my epic game on 1.03

[Wicky]

I'm on my 12th game now, since I consider myself not noob anymore I can handle an epic challenge galaxy. That means starting with a crappy homesystem, pirates+lifeforms max, max number of AIs all at chaotic aggression level. On top of that I start at basic tech, while all AIs are one stage higher at "young" hehe!!! Oh man, so here are the issues I have encountered so far:

1) exponential tech trading/diplomacy Seeing as I was the least developed race in the galaxy, I concentrated all my efforts into a single tech tree: shipyards. I crash researched that tree one time after the other, until I had one tech, that was superior to all other AI races. Now the fun can begin: Trade my shipyard tech to another race for money. Trade money+shipyard to 2nd race for their galaxy map, which reveals a lot of colonies. Now you have a trade item, the galaxy map, worth like 150k cash. Trade galaxy map to 3rd empire for like 4 more lower techs, rinse and repeat. Trade major techs to lower developed races for even more money. Trade vast ammounts of money for superior techs, that only 1 race has. To make it short, I paused the game and did 45 minutes only diplomacy, going through the whole list of 20 AI races like 5 times, grabbing everything I could, exploiting and bargaining. IN THE END, I had tons of money, ALL techs from everyone, and the whole galaxy map revealing all colonies. All in exchange for just 1 shipyard tech!!!

2) ignoring spaceports The AI captured my capital with a large spaceport having 1500 firepower 9000 shields! Nop, I didn't loose the spaceport. They came with a lousy force of 3 destroyers, and while my port was shooting at them, they landed a ton of troop transports and overthrew the government, capturing the spaceport as well. It should not be so easy to do that! If I did this as well, then I'd only need to retire all military ships, and build only fast and heavy shielded troop transports which are able to kamikaze-capture any planet. They outrun every military ship and can land while the guarding spaceport is firing on them. Seconds later, their spaceport is mine and will welcome any military forces who chased my troop transports. lol

3) ship firepower calculation bug When you add a torpedo with 40damage every 4 seconds to a ship, it has 40 firepower? Should be 10 firepower, because it does 10/sec. Vice versa when you add a laser with 5 damage every 0.25 seconds to a ship, it has 5 firepower? Should be 20, because it does 20 damage/sec.

4) Saving the game takes absurdly long?! If the optimization is too difficult, why don't you just write the whole process .exe with 1gb in RAM to disc? Then it takes only 20 seconds instead of 4 minutes to save the game.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Wicky

To make it short, I paused the game and did 45 minutes only diplomacy, going through the whole list of 20 AI races like 5 times, grabbing everything I could, exploiting and bargaining. IN THE END, I had tons of money, ALL techs from everyone, and the whole galaxy map revealing all colonies. All in exchange for just 1 shipyard tech!!!

That is pretty much a staple fare of 4X diplomacy: Get a tech, sell it to everyone. The more different civs you have, the more lucrative it is.

ORIGINAL: Wicky

2) ignoring spaceports The AI captured my capital with a large spaceport having 1500 firepower 9000 shields! Nop, I didn't loose the spaceport. They came with a lousy force of 3 destroyers, and while my port was shooting at them, they landed a ton of troop transports and overthrew the government, capturing the spaceport as well.

Wait, the one clever thing the AI thinks to do is a PROBLEM? This isn't a PROBLEM! This the one smart thing the AI can actually DO! Serves you right for not hiring more STORMTROOPERS.

Speaking of stormtrooper-hiring, the "automatically hire troop" option needs a control for "MOAR!". Because it hires kind of laughable defenses, and then you have to go and manually hire MOAR anyway. The Empire wants YOU!

ORIGINAL: Wicky

It should not be so easy to do that!

Serves you right for not making a spaceport with wave blasters for just that purpose. And not hiring enough STORMTROOPERS.

ORIGINAL: Wicky

If I did this as well, then I'd only need to retire all military ships, and build only fast and heavy shielded troop transports which are able to kamikaze-capture any planet.

And...? What of it? The AI will just take them back the same way. Plus, his spaceports suck, so they're not going to do nearly the damage yours did.

ORIGINAL: Wicky

3) ship firepower calculation bug When you add a torpedo with 40damage every 4 seconds to a ship, it has 40 firepower? Should be 10 firepower, because it does 10/sec. Vice versa when you add a laser with 5 damage every 0.25 seconds to a ship, it has 5 firepower? Should be 20, because it does 20 damage/sec.

"Firepower" is an arbitrary value that has almost no correlation to how effective the game will perform in battle. I don't really think it matters that the value is nonsense in yet another way.

ORIGINAL: Wicky

4) Saving the game takes absurdly long?! If the optimization is too difficult, why don't you just write the whole process .exe with 1gb in RAM to disc? Then it takes only 20 seconds instead of 4 minutes to save the game.

My theory is that it takes so ridiculously long because of the fancy compression it uses to keep the save file size down. I suspect this because when I tried to RAR a save file for transmission, it did not compress AT ALL, meaning the save was already highly compressed. There should be an option to turn this off, because, honestly, our time is worth more than disk space. Your game saves in 4 minutes? You can consider yourself lucky. I have seen it take HALF AN HOUR to save. In the time this game has wasted saving, I could earn enough money to just BUY A NEW HARD DRIVE.

[Wicky]

Hmm, wave blasters.. thanks for the tip! I never thought of putting area weapons on my spaceports because I usually don't research them. Too much friendly fire to my fleets

[Bloodly]

I imagine they're more effective for a single heavy ship or a base. Something that gets swarmed often. But of course, the range is an issue, and it seems the nature of combat(speed and range mean everything) does not lend itself to Area weapons at all, as they have neither.

[DigitalPhoenix]

ORIGINAL: Wicky

2) ignoring spaceports The AI captured my capital with a large spaceport having 1500 firepower 9000 shields! Nop, I didn't loose the spaceport. They came with a lousy force of 3 destroyers, and while my port was shooting at them, they landed a ton of troop transports and overthrew the government, capturing the spaceport as well. It should not be so easy to do that! If I did this as well, then I'd only need to retire all military ships, and build only fast and heavy shielded troop transports which are able to kamikaze-capture any planet. They outrun every military ship and can land while the guarding spaceport is firing on them. Seconds later, their spaceport is mine and will welcome any military forces who chased my troop transports. lol

[font="Arial"] i use this method to take over their planets while the rest of my fleet protects the troop-carrying ships .

i guess if we can easily take over their colonies this way , the AI can use this method against us as well .

one thing that may help , order your ships to focus fire on their troop-carrying ships first . u can tell which enemy ships they r because they fly really close to the planet/moon , like right on top of it in the center .

if u had no fleets nearby , try to put up additional defense bases to help the space port ward off enemy ships to give u some time to send a fleet over .

also make sure your planet/moon has a bunch of troops on it as well to protect it when the enemy does unload their own troops on to it .

also , just for extra insurance . when u have your fleet selected , the selection panel tells u how many troops that fleet is carrying . when u get to the planet/moon being attacked , first unload your troops to that colony and then shoot down their ships . after battle is done , u should be able to remove your troops from the colony and back onto your fleet to prepare for the next colony defense / invasion . [/font]

[Franky007]

Regarding 1) exponential tech trading/diplomacy

I would suggest the following way to reduce tech trading by the player:

The value of a tech sold by the Human player should be reduced by:

10% * the number of AI players who already have this tech.

This would make the game a little harder... a good thing.

[Sigh]

well this just gets better and better...