DivineWrath

Its a Drengin super ability "Super Dominators". Its an advantage/curse for the Drengin. When ever the Drengin declares war, or is declared war on, they gain a number of "super-dominator covettes" based upon their military ranking (I don't know the forumula).

They show up in fleets, and are always built the same regardless of the techs you know. Being the same model every time means that they could be considered useless if they arrive late in the game. As such, they have 2 uses: extra attack ships, or as extra cash for when you recycle them.

Readup on super abilities. They were a new feature developed for DA expansion. Read the DA manual, pages 15 to 16 (though I think some details have changed since then).

Correction Pages 16 to 17. These forums have a bad habit of not letting you edit your replies just after you post them.

Ok, I've read down what you've gotten so far and have some things to toss in there.

-Iconians
They have a stunted economy on the front of lacking government techs as well as good econ buildings. Toss this in the bucket with higher maintenance buildings and they have a restricter plate on them.

As you did mention, their HPs are superb and should be focused on high hp ships that get cycled in battles to repair and then rejoin. In any race, but moreso with the Iconians, I fight in to or three lines of fleets. As I get damaged ships, I send them back and pull up a fresh ship to replace it. The Iconians can pull this off with less waves though. With tech trading on and picking up other race's +hp passive bonus techs, they can be insanely sick hp mongers.

-Thalans
Some say to place the Hyperion Matrix not on Thala due to it's +8 food content. I'm still on the fence with that comment, but it's worth putting in the info. I prefer to put it on Thala and just ferry people off Thala to fill new planets to help offset the pop growth issue they have.

-Xeno Ethics & Alterians/Thalans
Perhaps I'll look into these tonight/this weekend, or you can look down the tech trees of each to come up with the new race/ethics techs they get. Also the fact that ONLY good Alterians get race/ethics techs while good/neutral/evil Thalans get race/ethics techs).

-New population caps
Another thing to note from DA to TA is that civ homeworlds have a initial cap of 16 billion and non civ capitals have a cap of 8 billion.

Blah. I had every intention to get those race/ethic techs listed out this weekend. However, the combination of a large map all abundant Iconian game I was playing and some b-e-a-utiful weather caused me to loose sight of what was so important to me on Friday. On the bright side, that game is done now so I should be able to focus on getting the techs listed out.

Thalan Race/Ethics

+Good
-Subspace Rebounder
-Telepathic Defense
-Arnorian Battle Armor
-Dynamic Shielding
-Hyperion Defense (Hyperion Defense Module [+25% defense in influence module])
-Fanatics (Church of Valor [super project 10 maint, 25% soldiering, 10% morale]
-Gaia Theory (Gaia Vortex [galactic achievement 10 maint, 10%PQ/morale/econ/food])
-Xeno Influence (influence+10% & Xeno Influence Module [starbase module...can't find this module])

+Neutral (My personal favorite of the three options)
-Hyperion Propulsion (+10% speed)
-Hyperion Fabrication (purchase now reduction +25)
-Space Superiority (Weapons+20%)
-Ultimate Creativity (Creativity+20%)

+Evil
-Psionic Missile
-Psionic Beam
-Hyperion Domination (hp+10)
-Xeno Brainwashing (Brain Washing Center [1per-planet 1maint, 20%econ, 50%influence])
-Weapon Magnifier (Weapons+10)
-Extreme Soldiers (Soldiering+20)

Note: None of the "Good vs Evil" or it's following tech exist in their tech tree. No Mind Control Center for you evil buggers.

*P.S. ...found more time tonight

Only to Alterians and Thalans. The other races have just the standard issue ethic techs.

BTW Choosing Evil as the Alterians/Thalans doesn't remove the ability to buy/steal the tech required for the Mind Control Center and building it yourself. One game I was able to pull that off before the race I bought the tech from could build it itself.

Now I wish I could go back and remove the details of the standard defensive modules in my Alterian post. Dumb me put those in as if they were new and then replied to my post w/ the Thalan info. /shrug. When/if DivineWrath puts it up in his 101 OP he can take care of that.

Glad to hear that time spent on that tech tree info came to good use ghostwes. My finger started to cramp after CTRL+R every tech, minus ethics. I don't think the CTRL+SHIFT+R would have not learned the ethics techs right away, thus making me go back and try to re-find them. Instead I cheat-learned everything, saved the game, then chose an ethic.

I know the weapons trees are different depending on which race you are. Some races get fast tracked (missing a block as you said w/ ion beams, or missing the last in a block) to the higher end, some even have their own block. The Yor for example have Scatter Blasters which are fairly decent weapons on their low end of the tree.

Evaluating ALL races and their weapons/defenses trees is a whole different subject...IMHO a better project for one who is better than I in figuring such things out. With these tree shake-ups, some races may be better suited for X style of weapon in TA than they are at the other two...or even much better than other races period.

The old standard of which weapon type is better for X thing (research time, cost, size, dmg) I think may get tossed out the window as a generalization.

~barks~ Wow, I tried something different (for me) with the Korath this weekend. I bee-lined to the Dark Influence tech instead of the Spore Weapons tech.

Large map, 8 opponents, all abundant, tough difficulty. I'm stomping people via influence AND military right now. I placed those buildings on all bordering planets and then any flipped planets and then just focused on planetary upgrades and new ships. Right now there isn't anyone in the galaxy that can stop this juggernaut of social/physical power.

I still think those darn buildings need tweaked back to 150% or even 100% influence. 200% is just nuts. Toss one of those puppies on an influence tile...youch.

Anyways, new update. I reviewed the Terror star, Fleet support modules, and the Misc sections and made updates as I felt they were needed. The Fleet support modules section got a complete rewrite so it could make a clear difference between fleet warp bubbles and atlas modules (name picked because it was used in the .xml files).

? I didn't notice this one in the race creation screen. I knew the Korx had a tech that gave a building that did this though...

I had misread the text on it. When I saw "When you have one point in this ability", I hadn't looked into the trade points since TA's inception and missed something. Just...straight up I hadn't looked into Trade bonuses.

Sadly, I couldn't do much of anything last night to confirm that since we got slammed by that cold front storm and lost power all night long :/ I only had time to get home and shower...not even eat.



That they do. Beyond a 'fun toy' to play with for a few games, they have very little use in strategy IMHO. Perhaps if you need to deal a strong blow to an enemy with a system that's filled with planets it would be useful.

I prefer to use them as a "Terrorstar Bomb" since they move too slow. If you're target is more than 10 parsecs away, it's in your interest to just send a fleet of 6 constructors and an escort fleet/ship with them then build right next to the star in question. After constructing it and using it once, you better hope you picked a area riddled w/ stars close by, otherwise it will be a long time before it's used again lol.

One more thing to jot down about TS for when you do play with them and then update the list. There is a new UP proposal to ban the use/construction of TS's.

Ahhh now it gets immortalized in a guide. It shall never die ~evil laughter~.

Did you get to delve into Terror Stars more?