Franco fx

I have never built a core group scout and since I usually play small maps I seldom build recon ships period.

You shouldn't be going broke. Buy or build all your colony ships on your home planet and let the other planets grow. Try to keep your morale over 70% so they will grow. Research Planetary improvement and Xeno Econ. Build some econ buildings on your planets along with the factories labs and entertainment centers. If you are doing the right things, by the middle of year 2 you should be clearing well over 100bc per turn and you should never need to move your spendin

Well, if you are up on your diplomatic skills, you can usually buy your way out of that war pretty quick and it will not be hard to re-establish good (allied) relations with a few gifts.

Influence victories are my thing. You need to colonize as many planets as possible. You need to mine the influence resources to the max Build the ROE Research the influence tree up to cultural conquest Research the governments tree up to democracy at least The larger the map, the harder it is. On a gigantic map you may need to go to war to expand your influence. If you have the strongest military and a good lead in all categories

Has anyone tried colonizing for the minors. Gift them 7-8 planets and see what they do.

Core ships are not good. Go by the hull sizes, tiny would usually be fighters, small would be corvettes and medium would be cruisers. You even get an in game movie when you roll out your first medium hull ship. Actually, with the attachments you can make the ships any size you like. If you want a cruiser size early, take a small hull, paste on some jewelry and voila, cruiser. When I got the game, I figured I would use the stock designs but I soon found that building the sh

I guess you mean the little pic in the upper right hand corner that is presently a red X. If you are sure it's a jpg you might try again. According to the properties there is a problem with the image

I believe the 1500 is hp. I have seen pirates with outrageous hit points but 1500 attack is impossible

It is not OFM helping you. All it does is fleet up the ships in orbit. It does not make them any stronger. Like serpico said you must have some kind of bonus in play. Actually I don't build the OFM very often. My garrison ships are not much good in a fleet battle and I would rather have them fight individually and have the better ships in fleet near the planet do the heavy lifting.

It gets harder with 1.2 but there are quite a few players that win at the highest levels. If you post what is giving you trouble they can probably help you out. BTW there is not a big problem with Metaverse game not being counted with the beta. Not saying it has not happened but no more than with the previous releases

chiclets = little white squares of chewing gum that went by the brand name chiclets

If you want to use the "canned ones", just keep researching along the weapons tech and they will appear sooner or later.

They are not disabled in 1.2

The guys that i have a hard time believing are those that say they always have a ready clatch of 4-5 friends that are chomping at the bit to play a MP game to the bitter end with them, Now there is a completely new breed of geek.

there poll? Where poll?

keep resarching weapons tech and by all means design your ships after you have the tech. The standard ships suck.

Well, the legend says he averages playing at painful. At my level (tough) I am usually finding the AI to be pretty good at everything and the new combat system is brutal compared to before. Still, there are those games when the AI seems to get untracked.

I believe you can already play each race with default abilities. Changing some of the abilities is an option.

It's true, it's all true. All those things are screwed and like a lover one grows tired of, the flaws get more irritating every day. Ah well, how does everyone like the new combat system.

You are right about that and that's pretty much how I play it but it is not a deal breaker either way. Depending on Morale a .1 planet can catch up to a .5 in 25-30 turns and none of them are producing much income at less than 2.0 anyway. I am sure there are players that can tell you exactly what the catch up rate would be. With me it is just a feel for it.

It is a good thought. It would be fun to battle test ships in the Combat Viewer but I doubt they will ever do it. Most players probably think it is easy enough to build them and live test them in a game. The battle simulater only tells you the likely winner based on the stats you plug in so it might not be what you have in mind.

It is all about map size. On the tiny and small maps I usually play, all colony ships are built on my homeworld and sent out with max population until it gets down to the low PQ planets. I let all new colonies grow without sending out colony ships unless I am just forced to rush a colony ship to grab a high PQ planet. On larger maps, the original colony rush is done the same way but later, the border planets build colony ships to extend the empire. I always have

My thought also Kryo

should be a protectorate avenue to go I liked the submissive pact idea that was in SMAC. The surrendering AI gave you all their tech and you had access to their bases but they could (didn't usually happen) come back and they could break the pact if you committed attrocities. I have never had a surrender since the early betas. It is e

What VD said