[ Distant Worlds 2 Advanced Guide ]

[Cyclopsslayerr]

Very nice!

Only 'issue' is in the difficulty comments. lol
Consider home system quality. A Trying or even Harsh start magnifies difficulties.

FREX: a Teekan Harsh start can generate a non-viable start. Your entire Home System is a Gas Giant with 2 moons. Massive resource shortages. The Teekan Racial event colony gets pushed into only able to start on your home world, So, a couple years in game, the event triggers, and replaces your 2B pop with 1 million...

That sounds like a fringe situation that may have escaped adequate testing, and thus might be a bug (or at least unintended). It might be worth sharing that save with a bug report, so that the team can implement a workaround and make sure that a suitable plot colony world is included in the solar system regardless of its harshness.

I'll report is again. But it is actually not uncommon.

[Babyhedgehog]

So I waited for sometime now, because I thought somebody would actually criticize this "advanced" "guide". But nobody did, so here I am: This paper you wrote, is first: full of wrong and misleading information, second: full of beginner tips not worthy an "advanced" guide, third: full of bla bla that you can say about every other strategy game too ("progress is key", is by far my favourite) and last: full of exploits, that are not needed because the AI in this game is almost as dumb as the one from Civ6.

So let us go through your "guide" chapter by chapter:

Chapter 1:

Though it's possible to save-scum and min-max your espionage missions, colonization success, initial diplomatic standing and other factors, the game is meant to be played by just taking the hit when things go wrong. Don't worry - you'll be fine. Or not. Playing the underdog is fun and there are several empire balancing mechanics such as espionage, tech capture and power envy. Perhaps most importantly, restarting keeps the game fun. Expect multiple playthroughs.

The first sentence in your paper that is so general you can literally say that about every strategy game.

High difficulty has a strong impact on which strategies are available to you (especially via harsher reputation penalties and lower espionage success rates). A very "challenging" universe makes lower difficulty just as challenging as max difficulty. Apologies for the confusing terminology: "Difficulty" refers to the setting (Easy/Normal/Hard/Very Hard/Extreme) while "challenge" refers to how hard the playthrough is.

To increase challenge, add problems for yourself:
a. Stronger neighbors
b. Stronger pirates
c. A more aggressive galaxy
d. Roleplay suboptimal strategies, like a Boskaran empire without diplomacy, hell-bent on exterminating all other species - especially those filthy humans
e. Refuse to make deals with pirates
f. Roleplay the military genius forced to deal with an incompetent leader mismanaging the empire (democracy in a nutshell)
g. Automate areas best handled by the player

"High difficulty has a strong impact on which strategies are available to you". Well we already had this, in point 1, stuff that happens in every (strategy) game.
a. Correct, but you did not point how you create stronger neighbours via the galaxy settings (higher starting tech level on AI would be an example)
b. Wrong, the player has an easier way of dealing with pirates (you can trade contact information for non-aggression treaties, something that the AI can not do (is an exploit); or you simply pay them off, something that the AI could, but does not do). Therefore stronger pirates make the game harder for the AI and easier for you.
c. Wrong, if the aggression would be only geared towards the human player, than an aggressive galaxy would make the game harder for you. But it is geared towards everybody equally, meaning it does never change difficulty. Although, it maybe is harder for those peacemonger players, that would fit better into a citybuilding game, than into an actual strategy game.
d. Ok, if you are bored with the AI in this game then you can do "roleplaying" in dumb way, like playing a guy with intelligence 1 in Fallout: New Vegas. Sure.
e. This only makes the game harder until you have a fleet that can destroy their spaceports. Once you have that achieved, the game actually becomes easier, because of all the technology that you get from the debris or capturing their ships. The pirates in this game right now offer no challenge beyond the immediate start of the game.
f. Same as 2d
g. Sure, you can turn your brain off. I would argue, that this does not make the game harder, it allows you to not play the game, but rather simulate it in the background, while smoking some weed.

Government should be switched when appropriate. Growth, happiness, corruption reduction, cash and research bonuses are most important. Generally, the best starting governments are Republic (free Planetary Admin Center plus its research) and Monarchy (free and unique Palace plus crew and command starting research). Geniocracy (Quameno; Research Labs unlocked) is best on a pre-warp empire to escape the home system ASAP. Starting facilities need a few days to appear. After that, feel free to switch to another government.
For general play governments, Mercantile Guild (Haakonish/Teekan) is overpowered, with extra income from trade agreements not tied to difficulty. Hive Mind (Boskara/Dhayut) is overpowered due to huge corruption reduction, near-infinite leader rule periods, better travel times in occupied systems (warp accuracy) and massive population growth during war, offset by slower research. Republic is strong but not overpowered. Military Dictatorship, Feudalism, Technocracy and Surveillance Oligarchy are currently the worst. Note that research speed isn't as important while you're gaining technology from captured ships and espionage.

"Government should be switched when appropriate". I would have never imagined that an "advanced" guide needs to tell me this piece of knowledge.
Governments play all very similar, because the game does not simulate a democratic parliament with ruling and opposing parties, a feudal class fighting a civil war for deciding who becomes the next monarch, or a corrupt patrician senate that just wants to maximize profits. Therefore discussing governments is not worth the time at all. Switching governments is just a trade between boni.
You are right though that the free planetary center or the Palace would be the best. In an advanced guide you should mention though, that the Palace is a first tier technology, that can be stolen from any monarchy and if any monarchy survives long enough, basically everybody in the galaxy can and will have a palace. And yes that persons in a hive mind never die is extremely weird and overpowered.

Characters gain skills/traits while performing activities, usually specific to the activity. Your first leader will likely have a shipbuilding skill since that's what your empire is doing when the galaxy is created. Generals can be specialized by invading colonies or recruiting troops. Admirals will usually gain the Hyperspeed skill by flying around or combat bonuses through fleet combat.

Another piece of knowledge, that is not worth to be put into a "guide intended for maximum difficulty".
Let me give you an example of an "advanced" tip for an "advanced" guide: "Leaders have a chance to get the "Health oriented" trait, if you research a technology in the medical systems tree, while they have an unoccupied trait slot."

The most profitable population policy is setting its most suitable species to Assimilate (which also means "attempt to populate") and all other species to Resettle, which prevents immigration.
a. Extermination causes a reputation penalty which makes your colonies less happy for decades and thus less profitable, and severely angers all factions which consist primarily of that species.
b. You'll want a troop recruitment/cloning colony with a recruitment General.
c. Add species to your empire by annexing existing colonies or via Migration Treaties.

I think that is wrong, but I am not 100% sure. As far as I am aware, the profit does not get better once you achieve at least 20 Suitability (!) with the race that has the biggest share of population on the planet. More Suitability does not help. However the Quality (!) of the planet changes the profit from it. So as an example on a 70 Quality Mangrove Forest planet, it would not matter how many Ikkuro, Quameno or Slukens are on it (all of them have at least 20 Suitability). If however Zenox would have the largest share of population on it (10 Suitability), than resettling would make sense. Your system however works, but it is too simplified.
6a. Exterminating causes a -15 penalty with the race, that you are exterminating ("is unhappy being part of you empire"). This modifier only applies to your planets with that race. Therefore if you are exterminating the race fully in your empire anyway it does not matter longterm. The reputation penalty is also boring. It goes away but slowly. At some point in the game you get the overwhelming opinion penalty for being too strong and successful, and at that point your reputation does not anmatter anymore anyways.
6b/c. More of those tips, that would be part of a beginner guide.

The Suitability displayed in the New Colonies tab shows species which are either loaded on a colony ship or have a large population in your empire (around 500m). It's somewhat misleading, and you're better off knowing which biome types the species are suited for (listed under "Chapter 5: Species"). Note that a colony ship cannot load passengers from a very small population.

Every beginner should figure out or be told, that UI filters that do not mention how they are calculated are totally pointless: "Priority" and "Importance" in the colony menu for example. This should, however not be part of an "advanced" guide though.

I recommend playing pre-warp on max difficulty in a harsh starting system at least once, to help you understand the game's mechanics. Note that the game's random generation restrictions (or lack thereof) currently don't support various setting combinations, especially in small galaxies, so you can hit hard walls which simply cannot be overcome like being stuck in a corner with zero ability to expand. Always restart when this happens - it's clearly not intended. Thus I don't recommend this for normal play. If you prefer detailed designs, start at T3-4 research. If you prefer the hightech stuff, try T7.

If you do not understand the game mechanics you should read a beginner guide, and not an advanced guide.

For initial research on a pre-warp empire, by far the best option is Early Warp Field Experiments, then either Stable Warp Fields or Research Labs, followed by the other. You need Warp Bubble Generators (WBGs) as soon as you can, though the combination of all three can be done more quickly by getting Research Labs first (+50% to all research speed) at the cost of postponing WBGs somewhat. This will cause your empire to sit around in a fully explored home system for a while, which can be mitigated slightly by building less explorers at first, freeing up cash to spend on crash research.

I agree with first Early Warp into second Stable Warp. Research Labs is definitely not important at all. You can steal that easily from your first contact. For me, the third technology is always the better reactors ("Advanced Nuclear Fission"). The difference between the first 2 reactor types is so massive, it gives you something around 40% more range on your exploration/construction/colonizing/piratekilling efforts.

The first thing a pre-warp empire should do is:
a. Set taxes to 0 (until the empire can become passively profitable, which then allows growth/research funding via taxes).
b. Crash research Early Warp Experiments.
c. Build a Spaceport with two Construction Yards and a Research Lab.
d. If the colony has a research bonus, build a Research Station.
e. Build 1-2 Explorers. Make everything bare-bones except for functional components - an Explorer should have lots of Fuel Cells and a Miner many Cargo Bays.
f. If using a government which gives a happiness bonus on leader change, dismiss the leader frequently unless you get one with +population growth.

Hmm, no, your prewarp guide sucks.
a. Taxes to 0 was a nice tip in Distant Worlds Universe, now it sucks.
b. Agreed.
c. Agreed, but if you want to minmax you should also manipulate the building order on the planet from explorer -> construction ship -> spaceport -> freighter -> miner into spaceport second, construction third, before you unpause the game the first time. While your starting exploration ship flies around reaching and exploring your first target, you simply do not have the need for a construction ship, so the spaceport can be done second.
d. The starting colony only has a research bonus in an extremely lucky start, if you manage to find a ruin on it. Having a 2nd research base in your home system makes the game so easy it is similar to finding an unoccupied super luxury in the first half hour of the game.
e. It is a 4X game. Building exploration units in a game where exploration matters is not worth a tip in an "advanced" guide.
f. Population growth is not so important, that it justifies dismising leaders constantly

Early on, consider that private income is what you're taxing on your colonies. Before your empire becomes profitable, lower taxes means faster population growth and you can regain the untaxed funds with ease. Don't worry too much about negative funds at this point. Just don't do this when your empire becomes passively profitable, as you want positive income to be used for research and colony growth. If your empire again becomes unprofitable, for example due to Protection Agreement costs, set taxes to 0 again temporarily. You can make a "Pre-Tax" save to see if you're ready to start taxing again (set tax to Auto, check funding tab).

No, early on, it is way more important to find access to as much luxuries as possible boosting your development rating, than boosting you happiness via low tax rate. So you need a shit ton of exploration ships (which cost money) and some construction ships (which cost money, too). Tax rate to 0 is really bad.
Also, the tax rate to 0 thing only works because your civilian economy is dumb and orders too much freighters and miners in the early game, and therefore giving your state economy too much money and allowing you to run such a deficit.

Crash research whenever possible. The exception is when you need the funds for diplomacy (including peacefully colonizing an independent colony) or building ships/stations.

You can easily only crash research the first 2 warp techs, that we talked above. The rest can be stolen, analysed out of debris or disassembled from captured ships. Invest your money into exploration, expansion or warfare, but not research.

A tier of research should be fully researched before moving on to the next, due to lower research times, with a few exceptions: Hyperdrives, Survey scanners, Ion Shield/Armor, a primary weapon, empire-boosting facilities, Planetary Governance and colonization, roughly in that order.

Does not need any reasoning, it is obvious why this advice is horrible.

There is more research than what is initially visible, even if set to "display all projects". By playing you can unlock "super" research options, which have no prerequisite technologies and often outperform everything else in the same category, allowing you to skip tiers and go straight for the super if you have high research speed, though I'd only recommend that if the research period is ~8 years or less. You'll also find repeatable upgrade research at the highest regular tier (below super).

You call them "super" research options? Why?
The technologies that do not have prerequisites are the ones that are special to a specific races. Then there a some techs that you can research after you visited a ancient ruin. And then there is government locked technology like the Planetary Palace. I do not know, why we call them "super" now, instead of unique, ancient or whatever.

Troop cloning facilities take the best troops stationed in your empire. They needn't be at the same colony.

Troop minmaxing is not needed at all in the game. Who cares.

The default number of planets works for short to medium games, but can be too many for very long games, especially with high colony suitability settings. It also increases micromanagement. Your hardware and preferences determine the right number of colonies in the game. If you want a big galaxy or long game, set the colony suitability setting to its lowest. You'll still be able to colonize an absurd amount using colonization research.

Agreed, the quality of planets is way to high in the game, making economy so easy, that it actually insults me. Every planet with 15 suitability is going to be profitable at some point and the even lower ones with big diameter can also be colonized. Even terraforming is not needed for that. There is no need for planets that have 80% quality, especially if the game has a background story that is something about "ancient race bombarded every colony into being almost unbearable 2000 years ago"

Sometimes, bad Hyperspeed pathfinding can be solved by clicking on empty space as opposed to an object.

Bad Pathfinding. Happens sometimes. Do not use a brain cell for it, you just get mad, especially if you happen to know some basic vector algebra.

Though subjective, I prefer not to use victory conditions as they're a bit unimmersive. However, they can be useful as a recommendation on how to roleplay your chosen species.

Whatever.

[Babyhedgehog]

Chapter 2

Fast progress is key, offset by empires' tendency to declare war on more powerful empires. I'm unsure if envy is caused by territory, population, technology, economy or some combination. High population growth causes your empire to expand more rapidly, causing its borders to span further, offset by the likelihood of overextending your fleets. Still, the empire with the best early-to-midgame usually dominates the galaxy.

My absolute favorite sentence in your guide: "Fast progress is key". That is so unique to this game, it really is an extraordinary tip. Come on, without sarcasm, even a poker player (which is a card (!) game), will tell you that you inflate the pot when you think you are ahead, basically "Fast progress is key".

Diplomacy is extremely lucrative and overpowered if you play it smart, even for military playthroughs.
a. Befriending everyone lets you pick who to go to war with and prepare your invasion.
b. Don't spend credits on trades unless you have to; trade Ruin information and introductions whenever possible.
c. The default gift value range (12.5k-37.5k) is a good estimate for optimal gifting. Larger or smaller is less efficient. The long-term relations bonus for gifting has diminishing returns and caps at 10, but the temporary bonus still works.
d. Treaties generate a large amount of relations. Gifting can be used to achieve treaty thresholds via the short-term gains. You can make a pre-gift save to check if your gift enables a new treaty, though you may need to wait a few weeks for the other faction to make the treaty offer.
e. Trade independent colony information with all known factions just before colonizing it, or when you see another empire colonize it (look for Troop Transports and Colony Ships).
f. Earn large amounts of information by stealing territory/galaxy maps, which can then be traded.
g. Factions will gain information themselves, meaning you can no longer sell that information to them - a good reason to first trade information found near them.
h. Information isn't worth the credit cost unless you're playing on low difficulty. Exploit this by constantly draining your neighbors' cash.

Diplomacy is fucking boring. Play EU4 with humans if you want to have meaningful diplomacy.

a. No need to befriend everyone, no need to befriend anyone actually. Game is easy enough.
b. Exploit, can not be used by the AI
c. I rather build a ship than gift my money away
d. Yeah, if you want to that, getting to the threshold that allows for a treaty is the only reason to maybe use a gift.
e. Another exploit.
f. Another exploit. I disable those options by disallowing all three types of map stealing in policy files and also not doing it myself. That gives every empire in the game a meaningful exploration. Otherwise they will just steal each others galaxy map and after 10 years into the game everybody knows everything about the galaxy. Boring.
g. Yes, the AI tries (!) to play the game, and therefore they also gain information.
h. Depends on the type of information, theoretically. Practically you either exploit diplomacy by using it (and obviously doing it better than the AI) or you do not by ignoring diplomacy (almost) completely. That is the state of the diplomacy part of Distant Worlds 2.

To peacefully deal with pirates, immediately get a Protection Agreement. Gift diplomatic introductions and cash until relations go over 12 and wait for them to offer a Non-Aggression Agreement. Past 15-20 you can make the offer yourself. This removes the Protection Agreement cost and makes them your allies. You can still attack them later:

Yeah, as long as the pirates are so dumb, they feel bland. They need a territory, that they extort (like every crime syndicate on real life earth has), they need a purpose (smuggling resources between empires, if one empire sets up a trading barrier (high tolls, for example)), they need to coordinate their ships for raids, and they need to able to actually ally empires or other pirates.

Capturing or destroying a pirate base causes many of their ships to join you, which you can then use or retire for technology. I strongly recommend retiring if the ship has components which you haven't researched yet.
a. You'll sometimes want to keep the pirates around for capturing so you can extract even more technology.
b. They can't conquer colonies, which lowers the risk, but beware that once you start shooting it can become impossible to move back towards peace and they will become a massive problem if you can't manage them militarily, which can result in a downward spiral stagnating your empire's progress.
c. They will capture your and other factions' ships, making the snowball factor potentially disastrous if not managed, especially if they capture Hive ships.

I always disassemble the pirate ships. Their weapon loadout is too atrocious.
a. You can design dedicated capture ships on your own. Ship boarding is not a hard tech to get.
b. That they cannot invade colonies is in my opinion an oversight, making the early game boring. Hopefully the developers will advance the pirates at some point.
c. Happens so rarely. Maybe, if you help them getting ships. And you probably need to put a special defence fleet onto their spaceport, so that it does not get destroyed by enemy empire, when all their ships are out for raiding.

War can be profitable if you need to invade colonies or conquer resources in order to expand, but damages your empire in all other cases. Lots of fun, though. The best time to fight a powerful empire is while it's preoccupied - especially after a fresh war declaration from a neighbor.

No, if two empires declare a war, you are going to wait some time until a shit ton of each of their forces are distracted or destroyed. You do your backstab, when the amount of resistance, you face as third party, is minimal. Not immediately.

If you capture or find an abandoned spaceport, keep it for the research bonus.

Those spaceports have a research "lab" not research "bonus" though. Is nitpicking, I know, but if you create a guide, do it better. I destroy those spaceports later, they are unimportant for the 20 research once you have 5000 or more research available from colony spaceports and actual research bases.

If you're forced to use an unsuitable species to colonize an independent colony, do it with the absolute lowest number of colonists you can get by loading colonists at 1/8th speed and aborting the loading order as soon as the first colonists appear in the passenger hold. The resulting population will remain tiny and is easily resettled later while the origin colony loses less population.

Is an exploit, and not necessary. You can easily just "welcome" new races into your empire, via warfare, and use those races to extend you colonization efforts.

Colonies' distance from the capitol increases corruption, though the +10 happiness from living in the capitol can sometimes be more valuable on your most profitable colony. The best colony to build "can only have 1" facilities is often the most profitable, which means a combination of high size and high suitability, though the soft cap for colony Development is 120 so it can be useful to boost colonies which have less (often inside nebulae).

Really, economy is so easy to handle, I never thought there is a corruption distance. Ok, I finally learned something from your guide. Keep that up! If you want to know a new exploit that you didn't mention in your guide full of exploits, here is one from me, regarding the one-per-empire-facilities:
1. Notice that the AI builds all "one per empire" facilities on one planet (at the start that is the homeplanet). 2. Declare war and wait until most of their fleets are distracted on the border between you and them (or destroyed). 3. Sneak a bombardment specialized fleet around to the facility planet. 4. Bombard all of the facilities down. 5. Make peace with whatever you want to achieve in the war. 6. Notice that the AI empire will rebuild all those facilities on the second largest planet (or the second most important, does not matter). Notice that this is more important for the AI than rebuilding their fleets 7. Now repeat the procedure.

Create and abandon a colony to give yourself independent colony information to barter with in diplomacy. Suitability doesn't matter. If a colony is out of reach you can also colonize a planet closer to it, then colonize your target and abandon the in-between colony. The double colony ship cost is regained over time.

Yeah, my favourite exploit from Distant Worlds Universe. Creating independent colonies in the backyards of the galaxy on planets that only become profitable once there are billions of people on it. Still an exploit.

Use Shift to display distance when pointing at an object with another selected; useful if you've set colonization distance limits (default is 300m). You can also use this to determine fuel range requirements for your designs. Note that colonies with less than 20 suitability often become profitable as they grow towards max population, but this takes a very long time.

The Shift key was a very terrible decision for the distance meter, because it is also used in key combinations. Alt would have been better.

Excess Private Economy Cash (PEC) is best spent on Mining Stations, both for redundancy in war and as a buffer against enemy threats.
a. Mining Stations should have maximum durability (including Ion Cannons and PDs), giving defence fleets time to arrive.
b. Spending all of your PEC will harm your ability to expand as you'll be unable to build new stations quickly, hence I recommend reserving ~25k PEC for expansion bursts.
c. Too many spread out Mining Stations can cause Freighters to waste time retrieving resources you don't need; a good reason to keep your supply lines tight.

If you need or want to extort the private economy's cash, you are an absolute noob. Sorry, I can not say this less insulting. It is so horrible, you basically do not understand the purpose of the private economy at all.
b. Mining stations do not need anything, just rebuild them. One mining station being destroyed does not matter at all. The AI overvalues destroying mining/longrangesensor bases so much, it reminds me of the old quote "Attracted, like a fly to a cow pat". If you however only have one refuel/repair station in the region where you fight, than it is your fault as the strategic mind behind your wars.
b. 25k for expansion bursts. Did you ever follow the private economy of this game? For example, when you introduce medium freighters to your empire, the private econonmy will spend literally millions in a short time to get enough of those. I can actually estimate how much money the private economy shoves into my state economy, when I do this. It depends massively on the size of the empire at that point though.
c. Theoretically you could be correct, I doubt it though. However spending more than one brain cell onto the mining base number and positions, while the freighters AI is so dumb, is just not my thing to do, I simply do not care. I developed a simply ruleset for mining bases in Distant Worlds Universe and successfully integrated it into Distant Worlds 2. Never thought about it since then.

To quickly gain funds from your private economy at a resource cost, scuttle some empty, idle freighters or passenger ships. They'll even leave some loot and your construction yards will replenish the loss quickly. If you have idle Construction Ships, building Mining Stations is a slower option.

Same as above: You are an absolute noob if you do not understand the purpose of the private/state economy split. Why the developers allow the player to destroy freighters, miners or passenger ships is beyond my understanding.

To plan Mining Stations, check the Resources tab to see which resource you need, then go to the New Mining Locations tab and filter for that resource. Always keep the excess above 10 for all resources, if you can - it's sometimes even worth going to war over, but only if you win.

Wrong. The production rate is definitely bugged. I can have -2000/s in caslon in this menu, with 400k caslon stored and 20 years later i have 2500k caslon stored, without building any caslon station in this period of time. So no, I never use the production rate as a measurement for my mining economy. The storage capacity and the storage position (meaning you do not need caslon on the other side of the galaxy, if the war is next to your homeplanet) is important for mining bases and nothing else.

Even if your empire has enough Caslon (fuel), putting a mining station on a Caslon source will give your empire a refueling station. They're rarely wasteful

True. And they attract AI "strike" forces. Perfect traps.

Tourism is only profitable with a few Resorts due to their maintenance costs being paid by the state (you).
a. Proximity to your colonies is key as this reduces travel time for passenger ships, though high Scenery helps too.
b. Recreation Centers are most useful due to their happiness (income) bonus to attached colonies.
c. To correctly calculate tourism profits, check "Economy/Annual Bonus Income/Tourism (previous year)" and subtract maintenance costs under "Economy/Maintenance/Other State/Resort Base".
d. I recommend placing a Resort over each colony which can have one to provide close-by tourism and act as a (weak) defensive base, then ignoring the other resort locations. This also frees up your Construction Ships.
e. Note that T4 Med/Rec add another +1 happiness, and more at higher tiers.

Tourism needs some deeper programming. It is boring. Right now I wait until my leader gets the famous trait (easy) and until the constructing ships have nothing better to do (harder), and then I just build tourist bases everywhere. Get 10k-20K per year out of it (as a boskara hive mind, rofl). Nice little side income. Does not need optimization.
a. Whatever.
b. Recreation centers are mostly for maintenance reduction.
c. Really? You are writing an "advanced" guide.
d. Maybe that works better than my approach, learned a second thing from your guide. Keep it up!
e. At that point in the game, you do not care about something so insignificant, like +1 happiness, any more.

Keep military ships in fleets and set "Military ships not in a fleet" to 0%. Non-fleet ships fail to coordinate attacks and thus don't win battles, but do incur losses when engaged. As a bonus, when you capture military ships, the "ships not in a fleet" filter lets you bulk-retire them. However, roaming military ships can work if your empire is far more powerful than its neighbors, whether economically or technologically.

If you would ever let the AI do your ship assignment, you probably never tried to actually "play" the game. The AI does neither understand basic role assignment (damage dealer, tank, crowd control and so on, lets call it "modern game strategy") inside a fleet, nor does it understand to design weapon loadouts fitting to a specific role. Therefore do it yourself, for me it is actually the most fun part of the game.
"However, roaming military fleets (!) can work if your empire is far more powerful than its neighbors, whether economically or technologically." I corrected that for you.

The most damaging spycraft mission possible is to incite a revolt against an empire with a powerful government type.

It is also the one with least probability to succeed. Most espionage mission would need a 60 month mission, with success chances calculated accordingly, to be actually a thing to pursue.

Counter Espionage can be used to capture enemy spies and prevent their missions' success. You can sell the prisoner back to its original empire at good value. Behind the scenes they will try to steal your tech and galaxy map (information), making Counter Espionage useful to maintain your tech and information advantage

This is obvious. Not interesting in an "advanced" guide.

A quick way to increase a population's assimilation, especially after a successful invasion, is to force a rebellion and quell it. To do this, set taxes to 100% and make sure to have some troops stationed. Around 1000 strength is often enough. This may be repeated up to 3-4 times for 100% assimilation. Make sure not to have low-HP troops stationed to avoid losses, and the extra troop XP is a handy bonus.

Is an exploit. The game is so easy there is no need to use exploits to defeat the AI. Also the 1000 strength that you are talking about is just incomplete information.
In a scenario there I would use such an an exploit, I would do the following:
1. Invade the planet (attacking (!) strength matters)
2. Put attacking troops and attacking minded generals back on to the invasion fleet
3. Calculate the number of rebel units that will spawn. I do not have exact formula, but it is something like one rebel unit per 250M population plus 1. There are inconsistencies if you have multiple races or lower than 250M population. Multiply the number of units with 65 (i am not 100% sure about the exact number) which is the attacking (!) strength of a rebel militia to get the attacking (!) strength of the rebellion as a whole.
4. Shove enough troops with defensive (!) strength and defensive minded generals onto the planet. You are the defender now (in case you do not know that, or an "advanced" guide does not mention the difference between attacking and defending). The more you have the quicker you will crush the rebellion.
5. Lose a shit ton of population, because the rebellion is working like any other normal attack, they will shoot population and also buildings.

That was chapter 2. Many beginner things here, that desperately needed a correction, and way too much exploits.

[AKicebear]

Is an exploit. The game is so easy there is no need to use exploits to defeat the AI. Also the 1000 strength that you are talking about is just incomplete information.

You may disagree with the design, but the devs have confirmed on these forums that the tax hike -> rebellion -> assimilation is working as intended. Not an exploit.

(I personally have issues with the design, at the very least how it's described)

[Babyhedgehog]

Chapter 3.1.

Prioritize Ion Shields at T3 research. This also helps against the Hive. At least 8 ion defense nullifies the damage and some disable effects of nebulae, making T4 Ion Armor even better for civ ships due to added armor and lower size (faster speed). Inside those nebulae you can find super research, hightech abandoned ships and the best potential colonies. Your Explorers won't normally go there unless they have ion defense (except due to pathfinding bugs - easily fixed using the game editor).

Sure, Nebulas need Ion Shields. Ion Defences are important, especially if you would fight against my ships. Two beginner tips that should not be in an "advanced" guide.

Generally, don't put weapons or significant defenses on civilian ships except the mentioned ion defense. This approach increases their speed, fuel efficiency and decreases cost/maintenance, which benefits your whole empire. They don't contribute in war and can't kill creatures until it no longer matters. If you find them dying in the crossfire over your colonies (enough to disrupt your logistics) and you have excess PEC, add some defenses. If your private economy is booming and you have excess resources, however, you could use civ ships as crude Missile boats for added firepower - just make sure they flee quickly.

The idea of missile boats is actually somewhat interesting. However, the AI has civilian ships with weapons and it does not work for them. Needs probably specific tactical orders. Third thing I learned in this thread.

Freighters benefit from more Cargo Bays. Passenger and Colony Ships benefit from more Passenger Compartments. Always fill your Colony Ships' excess space with them to jumpstart new colony growth. You'll commonly see ships transporting while mostly empty because the demand is less than capacity, but when you're running into deficits they'll need the space

3. "Freighter benefit from more Cargo Bays". Wow. Plants benefit from more water and fertilizer. The laundry benefits from more detergent. I simply can not deny such facts. By the way, you do not put passenger components on colony ships, you put more colony modules on it. The small (boskara) colony ship is like 3 colony modules, 2 crew systems, 1 gerax drive, 3 fission reactors and 1 proton engine. Fill all other white slots with fuel cells and you should have about 150M range. Thats low, but as a human player you can stop it manually on the refuel bases that are on the way to the target. The AI can not do that though, therefore it is an exploit. However the AI gets a massive growth bonus on harder difficulty settings, so with the exploit you are on equal footage with them.

Small ships are often better due to larger hulls being disproportionately expensive, which is probably unintended. Don't rush (or even use) newer ship types as they're less cost-efficient. A swarm of Frigates with good technology will destroy anything you point them at. Keep in mind that the Maximum Size stat is misleading, as the ship's hull size is deducted from it.
a. Small Constructors remain excellent because the Medium version doesn't get faster construction nor does it need more cargo space. For example, my T4 Large Mining Stations (the largest built by my Constructors) require 705 total cargo space and one Cargo Bay has 1400 capacity. More Small Constructors will build far more rapidly, cheaply and with less fuel costs than a few Mediums.
b. Small Explorers are best to field large numbers.
c. Medium Freighters have their uses in bulk resource transfer (which the AI prioritizes them for), but otherwise Small Freighters are best.
d. Civ ships can be upgraded to larger types if you have excess resources, to deliberately overshoot your empire's demand. A nice trick for Miners and Passenger Ships, which you can't have too many of.
e. Basic Frigates are the best combat ships over Escorts due to the extra defensive slot.
f. Quameno Fleet/Heavy Frigates get a fourth defense slot and 25 extra component space (40 max size yet +15 hull size) but their cost increases by ~38%. Not worth it unless using expensive components like Gravs or later tech. That logic applies to heavier ships as well.
g. You can even build a good command Frigate using speed-tanking: Add a Beam PD for the weapon requirement, then maximum speed Engines, Fleet Countermeasures/Targeting, Hyperdeny and defenses. Set to Evade. If there's size left over after the necessities, add more PDs. The most economical, passive command ships are Light Cruisers (not later variants), though an active command ship with more weapons can be fun.

I personally think it is intended and i also hope it stays like that. If you compare space navy with real life earth navy, that is just realistic. An aircraft carrier in an aircraft carrier group is not protected by a bunch of battleships, but rather by a bunch of frigates and destroyers. One expensive big ship that does alot, with a lot of cheap protection. Please keep it like that. The AI in Distant Worlds can be modified in the policy files to build more destroyer and frigates then larger ship variants and troop transports. Do that, i did that too. Tone down the number of troop transport massively that the AI builds, if you are editing this file, it is really that horrible. However, like i mentioned in 2.16, the AI does not understand role specific design (the destroyer/frigate will not be designed specifically for the purpose of protecting the carrier). However, you will not get an competitive AI just out of changing those values, it is just slightly better than before.

a. True, medium and large construction ships are pointless.
b. True, medium and large exploration ships are pointless.
c. I do not want to brag about the freighter AI. It is very atrocious. Just have all 3 design available and then just hope that they fill a spaceport with those 500 dyrillium needed in the next 8 years, even though a mining base with 20000 dyrillium is located in the same system as the spaceport.
d. Yes, the small and medium mining and passenger ships get outdated and replaced by the larger ones. At that point those ship types are not worth anything anymore.
e. Why the basic one? Did you mistype? First, this is probably race specific, second I never use a basic design, if I have the improved designs researched and third destroyers are better.
f. Whatever. Race specific stuff should be in the race specific section or in separate race specific guide.
g. A command frigate, sorry, I can not imagine that works. You told us in point 1.13. that you research a tier fully. So, when you have researched fleet targeting and countermeasures and also hyperdeny, you already have improved destroyers unlocked. So you have a command frigate around a bunch of destroyers. That already looks crazy. Then you set the command frigate to evade so it immediately warps out the battle and therefore denies the hyperdeny and the fleet sensors to the rest of the ships that are actually fighting the battle. Good attempt, you got me laughing.

Don't underestimate Resource Scanners. They allow an Explorer to map an entire asteroid field at once instead of surveying the asteroids one-by-one.

True, but a beginner advice.

Energy Collectors (ECs) function when stationary inside a star system. Therefore:
a. On stations, the reactor only needs to cover the static energy cost (because of design requirements) yet ECs should power everything.
b. On ships, ECs should cover the static energy cost, else they consume fuel when idle.

a. You should mention that this only works until something gets a lucky hit onto your reactor/energy collector/fuelcell.
b. Exactly, again something for a beginner guide.

Medical Centers work on Troop Transports. Recreation Centers work on Resorts. Commercial Centers work on Spaceports and Mining Stations. Every colony should have an "attached" Rec/Med center for the happiness bonus, which you could put on a Spaceport. The maintenance savings (Rec) and damage reduction (Med) can also be useful on larger ships/stations. When in doubt if a component is going to be useful, press F1 and check the Galactopedia's Components section.

Let me ask you once: You wrote an advanced guide, why are there so many beginner tips? You are simply not an advanced player if you ignore the ship designer telling you that a medical center make sense on a troop transport.

The "Retreat when" setting is important on ships:
a. Civilian ships should usually be left on the default "when attacked". If set to "enemy nearby", a single hostile can prevent them from docking even when not in danger, which is highly disruptive.
b. Military ships should flee soon enough to prevent losses yet not too soon, to avoid weakening the fleet mid-battle. I recommend "Shields below 20% or Armor below 50%" in most cases. "Never" could theoretically strengthen a fleet if you can easily replace its losses, though in that case you should build a larger fleet instead.

a. Who cares about the civilian ships in a battle? Oh yes, the missile boat guy.
b. Yes, these are the ones that make most sense, and you also pointed out correctly why. Defence fleets (with proper engagement range setting) operate close to your spaceports or construction ships, therefore they can easily be repaired or replaced, so "Never" is the correct setting. Also you rather lose a ship or a small fleet than a planet or an important spaceport. For fleets that occupy enemy systems it is mostly "Shields below 20 ...". Some minor fleets can be set to "Shields below 50 ...", troop transport for example. I manually warp the troops into system, if the enemy resistance is already broken. So the setting does not matter anymore except some surprise is happening and I am occupied with watching something else in a different part of the galaxy, and in that case I want them to flee a little bit quicker.

High speed Hyperdrives are best due to shorter travel time, meaning faster empire progress and better fleet intercept times. Perhaps other options will become useful in future patches. Short jump delay Hyperdrives can in theory be useful on military vessels to reduce losses (quick fleeing) but are still inferior overall - you're better off setting your ships to flee sooner.

Absolut wrong! The Equinox drives are the worst, actually. They only give an advantage over Kaldos over medium and long distances, those distances you want to avoid in a war as much as possible. Quick reaction time is essential for defensive fleets, so position them close to enemy threats and use Kaldos drives here. Occupying fleets want to have a fuel efficient Calista drive, because you need the fuel for fighting and staying inside an enemy system, not for just getting there. Similar thoughts apply to civilian ships, explorers and so on. In the end I can only imagine using an Equinox drive if I ever have to consistently (!) warp my fleets from one border of my empire to the other. However, somehow my economy is always so amazing, that I can afford fleets for each border instead of one warping back and forth.

Long Range Scanners (LRS) dramatically improve your fleets' ability to intercept threats. These work well on Spaceports, Monitoring Stations and fleet command ships but can be equipped on cheap Explorers (they'll need a Resource Scanner due to design requirements).
a. I recommend making a separate design named "Explorer [LRS]" for easier identification, stripped to the bare bones minimum (just one T1 engine) with sufficient ECs. Make sure that your regular Explorers don't retrofit to this design, for example by re-saving the regular design a day later (default retrofitting is "Latest"). Set the LRS design retrofit to "None" until you upgrade it, keeping the retrofit path tight, in case you forget to...
b. Set LRS Explorers to manual while they're being constructed, else you'll have to sift through the entire Explorer list to find them. You can also hotkey them with Ctrl + (number) as a reminder.
c. Position these so they cover all of your occupied systems, in star systems (for the ECs). Once in place you can easily find them by filtering the Explorer tab for idle ships. Useful as you'll need to retrofit the LRS components manually.
d. Once you've explored the entire galaxy, only retire the automated Explorers.

No, do not put a long range sensor on your spaceports, that is wasted potential for what a spaceport should do. Also you will overlap a lot with those arrays. A good grid of monitoring bases around your empire is just better. Hopefully somebody in the future tells the AI to build a proper monitoring grid, instead of whatever they try to achieve.

Regular Explorers can be set to "Retreat when: Enemy at same location". This lets you stop worrying about constant notifications of Explorers being attacked by creatures.

Beginner advice.

One Assault Pod can deliver one troop squad during invasion. A base troop compartment (capacity 10.000) holds two base infantry squads (size 5000) and thus needs two Pods. The ratios change as you start upgrading the components and unlock new squad types.

Yes and very important. Figuring out the number of assault pods needed in comparison to troop compartments is essential for efficient invading troop transports. It is sad though, that nobody taught the AI this detail. Still, this needs to be in a beginner guide.

A capture fleet uses Assault Pods to steal enemy ships' technology and some of their build costs (through retiring) or gain ships for your own use - an easily overlooked aspect of the game. Early on this can turn an angry pirate faction into a lucrative opportunity, quickly advancing your tech. It's important to learn how many Pods to send at a ship, never all Pods in your fleet - I managed to capture a 25k strength Hive fleet with an 11k strength T3 Blaster fleet with this way (using 40 Fleet Frigates), through micromanagement.

That a fleet dedicated to automatic capturing is going to shove all boarding parties onto one ship instead of splitting up boarding parties between multiple ships if you reach a specific, lets call it, "overwhelming" number, is just another AI quirk. Needs improvement by developers.

Defense fleets will intercept an inbound threat if detected. Attack fleets will select empire targets during war. Both can engage "dangerous locations".
a. Defense fleets are largely optional as they'll spend a lot of time idling. Attack fleets may see more use, at the cost of more micromanagement. A combination of both is most "comfortable", if you can afford it. Keep in mind that defense fleets can also be used as attack fleets, and vice-versa, by changing their AI settings (clearly shown in the fleet overview).
b. Always make the fleets large enough to crush their targets with minimal losses.
c. For defense fleets, good (overlapping) fleet coverage is important, which is why many smaller Defense fleets are superior to a few oversized ones. Just watch out for excessive losses, and keep in mind that response times need to be quick (based on Hyperdrives used). A 50M engagement range works well early on and can be increased later.

a. If you have StarTrek mindset, yes, then you create a "Starfleet" full of jack-of-all-trades ships, and everytime some threat is happening, you tell every ship in the vicinity to gobble up onto the threat. Did not work against the Dominion and the Borg. Even the StarFleet was forced to build dedicated warships at some point in, i dont know 2374, or so. It is similar here, the AI builds jack-of-all-trades ships, and they do not work.
Also, bad people in strategy games always think, that a unit doing nothing but sitting around, lets call it, "defending", is bad. It is not. Those people simply can not imagine how valuable it is to not be an easy target and force aggressors to think about different targets. For example, nobody told real life Denmark, that capitulating 4 hours after the war declaration, because you simply dont have any defenses, and therefore you can be easily overrun, is a tiny bit atrocious. Now, on the other side, you also do not want your defenses to be super costly, so do not overbuild them, that does not work either. If you judge the efficiency of the Roman Limes or the Chinese Wall, you will get that this idea does not work either. So there must some sort of middle ground here, and that also happens in DW2.
Now the problem is, the AI is very bad at creating a fleet dedicated to a specific role. As soon as the player is giving fleets dedicated roles (defend, bombard, capture, destroy, invade and so on), and designs ships with dedicated roles (tank, damage dealer, crowd control, and so on), you are already winning the game. And you are winning it so hard, that difficulty does not matter anymore.
b. No, sometimes forcing the enemy to retreat is enough, and that can be achieved way easier. Also to crush a target you only need better weapon loadout than the AI, not necessarily more ships.
c. No, build small system defence fleets, with system engagement range, that, you know, defend systems. Only for the border systems. And then larger regional defence fleets with actual engagement range close, but behind the immediate border. Find out what is the major attacking target of AI, (they will always shove almost everything into one system, the AI can not imagine what a "frontline" or a "border" actually is) and then simply relocate the regional fleets by changing their homebase to a base or planet in that specific system. The AIs strategic mindset is like a 17th century 30-Year-War "the more I concentrate, the more I can plunder". We call it the "stack of doom" in modern game strategy. Now you are better. Use your attacking fleets to immediately attack systems that are far away from all the fleets, that the AI shoved into your system, bombard their large planets and especially their homeplanet down, or invade them, and you have won the war. You can also give up the system that the AI is attacking, if your defenses are actually overwhelmed. Just delay the stack of doom strategy long enough until their economy does not exist anymore. Good defenses let you win almost every war in DW2.

Colony Ships can be used for fast, manual migration, unlike Passenger Ships. This lets you jumpstart new colony growth, though the high price of Colony Ships is a mitigating factor.

Exploit, but a funny one. I used to do that too. Makes the game too easy, though.

The Large Mining Engine radius only works when built on an asteroid, not a planet or moon. Check for the white circle to see if the mining radius is active.

Beginner advice.

Chapter 3.2.

Maintenance per year is roughly 1/25th of the ship's initial cost. That's why avoiding losses is important. As a result, fleets should overmatch their targets quite severely. Perhaps counterintuitively, rushing the enemy can reduce losses through faster killing - standoff tactics aren't necessarily safer unless they counter the enemy's tactics.

Wrong, fleets do not need to overmatch their targets, the stack-of-doom mindset is mostly garbage. Look at 3.1.14c, or ask Napoleon about his russian "adventure", if you need an explanation what the problem with that mindset is. (Small Hint: Destroy the supply lines of the stack-of-doom)
"Perhaps counterintuitively, rushing the enemy can reduce losses through faster killing." That is only counterintuitive for bad strategy game players. What happens is the following: "Oh, i get physical damage, let us build a physical armor." "Oh, now i have a physical armor, but enemy changed to fire damage, let es build a fire armor then." "Oh, now the enemy has lightning damage, let us build a lightning armor". And so on. Me: "Well now you have 3 armors, can only wear one at a time, and you still have your level 1 weapon, let us finish this shit show". Bad players always think in counters first, not in synergies, or enemy weaknesses. You can easily crush their argumentation with: "If I build a better weapon, I do more damage, therefore I kill faster, therefore I do not receive as much damage from you, therefore I do not need an armor at all". Actually, it is more complicated than that, but I hope you guys got the point. So, long story short, rushing targets is a valid strategy as is every other strategy and is not counterintuitive to any player, that actually has thought about it for more than a minute.

Armor mixed with shields is better than full shield spam, to handle shield penetrations and allow damaged ships to flee without taking internal damage. Armor/shield balance is nuanced due to the commonality of shield bypass weapons, the size-to-hitpoint advantage of shields plus lower size/energy requirement of armor. Some enemies favor one over the other. In defensive slot numbers, 40% Shields/60% Armor works well. Hightech damage control makes armor more potent than it is at lower tiers, but full armor + repair spam isn't competitive.

You forgot to mention the armor bypass and the ion defence in your list. Complicated topic, but could be dealt with an UI that lets us and the AI create specific designs for each bordering empire, meaning if an AI shares a border with my boskara-ion-melee-design, they would build more ion defence armor on the ships guarding/attacking that border, while on the other border with a, lets say, quameno-missile-only empire the AI would focus on shield recharge speed. This "dream" is however so far away from the reality of the game, that you can simply ignore finetuning this part. The AI can not either, so it does not matter that much.

The most important shield stats are recharge and resist. Shield amount comes after.

Nope, it depends on the situation. There is no general "this is better" here.

Damage Control (DC) applies only to hull, not armor or shields.

What? Oh, you mean the damage reduction portion of the damage control component. Please, if you want to write a guide, use correct and precise statements.

Targeting and countermeasures determine an attack's chance to hit, which applies to all weapons. They effectively function as damage modifiers and are extremely important, more so than sheer weapon numbers. Note that stationary targets are easy to hit regardless of their countermeasures.

Yeah, but remember the part about role specific design. Targeting is only interesting on ships that actually have a significant amount of damaging weapons. And you probably can also imagine, that countermeasures are only interesting on ships that have a shit ton of countermeasure weapons.

Fighters are a unique ship type housed in Fighter Bays. They have good DPS and a severe counter in the form of PDs. Bays can't be filled with one type of fighter so they always need both an Interceptor and Bomber design to be available. Their Reactor has fuel, so don't add Fuel Cells unless you think they're needed! Don't forget to set their tactics, like Cautious used with Missiles or Aggressive with Blasters. When designing a ship, Fighter Bays may not be a better choice than more/larger weapons - it depends on whether the target has PDs. The Hive may give the impression that Fighters are extremely overpowered due to their Carrier tactics, but that's misleading - it's actually their technological advantage that is overpowered and their non-Fighter ships use bad designs.

Fighters are cool. My favorite mod from Distant Worlds Universe was the mod that integrated this idea. But again you need to think about what role your fighters fill out. They can also do different stuff than just replace your point defence.

Fuel Tankers reduce the need for Fuel Cells on roaming fleets but are annoying to use: Their mining rate is low, they cannot refuel themselves (so you need 2 per fleet) and they must be left on Automatic to do their job. The Remote Fuel Transfer range doesn't work as advertised, so speed and numbers are important for quick refueling (which is why Small Fuel Tankers are best). Tankers can be ignored in smaller galaxies if you prefer.

Fuel Tankers are idiotic. If I would ever need fuel for a longer siege, I would do the following:
1. Find an enemy caslon base with high mining rate close to the target region that I want to occupy, invade or whatever.
2. Send a dedicated capture fleet to that base and take it. Send a manual construction ship and repair the base immediately.
3. Send a dedicated defend fleet with the construction ship, set the homebase of the fleet to that caslon base, and set the engagement range to nearby, so it actually only defends this base.
4. Let your occupying fleets refuel there.
Now, you could also use a manual construction ship to build a caslon mining base in the enemy's territory, once a war was declared, instead of point 1 and 2. Also works. Whatever you do, you get the idea, that fuel ships were never needed in this game. They are really really really idiotic.
But last game, I actually build my first fuel tanker. For refuelling a system defence fleet in a far away system, because my civilian economy needed 30 years to send some caslon to that new colony.

Different component types within a category often don't stack, like Reactive Armor/Shield Resist (RA/SR) or Hyperdrives. The worst stats between them then determine the ship's overall stats, as seen in the summary. Different categories can stack, like targeting/countermeasures (including from Thrusters and Vector Engines), Capacitors (which enhance shields from a general slot) and ion defense. There are exceptions, like shield recharge always stacking, so check the summary to make sure.

Yes, important.

Very Tight formation is best in the vast majority of cases (often even if the enemy uses Area weapons). This lets a fleet focus fire and concentrate PD coverage.

Very tight formation does not work with high amount of ships, you do not want your ships to "crash" into each other and than doing the wibbly-wobbly-thingy, that they also do when they accidentally come too close to a planet. Pathfinding issue, could be easily solved. The game also does not think of a formation like a human would actually do, imagine something like Age of Empires 2 or a basic roleplaying strategy Tank-in-the-front-DD-and-Healer-in-the-back. No, that would be to hard to program. Imagine a game that occupies 25 GB disk space in 2024 on 64 GB RAM and 8 core 16 threads 3.5 GHz CPU beaten by original Age of Empires 2 (500 MB disk space from 1999 with single core processor of 366Mhz and 64 MB of RAM. Yeah, imagine that. I know, I sound harsh to the developers here, but really, that is so basic. Reminds me, that I actually have the Age of Empires 2 compact disk (!) still in the shelf next to my computer.

There are three types of creatures: Gravilexes, which are weak laser bugs, Ardilus which have PD capability and Vordikar, by far the strongest, which damage hull directly. Only the latter ever gave me trouble but are safely dispatched using fighters, Beams or L Missiles (with micromanagement). In all other cases you may take losses when facing a Vordikar swarm.

Eliminate them with far away weapons, for example missiles. And proper retreat settings.

If you've followed my general and strategy tips, the Hive will be the first serious and unavoidable threat you'll face. Ion cannons will be useless against Hive Carriers due to ion defense but PDs spam will annihilate their fighters, plus you can capture them (which also prevents fleeing). Catching them with a fleet can be difficult, made easier with good LRS coverage. The Hive will likely have superior technology, so expect high RA/SR and heavy shielding. Ideally, use Blasters with Assault Pods and micromanage the engagement (avoid S Beams, Fast/Conc Missiles and S/M Railguns). Another option is to ignore them, as they can't conquer colonies and will eventually move on to attack your neighbors.

Endgame threats are a lazy mechanic for lazy developers or understaffed development teams. Let me clarify:
If you would have a good AI, then the human player would face constant competition and constant challenge throughout the game until he wins or loses. The human player would never need an additional artificial endgame challenge.
But normally what happens, because of dumb and lazy AI programming, is, that we eventually surpasses the AI in the midgame, when the starting AI boni do not matter that much any more. That is something that happens somehow in every 4X game. We are so used to surpassing the dumb AI in strategy games that neither players nor developers actually question such an endgame threat mechanic.
Thank god, that the Civ5-VoxPopuli modding community has shown, that is possible to get a smarter than normal 4X-strategy-game-AI, otherwise I would probably agree to the general point of view.
Long story short, I deactivate all those mechanics until we will get better AI. And yes it is possible to program that.

[Babyhedgehog]

Chapter 4.1:

This chapter is so insane, it is really hard for me to read it again. But here we go.

tl;dr: Blitz tactics tend to win battles. That means fast ships set to Aggressive, with Blaster or Beam spam (to prevent wasted shots), a Long Range Tractor for range dictation and one Beam PD for defense, plus one Assault Pod for capturing. The best hardpoints for blitz are Boskaran, though Ackdarian, Dhayut and Quameno Frigates are even better - just not their later ships.
Besides blitz, standoff tactics are a strong choice which works great on species with bad hardpoints, including Boskarans. Standoff ships should be set to Cautious and fitted with Missiles and/or fighters. Ackdarian and Teekan Frigate carriers are excellent against targets without PDs, including most creatures. Blitz ships able to close the distance will defeat standoff ships. In reality weapons are more nuanced, however, detailed further down.

You probably do not know what "blitz" in a strategy or tactic sense actually means. Use some different word like "melee" or "brawl", for what you describe here. Also using assault pods without ion weapons is just hilariously inefficient. You only need to kill the shields (and prevent the ship from fleeing and shooting), so maybe using the weapon, that excels at that, would be rather interesting. Standoff ships do not necessarily need cautious state, neutral can also work if their retreat setting and weapon loadout is set accordingly. The game however would really benefit, if somebody actually integrate real life naval strategy concepts. Imagine a setting named "fleet combat style" and it has "Brawl" (ancient era trireme stuff), "Poke and Retreat" (submarine wolfpack stuff), "Crossing the T" (18th century admiral nelson stuff) , "Far way Standoff" (modern naval warfare stuff) and so on. Would blow my mind if we ever get to that point.

The golden rule for weapon combinations is to keep optimal range equal between them and build the ship to stay at that optimal range using the ship's AI settings. Blitz ships should be set to Aggressive and standoff ships to Cautious, against all targets. Aggressive ships face their target while Cautious ships rarely do - the AI turns for movement, not weapon angle. Tractor Beams push or pull the enemy based on the range which the ship is trying to achieve. Long Range Tractors are very good on blitz ships, even when replacing a weapon.

Calling this a golden rule is overexaggerated. Yes, you want weapons that fit your aggressive, neutral or cautious setting. There are however more important "rules" though.

DPS/Size (DPSS) is far more important than DPS, except when lacking weapon slots (typically on "Fast" ship variants). DPSS is DPS divided by Size. This sadly isn't listed in-game so you'll need to calculate it yourself, giving you the best point of comparison, though it still won't include range, falloff, RA/SR or chance-to-hit calculations. I've included DPSS below for a quick overview.

That actually made me giggle for the last 5 weeks. DPS/size, lol. Is this some form of american documentary show, that goes something like: "Guys, we multiplied the number of teeth with the tail length of its standard prey and divided it by the time needed to fully eat this prey, and now we have the exact ranking of the most dangerous predators on planet earth!" "First, lets have an advertisement break!" I can not stop laughing at your ranking. The focus on DPS that players and developers do in games is such a limitless source of fun for me. Please never stop with that. Sucks though, you will never be a good strategy game player ever, if you fixate your strategy on DPS first. I could clarify that, but that would need at least a half hour video with a lot of boring math. I do not even own a youtube account.

Energy/Damage (ED) is another important yet unlisted stat. ED is calculated as energy per shot divided by damage per shot. To be clear, a shot which costs 1 energy and does 2 damage has 0.5 ED, meaning energy cost per damage dealt.

Oh yeah, please double down on the ranking with stupid stats thing. I get tears from laughing. This is so fucking funny.

Note that the DPS numbers shown in-game include accuracy calculations! So, 5 raw DPS combined with 88% accuracy becomes 5 * 0.88 = 4.4 DPS shown. This is especially important when looking at inaccurate weapons' stats.

Sure, if you want to, I win the game and most of the fleet battles without ever looking at the DPS stat, but sure do as you please.

Large variants of a weapon usually have longer range yet worse DPSS. L Blasters get even better DPSS instead, unlocked at T6. These outperform even Boskaran Blasters.

Yes, theoretically it would be a choice between more initial damage to surpass a high damage threshold (large firestorm torpedoes) or choosing higher frequency that can only surpass a lower threshold but saves some size (medium firestorm torpedoes). I am not testing that, because I do not need it to win at this game. So feel free to do it yourself. I just pick whatever fits still into my ship/base, in this case usually the medium version.

Seeking weapons (and Fighter Bays) ignore firing angles, including Missile PDs. Perfect for side and rear hardpoints, especially those on stations or ships set to Cautious.

Beginner advice. Sure.

Because of hardpoint limitations, including those on stations, you'll want at least one seeker weapon type. Ships and stations will fire at multiple targets if their fire angles can't hit the main target, hence side- or rear-facing direct fire weapons can work when surrounded, but otherwise this should be avoided; especially since it prevents focused fire.

Putting seeking weapons in the 90° slots is definitely a beginner advice.

Turn rate is useful on direct fire designs, especially Boskarans, partly because turn-rate improving engines provide a countermeasures bonus and partly because this speeds up retargeting. The popular advice "always go for max-speed engine spam" works well, but it's sometimes better to add turn rate when you've got some size left over. Unfortunately, vector thrust is currently weak compared to ships' base turn rate.

Turn rate is useful for "brawl" low range combat styles. Fix the vector engine bug in the components.xml file: On all 3 levels the "Maneuvering Thrust" for Fighters (210 on level 1) should be swapped with the one for normal ships (30 on level 1). Than this component actually makes sense. Fixing this helps the AIs turn rate a lot.

Ships with a movement order will still fire if a target is in range, which helps avoid getting surrounded, especially when using Missiles. Direct-fire weapons have a reduced firing angle when doing this.

What? A ship weapon always fires if a ship is inside the range of the weapon and inside the angle of the weapon slot, it is mounted to. That is what I thought. If movement actually narrows or widens the firing angle of a weapon slot that would really surprise me. That would also be the fourth thing that I learned from your guide.

Chapter 4.2 and Chapter 4.3:

A lot of nonsense here that does not matter, I told you my opinion about this above.

Chapter 4.4:

1. Point Defenses are anti-seeker and anti-fighter weapons, which will attack normal targets when no intercept target is available. They attack seeking projectiles (Torpedo/Area/Missile), reducing their damage by the intercept damage or apply intercept damage to a fighter.
Beam PDs are generally the best direct fire option due to their DPSS, range (coverage), near-hitscan speed and high accuracy, but at a very high energy cost.
Ion PDs are very close-range, can be mounted on fighters and disable ships/fighters (though not Hyperdrives or Sensors), but they can't handle even minor ion defense. Powerful against fighters due to low ion defense, especially the final tier Ion PD.
Railgun PDs are powerful against fighters due to their shield bypass.
2. To visualize PD coverage and speed, consider three spread-out ships intercepting a seeker. If Beam PDs, two are in range and can hit. If short-range PDs, two are in range but only one can hit in time. If Missile PDs, all three are in range but only one can hit in time. That's why Beam PDs are currently superior if you've some energy and a wide hardpoint to spare.
3. Point Shields are anti-weapon weapons. They "attack" projectiles and beams, which reduces their damage by the intercept damage, but are easily overwhelmed by simultaneous attacks.

Beam PDs are not an overall best. Bullshit, It depends primarily on your fleet combat style and the enemy combat style, as well as other stuff secondary. It sounds like somebody made a simplified test with one point defense ship fighting one enemy weapon ship and than made a statistic how long the point defence ship survived depending on the point defence weapon chosen. That is not a realistic scenario too judge such things. You also forgot the missile point defence weapon in your comparison.

Chapter 4 is by far your worst chapter. A complete overhaul would not be enough. It actually should be deleted immediately out of everybodys mind and out of internet.

Chapter 5:

Troops can be hired from any species in your empire, but you'll want to know which to recruit troops from. The Mortalen are ideal. For colony defense, the native planet type bonus can favor non-mortalen options. Cloning your best veteran squad is usually even better, which often ends up being Mortalen.

You do not need that much troops actually, if you invest your money into fleets and a monitoring grid. Good defence fleets can kill invasion fleets before the AI can use their assault pods. That is something that the AI is not aware of. No need to invest brain cells here. Mortalen as primary infantry (!) choice is correct though.

Species-specific tech can be stolen via espionage. A good reason to have at least one of each species in your galaxy. The Galactopedia sadly lists the names of species' components but not the names of relevant research, which makes choosing espionage targets (for species tech) guesswork, though I added the research names for the most important. I recommend making a savegame for each species to check their tech tree directly, or using the game editor to switch to another empire - still a hassle but at least you'll be certain. It's possible for AI empires to gain species tech from others. I evaluate species tech against the regular option when first unlocked, though higher tier regular options can be quite different.

I made a text document with all the names, too.

Though military species can be at war more often without weariness, economical and technological species tend to win those wars. Maintenance savings aren't as important as happiness and corruption reduction for fielding large fleets.

No, that depends to much on random galaxy generation things. In almost every game I played the hardest opponent got some sort of a lucky start (loros fruit on their home planet and a second high quality planet to colonize in the home system, that was my favourite opponent). The race and its boni do not matter so much. Also, this is not a specializing in one category game. You do everything (war, economy, technology, ...), you optimize everything as best as you can and then you win (or lose). This is an example of a really good strategy game setting or mindset. Not some of those roleplaying-strategy-games (this is how I call them), that let you win by hardcore specialization in one aspect (Civ with its science Victory comes to my mind).

Different species have different hardpoints and firing arcs on their designs. Front-facing hardpoints favor blitz, while side- and rear-facing hardpoints favor seekers.

No, depends on many other stuff, like your preferred combat settings, the unique tech available to you, ... .

"Isolationist" means that there are debuffs for colonizing and/or diplomacy. However, you're forced to engage in colonization and diplomacy unless you're roleplaying, as isolationism isn't viable (more species and better diplomacy = easier colonization, better economy, less undesired wars, better troops etc.)

Yes, thank god this not some kind of 4-city-tradition-into-rationalism game, that even mediocre, but somehow entertaining, youtubers could beat on highest difficulty. However it has so many other AI "quirks", that it kinda reaches unmodded Civ5/EU4/Stellaris easily.

"Best option for (biome) colonies" means that you'll always want this species on this colony type, if available. A handy reference list.
I don't have sufficient information on the species' story events, which can be important.
Choosing a species based on aesthetics is perfectly reasonable and should be the deciding factor if you're in doubt.

Yeah, whatever.

About the specific races: You need to expand in details:
Example 1: The ackdarian AI policy file says they want to do efficient drives and engines, which makes some sense considering you need energy left over for fighter bays. But why do they prefer the energy intensive high recharge shields then? Another example of bad AI design.
Example 2: Mortalen are the species with more engine slots on ships so you can outmaneuver everybody in close combat and pursue every fleeing ship (with some hyperdeny). The unique torpedo is obviously a seeking weapon and therefore does not care about your maneuvering at all.

[Nightskies]

Sheesh, that's a lot of spite, and though claiming the guide is dumb on many points, many of the criticisms are incorrect. The root problem of much of it is along the lines of 'in this way that I use things, your advice isn't good'. That doesn't invalidate the generally good advice at all. For example:

"Beam PDs are not an overall best. Bullshit, It depends primarily on your fleet combat style and the enemy combat style, as well as other stuff secondary."

It has high accuracy.
It has high range.
It has good damage output.
It is effective against seeking and fighters.
It is almost the smallest and most affordable PD system.
It doesn't require much research.

Its so effective overall, that its almost a question of "why use anything else?" Of course, the other PD is better in certain situations, which I myself explain earlier in this thread in the case of Railgun PD. However, using situational evidence as a reason to rebuke general advice is... Nonsense.

The guide is already lengthy, it doesn't need to go to explain what is best for every strategy for every situation for every race. And even if it did, what would be left for the player to determine?

Then there's simply incorrect criticism, things like "Then you set the command frigate to evade so it immediately warps out the battle and therefore denies the hyperdeny and the fleet sensors to the rest of the ships that are actually fighting the battle. Good attempt, you got me laughing."

You misunderstand what Evade does. The advice is sound.

Then there's all the "Beginner advice" bits. You might be surprised at what people don't know. (glances up one line)

[USSAmerica]

So I waited for sometime now, because I thought somebody would actually criticize this "advanced" "guide". But nobody did, so here I am:

Let me get this straight. You created a "new" (duplicate) account on the forums for the specific purpose of anonymously criticizing a long post that someone else spent a lot of time and effort to create. They offered their advice and suggestions to the community freely, with no demands that anyone follow it or play in that manner. Then you had such a need to vent your frustration and bile that you created a new account just to do it. Why not spew your bile using your existing account? Embarrassed by your own behavior much?

What a classic example of someone taking advantage of the internet to behave in a manner that would never be acceptable in any other setting.

[Babyhedgehog]

Sheesh, that's a lot of spite, and though claiming the guide is dumb on many points, many of the criticisms are incorrect. The root problem of much of it is along the lines of 'in this way that I use things, your advice isn't good'. That doesn't invalidate the generally good advice at al

Let me get this straight. You created a "new" (duplicate) account on the forums for the specific purpose of anonymously criticizing a long post that someone else spent a lot of time and effort to create. They offered their advice and suggestions to the community freely, with no demands that anyone follow it or play in that manner. Then you had such a need to vent your frustration and bile that you created a new account just to do it. Why not spew your bile using your existing account? Embarrassed by your own behaviour much?

What a classic example of someone taking advantage of the internet to behave in a manner that would never be acceptable in any other setting.

1. I was not frustrated when I wrote those posts. The tone that you interpret into my post is the wrong one. I also did not create a 2nd account for that.
2. I probably invested more time criticizing this post, than he actually invested time in making it.
3. At max. 20% of the things are entirely correct and therefore good advice. Most of the things are either wrong, incomplete or an exploit. Leaving bad advice in the internet unchallenged is one the biggest problems that we have in modern society. As I stated, I did not want to be the bad guy here, that is the reason why I waited 5 weeks in the hope of the community actually challenging it together. But nobody else did, instead you guys even applauded this guide.

It has high accuracy.
It has high range.
It has good damage output.
It is effective against seeking and fighters.
It is almost the smallest and most affordable PD system.
It doesn't require much research.

Again an example of bad advice:

Beam PD has high accuracy: True.
Beam PD has high range: The Sentinel PD has about 33% worse range than the interceptor missile. The Guardian Grid gets better, but on lvl 2 (!) it is still about 20% worse than the aegis missile, which is one tech column earlier.
Beam PD has good damage output: The ion pd has way more. Beam is in the middle of the pack until you get to the guardian grid, and than its still worse than the ion, which does not require a tech in column 8 and a tech in column 9.
Beam PD is effective against seeking and fighters: Needs to proven, which you do not.
Beam PD is almost the smallest pd: Yeah, the second thing that is true and does not need correction.
Beam PD is affordable: If your maintenance matters so much, than fix your economy first. Also, I loaded my last game with almost everything researched, and the guardian beam pd lvl 1 had 460 build cost with 23 maintenance, in comparison to ion rapid array 374/19, aegis battery 344/17 and terminator autocannon 378/19. Lol.
Beam PD does not require much research: The whole tree requires 6 techs, does not matter whether you take the blaster-into-beam pd route or the only-beam route, the same as missiles or point shields, while ion pd takes only 5 techs and kinetic pd needs 7 techs. It is definitely in the middle of the pack. Also it is the only pd that has a tech in the 9th column, meaning it is super expensive in tech cost.

I have the suspicion, that you play with XL mod, that probably alters weapon techs massively. Otherwise I can not imagine how you come to your conclusions.

(that was written with the version 1.2.0.8, in case somebody reads this years later)

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Have to admit, though, that you have a strange definition of an exploit. As I understand it, exploit is not something that "AI does not do", it's using legitimate game mechanics to achieve unintended results. So raiding a planet right before the invasion (with the purpose of avoiding militia spawn and minimizing potential losses) - is an exploit; trading contact information - is not. Going by "AI does not/can not do it" makes playing the game an exploit (since AI clearly does not do that). Thus a complete edition of any kind of guide should only concern itself with how to turn on "rule in absence", lest it turns into a list of exploits.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Is an exploit. The game is so easy there is no need to use exploits to defeat the AI. Also the 1000 strength that you are talking about is just incomplete information.

You may disagree with the design, but the devs have confirmed on these forums that the tax hike -> rebellion -> assimilation is working as intended. Not an exploit.

(I personally have issues with the design, at the very least how it's described)

It is an exploit if they AI does not use it.. .there are many things in the game that are intended but still exploits as the AI are simply not able to even come close to using them and it make the game way too easy.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Have to admit, though, that you have a strange definition of an exploit. As I understand it, exploit is not something that "AI does not do", it's using legitimate game mechanics to achieve unintended results. So raiding a planet right before the invasion (with the purpose of avoiding militia spawn and minimizing potential losses) - is an exploit; trading contact information - is not. Going by "AI does not/can not do it" makes playing the game an exploit (since AI clearly does not do that). Thus a complete edition of any kind of guide should only concern itself with how to turn on "rule in absence", lest it turns into a list of exploits.

That is your opinion clearly. But if you want true challange in any sense of the word there are things you simply should not do as it is a clear exploit over the AI and the AI are the only opponent in the game. Call it roleplay or just adjusting your playstyle to match a good challanging standard.

Pointing out which part of the game the AI can't use actually is important so the player can make an informed decision if they want to gain that advantege or not.

It is up to you if you want the challanage or just want to sleepwalk through every game...

To be honest I would agree to allot of the criticism and it clearly is a different point of view. And he clearly point out some facts that was wrong. The guide are better viewed as a beginner guide in my point of view and not directly bad in any way if some incorrect statements are changed.

We should help each other as much as possible and not compete who writes the better guide or have the best strategies or claim that someone that roleplay is not playing the game properly. There are no right way to play the game. You are allowed to use whtever game exploits there is for you to explore.

[Nightskies]

First, I do not play XL, though have tried it. Damn baseless invalidation attempts...

Beam PD has high range: Yes. While the interceptor is longer ranged, it still remains considerably longer ranged than the other options. And don't forget that the Interceptor PD is rather weak against seeking.

Beam PD has good damage output: Don't forget the impact of damage falloff. Even with the slightly unbalanced comparison of the Sentinel v2 vs the Ion Pulse Blaster v2, the Sentinel gets 28.53 DPS vs fighter/seeking at 850 range (the Ion's max), while the Ion gets 18.03 DPS. (edit: I didn't properly account for accuracy and based it on the *incorrectly calculated* in-game intercept DPS- it assumes volley fire using intercept RoF, which they do *not* do. Going off intercept damage per shot and intercept RoF instead and properly adjusting for intercept accuracy and applying falloff at 850 range... Sentinel DPS: 6.1; Ion Pulse DPS: 4.5) There should be no question which system will deliver more effective damage in the bigger picture- though the Ion PD has that big advantage against fighters (disable ability) that more than makes up for it.

Beam PD is effective against seeking and fighters: I am a little miffed that this is even being questioned by someone looking at the numbers. With "that specific example case" with Scott's tests with PD, that alone is already proof enough- the Sentinel literally outperforms everything else both in anti-fighter and seeking in that case. AND EVEN IF DISREGARDING THAT...

The stats themselves should speak strongly enough about its application against fighters and seeking. It does the same damage against both. Still, its effectiveness against both can be easily demonstrated by fully equipping the troop transports of an invasion fleet with Beam PD. They will handle a respectable amount of fighters and seeking from stations well enough where other systems may struggle against one. Note that the blaster and ion PD are also general purpose.

If you're finding that Beam PD isn't effective against fighters, that's probably a niche case (like how ion-equipped escorts are better than frigates specifically against the Teekan before ion armor is researched). Possible reasons why they aren't working for you:
Not enough PD/too many fighters (the railgun PD excels at this situation)
Poor anti-fighter PD weapon arcs (frontal beam PD is not preferable against fighters)
Overloaded processor (PD fires less assertively when the game is sluggish, missile PD handles this the best)

Situational cases where the beam PD isn't cutting it won't prove anything anyway- as I said before, your approach to invalidating the advice through 'well it wasn't working best for my strategy' is almost pointless.

Beam PD is affordable: You practically admit that it is more affordable. "I have tons of economy" is a moot argument. If the economy is already so bloated that the comparative cost of components is dismissible, then the whole question of what's more effective in the first place is equally dismissible by virtue of crushing the enemy through sheer numbers with any weapon system.

Beam PD does not require much research: The Guardian PD is a special weapon that should be excluded from the measure. The reason for it: it requires both Blaster and Beam PD researched, unlike the rest of the tree before it. Its like you're selectively looking at the tree in a way to support your argument. Lets look in detail to completely debunk any belief that the Beam PD- specifically the Sentinel- is not ergonomic in research cost.

These technologies are inherently the easiest to research to get in the first place. There are 4 PD techs at Tier 1, with a crash cost of 15k for reference:
Basic Point Defense (Point Defense Cannon)
Defense Missiles (Interceptor Missile)
Accurate Point Defense (Sentinel Multi-Beam Defense)
Rapid Point Defense (Buckler Repeating Blaster)

At Tier 2, Ion Point Defense (Ion Pulse Blaster) comes in at 80k crash cost. The whole Ion PD has three techs, alongside the three of the Buckler and Sentinel, but due to it being a tier later, it requires MUCH more research to acquire.

Missile and Railgun PD both have unbroken tier research requirements along the way, ultimately requiring not only more research to keep up, but also requiring an evolution of the weapon themselves earlier.

This means the Buckler and Sentinel are unrivaled when it comes to minimal research requirements to get and keep them up to date, and both go up to Tier 5 and sit comfortably in their performance in comparable tech tiers.

The Superior Ion Point Defense tech is a remarkable exception, coming in at Tier 6, and only requiring the preceding *two Ion PD techs to get it. Its not even on the same level as the Guardian PD in research demands, and it is, once again, highly valuable in this with its anti-fighter capacity for the cost to get and employ, while also being very effective against seeking.

The Guardian is also a remarkable exception, being *the* ultimate end-game PD. Not only does it have a Tier 8 version, but it also is the only PD with repeatable techs (not counting racial weapons). You get what you pay for, the Guardian is easily the strongest overall.

[Nightskies]

To be honest I would agree to allot of the criticism and it clearly is a different point of view. And he clearly point out some facts that was wrong. The guide are better viewed as a beginner guide in my point of view and not directly bad in any way if some incorrect statements are changed.

As (almost) always, I must agree with Jorgen. It does try to tackle a lot more specifics tips than other guides, and is probably the most condensed collection of tips there is, so I wouldn't protest to the label "advanced guide".

I would like to see more specific strategies and builds, both in fleets and for the empire overall... like the Ion Escorts would have been a great thing to share as a counter to early game Teekans, as specific as it is, it does perform really well at it.


*Oh, I don't know why I didn't agree before. Silence is quiet agreement, I suppose? Missile PD is good too. Like Jorgen is saying Missiles are underappreciated, my focus on Railguns is for the same reason. They both excel against figthers, in different ways, just like Ion do. That T6 Ion PD is just so remarkable, its kind of like the Epsilon Torpedo. Exceptional performance.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

While I mostly agree with the post, just to clarify a couple points:

That is your opinion clearly.

It's the definition that leaves room for "playing the game" between "rule in absence" and "exploiting 4x out of it" (although, one can argue that exploiting is in the genre definition, and thus should be done anyway). AI does not come up with good designs, does not prioritize research... or anything useful, really - unless you're automating everything, you're doing what AI can not. And by automating everything you take gameplay out of the game, turning it into the likes of visual novel. So with "AI can not do it" definition you either watch it unfold, or you're using exploits. I'd rather think that if it's called a game, then there's gameplay somewhere.

if you want true challange in any sense of the word there are things you simply should not do as it is a clear exploit over the AI and the AI are the only opponent in the game. Call it roleplay or just adjusting your playstyle to match a good challanging standard.

Always called it "house rules", and the need of having any not to sleepwalk thorough the game simply points out to atrocious game balancing.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Always called it "house rules", and the need of having any not to sleepwalk thorough the game simply points out to atrocious game balancing.

I agree that house rules are a pretty good term for it as from a pure technical perspective it is allowed to do whatever you like as long as the game support it.

My main point is that it is good to point out what extremely strong actions a player generally should avoid as the AI never usees them to make the game decently challenging without needing to min/max the must glaring holes in the games balance.

One good examle are using multiple mining modules on mining stations. The AI can't design such mining stations and a player can easily tripple the mining rate this way. This completely uppsets the balance of the game and make mining especially luxuries triviel in comparison to the AI which will in extention propel the player economy trhough the rough way faster than neccessary. Simple splution, just don't do it. This is a balance issue in the game that the developers allowed the players to do this... it is akin to play at the easiers level and giving the player tripple mining bonuses. It is up to you if you want to play on easy mode or not.

This is just one thing that you can do of many.

[Babyhedgehog]

Ok, I agree that we both disagree, in our view on point defence weapons.

With "that specific example case" with Scott's tests with PD, that alone is already proof enough

For you, I actually watched the videos of Scott, and they are a bad example, like I suspected earlier in this thread. For example he did a test in the pd-redux-video with 1 human destroyer with a pd weapons on a 360° slot vs 2 pirate ships, which serves only as a proof for a situation that has 1 human destroyer with a pd weapon on a 360° slot vs. 2 pirate ships. It can not serve for a proof in anything else. The reason why a specific field of more complex math is called "chaos theory", is because that there are situation there you can not easily extrapolate the results of such small tests into a larger environment by just doing linear math. For normal people it looks "chaotic". Please, in future, do not use the word "proof", if you do not know what it actually means in a non-linear dynamic environment.
(Actually, it would first need a proper proof, that the Distant Worlds combat simulation is a non-linear dynamic system in large battles, but I am too lazy for that. I kind of suspect it is, with my knowledge from university combined with what I saw in the game).

But, just the weapon angle alone (and therefore the maneuvering rate necessary) invalidates Scott's test to me. Imagine a standard AI ship having to turn with their standard 9° turn rate (lol) before it can countermeasure. Suddenly the missile pd are the best for this ship. Imagine you deactivate a ship before it can even shoot a 2nd volley of all his weapons. Suddenly ion weapons (not ion PD weapons) are the best.
Or imagine playing like the thread opener, constantly sucking millions of bucks out of the private economy, having enough money to counter the AI stacks of doom with even bigger stacks of doom, and therefore just not caring about efficiency of point defence at all.

Well, I play the game mostly in situations, that look like fleet vs fleet or multiple fleets vs. fleet and spaceport and 2 defensive bases. Did Scott do a test for that? No. Did he made a test with my specific designs? No. Did he even made a test with 5 different types of weapons shooting at the same time onto a single ship? No. So, I do not care about his or your "proofs".
Also he does not even have all the point defence weapons in his test. Only the ones that are specifically labelled "point defence". Come on. There are like 20 more or so. Ok they are bad at point defence, but yeah, they exist. (Edit: You could even call a hangar a "point defence system". And it is probably the best one against fighters, because it does not use weapon slots. Size sucks though)

well it wasn't working best for my strategy

You do not know what my strategy actually is. I just pointed things out that are too narrowminded in the starting post. Interpreting a specific strategy into that, is simply wrong. In my opinion, all point defences are mediocre, meaning the differences are too small too argue about, and therefore they are not interesting to look at all, except when they excel at specific stuff, that I actually use in this specific situation. These specific situations are:
90° slots left over: use missile pd
I do ion damage: use ion pd
too many (!) fighters: use kinetic or use hangars yourself (!)
too many (!) beams/directfire: use point shields
The problem is that your beam point defences does not have anything, that it excels at. You could call it a jack-off-all-trades, I call it a jack-of-no-trades.

Btw, if you still think that beam pd is good because it counters fighters so well: Imagine using slots for more weapon damage (instead of using these slots for point defences) and then destroying the ship with the hangar and therefore destroying the fighters before they can do too much harm. I know that is very unique concept.

(I should add some smilies here because people constantly interpret a angry or frustrated tone when I post stuff, and they also get angry themselves, but I'm also too lazy for that. )

[Jorgen_CAB]

Against fighters in particular if the PD leave a blind spot in the 90 degree aft arc they can be verry ineffective. Bombers and fighters tend to want to attack ships from behind.

The increased range of missiles can also be a bit more important in larger battles than small skirmishers would suggest.

You also will get verry diferent result with differet ship setup based on the scenario you put them in. A 1 vs 1 engagement, skirmishes with a dozen ship per side, two largee fleert or then multiple fleets battles and then battle with stations, fleetts and defensive bases etc... ships, weapons and other modules are likely to function very different in combination in all of them.

Just looking at the stats are very flawed logic most of the time. I have done allot of testing in many different types of settings and are often surprised to learn how things actually work sometimes very different than from what I expected.

One should be very careful drawing conclusions from the numbers alone.

One good example could be the power of point defence shields. You can argue that it is better to put a real weapon there to kill the opponent faster. But that might not be the case at all, even if you do more damage than what you prevent. That damage you prevent can be the difference of the ship become a casuilty ur manage to escape and later return in the same large scale combat. But in a smaller skirmish it will not be better most likely than having another weapon there destrying the opponent faster instead.

[Nightskies]

Congratulations on having university knowledge! However, this isn't a case where one side can just say "I agree that we both disagree" and be let off as though it can be presumed that there is merit in the argument or perspective.

"Oh yeah, please double down on the ranking with stupid stats thing. I get tears from laughing. This is so fucking funny."
"A lot of nonsense here..."
"Yeah, whatever."
"Wow. Plants benefit from more water and fertilizer. The laundry benefits from more detergent. I simply can not deny such facts."
"Who cares..."
"...mindset is mostly garbage."
" That is so unique to this game, it really is an extraordinary tip."
"...spending more than one brain cell..."
"You are an absolute noob if you do not understand..."

I suppose you were wearing a clown nose when typing it up if you felt that isn't excessive.

I'm persisting in this primarily because of the level of rudeness in your criticism. Its not my intent to moderate you, but if you incidentally chose to change your attitude, that'd be beneficial for you and the people you communicate to. If you were mostly accurate, it'd be more forgivable. Your positive intent to provide corrections is noble, but you are wrong in enough ways to lose forgiveness to your tone. I'm highlighting *this* error of yours as it is one of the most obviously incorrect conclusions.

Your argument that the beam PD line is not the overall best is still nearly meritless. This is the case with most of your assessments as you have presented them, not that they are worthless- but they are mere opinion, some of which are blatantly wrong. Even so, they're worth sharing... as opinions. You could agree that you're mistaken in your opinion sometimes.

Why is your opinion meritless? You have zero experimental evidence to show. And your argument is an attempt to invalidate one of the most worthy tests openly available to the community. Can you think of a better test with reasonable simplicity for our purposes? By the way, you didn't watch enough. He also did tests with multiple ships in engaging a pirate station. More seeking, more fighters, more PD, similar results.

The use of 360 arcs is intelligent- when comparing things reasonably, you use them the way they are intended.

Those cover your excuses to not regard the tests.

What it *****proves*****, quite simply, rather irrefutably, is that the Sentinel is not only effective against fighters and seeking, but it performs well at it. It is not a mathematical proof, but it is very reasonable evidence which helps to show the truth. My own tests and accompanying experience reinforces it, with recognition that it isn't The One PD To Rule Them All. And I challenge you to equip Invasion Fleets as I suggested- that is one of the tests I've done myself, and subsequently applied in gameplay.

Being a well rounded weapon IS a strength in itself, but it isn't just. It is, straight up, a strong PD (as PD goes). Your assessment as a "jack-of-no-trades" is, once again, incorrect. That's the Blaster PD- whose advantage is being the smallest and less energy consuming- a minimalist PD- but is still close in performance.

Your strategy is predictably situational, just as I mentioned before your response. That's good strategy against AI (just like Napoleonic Deathballs are), so don't think I'm criticizing your strategies. You haven't presented them, but I'm just using two brain cells here to figure that out. Situational weapons are the antithesis of 'overall best'.

If you're going to present evidence, make sure it isn't including factors that will favor one PD over another, unless you can provide tests for varying situations. Scott's tests are solid because they satisfy that. Obviously not all-inclusive, but are solid enough to show what they are capable of in a generic scenario.

So can you present any evidence, not stories or tangents, to show that any other PD is more effective in general? Or will you settle for having an opinion without evidence?


(*edit*) Oh. If you want to compare PD from Tier 6+, AFAIK and IIRC, I'm the only one that has openly shown tests about the Ion Rapid Pulse Array, declaring that it is a powerful PD weapon, but not with a comparison to other PD at equal levels. I showed it because of the question, "How Do I Fight the Gizureans". I didn't mention back then that the Guardian is stronger, or mean to suggest that the Aegis/Bulwark or Terminator (or even shield PD) under-perform. I figured it would go without saying. This weapon is uniquely powerful and is an ideal PD as a rushed target tech for mid-game when facing an enemy like the Gizureans, being very strong for the research requirements.

Unlike the preceding Ion Pulse Blaster, which is mostly only remarkable in its ability to use the ion effect against ships with no ion defense.
The Sentinel is good and performs generally well (same with the Buckler), but its only so strong. Mid-late game Gizureans demand more than a smattering use of the Sentinel when they're significantly stronger, and overloading on PD is sub-optimal.
The railgun and missile PD can be great against Gizureans with less research requirements, but are still specialized weapons in an anti-fighter capacity. They require an appropriate strategy to use them optimally- unlike the Beam, Blaster and Ion PD.
The Guardian is on another level of research requirements and is expensive, not really a viable weapon to tech rush.

So the Ion Rapid Pulse Array stands out as the ultimate in the Ion PD line, but its still only great in some situations. Only some empires would do well to rush the tech. Many empires would be better off relying on the Sentinel (or Buckler) and eventually getting the Guardian. Some should specialize in missile/railgun PD. Then some believe that just going all out blasters with no PD at all is the way to go (sometimes that is the strongest strategy).

Point being, if you want to compare the Ion Rapid Pulse Array to the other late game PD, there are a lot more considerations to take into account, and at the end of the day, you're still going to find that the Guardian is the strongest overall- that thing is a monster. Its so apparent to me on casual observation that there seems to be no need to test it... unless given a reasonable challenge to that observation.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In my opinion it does not really matter which PD you chose... just pick one and go for it. It is generally not worth the research to get more than one maybee two sometimes.

In general the Sentinel are the best PD on average, it also has the strongest end game PD generally. One other thing that really make the Sentinel good are the speed of the shots. As it hits almost instantly it actually outperfom others due to some mechanical oddities as well. As I modded the game somewhat I have studied a bit how PD work and don't work. I also nerfed the beam PD becasue of this and increased the speed of most others a bit too to make them all more balanced.

But it will aslo depend on the hulls you have. Some races have far better placement of good field of fire mounts than others.

But in general it does not matter which PD you choose, the one you get the fastest generally is the best one based on the amount of research point you will put into it.