1841

Thanks, Jeff. What do you do with your one ship, explore and that sort of thing?

1842

They need to create a galactopedia app so I can read through it while not booted into Windows.

Protection for mining stations: Do you assign shiips to protect them? Is it possible to build orbital defense batteries at their location? In my game last night where I got into an early fight with the Sluken, they were hopping into my system and would hit a mining station and kill it by the time one of my fleets arrived, then jump to the next station and repeat with my fleet chasing them. Though I had defended my system and killed a lot of ships, I ended up with a navy out of fuel because I didn’t realize all the gas mining stations were gone. Thanks advisors :)

1843

Once I have the money to afford it I like to keep quite a few Escorts and Frigates on auto. Without any input they will start escorting freighters and guarding stations for you and that’s often enough to run pirates away.

Some people also prefer to concentrate their ships into system defense fleets which can react quickly to anything going on in the system they are in, and especially early on that can be a good choice.

Yet another strategy that I use from time to time is to weaponize my mining stations… especially the gas ones that are usually extracting vital fuel and are critical to keep up and running.

The downside to options 1 and 3 are higher maintenance costs, and if you aren’t playing a particularly wealthy race those options may not be viable, but some mix of those three tactics should help.

If you get into a really early war with someone though, you may just not have the resources you need to build enough proper defenses. In those cases you may just kind of have to take it on the chin and try to get your fleet in front of him. Look for nearby stations he might move to next and try to be there to meet them or try sending your fleet into his space to raid stations and try to put him back on the defensive.

1844

I started with an exploration ship, just to fly around and find new systems, etc. for my guys to come use. Once I got the hang of the system, I switched to a fighter style ship, and flew around looking for easy prey like other civ’s scouts and transports, poorly defended land based units, etc. I’d upgrade at port when a good upgrade became available. Eventually I started commanding a fleet. All the while, I’d gradually start making certain decisions for my civ as I saw what they were and became comfortable with them, like choosing where to send certain fleets, where to colonize, what tech to go for, etc.

But I had a blast just being the pilot of the ships, and imagining my council saying “But Emperor, you’re too valuable to be flying dangerous missions all over the galaxy!!!” ;)

1845

Cool! I’m about to get Hyperdrive Precursors done and I just finished the Colonization tech, so perhaps before too long I’ll be able to set sail on Squidonia’s first interstellar exploration vessel.

1846

Well theoretically it’s possible now (to a degree), all the help files are in .mht format and there are mht viewers on the app store.

1847

Erik posted a config for a good beginner’s game on the Matrix forums: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3333889

1848

Thanks for the link, vyshka. I should have considered some of those options in my latest game. There really is a lot of flexibility there to create the game you want. I think I ended up with a 6x6 sector galaxy with 400 stars and normal pirates, monsters, and skill level. I think I left most of the stuff default after that.

For automation, I have left most things at default and then put a lot of items at suggest. In previous years I would try to micromanage all of my combat ships and fleets, but this time I let the AI do most of it. I just take over a fleet or two here and there to send them to targets I want or to patrol/clear out certain areas at times. That has helped me progress faster than I used to and helps me enjoy it a bit more. Managing so many ships used to bog me down and make me quit by year 10-12, but now I feel I can keep going. I also have about 6 or so construction ships constantly repairing ships in scrap yards that I am managing.

I have reached the 16th year of my world and it feels like things are just getting started. The initial colonization phase of the galaxy has just about finished up and I kept getting beat out by the other empires although I did end up with 9 colonies which is at the upper end of the charts. One planet I happened to watch the colony ship arrive at the exact same time one from another empire did. I literally hit the planet with my ship 1-2 pixels ahead of the other guy and I just about jumped out of my chair when I beat him to the colony, haha!

I really like how the diplomacy has developed. There always seems to be an option for what I want to accomplish, which can be rare in these sorts of games.

I also like how wars normally do not last long and are short term campaigns to try to improve your position. I still have no idea how to take over another colony. I had the AI send a fleet to finally try to take over the one main empire I have been mostly at war with and most of my troop transports were part of the initial attack fleet and all got blown up. I believe one landed and it showed me some ground battle map, but I got destroyed. I am curious how the subjugation works, though. This same empire ended up being subjugated to me, but still kept being a pain in my side by declaring war again and eventually I just let them out of it. I need to read up some more on how to fully take them over or just blow their planet up (if possible) or something so they don’t keep harassing me. I did blow their spaceport up once earlier and had their military strength down to 0.

Still, I believe this latest game has been my best run yet and maybe I can see more of the mid/late game as it develops.

1849

To take over a colony, you need:

Superior number of troops, or
Bombard weapons, and fewer troops, or
Bombard weapons and a colony ship!

I haven’t done any bombarding yet in Shadows, but in Legends most of the damage was taken by the enemy troops, which would leave their people and structures intact.

Bombarding enemy planets DOES affect your reputation, so I don’t do it too much.

If the enemy colony has a planetary shield, you cannot bombard. Taking enemy homeworlds with a planetary shield is almost impossible… I don’t like this, and hope they made a change to this in the future…

1850

Taking an enemy homeworls is not impossible. But it does require a determined effort. Come with enough troop transports full of at least 20 elite troops, or armors. Have at least 5 other nearby colonies constantly produce more troops and have your troop transports constantly fetch them and throw them into the fray. thanks to them fetching the troops automatically, this even is not a micromanagement hell.

1851

Sorry, “micromanagement hell” = impossible for me. :)

1852

So I still haven’t played this much. Just started a new game on the 1.9.0.4 patch. I’m playing in the new Shadows era as a regular empire and was trying to figure out why I couldn’t get my military ships to retrofit as new technologies were being discovered (I should point out that right now I have everything automated). Usually the AI would prompt me to retrofit or I could right-click on a ship and tell it to go retrofit to the newest tech. Neither seems to be working, so I thought what the hell, I’ll just build new ships. That’s when I realized that I didn’t have a single design for a combat vessel of any type, despite having several Escorts, Frigates, and Destroyers built early in the game. Is this normal? I don’t recall not seeing any combat designs in my previous game, but I didn’t get very far.

EDIT: I should specify that I don’t have any buildable military designs. If I change the filter on the Design screen to show All Designs, I can see some military designs that are marked as Obsolete.

1853

What do you mean? What I describe involves just clicking the “load troops” on the transports from time to time, waiting for them to do that with the fleet overview nicely tracking progress for you, and once they have enough troops, clicking once onto the enemy planet to unload. Like I said, such an attack on a homeworld does not even devolve into a micromanagement hell.

1854

My first thought was that you are lacking some necessary resources for the upgraded military designs, but if that were the case you would still see those designs listed in the design screen, though in orange. Anytime I’ve had trouble retrofitting, its been because of resource shortages. But I have no idea why your newer designs wouldn’t appear in the list of buildables. Hopefully someone else has a theory.

1855

Hi KevinC,

Did you ever research larger ship construction sizes? If your buildable ships are larger than your max construction size (this is especially possible if you never researched larger construction but still have some of the inefficient components like the Warp Bubble Generator and original Level 0 Reactor but have added new components in other areas) you could end up in this situation. Advancing construction size one level should clear it up, or researching more efficient components in other areas.

Regards,

  • Erik
1856

But… would it mean the new design would not even appear in the design list, even if its unbuildable?

1857

I probably hadn’t researched those yet. My confusion was the fact that I have a bunch of Frigates and Destroyers running around but A) Couldn’t retrofit them and B) didn’t have any designs for them when I went and looked (it was later that I realized there were Obsolete designs for them). If this is a normal situation then that’s fine, it was just confusing. I thought I’d at least be able to upgrade their weapons or see a design for them on the Design screen. I’ll keep the game going and see if I can start retrofitting them or building them later, I just didn’t recall this happening in my previous game (It very well may have, I may have just been too preoccupied with other stuff to notice).

1858

KevinC, my biggest gripe with DW is the lack of feedback when you can’t do things. Your problem is a case in point. When I was completely new to the game, I kept ordering fleets here and there, and the mission would appear at the fleet screen, and they’d just sit there. Turns out they were out of fuel, I was too new to realize that initially, no message that ‘hey, we’re out of fuel’ appeared. I had to figure it out on my own and was also frustrated for a while.

1859

My latest issues are that I am getting a lot of shortage of resources alerts and need to get a better handle on how to diagnose and fix the situation. I am wondering if I need to stop my constructors from automatically building new mining stations so I can catch up on resources so I can use them on new space ports and/or defense stations at my new colonies. I went to many of my new colonies and all of the build space port buttons have marks on them saying I don’t have enough resources to build them.

At times I have had events pop up asking me if I want to pay a premium price for certain resources to be smuggled to a specific colony. Perhaps there is a way to originate these yourself without waiting for an event to suggest it. I need to look into that. Is it possible to purchase resources on the open market somehow to make up for shortages? I normally just let my private sector handle that and look for mining sites that have what I am short and queue up a few mining stations. I need to see if there is a better option and whether I should be micromanaging that a bit more be it through purchasing them or controlling what trade I do with my trading partners.

1860

Over time if left on auto your construction ships will do a pretty good job of building mining bases to beef up your economy, but especially early on you might need to take a more direct hand.

Your freighters are actually pretty smart about moving resources around to get them to places that need them, so assuming you have enough freighters you basically just need to make sure you have plenty of the resources you’re short on being mined. There’s a number of other things it could be, but the most likely is just a general lack of resources.

I usually go into the expansion planner every so often and look at how many sources of each of the strategic resources I need. If there’s any I have none of or only 1 or 2 I’ll look through the list of discovered resources and queue up a few of that type to be mined.

With the new expansion you can also request resources at any of your colonies. Just select the planet and in the buttons underneath it’s picture in the bottom left there’s a button you can hit to put out a contract for resources. It can take a bit, and there’s no guarantee any pirates will take up the contract, but eventually they usually do.