That's all good advice.
In combat there are 4 settings, neutral (stationary ships unless ordered to move by you), Stand off (stays at or near the max range of the selected weapon which is shown by the star next to it) Pursuit (selected Pursuit ships try to stay behind targetted ships, which tends to result in the target's engines being exploded first) and the last one is Close in or something like that (this will cause your ships to move close to the targetted ship, and perform maneuvors that are different for every race)
For missile boats, you want to make sure the missiles are starred, then set the ship to Stand off (or neutral if you want to steer them, generally advised to be the opposite direction of the pursuing target if you are using missile boats)
For other weapons like mass drivers, set your ships to close in if the enemy fleet is attacking yours, or pursuit if they beeline to somewhere else.
The main use of Roll and Spin is to turn less damaged sides of your ship towards incoming fire. A good example would be when missiles are incoming. Use Roll a second before the volley hits to spread the damage across other sides of the ship. The AI doesn't use this tactic so it's slightly more vulnerable to missile kiting than you.
In the start missile boats are easily the most powerful weapon assuming you use the kiting tactic. Mass driver cruisers will beat them up close if they catch them. The AI will quickly adapt to counter missile fleets though and you will have to try other things. The power of missile boats also is a reason why lacking research accessibility to some kind of point defense is considered very poor luck on the chat channel.
Energy weapons are good because they greatly extend the range a ship can travel. Beamers are one of my favorite early game weapons, because they are extremely good against drones and purple or greater beamers can work as weak point defense against missiles. They can be an early counter to AI missile boats as the beamers zap enough missiles for the beamer cruiser to catch the missile boats before your ships are crippled. Mass driver ships will do too much damage for beamers to compete with though, so those would be the counter to beamers.
When targeting enemy ships, you can target individual turrets and disarm enemy ships. This can be useful, especially if it uses big guns.
What Jack said about the starting designs is true; they are absolutely terrible in comparison to what you can make. Prototype some new ships as soon as you can; even if they have the exact same weapon loadout you can make them travel two or three turns farther just by placing appropriate modules in them.
When defending, keep your ships near your colony. Planetary missiles are very strong in the early game.
When attacking a colony, you'll want to decide if you want to farm that colony for salvage (and slaves as Zuul). If farming you can send a sweeping fleet, made up of ship killing ships, and a second fleet made up of boarding ships. After the sweeper fleet clears the system, you use the farming fleet in combat to capture any ships and stations remaining. Boarded ships and stations tend to give you salvage research.
If you want to destroy the colony, use a sweeper fleet and an assault shuttle carrier fleet. Sweep it clear of ships, then send in the assault shuttle carriers. Park them outside the range of planetary missiles and launch the assault shuttles to bomb the planet. Planetary missiles can't lock onto shuttles, though drones and ships can shoot them down.
What was said by Jack about Colony stimulus is very valid. It's difficult to get those colonies back into your empire when you want, requiring research and diplomatic efforts. The civilian colonies will also be helpless against enemy attacks as well. Trade stimulus is useful, but colony stimulus is much less so. However, if you want to skew your government type towards the right, Colony stimulus will help do that.
If you want to be diplomatic with the AI, you will want to be the same type of government.
The AI likes to make demands. When you are already at war it's nonsensical so just deny them. I don't know if accepting is beneficial to the relationship or not when not at war.
Author
Topic: Sword of the Stars II - Let's survive (Read 9250 times)