Rangers luck runs out!

I once was "gifted" two precursor ships in a single game.... guess I was pretty far behind in the arms race :/.

I parked 'em on a world that had just finished the Spin Control Center. It wasn't long before my sabre-rattling neighbors became my best friends. ^^

I get Rangers late in the game where i got a hole fleet of ships combined to have over 200 weapons power.

I got a precursor ranger for the first time yesterday (newbie here) and it had 90 hitpoints. Nice, but better for wiping out mines and planets with one or two small ships circling them than anything else at the time. My drengin enemy was throwing battleships and such at me by that point, and I needed something with ridiculous armor and/or hitpoints by then.

Luckily I have 4 Lucky Rangers, one with over 200 hitpoints from so many kills and a couple almost at 200. They get wiped out by Drengin battleships too, but I just reload and try again. It may not be kosher, but it gives me practice on what combos of stuff work. The ultimate sandbox testing.

Right now I have been designing and building what I call Mules, which are ships just designed to absorb some punishment with a lot of shields (now at Barrier II). I can put 9 shields on them if I put on a warp drive, a ABS battle stations module, and a disruptor III(got this stuff from trades/conquest). So my very precious Rangers have a chance of surviving Drengin fleets because of fire being distracted elsewhere. I've only gotten to medium hulls so far, and large hulls are eons away. Also have logistics to group together up to 25 logistics points worth of ships. Lucky Rangers are 10 each and the medium-hulled "mules" are 5.

Found that with two Lucky Rangers and a mule, I can barely survive a fleet of two battleships with one ranger left but near dead. Two mules and a Lucky Ranger dies completely. The precursor ranger is just an insta-loss so he gets sniper duty behind enemy lines. Now I'm off to see if I can do three mules and a Ranger.

Unfortunately, the trick of combining high defense ships with other ships to completely distract enemy fire isn't working for me yet. Even with an ABS system on the mules, which since it multiples firepower I thought would be hit until finished off. The Ranger(s) come under fire every time, and early.

My fourth (DA) game I was getting horrendous numbers of them - I don't think I'm indulging in hyperbole when I say I think I had over two dozen of them. I know for a fact I counted 19 at one point.

Something I've noticed though is that the speed always really sucks on the one's I've found - I tend to use them defensively (Stick them on a starbase out in the boonies somewhere, and just build up my own fleets of fast attack vessels - sure they're more lightly armed during the main game, but I haven't died of boredom before they get anywhere -

That's interesting. The ones I've gotten so far have been quite fast, at least by my standards. I'm only up to warp drive though.

Now *that's* interesting. Mine have been horrendously powerful relative to the other ships in the game at the time, but *slow*.

But I tend to design fast ships anyway relative to the AI - I *have* wondered if the AI is dumber just because I have an older PC on occasion.

Jonnan

I hate it when the AI gets one of those Arnor battleships with like 40 defense in each category and about 200 beam, 50 missile, and 50 mass-driver attack (and 7 speed). That REALLY sucks.

I must do something wrong i have DL and DA and have never had 1 ranger.My enemies get them all the time.But ive not had 1 and i got the bloody game when it was released.lol.Still having fun on DA before i upgrade and get ToA.Ive tried it wit luck on and different races etc but to no avail.

As far as I can tell, they usually come around when your military is lagging behind significantly... and come more often based on luck.

So maybe this is totally wrong, but anyway, I notice I tend to make my lucky research breakthroughs -- not counting finding anomalies -- when I am concentrating mostly on research, and get Lucky Rangers or Precursor Rangers when my production is heavily tilted toward military.

Well, the "creativity" bonus is responsible for the finishing techs ahead of schedual (so if you selected or got that perk somewhere, it'll kick in every so often) but it's dependant on how much research you're doing whether it shows up at all. If you aren't researching, you don't get creativity bonuses.

As for the military/social connection to Rangers, I'm not so sure about that. I've never noticed it, myself... I'll keep an eye out for it, though!

Creativity works even if you're doing no research, for example while you are 500BC or more in debt. That is the reason to choose creativity, and that's why it's powerful.

I definitely keep my eye even more keenly on my surveyor now and switch to the research project with the longest build time when I see a spaceship graveyard coming up.

By the way, I got a Lucky Ranger the other day when doing very little military production. But that was in a game I won by doing next to zero military production all game, winning mostly through diplomacy and influence. The other game where I was building military like crazy in a prolonged scramble to fight back the Drengins and Thalans, I started popping out rangers like crazy.

Lotta coincidences look like they mean more than they do, but still ... the difference seemed pretty dramatic. Of course, it was only a couple games, so ...

HERE WE GO AGAIN.
playing a game similor to my earlier game with my custom opponant the Sisssssss
{evil snake guys} and doing fine. I get a message that they have found a precursor ship we designate as a cruiser. I check the military stats and Im at 48 with my Lucky ranger att34/def22 hp152 and the Sisssssss are 248, here we go again. They found a Arnorian Ranger att158-120-112/def24-27-27 hp90. They are too busy concoring the surrounding planets to bother with me right now, so i get some time to prepare and hope for more rangers. this ship is different than the one they found before also. Instead of red and sinister it is Silver and trimed in grey. There ships are still dark greentrimed black. Does this mean that there are 3 distinct rangers out there for the lucky 1 Anor style, 1 dread style and 1 styled as your own ships? Post here if you find any with discriptions if possible.

Odd end to a serious threat. The Sissssssss did well early in thier conquest of planets close to thier home planet.No ship or fleet could stand against the power of the anorian ranger, but the ship became a victim of economics when the evil Sisssssss economy crashed and she was scraped as a cost saving measure. They are now involved in a three way war as former victoms line up to seek revenge. Lucky for me, and I had just found another {mini} ranger.