Just a couple of questions...

[RaffleSnaffle]

yeah I will just have to play more and more. I have learned the most from just playing the game and learning through trial and error what works and what really doesn't.

thanks for all your guys' help! This forum is definitely one of the more friendly/helpful forums I have ever seen.

[Mofouler]

I think a spaceport should add to the defense of a colony in some way. They should probaly each some with their own garrison or in some way increase the defensive power of the troops already on the colony.

[Bingeling]

It can be a lot of fun to take your time. Follow a freighter around and see what they are up to. Or watch your passenger ship arrive at your resource base with tourists, stand outside to think a bit (to be booked for a new trip), travel to the colony of another nation, pick up their tourists and go to another resort base...

Find one of the three very rares, lock on to its location to watch the traffic. Mouse over or click the arriving ships to see their contents. I built a space port on one right away, and the first transports were all delivering building materials and leaving empty. Then came a legion of empty freighters to collect zentiba fluid (or was it korabbian spice?) and aim towards my capital and other large colonies. A trade line arrived straight from my capital to this system, even if there were multiple space ports in between, including my largest and riches colony.

Also. At the later stages of the AAR I was a bit quicker "killed a few targets that appeared", but I was quite detailed at the start. Because at the start less stuff goes on. But of course, I did not tell about locking on the colony ship and following its travel, and to zoom in and watch it crawl to the planet. Not everything is described, because not all the player does is an event.

Troop transports alone and on auto do focus on collecting their troops, but they do attack enemy if they present themselves. That is why I drop transports from fleet when they have attacked and put them on auto. I add them to flees once they are full. Asking the fleet to reload would not work very well, they would go to the few nearest colonies and grab a few and come back with lots of free space. That is my experience. I think I also have noticed that telling a fleet to load at a colony is less effective than telling single ships to do so. The annoying thing is to find the full ones among many, but the full ones has the order "none" and are in a system, while the ones still filling up have other orders or are in deep space (not that a ship on auto is ever in deep space with order "none").

During peace time, it is abut placing fleets around that cover my areas, and then let the time pass. I am typically "always" on 2X or pause, and wait for attack messages. In very early game I may be more in 4x, and in very rare circumstances I see combat on normal speed. When attack messages come, I click the message in the log on top, which will jump to the attacked unit, and I then zoom in a bit. Next up is finding the closest fleet and tell it to attack the aggressor or to patrol the attacked base. Alternatively I have lots of automated frigates and stuff, and press z to select the closest (there is also a button for that down left). Or I zoom out a bit and look for triangles, or simply drag a square in the area around hoping to find some.

If you play you will find your style and automation level. And notice that for a long stretches you can put max speed and go for a snack if you want. Especially once the galaxy is well settled and pirates become few and far between. Unless you let the AI do diplomacy which I think will put you "always in war".

That be said. In my AAR I had one instance of a mystery attack on the Kiadian which I never understood. That took my reputation from slightly positive to quite a bit negative. Much later I attacked the Wekkarus under peace, because I did not know war had ended. That put my reputation very, very low. And having low reputation makes the others attack you more easily. But the Atuuk created their own wars, it was only late in the game that other declared war on me [8D]

[RaffleSnaffle]

Mo - it would be interesting if you could, like you said garrison troops on the spaceport or defensive platform so in order to take them you would have to land transports on them to duke it out. Of course you could just blow it all out of the sky too. Even the idea of landing troops on space bases would be interesting in of in itself. Because you could like capture mining bases or things like that with troops? To turn them over to your empires control?

Idk just a thought. Of course this game has soo much future potential there are a lot of cool things that could be implemented into it.

[RaffleSnaffle]

ahh thanks for all the info Bing!

I think from now one I will just have a separate fleet for all of my transports like your "Invasion Fleet" in your Atuuk AAR.

Very good idea I had not thought of yet lol. Yeah I like controlling troop recruitment and ship construction. Things like taxes are a 50/50, but the more I play the less the AI gets to control things. I havn't messed with agents and leave them on manual anyways because the AI will get my rep. in trouble if I let it do what it wants in that realm. Treaties and wars are all on manual for me also.

If you have construction on manual will construction ships still continue to build mining bases, research stations, and resorts on their own?

[Data]

no, you'll have to order them
In practice I leave a couple of constructors for my personal use and the rest on auto

[Bingeling]

I would not want the transports in my combat fleet, they may be killed. My transports are wimpy.

I think there is a nice post in the tips and tricks thread there about having a cruiser as the transport fleet leader. That would make the transports head back to base (leader) once they have dropped their load, and you won't have to drop them from fleet and put them on auto on the attack.

I make sure to kill off space ports because I think that it is most logical and in most cases probably make things harder. I have not tried this since returning after the expansion, but you could at least be very cheesy and send your invasion fleet in and land while defenses are up. The space port and defensive bases become yours once you win the ground combat, and proceeds to shoot up the ships of your enemy returning home.

For instance... In the AAR the Dhayut capital had 38 ships in the build queue. I am pretty sure those would be built if I could take the space port intact (and would only need enough shield on the transports to survive its aoe to do that, which I may or may not have had).

If those 38 were military ships, I could proceed to retire them for tech (if they knew anything I did not), or maybe get hold of some better ships than I could build my own. I would of course also get the materials stored on the space port, keep the happiness bonus it gives to the colony, and have a juggernaut protecting my new colony. Not that it took long to build my own large space port once the AI discovered that we had money.

For constructors it works OK to use "queue the closest constructor to build XXX here" for my needs (fuel...). For the truly special needs (rare resources), I grab constructors from whatever they do and force them to start on the important stuff.