1528

Has anyone gotten a unifier victory? or chosen the diplomacy perk at character creation? I’ve sort of been ignoring that aspect of the game so far and I’m wondering if it would be fun to explore.

1529

With Tier IV military tech “Naval Command”, it looks like the transport adds 1 armor and 5 health to whatever the original unit had. (I had thought all transported units would have the same armor as each other, but no, it uses the original units armor and shields, and then with this tech you get an extra armor on top of that, you get 5 more health as well.)

But I do see resistance to all damage types dropped by 3 (and going negative). Plus speed drops to 24.

Does not seem to effect your weapon range or damage.

With “Naval Command” tech, speed of transports goes up to 32 and resistances only drop by 1. Still gaining 1 armor and 5 health from previous tech.

By way of comparison standard Vanguard infantry speed is 32. So standard transports are slower than walking infantry. Top tier transports go at walking speed. Frigates have move 40 and Battleships have move 32. Looks like standard NPC swimming critters have speed 32.

1530

Jump in, the water is fine! Very much just one more turn until you are bleary eyed.

1531

I use flying units in combat as flankers and for their abilities.

1532

So I think I’ve lost my first time playing on normal difficulty. I declared a war when someone jumped 2 of my claims, it looks like I should have turned the other cheek instead. I don’t really get the diplomacy part of the game yet nor do I have a sense of when to go on the offensive.

1533

Actually that’s a pretty good answer to my question, because I had no clue what “military infrastructure” was until I read your post, lol. I thought it was just something I had to build to unlock higher-tier units or something.

So that’s this infrastructure thing, right? How big a garrison does the 16 energy buy me, exactly? Is it the equivalent of four tier-1 units, say? More than that?

Also, everyone has a cosmite crunch but me. My dvar have plenty of cosmite. What I lack is energy!

1534

Vanguard numbers are:

No Military Infrastructure “Military Power 280” (Cost 0 Energy Total)
2 Standard Troopers
1 OWL Robot (standard scout unit — provides laser range finder and so-so laser attack)

Standard Military Infrastructure (Cost 4 Energy Total)
2 Standard Troopers
1 Assault Bike (Tier 2 Fast Calvary)
1 PUG Support (provides Healing, Smoke Cloud, Resupply for other units single use abilities)

Standard and Improved Military Infrastructure “Military Power 710” (Cost 4 for Tier I + 8 for Tier II = 12 Total)
2 Standard Troopers
1 Assault Bike
1 PUG Support
1 OWL Scout
1 Gunship Flyer

Standard, Improved, and Advanced Infrastructure “Military Power 1010” (Cost 4 + 8 + 16 = 28 Total Energy)
1 Standard Trooper
1 Assault Bike
1 PUG Support
1 Engineer Support
1 Gunship
1 Laser Tank

Defense Turrets adds another 300 to the Military Power and has no maintenance cost.

Same for me now. Early on I was Cosmite limited, bu now I’m Energy limited. I think basically I’ve made my military too large. I’m currently 1st of 6 for Total Might, but 6th of 6 for Development in the Rankings and 4th of 6 for Total Score and Total Capacity (whatever that means). The sad thing is I’m not even trying to be military focused — I guess I’m just gunshy after having had my Capital wiped out in my Coop game this past weekend.

I’m also 1st of 6 for Total Unity with twice the score of the nearest AI player (who is my Ally). Which does make me wonder if the AI is even playing that game. I’ve got 1 NPC faction (Psi-Fish) I’m allied with, 1 NPC faction (Spacer Gangs) I’ve been at war with the whole game, 1 AI Player I’m got a Defense Pact with, and 1 AI Player I’ve got a Non-Agression Pact with. That doesn’t seem like it should be twice as much Diplomatic capital as the next nearest player.

1535

That will change in the end-game - at one point I had over 50 Cosmite a turn and I still wanted more more more.

1536

I’ve seen way more than 3 turrets. It may be a function of either city size or the garrison size.

1537

Okay, I think I’ve discovered the answer to my own question. I thought I’d post in case anyone else wanted to know the answer.

If you move your mouse on top of the unit’s health in the detailed unit view and the unit is in your city you’ll see +6 base and +6 friendly territory. I thought +6 base might mean because I was sitting on a base, but I’ve concluded it means the basic value that is always present.

So as far as I can determine:

+6 healing for every unit regardless of circumstances.
+6 additional if you are in friendly territory.

Notice that this is not dependent on a unit’s health (e.g., it’s not a percentage, so units with a lot of health, take longer to heal).

Also by mousing over various health listings I’ve determined that commander’s “Field Medicine” seems to add +6 health per turn to both biological and mechanical units (e.g., Tanks and Gunships).

1538

There is also a sector hazard that prevents healing, maybe more than one.

1539

This is such a helpful thread. Thanks all!

1540

Re: Healing. The Vanguard - PUG unit provides ‘Biological Recovery’ which gives +6 health to all biologic units in it’s army stack per strategic turn. I’m not sure if other factions have a similar support unit/ability.

1541

Wow I totally did not know that about the PUG. I guess that’s a very good reason to keep the PUG around.

They seem to have a bug, as having the Engineer in the stack gives mechanical units a +6 Biological Recovery listed. I assume it’s just a text string miss-copied as non-mechanical units in the stack aren’t getting that.

1542

I anyone wants it, I’ve uploaded my Steam controller settings. Here’s the link Steam gave me:

steam://controllerconfig/718850/1833281183

It’s based on the standard Steam controller Mouse & Keyboard settings. I’ve also got:

  • Right touch pad acts as mouse, left touch pad acts as a scroll wheel, clockwise to zoom in, counter clockwise to zoom out.
  • Use left and right bumper buttons to go backwards and forward through units in tactical mode or through your armies on the strategic map.
  • Undergrip buttons rotate the tactical view left and right.
  • Y button places a unit in garrison mode. A button skips unit for the turn. B button continues movement along preplanned path. X button is currently unused.
  • Small left arrow (next to Steam button) is used for Ctrl (which can bring additional tooltip information in some screens). Small right arrow is kept as the default standard Escape.
  • Joystick scrolls map (WASD). I haven’t done anything with clicking down on the Joystick.
1543

Does everyone always have “The Growth” as a faction in every map? In every single game I have played, they have always been there plus one other random faction.

Is there a tech tree you can look at off line? ie: I have no idea what the celestial tech really does, the only way I know to see the tech tree is to start a game with that and look at it that way. Googling it has just come up with vague descriptions of each tree. The same with each of the races.

How do you tell your rankings with regards to other factions? I have heard people talk about that, and certainly the AI mentioned it, but I have no idea how this is done.

1544

My current game AFAICT has the Spacer gangs and the PsiFish as the only two NPC Factions, although I haven’t fully explored the map, so it’s possible something else is out there.

You need to have the Tier I technology “Area Surveillance” researched which includes “Capacity Rankings”.

Go to the Objectives Screen (the one that shows all the victory conditions). Down at the bottom of the screen next to the “Close” button there’s a button that says “Show Rankings”.

There are also rankings under each of the columns on the same Screen. Oddly they don’t always seem to match the rankings shown with “Show Rankings”.

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You also won’t see which specific AI faction is stronger or weaker (just where you are in the rankings) unless you’ve got the right technologies / spy operations run? I’m not sure, I’ve never tried playing with the covert stuff. You will see rankings for anyone you’re allied with.

1545

Sounds about right.

forward bases constitute friendly territory iirc, so are useful in that regard.

1546

This game is not quite grabbing me, and I’d really like it to (I bought the ultra deluxe edition). Honestly I’m feeling overwhelmed. I’ve had a half dozen or so false starts, both on the campaign and skirmish maps. I’ve a few questions:

Is the general consensus that the campaign is worthless and I should just jump into the skirmish maps? Does the campaign have any value - interesting story, tutorial value, etc? The voice work is pretty awful.

If a skirmish, what is a good starting set of settings? Race/class? number of opponents? world size? Difficulty level (easy or super-easy?)?

Is there a good basic website/manual/strategy guide that describes basic game concepts? Right now there seem to be too many resources/damage types/ammunition/weapons for me to wrap my head around. I’m also awful at the tactical combat it seems. Any good tips/pointer/strategy for that? I’m willing to watch some let’s plays if anyone has any suggestions.

1547

Tibbles is making an interactive wiki type website. Work in progress. There’s also a wikia.

Medium size, 6 players, easy difficulty, default everything, imperial world template.

YMMV. The campaign does a decent enough job of explaining some things, and setting up some other things.

But this is an AoW game, which means the campaign is usually back seat (except arguably in the first game because there was no RMG, and that campaign was just beautiful.)

I would say it is also useful because you are quite well directed/coralled, so you can focus on certain things.