New to GalCiv questions

In Moo2, Starbases were War Defences.   You built one at a planet and they could hold off several ships because they were ment to stomp ships and protect your planet.

 

In GalCiv II Starbases are resource buildings.  You build them in key points for resource reasons and they give you resource bonuses.  And they try (Badly) to defend themselves from stray ships that try to pick on them.

 

They serve very different reasons, and are built as such.  A well built and teched starbase can hold off a few tiney ships early game, mid game they can hold off 1, maybe 2 ships.   But the end results are that your expected to use Active Defence before they get attacked. That is, you have ships keep your boarders clear, and you destroy enemy ships before they reach your starbase.

 

The best example of this is a Military starbase (not the kind you build on military resources, but the kind you select to be a military starbase).  A large portion of this starbases arrays dont just focus on the starbases stats, but they amplify ships in its area.  7 tiney ships in range of this kind of starbase could easily get  +21 to attack, and/or  +14defence as a fleet.  What better use of these bonuses then to engage enemys before they can even threaten to destroy the structure thats providing them..

 

Thanks for the heads up, so there is no way to make a ship actively defend the bases then.    I have had incidents where I dont have the speed/range to reach an enemy ship in my turn, but they can go by my ships and frag the base, quite annoying when im trying to learn the game.  Is there anything I can do about that, or just get range and speed faster than they do.

That brings me to another question, how big of a role does speed play in combat?

 

Lastly, what are some basic Do's and Don't's for a good economy?

 

Sorry still quite Noobish.... but im trying...... I have gotten beaten about 4 times so far, and this is my 5th pass, and I think I will win it this time.  I just recently started looking into advise due to  consecutive BAD losses.

 

Thanks for the input.

I  "Think" you could park your ships on your starbase, double click them, and set them to "Guard".   but I am not 100% sure if it would work.  Its  posible that if your ships are slower then the AI's (and if the AI hates your starbase enough) that after your ships automaticly go out towards theirs that the ai might zoom around you to get the base...

 

I'm sure there are others better at the game then I am who might have different answers, but my own opinion (being semiwhat new myself), is that having equil or faster speed is very important.  Specificaly so that you can protect your transport ships while invadeing.  Its posible to protect your ships/bases with 1 speed slower then your opponent, but only if your very good at making sure you position your fleet in such a way that the AI would have to stop adjacent to your fleet before they reach their target.  one small mistake and your soldiers/starbase/whatever is toast.

 

I think the first most important thing in a fleet is being able to destroy enemy fleets/ships..  If you cant destroy their ships it doesnt matter how fast you get to them.  It may sound silly, but sometimes the AI will tec weapon/shields and logistics so fast that your in trouble if you are worrying about speed.

 

After that, Speed an sensors are important to the number of ships you lose.  And if you dont have the expansions (or have the right tec/super power) speed lets you get first strike which lets you cripple your opponents before they can fire back.   With a zerg strat speed wont matter so much, you just pump out so many ships you can ignore your losses.  But when every ship counts then having at least identical speed means that if the AI chases fleeing/damaged ships you will make it to help instead of being over taken and destroyed

 

In MOO2, ship speed contributed to initiative in combat and, since combat took multiple turns, could play a part in battles.  Not so to either in GalCiv2.

Setting ships and/or fleets to "Guard" will give you the chance to attack an enemy force before it attacks the base.  If you do not attack, the enemy can bypass your ship/fleet and attack the base.

If your defenders get destroyed, the remaining enemy can then attack the base.  If you have attrited the enemy enough, the base may yet survive.  Note that if the base is a military one, that the defenders will get the bonuses in the defense battles.

Actually you don't need to set them to do anything. All you have to do is to form up some of your top line ships into a fleet and park the fleet in the same parsec as the starbase. If an enemy ship or fleet wants to attack the starbase they first have to engage your fleet.

This works the same with fleets and individual ships as well. If you leave fleets and individual ships in the same parsec then if during the AI's turn if they attack that parsec they are forced to attack the strongest fleet first and so on. I'm not sure of the precise algorithm as to how strongest is determined but the attacker doesn't get to chose the order.

I often use this to protect ships I'm repairing after an attack. This works really well when you've just taken an enemy planet and so your ships are right next to your new planet. What you can do is to have two forms of the same ship simply with different names. When a ship of that type gets damaged you upgrade the ship from Fighter A to Fighter B. Since Fighter A and Fighter B are the identical ship it costs very little to do the upgrade and since you're right next to your new planet that upgrade occurs in one turn. The real purpose of the upgrade is that your ship automatically gets all damage repaired at the same time.

However during that one turn your ship is being repaired it's HP's are reduced and it's very vulnerable but if you park a top line fleet in the same parsec then an enemy must first attack and defeat the fleet before they can attack the ship being upgraded.

Of course simply keeping enemy fleets and ships out of your area in the first place accomplishes the same thing but it's a good idea to park a fleet on starbases that are outside your influence area just in case war breaks out.

Is that an update from one of the expansions mumble?

 

I know with out expansions in the updated DL game, AI attacking stacked ships of mine often, but not always,  kill my transports or single ships first. Thus I have learned a way around it.  also like Marauder, I have stacked impressive fleets on otherwise defenceless starbases and the AI would destroy the starbase first, and then attack my fleet.

 

I havent tested it out in TA yet to see if theres a change..

Another somewhat cheesy tactic is to park many minimally armed disposable ships on top of an entirely UNarmed starbase, and *don't* form them into a fleet. Any enemy attacking will hit the fodder first, and usually waste an entire turn killing one - they don't generally attack the same space twice in the same turn with the same fleet. You will lose fodder, but as long as there is fodder to be swatted the base is safe, buying your time to get a real fleet there to destroy the invaders.

Actually that is old information. It was certainly true as of DL v1.40x which was the last DL version before DA was first released. I haven't yet tried it in the DL that's bundled with DA/TA. It's too bad if they changed this because it allowed you to protect stuff as long as you had the most powerful fleet out there.

So when you attack a stack of ships/fleets do get to determine the order of attack? Or is it just the AI that gets to choose the order?

In essence the attack order of different fleets and individual ships in the same parsec was similar to the attack order of individual ships within a fleet battle. Basically the most powerful fleets were attacked first followed in turn by the next most powerful and only once fleets were killed could they go after individual ships.

It was the same attacking a planet with ships in orbit. You attacked the most powerful defender then the next most powerful and so on, unless you fought them as a fleet if the planet has an orbital fleet manager. Has this been changed as well?

Have they messed up repair via upgrade too?

Not that I'm aware of. I don't use that exact approach, but upgrading in general is the same. I've also never had the same issues with being attacked through cover like that, except in a few situations that turned out to be my fault. My guess is they are fortifying the base and defending with relatively weak ships, so the base is the strongest "fleet" in the pile. Arming a transport can also get you in trouble that way.

wow guys, you have all been a big help!  Kinda a bummer though, was hoping to be able to have some bad @$$ cinematic of a few ships defending their base form an attack, really is a shame they can't fight together.

Also, I think I know why, even when I was parked on the base, enemies were able to kill the base from underneather me, I never used upgraded engines, my ships were tanks, very effective thus far, but slow.

 

Question, is there a way to upgrade a ship without buying it directly?  Like pick the refit option, then it appears in the build queue for the base/planet?

Did I mis a standard repair option, or is it the proxomity repair thing near a base with that module?  I know thats kinda a noobish question, but as I said im new and there are ALOT of techs 

 

Much appreciated guys, and I love not being flamed for asking a question unlike other game genres.

 

One last question.

I am doing a system rebuild soon, and I do not want to lose my race or my custom ships, for that matter a buddy wanted to see my ships and I thought I would send him a save.  How do I do these kinds of backups?

That shouldn't matter. Your ship speed doesn't matter. What Willy said made the most sense to me.

I agree. If you fortify your starbase and then just have individual ships in the same parsec as the starbase then your starbase is the strongest and therefore first to be attacked.

Basically you should never arm starbases because of this and because it's a waste of time. Just make sure you have a strong fleet of ships in the same parsec and *that* should always be the first thing the AI has to attack.

No, upgrades are purchase only.

Not quite sure what you're asking but ships automatically repair themselves slowly over time and will repair somewhat faster if placed in orbit about a planet, but there are no repair modules that you can add to a starbase that will speed repair.

What I was talking about was that you can use the ship upgrade feature to repair ships by doing a fake upgrade of a ship to a differently named but otherwise identical ship. The only thing proximity has to do with this is the fact that the further you are from your own area of influence the longer an upgrade takes.

This site has always been relatively helpful. Perhaps it's just because it tends to be an older crowd that's interested in TBS although if you wander outside of the GalCiv2 specific forums into things like Off-topic and the like you may get a bit different response since those categories are shared with perhpas a dozen different sites.

Overall I think all of Stardock's forums attract a higher calibre of person that's less likely to flame someone than most other game sites, but there's always going to be the exception that makes the rule.

As far as backing up ship and raceconfig files it should be as simple as saving them off somehwere and putting them back later, but I'm not absolutely positive and the file locations depend on whether you'r playing DL, DA or TA.

I know I am a relatively new guy here, but i still think that if you have ships or fleet on "Guard" status, you will get the option to attack an enemy first, even if the starbase is heavily defended with module upgrades making it esentially the toughest thing in the hex.

I'm not sure what the difference is between "Guard" and "Sentry" though.  Maybe one would work better than the other.  I have never been able to find that explained in wiki or elsewhere.

Sentry is suposed to be an option you click so that your ship wont come up when you press the "next" button unless an enemy ship has come in its personal visual range.

 

I think, but I am not 100% sure, that ships on guard are suposed to act the same way except they also move towards and attack enemy ships that come in range.

I use "Guard" a lot and have not seen that behavior.