Pierpoint

If someone surrenders colonies to you that you don't want (as was mentioned: on the other side of the galaxy), you could always just give them away to someone else. No border problems with the other races that way, and the receiving race probably likes you more. Even better, give the colonies to a race that doesn't have any influence in the location of those colonies. Then the receiving race has more strained relations with the others around those colonies. Maybe you can use that to get the

Pierpoint smells a time-warp facilitator (ahh! MOO2 reference!)

I'm trying to decide if it's sad or not that I can pick out and recognize most of the parts on these ships now. Jury's still out

As for the pure weapons vs. heavy defense designs, I had an interesting chance to test how effective these were in a recent game. My main attack ship was a small size (10 hp) with 6 mass attack and 4 shield defense. The Torians, who I had just gone to war with, were fielding medium ships (16 hp) with 2 mass attack and 8 armor to counter me. Needless to say, my initial impression was "I'm screwed." After all, their defense was higher than my attack and they had more hit points. My defense (a

Based on my understanding of how combat works, i think Marcathonas has the right idea. Likewise, I agree with hockeyrama about defense being more valuable on bigger ships. Full defense value against the weapon that the defense counters (shields vs. lasers, etc) and square root of that value for everything else, rounded down. I'm also fairly sure that the minimum attack roll is 1 (not 0), since I've never had a ship do 0 damage to another ship that had no defenses. I'm also fairly sure that

Ah yes ... forgot about gold [slaps forehead] As for the no_trade thing, isn't rhe AI already pretty reluctant to share certain (generally military) techs? Maybe there's a flag already built in for that (yes, my modding experience with the game is pretty much nil, I'm not even much of a shipyard pro yet).

That's actually Civs 3 and 4 you're thinking of there. In Civ2 the main differences between nations were city names and player color. I was thinking more along the lines of the scenarios that were added later (2 expansion packs that I can think of: Conflicts in Civilization and Fantastic Worlds). I remember there was one Civil War scenario where there was a "Union" tech and a "Confederacy" tech that each side started with which gave them access to a slightly different tech tree and different

I'm pretty sure some of the old Civ2 scenarios made race (well, nationality) specific techs by having a base technology where there was no way to research it and all of the technologies for just that race had it as a prerequisite. Then the race that should be getting those techs would start the game with that base tech. Make sense? So like: Drengin Base Tech --> Drengin-Only Tech 1 --> Drengin-Only Tech 2 --> .... and only the Drengins would start the game with Drengin Base Te

Here are some earlier topics talking about beating Dread Lords Link Link Link Doing a search for "dread lords" or "achilles heel" will bring up more.

For all you EV Nova fans out there (anyone?) here's my first attempt at an Auroran Thunderforge battlecruiser. Still needs some work, but it's getting there:

I just answered a similar question earlier today. Not the most original ideas of how to fight them, but effective nonetheless: Link

Yes, as others said, defenses against Dread Lords aren't really worth until you get closer to their tech level. Here's a few ideas that work well against them (at least in the campaign missions, I haven't tried the "Dread Lords on Parade" Scenario yet) 1) use fleets of tiny or small ships with no defense and do everything you can to make sure they are the ones that start a battle (get the first shot). The idea here is to completely destroy the Dread Lord ship in the first rou

I find them more useful early in the game when ship attack / defense is low. Turning a fleet of tiny ships each with 1 attack and 1 defense into ships with 3 attack and 4 defense (the 2 +1 laser modules which are available early and the +1 to all defense module) lets you turn a fleet of cheap, junky ships into something that can take out pretty much anything the computer can throw at you for quite some time. EDIT: whoops, looks like you barely beat me on that one, justkevin.

Title Screen : 70 Main Map (8x8 with lots of stuff) : 2.5 - 14.5 needless to say, I never use tactical mode Ship Design : 34.5 - 37.8 P4 2.4 GHz 512 MB RAM NVIDIA GeForce 3 ti200 (64 MB) - yes my drivers are updated Display Resolution (game) : 1024x768

Very nice! I was actually attempting something similar (oddly enough also using the .NET framework). The only major difference was that I was going to add a tech-tree view similar to the one in game except that you could mouse-over each individual tech to see the cost, stuff it unlocked, etc (like in Civ IV). But rather than reinvent the wheel, I think I leave it to you or the devs to add in instead <img src="http://images.stardock.com

Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but I couldn't find it with the search: Starting a new game with the Drengin Human Wars scenario and then leaving the "Randomly Pick Races" option on will randomize your opponent and keep them from starting the game hostile towards you (they are neutral). So, for example, I was just locked in a struggle for galactic supremacy with the vile ... Arceans. <img src="smiles/Smile.gif" border=0 ALIGN="

Here's a few combat screenshots with the ships I'm using in my current game, A squadren of Lightning-C interceptors (1 mass attack, 1 point defense, 6 speed, heavily augmented by military starbases) on routine border patrol destroy 2 billion Dominion of Korx soldiers attempting to enter Terran space: Link A Minuteman class cruiser (14 mass driver attack, 4 point defense, 9 speed) escorted by a newly-produced

Well, I finally managed to beat this mission after scaling the difficulty down to normal (1.1 beta version). Although, I think it was more luck than skill on my part. Basically, I made a few transports with 10 speed as soon as possible at Outpost 22 (the higher up one on the map) and traded the planet above it back and forth with the Dreadlords (that planet is conveniently exactly 10 squares away from where the transports undock). After a successful

Just out of curiousity, do the 3 allies just not build any military ships for anyone else? I've restarted this mission a few times (challenging difficulty) and all the computer players do is build constructors, colony ships, and freighters. Then around turn 12 or 13, that Sarek ship comes flying down (the 1 beam attack one) and starts popping all of these ships, which the allies just keep rebuilding without ever fighting back. Needless to say, despi