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[Metalax]

Why do you say that?  I think I may actually play out cheaper than other empires.  Lower tech costs less, and I won't need some pieces of tech as much as others.  Lasers don't really need the range modifier, for instance, since they'll mainly be used for point blank piercing, so I can shave off costs there.  Engines may not use fuel-per-hour modifiers and scrimp on costs.  If I'm lacking resources that means I'll need to claim more planets!  It will be extremely aggressive as well, possibly unable to stop exploiting.  Attack one NPR, and while recouping the cost by colonizing their worlds, encounter another NPR.  That means getting into another fight, and recouping costs...  Either way, Earth will probably be permanently producing mines, and terrifyingly sized mining ships will likely become a thing.

If you are going the route of tech assimilation via boarding, microwave weapons may actually be a good investment to knock out the enemies ability to shoot at your boarding shuttles. Also don't forget to have maintenance supply barges accompanying your fleet train, so your prize vessels can repair themselves enough to make it back to your chop-shop planet. Salvage vessels would likely also be a good idea following this strategy so you recover some tech from ships you accidentally destroy instead of capture.

40 million kms at 30000 kms? Dayum. I knew missiles were good and could be extremely long ranged, but I don't like creating overpowered, across-the-system missile frigates. Then again, with my current knowledge of the game, no matter how hard I try i'll never make anything too good.

40 million km really isn't long range.

What's the best weapon to use for point defense?

Usually a mix of anti-missile missiles(AMM's) and beam PD works best, backed up by shields so that any leakers don't cause any lasting damage.

AMM's are short range(<2 M km), typically warhead 1, missiles with the best combination of speed and hit chance that you can manage. They are typically size 1 so as to carry the maximum numbers on each ship and take advantage of smaller launchers firing faster. However, particularly at low tech or if facing armoured missiles and so needing a larger warhead, it is quite possible to use size 2 or 3 missiles in this role. If you rely purely on AMM's for your PD, you will usually need to fire multiple AMM's for each incoming missile.

As for which type of beam defence is best, it varies depending on what the enemy is firing at you. Mesons are good against armoured missiles, but can more easily be overwhelmed by numbers. Lasers are also good against armoured missiles and have the range to potentially get multiple shots at an incoming salvo, but again are subject to being overwhelmed by numbers. Gauss(once at least a couple of levels of the rate of fire tech are researched) fair poorly against armoured missiles but are excellent against large numbers. Railguns do well against armoured missiles and also against numbers but, as they cannot be turreted, have difficulty hitting fast missiles.

CIWS are self contained gauss PD that include their own firecontrol and that can be mounted on commercial designs as well as military. Unlike Gauss PD however they can only fire on missiles that are attempting to hit the ship it is mounted on rather than any ship in the taskgroup.

[Girlinhat]

Why do you say that?  I think I may actually play out cheaper than other empires.  Lower tech costs less, and I won't need some pieces of tech as much as others.  Lasers don't really need the range modifier, for instance, since they'll mainly be used for point blank piercing, so I can shave off costs there.  Engines may not use fuel-per-hour modifiers and scrimp on costs.  If I'm lacking resources that means I'll need to claim more planets!  It will be extremely aggressive as well, possibly unable to stop exploiting.  Attack one NPR, and while recouping the cost by colonizing their worlds, encounter another NPR.  That means getting into another fight, and recouping costs...  Either way, Earth will probably be permanently producing mines, and terrifyingly sized mining ships will likely become a thing.

If you are going the route of tech assimilation via boarding, microwave weapons may actually be a good investment to knock out the enemies ability to shoot at your boarding shuttles. Also don't forget to have maintenance supply barges accompanying your fleet train, so your prize vessels can repair themselves enough to make it back to your chop-shop planet. Salvage vessels would likely also be a good idea following this strategy so you recover some tech from ships you accidentally destroy instead of capture.

I was actually going to go for some MONSTER carriers.  Like instead of having a fleet, there would be one huge jump-capable ark ship with enormous hangar space, filling maybe 1/4 of its hold with the actual ships.  Once in a system, it hopes to lock it down, forming a beachhead on its own, and deploying task forces to handle in-system situations.  Captured ships would be placed inside the main carrier, where they suffer no failures and can be brought home as proper war prizes.

Part of the reason for the huge slow carrier is to have extremely fast ships.  The carrier's drive is used for the economic burn to different locations, while the warships utilize the inefficient high power drives for short range combat.  This means my warships wouldn't have to worry much about efficiency or lasting power, they could be stripped down without much maintenance or fuel, as well as being able to repair their armor.  The goal for warships is going to be speed above all else.  The faster they move, they more they can avoid all incoming weapon types, get their own shots to land, and rush through missile range and into beam hits.  As well as, you know, getting the 20x speed for marine drops.

[coleslaw35]

Should I be worried if every once in a while I get very short messages appearing in my event log? For example, about 10-20 in-game years before, I got a random message that said something like "0.51 years" and that kind of spooked me. Just now, I got another message and it's literally just "s". The event type for both of them was "Message Continued".

This is a random guess on my part, but am I getting interference from other NPR messages? If not, is this just a bug? I KNOW I'm not the one doing it.

[Graknorke]

"message continues" means that a previous message went over the character limit, if you look earlier on in the same turn you should see a message the ends before it's actually finished.

[coleslaw35]

"message continues" means that a previous message went over the character limit, if you look earlier on in the same turn you should see a message the ends before it's actually finished.

oh. uh..
right.

derp. My bad.

[Flying Dice]

-PD snip-

Note that if you elect to go the last-ditch PD route, don't use CIWS for military ships. Manually-created batteries of Gauss turrets are as effective and can be used to defend other ships. The only point where CIWS might be a good option would be ships with long deployment ranges and times, the sort of thing you'd use to picket distant systems/scout enemy forces/harass commercial shipping, where you're unlikely to have much in the way of fleet support. And, obviously, on commercial vessels, because it doesn't make them military.

An escort frigate or whatever with 40 Gauss turrets does a hell of a lot to enemy missiles, especially because AI shipbuilding doesn't go for the optimal route of very large individual salvos.

[coleslaw35]

What exactly happens when I release a colony as its own independent empire? Is there a bad side to it other than no taxes from that colony's population? I currently have a 0.4 million pop colony on Vesta (an asteroid. Founded the colony there as a way to play around with the underground infrastructure thing) and once that asteroid is mined out, I don't want to have to mess with it anymore due to the constant complaints from my inability to build enough underground infrastructure to accomodate the growing population. I'm assuming that what could happen is that the newly independent empire would, least worringly, "steal" my potential mining colonies or at worse, if it were strong enough (which I heavily doubt considering it's only got 400,000 people), declare war on me.

[Girlinhat]

Isn't there an option to limit growth and prevent them from exceeding their infrastructure?

[coleslaw35]

Isn't there an option to limit growth and prevent them from exceeding their infrastructure?

I hope there's an option like that because Luna (EDIT: Luna has now been terraformed into a hospitable planet and no longer needs infrastructure! Woooh!), Mars, Ganymede, and Vesta constantly give me notifications about the unrest they're gaining due to overpopulation. Then i got a notification about my ground troops lowering unrest. Then they gain unrest. Then they lose unrest. etc, etc. It goes on and on and it clogs up my event logs.

[Zangi]

Don't believe so, I just turn off the event notification for those.

[coleslaw35]

Don't believe so, I just turn off the event notification for those.

You can do that? What menu do I have to dig through to do that?

Never mind, found it!

Spoiler: For anyone wondering where it is... (click to show/hide)

Open your event log screen. It is this button right here. Find what you want to hide/unhide in your event log in the list and double click it.

[Aseaheru]

Speaking of events, how do you cause them to show up on the main game screen, as shown in Quill's videos? Is it a mod?

[coleslaw35]

Speaking of events, how do you cause them to show up on the main game screen, as shown in Quill's videos? Is it a mod?

Spoiler: What, this? (click to show/hide)

Also, question. Do missile fire controls act as active sensors as well? I need to know if I need to put active sensors on a ship with a missile control already on it.

EDIT: *DJ Khaled voice*
Anotha one.
Is there a way to fix an issue with star systems stacking on top of each other when they are explored?

Spoiler:  Never Mind (click to show/hide)

Another Edit: A quick google search revealed these two posts that answered my question from this very thread:

how do I change the position of star systems on the galactic map?

Shift-left mouse button drag.  And then don't forget to use the save button (cunningly located under the "Sys Pos" button) or it will undo it all. 

[Culise]

Also, question. Do missile fire controls act as active sensors as well? I need to know if I need to put active sensors on a ship with a missile control already on it.

EDIT: *DJ Khaled voice*
Anotha one.
Is there a way to fix an issue with star systems stacking on top of each other when they are explored?

Spoiler:  This is what I mean (click to show/hide)

Nopers.  Need both active sensors and fire control sensors to ID the ship and ensure a weapons lock, respectively.  That said, they don't need to be on the same hull - you can have a dedicated sensor ship to light up targets for your fire control systems on your armed missile boats to lock onto.

As for galaxy map, you'll have to move them into place manually.  SHIFT + Click lets you move a system to wherever you want.  From the top menu, the "Sys Pos" button (lower left corner) gives you an option for an alignment grid in the left bar, which may be used to align star systems to the specified grid if you wish, and also the "Save Position" and "Restore" buttons, which respectively save the map modifications you've made and revert back to the last saved map if you don't like the changes you've made.  It's important to note that if you do not save manually, your map settings will *NOT* be saved for you when you close the window - that is, if you don't save, you'll have to arrange the star systems to your liking again.  So please don't forget, if only for your own sanity. ^_^

[coleslaw35]

Also, question. Do missile fire controls act as active sensors as well? I need to know if I need to put active sensors on a ship with a missile control already on it.

EDIT: *DJ Khaled voice*
Anotha one.
Is there a way to fix an issue with star systems stacking on top of each other when they are explored?

Spoiler:  This is what I mean (click to show/hide)

Nopers.  Need both active sensors and fire control sensors to ID the ship and ensure a weapons lock, respectively.  That said, they don't need to be on the same hull - you can have a dedicated sensor ship to light up targets for your fire control systems on your armed missile boats to lock onto.

As for galaxy map, you'll have to move them into place manually.  SHIFT + Click lets you move a system to wherever you want.  From the top menu, the "Sys Pos" button (lower left corner) gives you an option for an alignment grid in the left bar, which may be used to align star systems to the specified grid if you wish, and also the "Save Position" and "Restore" buttons, which respectively save the map modifications you've made and revert back to the last saved map if you don't like the changes you've made.  It's important to note that if you do not save manually, your map settings will *NOT* be saved for you when you close the window - that is, if you don't save, you'll have to arrange the star systems to your liking again.  So please don't forget, if only for your own sanity. ^_^

Thanks for answering my first question! You're two minutes late with the second one though, lol.