Sole Soul

The best way to "defeat" them is to send them off on wild goose chases with ships that can handily outrun them, while also using fast transports to beat the enemy's defenses to their planets. I know the lucky rangers can't happen in the first 3-5 years, and I was under the impresion the precursor rangers were similarly limited, so there is at least a grace period before they show up, which is generally sufficient, even in TA, to come up with some way of dealing with them, alth

[quote who="qrtxian" reply="287" id="3091897"]I think I may have to nerf the Ranger. It's bad enough that the busy archaeologists have unearthed four of the suckers in my latest game, but I can buy them from the AI for a little under 40000 bc. Dunno what happened to the fourth one, but now that I have three of them pretty much nobody can stop me.[/quote] If you have 40,000bc, that might have something to do with why nobody can stop you... ;)

[quote who="Tolmekian" reply="282" id="3090537"]And finally, for another peek, here's something I just found: A nice improvement unlocked by the Drengin/Korath Xeno Brain Washing. It was unavailable due to a simple typo in the TechRequirement - XenoBrainwashing instead of XenoBrainWashing. It's funny, I previously changed the Icon and Query for it, but didn't notice that it wasn't available. Sigh.[/quote] *facepalm* Capi

I didn't remember DL's planet count being quite so low, so I started a game and did a headcount; got almost 500. However, since DL's lower class planets are of much more limited usefulness, it's perhaps fair to say that only ~400 of those are worthwhile. It's also possible that planet count in DL has gone up somewhat since 1.4. But as DL's pop growth is quite a bit slower, even before accounting for Breeder, and pop determines economy which determin

It's always the French, isn't it? ;) Glad to hear it; I've gotten it as well, but haven't had the time to devote to it yet.

[quote who="genrich_toews" reply="15" id="3088337"]you have a point, I dont trade tech at all, but then again, I spend every penny on production, but how does that explain the fleet size of my enemies? and I dont research defences, I decided its better to have Larger Hulls and more GUNZ!!! How do I post the save file? cant figure the option, image, code, yes, but doesnt say much about insert file?[/quote] You'll need to host it somewhere.

[quote who="Wizard1956" reply="17" id="3088331"] Quoting RedneckDude, reply 16I know, I was just messing with the dastardly duck. Rule #3: Don't provoke the duck.[/quote] Rule #1: You do not talk about the duck. Rule #2. You DO NOT talk about the duck. ;)

Tolmekian for President! Change I can believe in! ;) ShipMoveBonus is in Hyperion Shipyard, Navigation Center, Advanced Navigation Center, and Innovation Complex. It provides +speed on that planet. ShipSpeedBonus is in Gravity Accelerators and provides +speed civ-wide. At least, according to the tags. I hadn't thought to try removing those tags to see what's hardcoded, though.

It sounds to me like you're not researching fast enough, actually. Could you post a savegame so we can take a look? Click on an enemy ship, and click ship details. What weapons/defenses are they using? What weapons/defenses are you using?

[quote who="The_Pet" reply="13" id="3088144"]Can anyone help me with how to install this in to the game. I have the Ultimate Edition purchased off Steam, but I only seem to be able to find templates with no components and when I run a game their not present in the ship build list, thanks again for any assistance you can give us on this matter.[/quote] Based on how old this thread is, I'd guess this is for Dread Lords, as Dark Avatar wasn't even released then. DL ships ar

[quote who="Gaunathor" reply="4" id="3086958"]Thanks. I also think it is good that it was changed. But the ability to buy everything at no cost, if your reduction is 100% or more, is a little OP.[/quote] I submitted a bug report to that effect...over two years ago. But even with Thalan/Korx and Neutral you need another 50%. I suspect they're not worried about it, because the only source of it in an unmodded game is a single post-colonization, pre-ethics event, out of 3

[quote who="Gaunathor" reply="2" id="3086866"] Quoting Sole Soul, reply 1since the rush buy purchase reduction didn't actually work in DL or DA. Actually, it did work. Just not how it was supposed to. It reduced the number of weeks you had to pay leases for. With a 100% reduction the number gets reduced to 0 weeks. Or, in other words, you don't have to pay any leases at all. How it works now, however, is even more powerful, as with a 100% reduction you don&#

Contrary to popular belief, TA didn't really bring sweeping economic changes to the table. The income function is still the same, and the tourism function is, I believe, increased. However, there's less morale on your HW, as well as less morale from trade goods if you don't use a Terran or Minor tech tree, in addition to more morale holes in specific tech trees. The reason TA's economy is harder is because everything costs more maintenance, and gives less o

The AI doesn't cheat, at least on the lower difficulties, and it doesn't technically cheat on the higher ones, either; it just has artificial bonuses to make it harder. There's been discussion previously about the AI "knowing" where things are in advance, but even if that's the case, it's coded to act like it doesn't, at least on anything below Tough. The reason it feels like the AI was cheating in the campaign is because your enemy starts out in a bett

[quote who="Neilo" reply="4" id="3085702"] Quoting Sole Soul, reply 3The campaign is fun You liked it? I played the DL campaign, it bored me and i never touched the campaign button again. Perhaps as i delve into TA in the coming weeks i play it's campaign.[/quote] What can I say, I love a good challenge. Considering it's basically the only place you can have Dread Lords rain troops down on you, it's worthwhile. They just tend to get steamrolled when t

The campaign is fun-but it's not for learning the game; it's designed to be a challenge. Additionally, at sub-normal levels the human player gets an econ bonus, and at difficulties greater than Tough the human player gets a hidden research bonus that makes keeping up with the AI's research much easier. But the link Neilo provided is a very good guide.

IIRC, since planetary governors got set to ctrl+P for TA (2.x?), +planet quality is now ctrl+shift+N. Alternatively, ensure that you're targeting the game executables, not the launchers; that is, GalCiv2.exe/GC2DarkAvatar.exe/GC2TwilightOfTheArnor.exe, as opposed to GC2Launch.exe/DALaunch.exe/TALaunch.exe.

[quote who="Tolmekian" reply="228" id="3081615"]v2.1 Sneak PeekAs a parting thought, I had another idea for evil weapons and good defenses. What if, instead of a bunch of weapons or defenses, you just got access to a single tech that provided a weapons or defense bonus? Say, Psionic Weapons for evil and Telepathic Defenses for good? How much of a bonus would be appropriate? 25%? 50%? How much for weapons? How much for defense? If you've read this w

Sins of a Solar Empire may be closer to what you're looking for. It's definitely got the many ships part covered, and aside from being a gigantic game of rock-paper-scissors, it is fairly tactical. There is planet management, but upgrades are very limited, structures are moderately limited, and you'll hardly notice either. There is a research tree as well, but while it does have a decent effect o

That's interesting. How did you manage that, out of curiosity? In any case, that's for a 1:1 ratio of influence SBs to target planets. Even I suggested it might take two. How's 24 years sound to you? So I'll stand by my estimate of closer to 10x than 100x. Which still suggests that logistics may need a change.

How does that make the Yor better? With, say, 30 starbases (is this an unrealistic number?), the last one will cost 13,650 to build with 57 logistics (first 10 are free, although if memory serves the free quantity may change based on galaxy size-that's a Gigantic number, for reference). 30 influence SBs might be a bit much, but when you consider that this counts economic SBs, military SBs, and even mining SBs, it's not that many. Actually, mining SBs are counted

[quote who="Gaunathor" reply="214" id="3080469"]Quoting Sole Soul, reply 2117. True in practice, but not in theory, as at 100 logistics starbases are free to construct. You mean, if I have a logistics ability of 100+ I don't have to pay anything for new starbases, no matter how many I have?[/quote] Precisely. However, given that your own Logistics System plus all techs (and assuming a starting value of 6) takes you to 57, you need another 43, which means c

[quote who="qrtxian" reply="212" id="3080150"] Quoting Sole Soul, reply 2119. Or capture Hyperion Logistics Systems. Granted, the AI can't do this. Why not? It won't specifically seek them out, but it can certainly capture them.[/quote] This is why I should proofread my posts better. That's what I meant: The AI doesn't know how to do it, but it can happen by accident.

There was a weird bug in DA 1.7 where the game lost track of how much money you had when you were rush buying things, and wound up setting your money to a few hundred million in debt. Fortunately there was also a weird bug in DA 1.7 where once you researched Xeno Ethics if you didn't have enough to switch ethical alignment your cash was set to 0 even if you were in debt, so I got out of it eventually. But with no research it took me a great deal of time, and I didn't e

[quote who="Gaunathor" reply="210" id="3079842"]I'm not really qualified to answer this, as I rarely use influence starbases, but maybe an accountant-approach can provide some food for thought:[/quote] 1. Only a valid assumption if the values per module haven't been tweaked; otherwise you're looking at 5 useful modules plus an initial constructor for 6 total. 2. With decent industry it should be perhaps two or three turns, but okay. 3. As influence is a square ro