<t>Everybody has a different style, I'm sure, but my personal favorite weapons progression is waves, guns, and then standoffs. At the low end defensive waves are just so darn good at stopping stuff and the 360&deg; field of fire helps when all your captain knows how to do is charge and retreat. At ...

<t>I must confess I turn off random events for the same reasons. I really don't care much for a system which penalizes playing fullbore under the guise of "fairness". All REs do is make it a test of trying to keep up with the leaders, but staying just a bit behind, until growing big enough to ...

<t>After tiring of exploring the edge cases of the AI I'm now trying to get a handle on how scoring is computed. Obvious inputs are income, population size, number of techs, and number of ships, but I'm having a little trouble figuring out the negative modifiers. I've seen the score line graph show ...

I've watched them hit by focusing on the target, but never seen a message. You might get one if you focus on the firing planet and making sure "Show attacks" is set in the unit options. Might be worth an experiment.

D.

<t>I dunno. It is really frustrating to have something 6 months from being researched put on hold due to some stupid freighter being built but I can rationalize it a bit. Consider:<br/>
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Starships (of any kind or size) are quite ambitious undertakings, requiring not just a lot of people to ...

I, too, like standoffs, but they suffer terribly at the low end of the tech spectrum. They are particularly ineffectual against waves I've found. Once you get Anti-matter standoffs, though... wow!

D.

<r><QUOTE><s>[QUOTE]</s><I><s>[i]</s>Originally posted by Andrew Ewanchyna <e>[/i]</e></I><br/>
<B><s>[B]</s>I've patched the "hording of wisdom artifacts on starships" problem. Thought I did a while back, but noticed I wasn't checking the starships. Take that cheaters! <e>[/B]</e></B><e>[/QUOTE]</e ...

<t>Eric:<br/>
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Not to worry. I'm in agreement with you. It does make the game terribly predictable. That's why I'm wondering if Andrew will do something in the code about it.<br/>
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For what it's worth the problem still persists at the Advanced level. In the one game at advanced ...

<r><QUOTE><s>[QUOTE]</s><I><s>[i]</s>Originally posted by EricLarsen <e>[/i]</e></I><br/>
<B><s>[B]</s><br/>
... <br/>
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I discovered there was an extreme shortage of world relics. Several combined races only have 1 world relic and are perpetually stuck in the atomic age. some have 2 and are in ...

It only happened once. Now I make sure to be the one stealing ships. After teleporting pods are developed I always include at least one on anything bigger than a gunboat. By the end of the game I've seen almost a quarter of ships in my fleet being "repo" jobs.

D.

<t>Security defends against assaults. With zero red shirts if you go up against a race with shield ignoring pods you'll rapidly find yourself fighting your own ships.<br/>
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[edit to add engineering speculation]<br/>
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I think additional engineers speed repair times for battle damage while a ...

<r><QUOTE><s>[QUOTE]</s><I><s>[i]</s>Originally posted by EricLarsen <e>[/i]</e></I><br/>
<B><s>[B]</s>Now I think I'll let the program handle my frieghters automatically, though it still looks like it's best to manually catch the stars as they come out of turmoil.<br/>
Eric Larsen <e>[/B]</e></B><e ...

<t>Perhaps this is already in the game, but I've not been able to figure out how:<br/>
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It would be nice to have a better way of turning off the intro movies then having to remove or rename the movie files. It's tiresome to have to sit through the 30 seconds or so of the Matrix logo/ApeZone ...

<r><QUOTE><s>[QUOTE]</s><I><s>[i]</s>Originally posted by Grotius <e>[/i]</e></I><br/>
<B><s>[B]</s>I can't figure out how to foment unrest among other players. The online manual says to click on the appropriate button in the Diplomacy screen, but the appropriate button may be mislabeled. One says ...