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[etgfrog]

Has anyone gotten to size 6 or 7 colonies??? Just curious. Have a middling little empire going that nets in 300k at peak, but I am unable to really defend it well enough without blowing the majority of my income on bribery--pirates come and trash stuff anyways--usually with max space defenses.

I'm at size 6 on my colony main colony. Upgrade your patrol hq, that will increase the size of your defending fleets. I guess it also helps I managed to find a pristine nanoforge out of a mining station. The first few two raids I have problems with because I couldn't upgrade my station fast enough, but I could just barely get a win when I fought with the station, now its fully upgraded I don't have to worry about factions being capable of knocking it over. I guess it also helps I haven't angered the other factions too badly. I also guess its because I found a class 4 planet with a class 5 moon, which is where I'm staged out of.

Spoiler: This is the scale of fleets being thrown arround (click to show/hide)

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Ah yes, I collated some notes other players had and upped my colony game. Making $700k+ now, with 7 colonies over 4 systems--I don't know how efficient that is, and I desperately wish that I was able to consolidate my planets more closely together, but I've got two size 6 colonies now, and my defenses have been unassailable for a while. Unfortunately, my systems are spread out over the North Eastern salient of the Core Worlds and as such there have been MONGO huge fleets trawling the hyperspace lanes (they want my sweet sweet fuel and ore).

Currently, I'm trying to work out a fleet composition that allows me to take on larger fleets. Carriers + hardier long range frigates seem to perform fairly well.

And yea, I've also avoided getting on other factions' bad sides. Unfortunately, all the bribery, and several fleet wipes have left me in weak position to go exploring again--I have yet to find a pristine nanoforge and I really need some more higher-tier stuff/blueprints.

$1.5M in the bank right now, so it's time to see if I can recover some good salvage again.

EDIT: What I would not give for a Wolf production chip...

[etgfrog]

Hm...worst case you can go raid places to try to grab the blueprints. I need to try it out sometime to see what I can get. I guess I should also mention, my main world is now at size 8 and its still growing.

[EnigmaticHat]

My colony is starting to really piss the other factions off.  I have a 39% market share in fuel, and a 25-29% in supplies, ship hulls, heavy armaments, and heavy machinery.  Plus a nice 20% in organics and transplutonic metals.  This is all from one planet mind you.  Said colony will always have at least 2 threats queued up against it, not counting the Luddic Path or pirates.

My factions' fleets have started to come together.  My main fleet is built on the theme of all my direct firing ships having converted hangar bays; this can't be used in the faction fleets but I've managed to get the general idea across.  My average faction fleet consists of a large body of shepard drone tenders and condors equipped with talons*, escorted by a few cerebus.  One of my patrols attacked a Tri-Tachyon invasion force and I joined it.  The end result was a huge mass of drones and fighters, plus some low tech converted civilian ships, ripping apart a half dozen cutting-edge warships.  What's especially funny is that most of the patrol set their fighters to defend my hammerhead, so there was one destroyer staring down all these big ships and whenever a missile or fighter so much as looked in that direction a huge ball of lasers, bullets and swarmer missiles would annihilate it.

I just found a legion blueprint too.  I've never been impressed by the legion but if my faction is going to have a capital ship its the only one that fits the theme.  So that's fun.

*which is kind of silly considering how many fighter blueprints I have, I guess the AI is psyched out by how few ordinance points the condor has.  Thankfully even tho they're cheap talons kick ass

[Majestic7]

Astral is the best capital ship for fighter spam. I lucked out and found a blueprint, it is the flagship of my faction's fleet now. Don't have one for myself, yet. I produced one and haven't used it yet. I as well salvaged Battlegroup XIV Legion, it is sitting at my home planet next to the Astral. Money is not problem; supplies and fuel are.

I'm getting the idea that setting up colonies makes so much money so fast because the core world production specs are so bad. Basically, nobody is producing anything, so your colonies can easily claim the markets. Honestly I think there should be larger, more civilized core and then a few lone fringe colonies (independents and maybe a couple of Hegemony military outposts) among unclaimed systems. Maybe you could find a lost colony in unexlored systems and claim it... and then a large part of completely unsettled territory. Trade should have a range limit as well, maybe you could build a chain of refueling stations to extend it... Stuff like that.

I think it is fine to make money with your colonies and claim a local niche, but taking over sector-wide markets with a few colonies less than six months old is very strange.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Hm...worst case you can go raid places to try to grab the blueprints. I need to try it out sometime to see what I can get. I guess I should also mention, my main world is now at size 8 and its still growing.

First of all size 8!? Damn, it's one of the largest worlds in the sector now, I assume that size 9 and 10 are billions and tens of billions, respectively?

Also, have you done any raiding? Even on pirate bases? What size/kind of fleets have you used for such an endeavor?

[Majestic7]

First of all size 8!? Damn, it's one of the largest worlds in the sector now, I assume that size 9 and 10 are billions and tens of billions, respectively?

Also, have you done any raiding? Even on pirate bases? What size/kind of fleets have you used for such an endeavor?

I've been raiding Pathers, you need a fleet strong enough to take out one of their bases. You might need to tackle a large fleet.

Once you get at the colony, you need hundreds of spare fuel to bombard its defences. This is not necessary, but recommended to make the raid easier. Raiding requires marines, 100-200 is good. If you can, acquire a Valkyrie transport since it gives both crew capacity and ground invasion bonuses. Valkyrie bonus gives +1 to raid value per marine up to 100 marines. Pirate modification to the Colossus freighter is another ship that grants ground combat bonus. I don't know if it scales the same way. I'm not certain if there are any others. (I think there should be assault shuttles with ground combat bonus too, though. That would especially make sense as to why pirates like shuttles so much - they use them to loot things planetwise.)

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Do you guys personally control your ships against battle stations? When I try to play strategist and put them on autopilot, it seems like the drones and missiles force them in to self-preservation mode and they don't bother to get close enough to return fire.

Also, what are your fleet compositions looking like? RN, I have a paragon (that I just found, literally, lying around) and a horde of heavy frigates (mod content, pretty well rounded ships, missiles and ballistics)--seems to go toe to toe (not without losses) with any of the fleets I've encountered, but is getting shredded by the station im assaulting.

[etgfrog]

First of all size 8!? Damn, it's one of the largest worlds in the sector now, I assume that size 9 and 10 are billions and tens of billions, respectively?

Also, have you done any raiding? Even on pirate bases? What size/kind of fleets have you used for such an endeavor?

Yep, its up to size 9 now, with billions of people living there, growth has slow tremendously and it costs 6.4 million to max out the growth incentive. And yes, I've raided some pirate bases, I had 5 valkarie transports with 500 marines, I was getting about 4k cash and 20k worth of resources per raid. Its essentially chump change where I'm at, no blueprints or anything special in the 10 times I tried but you can do that every 3 days or so.

As for station battles, try heavy armored ships, 3 dominators tends to do well against the ludic path bases.

[Majestic7]

I tend to always fly Apogee because it has 360 degree shields and lots of flux capacity. I use my ship as a shield before suicidal carriers or other more fragile targets, sucking in hits and using PD capacity against missiles/fighters. Extreme range beams at front for poking enemies into attacking me. Flying a more aggressive ship would likely be more effective, but eh, I can't be bothered to micromanage shields and maneuvers.

When I pursuit, I have a Wolf or Vigilant frigate for that.

[EnigmaticHat]

For station battles I like to use the squall LRM launcher.  The squall seems to be balanced around the idea that 80% of its missiles will miss, so its pretty much a perfect siege weapon.  I've never particularly

I'm getting the idea that setting up colonies makes so much money so fast because the core world production specs are so bad. Basically, nobody is producing anything, so your colonies can easily claim the markets. Honestly I think there should be larger, more civilized core and then a few lone fringe colonies (independents and maybe a couple of Hegemony military outposts) among unclaimed systems. Maybe you could find a lost colony in unexlored systems and claim it... and then a large part of completely unsettled territory. Trade should have a range limit as well, maybe you could build a chain of refueling stations to extend it... Stuff like that.

I think it is fine to make money with your colonies and claim a local niche, but taking over sector-wide markets with a few colonies less than six months old is very strange.

I agree with you to a point, but it is important to remember that most planets in the sector fundamentally suck.  Jangala of the Corvus system is one of the most populous and notable planets in the sector, and its a jungle... that's still not that friendly of an environment.  If you go to the Sindri's system (which controls some of the best planets in the galaxy) almost all of them are barely terraformed rocks overpopulated and polluted.

Remember how I said I had 39% market share of fuel?  Only 6 planets, counting mine, actually export fuel.  This is because starports and patrol HQs (things that most planets seem to have) consume fuel regardless of planet size, but fuel production doesn't depend on planet quality, only on available labor (and a certain domain-era artifact).  Everyone is exporting, no one is importing.

It would be cool if in the future instead of one cluster of inhabited systems there was multiple seperated ones and each of them was its own market.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Some more isolated freeports/pockets of civilization and a larger map would go a long way. (Not that the map is small now)

[WealthyRadish]

Astral is the best capital ship for fighter spam. I lucked out and found a blueprint, it is the flagship of my faction's fleet now. Don't have one for myself, yet. I produced one and haven't used it yet. I as well salvaged Battlegroup XIV Legion, it is sitting at my home planet next to the Astral. Money is not problem; supplies and fuel are.

One thing that I've noticed in this version is that the battle autoresolver seems to strongly take into account deployment costs when simulating the battles. I initially had my faction use paragons as their preferred capital ships (and other high tech ships), but found that they seemed to be losing battles they clearly should've been winning, particularly defensive battles where they had the help of orbital defenses. For this reason I actually scrapped my initial plan of having my faction prefer high-tech ships, since the lower tech ones have lower deployment costs (it's the supply "Recovery Cost" stat) and should be more likely to actually see use. An Astral is only 45 compared to the Onslaught/Conquest's 40, but for the 60 that a Paragon costs I think it was having a serious negative effect.

It's also worth giving fleets options so the picket fleets can use faster ships. I found my "fast pickets" were using Paragons, which is hilarious but also really ineffective.

Another note on faction configuration that I noticed is that it's possible to go way overboard on ship quality. I didn't want my fleet flying clunkers, but I realized that with the upgraded heavy industry together with a pristine nanoforge that any position on the quality slider over the second level was pretty much wasted. That area of fleet composition might be best favored toward officer quality, since fleet size increases anyway with population and other effects while only a relatively small portion of the fleet seems to actually count for the first "phase" of battle resolutions (if the previous note about deployment cost being important is correct).

I tend to always fly Apogee because it has 360 degree shields and lots of flux capacity. I use my ship as a shield before suicidal carriers or other more fragile targets, sucking in hits and using PD capacity against missiles/fighters. Extreme range beams at front for poking enemies into attacking me. Flying a more aggressive ship would likely be more effective, but eh, I can't be bothered to micromanage shields and maneuvers.

The Apogee's always been my favorite as well, and it was so nice to see a starting option in this version that gives you one right off the bat instead of having to waste massive amounts of time trying to get lucky salvaging one off independents or finding one on the market. I consider it more powerful than any capital ship if given a strike layout (plasma cannon, antimatter blasters, torpedoes, no PD, etc), while also being the best ship for exploration.

[Parsely]

One thing that I've noticed in this version is that the battle autoresolver seems to strongly take into account deployment costs when simulating the battles. I initially had my faction use paragons as their preferred capital ships (and other high tech ships), but found that they seemed to be losing battles they clearly should've been winning, particularly defensive battles where they had the help of orbital defenses.

According to the dev diary on autoresolve there's a little more to it that just deployment cost but of course the game needs some method to resolve fights and it doesn't necessarily play into every player's perception of what fleet composition should beat another: http://fractalsoftworks.com/2011/11/09/automatically-resolving-combat/

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Yikes. I am so bad at combat. Honestly, I have forgotten everything about fleet composition and loadouts--and manually controlling ships... forget it.