acidlacedpenguinInstitutionalizedSafe in jail.Registered Userregular
edited May 2009
the last 4x game I ever played was Stars! and I remember having games that would last for months, which was awesome. Seeing how this is meant for multiplayer and has real time combat, how does this compare as far as length of game goes?
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
edited May 2009
Question:
Is there a way to bring two fleets into a battle?
Also, there is no z axis in the game? I coulda sworn I seen a video where a person had a ships in a 3D formation.
Also, there is no z axis in the game? I coulda sworn I seen a video where a person had a ships in a 3D formation.
Two fleets will combine into one big group. Basically, you'll have the two groups form one large group of reinforcements off-map. If you have any CnC ships, one will lead their formation in while the other fleet goes to the back of the reinforcement queue. You can move the reinforcements around to better suit when you'd like new ships to come in. There is a limit on the number of ships you can have on screen at once that depends on your CnC tech.
The Z-axis seems to be taken care of automatically, at least as far as I've seen. I'm not sure if there is a Homeworld like command for going up the Z-Axis. If you send a ship to where another ship is, I'm pretty sure the engine will cause the second to just fly above or below the first one.
NOTE: I only have the base game. This all might have changed with the latest expansions.
the last 4x game I ever played was Stars! and I remember having games that would last for months, which was awesome. Seeing how this is meant for multiplayer and has real time combat, how does this compare as far as length of game goes?
This really depends on the settings you choose for your game. A maximum size galaxy in one of the more spread out formations can take a surprising amount of time to finish. It also depends on how careful you are with your turns and how much time you spend playing each day. The longest game I've ever played was a 5 player multiplayer game in a ring shaped galaxy. It was only a hundred stars out of a possible 350 stars, on normal speed settings, and it still took an entire 3 day weekend of play to determine who was going to win. Once one player was clearly capable of beating everyone else at once, the others surrendered. There were probably at least two more days of play in that map, but it was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
That was on a map with normal income, normal research speed and turns limited to 90 seconds and 4 minute combats. You can reduce income and research speed to lengthen the game, add more stars, increase or decrease time limits on combat, and remove turn time limits. I can easily imagine a 350 star spiral galaxy or globular cluster map taking months to complete if you spend only a couple of hours on it a night and take your turns carefully.
Conversely, if you shrink the galaxy, choose a tightly packed arrangement of stars or increase economic efficiency or research efficiency values, you can have a lightning fast knife fight style of game.
I kinda don't like how the game is basically all about the fleets.
I expected more colony stuff going on, like Master of Orion.
But seeing as the game is focused on multiplayer and the turns not taking 1 hour, I can see why they did it.
I still find it hilarious how many ships you can build in one round and how many fucking tankers I need.
Seriously, my fleets (as humans) had almost as many tankers as they had combat ships,just so I could get to the god damn enemy colonies!
You mean Master of Orion 2... The original had a colony system almost exactly the same as SoTS if I'm remembering correctly.
AI rebellions are usually devastating things to be avoided at all costs, but in a recent multiplayer game I found a bit of a silver lining. They make a good Doctor Strangelove style doomsday device.
Me and a few other people were playing the holy lands scenario, where people try to conquer and hold specific planets for a set number of turns, and I was horribly walled in. I had at least two races between myself and my third holy planet, and someone else was working on conquering their last holy planet. I was never going to win that game. I decided to go out with as big a bang as I could, So I stopped all shipbuilding, poured all my income into AI research and boosted it as hard as I could.
Within two turns, half my empire had disappeared. Within five turns the AI had expanded well beyond my original borders. Within ten turns it was spamming multiple Dreadnought Fleets in every direction. I was still in fifth place in the rankings, but everyone else was hurting almost as badly.
It certainly made the loss sting quite a bit less.
Whats the difference between today and yesterday....I have 30 bucks less and spent about 10 hours playing this game.
I'm enjoying it quite a bit, it leaves me wanting more as I to wish the combat was turned based. It's still fun though. I wish the ship designing was more complex to but whatever.
Does this game have any sort of mods? I saw one for battlestar galatica, but I was wondering if there was anything else available
I'm getting back into the game and having a blast. Me and a guy from new Zealand have been playing most nights at 5 (tonight starting at 8 est). Sometime in the near future we'll be starting a new game, is anyone interested?
(i want to play with PA ppl).
there is an xfire chat room specifically dedicated to sword of the stars. Not many people know about it, but I try to hang out there when i'm playing a game.
stopgap on
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
If there are any fellow noobs wanting to learn how to play, I started a TAR (Tactics and Action Report) on the official board to get help as a new player:
Just wanted to say I read this and even though I don't (yet) play the game, really enjoyed it. Even though I didn't understand a lot of the terms, I got the basic gist, and it was a good advertisement for the game. Thanks for putting it together!
It's one of those games that really deserved better than it got in terms of sales. When it hit, it was one of the best strategy games on the market, and in my opinion dominates it's sub-genre. It really is all I want out of a 4x game.
I think that for some, the simplicity of the base game was a slight turn off. Plus, I seem to recall the concept of a random tech tree was viewed with some manner of trepidation. Frankly, I think it's an inspired idea that encourages replays, but that's me.
I see that they added some features with the expansions. That's good and allows them to try stuff out.
I hope it does well enough to warrant another stab at the game style. I like the concepts of the game and find it pretty damn engrossing. Add more customization into it and you probably could have a pretty damn good galactic empire simulator.
In my first game I played as Hivers. I was colonizing every planet I could get to, regardless of its suitability or size, and I was specializing in ballistic weapons. First of all, research was going very slowing because nearly all my income was going into development, and second my shitty mass drivers could not hit anything ever. The Liir would constantly intercept my colony fleets out in deep space and were simply to fast to be retaliated against. I did not have very much fun.
Now I'm playing as Humans who have huge beamers that can fry the gun turrets off even the most agile destroyers. Oh and guess what faggot Liir? Can't intercept me in nodespace. Assholes.
stabby, seems like you found your niche. I played this game for years (although ive been on a long hiatus), and to be honest, im Still not that good with the Hive, they require a very different mindset than the other races. Humans on the other hand despite their fragility, are fun.
I jus tried a game a Hivers, they're different but I'm enjyoing far more than my human game. On the downside finding silicoid queens and swarm everywhere without being able to research point defence tracking sucks.
If Silicoid Queens are up in your grill, get UV laser destroyers and pop their Swarm Nests. Your lasers will bounce harmlessly off of fully grown Queens, but they'll eat everything else the Swarm can throw at you.
And will pew pew nests and babby queens fine.
Colonizing is easy too! I like to flood worlds with Hiver colonizers until it is around 30ish infrastructure if it is around 200-300 hazard, or 60ish infrastructure if it is +400 hazard.
And why are you sending out colony fleets as Hiver? Send out gate fleets, then gate in gauss armed fission engine colony ships! Or PD if you really really fear colony traps, but isn't not like colony traps are a huge setback for Hiver players. Deployed gate ships aren't even affected by tractor beams!
Stupid question for those who have the Steam version of the game:
Does the Steam version of this allow complete offline play? As in, I don't have to be online at all and can still launch the game.
I've heard that Company of Heroes doesn't allow this (and it seems to be true, from my experience with the latest versions of the base game) and it's on Steam. I want to find out if I can play the game without being online in any way, shape, or form. It will help me decide if I want the Steam version or if I'm willing to wait for the Impulse version.
(Frankly, I'd also like to just put my base game from CD into Steam and have it recognize that, but I gather from Steam's forums that SotS isn't one of the few games that will do this.)
I hope it does well enough to warrant another stab at the game style. I like the concepts of the game and find it pretty damn engrossing. Add more customization into it and you probably could have a pretty damn good galactic empire simulator.
I don't think you have anything to worry about there. Looks like they're cooking up a couple othergems as well.
AlanF5 on
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
Stupid question for those who have the Steam version of the game:
Does the Steam version of this allow complete offline play? As in, I don't have to be online at all and can still launch the game.
I don't know about this game specifically, but Steam requires that the Steam client run in the background in order to run games connected to your account, which requires that you be online to connect to their server. So yeah, unfortuantely you probably have to be online no matter what.
I think Stardock does not have this restriction though.
Stupid question for those who have the Steam version of the game:
Does the Steam version of this allow complete offline play? As in, I don't have to be online at all and can still launch the game.
I don't know about this game specifically, but Steam requires that the Steam client run in the background in order to run games connected to your account, which requires that you be online to connect to their server. So yeah, unfortuantely you probably have to be online no matter what.
I think Stardock does not have this restriction though.
Well, you can run Steam in Offline mode. I do that all the time to play Portal and Max Payne outside of my house. So, you don't have to be online to play those.
The difference with Company of Heroes appears to be that THQ in the game itself will not perform a disk check if you bought the game on Steam and it can get online and check. Otherwise, you have to have the disk...which with a digital copy can't happen. So, Company of Heroes seems, to me at least, not have an offline mode in Steam.
Since the others mentioned (as well as HL2) have full, offline modes in Steam, I'm trying to find out if SotS does as well. I like digital distribution, but find that a restriction of only playing when online, even in single player, to be a little...annoying.
Fuck the swarm,
I still haven't gotten the hang of combat yet...and usually do much worse then I feel I should be doing.
Anyone have any pointers? Also the research bonus option is kinda wonky, it feels like it doesn't actually have any effect.
What race are you using? All of them fight differently due to their ship design/engine tech.
Right now I'm using Human, I've tried a few of the races but did best with them.
A few things, what can I do about rebellion's on my planet. Also does the research boost actually do anything, it doesn't see, to have any effect, and if I use it while it's already being researched it restarts the research.
Having only the base game, I remember not using the research boost. I just used the slider to decide where I needed stuff...either production or research and went from there. I definitely don't know anything about anything restarting the research.
Since your using humans, you have to think of the Age of Sails when in combat. Your ships will shoot a whole lot more weapons if you turn your ships to "give them a broadside." A lot of your weapons are on your long axis. When you fly through the enemy, they have to split their fire. If you turn sideways, all guns will face towards your enemies. This is primarily a Destroyer concern. Cruisers and Dreadnoughts have guns, guns, and more guns, so you have less need to worry about this.
Inertia is also something you have to watch. Don't turn after you pass someone, turn before because your heavy ass is going to drag you along. Start turning before if you think they are going to bypass you.
Managing the human combat fleets takes a little bit of time to get down.
Fuck the swarm,
I still haven't gotten the hang of combat yet...and usually do much worse then I feel I should be doing.
Anyone have any pointers? Also the research bonus option is kinda wonky, it feels like it doesn't actually have any effect.
What race are you using? All of them fight differently due to their ship design/engine tech.
Right now I'm using Human, I've tried a few of the races but did best with them.
A few things, what can I do about rebellion's on my planet. Also does the research boost actually do anything, it doesn't see, to have any effect, and if I use it while it's already being researched it restarts the research.
Rebellions are triggered when planetary morale drops too low. Once a planets morale drops below 25 or so, you'll start to get a news ticker event telling you that it is in danger of a rebellion. The longer it stays low, the more likely a rebellion is to happen.
The most common causes of low morale are population control and warfare. If a planets population cant grow it loses one morale, if you force its population to shrink, it loses two morale. A battle over a planet will cause a larger loss of morale depending on how large it was and weather you won lost or tied. If a nearby planet is glassed, morale is lost depending on how close the planet was.
You can improve planetary morale by keeping all a planet's trade routes active, good for +1 morale per turn. A police ship orbiting the planet will reduce morale losses. Settling a new colony will give your entire empire +2 morale once, and destroying an enemy colony will also improve morale.
The research boost is more efficient and risky than normal research. Money spent boosting research counts roughly twice as much as money spent in normal research. At the same time, the more money you pour into boosting, the higher the chance that there is a research accident.
The accident will set research progress back to zero and damage one or more of your planets depending on how dangerous the research is. Industrial tech is relatively safe, even if it goes wrong. Biowar tech, AI, Antimatter research and nanobot research can have really nasty results.
If there are any fellow noobs wanting to learn how to play, I started a TAR (Tactics and Action Report) on the official board to get help as a new player:
Just wanted to say I read this and even though I don't (yet) play the game, really enjoyed it. Even though I didn't understand a lot of the terms, I got the basic gist, and it was a good advertisement for the game. Thanks for putting it together!
Thank you! It's been a great learning experience and it helps that everyone is pitching in with their hints and tips. I'm only up to Turn 66, so there's still a long way to go.
Fuck the swarm,
I still haven't gotten the hang of combat yet...and usually do much worse then I feel I should be doing.
Anyone have any pointers? Also the research bonus option is kinda wonky, it feels like it doesn't actually have any effect.
What race are you using? All of them fight differently due to their ship design/engine tech.
Right now I'm using Human, I've tried a few of the races but did best with them.
A few things, what can I do about rebellion's on my planet. Also does the research boost actually do anything, it doesn't see, to have any effect, and if I use it while it's already being researched it restarts the research.
Rebellions are triggered when planetary morale drops too low. Once a planets morale drops below 25 or so, you'll start to get a news ticker event telling you that it is in danger of a rebellion. The longer it stays low, the more likely a rebellion is to happen.
The most common causes of low morale are population control and warfare. If a planets population cant grow it loses one morale, if you force its population to shrink, it loses two morale. A battle over a planet will cause a larger loss of morale depending on how large it was and weather you won lost or tied. If a nearby planet is glassed, morale is lost depending on how close the planet was.
You can improve planetary morale by keeping all a planet's trade routes active, good for +1 morale per turn. A police ship orbiting the planet will reduce morale losses. Settling a new colony will give your entire empire +2 morale once, and destroying an enemy colony will also improve morale.
The research boost is more efficient and risky than normal research. Money spent boosting research counts roughly twice as much as money spent in normal research. At the same time, the more money you pour into boosting, the higher the chance that there is a research accident.
The accident will set research progress back to zero and damage one or more of your planets depending on how dangerous the research is. Industrial tech is relatively safe, even if it goes wrong. Biowar tech, AI, Antimatter research and nanobot research can have really nasty results.
Oh, yeah, the research accident. Yeah, I never dropped a lot into the boost and that's the reason why. Don't over do it, and I'm sure it's a great tool, but I never used it because of this reason.
Ah that explains a lot lol
Damn so each time it went back to zero it means there was accident...dear god my poor colonies.
Also how does the node lane travel work?
Also thanks for the advice so far, it's been a great help. The rebellion on my home planet has sucked
Node lane travel basically means your ships have to follow lines between planets instead of you being able to send them wherever the fuck. You can still slowboat it, but it'll take forever.
Also, keep your treasury above 1 million as much as possible, as it gives +1 morale per turn to all planets, effectively counteracting the -1 from population control.
Node lane travel allows human ships to travel very quickly between the stars. Also, I think they can't be intercepted unless by another node travelling race. I'm not sure about this, but believe that's the case.
The nodes are the highways. However, once your opponents see you arrive, they will know from which planet/direction your fleets will be coming.
You can travel between the stars outside of nodes, but it is extremely slow. The other races outpace you in realspace transit speed.
On morale, it's not even an issue until that colony has 100 million or more civillians. In extreme situations, morale problems can be curbed by reducing the civilian population to 99 million, but this limits your tax income and trade lanes. There are also bonuses for 5 million credits in the bank and 15 million credits in the bank. Police Cutters are single-section Destroyers that become available once FTL commerce and Fusion are both researched.
On node lanes, your ships cannot change course mid-lane. Also note that a ship needs enough fuel in its tanks to complete a lane; tanker re-fueling in mid lane is not good enough. Thus, the longest node that your ships can travel is equal to the range of your engines. A tanker or colonies will refuel your ships as they pass from one node to the next, even if they do not stop there between turns.
Research boosting is highly situational; it is worth double again (that's 400% total) if you are overbudget. The chance of failure depends on how much is bost and how much is normal funding, but the color of the letters as you adjust the bost slider is a rough indicator. If you are two or three turns from Fusion Warhead (or already overbudget) and a hiver fleet is one or two turns away from a large colony, that boost may get you those warheads in time to make a difference on that fight.
AlanF5 on
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
Stupid question for those who have the Steam version of the game:
Does the Steam version of this allow complete offline play? As in, I don't have to be online at all and can still launch the game.
I don't know about this game specifically, but Steam requires that the Steam client run in the background in order to run games connected to your account, which requires that you be online to connect to their server. So yeah, unfortuantely you probably have to be online no matter what.
I think Stardock does not have this restriction though.
Well, you can run Steam in Offline mode. I do that all the time to play Portal and Max Payne outside of my house. So, you don't have to be online to play those.
Awesome. I had no idea you could do that. I'm learning things about my direct download game clients and an excellent niche game.
I'm right there with him on the difficulty. I've been trying to excel as humans and using a small map of about 40 stars to get it right. Every game I end up drastically behind the one AI player on the map. This last game I ended up taking on the Hivers who had me beat everywhere, colonies, tech, pop, the whole works. By the time I got around to assaulting their planets they had upwards of 100 ships average per whatever planet I was after, pure ridiculousness.
If the Hivers can see you coming, yeah. Their gate networks can make assaulting them a painful process, but with a little practice a player can handily out colonize the ai. They're just barely bright enough to give a pleasant fight, but the trick is that they already know what to do with all these new techs and changing industrial conditions.
Starting out, you're all confused by the early game. Then you hit mid game and get rocked. Then you plan for midgame, but when you get past that late game shows up and it all goes to hell again. I can sympathize. =P
You might find it easier to do your thing if you have multiple ai on a medium map. They spend a fair amount of effort on slaughtering each other.
Posts
Is there a way to bring two fleets into a battle?
Also, there is no z axis in the game? I coulda sworn I seen a video where a person had a ships in a 3D formation.
Two fleets will combine into one big group. Basically, you'll have the two groups form one large group of reinforcements off-map. If you have any CnC ships, one will lead their formation in while the other fleet goes to the back of the reinforcement queue. You can move the reinforcements around to better suit when you'd like new ships to come in. There is a limit on the number of ships you can have on screen at once that depends on your CnC tech.
The Z-axis seems to be taken care of automatically, at least as far as I've seen. I'm not sure if there is a Homeworld like command for going up the Z-Axis. If you send a ship to where another ship is, I'm pretty sure the engine will cause the second to just fly above or below the first one.
NOTE: I only have the base game. This all might have changed with the latest expansions.
This really depends on the settings you choose for your game. A maximum size galaxy in one of the more spread out formations can take a surprising amount of time to finish. It also depends on how careful you are with your turns and how much time you spend playing each day. The longest game I've ever played was a 5 player multiplayer game in a ring shaped galaxy. It was only a hundred stars out of a possible 350 stars, on normal speed settings, and it still took an entire 3 day weekend of play to determine who was going to win. Once one player was clearly capable of beating everyone else at once, the others surrendered. There were probably at least two more days of play in that map, but it was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
That was on a map with normal income, normal research speed and turns limited to 90 seconds and 4 minute combats. You can reduce income and research speed to lengthen the game, add more stars, increase or decrease time limits on combat, and remove turn time limits. I can easily imagine a 350 star spiral galaxy or globular cluster map taking months to complete if you spend only a couple of hours on it a night and take your turns carefully.
Conversely, if you shrink the galaxy, choose a tightly packed arrangement of stars or increase economic efficiency or research efficiency values, you can have a lightning fast knife fight style of game.
You mean Master of Orion 2... The original had a colony system almost exactly the same as SoTS if I'm remembering correctly.
Me and a few other people were playing the holy lands scenario, where people try to conquer and hold specific planets for a set number of turns, and I was horribly walled in. I had at least two races between myself and my third holy planet, and someone else was working on conquering their last holy planet. I was never going to win that game. I decided to go out with as big a bang as I could, So I stopped all shipbuilding, poured all my income into AI research and boosted it as hard as I could.
Within two turns, half my empire had disappeared. Within five turns the AI had expanded well beyond my original borders. Within ten turns it was spamming multiple Dreadnought Fleets in every direction. I was still in fifth place in the rankings, but everyone else was hurting almost as badly.
It certainly made the loss sting quite a bit less.
I'm enjoying it quite a bit, it leaves me wanting more as I to wish the combat was turned based. It's still fun though. I wish the ship designing was more complex to but whatever.
Does this game have any sort of mods? I saw one for battlestar galatica, but I was wondering if there was anything else available
(i want to play with PA ppl).
there is an xfire chat room specifically dedicated to sword of the stars. Not many people know about it, but I try to hang out there when i'm playing a game.
Just wanted to say I read this and even though I don't (yet) play the game, really enjoyed it. Even though I didn't understand a lot of the terms, I got the basic gist, and it was a good advertisement for the game. Thanks for putting it together!
I guess games like this are too niche and get glossed over too easily in favour of bigger name titles.
But yeah, niche game catagory as well.
I see that they added some features with the expansions. That's good and allows them to try stuff out.
I hope it does well enough to warrant another stab at the game style. I like the concepts of the game and find it pretty damn engrossing. Add more customization into it and you probably could have a pretty damn good galactic empire simulator.
I still haven't gotten the hang of combat yet...and usually do much worse then I feel I should be doing.
Anyone have any pointers? Also the research bonus option is kinda wonky, it feels like it doesn't actually have any effect.
What race are you using? All of them fight differently due to their ship design/engine tech.
Now I'm playing as Humans who have huge beamers that can fry the gun turrets off even the most agile destroyers. Oh and guess what faggot Liir? Can't intercept me in nodespace. Assholes.
If Silicoid Queens are up in your grill, get UV laser destroyers and pop their Swarm Nests. Your lasers will bounce harmlessly off of fully grown Queens, but they'll eat everything else the Swarm can throw at you.
And will pew pew nests and babby queens fine.
Colonizing is easy too! I like to flood worlds with Hiver colonizers until it is around 30ish infrastructure if it is around 200-300 hazard, or 60ish infrastructure if it is +400 hazard.
And why are you sending out colony fleets as Hiver? Send out gate fleets, then gate in gauss armed fission engine colony ships! Or PD if you really really fear colony traps, but isn't not like colony traps are a huge setback for Hiver players. Deployed gate ships aren't even affected by tractor beams!
Does the Steam version of this allow complete offline play? As in, I don't have to be online at all and can still launch the game.
I've heard that Company of Heroes doesn't allow this (and it seems to be true, from my experience with the latest versions of the base game) and it's on Steam. I want to find out if I can play the game without being online in any way, shape, or form. It will help me decide if I want the Steam version or if I'm willing to wait for the Impulse version.
(Frankly, I'd also like to just put my base game from CD into Steam and have it recognize that, but I gather from Steam's forums that SotS isn't one of the few games that will do this.)
I don't know about this game specifically, but Steam requires that the Steam client run in the background in order to run games connected to your account, which requires that you be online to connect to their server. So yeah, unfortuantely you probably have to be online no matter what.
I think Stardock does not have this restriction though.
Well, you can run Steam in Offline mode. I do that all the time to play Portal and Max Payne outside of my house. So, you don't have to be online to play those.
The difference with Company of Heroes appears to be that THQ in the game itself will not perform a disk check if you bought the game on Steam and it can get online and check. Otherwise, you have to have the disk...which with a digital copy can't happen. So, Company of Heroes seems, to me at least, not have an offline mode in Steam.
Since the others mentioned (as well as HL2) have full, offline modes in Steam, I'm trying to find out if SotS does as well. I like digital distribution, but find that a restriction of only playing when online, even in single player, to be a little...annoying.
i'm so pissed direct2drive and steam didn't have the expansion stand-alone. i like to stick with those for online distribution games
Right now I'm using Human, I've tried a few of the races but did best with them.
A few things, what can I do about rebellion's on my planet. Also does the research boost actually do anything, it doesn't see, to have any effect, and if I use it while it's already being researched it restarts the research.
Since your using humans, you have to think of the Age of Sails when in combat. Your ships will shoot a whole lot more weapons if you turn your ships to "give them a broadside." A lot of your weapons are on your long axis. When you fly through the enemy, they have to split their fire. If you turn sideways, all guns will face towards your enemies. This is primarily a Destroyer concern. Cruisers and Dreadnoughts have guns, guns, and more guns, so you have less need to worry about this.
Inertia is also something you have to watch. Don't turn after you pass someone, turn before because your heavy ass is going to drag you along. Start turning before if you think they are going to bypass you.
Managing the human combat fleets takes a little bit of time to get down.
Rebellions are triggered when planetary morale drops too low. Once a planets morale drops below 25 or so, you'll start to get a news ticker event telling you that it is in danger of a rebellion. The longer it stays low, the more likely a rebellion is to happen.
The most common causes of low morale are population control and warfare. If a planets population cant grow it loses one morale, if you force its population to shrink, it loses two morale. A battle over a planet will cause a larger loss of morale depending on how large it was and weather you won lost or tied. If a nearby planet is glassed, morale is lost depending on how close the planet was.
You can improve planetary morale by keeping all a planet's trade routes active, good for +1 morale per turn. A police ship orbiting the planet will reduce morale losses. Settling a new colony will give your entire empire +2 morale once, and destroying an enemy colony will also improve morale.
The research boost is more efficient and risky than normal research. Money spent boosting research counts roughly twice as much as money spent in normal research. At the same time, the more money you pour into boosting, the higher the chance that there is a research accident.
The accident will set research progress back to zero and damage one or more of your planets depending on how dangerous the research is. Industrial tech is relatively safe, even if it goes wrong. Biowar tech, AI, Antimatter research and nanobot research can have really nasty results.
Thank you! It's been a great learning experience and it helps that everyone is pitching in with their hints and tips. I'm only up to Turn 66, so there's still a long way to go.
Oh, yeah, the research accident. Yeah, I never dropped a lot into the boost and that's the reason why. Don't over do it, and I'm sure it's a great tool, but I never used it because of this reason.
Damn so each time it went back to zero it means there was accident...dear god my poor colonies.
Also how does the node lane travel work?
Also thanks for the advice so far, it's been a great help. The rebellion on my home planet has sucked
Node lane travel basically means your ships have to follow lines between planets instead of you being able to send them wherever the fuck. You can still slowboat it, but it'll take forever.
Also, keep your treasury above 1 million as much as possible, as it gives +1 morale per turn to all planets, effectively counteracting the -1 from population control.
The nodes are the highways. However, once your opponents see you arrive, they will know from which planet/direction your fleets will be coming.
You can travel between the stars outside of nodes, but it is extremely slow. The other races outpace you in realspace transit speed.
On node lanes, your ships cannot change course mid-lane. Also note that a ship needs enough fuel in its tanks to complete a lane; tanker re-fueling in mid lane is not good enough. Thus, the longest node that your ships can travel is equal to the range of your engines. A tanker or colonies will refuel your ships as they pass from one node to the next, even if they do not stop there between turns.
Research boosting is highly situational; it is worth double again (that's 400% total) if you are overbudget. The chance of failure depends on how much is bost and how much is normal funding, but the color of the letters as you adjust the bost slider is a rough indicator. If you are two or three turns from Fusion Warhead (or already overbudget) and a hiver fleet is one or two turns away from a large colony, that boost may get you those warheads in time to make a difference on that fight.
Awesome. I had no idea you could do that. I'm learning things about my direct download game clients and an excellent niche game.
Complicated eh? I wouldn't ever try another turn based 4x. This is about as simple and streamlined as they come.
Starting out, you're all confused by the early game. Then you hit mid game and get rocked. Then you plan for midgame, but when you get past that late game shows up and it all goes to hell again. I can sympathize. =P
You might find it easier to do your thing if you have multiple ai on a medium map. They spend a fair amount of effort on slaughtering each other.