planet systems (hopefully with one of those a nice, juicy Terra or even ice/desert/volcanic planet). At that point I turtle down and start really hammering the military research. I usually don’t go for quantity at this point but quality, so I normally only research the next up capital ship and next fleet logistics level then concentrate on better weapons and expanded abilities. I’ll then pull back my fleet to some central hub so that when an enemy hits my fixed defenses I can bring my mobile force into it’s prepared slot (between two fixed defense belt kill zones) and pound the enemy to scrap.
At the same time I’m sending out scouts so I know all the paths and planets out there. Once you build up to a certain point find the choke points that are strategically valuable and then pounce…or if you see any back door ways to get to the enemies rear area (usually stars are great for this) then do a raid to pound one of his main planets to scrap, even if you can’t hold it (I usually can…the computer isn’t very responsive when you do this).
That’s my strategy anyway. It makes for longer games but I’ve only lost one on Normal so far…and frankly I still don’t see how to win that one when you start off in deficit spending and not enough metal/gem resources.
-XT
Thanks for the tips. I’ll see if I can take it to heart. Right now it’s a queasy sort of mix for me it feels like it should play at a different pace then the one I’m going at. I played a third game against three easy players and once again it was just a cakewalk I guess I should go to a small map and one ‘normal’ player.