I was pointing out that building a ship to colonize planets in-system was a waste of resources. I know it takes pop :?
Is time a gift or punishment?
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lu tzeSweeping the monestary steps.Registered Userregular
edited June 2012
Right... then I'll simply refer you to my previous answer:
Most of the time it's not worth doing that because you move a population from a productive planet to a marginal one. You gain literally nothing except an approval hit... Hence my point that it's generally more efficient to build up systems one planet at a time.
Your method only brings you out ahead if colonization creates population, instead of moving it.
lu tze on
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cptruggedI think it has something to do with free will.Registered Userregular
Right... then I'll simply refer you to my previous answer:
Most of the time it's not worth doing that because you move a population from a productive planet to a marginal one. You gain literally nothing except an approval hit... Hence my point that it's generally more efficient to build up systems one planet at a time.
Your method only brings you out ahead if colonization creates population, instead of moving it.
I never really thought of it that way. That's very true, if you're already on a huge jungle and roll a pop over to a lesser planet, you really aren't gaining anything unless it has particular resources you need.
Hmm.. This is probably why I was taking such huge approval hits early on. Moving to rough planets for no real reason.
You're gaining increased pop cap. That is the thing you are aiming for. The more citizens you have, the more industry, money, etc you get. I don't understand how people are not getting that. Do you guys stay in your home system for the entire game when you only find desert and lava planets?
Is time a gift or punishment?
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lu tzeSweeping the monestary steps.Registered Userregular
Yes it's often worth the production hit to capture virgin systems before your opponents (this is the eXpand part of 4x!). But you have to recognize that it does come at a cost.
We get it, Napoleon, we get it.
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World's best janitor
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited June 2012
Even as not-Sowers I tend to start spreading pretty early just to grab resources and set up future monopolies for the coo coo crazy bonuses once you unlock that resource.
You take a bit of happiness hit early on, but it's super not difficult to recover from that.
I feel as though I didn't expand fast enough in my last game (as Sowers). Once I found where the other civs were, I should have colonized every system in my area as fast as I could... no more pirates once you do that.
Yes it's often worth the production hit to capture virgin systems before your opponents (this is the eXpand part of 4x!). But you have to recognize that it does come at a cost.
We get it, Napoleon, we get it.
OK then :P
What I'm really wanting to get at, and failing clearly, is that as Sowers you really do need to grab as many planets as you can just because you can. With the exception of terran, ocean, and jungles planets (which you're not going to find because lol rng), and tundra planets (you start with that tech because your homeworld is one), all of your planets are going to have a production penalty. That on its own shouldn't be stoping you.
Is time a gift or punishment?
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Yes, but expanding in system to worse planets gets you nothing unless you are already at the population cap. So just colonising everything is inefficient
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
All your planets are worse planets! You have to expand sometime!
Jesus, I'm talking in circles.
Is time a gift or punishment?
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
You're not making sense now. You only expand in system in order to get resources or when you hit your population cap. Doing it before wastes time on colonising, lowers approval and reduces the system output. It is all downsides. There is no advantage to a larger population cap only a larger population
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
One way or the other, colonizing other planets and systems involves moving population to less efficient planets. This is just as true late game (actually it's more true late game) as it is early game.
And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm betting you'll gain a greater population growth by colonizing a bunch of systems all at once rather than waiitng for one system to max out population, because you'll have multiple systems producing population at any given time.
Just any way you slice it, there is virtually no reason to not expand early game. That's not even just a Sowers thing, they can just expand easier than other factions. The other factions still want to get colonization tech to grab at least a few systems early on anyway. Because you want the expanded area of influence, you want the strategic and luxury resources, etc etc.
One way or the other, colonizing other planets and systems involves moving population to less efficient planets. This is just as true late game (actually it's more true late game) as it is early game.
And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm betting you'll gain a greater population growth by colonizing a bunch of systems all at once rather than waiitng for one system to max out population, because you'll have multiple systems producing population at any given time.
Just any way you slice it, there is virtually no reason to not expand early game. That's not even just a Sowers thing, they can just expand easier than other factions. The other factions still want to get colonization tech to grab at least a few systems early on anyway. Because you want the expanded area of influence, you want the strategic and luxury resources, etc etc.
Thank you. I'm so frustrated atm I can't express myself properly.
Is time a gift or punishment?
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I'm actually finding in my current game that the penalty for expansion may be a bit too small.
I've been able to basically grab every system in sight, lower taxes a bit to compensate, and if I need the extra dust just convert industry to dust. This becomes even easier once you have a couple of the +30 Happiness improvements basically I'll take a new system, and just buyout the Infinite Markets improvement or whatever immediately. There has been no real downside to doing this that I can see, and when the game progresses into its later stages I'll have an incredibly huge, fully functional empire on hand. The new systems become a net gain almost immediately with lowered taxes and the first +30 Happiness improvement. Once you get Colonial Rights or whatever and your entire empire has tons of happiness it gets even crazier.
One way or the other, colonizing other planets and systems involves moving population to less efficient planets. This is just as true late game (actually it's more true late game) as it is early game.
And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm betting you'll gain a greater population growth by colonizing a bunch of systems all at once rather than waiitng for one system to max out population, because you'll have multiple systems producing population at any given time.
Just any way you slice it, there is virtually no reason to not expand early game. That's not even just a Sowers thing, they can just expand easier than other factions. The other factions still want to get colonization tech to grab at least a few systems early on anyway. Because you want the expanded area of influence, you want the strategic and luxury resources, etc etc.
Oh totally. But there's a very clear point where it's worth expanding in system versus when you are throwing growth, happiness, cash, research and industry down the toilet.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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lu tzeSweeping the monestary steps.Registered Userregular
edited June 2012
Yes, exactly.
I think we're all talking past each other at this point.
I'll try sum up my thoughts on the subject:
1. It's almost never worth expanding in systems you already own until you're approaching the population cap in that system.
2. Expanding to new systems is an investment, and you have to weigh the returns. You'll always come out ahead eventually, but for marginal systems (i.e. anything below arid/tundra) the rate of return will be slower, so you might be better off investing elsewhere first.
I think we're all talking past each other at this point.
I'll try sum up my thoughts on the subject:
1. It's almost never worth expanding in systems you already own until you're approaching the population cap in that system.
2. Expanding to new systems is an investment, and you have to weigh the returns. You'll always come out ahead eventually, but for marginal systems (i.e. anything below arid/tundra) the rate of return will be slower, so you might be better off investing elsewhere first.
Also, mature population capped systems can kick start new systems by colonizing more than one planet.
Any word yet on multiplayer? We need to get some aggression out.
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lu tzeSweeping the monestary steps.Registered Userregular
edited June 2012
If you mean is it implemented, then yes, multiplayer is in the current build.
If you mean are we playing, I personally haven't tried it yet (blame DayZ... and Dungeon Crawl, and Caves of Qud), so I've no idea if it's decent.
lu tze on
World's best janitor
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited June 2012
So I think I'm probably abusing some unbalanced mechanics here.
I started off expanding to about ten systems as fast as possible, rushing research to Colonization tech first, then Happiness tech, and then the -20% Weapons Module ship and Lasers.
I then used the -20% Weapons Module Weight ship to create a ship with the +40% damage support module, and then nothing but Lasers. It is effectively an unarmored pile of guns.
Then I amped up my Industry on virtually every planet to the point where I could pump out at least one of these ships from every single one of my systems every turn. (It quickly got to the point where I could pump out two of them per turn per system, at which point I decided upgrading my lasers and making it take longer to produce was pointless)
Turns out, in combat, ships can only target a single other ship per "attack phase". So when I'm sending a fleet of twenty of my zerglings into their fleet of 5-6 ships. At absolute worst I lose 5-6 ships, it is virtually impossible for me to lose more than that. Ships which I am pumping out by around 20+ per turn.
I'm now just swarming out in absolutely every direction, at war with all three other races and handily ruining everything they send at me.
No, that's about what Sowers should be doing. Lasers seem to be the best weapon, the AI rarely uses shields. And they tend to use balistics, so you could slap on some armor and be completely invincible at the same time.
Is time a gift or punishment?
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited June 2012
It's more the zerg rush tactics of "ships can only target an individual opposing ship" thing that feels so cheap that I think I've basically broken the game.
It makes larger ships really not worth the extra cost and CP when you can field at least twice as many smaller ships with roughly the same cost to weight ratio. (Better, even, if you're just doing what I'm doing and loading them with nothing but weapons)
And since the AI runs ship combinations that seem like halfway sensible combinations of small and large sips, they always fall over when faced with a horde of small ships focused on doing nothing but damage. I think they're going to need to alter the way combat works somehow, like making some weapons do spread damage, or maybe one or more tactics cards to accomplish that possibly.
EDIT: Or maybe just allow larger ships to target multiple smaller ships at once?
I dunno, as is there's basically no reason to ever build a Dreadnought.
EDIT2: Maybe a ship can target a number of CP worth of ships equal to its own CP?
That might homogenize things a bit, but at least it would probably help balance out.
It's more the zerg rush tactics of "ships can only target an individual opposing ship" thing that feels so cheap that I think I've basically broken the game.
Ha, I just remembered that I broke Master of Orion 1 the same way.
I discovered that massive swarms of cheap ships of the smallest size with whatever weapon I could fit on them could beat anything. Sure, I lost hundreds per turn, but I attacked with a blob of 2000+ and cranked them out like there was no tomorrow.
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lu tzeSweeping the monestary steps.Registered Userregular
It's a viable tactic in Master of Orion, because there are ways of countering it.
An individual weapon could only ever target one ship per round, so swatting fighters with death rays would result in massive overkill. However, arrays of smaller less powerful weapons would still cope quite well.
Then you had pulse phasers/autocannons and scatter pack missiles which would take out multiple fighters per turn. Streaming weapons would never overkill, instead transfer their remaining damage to other ships in the stack. Pulars and stream projectors would damage every ship at once. A repulsion beam would not let puny fighters close enough to attack with their short range weapons.
Oh yeah, and the black hole generator...
So yeah, you never broke MOO. The AI is capable of dealing with it there, I've seen it do so many times. In fact the AI is quite fond of using the tactic itself, and can catch beginner players (who generally think bigger is better) off guard with it.
So yeah, you never broke MOO. The AI is capable of dealing with it there, I've seen it do so many times. In fact the AI is quite fond of using the tactic itself, and can catch beginner players (who generally think bigger is better) off guard with it.
You sure? I never ever saw the AI do that. I just kept mass-producing fighters that stung everything to death. Sure, I lost them in droves, but I still ended up being the winner.
So yeah, you never broke MOO. The AI is capable of dealing with it there, I've seen it do so many times. In fact the AI is quite fond of using the tactic itself, and can catch beginner players (who generally think bigger is better) off guard with it.
You sure? I never ever saw the AI do that. I just kept mass-producing fighters that stung everything to death. Sure, I lost them in droves, but I still ended up being the winner.
A grand strategy worthy of Weyland-Yutani. You should apply for a management position.
So yeah, you never broke MOO. The AI is capable of dealing with it there, I've seen it do so many times. In fact the AI is quite fond of using the tactic itself, and can catch beginner players (who generally think bigger is better) off guard with it.
You sure? I never ever saw the AI do that. I just kept mass-producing fighters that stung everything to death. Sure, I lost them in droves, but I still ended up being the winner.
A grand strategy worthy of Weyland-Yutani. You should apply for a management position.
0
lu tzeSweeping the monestary steps.Registered Userregular
So yeah, you never broke MOO. The AI is capable of dealing with it there, I've seen it do so many times. In fact the AI is quite fond of using the tactic itself, and can catch beginner players (who generally think bigger is better) off guard with it.
You sure? I never ever saw the AI do that. I just kept mass-producing fighters that stung everything to death. Sure, I lost them in droves, but I still ended up being the winner.
I've seen it go both ways.
Doesn't really matter though. The point is, there are multiple tools to deal with the tactic, which is something that Endless Space is lacking at the moment.
I think we're all talking past each other at this point.
I'll try sum up my thoughts on the subject:
1. It's almost never worth expanding in systems you already own until you're approaching the population cap in that system.
2. Expanding to new systems is an investment, and you have to weigh the returns. You'll always come out ahead eventually, but for marginal systems (i.e. anything below arid/tundra) the rate of return will be slower, so you might be better off investing elsewhere first.
You're right, the discussion is really delineated into two different things. In system expansion and expanding to another system.
The biggest difference is that planetary/in system population growth is system wide. Planets do not gain population independently. So yes, taking pop from your huge jungle planet to pop a tiny barren makes little sense. But most of that is mitigated by endgame techs that provided massive boosts to approval and resource per pop on planet. But early game, yeah, I have seen the detrimental effects first hand with way crappy approval levels.
Now expanding to another system. Yes, pretty much always good IMO. That system grows independently and provides additional control over the galaxy.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Yeah, ES is lacking in the weapons department. That was really great about Sword of the Stars.
Do you mean MoO2? I seem to remember Sword of the Starts having the same missiles, projectiles and beams arrangements as endless spice does
In SotS there were significant qualitative differences between types of weapons beyond optimal ranges and rate of fire. As tech levels changed you gained additional capabilities which had significant impact on your ship design choices. High tech weapons were good, not only for their greater damage output, but for their valuable secondary effects.
The relationship between shipbuilding, technology, and combat is a real strong point of SotS. Endless space focuses more on empire management.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
It must just be me being forgetful then.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Yeah, ES is lacking in the weapons department. That was really great about Sword of the Stars.
Do you mean MoO2? I seem to remember Sword of the Starts having the same missiles, projectiles and beams arrangements as ES does
It has missiles, projectiles, beams and drones. But it had tons of variety - missiles were everything from long-range torpedoes to short-range dumbfire racks that fire a swarm of rockets.
Oh, and there were weird energy weapons too. Like that weirdo shotgun that knocked everything the hell away.
edit: but it also had real-time combat where you controlled the ships. A lot of that stuff won't work with the simpler combat abstraction in ES.
I loved SotS... expanding as the bugs was rather intriguing. As soon as I opened a wormhole the star was effectively mine. And because of all the insta-transport I only needed 2 fleets. The massive empire defense fleet and the invasion taskforce. Rarely was there a simultaneous attack on the same turn.
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I think after my current game I'm going to lay off this for awhile, at least until they work on it a bit more.
I'm not complaining, because it's still definitely a work in progress beta and it's got loads and loads of potential, but right now it's just a little too unbalanced in such a way that makes it incredibly easy to break open.
Between the ships only targetting a single other ship per combat "round", and the fact that grabbing as many systems as possible as fast as possible has virtually no downside, it's a little too easy to ramp up and steamroll at any difficulty with any faction. Some just make it incredibly easier. (Sowers, I'm looking at you)
I loved SotS... expanding as the bugs was rather intriguing. As soon as I opened a wormhole the star was effectively mine. And because of all the insta-transport I only needed 2 fleets. The massive empire defense fleet and the invasion taskforce. Rarely was there a simultaneous attack on the same turn.
Didnt care for their Flyman voice though.
FORGIVE US, MY QUEEN! WE WERE SLOW. BUT SUCCESSFUL!
I loved SotS... expanding as the bugs was rather intriguing. As soon as I opened a wormhole the star was effectively mine. And because of all the insta-transport I only needed 2 fleets. The massive empire defense fleet and the invasion taskforce. Rarely was there a simultaneous attack on the same turn.
Didnt care for their Flyman voice though.
FORGIVE US, MY QUEEN! WE WERE SLOW. BUT SUCCESSFUL!
Posts
I was pointing out that building a ship to colonize planets in-system was a waste of resources. I know it takes pop :?
Most of the time it's not worth doing that because you move a population from a productive planet to a marginal one. You gain literally nothing except an approval hit... Hence my point that it's generally more efficient to build up systems one planet at a time.
Your method only brings you out ahead if colonization creates population, instead of moving it.
I never really thought of it that way. That's very true, if you're already on a huge jungle and roll a pop over to a lesser planet, you really aren't gaining anything unless it has particular resources you need.
Hmm.. This is probably why I was taking such huge approval hits early on. Moving to rough planets for no real reason.
You take a bit of happiness hit early on, but it's super not difficult to recover from that.
OK then :P
What I'm really wanting to get at, and failing clearly, is that as Sowers you really do need to grab as many planets as you can just because you can. With the exception of terran, ocean, and jungles planets (which you're not going to find because lol rng), and tundra planets (you start with that tech because your homeworld is one), all of your planets are going to have a production penalty. That on its own shouldn't be stoping you.
Jesus, I'm talking in circles.
And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm betting you'll gain a greater population growth by colonizing a bunch of systems all at once rather than waiitng for one system to max out population, because you'll have multiple systems producing population at any given time.
Just any way you slice it, there is virtually no reason to not expand early game. That's not even just a Sowers thing, they can just expand easier than other factions. The other factions still want to get colonization tech to grab at least a few systems early on anyway. Because you want the expanded area of influence, you want the strategic and luxury resources, etc etc.
That's Cravers trapped in that blue system. :P
Thank you. I'm so frustrated atm I can't express myself properly.
I've been able to basically grab every system in sight, lower taxes a bit to compensate, and if I need the extra dust just convert industry to dust. This becomes even easier once you have a couple of the +30 Happiness improvements basically I'll take a new system, and just buyout the Infinite Markets improvement or whatever immediately. There has been no real downside to doing this that I can see, and when the game progresses into its later stages I'll have an incredibly huge, fully functional empire on hand. The new systems become a net gain almost immediately with lowered taxes and the first +30 Happiness improvement. Once you get Colonial Rights or whatever and your entire empire has tons of happiness it gets even crazier.
Oh totally. But there's a very clear point where it's worth expanding in system versus when you are throwing growth, happiness, cash, research and industry down the toilet.
I think we're all talking past each other at this point.
I'll try sum up my thoughts on the subject:
1. It's almost never worth expanding in systems you already own until you're approaching the population cap in that system.
2. Expanding to new systems is an investment, and you have to weigh the returns. You'll always come out ahead eventually, but for marginal systems (i.e. anything below arid/tundra) the rate of return will be slower, so you might be better off investing elsewhere first.
Also, mature population capped systems can kick start new systems by colonizing more than one planet.
Any word yet on multiplayer? We need to get some aggression out.
If you mean are we playing, I personally haven't tried it yet (blame DayZ... and Dungeon Crawl, and Caves of Qud), so I've no idea if it's decent.
I started off expanding to about ten systems as fast as possible, rushing research to Colonization tech first, then Happiness tech, and then the -20% Weapons Module ship and Lasers.
I then used the -20% Weapons Module Weight ship to create a ship with the +40% damage support module, and then nothing but Lasers. It is effectively an unarmored pile of guns.
Then I amped up my Industry on virtually every planet to the point where I could pump out at least one of these ships from every single one of my systems every turn. (It quickly got to the point where I could pump out two of them per turn per system, at which point I decided upgrading my lasers and making it take longer to produce was pointless)
Turns out, in combat, ships can only target a single other ship per "attack phase". So when I'm sending a fleet of twenty of my zerglings into their fleet of 5-6 ships. At absolute worst I lose 5-6 ships, it is virtually impossible for me to lose more than that. Ships which I am pumping out by around 20+ per turn.
I'm now just swarming out in absolutely every direction, at war with all three other races and handily ruining everything they send at me.
It makes larger ships really not worth the extra cost and CP when you can field at least twice as many smaller ships with roughly the same cost to weight ratio. (Better, even, if you're just doing what I'm doing and loading them with nothing but weapons)
And since the AI runs ship combinations that seem like halfway sensible combinations of small and large sips, they always fall over when faced with a horde of small ships focused on doing nothing but damage. I think they're going to need to alter the way combat works somehow, like making some weapons do spread damage, or maybe one or more tactics cards to accomplish that possibly.
EDIT: Or maybe just allow larger ships to target multiple smaller ships at once?
I dunno, as is there's basically no reason to ever build a Dreadnought.
EDIT2: Maybe a ship can target a number of CP worth of ships equal to its own CP?
That might homogenize things a bit, but at least it would probably help balance out.
Ha, I just remembered that I broke Master of Orion 1 the same way.
I discovered that massive swarms of cheap ships of the smallest size with whatever weapon I could fit on them could beat anything. Sure, I lost hundreds per turn, but I attacked with a blob of 2000+ and cranked them out like there was no tomorrow.
An individual weapon could only ever target one ship per round, so swatting fighters with death rays would result in massive overkill. However, arrays of smaller less powerful weapons would still cope quite well.
Then you had pulse phasers/autocannons and scatter pack missiles which would take out multiple fighters per turn. Streaming weapons would never overkill, instead transfer their remaining damage to other ships in the stack. Pulars and stream projectors would damage every ship at once. A repulsion beam would not let puny fighters close enough to attack with their short range weapons.
Oh yeah, and the black hole generator...
So yeah, you never broke MOO. The AI is capable of dealing with it there, I've seen it do so many times. In fact the AI is quite fond of using the tactic itself, and can catch beginner players (who generally think bigger is better) off guard with it.
You sure? I never ever saw the AI do that. I just kept mass-producing fighters that stung everything to death. Sure, I lost them in droves, but I still ended up being the winner.
A grand strategy worthy of Weyland-Yutani. You should apply for a management position.
Doesn't really matter though. The point is, there are multiple tools to deal with the tactic, which is something that Endless Space is lacking at the moment.
You're right, the discussion is really delineated into two different things. In system expansion and expanding to another system.
The biggest difference is that planetary/in system population growth is system wide. Planets do not gain population independently. So yes, taking pop from your huge jungle planet to pop a tiny barren makes little sense. But most of that is mitigated by endgame techs that provided massive boosts to approval and resource per pop on planet. But early game, yeah, I have seen the detrimental effects first hand with way crappy approval levels.
Now expanding to another system. Yes, pretty much always good IMO. That system grows independently and provides additional control over the galaxy.
SotS had a lot of variety within those categories, though I can't comment so much on Endless Space's armaments.
The relationship between shipbuilding, technology, and combat is a real strong point of SotS. Endless space focuses more on empire management.
It has missiles, projectiles, beams and drones. But it had tons of variety - missiles were everything from long-range torpedoes to short-range dumbfire racks that fire a swarm of rockets.
Oh, and there were weird energy weapons too. Like that weirdo shotgun that knocked everything the hell away.
edit: but it also had real-time combat where you controlled the ships. A lot of that stuff won't work with the simpler combat abstraction in ES.
Didnt care for their Flyman voice though.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
I'm not complaining, because it's still definitely a work in progress beta and it's got loads and loads of potential, but right now it's just a little too unbalanced in such a way that makes it incredibly easy to break open.
Between the ships only targetting a single other ship per combat "round", and the fact that grabbing as many systems as possible as fast as possible has virtually no downside, it's a little too easy to ramp up and steamroll at any difficulty with any faction. Some just make it incredibly easier. (Sowers, I'm looking at you)
FORGIVE US, MY QUEEN! WE WERE SLOW. BUT SUCCESSFUL!
:^:
./pain
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN