What are your favorite Tech Tree paths ?

[BeerBob]

Just looking for some feedback for those that have played the game a fair amount on how you progress through the tech tree. What are some peoples favorite paths to research first then second, etc. ? In other words if you have to put a do these first, then these,. what might those be and why ? The tech tree is awesome in this game. It is massive compared to even some newer games of the genre.

[Lain]

Engines and small ship construction. And Ship capture systems. I do these because it doesnt matter what weapons the enemy has if they cant hit you, using seeker weapons at long range you could decimate entire fleets just by playing the long range card. Ship capture systems is also great cause lets say you did do this and the enemy does have something thats giving them an advantage or you just want colonization tech which is expensive. Most ai ships dont use sheilding till very late in the game so you can rather easily board and capture ai ships break them down and steal alot of tech. Sensors continueing along is also very important for it increases the chance to hit and if you use direct fire weapons and not seekers its important and if you use proper aa placement you can intercept nearly anything they throw at you. Like the wave motion gun cant be used with out combat sensors. Like combat sensors defence systems help to.

For economic reasons computers and robotics are needed so you can eventually get the monolith facilitiy and all the other buff facilities.

In racial techs my personal opinion is that organics and crystaline are iffy they have superior armor but there is only a few things you would actually want from these trees and for 2000 racial points most of it can be subsituted. The things you would want are really the energy reflector, the energy weapons in organics cause they are a slight bit better then meson blasters and crystalines armor bypassing weapons which i have to use null space instead.

Religious tech is all buffs so i wont go into it.

Temporal is usually a must for me in my races. What i like is nearly everything. The events predictor adds 15 percent chance to hit in a system they are build, The temporal ship yard builds much faster then normal ones, you can rip off their armor fast and the tachiyon cannon has a much better acuracy then most beam weapons but mostly it helps industry.

Physic Tech i wasnt sure at first i feel the balance mod nerfed a few racial tech areas like crytals half damage beam defence and 50 percent off maintence set up but since you cant steal ships with physic anymore i wasnt sure till i found the new use of the converter to be rather good. What it does it allows you to take over enemy ships for a bit in the battle. Once you have control over them you make them ram into stuff causing extra damage and killing their ship or keep it still for a boarding crew.

[BeerBob]

That's good. Never thought of it that way. Thanks..

[Telfram]

Always concentrate of missile weapons first to get a decent range. Allows decent weapon platforms to be built to defend planets and a stand off ability on your ships while the other races seem to trend towards energy weapons, trade off being their heavy and need ordanece.
Also i go for the extra speed special ability(does'nt work on balance Mod), so your ships can outrun anything else early on, while also outranging them.
Have battered a 1 battleship almost into scrap with a 1 frigate with this.

[Peter Pan]

Out of topic, but I need to say it. Change sounds of ship creation phase plz: the module add is terrible.

[Gilmoy]

Disclaimer: I play SE:V as a solitaire game, in team mode (me vs. all AIs), Balance Mod (latest version). I always use tactical ship combat (which is known ba-roken in the human's favor :) So my "style" exploits the heck out of the fact that I can capture 8 of 15 AI homeworlds with a /total/ of ~5 frigate ~4 destroyer and some small freighters. None of this would work with strategic ship combat (and then I'd rather just play something else, or write my own).

Turn 00 research bonus: Ion Engines, and stay in until Ion 3s. It makes all your ships faster and cheaper.

Tier 0*: Engines, Sensors, Point Defense, Small Ship 3. Also, Civic + Recreation 3 for +1.5%/turn happiness, which ensures that your empire spends most of its time in Happy for +10% production. A tier is roughly a stopping point for tech focus, where your ships reach a level of non-suck that lets you switch focus to other things.

Tier 1: Physics 1, Shield 3 + Shield Regen 1, Anti-Proton Beams 3 for range-9 (beats all range-8 DUCs), Point-Defense Cannon 3 or 4 (to one-hit kill most Capital Ship Missiles). Small Ship 6, Large Ship Mount on 400-kt Destroyer for +1 range APs.

On a large map, you can usually finish that before you meet the 1st AI, and then conquer about half of a large map without further upgrades. Oh, I also never build my own 2nd Space Yard, I just conquer them from AIs.

Tier 1.5: Mineral/Food/Radioactives Extraction 2, Satellite 5 for robo-extractor sats (needs 110 kt). Solar Sail 1. Centralized Computer Systems 10, Applied Research 10.

I used to fear the AI getting shield generators on weapon platforms (which apparently is a serious late-game screw: you're racing to conquer the map before then). But in Balance 1.20-beta, Small Weapon Platforms can still take Large Platform Mount, which gives a ridiculous +3 range, which means a simple DUC1 now has range 11(!!). Just bring enough beef + shield regenerators and overwhelm those few planets ... or AP5 (range-10) on Cruiser + Heavy Ship Mount (range +2).

Once you conquer some AIs, you get three diasporas going concurrently: (1) the other 2 colonization techs you steal; (2) lifting domes (by shuttling native breathers for every planet's atmosphere); (3) per-system optimizations, e.g. moving non-population-dependent facilities (Spaceport, Resupply Depot, Storage, system-wide things) onto tiny planets.

So ... I still dunno what Tier 2 looks like. Tier 1 + tactical combat is that strong :) More deeply: SE:V's click-hell UI does not scale up to the diasporas. When the tedium overwhelms the memory of fun, you give up and start a new game.

I used to build all research, 0 intelligence, and just grit my teeth through sabotage. Now I dedicate 1 system to all-Intelligence Centers (and Complexes), and I've learned that if I espionage the AIs first, they spend all of their intel on defense and never gang up on me. Hah!

[BeerBob]

Thanks all. Good info all around. I have not really tried the ship capture yet. Thought it would be too hard or not work very well but it sounds like it does. That would help give a boost in tech that I would not get till very late in the game or wasted research points on. I have noticed the intelligence defense as well for the AI. So I always make sure to have some intel points available to throw at them and keep them occupied. Played with a race that had temporal tech and wow, those temporal space yards are the bomb. Nothing like pumping out a few dozen ships in a couple turns if you have a few of them.