Roxlimn

Arguably, Good defense techs are more powerful, even, that Psyonic Beam. The trouble with Psyonic Beam is that it costs a lot to produce and maintain. Good-aligned Civ ships with all the defensive trimmings can expect to take on the entire sizable Drengin fleet alone and come out with heroic level XP to boot! The boost Defense got since DA was patched has put a real premium on those defensive techs and upgrades that Good gets with Xeno Ethics (and yes, it pays to research it early to

Not to be contrary here or anything, but in this game, "Evil" is about preserving your Civ, not your own person. As long as you're ruthless enough to take any measures (going only by success) to advance your Civ, you're Evil. That means that you could actually care about your Civ. In fact, nearly all the Evil choices are quite good for your Civ, [i]in the long run[/i]. Even without propaganda, the naked truth of that would be questionable at worst to members of your own Civ, and hero

[b]Honshu:[/b] Not in my experience. "Good" is a game mechanic, nothing more. Essentially, the game asks you to choose from 3 differently valued choices with repercussions down the line. Choosing "Good" simply means that you can opt to align with Good with no costs. Do this experiment and you'll see: rename the alignments and remove all nongame elements. The "weirdness" of the choice balance will become apparent. Of course, if you're up for score, you need to play a certai

The Freighter maintenance would need to be dropped significantly. If you're not making money on Freighters, there's no point to making them. In DA, Freighters have 0 maintenance. That makes every trade route pure profit. If Freighters have significant maintenance, the trade route return would be need to be massive to offset the production and maintenance costs.

It depends on my mood. There are times when I start up a Battle of the Gods game purely to design a template and save it for "real game" use. I can use up entire 2 or 3 hour sessions just designing ships. The main difficulty and artistry of designing templates is in hardpoint management. The editor essentially allows you to place any component anywhere, you just need to get the hardpoint in the right place in the right orientation. Some of the longest sessions I've spent des

[b]Honshu:[/b] By that same token, everything in the game ought to be exactly the same. Civ differences ought to be obliterated for the purpose of complete balance! Of course, that's an exaggeration, but so is the conclusion that choosing Good is that much harder and doesn't have anything going for it. The event choices are weirdly balanced, but as long as you balance slightly Good before you choose Ethics, then you don't need to sacrifice all that many of the goodies the Evi

I think that Evil being powerful in [i]Dark Avatar[/i] makes a lot of sense. After all, the game is all about the galaxy going to hell in a handbasket. Conversely, the balance should firmly (but not overwhelmingly) shift to Good in Twilight. Neutral for DL, Evil for DA, Good for TA. Makes some kind of story sense. Good should win in the end.

[b]Mac2411:[/b] [quote] True, but if you already have a juggernaut of a starfleet ready to attack the enemy as soon as your constructors finish building the forward-placed starbases you claim are so overpowered and deadly, then you have big fleet costs in addition to paying the costs for all of those constructors waiting to build the starbase. I would also add that if your victory is so quick using this tactic, the AI is never going to reach the starbases to attack anyway, so additi

Of course. AS long as we talk about the game, there's no reason to get offended. [quote] In fact, given their sheer size and relative importance of extending ranges of fleets and providing a friendly sphere of influence where repairs can take place relatively more quickly despite being far from homespace, they should be able to outfight a similarly advanced starship and at least hold off all but the most determined of attacks until help can arrive. That's not the same as making the

They detect ships. I spend mucho dinero for strategic sensor upgrades. Very nice. Slow down your game like all get out, though.

The freighter idea is certainly interesting. I also had the same thought, but I was thinking that initially, at least, I want the implementation to be as simple as possible, so there's less chance of programming failure, and so that the devs will be more likely to be open to the idea. A single working algorithm would be best, though. I think we want to limit the number of working programs that are resident in the memory at any one time. Also streamlines the game program, since you'll

Personally, I can't imagine why there should be any complaints against Civ IV other than technical ones. The game is extremely moldable and also extremely moddable. If you think it's too slow - you can make it go faster! If you think the map is too small - you can play with as huge a map as you can possibly want! In particular, I don't see this defensive emphasis feature. Civ IV wins through military conquest are nearly always fast and dramatic. Not the one-turn artillery wins of C

I think it goes without saying that most everyone is disgusted with the way Starbases are currently built. People get around the multiple Constructor issue in various ways, but the fact that they find ways around it simply indicates that it's not fun - no one actually likes making all these Constructors and trundling them all around the neighborhood. I'm proposing an idea for the devs - something that relies on a built-in mechanic that can be used to ease the problem, and hopefully als

From a gameplay perspective, it's really a moot point. We [i]already[/i] use Medium or Small ships essentially as oribtal defense plaforms. No engines, all weapons, or mostly defense or somesuch. Whatever the verisimilitude of it, the real question is: how much planetbound defense would be [i]fun[/i] to have? Would you care for a Huge Hull thousand attack Ship to be stationed at every enemy planet at no maintenance cost to the defender? How about a Large one instead? Severa

That line of thought goes to "reasonability." Many of the points of discussion here focus on "defense." That a Starbase ought to be able to "defend" itself. The problem is that allowing even "just" a Military Starbase to "defend" itself essentially turns it into an instant attacking juggernaut. This is a game - it has certain peculiarities. One of those peculiarities is that a fully-functional super Starbase can be created deep in enemy territory in as little as a week, without so m

Military Resources are top priority targets. Just one or two of those can needlessly hamper your conquest efforts, even when it seems like it's a foregone conclusion. Those things have to go first.

I certainly didn't ignore that. I did make the point that if Starbase defenses were buffed in the late game, latter game Military Starbase powers could be used to "fortify" your way all across the galaxy and take over enemies using technically inferior ships and technology. This doesn't happen in the early game because early game Military Starbases don't have such potent power projection capabilities, and not in the late game because they need to be defended with fleets, making a straight-up f

From a purely gameplay perspective, starbase weapons and defense modules are exceedingly powerful against early and mid-game Smalls and Mediums - typically the kind of fleets likely to be dispatched to take out "soft" targets. Even late in the game, a fully decked-out Starbase can defend itself against a small fleet of Smalls and Mediums, and even against a slightly backwards Large Ship fleet. You could park a fleet to defend your most important Starbases and not bother to create defen

Generally, I name my ships with wildly weird nomenclatures like Praetorian-class alongside Maga-class (I figured some battle took place at the star system and the Terrans now build a destroyer-type ship in honor of it). Unique names allow me to keep track of which ships are which, since I often design them for very specific purposes. For instance, a Hunter-Killer Frigate purpose-made to kill the Yor would not be the same as one made to kill the Iconians. Sometimes, I include designati

A slightly less than 75% fleet offense will still work. You can get it down to 60% of total fleet attack and still have a reliable chance of success if you have reasonable weapons and logistics of your own, and can expect to reduce enemy fleet attack power sufficient to become invincible before they take out too many of your own ships. It's fortunate that the AI doesn't create Defense-oriented juggernauts, although I wish they would do so if profitable in TA. An on-defense juggernaut

Different ship designs for different purposes. I never build Huge ships except to dominate ship to ship combat. If your purpose is to destroy enemy fleets, you want a big nasty ship with plenty of the correct defense type, or else only weapons and engines. For this purpose, you build as large as your tech will allow. You want lots of engines on this one - it helps it to destroy as many fleets as possible. For garrison duty, I build only Small and Tiny ships. Sometimes,

I attack AI starbases to good effect. You can actually sense the AI struggling economically when you take apart its economic routes. It's great if you can take out its merchant fleet itself, but taking out the econ starbases also takes out modules it may be using to increase production. The military starbases are also a valid and often very sensible target. It goes without saying that resource starbases are very nice to take. I'm not seeing this problem. Sure, I like to tak

Well, I'm hardly anyone to give advice, since I only like to play at the Tough setting on DA, but it's quite doable. I can win on DA even when I'm isolated on the far side of the galaxy with like one or two habitable planets in range - the map placement is less of an issue precisely because of the environment changes. Never research Extreme Colonization tech to start with. Ever. Especially if you have no prospective planets to colonize. Generally speaking, I only resea

For my part, I usually consolidate all my trade routes into one or two close paths that I then stud with Econ starbases. The starbases are placed for optimal multiple coverage - large areas of overlap between adjacent starbases boosts the trade income like nobody's business, and the effect on the nearby planets' manufacturing isn't too shabby either. Since I overlap the bases, placing them all on optimal lines is less of an issue. I optimize the bases by weighing both route coverage

You sure you weren't ripped off by the store, or got invaded by malware through your broadband? Some pirates steal serial numbers from legal copies and liberally sell copies of said game with that serial number. You could have been sold a pirated copy, or your copy could have had its serial number compromised.