Morberis
2743
Extremely happy to report that whatever went wrong in the last patch that was torpedoing my tactical games has disappeared.
Kudos and thank you very much for the extremely informative answer! This helped a lot. Basically it means I did all the wrong things. lol
MikeJ
2745
I’m glad I could help. There is a lot of neat, but poorly-explained stuff going on in this game. The interface often doesn’t help discover this at all, and the devs can be extremely cryptic.
Morberis
2746
Speaking of… What are the rules that govern station placement and upgrading? I see that next to a system it has one bubble which means I can place 1 station, by why does it have 1 bubble and what can I do to add more? Why can I not just upgrade stations when I want.
Just intereasted because I thought it might be a population issue or something, but then the system I wanted to develop maxed out its 3 size 4 planets for population and I still couldn`t upgrade my civilian station past a waystation.
Just intereasted because Im playing a game now with 200% random encounters and 2 grand menaces so I have to be on my toes. Im loving it, much more involved than my learning games that had no grand menaces and 70% random encounters. There is swarm EVERYWHERE, I love it. Survey crews double as extermination crews. I`m developing ship builds and strategies tailored to fighting them, I love the tactical combat.
General strategy advice, is it possible to research into both shields and armor or will that divide my research and fleets too much?
MrCoffee
2747
MikeJ
2748
Population controls the number of stations you can have. To upgrade, go to the station manager, hit the automatic upgrade and confirm build order buttons, and then wait for those modules to finish building. Generally, I do this as soon as I build a station, and after every upgrade, if I have plans to build it later.
Since stations need a certain set of modules to upgrade, and modules only build one per turn, it’s a brake on how fast you can upgrade stations.
General strategy advice, is it possible to research into both shields and armor or will that divide my research and fleets too much?
You can definitely have both. Armor is a good idea most of the time. For shields, there are the all-around shields and frontal-only shields. All-around shields can only be used on cruisers, but they can soak up quite a lot of damage, especially at high tech levels. Frontal-only applies to cruisers and dreadnaughts. These stop either all physical weapons (deflector) or all energy weapons (disruptor).
Ah, I wasnt aware that the deflector and disruptor were frontal only. Its only in this game that Im dipping my toes into shields. Do you normally get lots of frontal damage? In my last 2 games where I went to 200 turns before restarting I always suffered most my damage to the rear of the ship with the front being almost untouched. Maybe thats just facing the swarm though?
Thanks MrCoffee, for some reason I just hadnt seen that... dont question it. Shhh.
MikeJ
2750
Most of it come from the front in most situations. Of course, it also depends how you drive the ships, and whether you are outnumbered or facing more nimble opponents. Drones and battleriders will easily attack from all angles, opposing dreadnaughts, not so much.
One station slot per 400M population rounded up. So 400.1M means a max of 2 stations.
I have 40 hours in now, maybe 20 in after the all clear, and there are definitely some quirks. For instance, why do I have to change to the trade view to see or change my trade setup for a system, why not through the right click menu for the system? It just seems to add alot of extra time switching overlays. It would mean my mouse doesn`t have to travel across the screen and then back, and then across and back and save me, 2 clicks?
Is the wiki out of date with regard to police cutters? I dont seem to get the opportunity to build them when I research FTL Economics like the wiki suggests, but instead after I research Expert Systems. And whats their point? They dont seem to be able to fight pirates at all, do they just decrease the amount of pirate raids? It seems like it does, and reading back thats what other people seem to say? Same goes with Defense Platforms. They cant fight pirates, but if I get say a Haunt invading theyll take down my 3 drone platforms easy peasy and then attack the planet with impunity.
I really like the fleet system they have, with bases and the logistics.
My pet peeve with the interface is that it always defaults to the utterly useless planet bar, when switching to a new system, whereas the fleet bar is the one you are almost always interested in.
The police cutters decrease the chance of a pirate raid to occur - but only if they are in the defense fleet, not if they are in reserve.
The system platforms are not useless - just build at least a dozen of them and place them in all the neighbouring fields around the field containing your planet. The haunts may destroy two or three of your platforms, yes, but in the meantime the remaining ones will have killed the haunts. But the platforms are especially useful against meteorite strikes, and also as a delay tactic: If you know an enemy fleet is coming from some particular direction, and your fleet needs one or two more turns to arrive, then distribute your platforms nicely along the way the enemy is likely to take through the system to reach your planet. It will have to fight each platform individually, allowing you to delay his attack on the planet by up to four turns sometimes!
The drone platforms are particularly useless against a heavily armored fleet with missiles and point defense though.
Yeah, point defense makes for a pretty light show. Since the cluster map I`m playing on is infested with the swarm I have 1 fleet that consists of 2 PD ships and 3 shielded armor sections.
Definitely seeing some issues with the AI, not big but theyre there. The main thing that Ive noticed is that theres a large system with a swarm infestation. Now both the LOA and the Human player are bogged down there for ohhh 45 turns unable to clear it out. Ive also been at war with the human player for about 50 turns and its been long enough that Ive tested out my original ships and found them lacking. Thats ok, I didnt have that many of them so I sent out another wave of reinforcements. Not quite good enough. Hes heavily missile based and just 1 PD ship wasnt good enough, and my ragtag collection of ships just wasnt working out. So Ive shut down research for 15 turns, replaced them all with MK4 ships that have PD, upgraded lasers, armor, and brand new dreadnaughts. He still hasnt built defenses against me, or really massed any good fleets against me. Its still mostly survey and colonization fleets and about 1 out of 5 will be a combat fleet. Colonizers aren`t going to do anything. Anyway turn 143 and things are looking up UP UP for the Lir Zuul Alliance.
We`ll see, I might have to set them to hard which is not something that I expected.
MikeJ
2755
Hopefully you jumped on at a point where the AI is improved before the AI issues start to seem too big. As it is, the AI issues are pretty much the determining factor in how I lay out my games.
MikeJ
2756
Patch out last night:
2.0.24645.1
Critical fixes:
- Fixed combat CTD.
- Fixed destroyed system CTD.
- Fixed CTD in build screen.
- Fixed Loa CTD when doing NPG gate mission from destroyed planet.
Other fixes:
- Fixed able to set missile to PD.
- Fixed selected groups ignoring combat planes to which they are set.
- Fixed “stop” speech event.
- Fixed “defeated pirate base” being spammed 3x when it is defeated.
- Fixed AI colonizing hostile systems.
- Fixed case where AI would have a fleet with no command ship.
- Fixed issue that would cause too many locust scouts.
- Fixed case where randoms could be flagged as neutral.
- Fixed VN Pyramids not firing at planet.
- Fixed Loa not spawning next to their gates.
- Fixed AI not launching battlecruisers and battleships.
- Fixed AI not launching riders in some cases.
- Fixed Loa not properly removing cubes for ship damages.
- Fixed ships flying into locust moons.
Other changes and additions:
- Fixed various strings.
- Windowed fullscreen support.
- Revamped post-combat screen.
- “C” button in chat now connects/disconnects from chat.
- Double pressing 1-0 will focus on the ship group instead of whenever you press the button.
- Starmap now remembers if fleet/planet tab was last selected.
- Added a hot key to exit accelerated time.
Not listed are a return of the dreadnaught ‘flagship’ command sections (you are allowed more than one) and some changes to SolForce speed, and some mysterious economic change.
If only they could make the AI do better with budgets and logistics. It’s really what’s holding it back as a single-player experience, IMO.
Sorry if this is obvious or been answered before. Is there way to change the admiral on a fleet with first disbanding the fleet and reforming under the new admiral?
I very much like the admiral concept but in practice it’s more of a pain. Traits are goofy. I can put an elite dude in charge and when he retires I get a wastrel. Tedious…
Scotten
2758
I’m not aware of any method except disbanding. Admirals should be something that can be turned off…
I think I’d prefer a “blank” admiral (no paticular skills). He grows in the skills you paticularly use him in. If you use him to scout then over time he scouts better. Then when he retires his XO that replaces him inherits say 50% of his traits or something. Eh… I don’t know. I’m not a game designer.
Admirals can go rogue. If a province rebels all admirals from that province male a loyalty check to see if the stay with your Emmott or join the rebellion.
Oh that’s the part I think is cool. Its the rest that’s a pain.
ledshok
2762
$5 on Gamersgate today. Think I’ll bite…
