TEC Strategy - help!

For the amount of info your asking for you really need to watch replays of people who do an exceptional job of kicking your ars. No joke its the easyest way to learn. The forums are the other. Their's lots of great info there just look deep for it. As for Destrels strategy's for the most part there all viable given the right map layout and a player who's learned enough sins to make it happen.

And I thought this forum was helpful...

This thread is kind of hard to follow. You establish knowledge of econ, ship mechanics, and viable strats, and then you assert that they are all useless. They are not all useless, and the econ/ship info is quite important to success. From here I'm guessing your problem is in execution, so I'm going to give some basic tips for fighting AI(s?)

1. Expand as much as you possibly can very early. Planet bombing is limited in the early game, and 1-2 turrets will fend off most harassment. Unless the map is quite small, (15 planets or less) start off with the Colonizer capital ship. Reinforce it with ~10 frigates and just take every neutral planet you can. Generally the first things I research are volcanic and ice colonization. Build at least one colony frigate, too, and capture any neutral astroid field mines. This is important to early game econ, do not underestimate it.

2. JRM frigates are only any good for the first ~40 minutes. If the game gets to be an hour long, you will be best off with heavy cruisers, flaks, a few Hoshikos, and capital ships. Fighters (on your cap ships and hangars) are better in the early game as bombers only excel against heavy cruisers, caps, and structures. Bomber carriers are good in the late game for razing orbital structures and ganking capital ships. The Armistice ability on the Colonizer cap is a huge boon to fleet survival. Just dump that in any fight you won't win, and escape.

3. Build orbital defense structures. Lots of them. The AI tends to over-upgrade the fleet cap techs, and I'm guessing from your plea for help that you do not wholly optimize your economy. This is the best way to keep your planets defensible without having to invest in such a high upkeep. Also, build a media hub (culture building, forgot TEC name) at every planet.

4. Organize your fleets with direct DPS ships and your capital ships on a hotkey. Start the fleet with a capital ship so it is the focus of the fleet arrangement. Keep your support ships and your flaks in the fleet, but not in the hotkeyed group. Put all the ships in the fleet in Hold Position, and set the fleet to 'All tight'. Now, the flaks and support ships will automatically stay with your capital ship, even through jumps. You can focus fire with your primary dps ships without worrying about the flaks and supports wandering off. Eventually you'll micro more, but this is quite sufficient for AI.

5. The easiest way to beat AI is to expand early, build up planetary defenses, and suffocate their meager econ. They tend to shoot right up the fleet cap upgrades into a huge economic upkeep that is irreversible. At this point, trapping ships with phase jump inhibitors and killing the colonies far from their main fleet is crippling. Eventually you'll start to out tech them and be able to support a crushing force that their current ships cannot handle, and with an econ that can't fill the holes.

I have more, but I'm rambling already More specific questions might help.

Im sorta new to this game... but, my strategys work pretty well, at least agaisnt the AI  :CONGRAT: 

In the beginning of the game, exploration and resource gathering are essential! While you focus on exploration, over time and through improvments on technology will allow you to not only explore the map, but also obtain a large amount of resources. Second, dont go chasing after pirates or other players/AIs! You MUST gain footholds on strategic planets surrounding your home planet. This is important for two reasons. One, increase your resource gather rate without having to buy from the black market. Two, it serves as an outer layer of defense around your home planet to prevent possible early rush or invasion. At the same time, your fleet(s)should be growing in size. What you MUST be carful of is not to get too close to your enemy just yet. The chances are, they are spending at least 50% of their income to find you (weather it be themselves or paying pirates) To make this harder for them, send small dummy fleets consisting of small umimportant ships. Use them to scout as well as throw the enemy off track. By this, i mean, when you faze jump, go the OPPOSITE way of your home planet.
By this time, your fleet(s) should have several capitol ships, your home planet locked with extreme defenses, as well as a substancial amount of support ships (frigates & crusers). This is when you should begin to put pressure on enemy holdings. You can start with two options. OPTION A: eliminate the pirates to make it easier to move about the galaxy. This however can be VERY difficult considering the size of the pirate fleet. OPTION B: continue to pay off the pirates to attack and put pressure on the opposing player/AI. From here you have two sub-options. One, you can attack the pirates while they are buissy attacking the other player/AI. Two, you can simply attack the player/AI while the pirates also put pressure on them.

THE KEY TO SUCCESS IS A LARGE AND FLEXABLE ECONOMY!!!!!

If and when you decide to take out the pirates, move SLOWLY towards the enemy's home planet. The key is to keep a strait line of which to push from. This means multiple fleets, attacking multiple planets, simultainously. As you hop from planet to planet, be sure to set up basic defese as well as hangers of which to replace ships lost in battle. Keep doing this untill you surround the enemy's home planet. If you decided not to take out the pirates... BE CARFUL!!! It just makes things harder. When you attack the home planet. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THEIR POWER!!!!!! The ships you use should be of GREAT variety. I cant stress enough how important a variety is. The size of fleets will reflect based on your economy, game type, and specific events in that specific game. There is no real number, just get it as big as you need. Give 110%.

Its alot, but it normally works
(pardon my poor spelling

Thanks guys, that was helpful indeed... +karma points given to all of you.

I think my problem is that I haven't built enough planet defenses, and had to maintain a large fleet to defend my empire.

Specific (maybe noob-ish) questions:
1. if i can build heavy cruisers, should i even invest time+money in training frigates?
2. if i build only cruiser + capship fleets, what's the good composition of this fleet, i mean like 80% heavy cruisers
3. how can i assign a hot-key to my fleets?
4. what's a DPS ship?
5. which techs should I rush for in the early game and in the late game?
6. what's the bounty good for in the pirate window?

I'll address the ones I know about or that aren't too generic.

1. Upgraded frigates can be built much more rapidly than heavy cruisers, and a long-range strategy is basically free damage for you when you've got your cruisers in the middle of the enemy fleet mixing it up. Your call, but if you're in MP and are just sticking with nothing but heavy cruisers, a balanced fleet will take you out.
2. Don't. The support ships are there for a reason, and can really make a difference in the longevity of your fleet.
4. Damage per second. Basically it's offensive power. Illuminators from Advent are an example.
6. By bidding against other players just before pirates launch, you can cause the pirates to harass and distract them. What I've done successfully on small maps is outbid other players to get the pirates to attack them, find out where the pirates are going and go there too. While the AI fights the pirates, I take out their buildings with my fleet, and them mop up both the pirates and the AI forces at the location.

-- Retro

the ones Retro didn't worry about:

3. Selecting a group of ships and pressing control + 1 will assign them to the 1 key.

5. No simple answer: sounds like you are playing against the AI mostly so alot of techs that don't get used that often in multiplay can be useful.

One that can be fun to try out for the late game is Vasari Returning Armada. I've got a game going right now against 7 hard locked AI that I'm winning pretty handily with that tech.

A useful early tech is TEC tradeports, which if you fill every non-essential logistical spot with them will give you massive income in the long term.

Mid-game Advent Guardians can use repulsion to scatter enemy ships like leaves. It's pretty broken, but alot of fun against AI.

*Don't forget to upgrade your planet populations as soon and as much as possible. I generally won't colonize a roid unless I can upgrade it immediately, a planet I want to upgrade at least twice as soon as I colonize...

PS - I'm sorry the multiplayer strategy post I made isn't much use to you :/ I hope the tips in this thread get you on the right path.

Peace

Some good advice here.

I think the two most improtant suggestions are planetary defense (need lots of it at your critical planets) and fleet composition.

Bombers have brutal damage output, even if they are penalized against everythign but heavy cruisers. And the only thing that can take them down effectively is fighters. So make sure you've got lots of hangar bays around. They will be your mainstay static defense (supported by repair bays and other secondary structures). Turrets don't generally hold up once hangar bays become affordably.


Fleet composition is a careful art. Heavy cruisers are not the be all end all. Bombers will rip them to shreds. In the mid and late game, the AI tends to push lots of support cruisers and carriers. Heavy cruisers will tear up support cruisers, but bombers will tear up your heavy cruisers.

If you don't want to play with support cruisers, you need to at LEAST make sure your heavies are covered by plenty of fighters. And again, bombers are your best DPS bang for buck by far at this stage of the game.

I feel, (although i know it's unpopular), that the usefulness of LRMs begin to fade a little bit at this stage, and tend to divert a lot of production towards carriers and larger ships. At least against the AI who tends to stop building the things LRMs are best against.


Make sure you keep a task force of lights around though, as their abilities do a good job at slowing down support cruisers. (Turn off auto-attack for maximum casting affectiveness).

And fleets fleets fleets. Make sure you keep all the units you want to move as a group in their own fleet (with a seperate fleet for each group you want to move independently). If you do this the unit AI will do an EXCELLENT job of choosing good targets for you and focus firing optimally. (You may have to take a little more control earlier in the game, or if you are hell bent of popping their capship, but in general the I personally don't think you need to get your hands dirty with Micro too much, especially against the AI).


Bottom line: Fleet composition, pay attention to what they've got and build appropriately. Don't have any preconcieved notions about the kind of fleet your going to build, be flexible, and make sure what you build is affective against what they've built.

Thanks very much guys!

I managed to conquer an AI for the first time, using all the tips you proposed here.
I think the key elements are:
1. economic development: early speed expansion, population upgrades, mines, trade ports
2. planetary defense: 2 repair bots, 2 hangars, 4 gauss defense guns (or what's their name) / planet. yes, i find these structures more important than maintaining a large fleet.
3. fleet management: go for a good mix of units, with swifter and slower, fighter and bomber ships alike, and a good amount of repairing ships.
4. tech: hull/shield/antimatter techs.

I'm gonna answer these anyway, even though you've got this mostly figured out and they've already been addressed to some degree.

1. It depends on when you expect the game to resolve. I tend to skip the Laser upgrades (light frigates) in games that I am not Sova rushing, but remember that some cap ships are affected too and you might end up getting use out of it. Armor/Hull (top priority for TEC) and Shield upgrades are always useful.

2. A usual defense fleet on normal fleet sizes for me (late game) is about 30-40 Kodiaks, ~20 flaks, ~10 Hoshikos, and 2-3 capital ships. 30-40 fully upgraded Kodiaks is kind of the breaking point for being able to mostly 1-volley the support cruisers/carriers.

3. Select the units you want involved, through use of box drag or alt+click to get an entire unit type. Adding shift while selecting will add or remove new units to the selection. Then hit control+#, # being whichever number on the keyboard you want the group to be. Now you will recall the group selection if you simply hit the # key you assigned. Add new units to the hotkey by hitting it, then hold shift and select the additional units. This can be done in the reverse order too. Finally, hit control+# again to update the group.

4. Sorry, this was unclear. By DPS ship I mean the ships that fire direct weapons at other ships as their primary function. To rephrase, ships that you do not need to be autocasting abilities like the Hoshiko heal. Hoshikos DO have a weapon, but if you're spending all your time telling them to attack something directly, they won't use the abilities enough. This applies to flak ships as well, it's best to just leave them at an advantageous spot and let them fire on their own.

5. Planet colonization techs, and techs that give you a new building/ship/ability. Late game is where you'll fill out the ship weapon and other upgrades. I tend to always try to have one research going when I can afford it, so I'll start up a hull, armor, and/or civ tech when I can't think of anything better.

6. Every # minutes, (I don't know what it is, I always keep pirates inactive as I think they are an unnecessary distraction) the player with the most bounty on their head is attacked by pirates. These fleets grow as the game progresses. The bounty given is depleted as the ships die.

Next up: when you move to multiple foes, either lock the teams before starting, or concentrate on solving missions the AI sends you. Otherwise the AI's will swarm you, and that's something that takes a Really Good Player (TM) to beat.

Good luck, and enjoy playing.

-- Retro

Making a fleet/hotkeys is hard to explain with just words to someone who isn't familiar with the concept, which has been around for a long time in RTS games.

Here's a couple of clips that include both making a hotkeyed fleet, and what to do if your fleet doesn't assign a capital ship as the fleet lead. I honestly don't know why it happens, but there are a couple easy ways to fix/prevent it.

Fleet and Hotkey setup clip

Since I don't want to bother with editing, here is a description of the clips.

Clip 1: To set the hotkey of my current defense fleet in this particular game, I manually select the capital ships while holding shift. Then, I hold shift+alt and click on a Kodiak to add them all to selection. Finally, control+1 is hit to set the group. You can see it reselected a couple times by just hitting 1 again. The fleet is then set by simply dragging a box around the entire set of ships and creating a fleet. The difference between selecting the fleet and the hotkey is shown. I set the fleet to Hold Position so the ships don't wander around, and set it to 'All tight' so the flaks stay close to the capital ship leader. Now that this is set, I direct the hotkeyed group to a new system. This makes fleet direction easy, because when I need to get a fleet to a system being attacked, I don't actually need to find the fleet. I can just hit 1, and right click on the system. You can set them to jump as a group if you want them to stay even closer.

Clip 2: In this case, my offensive/planet razing fleet did not assign a capital ship as the fleet lead when I created it. This is a problem, because bomber carriers are not a member of the hotkey group for that fleet. The ships I select will travel, but then try to go back to the fleet lead which has not moved from its original position. In this case, I simply select the ship (be careful not to select the whole fleet, just the ship that was assigned lead) and remove it from the fleet. Every time I have done this, it defaults lead to a cap. Then, select the whole fleet from the icon and shift+select the ship you removed. Create the fleet again. Now you're good to go.

Yeah, I know that was convoluted and long, but it's an important step in reducing time required to move your ships from place to place and keep them where you want them.

After that...time to move on to online multiplayer to play human opponents. Once you feel comfortable with the game it's more fun than playing feckless AI.

One thing I didn't see in the above posts is some important first steps. This mainly applies to a med. size game or larger, or a game where you wont get rushed. I like to build my cap. factory first, in order to get that out as quick as possible. Then the resources on first planet. I'll build a scout, two lights, a colony, and another scout. Start taking planets and as soon as you get the cash build 2 civ. stations.

This will allow you to reserch ice and lava colony as soon as you need it, and also to get trade outposts up and running as soon as possible. This will give you the cash you are going to need to start working on your fleet, which at this point you will be behind on, but not for long.

On a side not, I've noticed that 1 kol leveled up a bit, with proper research can survive a lot of pounding. If you add two of the shield restore ships to the mix, then they can cast on each other, and the kol often enough to take out fleets sometimes twice the size, or at least last until backup arrives. Granted that it takes some practice microing 3+ ships when there is 100+ in the fight, it can be hard to tell where some things are, don't forget to use the sidebar.

Also, I like to use more of the robotics ships than others suggested, but thats just a personal preference. Either way HCs should make up the bulk of a fleet, but don't neglect a good mix. I like to have half as many robotics ships as my HCs, and then about 1/4 as many of each other type that I like to use. Example

40 HCs
20 Robotics
10 LRMs
10 Carriers
10 Flaks

(Sometimes I just keep one or two factories churning out lights for their sabatoge ability, and because they build so fast.)

So getting your trade and ice and volcanic coloy research is top priority in the the begging minutes of the game?

It depends on the situation. If you are near a lot of Ice/Volcanic planets, then you should research their colonization. Otherwise, it might be best to stick to the military tree until you need those planets.

Also, this topic is well over a year old. >__< If you have another question, feel free to make your own topic.

Yes, it does depend on the situation. After all, its worthless to research if there aren't any volcanic or ice planets on the map or your star. And yes swordsalmon, it is almost TWO years old (minus about 5 months)