Quantity over Quality for the Combat Ships?

[KG Erwin]

In looking down the thread list, I saw some gameplay hints about churning out masses of cheap small ships (Space-Beetles?) rather than the Intergalactic Cadillacs I'm fond of. So, this is how you win battles? [:(]

[Erik Rutins]

I've found that it depends on which race you are fighting and of course the current situation in terms of technology, colony development, hulls, etc. I don't find quantity over quality to be _the strategy_ for this game, but it can work.

[sabre1]

I like building the big stuff also, but it doesn't seem to pay off in this game.

I also like setting up random huge maps starting with nothing against 1 other player. I end up getting bogged down in to many things to keep track of. It's fun until I reach that point though.

I am curious in the random scenario setup if you choose another tech for example the humans using KlaKeen (spelling) do they get the higher offensive rates?

Who makes the deadliest large ships?

Someone mentioned that you should only have a couple of shipyards, but if you lose those you are kind of in a bad spot if you need to build ships in a hurry.

It would (in my mind anyway) be fun to play and ally with another human taking on the computer at the most difficult level. Of course that's assumming the other human does poorly against the AI like I do.

[Erik Rutins]

For me at least, it has often made a big difference who can get to the larger hulls and tech advantages first vs. who can build hordes of small ships. The combats only allow a portion of huge fleets to engage at a time. In one rather extreme example, I had a fleet of about 20 Human Super-Dreadnoughts, 30 Dreadnoughts and about 20 Cruisers and Destroyers destroy a Hive Fleet of 1000+ Ships, mostly Destroyers and Cruisers. Took a while to run all the combat rounds, but it worked. I ended up with around 50% casualties but broke the back of the computer Hive player and was able to conquer most of his worlds soon thereafter.

Regards,

- Erik

[Elric]

But sending 1000 tiny ships into your "armada of death" isnt the proper way to do a swarming strategy. Especially when I play the hive, I like to get tons of cruiser class ships, and rarely fight the other persons main fleet, instead splitting into 20 or so attack fleets and decimating their colonies.

[pargen]

I have noticed that the AI (hive anyway) prefers to target the biggest ships. So, no big ships unless you have a lot of them.