So I just bought this (the base game) from D2D for $5. Money well spent so far. It was a little jarring not having to manage colonies, but I sucked at that part in most 4x games anyway
You should at least pick up Born of Blood as well. They make a lot of interface tweaks between each expansion and even just BoB will put a lot of needed polish on the game.
I was going to ask about this, cause I got the game from D2D, but they do not have BoB or AMoC. I suppose I could get the Sword of the Stars Ultimate Naval Yard Edition. That one comes with all the expansions including Argos for 40 bucks.
Even though I only paid $5 for SoTS I am hesitant to buy it again. Maybe in a couple days I will pick it up. By that time I will have a good idea if I really like SoTS or not. So far so good though.
Just some food for thought, but when I first got the game I wasn't that crazy about it. I played a little, but it didn't hold my attention all that well. The expansions totally changed my view on the game. It's now really solid, and in the few multiplayer games I've been in, it's been a lot more fun than fighting the AI.
SotS is built for multiplayer from the ground up. It's okay in singleplayer but it really shines in multi. Well, except the eternal time sink that is trade, but other than that, all awesome, all the time.
SotS is built for multiplayer from the ground up. It's okay in singleplayer but it really shines in multi. Well, except the eternal time sink that is trade, but other than that, all awesome, all the time.
PS: Fuck trade.
Fuck trade.
Wish there was a trade y/n button.
Though that would give the Zuul a gigantic advantage.
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
SotS is built for multiplayer from the ground up. It's okay in singleplayer but it really shines in multi. Well, except the eternal time sink that is trade, but other than that, all awesome, all the time.
PS: Fuck trade.
Fuck trade.
you're just bitter that my morrigi empire is pulling down 5 million spacebux a turn.
Do strafe ships always suck? What about Torpedo ships?
Strafe ships are actually fantastic if you load them with the right weapons and use the right orders.
Bear in mind that ships on follow orders will prioritize their movement order over getting a bead on their target, so you either need very maneuverable ships or you need to hit full stop to bring all those forward weapons to bear. This also applies to heavy beams since those are also always fixed forward.
I didnt quite understand what you said, so you must tell a strafe ship in the middle of fighting to switch to "normal" tactic?
And what weapons work, is it long range weapons that seem to work better?
Unfortunately, as awesome as the combat is, the loading screens are too long. I played a small map for 20 hours, and Im still absolutely nowhere. It takes too long to play this.
SotS is built for multiplayer from the ground up. It's okay in singleplayer but it really shines in multi. Well, except the eternal time sink that is trade, but other than that, all awesome, all the time.
PS: Fuck trade.
Fuck trade.
you're just bitter that my morrigi empire is pulling down 5 million spacebux a turn.
If it didn't take twice as long to micromanage trade compared to everything else you're doing, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. But when trade is so stupid good, you have to go for it with 5 out of 6 races. And when you do, the best way to expand it is to queue up one freighter per turn per system. And when you have trade route capacities in the 60s-70s for most sectors, that's a lot of clicking. Click click click click click.
They better add some sort of auto management button for trade if they include it in SotS2. They better.
But when trade is so stupid good, you have to go for it with 5 out of 6 races. And when you do, the best way to expand it is to queue up one freighter per turn per system. And when you have trade route capacities in the 60s-70s for most sectors, that's a lot of clicking.
It is not that hard to mass build freighters at your homeworld or w/e and then ship them to the right trade sector. Also, the devs have already streamlined trade since it was introduced. Remember when BoB didn't have a trade tab? *shudder*
Also, you often have to do quite a lot of on-the-spot, every turn building for your combat ships as well so you don't go horribly into debt.
I do agree that trade is maybe too powerful, especially for the damn birds. Maybe it ought to be easier to raid?
I didnt quite understand what you said, so you must tell a strafe ship in the middle of fighting to switch to "normal" tactic?
First of all, one important thing to remember for combat is that if you've told a ship to move somewhere, it "wants" to get to its location more than it "wants" to line up its weapons on a target. In general, the faster a ship is going, the harder it is for it to line up a shot.
When a ship is under Normal orders, it behaves like this:
A. If a ship doesn't have orders to move somewhere, it will spend all of its time trying to line up its weapons on whatever target you've selected.
B. Ships will NOT move to get in weapons range under Normal orders; they will only fire on things that fly into their range.
When a ship is under Close to Attack orders, its behavior changes a bit:
A. A ship will ignore any movement orders it has until it's destroyed all possible targets in range.
B. If you select a target for a ship, it will move towards the ship to get into weapons range.
C. After getting into weapons range, a ship will continue to move in a fashion dependent on your race.
For example, Tarkas and Hivers will make high speed attack runs where they zoom past the enemy formation with guns blazing, turn around on the other side, then do it again. Liir will slowly circle around the enemy, trying to hit their engines.
Now, if you tie this together with what I said at the beginning about moving ships having a hard time lining up shots, you can see why the races that make high speed attack runs might have a problem with Strafe sections!
So if you're one of those races, you either need to have your Strafe ships hold still, or use different ships/weapons that can track more accurately.
And what weapons work, is it long range weapons that seem to work better?
All weapons have different utility in different situations. A lot of the game is figuring that sort of thing out, so there's no easy answer, and an in-depth discussion could fill several posts. The wiki is pretty good reading for that sort of thing though.
Unfortunately, as awesome as the combat is, the loading screens are too long. I played a small map for 20 hours, and Im still absolutely nowhere. It takes too long to play this.
One big disadvantage to the real-time combat and the customizable ships is that the game has to load every single ship model partaking in a combat.
There's a few things you could try to alleviate this:
1. Use auto-resolve. You don't need to fight every tiny scout battle. In fact, you could probably get by only fighting the most important planetary invasions and leave everything else up to having superior firepower and/or numbers.
2. Play multi-player. The AI is notorious for making a bajillion ship designs that differ only by a single turret, which artificially inflates the number of ships that need to load for a combat. Human players are a little less OCD.
3. Buy a new computer. This one is only half-serious, but despite the min specs, SotS can actually be pretty resource intensive, especially during large battles.
But when trade is so stupid good, you have to go for it with 5 out of 6 races. And when you do, the best way to expand it is to queue up one freighter per turn per system. And when you have trade route capacities in the 60s-70s for most sectors, that's a lot of clicking.
It is not that hard to mass build freighters at your homeworld or w/e and then ship them to the right trade sector. Also, the devs have already streamlined trade since it was introduced. Remember when BoB didn't have a trade tab? *shudder*
Also, you often have to do quite a lot of on-the-spot, every turn building for your combat ships as well so you don't go horribly into debt.
I do agree that trade is maybe too powerful, especially for the damn birds. Maybe it ought to be easier to raid?
It isn't hard. It just takes way longer than other things that you absolutely must do, and trade is one of those things that you have to tech and have to use, because if you don't, your economy will suck compared to someone who did. Skipping trade nets you a marginal advantage over someone who techs trade for all of 10-20 turns, maybe a bit more. Then he starts filling up trade routes and you can go fuck yourself because his economy is twice the size of yours and growing, even if he isn't expanding.
In addition, multiplayer turns already take a longass time, trade is just the straw that dropkicked the camels back. And while I do enjoy me some Zuul, they get old pretty fast.
In closing, trade is too powerful. It isn't a choice. I can skip the higher tiers of biotech. I can stick with destroyers for the first 100 turns and still come out on top. I cannot skip trade and expect to win. It's just too much of a game changer, and for something so integral to the game, it should be more streamlined. Something as simple as dropping the max on trade routes. Or increasing the cost of freighters by 5 and the income proportionally. Late game in bigger galaxies, when you have 30+ colonies, most of your sectors can end up with 200-250 routes. And you generally have 10+ sectors. It's just a gigantic pain and you can't skip it, because that'll lose you the game.
Depends. For some races this is harder for some much easier since it ultimately depends a lot on propulsion. I may quote from the Wiki:
Commerce Raiding
Once you have researched the Commerce Raiding technology, you will be able to move ships into Trade Sectors containing a colony owned by other Empires in the game.
Overall the idea with Commerce Raiding is mostly to force other Empires to spend more money protecting their freighters and trade routes, than you spent on raiding. But raiding can also generate income. If a freighter is destroyed, the player who destroys that freighter gets a bounty depending on the size of the Freighter: 25,000 for a DE Freighter and 50,000 for a CR Freighter. But if a freighter has all of it's turrets blown off instead, the attacking player gets a larger bounty, again depending on the size of the Freighter: 50,000 for a DE Freighter and 75,000 for a CR Freighter.
Commerce Raiders
Commerce Raiders are any warship you move into a Trade Sector, they are not a particular class of warship like freighters are. You move them to the Trade Sector you want to raid manually.
If Commerce Raiders succeed and at least one lives to talk about it, the owning Empire will get a monetary reward for each freighter destroyed or disarmed. A point of consideration is that Commerce Raiders need to find their quarry (Deep Scan is a good idea) and evade detection by Escort fleet elements. Other points:
Stealth Armor reduces the chances of Raiders being spotted by Escorts
Larger hull sizes increase the chances of Raiders being spotted by Escorts
The larger the fleet, the higher the chance of Raiders being spotted by Escorts
Multiple small fleets are more stealthy than one large one.
Escorts
An Empire can keep warships stationed at their worlds and use them to intercept inbound Commerce Raiders if they are fast enough, but usually this will result in avenging your freighters rather than protecting them.
Alternatively, you can attempt to reduce piracy by assigning Escorts to your Trade Sectors.
Escorts will spread themselves over all the trade routes in a given Trade Sector, whereas Commerce Raiders will stick together in whatever fleet arrangement they were sent into the sector in.
Raiders
It is possible to raid allied fleets in a secured sector by using the "Raider" flag. The raider flag is only required for ships in a secure sector. Otherwise the ships are assumed to be escorts. Any ships in unsecure sectors are already treated as raiders. As mentioned before, if a raider fleet is detected, it will be apparent to the enemy, and they can avoid it. Larger fleets/ships are more likely to be detected. You can split ships up into separate fleets to make them harder to detect, but you will be raiding with the smaller fleets.
Only the Zuul receive the link from FTL Broadband to Commerce raiding. All other races must research FTL Economics to research Commerce Raiding.
+++End of quote+++
Personally succesful trade raiding consists of two major designs.
The first design will make the backbone of your raiding fleets and you want probably a lot of those.
They are built for firepower speed and stealth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqsC5URw5OI
The second design is for slugging out when your raiders really get seriously engaged because of the damage you do. You do not want much of that type, but you will need those eventually. Big battleships capable of dealing with the more advanced escorts your opponent will field. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Es0cX8CHVs
Depends. For some races this is harder for some much easier since it ultimately depends a lot on propulsion. I may quote from the Wiki:
+++End of quote+++
Personally succesful trade raiding consists of two major designs.
The first design will make the backbone of your raiding fleets and you want probably a lot of those.
They are built for firepower speed and stealth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqsC5URw5OI
The second design is for slugging out when your raiders really get seriously engaged because of the damage you do. You do not want much of that type, but you will need those eventually. Big battleships capable of dealing with the more advanced escorts your opponent will field. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Es0cX8CHVs
Want to know the best way to fund raiding? Trade. And you already teched it to get to raiding.
With bounties up to 75000 CR per freighter raiding is not in need of funding. Of course you can (and should) additionally trade in YOUR secure sectors (if not playing Zuul). But the truth is that trade routes are simply immensely vulnerable. Escorts spread and raiders stick together. Even allies can raid. Its pretty clear where the advantage is.
You got a problem with the trade generated economy of an opponent (or allie)? Attack it. Freighters, especially large ones, are no cheap ships. Its quite possible to turn the idea of a trade oriented economy into financial disaster (unless you play Hiver).
Trade is powerful, no doubt (especially for Morrigi) but its also easily disrupted.
With bounties up to 75000 CR per freighter raiding is not in need of funding. Of course you can (and should) additionally trade in YOUR secure sectors (if not playing Zuul). But the truth is that trade routes are simply immensely vulnerable. Escorts spread and raiders stick together. Even allies can raid. Its pretty clear where the advantage is.
You got a problem with the trade generated economy of an opponent (or allie)? Attack it. Freighters, especially large ones, are no cheap ships. Its quite possible to turn the idea of a trade oriented economy into financial disaster (unless you play Hiver).
Trade is powerful, no doubt (especially for Morrigi) but its also easily disrupted.
Raiding is not nearly as useful as you seem to believe.
Number of raiders is inversely proportional to the chances of actually getting to raid.
Realistically, to have a chance in hell of getting any raid at all, you should have 6 DEs or less, preferably with stealth armor. Also, you have to actually go get raiding, which is a 2 turn ish tech investment.
So, youve now cranked out those 6 DEs to shoot into every trade sector the enemy has. Lets conservatively say 3 sectors. You paid at least 40k is up front for each of those DE groups and now pay maintenance of 3k per sector per turn. Also, you spent the time intensive micromanagement of placing those fleets in individual trade sectors, and then remembering to flag them as raiders once they get there.
So 120k up front, 9k per turn, plus time (extremely valuable in the average multiplayer game with turn limits).
Lets say you get lucky and get a raid on the 1st turn. If it's a raid around a planet, I hope those DEs have PD cause if they don't you are going to lose at least a few.
If the enemy has CR freighters, you are going to lose at least some of your destroyers, and maybe kill 1 freighter if you are lucky. Hiver CR freighters will just plain destroy your DEs and probably not even bother running away. Fuck those guys.
But let's say the raid is successful against 2 unescorted, green laser armed DE freighters. You kill two 50k freighters and get the bounty which pays for the cost you put out for the raiding fleet. He loses 100k, though the freighters probably already paid for themselves and then some before you killed them.
Next turn, those freighters are replaced for 100k with about 5 seconds of micro and put back into those already developed routes automatically.
You on the other hand have to 1) find where the battle was and check the status on your fleet. Scuttle/retreat anyone with lost sections or engines as they are basically dead weight 2) build replacements. Then, on the next turn after that, you need to manually move your replacement raiders back into the sector, then once they arrive put them back into the raiding fleet or flag their fleet as a raider fleet.
Most of the time though, all of those ships you built just kinda chill in the trade sectors without raiding anything and soaking up maintenance credits. In the rare event someone tries to actually raid me, I just drop a single combat CR into the trade sector to escort. They make rather quick work of the average raiding force, especially the fragile stealth armor ones.
You know what I use raiding for? Putting a deep scan/ER into trade sectors for untouchable radar coverage. Can also use it to move ships between friendly planets without lanes as Zuul but that is frowned upon and I don't do that.
So yeah, Sots 2 better have trading as an abstraction/much less micro intensive process.
EDIT: Would have liked it a lot better if "trade" was simply a tech that increased the conversion of unused IO to credits.
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
We could just houserule no trade, give the sad morrigi player an econ boost, and the zuul a little penalty.
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
Morrigi don't need trade.
not even slightly.
They out-tech everyone but Liir, AND get better tech selection, AND strong economic return, AND are by far the fastest race in the game on the strategic map. They start with half of the drone tree, among other things - starting with Expert Systems puts them ten turns ahead of everybody else from turn 1.
They also have the strongest scouting and expansion ability in the early game - you just spam ER DE's everywhichway - you have the fastest drive which isn't bound to worthless node lines.
The only race which even holds a candle to the birds is Hivers.
I'm going to have to get in on one of these games you guys play and see how they go down, because they are completely different from my experiences with the game...
How many turns do they typically last? How many stars? How many players?
I've never once seen moving into trade do anything but slow a player down on the techs and ships that actually matter. Trade is just a "win more" thing - if you had time to develop a trade network, you had time to steamroll the galaxy.
You realize that the Morrigi have a large penalty (600 -> 550) to hazard tolerance and are tied for the worst colonizers, as well as being tied for second-worst in population growth to begin with, resulting in excruciatingly slow population growth on planets that are not absolutely perfect. On top of that, they also get a 20% penalty to income from their populations, and have incredibly expensive and flimsy ships in general.
Having a large tech tree doesn't do shit if you don't have the money to actually research any more of it than anybody else. Having awesome drones doesn't do shit when they are the easiest thing in the game to counter.
I dunno, I think they could stand to have a little lower strategic speed and maybe some lower tech chances in certain places like cannons and ballistics. Being a biased bug, I think anyone who can make one turn trips before Antimatter is bullshit.
Also, drones are like most guided ordnance: it's still possible to use them against an enemy with point defense, you just need to oversaturate them. Drones still last longer than missiles against PD, although it helps to bring a repair cruiser.
Saying "you just need to oversaturate them" is like saying "you just need to bring twice as many ships as your enemy." Well yeah, no shit you could do that, but your ships are already more expensive (say, 20% or so). You can't do much to oversaturate somebody with drones except to bring so many more ships than them that they could just all have Red Lasers and you'd still win.
Garthor on
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited October 2009
Anyone else getting turned on by all this talk? :winky:
It seems I will need to get the expansion after all. I am really enjoying the base game. However it seems I can only get Born of Blood from Gamersgate. Anyone know if that will work okay with my D2D version of the base game? Nothing special about the D2D version, it's pretty much the same thing as installing from the DVD.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
You realize that the Morrigi have a large penalty (600 -> 550) to hazard tolerance and are tied for the worst colonizers, as well as being tied for second-worst in population growth to begin with, resulting in excruciatingly slow population growth on planets that are not absolutely perfect. On top of that, they also get a 20% penalty to income from their populations, and have incredibly expensive and flimsy ships in general..
Birds get first pick on planets anyway. First to arrive, first to colonize. Population growth and slightly worse hazard tolerance barely matter due to Morrigi's rapid exploration - it roughly zeroes out across the races.
You sure it's a penalty to income? I remember it being a bonus to income from population, but a penalty to IO. Something like that? Currently scouring the wiki...
As for their ships being flimsy, it doesn't matter because they are faaaaast. You zip around and hit soft targets until you've got an insurmountable lead, then steamroll.
I dunno, I think they could stand to have a little lower strategic speed and maybe some lower tech chances in certain places like cannons and ballistics.
Honestly, I don't think they need any serious nerfing. Nerf them and hivers will rule unapposed - I think the other four races just need a little bit of buffing.
Good nerfs to morrigi would be; no starting drone tree techs, bring their advanced drones back down to 1 small, 1 medium mount, and for christ's sake make Habitat statations NOT bird-exclusive...
As for drones - they're siege weapons. You bring em out, let them blow stuff up until they die, then retreat and let your Repair cruisers replace them all. Rinse and repeat as necessary. They aren't meant to crush all opposition in one fell swoop...
Anyone else getting turned on by all this talk? :winky:
It seems I will need to get the expansion after all. I am really enjoying the base game. However it seems I can only get Born of Blood from Gamersgate. Anyone know if that will work okay with my D2D version of the base game? Nothing special about the D2D version, it's pretty much the same thing as installing from the DVD.
Axen, if you really do like the game you might as well go ahead and grab the Ultimate Collection + ANY from Steam so you can play with the rest of us.
You realize that the Morrigi have a large penalty (600 -> 550) to hazard tolerance and are tied for the worst colonizers, as well as being tied for second-worst in population growth to begin with, resulting in excruciatingly slow population growth on planets that are not absolutely perfect. On top of that, they also get a 20% penalty to income from their populations, and have incredibly expensive and flimsy ships in general..
Birds get first pick on planets anyway. First to arrive, first to colonize. Population growth and slightly worse hazard tolerance barely matter due to Morrigi's rapid exploration - it roughly zeroes out across the races.
You sure it's a penalty to income? I remember it being a bonus to income from population, but a penalty to IO. Something like that? Currently scouring the wiki...
As for their ships being flimsy, it doesn't matter because they are faaaaast. You zip around and hit soft targets until you've got an insurmountable lead, then steamroll.
Dissertation on morrigi weaknesses below, spoilered for wall of text.
My understanding is that the birds have a penalty to both industry and planetary taxes. The industry penalty is offset by the fact that they start with several of the industrial techs. In effect, they start with comprable industrial output, but after the other races finish the industry techs, the morrigi are behind. On top of that, their gimped planetary income forces them to dedicate about half their empire's industrial output to maintaining trade routes.
The end result is they often have plenty of money, but they cant get ships built at any speed. Most races would get around this problem by distributing their ship building around the entire empire, and assembling a fleet at some central world. The morrigi can't really do that, since without the flock bonus, their ships will move slower than the tarka's once the fission age is over.
From what I've seen playing multiplayer, the two most popular races are hivers and liir. Nobody plays tarka, and humans and zuul are rare. Both the hivers and liir are late blooming races, who are badly equipped to challenge the morrigi at their weakest point: the mid fission age. They can still do it, but it requires a real comittment to an aggressive strategy.
The PA multiplayer games I've been in have generically been quite diplomatic. People want to build economy and tech in relative peace, and only attack when they feel ready. This benefits the morrigi since it allows them to get their economy off the ground, tech some nasty combinations, and build several fleets.
Try playing a bird that starts next to an aggressive zuul, human, or tarka. Its bad enough when the AI does it. A human controlled enemy is hellish, and requires you to deform your entire strategy to deal with them. If you dont like dealing with node lines, go tarka. They can scout just as quickly as the birds in the same manner: just sending ERs everywhere. Their range is a bit shorter but the cheaper, better, tarka ships should leave you with enough savings to buy some tankers to refuel the ERs.
Research-wise, the birds are really dependent on their gimmicks. Morrigi ships are expensive, and take way too long to build, so if you can force them to engage, and can maintain a 1:1 kill ratio, the morrigi are acutally losing badly. Because of this, the morrigi really need their drones, armor tech, high level brawler weapons and good intel tech. If you can compromise any one of these advantages, then the morrigi are going to have to tech way up a whole new tree to compensate.
If the morrigi are allowed the initiative, large fleets of fast, well armed ships can really do a lot of damage. Don't allow them to choose the time or place of engagement. If you can force a morrigi to respond to your moves, he's lost the speed advantage.
Really, the strategy for dealing with a morrigi empire is similar for dealing with a hiver empire. Keep it small in the early game and if it seem threatening, attack unpredictably. Don't let it get entrenched.
My understanding is that the birds have a penalty to both industry and planetary taxes. The industry penalty is offset by the fact that they start with several of the industrial techs. In effect, they start with comprable industrial output, but after the other races finish the industry techs, the morrigi are behind. On top of that, their gimped planetary income forces them to dedicate about half their empire's industrial output to maintaining trade routes.
Nope. Baseline IO. It might seem this way, however, because Morrigi ships have a significantly higher IO cost across the board (Standard Command, for some reason, costs twice as much IO as every other race's, though other sections don't have quite that disparity). And, of course, the IO drain from having to maintain trade routes.
Also, looking at it now: Morrigi mission and engine sections seem to be par, but the command sections have comparitively low health. But, their configuration might lend to them exploding easily: you hit the mission and the command at the same time, so they blow up together rather than a destroyed section taking hits and splitting the difference over the whole ship, which slightly prolongs its life.
Anyone else getting turned on by all this talk? :winky:
It seems I will need to get the expansion after all. I am really enjoying the base game. However it seems I can only get Born of Blood from Gamersgate. Anyone know if that will work okay with my D2D version of the base game? Nothing special about the D2D version, it's pretty much the same thing as installing from the DVD.
Axen, if you really do like the game you might as well go ahead and grab the Ultimate Collection + ANY from Steam so you can play with the rest of us.
I could've sworn I saw a bundle with original + all expansions right after ANY was released, named something like SotS Complete or whatever, but just now I looked for it again and I can't find it on steam, impulse, or anywhere.
A google of 'sots complete' results in this thread on ars, so I'm not completely crazy... [tiny]Right?[/tiny]
Woggle on
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Anyone else getting turned on by all this talk? :winky:
It seems I will need to get the expansion after all. I am really enjoying the base game. However it seems I can only get Born of Blood from Gamersgate. Anyone know if that will work okay with my D2D version of the base game? Nothing special about the D2D version, it's pretty much the same thing as installing from the DVD.
Axen, if you really do like the game you might as well go ahead and grab the Ultimate Collection + ANY from Steam so you can play with the rest of us.
I could've sworn I saw a bundle with original + all expansions right after ANY was released, named something like SotS Complete or whatever, but just now I looked for it again and I can't find it on steam, impulse, or anywhere.
A google of 'sots complete' results in this thread on ars, so I'm not completely crazy... [tiny]Right?[/tiny]
Direct2Drive has something like the SOTS Ultimate Naval Yard Collection, which includes SoTS, BoB, AMoC, and ANY for only $40 bucks. I will probably pick that up. I only paid $5 for SoTS so paying another $40 really isn't anything, but I will probably wait till the end of the month when my SoTS purchase isn't so "fresh" so to speak :P.
Anyone else getting turned on by all this talk? :winky:
It seems I will need to get the expansion after all. I am really enjoying the base game. However it seems I can only get Born of Blood from Gamersgate. Anyone know if that will work okay with my D2D version of the base game? Nothing special about the D2D version, it's pretty much the same thing as installing from the DVD.
Axen, if you really do like the game you might as well go ahead and grab the Ultimate Collection + ANY from Steam so you can play with the rest of us.
I could've sworn I saw a bundle with original + all expansions right after ANY was released, named something like SotS Complete or whatever, but just now I looked for it again and I can't find it on steam, impulse, or anywhere.
A google of 'sots complete' results in this thread on ars, so I'm not completely crazy... [tiny]Right?[/tiny]
Direct2Drive has something like the SOTS Ultimate Naval Yard Collection, which includes SoTS, BoB, AMoC, and ANY for only $40 bucks. I will probably pick that up. I only paid $5 for SoTS so paying another $40 really isn't anything, but I will probably wait till the end of the month when my SoTS purchase isn't so "fresh" so to speak :P.
Dissertation on morrigi weaknesses below, spoilered for wall of text.
My understanding is that the birds have a penalty to both industry and planetary taxes. The industry penalty is offset by the fact that they start with several of the industrial techs. In effect, they start with comprable industrial output, but after the other races finish the industry techs, the morrigi are behind. On top of that, their gimped planetary income forces them to dedicate about half their empire's industrial output to maintaining trade routes.
The end result is they often have plenty of money, but they cant get ships built at any speed. Most races would get around this problem by distributing their ship building around the entire empire, and assembling a fleet at some central world. The morrigi can't really do that, since without the flock bonus, their ships will move slower than the tarka's once the fission age is over.
From what I've seen playing multiplayer, the two most popular races are hivers and liir. Nobody plays tarka, and humans and zuul are rare. Both the hivers and liir are late blooming races, who are badly equipped to challenge the morrigi at their weakest point: the mid fission age. They can still do it, but it requires a real comittment to an aggressive strategy.
The PA multiplayer games I've been in have generically been quite diplomatic. People want to build economy and tech in relative peace, and only attack when they feel ready. This benefits the morrigi since it allows them to get their economy off the ground, tech some nasty combinations, and build several fleets.
Try playing a bird that starts next to an aggressive zuul, human, or tarka. Its bad enough when the AI does it. A human controlled enemy is hellish, and requires you to deform your entire strategy to deal with them. If you dont like dealing with node lines, go tarka. They can scout just as quickly as the birds in the same manner: just sending ERs everywhere. Their range is a bit shorter but the cheaper, better, tarka ships should leave you with enough savings to buy some tankers to refuel the ERs.
Research-wise, the birds are really dependent on their gimmicks. Morrigi ships are expensive, and take way too long to build, so if you can force them to engage, and can maintain a 1:1 kill ratio, the morrigi are acutally losing badly. Because of this, the morrigi really need their drones, armor tech, high level brawler weapons and good intel tech. If you can compromise any one of these advantages, then the morrigi are going to have to tech way up a whole new tree to compensate.
If the morrigi are allowed the initiative, large fleets of fast, well armed ships can really do a lot of damage. Don't allow them to choose the time or place of engagement. If you can force a morrigi to respond to your moves, he's lost the speed advantage.
I mostly agree with this assessment.
And actually, I play Tarka religiously. Our LAN games got to the point where if one person picks morrigi, everyone else does too, so...
The Tarka are interesting because in late fission era you're forced to make a choice;
A) Fusion Fast AI (something like 50% of the time?)
C) Go out into the universe and kill colonies until you're far ahead in the standings
The challenge with them comes when you get shafted on planets in the early game AND miss the roll on the early AI link. This is about the only time I consider trade - but I still feel there are better options for improving your economy without gimping your IO or tech order.
Dissertation on morrigi weaknesses below, spoilered for wall of text.
My understanding is that the birds have a penalty to both industry and planetary taxes. The industry penalty is offset by the fact that they start with several of the industrial techs. In effect, they start with comprable industrial output, but after the other races finish the industry techs, the morrigi are behind. On top of that, their gimped planetary income forces them to dedicate about half their empire's industrial output to maintaining trade routes.
The end result is they often have plenty of money, but they cant get ships built at any speed. Most races would get around this problem by distributing their ship building around the entire empire, and assembling a fleet at some central world. The morrigi can't really do that, since without the flock bonus, their ships will move slower than the tarka's once the fission age is over.
From what I've seen playing multiplayer, the two most popular races are hivers and liir. Nobody plays tarka, and humans and zuul are rare. Both the hivers and liir are late blooming races, who are badly equipped to challenge the morrigi at their weakest point: the mid fission age. They can still do it, but it requires a real comittment to an aggressive strategy.
The PA multiplayer games I've been in have generically been quite diplomatic. People want to build economy and tech in relative peace, and only attack when they feel ready. This benefits the morrigi since it allows them to get their economy off the ground, tech some nasty combinations, and build several fleets.
Try playing a bird that starts next to an aggressive zuul, human, or tarka. Its bad enough when the AI does it. A human controlled enemy is hellish, and requires you to deform your entire strategy to deal with them. If you dont like dealing with node lines, go tarka. They can scout just as quickly as the birds in the same manner: just sending ERs everywhere. Their range is a bit shorter but the cheaper, better, tarka ships should leave you with enough savings to buy some tankers to refuel the ERs.
Research-wise, the birds are really dependent on their gimmicks. Morrigi ships are expensive, and take way too long to build, so if you can force them to engage, and can maintain a 1:1 kill ratio, the morrigi are acutally losing badly. Because of this, the morrigi really need their drones, armor tech, high level brawler weapons and good intel tech. If you can compromise any one of these advantages, then the morrigi are going to have to tech way up a whole new tree to compensate.
i don't think it could work, morrigi NEED trade, a little econ won't offset that.
I didn't say little. At least 20-30% or so would be needed.
If the morrigi are allowed the initiative, large fleets of fast, well armed ships can really do a lot of damage. Don't allow them to choose the time or place of engagement. If you can force a morrigi to respond to your moves, he's lost the speed advantage.
I mostly agree with this assessment.
And actually, I play Tarka religiously. Our LAN games got to the point where if one person picks morrigi, everyone else does too, so...
The Tarka are interesting because in late fission era you're forced to make a choice;
A) Fusion Fast AI (something like 50% of the time?)
C) Go out into the universe and kill colonies until you're far ahead in the standings
The challenge with them comes when you get shafted on planets in the early game AND miss the roll on the early AI link. This is about the only time I consider trade - but I still feel there are better options for improving your economy without gimping your IO or tech order.
You need to play some PA games.
We feast upon Mother's flesh. (ie zuul absolutely wreck morrigi, almost as bad as they wreck liir). Only exception to this is if the morrigi rolls up emitters, as emitter drones will hold off the zuul until CRs hit the field, and not a moment longer. 2-3 CR refinery bombs will kill just about every drone. Just situate them just far apart where their explosions dont hit eachother, or the fleet thats behind (that fleet of cheap ass Scavenger CRs covered in whatever crappy weapon you can strap onto them). If they try to target the fleet, the drones will still automatically target the refineries and blow them up on the way through
Hivers, though powerful, very rarely end up as the top dog in our games just by their very nature unless they start next to some pacifist (WOGGLE) and aren't pressured. You expand slowly, and every skilled player you edge up against will be actively seeking out and crushing expansion fleets.
i don't think it could work, morrigi NEED trade, a little econ won't offset that.
I didn't say little. 20-30% or so would probably be needed.
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
I would trade a pile of drones for three CR refineries ANY DAY of the week. That's great tempo!
Even better if you're abusing COLs with CnC retreats. :winky:
To be honest, it really sounds like your zuul players are simply much better than your morrigi players.
I must admit, I do prioritize hivers and zuul as targets. It's like they have gigantic bullseyes painted on their colonies.
My understanding is that the birds have a penalty to both industry and planetary taxes. The industry penalty is offset by the fact that they start with several of the industrial techs. In effect, they start with comprable industrial output, but after the other races finish the industry techs, the morrigi are behind. On top of that, their gimped planetary income forces them to dedicate about half their empire's industrial output to maintaining trade routes.
The end result is they often have plenty of money, but they cant get ships built at any speed. Most races would get around this problem by distributing their ship building around the entire empire, and assembling a fleet at some central world. The morrigi can't really do that, since without the flock bonus, their ships will move slower than the tarka's once the fission age is over.
From what I've seen playing multiplayer, the two most popular races are hivers and liir. Nobody plays tarka, and humans and zuul are rare. Both the hivers and liir are late blooming races, who are badly equipped to challenge the morrigi at their weakest point: the mid fission age. They can still do it, but it requires a real comittment to an aggressive strategy.
The PA multiplayer games I've been in have generically been quite diplomatic. People want to build economy and tech in relative peace, and only attack when they feel ready. This benefits the morrigi since it allows them to get their economy off the ground, tech some nasty combinations, and build several fleets.
Try playing a bird that starts next to an aggressive zuul, human, or tarka. Its bad enough when the AI does it. A human controlled enemy is hellish, and requires you to deform your entire strategy to deal with them. If you dont like dealing with node lines, go tarka. They can scout just as quickly as the birds in the same manner: just sending ERs everywhere. Their range is a bit shorter but the cheaper, better, tarka ships should leave you with enough savings to buy some tankers to refuel the ERs.
Research-wise, the birds are really dependent on their gimmicks. Morrigi ships are expensive, and take way too long to build, so if you can force them to engage, and can maintain a 1:1 kill ratio, the morrigi are acutally losing badly. Because of this, the morrigi really need their drones, armor tech, high level brawler weapons and good intel tech. If you can compromise any one of these advantages, then the morrigi are going to have to tech way up a whole new tree to compensate.
i don't think it could work, morrigi NEED trade, a little econ won't offset that.
I didn't say little. At least 20-30% or so would be needed.
If the morrigi are allowed the initiative, large fleets of fast, well armed ships can really do a lot of damage. Don't allow them to choose the time or place of engagement. If you can force a morrigi to respond to your moves, he's lost the speed advantage.
I mostly agree with this assessment.
We feast upon Mother's flesh. (ie zuul absolutely wreck morrigi, almost as bad as they wreck liir). Only exception to this is if the morrigi rolls up emitters, as emitter drones will hold off the zuul until CRs hit the field, and not a moment longer. 2-3 CR refinery bombs will kill just about every drone. Just situate them just far apart where their explosions dont hit eachother, or the fleet thats behind (that fleet of cheap ass Scavenger CRs covered in whatever crappy weapon you can strap onto them). If they try to target the fleet, the drones will still automatically target the refineries and blow them up on the way through
i don't think it could work, morrigi NEED trade, a little econ won't offset that.
I didn't say little. 20-30% or so would probably be needed.
That small change for each race... propulsion. Makes one hell of a difference for each race. For example propulsion is tremendously hard for humans (and thats why they get not picked often) but as a result Humans are tremendously hightech. You will be the first to develop fusion drive or you are not doing it right. I do not have to remind you what kind of weapons that allows. And Humans HAVE to do it very early. Those Zuul cruisers? Lunch for even a fleet of Human DE. Because they probably already pack fusion torpedos whilst Zuul are crawling along with fission tech. Humans ain't bad but they are tremendously unforgiving. You better know what you do and don't screw up.
I am a devote Morrigi player. I tested the other races but Morrigi are my pick of choice.
You are right about the fragility and expense of their ships. But damm can Morrigi expand.
Note: i hate drones. I really do.
I tried multiple approaches until i came up with expanding by using scout tanker fleets occasionally returning to pick up a colonizer (Morrigi travell fastest in fleets made up of 9 ships and a Gravboat DE).
Yes, tankers tend to blow up. But considering the menaces out there its really not much of matter if you use other DEs.
And whilst that is done you spend about 3/4 in research. The difficult thing is really to not overdo it so colony development costs freeze you up into being forced to do nothing.
It is THE flood, i tell you. A good rule of thumb is being ahead of the largest player by at least 100%. So if he has three colonies you should have six or you are too slow (unless he is Morrigi too, then of course try to top him a bit). Trying to keep up with this and fortify your planets is completely futile. It only slows you down.
So you expand and expand until you run in other players. And then you will start loosing colonies. Its inevitable. But your empire will have spread so far at that point (given a sufficient map size; i prefer around 120 stars for 6 players) that it is really not of much concern. Actually it frees up development resources on you least developed planets and those won't be of much help to your enemy. Actually a strain. Do not worry: if they are sufficiently developed (by your oponents) we conquer those again.
So here you are: at war. Loaded with a crapload of tech (because you mostly focused on tech), a vast empire with your productive colonies deep behind the frontlines and a abundance of cash coming in and no military fleet.
Can you imagine what the next step is?
Switch eco to war production. Recall the tanker fleets. We will need those.
Technology:
Most important is to know what you are up against. Are you getting blasted by missiles? Lasers? Projectile weapons? Research defensive technology for the adequate countermeasures. Those techs are relatively cheap and can be achived by a minimum research spending quickly. We need our economy for building fleets of modern attack ships in record time.
Research priorities:
1. Anything wich is cheap and helps colonization.
2. Weapons: you need small arms, medium guns as well as preferably some sort of torpedo.
3. Sensors & anything wich increases fleetsize.
4. Bigger ships and large mounts (considering destroyers: if you do not like torpedoes you can go spinal mount from here).
5. Improve weapons & propulsion.
In that order.
Tactics:
Morrigi cruisers are not very tough. Fine ships with a decent technology headstart and proper countermeasures but Morrigi are better off with destroyers. Of course you need cruisers for fleet command and a typical fleet also includes a few combat cruisers for meat shields (and later a Refinery). But the main force will be consist of destroyers. Those Zuul cruisers are a lot less menacing when facing a dozen plasma torpedoes.
You notice there is not really much room for developing trade until you actually push the invaders back into their territory. Then its your decision if you keep pushing or develop trade. Probably its best to divert resources to trade and raiding and then push even more. But it has the drawback of giving oponents the time to dig in.
Just a reminder guys: I'm planning on re-hosting last weekend's game on saturday at noon pacific time, that's 3pm eastern time. Could Tongue, pollo, and whoever was gonna pick up the liir slot check in? I'd like to double check that we'll have enough players.
Posts
Just some food for thought, but when I first got the game I wasn't that crazy about it. I played a little, but it didn't hold my attention all that well. The expansions totally changed my view on the game. It's now really solid, and in the few multiplayer games I've been in, it's been a lot more fun than fighting the AI.
PS: Fuck trade.
Wish there was a trade y/n button.
Though that would give the Zuul a gigantic advantage.
you're just bitter that my morrigi empire is pulling down 5 million spacebux a turn.
And what weapons work, is it long range weapons that seem to work better?
Unfortunately, as awesome as the combat is, the loading screens are too long. I played a small map for 20 hours, and Im still absolutely nowhere. It takes too long to play this.
If it didn't take twice as long to micromanage trade compared to everything else you're doing, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. But when trade is so stupid good, you have to go for it with 5 out of 6 races. And when you do, the best way to expand it is to queue up one freighter per turn per system. And when you have trade route capacities in the 60s-70s for most sectors, that's a lot of clicking. Click click click click click.
They better add some sort of auto management button for trade if they include it in SotS2. They better.
Because all the time I spent on trade is time I'll never get back.
Reply to Cynic:
It is not that hard to mass build freighters at your homeworld or w/e and then ship them to the right trade sector. Also, the devs have already streamlined trade since it was introduced. Remember when BoB didn't have a trade tab? *shudder*
Also, you often have to do quite a lot of on-the-spot, every turn building for your combat ships as well so you don't go horribly into debt.
I do agree that trade is maybe too powerful, especially for the damn birds. Maybe it ought to be easier to raid?
Reply to Renegen
First of all, one important thing to remember for combat is that if you've told a ship to move somewhere, it "wants" to get to its location more than it "wants" to line up its weapons on a target. In general, the faster a ship is going, the harder it is for it to line up a shot.
When a ship is under Normal orders, it behaves like this:
A. If a ship doesn't have orders to move somewhere, it will spend all of its time trying to line up its weapons on whatever target you've selected.
B. Ships will NOT move to get in weapons range under Normal orders; they will only fire on things that fly into their range.
When a ship is under Close to Attack orders, its behavior changes a bit:
A. A ship will ignore any movement orders it has until it's destroyed all possible targets in range.
B. If you select a target for a ship, it will move towards the ship to get into weapons range.
C. After getting into weapons range, a ship will continue to move in a fashion dependent on your race.
For example, Tarkas and Hivers will make high speed attack runs where they zoom past the enemy formation with guns blazing, turn around on the other side, then do it again. Liir will slowly circle around the enemy, trying to hit their engines.
Now, if you tie this together with what I said at the beginning about moving ships having a hard time lining up shots, you can see why the races that make high speed attack runs might have a problem with Strafe sections!
So if you're one of those races, you either need to have your Strafe ships hold still, or use different ships/weapons that can track more accurately.
All weapons have different utility in different situations. A lot of the game is figuring that sort of thing out, so there's no easy answer, and an in-depth discussion could fill several posts. The wiki is pretty good reading for that sort of thing though.
One big disadvantage to the real-time combat and the customizable ships is that the game has to load every single ship model partaking in a combat.
There's a few things you could try to alleviate this:
1. Use auto-resolve. You don't need to fight every tiny scout battle. In fact, you could probably get by only fighting the most important planetary invasions and leave everything else up to having superior firepower and/or numbers.
2. Play multi-player. The AI is notorious for making a bajillion ship designs that differ only by a single turret, which artificially inflates the number of ships that need to load for a combat. Human players are a little less OCD.
3. Buy a new computer. This one is only half-serious, but despite the min specs, SotS can actually be pretty resource intensive, especially during large battles.
It isn't hard. It just takes way longer than other things that you absolutely must do, and trade is one of those things that you have to tech and have to use, because if you don't, your economy will suck compared to someone who did. Skipping trade nets you a marginal advantage over someone who techs trade for all of 10-20 turns, maybe a bit more. Then he starts filling up trade routes and you can go fuck yourself because his economy is twice the size of yours and growing, even if he isn't expanding.
In addition, multiplayer turns already take a longass time, trade is just the straw that dropkicked the camels back. And while I do enjoy me some Zuul, they get old pretty fast.
In closing, trade is too powerful. It isn't a choice. I can skip the higher tiers of biotech. I can stick with destroyers for the first 100 turns and still come out on top. I cannot skip trade and expect to win. It's just too much of a game changer, and for something so integral to the game, it should be more streamlined. Something as simple as dropping the max on trade routes. Or increasing the cost of freighters by 5 and the income proportionally. Late game in bigger galaxies, when you have 30+ colonies, most of your sectors can end up with 200-250 routes. And you generally have 10+ sectors. It's just a gigantic pain and you can't skip it, because that'll lose you the game.
Commerce Raiding
Once you have researched the Commerce Raiding technology, you will be able to move ships into Trade Sectors containing a colony owned by other Empires in the game.
Overall the idea with Commerce Raiding is mostly to force other Empires to spend more money protecting their freighters and trade routes, than you spent on raiding. But raiding can also generate income. If a freighter is destroyed, the player who destroys that freighter gets a bounty depending on the size of the Freighter: 25,000 for a DE Freighter and 50,000 for a CR Freighter. But if a freighter has all of it's turrets blown off instead, the attacking player gets a larger bounty, again depending on the size of the Freighter: 50,000 for a DE Freighter and 75,000 for a CR Freighter.
Commerce Raiders
Commerce Raiders are any warship you move into a Trade Sector, they are not a particular class of warship like freighters are. You move them to the Trade Sector you want to raid manually.
If Commerce Raiders succeed and at least one lives to talk about it, the owning Empire will get a monetary reward for each freighter destroyed or disarmed. A point of consideration is that Commerce Raiders need to find their quarry (Deep Scan is a good idea) and evade detection by Escort fleet elements. Other points:
Stealth Armor reduces the chances of Raiders being spotted by Escorts
Larger hull sizes increase the chances of Raiders being spotted by Escorts
The larger the fleet, the higher the chance of Raiders being spotted by Escorts
Multiple small fleets are more stealthy than one large one.
Escorts
An Empire can keep warships stationed at their worlds and use them to intercept inbound Commerce Raiders if they are fast enough, but usually this will result in avenging your freighters rather than protecting them.
Alternatively, you can attempt to reduce piracy by assigning Escorts to your Trade Sectors.
Escorts will spread themselves over all the trade routes in a given Trade Sector, whereas Commerce Raiders will stick together in whatever fleet arrangement they were sent into the sector in.
Raiders
It is possible to raid allied fleets in a secured sector by using the "Raider" flag. The raider flag is only required for ships in a secure sector. Otherwise the ships are assumed to be escorts. Any ships in unsecure sectors are already treated as raiders. As mentioned before, if a raider fleet is detected, it will be apparent to the enemy, and they can avoid it. Larger fleets/ships are more likely to be detected. You can split ships up into separate fleets to make them harder to detect, but you will be raiding with the smaller fleets.
Only the Zuul receive the link from FTL Broadband to Commerce raiding. All other races must research FTL Economics to research Commerce Raiding.
+++End of quote+++
Personally succesful trade raiding consists of two major designs.
They are built for firepower speed and stealth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqsC5URw5OI
The second design is for slugging out when your raiders really get seriously engaged because of the damage you do. You do not want much of that type, but you will need those eventually. Big battleships capable of dealing with the more advanced escorts your opponent will field.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Es0cX8CHVs
Want to know the best way to fund raiding? Trade. And you already teched it to get to raiding.
You got a problem with the trade generated economy of an opponent (or allie)? Attack it. Freighters, especially large ones, are no cheap ships. Its quite possible to turn the idea of a trade oriented economy into financial disaster (unless you play Hiver).
Trade is powerful, no doubt (especially for Morrigi) but its also easily disrupted.
I still maintain that the only way trade is ever going to be profitable is if every other player is asleep at the wheel.
Raiding is not nearly as useful as you seem to believe.
Number of raiders is inversely proportional to the chances of actually getting to raid.
Realistically, to have a chance in hell of getting any raid at all, you should have 6 DEs or less, preferably with stealth armor. Also, you have to actually go get raiding, which is a 2 turn ish tech investment.
So, youve now cranked out those 6 DEs to shoot into every trade sector the enemy has. Lets conservatively say 3 sectors. You paid at least 40k is up front for each of those DE groups and now pay maintenance of 3k per sector per turn. Also, you spent the time intensive micromanagement of placing those fleets in individual trade sectors, and then remembering to flag them as raiders once they get there.
So 120k up front, 9k per turn, plus time (extremely valuable in the average multiplayer game with turn limits).
Lets say you get lucky and get a raid on the 1st turn. If it's a raid around a planet, I hope those DEs have PD cause if they don't you are going to lose at least a few.
If the enemy has CR freighters, you are going to lose at least some of your destroyers, and maybe kill 1 freighter if you are lucky. Hiver CR freighters will just plain destroy your DEs and probably not even bother running away. Fuck those guys.
But let's say the raid is successful against 2 unescorted, green laser armed DE freighters. You kill two 50k freighters and get the bounty which pays for the cost you put out for the raiding fleet. He loses 100k, though the freighters probably already paid for themselves and then some before you killed them.
Next turn, those freighters are replaced for 100k with about 5 seconds of micro and put back into those already developed routes automatically.
You on the other hand have to 1) find where the battle was and check the status on your fleet. Scuttle/retreat anyone with lost sections or engines as they are basically dead weight 2) build replacements. Then, on the next turn after that, you need to manually move your replacement raiders back into the sector, then once they arrive put them back into the raiding fleet or flag their fleet as a raider fleet.
Most of the time though, all of those ships you built just kinda chill in the trade sectors without raiding anything and soaking up maintenance credits. In the rare event someone tries to actually raid me, I just drop a single combat CR into the trade sector to escort. They make rather quick work of the average raiding force, especially the fragile stealth armor ones.
You know what I use raiding for? Putting a deep scan/ER into trade sectors for untouchable radar coverage. Can also use it to move ships between friendly planets without lanes as Zuul but that is frowned upon and I don't do that.
So yeah, Sots 2 better have trading as an abstraction/much less micro intensive process.
EDIT: Would have liked it a lot better if "trade" was simply a tech that increased the conversion of unused IO to credits.
Great minds,
Morrigi don't need trade.
not even slightly.
They out-tech everyone but Liir, AND get better tech selection, AND strong economic return, AND are by far the fastest race in the game on the strategic map. They start with half of the drone tree, among other things - starting with Expert Systems puts them ten turns ahead of everybody else from turn 1.
They also have the strongest scouting and expansion ability in the early game - you just spam ER DE's everywhichway - you have the fastest drive which isn't bound to worthless node lines.
The only race which even holds a candle to the birds is Hivers.
I'm going to have to get in on one of these games you guys play and see how they go down, because they are completely different from my experiences with the game...
How many turns do they typically last? How many stars? How many players?
I've never once seen moving into trade do anything but slow a player down on the techs and ships that actually matter. Trade is just a "win more" thing - if you had time to develop a trade network, you had time to steamroll the galaxy.
{/highly opinionated}
Maybe the houserule ought to just be no Morrigi? I agree they are pretty bullshit.
Having a large tech tree doesn't do shit if you don't have the money to actually research any more of it than anybody else. Having awesome drones doesn't do shit when they are the easiest thing in the game to counter.
I dunno, I think they could stand to have a little lower strategic speed and maybe some lower tech chances in certain places like cannons and ballistics. Being a biased bug, I think anyone who can make one turn trips before Antimatter is bullshit.
Also, drones are like most guided ordnance: it's still possible to use them against an enemy with point defense, you just need to oversaturate them. Drones still last longer than missiles against PD, although it helps to bring a repair cruiser.
It seems I will need to get the expansion after all. I am really enjoying the base game. However it seems I can only get Born of Blood from Gamersgate. Anyone know if that will work okay with my D2D version of the base game? Nothing special about the D2D version, it's pretty much the same thing as installing from the DVD.
Birds get first pick on planets anyway. First to arrive, first to colonize. Population growth and slightly worse hazard tolerance barely matter due to Morrigi's rapid exploration - it roughly zeroes out across the races.
You sure it's a penalty to income? I remember it being a bonus to income from population, but a penalty to IO. Something like that? Currently scouring the wiki...
As for their ships being flimsy, it doesn't matter because they are faaaaast. You zip around and hit soft targets until you've got an insurmountable lead, then steamroll.
Honestly, I don't think they need any serious nerfing. Nerf them and hivers will rule unapposed - I think the other four races just need a little bit of buffing.
Good nerfs to morrigi would be; no starting drone tree techs, bring their advanced drones back down to 1 small, 1 medium mount, and for christ's sake make Habitat statations NOT bird-exclusive...
As for drones - they're siege weapons. You bring em out, let them blow stuff up until they die, then retreat and let your Repair cruisers replace them all. Rinse and repeat as necessary. They aren't meant to crush all opposition in one fell swoop...
Axen, if you really do like the game you might as well go ahead and grab the Ultimate Collection + ANY from Steam so you can play with the rest of us.
Dissertation on morrigi weaknesses below, spoilered for wall of text.
The end result is they often have plenty of money, but they cant get ships built at any speed. Most races would get around this problem by distributing their ship building around the entire empire, and assembling a fleet at some central world. The morrigi can't really do that, since without the flock bonus, their ships will move slower than the tarka's once the fission age is over.
From what I've seen playing multiplayer, the two most popular races are hivers and liir. Nobody plays tarka, and humans and zuul are rare. Both the hivers and liir are late blooming races, who are badly equipped to challenge the morrigi at their weakest point: the mid fission age. They can still do it, but it requires a real comittment to an aggressive strategy.
The PA multiplayer games I've been in have generically been quite diplomatic. People want to build economy and tech in relative peace, and only attack when they feel ready. This benefits the morrigi since it allows them to get their economy off the ground, tech some nasty combinations, and build several fleets.
Try playing a bird that starts next to an aggressive zuul, human, or tarka. Its bad enough when the AI does it. A human controlled enemy is hellish, and requires you to deform your entire strategy to deal with them. If you dont like dealing with node lines, go tarka. They can scout just as quickly as the birds in the same manner: just sending ERs everywhere. Their range is a bit shorter but the cheaper, better, tarka ships should leave you with enough savings to buy some tankers to refuel the ERs.
Research-wise, the birds are really dependent on their gimmicks. Morrigi ships are expensive, and take way too long to build, so if you can force them to engage, and can maintain a 1:1 kill ratio, the morrigi are acutally losing badly. Because of this, the morrigi really need their drones, armor tech, high level brawler weapons and good intel tech. If you can compromise any one of these advantages, then the morrigi are going to have to tech way up a whole new tree to compensate.
If the morrigi are allowed the initiative, large fleets of fast, well armed ships can really do a lot of damage. Don't allow them to choose the time or place of engagement. If you can force a morrigi to respond to your moves, he's lost the speed advantage.
Really, the strategy for dealing with a morrigi empire is similar for dealing with a hiver empire. Keep it small in the early game and if it seem threatening, attack unpredictably. Don't let it get entrenched.
Nope. Baseline IO. It might seem this way, however, because Morrigi ships have a significantly higher IO cost across the board (Standard Command, for some reason, costs twice as much IO as every other race's, though other sections don't have quite that disparity). And, of course, the IO drain from having to maintain trade routes.
Also, looking at it now: Morrigi mission and engine sections seem to be par, but the command sections have comparitively low health. But, their configuration might lend to them exploding easily: you hit the mission and the command at the same time, so they blow up together rather than a destroyed section taking hits and splitting the difference over the whole ship, which slightly prolongs its life.
I could've sworn I saw a bundle with original + all expansions right after ANY was released, named something like SotS Complete or whatever, but just now I looked for it again and I can't find it on steam, impulse, or anywhere.
A google of 'sots complete' results in this thread on ars, so I'm not completely crazy... [tiny]Right?[/tiny]
Direct2Drive has something like the SOTS Ultimate Naval Yard Collection, which includes SoTS, BoB, AMoC, and ANY for only $40 bucks. I will probably pick that up. I only paid $5 for SoTS so paying another $40 really isn't anything, but I will probably wait till the end of the month when my SoTS purchase isn't so "fresh" so to speak :P.
Edit-
Linky
Ahah, expanding the acronym in google gave me this Impulse pack of all of them for $25, but apparently you're a month too late.
I mostly agree with this assessment.
And actually, I play Tarka religiously. Our LAN games got to the point where if one person picks morrigi, everyone else does too, so...
The Tarka are interesting because in late fission era you're forced to make a choice;
A) Fusion
C) Go out into the universe and kill colonies until you're far ahead in the standings
The challenge with them comes when you get shafted on planets in the early game AND miss the roll on the early AI link. This is about the only time I consider trade - but I still feel there are better options for improving your economy without gimping your IO or tech order.
You need to play some PA games.
We feast upon Mother's flesh. (ie zuul absolutely wreck morrigi, almost as bad as they wreck liir). Only exception to this is if the morrigi rolls up emitters, as emitter drones will hold off the zuul until CRs hit the field, and not a moment longer. 2-3 CR refinery bombs will kill just about every drone. Just situate them just far apart where their explosions dont hit eachother, or the fleet thats behind (that fleet of cheap ass Scavenger CRs covered in whatever crappy weapon you can strap onto them). If they try to target the fleet, the drones will still automatically target the refineries and blow them up on the way through
Hivers, though powerful, very rarely end up as the top dog in our games just by their very nature unless they start next to some pacifist (WOGGLE) and aren't pressured. You expand slowly, and every skilled player you edge up against will be actively seeking out and crushing expansion fleets.
I didn't say little. 20-30% or so would probably be needed.
I would trade a pile of drones for three CR refineries ANY DAY of the week. That's great tempo!
Even better if you're abusing COLs with CnC retreats. :winky:
To be honest, it really sounds like your zuul players are simply much better than your morrigi players.
I must admit, I do prioritize hivers and zuul as targets. It's like they have gigantic bullseyes painted on their colonies.
That small change for each race... propulsion. Makes one hell of a difference for each race. For example propulsion is tremendously hard for humans (and thats why they get not picked often) but as a result Humans are tremendously hightech. You will be the first to develop fusion drive or you are not doing it right. I do not have to remind you what kind of weapons that allows. And Humans HAVE to do it very early. Those Zuul cruisers? Lunch for even a fleet of Human DE. Because they probably already pack fusion torpedos whilst Zuul are crawling along with fission tech. Humans ain't bad but they are tremendously unforgiving. You better know what you do and don't screw up.
I am a devote Morrigi player. I tested the other races but Morrigi are my pick of choice.
You are right about the fragility and expense of their ships. But damm can Morrigi expand.
Note: i hate drones. I really do.
I tried multiple approaches until i came up with expanding by using scout tanker fleets occasionally returning to pick up a colonizer (Morrigi travell fastest in fleets made up of 9 ships and a Gravboat DE).
Yes, tankers tend to blow up. But considering the menaces out there its really not much of matter if you use other DEs.
And whilst that is done you spend about 3/4 in research. The difficult thing is really to not overdo it so colony development costs freeze you up into being forced to do nothing.
It is THE flood, i tell you. A good rule of thumb is being ahead of the largest player by at least 100%. So if he has three colonies you should have six or you are too slow (unless he is Morrigi too, then of course try to top him a bit). Trying to keep up with this and fortify your planets is completely futile. It only slows you down.
So you expand and expand until you run in other players. And then you will start loosing colonies. Its inevitable. But your empire will have spread so far at that point (given a sufficient map size; i prefer around 120 stars for 6 players) that it is really not of much concern. Actually it frees up development resources on you least developed planets and those won't be of much help to your enemy. Actually a strain. Do not worry: if they are sufficiently developed (by your oponents) we conquer those again.
So here you are: at war. Loaded with a crapload of tech (because you mostly focused on tech), a vast empire with your productive colonies deep behind the frontlines and a abundance of cash coming in and no military fleet.
Can you imagine what the next step is?
Switch eco to war production. Recall the tanker fleets. We will need those.
Technology:
Most important is to know what you are up against. Are you getting blasted by missiles? Lasers? Projectile weapons? Research defensive technology for the adequate countermeasures. Those techs are relatively cheap and can be achived by a minimum research spending quickly. We need our economy for building fleets of modern attack ships in record time.
Research priorities:
1. Anything wich is cheap and helps colonization.
2. Weapons: you need small arms, medium guns as well as preferably some sort of torpedo.
4. Bigger ships and large mounts (considering destroyers: if you do not like torpedoes you can go spinal mount from here).
5. Improve weapons & propulsion.
In that order.
Tactics:
Morrigi cruisers are not very tough. Fine ships with a decent technology headstart and proper countermeasures but Morrigi are better off with destroyers. Of course you need cruisers for fleet command and a typical fleet also includes a few combat cruisers for meat shields (and later a Refinery). But the main force will be consist of destroyers. Those Zuul cruisers are a lot less menacing when facing a dozen plasma torpedoes.
You notice there is not really much room for developing trade until you actually push the invaders back into their territory. Then its your decision if you keep pushing or develop trade. Probably its best to divert resources to trade and raiding and then push even more. But it has the drawback of giving oponents the time to dig in.
Or to sum it all up briefly:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjuKzQR5tfA