What am I missing?

[DuoX]

I find this game extremely difficult. I have started several campaigns with various stipulations and settings, and no matter what the game eventually pits me against an enemy that dwarfs anything I have built and leaves me helpless. What am I doing that allows thier technology to surpass mine so vastly?

[Arnathos]

Well, the research speeds on tech are different for each race, and are also dependant on the amount of money you make. Having decent trade can help you get quite a lot of income from only a few planets.

It also depends on the difficulty setting, and I'd advise you to start low untill you get the hang of it.

Lastly I would advise you to never play as Zuul, while they might seem cool, they have the weakest ships, the slowest tech speed, and in my opinion the worst FTL. Tarka's, Liir and Morrigi are all quite straight forward, and easy to start with. Humans are amazing when you get the hang of them, and so are hivers.

There are a lot of stratedgy guides and tutorial video's available on the internet, I do suggest you watch some of them before going into the game.

I hope this helps!

[DuoX]

Thanx I will put all this into thought.

[jebbers12]

a strategy that always works for me is to build extremely light ships so they're cheap and you can simply overwhelm anything the other team has untill you have quite a bit of armor research and heavy weapons then you can build heavy dreds and withstand the blasts far longer than them

[DuoX]

thats a good idea too, i will have to try all of this out, thanx a bunch

[Chroma]

If the enemy is advancing in tech quicker than you are, you might be wasting too much money on anything but research. I find that having the savings-research slider set to 75% research, and only ever colonising a few planets at a time gives me a good research rate and allows me to expand at a decent rate. This is coming from a Human user, mind, but thats just how I play. Try to ensure that your colonising costs never put your research costs below 50% of the little pie chart at the top left, that may also help.

[DuoX]

Ya, if anything I spend too much time on research, but since I posted this I realized something, If I'm fighting Liir or Zuul or other Humans (Key factor I should have mentioned, I'm playing human), I can handle myself, and go tit for tat. The Tarkanians seem to douse me even with lower Tech. They hit like tanks and take it like tanks, only time I feel really screwed is against them. If i give myself 15 extra research in the early game also seems to help lol.

[GM Pax]

Early on, push the budget slider way over to the right - a 90/10 split is what you shoudl aim for.

I push hard for Biological Transfer and Cruisers early on; they make early colonisation efforts much more effective (you'll pick up suspended animation along the way, too). General colonisation techs are the next primary aim - but, intersperse those with some weapons and industrial techs.

Mind, I usually play Hiver. Being able to use those gates is primo - I send out several fleets each with a Gate ship and a couple tankers, to each new system. Once they arrive, I can gate in Colony ships as needed (and pull the tankers back to the home systems for re-use).

And Humans? My favorite opponent. If I can lock down a few choke points on their Node-Line network, I can hold them at bay while developing the crap out of my colonies, and just out-economy the enemy.

[My name is not important]

Make sure you colonize other planets, just not too many. If you're colonizing too many planets, you'll spend all your resources in development. On the other hand, if you're not colonizing, you'll be short on production, economy and research.

Try to keep the light blue and orange slices of the pie chart balanced.

[DuoX]

Thanx for all your input but frankly I find this game impossible to play unless I give myself HUGE advantages (like 15 tech and 10 colonies to start). Either the game stomps me or is way to easy, I cannot find a middle ground. EVERY Campaign I have tried to play legit, I eventually encounter the Liir or the Taarkanians and the decimate me with ease as they have some armor/weapon that the game decided I not only cannot research but can't even have something comparable to it. I have followed every economic peice of advice, my money is overflowing, makes no difference when one of their ships is worth 10 of mine. I raced as fast as I could through weapon tech, and most game won't randomly drop enough of it for me to survive. I am done with this game as I have waisted 200 hours trying to play a Legit campaign only to be facerolled each and every time.

[Cyber Hobo]

Originally posted by Zombie Hunter:

Thanx for all your input but frankly I find this game impossible to play unless I give myself HUGE advantages (like 15 tech and 10 colonies to start). Either the game stomps me or is way to easy, I cannot find a middle ground. EVERY Campaign I have tried to play legit, I eventually encounter the Liir or the Taarkanians and the decimate me with ease as they have some armor/weapon that the game decided I not only cannot research but can't even have something comparable to it. I have followed every economic peice of advice, my money is overflowing, makes no difference when one of their ships is worth 10 of mine. I raced as fast as I could through weapon tech, and most game won't randomly drop enough of it for me to survive. I am done with this game as I have waisted 200 hours trying to play a Legit campaign only to be facerolled each and every time.

idk dude when i play its almost impossible to lose

[DuoX]

Well I did say I can set up a game where I start with more tech/colonies I can win. But I find that boring. PLUS I will admit, I have never tried another race. Is that what I'm doing wrong? Do humans just suck and I should try another race?

[Khadgar]

Here are some things you might try to make your SOTS matches more enjoyable.

*Try a team game with fixed teams. 3v3, or even 4v3 (in your favor) so that you can rely on your teammates to help you out a bit, and have someone else to work with. If you want to make it extra effective, restart the game if you and your ally(s) have a very close climate hazard to you, because nothing beats having an ally with 800+ climate hazard, meaning you aren't competing with them for worlds at all.

*Expand more/less aggressively. When I first started playing SOTS, I expanded way too aggressively, which always ended up hurting more than it helped. A rule of thumb I ended up using was to only colonize 200+ CH worlds if "colony maintenance" was less than my surplus money each turn. In other words, if i was spending 500,000 a turn on colony maintenance, I wouldn't take a new world unless I was also getting 500,000 or more in direct cash after all expenditures. There is not reason for this, it was just a guideline to help me decide when I should expand and when I shouldn't.

*Try a different technological pathway than your normally do (if you have a favorite). For example, you say that you always get dominated by the enemy ships; perhaps you might fare better if you had gone a different tech route for your empire. For example, Tarka empire has a great chance to research armor technology, which makes ballistic weaponry less effective (it will bounce off more often). This can be mitigated by getting AP rounds, OR simply going for energy, missile, or torpedo weaponry instead. The Liir on the other hand have the best chance to research both levels of reflective coating, which reduces energy weapon's effectiveness. Beyond weapon technologies, you could try for a cruiser rush, i.e. go for cruiser tech very early, then use your cruisers to dominate the enemy while everyone else is still bloated with destroyers. It won't last forever, but if you make good use of your advantage, it can put you in a great place for the rest of the game. It's also always a good idea to snag those C&C boosting upgrades, getting 2 or 3 extra ships in a battle might not win it for you, but it really adds up over time.

*Shields or deflectors can easily turn the tide of a battle. Even mk1 shields or deflectors can turn a lopsided engagement in your favor. Shields are basically a regenerating layer of HP, while deflectors can turn even the smallest destroyer into an impenetrable tank if used properly. Example -- I had a scenario where the hiver opponent had a massive fleet of dreadnaughts en route to my homeworld, and I had barely gotten to cruiser tech. I built a fleet of 20-30 destroyers armed entirely with ballistic deflector shields (since Hivers almost exclusively use ballistic weaponry), and fought the hiver ships in deep space. Each combat I would array my destroyers in a straight line against the enemy, with the command "facing" set so that the destroyers would always face the nearest enemy, thus preventing their ships from getting any shots through my shield. It took several turns, but since my destroyers couldn't die, I obviously won the combat. This is a case where deflector shields are very effective. Normal shields are ALWAYS effective.

Lastly, here is a list of a few of the 'advanced' battle tactics/ship combos I use to win battles that I normally wouldn't win at all.

Hammerhead/Pursuit + Missiles : with this destroyer type you can outrun your enemy, while constantly pelting them with missiles. For increased effectiveness, use point defense in the small slots to prevent you from biting the dust for enemy missiles. Works with cruisers too, if you have good enough engines (and use the fasted mission section available, usually "armor").

Minelayer : Minelayers are very hard to use in my opinion, but they can be extremely effective. For example, when defending a planet of yours, minelayers can simply run away from the enemy (as per above strategy), while their mines & the planet's missiles blow up the pursuing enemy ships. The best choice of mines is leap mines [req: fusion mines] or implosion mines. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that the enemy AI will only pursue your ships if it can see them. So, if you blow up the first wave of 10 ships they send at you while you run away to the outer reaches of the system, the next wave that spawns in will just head straight for the planet, so a keen commander will attempt to time the destruction of the first wave with their minelayers arriving back in the area (or at least one minelayer).

Assault Shuttle Cheese : The enemy AI is told to ALWAYS attack assault shuttles/bio missiles as the highest priority over any other ship type. Period. You can use/abuse this feature when attacking an enemy planet by timing your assault shuttle releases to control where the enemy fleet is headed. For example: at the start of a combat, send 1 assault shuttle carrier to the far left, and 1 to the far right. Your main attack fleet in the center can move straight in, as soon as it encounters the enemy fleet, have the far right/left shuttle carrier deploy its shuttle(s). The enemy fleet with instantly change course to deal with the lonely shuttle. Hopefully, by the time the shuttle is destroyed, your fleet will have gotten in many free shots on the enemy, or closed range to the planet, or whatever your goal is. Feel free to tweak this basic concept as needed. A good method is to merely have a fleet composed entirely of assault shuttle carriers: use the single ship early-shuttle launch distraction method to clear a path for the rest of your fleet to get point blank range of the planet for an easy kill.

Multi-Warhead Missile : Research this tech ASAP if you are having trouble defending your planets and using missile tech in any fashion. It converts some planetary defense missiles into MW Missiles, which more than triples their effectiveness. If the enemy has any point defense at all, MW missiles will enable you to still get through.

I hope some of these tips resonate with you and help you get a better SOTS experience! Feel free to ask for specific help with combat, as I'm pretty experienced at the SOTS combat mechanics with around ~500 hours played.

[DuoX]

Wow. After reading that i think I was just taking way too simple an approach to everything. I tried to have MK4 shields carry me but having no armor (random generated techonology didn't give it to me) The Liir raped me once I encountered them. They resisted any weapon I had, BUT My approach to fighting has been very very simple from what you just explained. I will try some new approaches, admittedly The only races who dominate my human campaigns have always been tarkanian and liir. I also think I don't understand the battles very well, as I just kionda fly in and let them fight, trying to single target everything. Maybe I'm just too used to Starcraft mentallity? More advice on the fighting would be amazing... plus the idea of having teamamtes can help, If I watch what the computer is doing with any luck I will learn from that. One last thing, Is there a way to avoid the Overbudget problem? I have had that stiffle me for up to 6 turns in a row.
Thanx a bunch as I'm sure you can tell I was begining to get agitated. lol

[Khadgar]

From what I understand about research, each technology is randomly assigned a % value of research needed. So, purple laser might take 5000 points as default, but for each player it could be between maybe 3500 and 10000 points needed. Research going overbudget isn't something that you can control (as far as I know), so you just have to deal with it. However, I THINK (but am not sure) that if you throw extra research points onto a tech, it won't overflow. So what that means in an example is:

A technology costs 40000 points (credits) to research.
35% research slider (50000 credits)- tech completes in 1 turn, you get 10000 credits back
70% research slider (100000 credits) - tech completes in 1 turn, you get 60000 credits back
So don't worry about tweaking the research slider, just leave it at whatever value you can afford, you'll be refunded.

As far as combat goes, yeah, single-targeting enemies is a good tactic most of the time, but there is more you can do. For example, most of the time it works alright to set your ships on pursit or close attack, but depending on your weapon loadout, it might work better to make a concave (a la starcraft) on neutral stance. Get 6 cruisers with blazers or impactors or torpedos in a semicircle, and it is almost always more effective to just sit still and aim at the enemy. If you are using close-attack with a blazer, for instance, often times the blazer will fire right before the ship decides to manuver to a new position where the blazers aren't even hitting the enemy, wasting the entire shot.

Here's one simple tactic you can try that might help you out that is simple to do. If you research phasers, beamers, heavy beams, etc any very accurate weapons, you can try to knock off the enemy turrets. Even a heavy turret will blow up with just one barrage from a single cruiser. Just bring your ships in range of the enemy with hold fire on (or not), pause the game (default is pause/break) once you're in range, and tell each of your ships to target a turret on an enemy ship. Each time a turret blows off, switch targets, and with just a few volleys the enemy fleet will be basically dead in the water. Does not work on non-turret weapon systems such as strafe command, blazer, etc. It's pretty much the best tactic versus super heavy weapons, like projectors, triple plasma cannon, AoE missiles, etc...

[DuoX]

Your the Man. I'm going to utilize these tactics and try a new race as well. With any luck my next experiance I won't be so heftily smacked down upon. Thanx a bunch!