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[Bremen]

My current game is, let me do that math, 66 years in. My usual expansion is best described as slow and thorough; in each system I aim for a nexus world with nearly identical atmosphere to Earth (not just for RP reasons, as having at least 1.0 atm also protects from beams), large population and a variety of installations, and, wherever possible, in system mining colonies mass drivering every type of mineral to the planet. Basically every planet is fully self sufficient and capable of handling its own expansion if all the others were to get wiped out.

I also normally only colonize one planet in each system, including Sol; while I realize the trade benefits to multiple worlds I like the centralization; it makes defense easier and things easier to keep track of.

Currently I've got Earth with 1.78b pop, Eden with 251m, Shangri-la with 147m, and Avalon with 81m. My military is split between two groups (previously three, before I scrapped the survey wing because they were outstripping my expansion rate); a planetary defense group of missile bases and FAC squadrons, and a naval fleet of 34,000 ton battleships and 14,000 ton cruisers, exclusively beam armed. All told there are 11 missile bases, 60 FACs, 5 Battleships, and 8 Cruisers. I previously used a science ship variant on the 34,000 ton battleship for survey duties (had four, and even with a jump drive and survey sensors they were quite dangerous) which in theory would have aided the fleet in times of war. Unfortunately they never ran into any enemies so I didn't get to test them. They were called the Galaxy class and inspired by Star Trek .

Which on a related note, is kind of why I lost interest in that game; I built so much but there weren't any enemies to provide challenge.

[Flying Dice]

NPR gen rate: 100%.
NPR difficulty: 200%
Swarm: On
Precursors: On
Invaders: On


There's a bit of difficulty. 

Though if you don't start with an existing NPR/kill it early in the game, yeah, you won't really face much trouble from post-start generated NPRs, as they're generated at low tech levels or pre T-N levels, and will be completely unable to pose a threat once you're at mid tech, as you'll continue to outpace them in research and expansion.

[EuchreJack]

Your best bet is to just start with multiple NPRs and a small galaxy.  But the NPRs will probably go at it and leave your turns at 5 sec intervals.

[Flying Dice]

Hence why you just start with one NPR and boost its economy; it'll develop quickly, and will usually be able to curbstomp other NPRs, so it won't slow you down too much.

[darkrider2]

I'm just getting my military up after 30 years in game and I'm going to turn precursors and star swarm on once I get it going. But I'd like to hear your opinions about the ships I've designed.

There is a fourth and fifth design, one is a jump tender that can jump 5 8000 ton ships. The other is a sensor ship with massive sensor suites (1000 tons each, one at 60 res and one at 1 res), I didn't bother copying them here. And I'll probably design a tanker/supply/collier ship later that can jump with the warfleets to keep them functional.

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Imp class Missile Interceptor Ship    5,500 tons     394 Crew     869.8 BP      TCS 110  TH 240  EM 0
2181 km/s     Armour 6-27     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 12
Maint Life 10.82 Years     MSP 494    AFR 48%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 8    5YR 116    Max Repair 63 MSP
Magazine 372   

Military Ion Engine (4)    Power 60    Fuel Use 70%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres    Range 233.7 billion km   (1240 days at full power)

Size 1 Missile Tube (12)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 10
Cloud MFC (3)     Range 13.9m km    Resolution 1
Cloud Interception Missile Mk II (372)  Speed: 30,000 km/s   End: 7.1m    Range: 12.8m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 260 / 156 / 78

ECCM-1 (1)         Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Probably not enough missile launchers.

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Torrent class Area Defence Cruiser    5,000 tons     324 Crew     1019 BP      TCS 100  TH 180  EM 0
1800 km/s     Armour 6-26     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 6     PPV 27.6
Maint Life 11.42 Years     MSP 764    AFR 33%    IFR 0.5%    1YR 11    5YR 161    Max Repair 144 MSP

Military Ion Engine (3)    Power 60    Fuel Use 70%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 350,000 Litres    Range 180.0 billion km   (1157 days at full power)

Derringer Turret (12x3)    Range 30,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Torrent Fire Control (3)    Max Range: 80,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0

ECCM-1 (1)         This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

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Cutthroat class Missile Cruiser    6,600 tons     509 Crew     920.8 BP      TCS 132  TH 240  EM 0
1818 km/s     Armour 6-31     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 8     PPV 20
Maint Life 10.88 Years     MSP 698    AFR 43%    IFR 0.6%    1YR 11    5YR 162    Max Repair 70 MSP
Magazine 500   

Military Ion Engine (4)    Power 60    Fuel Use 70%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 600,000 Litres    Range 233.7 billion km   (1488 days at full power)

Size 10 Missile Tube (2)    Missile Size 10    Rate of Fire 75
Rapier MFC Mk II (1)     Range 107.3m km    Resolution 60
Rapier Swarm Missile Mk IV (50)  Speed: 9,000 km/s   End: 119m    Range: 89.3m km   WH: 0    Size: 10    TH: 30 / 18 / 9

ECCM-1 (1)         Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The missiles are two stage, they separate at 25m km to their target, each one carries 6 missiles that travel 30000 km/s with a warhead strength of 1.

[Tarran]

AMM is fine in the amount of missiles it can put out, though it only has 31 volleys worth of ammo, which may be a problem. I'd suggest either dedicated armored coilers or more clips.

The PD looks like it can put out a half decent volley, and at a decent tracking speed.

The offensive missiles... are really bad in my opinion. I'm perfectly fine with the 6 size 1 missiles, but only warhead size 1? That's nothing but a needle against any well armored ship or a ship with half decent shields. You need more penetration. Your missile ships are okay otherwise.

The speed of all the ships in my opinion is on the slow side, but that's just me. Just so you know, with that speed, you'd better win your battles or you could get the crap kicked out of you by Star Swarm or any other fighters.

I'd also recommend some close-combat ships, so you aren't completely defenseless when you run out of missiles.

[forsaken1111]

I wonder if it'd be feasible to play the last surviving colony of an advanced empire, possibly one woken from some kind of hibernation sleep by an impertinent younger race. 1 million population or less but most/all tech researched. You'd likely have trouble crewing your ships but you'd need far less of them.

[Tarran]

I would be less worried about the crew of ships and more worried about the possible huge shortage of workers to work basically anything.

[darkrider2]

My engine tech is on ion, Improving that to the next engine type would speed my ships up and make my missiles more efficient, so that's probably the next step.

[PTTG??]

On May 28th, 2030, SARD researchers started noticing strange results in some experimental timekeeping devices. "It's almost like every five seconds, time is holding its breath," said one researcher. They hypothesized that this may be evidence of advanced extrasolar life. "For the meantime, we've enabled auto-rotation, or 'auto turns' on our chronometers, and that seems to have resolved the issue."

Let's see how long this takes to get through...

In other news, SARD has established a permanent human settlement- a mining colony- on Mars, and an entirely automated complex on Io. During the initial scans, an astounding discovery was made: some kind of ruined alien colony. After several years of examination by humanity's foremost (and only) experts in alien language, a basic understanding of their language was reached and a number of advanced alien tools were discovered. A second site, located on Titan, showed promise of being even larger.

[Flying Dice]

I would be less worried about the crew of ships and more worried about the possible huge shortage of workers to work basically anything.

This would actually make it a really interesting game; you'd have to very carefully manage your existing resources and avoid losses while slooooooowly building your population back up. So basically the younger races could lose twenty ships for every one of yours they kill, and still come out ahead, because they can replace losses and you can't. Obviously, would be much better as an AAR game with the player controlling all the sides, to prevent NPR stupidity getting in the way of RP.

[Girlinhat]

I've always held that the way to win a war is not to produce big ships, but it's to continue producing big ships through the duration of the fight.  It's not about one fight, it's about how quickly you can recoup your losses after a fight.  If you see your shipyards taking 5 years to produce a ship, try making smaller ships.  In war you'll end up limiting your ship size based on construction speed, not on jump drive size or shipyard size.

[MarcAFK]

My current game is somewhat interesting, Firstly theres somewhat less resources in sol than i'm used to from my other games, but that's fine i'll survive with 0.1 availability deposits for a while, but what gets me is the unavailibility of systems. From the 2 transit points in sol one led to alpha centauri with 1 planet and no transit points, and one lead to a system with no planets and 2 transit points, from those points i got another empty system with no transit points, and one black hole system.  The black hole is currently unexplored but i'm hoping to find something to jump to. At least if i do manage to get out of sol i'll have a nice choke point  i can put all my defences onto.
Is there some setting that affects system generation like this? I had difficulty set to 200% but i was under the impression that this setting was for NPR's rather than map generation/resources.

[Flying Dice]

My current game is somewhat interesting, Firstly theres somewhat less resources in sol than i'm used to from my other games, but that's fine i'll survive with 0.1 availability deposits for a while, but what gets me is the unavailibility of systems. From the 2 transit points in sol one led to alpha centauri with 1 planet and no transit points, and one lead to a system with no planets and 2 transit points, from those points i got another empty system with no transit points, and one black hole system.  The black hole is currently unexplored but i'm hoping to find something to jump to. At least if i do manage to get out of sol i'll have a nice choke point  i can put all my defences onto.
Is there some setting that affects system generation like this? I had difficulty set to 200% but i was under the impression that this setting was for NPR's rather than map generation/resources.

Nothing more than luck. I typically set 5-6 Sol JPs to avoid stuff like this. And yes, the difficulty modifier affects NPR economic productivity.

[Tarran]

I've always held that the way to win a war is not to produce big ships, but it's to continue producing big ships through the duration of the fight.  It's not about one fight, it's about how quickly you can recoup your losses after a fight.  If you see your shipyards taking 5 years to produce a ship, try making smaller ships.  In war you'll end up limiting your ship size based on construction speed, not on jump drive size or shipyard size.

It's always been my opinion that to win a war, in any situation and any time and any game, is not to have lots of crappy things, but a few powerful things that can easily smack those crappy things around. A few nukes to a few ten thousand artillery shells, if you will. A big ship that is x3 more expensive than one of your small ships and takes x3 times to build but takes out 5 for one of it is a good ship in my opinion. Because even though it will take longer to build, I will crush your units in large scale battles, taking less losses than in a 1v1 battle, and eventually grind your inferior units down.

But hey, that's just my opinion. I've always been into quality over quantity. I'm sure quantity has it's own methods, but my personal opinion is that quality is best.