I love this game! But some things that don't seem to work...

[LoBlo]

I love this game. Its complexity and depth is perfect. World and empire economies, logistics, and resource scarcity make it thought provoking and fun. I've been looking for something like this for years, ever since Space Empires 5 hit a dead end. I can see myself playing this for years and don't get me started on the modding.

But there's a couple of things that seem broken and I was wondering if its just me not understanding the mechanics, or are fixes needed?

1. Dead beat freighters. During the mid and late game, I see alot of freighters sitting around with no orders despite having severe resource shortages throughout the colonies. I'm not sure how to get them going and why they are just sitting around. They tend to cluster around my larger colonies and capital. Clicking on them doesn't show them waiting to retrofit either. They are just floating there for years on end without orders.

2. Small freighters only. When I upgrade my research to larger freighters, the AI just wants to keep building small freighters. I'm not sure why, they are so much less inefficient.

3. Lack of destroyers or larger by the AI. Despite changing my fleet composition and my build preferences in the AI menus, the game doesn't seem to build ships larger ships. I take out frigates from my fleet schemes and set the percent frigates in my AI manager to 0%, but the AI just stops building warships altogether. Anything that I'm doing wrong?

Great game, I hope the developers love it as much as we do and continue to put efforts to refining it. I'd happily stick with them if they keep at it!

Ben

[maggiecow]

I love this game. Its complexity and depth is perfect. World and empire economies, logistics, and resource scarcity make it thought provoking and fun. I've been looking for something like this for years, ever since Space Empires 5 hit a dead end. I can see myself playing this for years and don't get me started on the modding.

But there's a couple of things that seem broken and I was wondering if its just me not understanding the mechanics, or are fixes needed?

1. Dead beat freighters. During the mid and late game, I see alot of freighters sitting around with no orders despite having severe resource shortages throughout the colonies. I'm not sure how to get them going and why they are just sitting around. They tend to cluster around my larger colonies and capital. Clicking on them doesn't show them waiting to retrofit either. They are just floating there for years on end without orders.

2. Small freighters only. When I upgrade my research to larger freighters, the AI just wants to keep building small freighters. I'm not sure why, they are so much less inefficient.

3. Lack of destroyers or larger by the AI. Despite changing my fleet composition and my build preferences in the AI menus, the game doesn't seem to build ships larger ships. I take out frigates from my fleet schemes and set the percent frigates in my AI manager to 0%, but the AI just stops building warships altogether. Anything that I'm doing wrong?

All pretty standard issues people have been having. Off the top of m y head:

1. Are your freighters gassed up? Do you have trading partners? You might just have too many colonies. Best to build up colonies slowly. Don't try to build half a dozen at once, they'll all be demanding resources and there'll be a lot of unhappy citizens. If you have a lot of stations and bases, they all hoard Caslon. Earlier versions of the game had this go a bit overboard but it shouldn't be so bad now. I suspect freighters may be sitting around while a source accumulates what they need.

2. Seen this issue from launch. Not sure if it's even a bug.

3. Have you got your military automated? Like, you're letting the automation settings build your fleets? Bold. Have you looked at your fleet templates? Do you have viable designs for the heavier ships? Sometimes the AI will wait for a few technologies (eg higher tech fuel and cargo storage) to catch up before upgrading a design. Legit not sure about this one. I wouldn't trust the AI to build my fleets, but if you want to you are going to need a college level course on the automation settings. Youtube has a bunch of Tutorials.

Great game, I hope the developers love it as much as we do

You got a frog in your pocket? :p

[LoBlo]

All pretty standard issues people have been having. Off the top of m y head:

1. Are your freighters gassed up? Do you have trading partners? You might just have too many colonies. Best to build up colonies slowly. Don't try to build half a dozen at once, they'll all be demanding resources and there'll be a lot of unhappy citizens. If you have a lot of stations and bases, they all hoard Caslon. Earlier versions of the game had this go a bit overboard but it shouldn't be so bad now. I suspect freighters may be sitting around while a source accumulates what they need.

2. Seen this issue from launch. Not sure if it's even a bug.

3. Have you got your military automated? Like, you're letting the automation settings build your fleets? Bold. Have you looked at your fleet templates? Do you have viable designs for the heavier ships? Sometimes the AI will wait for a few technologies (eg higher tech fuel and cargo storage) to catch up before upgrading a design. Legit not sure about this one. I wouldn't trust the AI to build my fleets, but if you want to you are going to need a college level course on the automation settings. Youtube has a bunch of Tutorials.

1. Hm.. thanks for the insight. They are gassed up, but in the mid and late game I do tend to branch into 4-6 colonies all at once. I never thought of colonies as resource hoarders until now. Perhaps I'll trial setting there resource stockpiles to manual in order to keep them 'honest'.

You've made me think about a weakness in my play strategy. I typically view any colony and space port as just another stop for my fleets to repair and gas up, but perhaps that overly ambitious and I should stockpile only 2-3 bases for my military. Guess that's more logical. Even the USAs 20 trillion dollar economy only has 4 major shipyards. .... Hm... I've got to change my strategy.

2. Thanks for the clarification. Guess I won't even bother trying to upgrade the sizes until this bug is fixed.

3. I see your point with the tech. I tend to stick with torpedoes and don't bother with the other weapons so the AI is probably confused to put class 1 weapons on a battleship. Maybe that's it.

I was having a hard time getting my fleets off their tail, so I thought that maybe fully automating it would work. I tend to give them a mission and then see them just sit around doing nothing despite an enemy a system over. This is despite giving them a wide 33% combat range.

Here's hoping some bugs get fixed.

[Litjan]

Regarding the ship upgrades...I am not sure how heuristic the ship upgrade process really is. I think that the automatic designer probably picks from a vast list of pre-made models, possibly automatically swapping certain components that are mere upgrades of the same component (i.e. fuel cells).

So if you do some very extravagant research strategy (like maybe never researching warp drives since you decide to stick to one system, only) then the automated upgrading will fail because simply there are no templates "without warp drives"?

So the automatic upgrader is looking for fairly "balanced" ships to make (some missiles, torps, beam weapons) and if one category is completely missing from being researched, it may come up blank. You would have to make designs manually, then.

[LoBlo]

Regarding the ship upgrades...I am not sure how heuristic the ship upgrade process really is. I think that the automatic designer probably picks from a vast list of pre-made models, possibly automatically swapping certain components that are mere upgrades of the same component (i.e. fuel cells).

So if you do some very extravagant research strategy (like maybe never researching warp drives since you decide to stick to one system, only) then the automated upgrading will fail because simply there are no templates "without warp drives"?

So the automatic upgrader is looking for fairly "balanced" ships to make (some missiles, torps, beam weapons) and if one category is completely missing from being researched, it may come up blank. You would have to make designs manually, then.

I hate the fact that civilian ships try to auto-update to all the latest tech despite the resource shortages. All the mid game stuff uses hexaborium(sp?) Or delyrium(sp?) crystals which are extremely scarce and should be too expensive.

It would be like oil companies deciding to make all there oil tankers from carbon fiber with nuclear propulsion... some things should be restricted to military only.

I also hate when I see a precious resource sold on the free market when I'm in short supply myself. I saw tons of my hexa being traded to a partner but ran out for my own battleships. Maybe that's not so unrealistic....

[Jorgen_CAB]

I hate the fact that civilian ships try to auto-update to all the latest tech despite the resource shortages. All the mid game stuff uses hexaborium(sp?) Or delyrium(sp?) crystals which are extremely scarce and should be too expensive.

It would be like oil companies deciding to make all there oil tankers from carbon fiber with nuclear propulsion... some things should be restricted to military only.

I also hate when I see a precious resource sold on the free market when I'm in short supply myself. I saw tons of my hexa being traded to a partner but ran out for my own battleships. Maybe that's not so unrealistic....

You should in general control this by designing the ships yourself and with that you decide what components they use and when they upgrade.

I would obviously like if the was a way to force some sort of empire wide strategic reserve of some resources that the state can buy for future use or something, something that can then only be used by constructing state ships.

[WiZz]

1. Yes, it's a major game issue, sometimes even game-breaking. I'd wish to see private ships more active.
2. It's already reported many times.
3. Didn't see this issue. I usually order ships myself.

[mordachai]

Might be smart to do a player-poll on who uses what manual vs. automation.

I design all of my military ships, and sometimes the bases. Automation is just too... limited, in its thinking. And we have no way to tell it "hey, favor blasters + energy torps" or whatever - it builds based on racial prefs? or just frm bad templates? not sure?

And I let the automation suggest build orders but default to deny. Then I occasionally approve, or I click the notification to go to the build order screen, and adjust as desired (remove what's dumb IMO, add more of what I want, whatever).

I also will take manual control of designing a ship-role-type, and immediately mark it as obsolete - in order to not allow the automation to design another one nor to ever build a ship of that class until I want it to (by upgrading from there and not marking that new model as obsolete). This is my fav. way to control what gets built or suggested at this time.

I used to control it by going into automation - construction - and then tweaking the ratio of military ship types - so say zero out frigates until I had a design I really did want built - then restore the ratio in that category to get the game to build or suggest those to me again.

I also ALWAYS build my own fleets. I never let the automation do this. Otherwise it's a disaster that only becomes worse. I decide when and where fleets are built, exactly when and where I want them - then I manage reassignment of home base and allowed mission range as the game evolves.

Curious what others do?

[WiZz]

Might be smart to do a player-poll on who uses what manual vs. automation.

I design all of my military ships, and sometimes the bases. Automation is just too... limited, in its thinking. And we have no way to tell it "hey, favor blasters + energy torps" or whatever - it builds based on racial prefs? or just frm bad templates? not sure?

And I let the automation suggest build orders but default to deny. Then I occasionally approve, or I click the notification to go to the build order screen, and adjust as desired (remove what's dumb IMO, add more of what I want, whatever).

I also will take manual control of designing a ship-role-type, and immediately mark it as obsolete - in order to not allow the automation to design another one nor to ever build a ship of that class until I want it to (by upgrading from there and not marking that new model as obsolete). This is my fav. way to control what gets built or suggested at this time.

I used to control it by going into automation - construction - and then tweaking the ratio of military ship types - so say zero out frigates until I had a design I really did want built - then restore the ratio in that category to get the game to build or suggest those to me again.

I also ALWAYS build my own fleets. I never let the automation do this. Otherwise it's a disaster that only becomes worse. I decide when and where fleets are built, exactly when and where I want them - then I manage reassignment of home base and allowed mission range as the game evolves.

Curious what others do?

I am never doing manual design coz player already has too much advantages and with manual designs it becomes a huge issue.
Build orders work in a pretty weird way for me. Sometimes it asks unneeded ships or doesn't ask at all. I let it work auto and often order ships myself.
I usually let AI to create fleets but add ships myself. AI is pretty passive to order additional military ships and add them to fleets.

[LoBlo]

Might be smart to do a player-poll on who uses what manual vs. automation.

I design all of my military ships, and sometimes the bases. Automation is just too... limited, in its thinking. And we have no way to tell it "hey, favor blasters + energy torps" or whatever - it builds based on racial prefs? or just frm bad templates? not sure?

And I let the automation suggest build orders but default to deny. Then I occasionally approve, or I click the notification to go to the build order screen, and adjust as desired (remove what's dumb IMO, add more of what I want, whatever).

I also will take manual control of designing a ship-role-type, and immediately mark it as obsolete - in order to not allow the automation to design another one nor to ever build a ship of that class until I want it to (by upgrading from there and not marking that new model as obsolete). This is my fav. way to control what gets built or suggested at this time.

I used to control it by going into automation - construction - and then tweaking the ratio of military ship types - so say zero out frigates until I had a design I really did want built - then restore the ratio in that category to get the game to build or suggest those to me again.

I also ALWAYS build my own fleets. I never let the automation do this. Otherwise it's a disaster that only becomes worse. I decide when and where fleets are built, exactly when and where I want them - then I manage reassignment of home base and allowed mission range as the game evolves.

Curious what others do?

I tried automatic, because the computer opponents seemed to do a decent job at attacking weak colonies and invading them with sufficient troops to conquer them. I haven't battled an AI midgame in which I don't loose at least 2-3 colonies while my fleet goes off to bombard the enemy. They even do a good job at approaching from the opposite side of a station to land troops. I figured why not let my own AI take a swing at running things.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to live up to the activity of the computer oponent AIs. I figure its something I'm doing to disrupt the normal development by leaving out some research tech or something else that I can't pin down.

When I build fleets and set them to automatic, even then the AI does weird stuff. I'll set the fleet to defend a system with 'system only' response and when I check on them, they are two systems over from their station attacking an enemy mining operations...

Guess its a work in progress.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I tried automatic, because the computer opponents seemed to do a decent job at attacking weak colonies and invading them with sufficient troops to conquer them. I haven't battled an AI midgame in which I don't loose at least 2-3 colonies while my fleet goes off to bombard the enemy. They even do a good job at approaching from the opposite side of a station to land troops. I figured why not let my own AI take a swing at running things.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to live up to the activity of the computer oponent AIs. I figure its something I'm doing to disrupt the normal development by leaving out some research tech or something else that I can't pin down.

When I build fleets and set them to automatic, even then the AI does weird stuff. I'll set the fleet to defend a system with 'system only' response and when I check on them, they are two systems over from their station attacking an enemy mining operations...

Guess its a work in progress.

In my opinion there is a huge imbalance in the game with defensive structures, troops and the like... they simply is not worth it.

You are way better of not defending more than one or two worlds who are your major staging points. Instead you have a MUCH bigger fleet and mostly offensive troops to counter invade if a planet against the odds are invaded, you just take it back.

I don't even put weapons on any stations, just some shields and armour (perhaps some point defences though). I have never built a single defensive base... too expensive and don't even cover a whole planet with defences, let alone a system. I rather have a dedicated system fleet, which also can help out elsewhere in neighbouring systems if necessary.

Ships are mobile and if you have more of them you can defend where you need more readily instead. There is nothing really in the game that encourage you to actually defend anything but a few strategic places. A strong fleet and invasion capability is way more effective.