When he retaliated, their fleet ran. Although this is a good sign they felt outnumbered, he never proved superiority one way or another.

I dunno. It's nice to have forces that can reach out to other parts of the grav well, especially one as large as a gas giant. But the safety protocol override or construction facilities certainly earn their way.

Okay, this is my fault. I'm so use to playing DS that I forget the features of the original. But in other grav wells, both are viable options.

That's right. It was a gas giant so I was very limited. It's a great tip though for other situations where stationary defenses are available.

That's a really good point. In my fight or flight dilemma, I think I chose flight because I really didn't want to lose any of my capital ships. It probably would have been better to lose a cap ship given the strategic value of the starbase alone. As far as the actual value, I'm not sure. The capital ship cost me a command crew and a lot of credits by comparison, but then again, the cost of deploying and upgrading my starbase does add up. It was a difficult decision.

SC and MD? Help me out here. I'm assuming SC is strike craft.

On a completely separate note, while reading up on starbases, I learned something. Like planets and ships, they too can be renamed. That's awesome! I just wish we could rename the stars.

Very true. It remains to be seen if my fleet holds up against theirs. When they fled from the second planet though, that did suggest doubt in the AI, but they may still prove very effective against my refined fleet. Several weeks ago, I learned an important lesson. Whenever I think I have an awesome fleet, I don't. The AI has an even bigger and better fleet somewhere in the galaxy.

Yes and MD is Mass Disorientation. A rather nasty Advent Starbase ability that messes up the enemy ships.

Haha, I skim when I read so when I saw him start the sentence of started "ripping through their defences" I assumed he rolled their fleet as well lol.

No worries, we all do that from time to time. I forget that dynamic ship movement is not an ingrained feature so when I go back to playing original after Star Trek mod, I am like "Why is my fleet just lining up in front of the enemy fleet?"

Very True, I guess I look at it from the Standpoint or Sunk & Recoverable cost. Once you buy the command crew and fleet supply, I never really factor those into the cost of a cap because I buy them once and no matter how many caps you may lose, you always get the Supply and Cap Crew back. You raise a valid point though in total cost, the SB and Cap were probably roughly equivalent by that point.

Sorry, i use abbreviations for alot of things, Ryat is correct. Mass Disorient + max SC on an Advent SB is a nasty combo because the enemy Flak and abilities are disabled except at the Cap Ship level so the 20 SC on the Advent SB get to tear through enemies with virtually no opposition. Its a powerful enough combo that I will often times forego more than 1 armor upgrade on the Transcencia in order to have max SC and MD. You can also get a similar synergy maxing meteor and MD as well. MD locks them down so you can bombard with meteors. I find max SC to be slightly more reliable however but thats just a personal preference.

Yeah, I said I ripped through their planetary defenses, but I forget that sometimes planetary defenses can include a defending fleet. In this instance, the defenses included turrets, hangars, and a starbase.

That's also a very valid point. You do get it back so it's technically recoverable. I'll remember that.

My friend recently told me about an experiment involving 20 scouts with the timed explosive research. He apparently rushed a starbase and the explosives took it out. I find this hard to believe so I may have to conduct my own experiment.

It's clever, but something about that confuses me. It can take several capital ships to bring down a starbase yet 20 little scouts with explosives have an equally devastating effect?

Plausible. Arcova's Timed Charges do a lot of damage, and the Starbase can only target 4 at once, and the SC can only target 1. Go for it.

well, each wing of SC can target one, so it depends on how many wings you have. But if left to choose their own targets, they all grab up the same one. Odds are that if the strike is done right, you won't have time to react.

I do wonder how well this would work. If it does, I would be willing to get 40 scouts just to be sure I bypass fleet elements. Still cheap.

edit: EPIC FAIL! Took 20 Scouts. Managed to get 19 past the fighters, but Timed Explosives can't target a starbase. It doesn't count as a structure.

Yeah, when he told me that, it seemed too easy. However I'll still make a note of the tactic for use against other structures (especially hangars). Could come in handy.

You are correct sir, I have lamented this same fact. However, timed explosives do make a great suicide blockade runner type of unit to wreck havok with the unprotected rear planets of an enemy empire. I will often build like 20-30 with the jump immunity upgrade and use them to break through the front line worlds to bomb Labs, Trade Ports and Factories in the rear worlds. Its a cheap cost effective way to draw away front line defense fleets.

Well, in this case, there were 13 beam platforms in orbit around the station. I would gladly wreck them to clear space for my fleet.

I've tried this, it doesn't work, not on the Orkulus nor on the stationary starbases. Would make things quite interesting if it did work though...

I think it's a much more effective strategy against human players who don't build random defense turrets everywhere. It's funny to watch someone try (and fail) to deal with 40 scouts with Timed Explosives which destroy their trade ports and all their labs. It's much more effective than you would think.

Scouts are simply too fast to catch and are difficult to counter early ish in the game if they just do hit-and-runs, which can result in very very few casualties if micromanaged properly.

Of course, this comes at the expense of the rest of your fleet, so you'd better hope your opponent is distracted taking other planets or tries to go after your scouts, and doesn't use the usual 2-carrier-cap-bomb-assault that seems to be so common nowadays among good players.