Does anybody ever win this game?

[kyleh]

I'm not going to claim to be a 4x master, but I've been around the block and used to regularly trounce games like MOO and MOO2 even on the hardest settings. I bought this a week ago or so and I've started at least a dozen games. In each game that I have started, no matter what I do, no matter what tech level I research up to, no matter how many ships I build, I always get soundly whipped by the first fleet of just about anything that comes and finds me. I just watched 600 ships get flattened after about 3 hours of gameplay by one fleet of pirates, the first I had seen since the beginning of the game.

So that begs the question. If 15-20 pirates can defeat 600 ships, including no less than 10 carriers, what strategy can be successful?

- I had researched all techs up to about level 8-12
- I had all ships in the fleet set to auto-refit
- I had 8 planets across 2 systems, with a single fleet of 600 ships ready to scramble for the inevitable pirates that always show up when you take a second system.
- The pirates killed every single ship I had in about 30 seconds in one big furball when I sent them the direction of the pirates with an attack order.

I've restarted the game about 8-10 times with new medium/large spiral galaxies and easy AI opponents, with the Remnants turned off.

I've set the Pirate's number to .1, that was the setting in this last game.

No matter how much fun I'm having in this game or how many ships I build or how many times I refit the ships to try to keep them high tech, the first enemy (non scout) ship I see heralds the overwhelming end of the game.

Am I just getting the scale wrong? Is it possible that the game has some kind of bug in the current version that makes it unwinnable with pirates enabled? Does every planet that I have need to be churning out as many thousands of cheap ships as I can possibly fit into the game in order to have some success? I'm afraid to expand any faster, because the 2nd system I take always gets attacked by pirates in about 10 minutes flat and that begins blockades which begins the end of the game if I ever try to take that system back. The pirates typically arrive before any of the local planets even get to thier fourth structure, so there isn't time to fortify against it and the above (I thought MASSIVE) force of ships that escorted my last group of colony ships slowed the enemy down about as effectively as the solar wind.

I'm confused/frustrated, and I've read through all of the noob threads with no real help in sight and no success at all in the game.

[Lancaster71]

Have you tried making your own ships?

The first thing I do is create a few hundred scouts to explore the galaxy. This helps me to avoid systems with remnant in them. Also lets me know when other AI players are starting to come close. (the scouts are set to only explore one system, so they will stay in the one system they explore, giving me vision)

At around the tech levels you have is when I start using my own blueprints. Before that I just place 7 bombers in each system no matter what, that seems to keep the pirates out of anywhere I expand. As long as you have some sort of military presence in a system, the pirates dont seem to want to enter. After some experimenting 7 bombers seems to do the trick. Send the bombers to the system before you send out a colony ship to ensure that it is secure. Once the system is secure I mark the system for autocolonization and build a corrosponding number of colony ships, let them go and set my eyes on a different system.

I also have around 30-40 planets by the time I reach those tech levels, mostly concentrating on my economy the first hour of the game or so. In the top left corner there is a button where you can bring up supply and demand of goods your empire. Keep an eye on that and when you need, advanced parts, colonize a world and install a govoner that will concentrate on adv. parts. Need electronics? do the same but install an electronics govoner, etc.

Expanding like this for the first part of the game, until my economy is rock solid and my research levels are around ten makes for an easy win. I just avoid all the remnant systems until this point in the game, they arent worth dealing with right away.

That said, once I start implementing my own ship designs, no other empire poses a threat. I dont even make a balanced fleet, just one ship that does a ton of damage with max armor and decent acceleration at around 40-60 scale. These should build on a construction oriented world in about 5sec or less. Once this happens, I expand. It would be good to make a ship dedicated to killing planets, with the biobomb to keep the AI's structures intact, and a ship dedicated to killing other ships. You can set what the ship targets in the AI settings so ships with biobombs dont try to take out other ships or so your other ships dont destroy the enemy buildings on the planets.

This works great against a medium AI. I have just been scared to try a hard AI, haha. Definitely not what I have seen other people doing on the forums, but this strategy works great for me.

Hope this helps.

--
Lancaster

[kyleh]

Thanks for the advice Lancaster, I'll give that a shot next time I play!

[WIbigdog]

Also, what scale are your ships at the 3 hour mark? I find that at that time I've got 150 scale Dakota-class Battleships and Zion-class BattleCruisers (I enjoy my naming scheme) forming the strong arm of my fleet with the vast majority of my ships being 50 scale Kodiak-class Cruisers and 40 scale Yamamoto-class Destroyers. A tip is that when you build larger ships like that you can scale down the weapons on them without losing too much damage thanks to the extra size. You can then put other things on your ship such as shields or a repair bay. Also, don't forget to upgrade your ships out of "plate armor" and go for a mix of Reactive and Nano. Also, a handy tip is that, once you have both fusion reactors and ion thrusters on your ships, you can usually get away with a fuel tank that's only .25 scale and...(that one sub-module that increases the storage capacity that I can't think of the name of). It'll usually give my ships half an hour of flight.

Other than that, after 3 hours you're going to need WAY more than just 2 systems, because even a trivial AI will probably have over 10 by that time, maybe more.

Also, have you created your own race? Go into customize and give yourself the trait that gives you two starting planets and the technology one that gives you biology and farms level 2 from the get go, it's always a good thing to not have to build an early farm world. Then just choose whichever negative pills you can swallow (such as no civic policy things). I find that is a pretty good advantage to start with. Just keep trying and learning, it takes a while. :D