Is there a reason to build another ship type? 8x55 with three times the range of pretty much any other ship at no greater cost really... am I missing something?

Is there an explanation somewhere of attack and defence? If I have 8x missiles with 55 attack, is that 55 total or 55 per missile? What does 30 defence mean when hit by a missile?

<r> Armada 2526 is very much your typical 4X, a mix of the strategic layer of Galactic Civilisations 2 and the tactical combat of Sword of the Stars (except not as good). It feels like a lite 4X which makes for faster games than either of those two.<br/>
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I haven't got around to playing ...

Any chance we won't have to keep entering our serial key for future patches?

Thanks!

Any way to set the number of players but randomise the factions (other than closing my eyes and stabbing the buttons)?

<t> Two questions which I couldn't find answers for in the manual:<br/>
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1. What is the difference between difficulty levels? Smarts? Resource bonuses?<br/>
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2. On the negotiation screen there are three icons, the middle indicates whether they're allies or not, the right one the ...

Roughly every other load Firefight will hang when loading a map during the "Creating Scrub..." bit. I have to close the game and reload it. Any ideas? Seems Matrix have forgotten they own this game.

I'm running v2.0 under Windows XP SP 1.