A Little Help

You have to design your own ships in this series.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

If you want better ships, research Light Hull construction. This will, at level 5, open up a new type of ship class. Research THAT to 5 and it'll open up yet another, etc.

The AI actually attacks you? Wow!

He means he has the default three ship sizes, d'oh. Man did I miss that one.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

To attack a normal planet with normal anti-planet weapons, there has to be an opponent inhabiting it.

However, you can also research a good ways into the Stellar Manipulation tech to get a Tectonic Bomb, which has enough power to turn a planet into nothing but asteroids. It's great fun at parties!

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With all these people, you would expect one of them to carry an iguana around...

Some treaties forbid planetary bombardment.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Each level of Light Hull Construction also gives you bigger Frigates, Colony Ships, and Small Transports.

My sentiments exactly...

The AI isn't actually that bad, it just makes some bad decisions about treaties and ship design that limit it significantly, but for most other things it knows what it's doing.

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With all these people, you would expect one of them to carry an iguana around...

I get the sense the other AI weakness is in the "ground war" -- it is too slow to build weapons platforms and ground troops, so it can easily be taken apart with "commando" raids.

And Weapons platforms are extremely efficient defenses against a hasty attack -- "No sailor but a fool" chooses a duel against land-based ordnance. 200kt all armor and weapons is probably the equal of a fully supplied 350kt ship.

I've never had them attack me per say, but I do get them trying to get through my warp points all the time. Sometimes with fleets of 10+ ships. These of course get raped by my tekked up satillites with large sat mounts.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

For todays homework, here is what you should have by 20-30 turns.

• All available planets colonised in two systems (reds and greens)
• Nearly all of the planets should be exclusivily research facilities
• At least lvl 10 in depleted uranium cannon
• A few more levels in armor
• Level 5 light hull
• A few levels in sensors
• If you've got more than 3 green planets then you should be able to get up to contra terrene engine

Of course i'm basing this off my own experiences. Because when the demo was out and I was doing my videos, I needed a few tech levels to get the bigger better ships/bases/fighters. At around 90 turns I was on 200k res per turn.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

nah drop DUC reserch and go straight for pullsed energy weapons.
far better damage for size.

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an se5a is a ww1 fighter, it is also a car.

In SE4, DUCs were so cheap to research and gained range rapidly, and tech levels were much fewer, so it was worth maxing out DUC at level 5 before taking the plunge on Physics 2 and starting on energy weapons.

In SE5, there is so much more to research that we seem to all gravitate toward extremely research-heavy economies early in the game, and it's more likely that you'll have Physics 2, shields, and energy weapons before your first real warfare.

On the whole I like the feel of technologies in SE5 a lot better, but there seems to be little incentive to actually max out early technologies rather than jump to later ones. My current gut feeling (though I haven't played enough to validate it yet) is that the exponential curve on research cost needs to be tweaked by tech type - weapons techs should be flatter, applied sciences about the same as now, and pure science steeper. This would make heavily optimizing early techs much more viable as an option so that technology choices become less cookie-cutter.