Chapter 3.1.
Prioritize Ion Shields at T3 research. This also helps against the Hive. At least 8 ion defense nullifies the damage and some disable effects of nebulae, making T4 Ion Armor even better for civ ships due to added armor and lower size (faster speed). Inside those nebulae you can find super research, hightech abandoned ships and the best potential colonies. Your Explorers won't normally go there unless they have ion defense (except due to pathfinding bugs - easily fixed using the game editor).
Sure, Nebulas need Ion Shields. Ion Defences are important, especially if you would fight against my ships. Two beginner tips that should not be in an "advanced" guide.
Generally, don't put weapons or significant defenses on civilian ships except the mentioned ion defense. This approach increases their speed, fuel efficiency and decreases cost/maintenance, which benefits your whole empire. They don't contribute in war and can't kill creatures until it no longer matters. If you find them dying in the crossfire over your colonies (enough to disrupt your logistics) and you have excess PEC, add some defenses. If your private economy is booming and you have excess resources, however, you could use civ ships as crude Missile boats for added firepower - just make sure they flee quickly.
The idea of missile boats is actually somewhat interesting. However, the AI has civilian ships with weapons and it does not work for them. Needs probably specific tactical orders. Third thing I learned in this thread.
Freighters benefit from more Cargo Bays. Passenger and Colony Ships benefit from more Passenger Compartments. Always fill your Colony Ships' excess space with them to jumpstart new colony growth. You'll commonly see ships transporting while mostly empty because the demand is less than capacity, but when you're running into deficits they'll need the space
3. "Freighter benefit from more Cargo Bays". Wow. Plants benefit from more water and fertilizer. The laundry benefits from more detergent. I simply can not deny such facts. By the way, you do not put passenger components on colony ships, you put more colony modules on it. The small (boskara) colony ship is like 3 colony modules, 2 crew systems, 1 gerax drive, 3 fission reactors and 1 proton engine. Fill all other white slots with fuel cells and you should have about 150M range. Thats low, but as a human player you can stop it manually on the refuel bases that are on the way to the target. The AI can not do that though, therefore it is an exploit. However the AI gets a massive growth bonus on harder difficulty settings, so with the exploit you are on equal footage with them.
Small ships are often better due to larger hulls being disproportionately expensive, which is probably unintended. Don't rush (or even use) newer ship types as they're less cost-efficient. A swarm of Frigates with good technology will destroy anything you point them at. Keep in mind that the Maximum Size stat is misleading, as the ship's hull size is deducted from it.
a. Small Constructors remain excellent because the Medium version doesn't get faster construction nor does it need more cargo space. For example, my T4 Large Mining Stations (the largest built by my Constructors) require 705 total cargo space and one Cargo Bay has 1400 capacity. More Small Constructors will build far more rapidly, cheaply and with less fuel costs than a few Mediums.
b. Small Explorers are best to field large numbers.
c. Medium Freighters have their uses in bulk resource transfer (which the AI prioritizes them for), but otherwise Small Freighters are best.
d. Civ ships can be upgraded to larger types if you have excess resources, to deliberately overshoot your empire's demand. A nice trick for Miners and Passenger Ships, which you can't have too many of.
e. Basic Frigates are the best combat ships over Escorts due to the extra defensive slot.
f. Quameno Fleet/Heavy Frigates get a fourth defense slot and 25 extra component space (40 max size yet +15 hull size) but their cost increases by ~38%. Not worth it unless using expensive components like Gravs or later tech. That logic applies to heavier ships as well.
g. You can even build a good command Frigate using speed-tanking: Add a Beam PD for the weapon requirement, then maximum speed Engines, Fleet Countermeasures/Targeting, Hyperdeny and defenses. Set to Evade. If there's size left over after the necessities, add more PDs. The most economical, passive command ships are Light Cruisers (not later variants), though an active command ship with more weapons can be fun.
I personally think it is intended and i also hope it stays like that. If you compare space navy with real life earth navy, that is just realistic. An aircraft carrier in an aircraft carrier group is not protected by a bunch of battleships, but rather by a bunch of frigates and destroyers. One expensive big ship that does alot, with a lot of cheap protection. Please keep it like that. The AI in Distant Worlds can be modified in the policy files to build more destroyer and frigates then larger ship variants and troop transports. Do that, i did that too. Tone down the number of troop transport massively that the AI builds, if you are editing this file, it is really that horrible. However, like i mentioned in 2.16, the AI does not understand role specific design (the destroyer/frigate will not be designed specifically for the purpose of protecting the carrier). However, you will not get an competitive AI just out of changing those values, it is just slightly better than before.
a. True, medium and large construction ships are pointless.
b. True, medium and large exploration ships are pointless.
c. I do not want to brag about the freighter AI. It is very atrocious. Just have all 3 design available and then just hope that they fill a spaceport with those 500 dyrillium needed in the next 8 years, even though a mining base with 20000 dyrillium is located in the same system as the spaceport.
d. Yes, the small and medium mining and passenger ships get outdated and replaced by the larger ones. At that point those ship types are not worth anything anymore.
e. Why the basic one? Did you mistype? First, this is probably race specific, second I never use a basic design, if I have the improved designs researched and third destroyers are better.
f. Whatever. Race specific stuff should be in the race specific section or in separate race specific guide.
g. A command frigate, sorry, I can not imagine that works. You told us in point 1.13. that you research a tier fully. So, when you have researched fleet targeting and countermeasures and also hyperdeny, you already have improved destroyers unlocked. So you have a command frigate around a bunch of destroyers. That already looks crazy. Then you set the command frigate to evade so it immediately warps out the battle and therefore denies the hyperdeny and the fleet sensors to the rest of the ships that are actually fighting the battle. Good attempt, you got me laughing.
Don't underestimate Resource Scanners. They allow an Explorer to map an entire asteroid field at once instead of surveying the asteroids one-by-one.
True, but a beginner advice.
Energy Collectors (ECs) function when stationary inside a star system. Therefore:
a. On stations, the reactor only needs to cover the static energy cost (because of design requirements) yet ECs should power everything.
b. On ships, ECs should cover the static energy cost, else they consume fuel when idle.
a. You should mention that this only works until something gets a lucky hit onto your reactor/energy collector/fuelcell.
b. Exactly, again something for a beginner guide.
Medical Centers work on Troop Transports. Recreation Centers work on Resorts. Commercial Centers work on Spaceports and Mining Stations. Every colony should have an "attached" Rec/Med center for the happiness bonus, which you could put on a Spaceport. The maintenance savings (Rec) and damage reduction (Med) can also be useful on larger ships/stations. When in doubt if a component is going to be useful, press F1 and check the Galactopedia's Components section.
Let me ask you once: You wrote an advanced guide, why are there so many beginner tips? You are simply not an advanced player if you ignore the ship designer telling you that a medical center make sense on a troop transport.
The "Retreat when" setting is important on ships:
a. Civilian ships should usually be left on the default "when attacked". If set to "enemy nearby", a single hostile can prevent them from docking even when not in danger, which is highly disruptive.
b. Military ships should flee soon enough to prevent losses yet not too soon, to avoid weakening the fleet mid-battle. I recommend "Shields below 20% or Armor below 50%" in most cases. "Never" could theoretically strengthen a fleet if you can easily replace its losses, though in that case you should build a larger fleet instead.
a. Who cares about the civilian ships in a battle? Oh yes, the missile boat guy.
b. Yes, these are the ones that make most sense, and you also pointed out correctly why. Defence fleets (with proper engagement range setting) operate close to your spaceports or construction ships, therefore they can easily be repaired or replaced, so "Never" is the correct setting. Also you rather lose a ship or a small fleet than a planet or an important spaceport. For fleets that occupy enemy systems it is mostly "Shields below 20 ...". Some minor fleets can be set to "Shields below 50 ...", troop transport for example. I manually warp the troops into system, if the enemy resistance is already broken. So the setting does not matter anymore except some surprise is happening and I am occupied with watching something else in a different part of the galaxy, and in that case I want them to flee a little bit quicker.
High speed Hyperdrives are best due to shorter travel time, meaning faster empire progress and better fleet intercept times. Perhaps other options will become useful in future patches. Short jump delay Hyperdrives can in theory be useful on military vessels to reduce losses (quick fleeing) but are still inferior overall - you're better off setting your ships to flee sooner.
Absolut wrong! The Equinox drives are the worst, actually. They only give an advantage over Kaldos over medium and long distances, those distances you want to avoid in a war as much as possible. Quick reaction time is essential for defensive fleets, so position them close to enemy threats and use Kaldos drives here. Occupying fleets want to have a fuel efficient Calista drive, because you need the fuel for fighting and staying inside an enemy system, not for just getting there. Similar thoughts apply to civilian ships, explorers and so on. In the end I can only imagine using an Equinox drive if I ever have to consistently (!) warp my fleets from one border of my empire to the other. However, somehow my economy is always so amazing, that I can afford fleets for each border instead of one warping back and forth.
Long Range Scanners (LRS) dramatically improve your fleets' ability to intercept threats. These work well on Spaceports, Monitoring Stations and fleet command ships but can be equipped on cheap Explorers (they'll need a Resource Scanner due to design requirements).
a. I recommend making a separate design named "Explorer [LRS]" for easier identification, stripped to the bare bones minimum (just one T1 engine) with sufficient ECs. Make sure that your regular Explorers don't retrofit to this design, for example by re-saving the regular design a day later (default retrofitting is "Latest"). Set the LRS design retrofit to "None" until you upgrade it, keeping the retrofit path tight, in case you forget to...
b. Set LRS Explorers to manual while they're being constructed, else you'll have to sift through the entire Explorer list to find them. You can also hotkey them with Ctrl + (number) as a reminder.
c. Position these so they cover all of your occupied systems, in star systems (for the ECs). Once in place you can easily find them by filtering the Explorer tab for idle ships. Useful as you'll need to retrofit the LRS components manually.
d. Once you've explored the entire galaxy, only retire the automated Explorers.
No, do not put a long range sensor on your spaceports, that is wasted potential for what a spaceport should do. Also you will overlap a lot with those arrays. A good grid of monitoring bases around your empire is just better. Hopefully somebody in the future tells the AI to build a proper monitoring grid, instead of whatever they try to achieve.
Regular Explorers can be set to "Retreat when: Enemy at same location". This lets you stop worrying about constant notifications of Explorers being attacked by creatures.
Beginner advice.
One Assault Pod can deliver one troop squad during invasion. A base troop compartment (capacity 10.000) holds two base infantry squads (size 5000) and thus needs two Pods. The ratios change as you start upgrading the components and unlock new squad types.
Yes and very important. Figuring out the number of assault pods needed in comparison to troop compartments is essential for efficient invading troop transports. It is sad though, that nobody taught the AI this detail. Still, this needs to be in a beginner guide.
A capture fleet uses Assault Pods to steal enemy ships' technology and some of their build costs (through retiring) or gain ships for your own use - an easily overlooked aspect of the game. Early on this can turn an angry pirate faction into a lucrative opportunity, quickly advancing your tech. It's important to learn how many Pods to send at a ship, never all Pods in your fleet - I managed to capture a 25k strength Hive fleet with an 11k strength T3 Blaster fleet with this way (using 40 Fleet Frigates), through micromanagement.
That a fleet dedicated to automatic capturing is going to shove all boarding parties onto one ship instead of splitting up boarding parties between multiple ships if you reach a specific, lets call it, "overwhelming" number, is just another AI quirk. Needs improvement by developers.
Defense fleets will intercept an inbound threat if detected. Attack fleets will select empire targets during war. Both can engage "dangerous locations".
a. Defense fleets are largely optional as they'll spend a lot of time idling. Attack fleets may see more use, at the cost of more micromanagement. A combination of both is most "comfortable", if you can afford it. Keep in mind that defense fleets can also be used as attack fleets, and vice-versa, by changing their AI settings (clearly shown in the fleet overview).
b. Always make the fleets large enough to crush their targets with minimal losses.
c. For defense fleets, good (overlapping) fleet coverage is important, which is why many smaller Defense fleets are superior to a few oversized ones. Just watch out for excessive losses, and keep in mind that response times need to be quick (based on Hyperdrives used). A 50M engagement range works well early on and can be increased later.
a. If you have StarTrek mindset, yes, then you create a "Starfleet" full of jack-of-all-trades ships, and everytime some threat is happening, you tell every ship in the vicinity to gobble up onto the threat. Did not work against the Dominion and the Borg. Even the StarFleet was forced to build dedicated warships at some point in, i dont know 2374, or so. It is similar here, the AI builds jack-of-all-trades ships, and they do not work.
Also, bad people in strategy games always think, that a unit doing nothing but sitting around, lets call it, "defending", is bad. It is not. Those people simply can not imagine how valuable it is to not be an easy target and force aggressors to think about different targets. For example, nobody told real life Denmark, that capitulating 4 hours after the war declaration, because you simply dont have any defenses, and therefore you can be easily overrun, is a tiny bit atrocious. Now, on the other side, you also do not want your defenses to be super costly, so do not overbuild them, that does not work either. If you judge the efficiency of the Roman Limes or the Chinese Wall, you will get that this idea does not work either. So there must some sort of middle ground here, and that also happens in DW2.
Now the problem is, the AI is very bad at creating a fleet dedicated to a specific role. As soon as the player is giving fleets dedicated roles (defend, bombard, capture, destroy, invade and so on), and designs ships with dedicated roles (tank, damage dealer, crowd control, and so on), you are already winning the game. And you are winning it so hard, that difficulty does not matter anymore.
b. No, sometimes forcing the enemy to retreat is enough, and that can be achieved way easier. Also to crush a target you only need better weapon loadout than the AI, not necessarily more ships.
c. No, build small system defence fleets, with system engagement range, that, you know, defend systems. Only for the border systems. And then larger regional defence fleets with actual engagement range close, but behind the immediate border. Find out what is the major attacking target of AI, (they will always shove almost everything into one system, the AI can not imagine what a "frontline" or a "border" actually is) and then simply relocate the regional fleets by changing their homebase to a base or planet in that specific system. The AIs strategic mindset is like a 17th century 30-Year-War "the more I concentrate, the more I can plunder". We call it the "stack of doom" in modern game strategy. Now you are better. Use your attacking fleets to immediately attack systems that are far away from all the fleets, that the AI shoved into your system, bombard their large planets and especially their homeplanet down, or invade them, and you have won the war. You can also give up the system that the AI is attacking, if your defenses are actually overwhelmed. Just delay the stack of doom strategy long enough until their economy does not exist anymore. Good defenses let you win almost every war in DW2.
Colony Ships can be used for fast, manual migration, unlike Passenger Ships. This lets you jumpstart new colony growth, though the high price of Colony Ships is a mitigating factor.
Exploit, but a funny one. I used to do that too. Makes the game too easy, though.
The Large Mining Engine radius only works when built on an asteroid, not a planet or moon. Check for the white circle to see if the mining radius is active.
Beginner advice.
Chapter 3.2.
Maintenance per year is roughly 1/25th of the ship's initial cost. That's why avoiding losses is important. As a result, fleets should overmatch their targets quite severely. Perhaps counterintuitively, rushing the enemy can reduce losses through faster killing - standoff tactics aren't necessarily safer unless they counter the enemy's tactics.
Wrong, fleets do not need to overmatch their targets, the stack-of-doom mindset is mostly garbage. Look at 3.1.14c, or ask Napoleon about his russian "adventure", if you need an explanation what the problem with that mindset is. (Small Hint: Destroy the supply lines of the stack-of-doom)
"Perhaps counterintuitively, rushing the enemy can reduce losses through faster killing." That is only counterintuitive for bad strategy game players. What happens is the following: "Oh, i get physical damage, let us build a physical armor." "Oh, now i have a physical armor, but enemy changed to fire damage, let es build a fire armor then." "Oh, now the enemy has lightning damage, let us build a lightning armor". And so on. Me: "Well now you have 3 armors, can only wear one at a time, and you still have your level 1 weapon, let us finish this shit show". Bad players always think in counters first, not in synergies, or enemy weaknesses. You can easily crush their argumentation with: "If I build a better weapon, I do more damage, therefore I kill faster, therefore I do not receive as much damage from you, therefore I do not need an armor at all". Actually, it is more complicated than that, but I hope you guys got the point. So, long story short, rushing targets is a valid strategy as is every other strategy and is not counterintuitive to any player, that actually has thought about it for more than a minute.
Armor mixed with shields is better than full shield spam, to handle shield penetrations and allow damaged ships to flee without taking internal damage. Armor/shield balance is nuanced due to the commonality of shield bypass weapons, the size-to-hitpoint advantage of shields plus lower size/energy requirement of armor. Some enemies favor one over the other. In defensive slot numbers, 40% Shields/60% Armor works well. Hightech damage control makes armor more potent than it is at lower tiers, but full armor + repair spam isn't competitive.
You forgot to mention the armor bypass and the ion defence in your list. Complicated topic, but could be dealt with an UI that lets us and the AI create specific designs for each bordering empire, meaning if an AI shares a border with my boskara-ion-melee-design, they would build more ion defence armor on the ships guarding/attacking that border, while on the other border with a, lets say, quameno-missile-only empire the AI would focus on shield recharge speed. This "dream" is however so far away from the reality of the game, that you can simply ignore finetuning this part. The AI can not either, so it does not matter that much.
The most important shield stats are recharge and resist. Shield amount comes after.
Nope, it depends on the situation. There is no general "this is better" here.
Damage Control (DC) applies only to hull, not armor or shields.
What? Oh, you mean the damage reduction portion of the damage control component. Please, if you want to write a guide, use correct and precise statements.
Targeting and countermeasures determine an attack's chance to hit, which applies to all weapons. They effectively function as damage modifiers and are extremely important, more so than sheer weapon numbers. Note that stationary targets are easy to hit regardless of their countermeasures.
Yeah, but remember the part about role specific design. Targeting is only interesting on ships that actually have a significant amount of damaging weapons. And you probably can also imagine, that countermeasures are only interesting on ships that have a shit ton of countermeasure weapons.
Fighters are a unique ship type housed in Fighter Bays. They have good DPS and a severe counter in the form of PDs. Bays can't be filled with one type of fighter so they always need both an Interceptor and Bomber design to be available. Their Reactor has fuel, so don't add Fuel Cells unless you think they're needed! Don't forget to set their tactics, like Cautious used with Missiles or Aggressive with Blasters. When designing a ship, Fighter Bays may not be a better choice than more/larger weapons - it depends on whether the target has PDs. The Hive may give the impression that Fighters are extremely overpowered due to their Carrier tactics, but that's misleading - it's actually their technological advantage that is overpowered and their non-Fighter ships use bad designs.
Fighters are cool. My favorite mod from Distant Worlds Universe was the mod that integrated this idea. But again you need to think about what role your fighters fill out. They can also do different stuff than just replace your point defence.
Fuel Tankers reduce the need for Fuel Cells on roaming fleets but are annoying to use: Their mining rate is low, they cannot refuel themselves (so you need 2 per fleet) and they must be left on Automatic to do their job. The Remote Fuel Transfer range doesn't work as advertised, so speed and numbers are important for quick refueling (which is why Small Fuel Tankers are best). Tankers can be ignored in smaller galaxies if you prefer.
Fuel Tankers are idiotic. If I would ever need fuel for a longer siege, I would do the following:
1. Find an enemy caslon base with high mining rate close to the target region that I want to occupy, invade or whatever.
2. Send a dedicated capture fleet to that base and take it. Send a manual construction ship and repair the base immediately.
3. Send a dedicated defend fleet with the construction ship, set the homebase of the fleet to that caslon base, and set the engagement range to nearby, so it actually only defends this base.
4. Let your occupying fleets refuel there.
Now, you could also use a manual construction ship to build a caslon mining base in the enemy's territory, once a war was declared, instead of point 1 and 2. Also works. Whatever you do, you get the idea, that fuel ships were never needed in this game. They are really really really idiotic.
But last game, I actually build my first fuel tanker. For refuelling a system defence fleet in a far away system, because my civilian economy needed 30 years to send some caslon to that new colony.
Different component types within a category often don't stack, like Reactive Armor/Shield Resist (RA/SR) or Hyperdrives. The worst stats between them then determine the ship's overall stats, as seen in the summary. Different categories can stack, like targeting/countermeasures (including from Thrusters and Vector Engines), Capacitors (which enhance shields from a general slot) and ion defense. There are exceptions, like shield recharge always stacking, so check the summary to make sure.
Yes, important.
Very Tight formation is best in the vast majority of cases (often even if the enemy uses Area weapons). This lets a fleet focus fire and concentrate PD coverage.
Very tight formation does not work with high amount of ships, you do not want your ships to "crash" into each other and than doing the wibbly-wobbly-thingy, that they also do when they accidentally come too close to a planet. Pathfinding issue, could be easily solved. The game also does not think of a formation like a human would actually do, imagine something like Age of Empires 2 or a basic roleplaying strategy Tank-in-the-front-DD-and-Healer-in-the-back. No, that would be to hard to program. Imagine a game that occupies 25 GB disk space in 2024 on 64 GB RAM and 8 core 16 threads 3.5 GHz CPU beaten by original Age of Empires 2 (500 MB disk space from 1999 with single core processor of 366Mhz and 64 MB of RAM. Yeah, imagine that. I know, I sound harsh to the developers here, but really, that is so basic. Reminds me, that I actually have the Age of Empires 2 compact disk (!) still in the shelf next to my computer.
There are three types of creatures: Gravilexes, which are weak laser bugs, Ardilus which have PD capability and Vordikar, by far the strongest, which damage hull directly. Only the latter ever gave me trouble but are safely dispatched using fighters, Beams or L Missiles (with micromanagement). In all other cases you may take losses when facing a Vordikar swarm.
Eliminate them with far away weapons, for example missiles. And proper retreat settings.
If you've followed my general and strategy tips, the Hive will be the first serious and unavoidable threat you'll face. Ion cannons will be useless against Hive Carriers due to ion defense but PDs spam will annihilate their fighters, plus you can capture them (which also prevents fleeing). Catching them with a fleet can be difficult, made easier with good LRS coverage. The Hive will likely have superior technology, so expect high RA/SR and heavy shielding. Ideally, use Blasters with Assault Pods and micromanage the engagement (avoid S Beams, Fast/Conc Missiles and S/M Railguns). Another option is to ignore them, as they can't conquer colonies and will eventually move on to attack your neighbors.
Endgame threats are a lazy mechanic for lazy developers or understaffed development teams. Let me clarify:
If you would have a good AI, then the human player would face constant competition and constant challenge throughout the game until he wins or loses. The human player would never need an additional artificial endgame challenge.
But normally what happens, because of dumb and lazy AI programming, is, that we eventually surpasses the AI in the midgame, when the starting AI boni do not matter that much any more. That is something that happens somehow in every 4X game. We are so used to surpassing the dumb AI in strategy games that neither players nor developers actually question such an endgame threat mechanic.
Thank god, that the Civ5-VoxPopuli modding community has shown, that is possible to get a smarter than normal 4X-strategy-game-AI, otherwise I would probably agree to the general point of view.
Long story short, I deactivate all those mechanics until we will get better AI. And yes it is possible to program that.
