Managing orbital stations and other qurestions

[Bromley]

Newb question. Is there an easy way to manage orbital bases? Say I want a listening station at every colony (I know, it'd probably be better to edit space ports, but I don't want to mess around with ship design just yet). I was using the colony screen to add, but it looks like it will let me add a listening station to a colony that already has one, which is annoying.

Also (and I will look for the answer for this one, but I might as well ask it here), is the game too easy on "normal" settings if you use the recovered ships as your strike force? I've played two games now and 3-4 high tech cruisers in the destroyer age seem to deal with most civilisations. The hardest thing about overruning the others seems to be getting my transports to load troops. What are the best settings to get the most out of the AI - clearly it's not as good as a human at grabbing the goodies, so is it best to just disable the story events when setting up a game. (Note though that I've not seen the return, or any similar thing, yet. So perhaps I'm about to get my arse handed to me ).

Finally, is the troop management aspect as horrible as I think it is? What is the reason for the Troops screen - I use the Colony one to spam my troops out, but even then it feels very clunky.

[ASHBERY76]

I use house rules when getting recovered ships.I retire them for tech.I hope it was balanced better(less ships) in Legends as I like playing in story mode.

[feelotraveller]

ORIGINAL: Bromley

Newb question. Is there an easy way to manage orbital bases? Say I want a listening station at every colony (I know, it'd probably be better to edit space ports, but I don't want to mess around with ship design just yet). I was using the colony screen to add, but it looks like it will let me add a listening station to a colony that already has one, which is annoying.

Also (and I will look for the answer for this one, but I might as well ask it here), is the game too easy on "normal" settings if you use the recovered ships as your strike force? I've played two games now and 3-4 high tech cruisers in the destroyer age seem to deal with most civilisations. The hardest thing about overruning the others seems to be getting my transports to load troops. What are the best settings to get the most out of the AI - clearly it's not as good as a human at grabbing the goodies, so is it best to just disable the story events when setting up a game. (Note though that I've not seen the return, or any similar thing, yet. So perhaps I'm about to get my arse handed to me ).

Finally, is the troop management aspect as horrible as I think it is? What is the reason for the Troops screen - I use the Colony one to spam my troops out, but even then it feels very clunky.

You could instead retrofit your spaceport to contain the approprate components (design screen then retrofit order).

Retiring alien ships is the option I have always used.

Disabling the storyline makes the game less easy (please note - less).

There are many settings to effect the type of game. Try messing with the starting tech levels, empire expansion (size) and home systems (population and resources). I often use a 'trying' vs. 'abundant' home system pairing.

I use the troop screen for disbanding troops, finding out the spread of forces across the empire and seeing which ones are not fully ready. My gripe with troop management is getting the transports to get a full load - often they will only take one troop from a colony which is crawling with them.

[Nedrear]

Traveller he said he does NOT want to retrofit a special spaceport. Therefore your answer will not be helpful. You even quoted that passage.
 
Yes listening stations are Non-planetary and can be put into deep space. Therefore you can build an unlimited amount. I know they got the bonus of "listening" to other communications, but if you only want to scan the surroundings you can just put the scanner in everything. Since you are not messing with the designs yet, this will not help.
 
Troops will be remodeled in Legends. Stay tuned nad read the other thread!
 
 

[cookie monster]

Can you from the main game game screen, click on next colony and build monitoring stations as required.

That should work.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: Bromley
Finally, is the troop management aspect as horrible as I think it is? What is the reason for the Troops screen - I use the Colony one to spam my troops out, but even then it feels very clunky.

Troop management in terms of moving troops, keeping some troops on colonies, assessing the situation and making decisions still needs a lot of love even with vanilla Legends. At present, the troop screen is the only place to find detailed information about troop units. I sort by strength or location most frequently to get an idea of my current combat power -- the colony screen gives you the troop units and characters in one tab and a tool tip to provide strength and readiness.

I also purposefully design, build and use troop transports that hold a smaller number of units so that I can only pickup a certain number from each colony for movement elsewhere. I keep these 'assault squadrons' in separate fleets from my expeditionary fleets. Keep in mind the AI will load the best units (largest strength) first on load -- so if you want to keep your best troops behind to defend it's frustrating.

[cookie monster]

You can use the troops screen to see all your troops.

You can disband any weak troop units.

With a large empire, you really need a galaxy overlay to carryout troop management.

...............

Perhaps, you could sort your colonies by value, and only defend/recruit troops at the major colonies.

[feelotraveller]

ORIGINAL: Nedrear

Traveller he said he does NOT want to retrofit a special spaceport. Therefore your answer will not be helpful. You even quoted that passage.

Woops! [:)]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Bromley

Newb question. Is there an easy way to manage orbital bases? Say I want a listening station at every colony (I know, it'd probably be better to edit space ports, but I don't want to mess around with ship design just yet). I was using the colony screen to add, but it looks like it will let me add a listening station to a colony that already has one, which is annoying.

Also (and I will look for the answer for this one, but I might as well ask it here), is the game too easy on "normal" settings if you use the recovered ships as your strike force? I've played two games now and 3-4 high tech cruisers in the destroyer age seem to deal with most civilisations. The hardest thing about overruning the others seems to be getting my transports to load troops. What are the best settings to get the most out of the AI - clearly it's not as good as a human at grabbing the goodies, so is it best to just disable the story events when setting up a game. (Note though that I've not seen the return, or any similar thing, yet. So perhaps I'm about to get my arse handed to me ).

Finally, is the troop management aspect as horrible as I think it is? What is the reason for the Troops screen - I use the Colony one to spam my troops out, but even then it feels very clunky.

Just my advice, but do not build a station with LR sensors at every colony...the LR sensors are very expensive, and one per system will suffice. Generally I design only my large starports with the LR sensor, and put a single monitoring station in any system that doesn't have enough population to support a large starport.

[Bromley]

Cheers guys.  If there was a thumbs up button I'd be spamming that, but as there isn't you'll have to make do with old-fashioned thanks.

I'm off to try CM's Next Colony suggestion - I haven't really used those buttons yet.  I've also just started designing ships (mainly because I just found a Death Ray!), so I'll shoehorn some sensors into the large stations.