Couple questions I have.....please keep in mind I still am playing dl, hope to fix that soon when I get a few bucks.

1. Where can I find the "0 year victory strategy"?  I have an idea on how it can be done, but I really would not want to waste time doing it. Seems its good for boosting your metaverse score though.

2. I find that defending my colonys with ships in orbit is a waste of time (playing on masochistic or below). Does anyone really spend a lot of resources defending colonys?

3. What is the 1hp bug/error?

4. when setting my science on very slow. Does this just effect me, or  all races? Because it seems the computer players are not effected. Though with tec trading this can be offset.

I looked for post on some of these things. There are so many in the forums, it just seems easier to ask here then to spend all day looking.

Thanks for the help in advance. Also I hope my spellling was not taht bad. lol

If you're talking about the technology rate at the game setup screen, that is a cost modifier to all techs, so it affects everyone equally.  Galaxy size also has a cost modifier to techs.

I don't defend my planets in the traditional sense. to stop troop ships, which is all you really need to be careful of, just place an empty hull on a planet. then use your battle groups to destroy approaching vessels. Simple.

Well Thanks guys.

A couple comments.

Sole Soul:

your right, I was talking about technology rate. The computer must be killing me on research. I dont mind, I just steal thier tec's when I take thier planets.

KzintiPatriarch:

Thanks for the PM on the zero year win. (though I have no idea what a spore is yet). I really need to get the expanision packs.

I dont defend my planets either in orbit, I use very fast long range ships (cargo hulls loaded with engines and one gun) to kill transports before they group with escorts or enter my space. And if fast enough, return my attackers to safe area's on same turn. Works great if the enemy has you out numbered and out guned. Also my transports are loaded with engines so I can recover a lost planet the very next round. Really slows the enemys advance when they gotta keep wasting transports to take the same planet.

I also like playing the gigantic games, many stars, many planets, max races (random). So max tec always happens. (What I dont like is that the other races still have discovery spheres everywhere after they have max tec.)

mADDYman:

The empty hulls is a good idea, You could direct hostle attacks where you want that way. (seems the computer always gos for undefended planets first, many times with unescorted transports)

Loupdinour:

Still no idea about spore ships, But if I could get planetary invasion fast enough, maybe I could take someone out fast. I will have to see if I could do that, never really tryed.

You know, all those years I spent playing wing commander must have been for a reason.

Which is why Information Warfare and Mass Drivers are your friends!

In my last game I put that to the test. I took over a homework with 2 tandard transports. both carried 1000 people. I had 2000mil people up againest rough 16000mil, I did this 3 or 4 times through out the game and 1/4 times it suceeded. I used different methods of invasion. surprisingly mass driver lost and information warfare won, micro soldiers also lost along with Tidal disruption.

When I used info warfare I managed to get 3000-4000 people on my side. I had their entire empire under my cultural influence which aidded my invasion.

In order to get PI to work in a gigantic ZYW, a lot of changes are needed.  Research order would be about 80% different, and your racial setup would also be significantly changed.  I dont think you could score as high as when using Spore, but when I have a chance, I'll figure something out.  The biggest problem will be to get enough troops to the enemy homeworld by April 8th.

Grats to Snarkotamus for his highest scoring game yet of just under 300k!    Did you try using the Swindle or go for a more straightforard approach?

Thanks to Loup and Silver for always being helpful too.

Sentient species taste better...

I'm using my "evolving hybrid ToA swindle". It is a twisted pepretration of ruthless diplomacy (usually 200+%), influence, war profiteering, and plain old-fashioned devious backstabbing. I still lack the patience to grind out a huge military score, so I am concentrating on improving the front-end scoring.

hey KP, are you still interested in the D&D game? if not, it's totally fine. i actually wouldn't mind a smaller group.

same for SS.

will do. maybe tonight, but probably tmrw some time. though i did try to get everyone to check in about a week and a half ago.

But that's a good thing, right?

Piz is itching to play, SB seems ready to get stuff going, Neilo asked me about it the other day. not sure about DA, but i think he's probably still in. my sense is that they want to start, but Neilo and DA in particular still don't have a firm grasp of exactly what that entails because they've never played before. i can completely understand about the time constraints, too. i would greatly value your experience and insight, but on the other hand i think experience could frustrate you a bit. i'm sure it'll be slow going at first, partly due to everyone learning the game (Piz played 2.0 once upon a time, so he'll still be learning the 3.5 rules). plus... well, given the group, i think there will be a lot of goofing off and out-of-game chatter.

i think what i'd like to do is schedule a "training" session with those four. run through a few combat encounters, level up a couple times, and deal with some non-combat situations. i think it'll give them all a firmer grasp of how the game actually works. and then i'd like to get started. i think until we get some momentum into the campaign, it'll be better to keep the group small. there's certainly no reason your character couldn't come in after we've already started.