GSFParadox

Presumably somebody has to steer...

That's not really the point now, is it? I'm sure you would happily declare war and then watch yourself get crushed in this scenario. So you should be able to threaten someone to remove their starbase, even if you can't possibly back it up militarily? Face it: if you'd lose in a war with them, you real

I thought the number of starbases you can build was linked to the logistics ability.

As for sensors, I find it's much cheaper and better to build one sensor ship to tag along with a group of fighters than have every fighter outfitted with sensors. Just keep it out of battle. Life support is different though. Consider where you are going to be fighting and add life support accordingly. If you're invading across the map, you'll want to plug some modules in, but if you're fighting on your home turf don't waste the room. Defence

Well certainly the depiction of ground war is absurd. It's the future! Let's all bunch up on a big plain and walk towards each other, guns blazing!

Economy bases are wild stuff. I found a star that had two high-class planets around it. One had three 100% mfc bonus tiles, and the other had a 700% tile (crazy!). With a couple economy bases around them, I was turning out massive ships that went 5 sectors at a time and dealt 150 damage every turn. I went Federation gov't, maxed out production and was still making 700bc a turn with 80% approval, and simply rolled over the Altarians and the Drath, savin

A military base will not, as far as I can tell, protect other starbases. Its bonuses only apply to ships. Could be wrong, though. Of course, a couple crappy ships sitting on an influence/economy starbase can turn into powerful defense vessels with a military starbase nearby.

I never try for a new map. If I lose a game, I learn something, even if it was because of a terrible starting setup. I try to make the best of what I get, even if I spend ten minutes on a turn twiddling the details to maximize production.

I don't really bother with military bonuses or military spending at all anymore. I find it's much better to just have a powerhouse economy and buy all your ships. I'm in the middle of a game where my research bonus is around 80% and my diplomacy is about 140%. This means I can sell my advanced techs for ridiculous sums to my friends and buy highly advanced ships. Much easier than begging for techs and building ships the slow way. Personally

It would be interesting to have a sub-light mod that dealt with big solar systems instead of galaxies. You could have solar sails, Bussard ramjets, ion drives that are actually ion drives, etc. As it stands that's all sub-light technology.

The question is not "what happens next", but rather "what do I want". If you think war is coming and you want to be prepared to fight, crank your military slider up in the budget, set your colonies to military production, and build factories. Use your espionage to find out what the Arcean ships are like - i.e. are they outfitted with mass drivers and deflectors? Then put titanium armor and stingers on your ships. If they have beam weapons and chaff the

Typically in a time of war people surrender to their enemies, not to their friends. That's what surrender is all about.

I had the same problem. Here's the deal - the cursor isn't actually stuck. It's just gone. For me, at least, I found that if I moused around, things would still light up and I could click on them - I just had no cursor. Took a restart to get it back.