Sovereign wrote:
It has to be so cause if i remember correctly the tax rates were almost always at 100%

When was this? In a recent patch?

At what game phase was this?



I remember having seen tax-rates of 105% in doing this. This, as far as I know was fixed.



Also, I'm still prettymuch convinced that the AI has to bring up upkeep. The AI really went into rebellion earlier by trying to pay it with increasing tax. If the "fix" was to simply remove it, it would be totally laughable.

I even remember having made a mod that returns upkeep to 1 dust/cp to resolve it temporarily.

With that the AI in the lategame had several hundred 21/21 fleets hanging around several systems and it took 10 minutes to load a savegame.

I haven't played with a single mod yet. I game on a mac and if it's anything like civ... ugh, I probably won't.

A little bit late (i have so little time atm) but i played recently i game with your mod Ail. And i have to say its already a huge improvment compared to vanilla. The reduced retreat spam is noticable and in the early game the AI ships are indeed no trash ships anymore and are at least able to kill a decent amount of my glass cannons.



But one thing i noticed the AI does not react properly imho and have hard times when u start using Bombers and Fighters.

Maybe I should rethink my strategy, but if I wanted ships in a hurry I usually just bought them with dust (I usually have enough when I'm playing) and I always keep my fleets upgraded to the most current design. I also usually give my custom faction ship building reduction traits (can't think of exact name right now).

On small ships I use very little defense, if at all.

Usually pack them with LR-Only weapons. Weapon-Composition may vary but preferably Kinetics.



Medium ships: Unless I got a bonus on Defense, like the Harmony, I don't really build the medium-sizes ships at all. They are bad as glass-cannons and bad as tanks.

I feel they simply are not cost-efficient. I might build very few as tanks without anything but defense to bridge the gap unless I have large ships.



Large ships: Big Omni-Tanks with primarily mid- and short-ranged weapons, one good armor-piece and repair-module.



I don't usually use the +Tonnage module anymore. It simply is not cost-efficient, even at 4x Hexaferrum.

If, at all, I would build it on large ships only.

I'd put the tonnage module on every single ship once I unlock it...

If you need to crank out ships in a hurry, you might want to think twice about this. A tonnage module can double the cost of a destroyer! Now if you can spare the production cost and you have time to build ships at your leisure, then sure, go for the tonnage module. I usually don't use it until later in the game when my systems are so strong they can afford the extra cost.

I'm fairly new to Endless Space and only played the Disharmony side of it and have only play the normal difficulty so far (so my answer may not be the best).



Anyways I've noticed the AI changes their tactics during the game several times so it would be hard to pick just one design that works for everything. I'm usually on my 5th or 6th design of a ship when the AI is on their 15th or 16th design of their ship. I've also noticed that if you use the same card a lot in battle the AI will start to use cards that counter the card you've been using a lot.



For the most part I give every ship all weapons and defenses and the same number of each type, but usually put more weapons than defense. I'd put the tonnage module on every single ship once I unlock it (more tonnage = more things you can put on your ships). The repair module is the 2nd best support module since it repairs the ship it's on in battle and repairs the other ships in in the fleet (and I think the benefit does stack, but could be wrong). I also really like adding fighters or bombers to my ships, they do extra damage to the enemy and I haven't ever seen the AI use point defense or fighters or bomber of their own.



And as far as I know the power module is not worth it for the tonnage it takes to use and the benefit it provides unless you find a ship design with a special that reduces the power module tonnage, then I'd probably use it, just on that ship.



Also for late game I still use the small and medium size ship designs. As long as You have bigger ships mixed in with them they usually survive and if they don't it's easier to build new ones than if you lost a big ship. Keep some defenses on them but they won't need as much as bigger ships since the bigger ships are usually targeted more than the little ones so you can put more weapons on the little ones.

hehe, I think I sparked an old discussion, sorry guys



I would really appreciate some feedback on what you find to be the best ships.



For example:



Cruiser, all melee kinetic but 1 melee laser and 1 melee missile, with 3 defense on each type, plus weight reduction, armor and repair.



Is the power efficiency module useful if you mainly go kinetic or is it only good with laser?



Late game do you just stick in 4 dreadnaughts or stick with cruisers?



many many thanks

I'd say: Play the same difficulty-level you usually play. This way the differences can be best compared to your usual playthroughs. (For me that was Serious)



I'd also say: start out by using whatever ship-design-philosophy you are used to and then adapt.

As glass-cannon-user you will probably have an easier time adapting to the changes than other players but it still should be rather interesting if your advantage is smaller than before.

Downloaded and will do a test run on weekend.



should i play on normal? Or using a specific fleet design? I am a glass canon user normaly didnt know how your templates will handel that.

I've always tested this on normal, since there the only bonus they get is the approval bonus. On higher difficulties they get tons of other boni aswell.



Care to try my new mod btw? ^^

mhh it was in february or march but there wasent a patch for a long time or?



i also remember that the Approval was extremly bad and they did had a rebellion. (at least without their Bonus from the difficulty) which is tremendous isent it? (+50 Approval and -90 Improvment Upkeep is confirmed on Endless)



maybe this bonus is motivating them too, to build infinite fleets of bad ships.



Yeah i forgot about that Upkeep disscount on Improvments maybe there lies the rub.

hello there :-)



I love the game, especially the gorgeous graphics and the gradual empire buildup.



But I do get a bit frustrated when it gets to the stage of actually defeating the endless waves of enemy fleets.



I have read about 'glass cannon' ships, which afaik are basically melee kinetics with little defense. Best way to go?



To date, genrally I use melee or long range kinetics (no idea which is statistically best) with one or two of the other weapons to mess with the enemy scientists.



cheers peeps :-)



edit: sorry should add this is in disharmony, also what do you think to the armour/repair upgrages, I always get them when available

That or employ some professional help (Not that I am insulting anybody here) to work on a brand new AI from scratch.



That would be worth, and I do mean worth, a expansion entirely devoted to new high level AI, that doesn't cheat.

It has to be so cause if i remember correctly the tax rates were almost always at 100% and in that cases and they still pay their ship crews not a single nanobot of Dust.



I hope the Devs will ask you for help Ail to fix this one day.

The way the AI cheats is with approval. They can usually afford higher tax-rates and thus maintain more ships.



I think on higher difficulty-levels they also get a discount on upkeep.

Ail wrote:
Who sayd the AI doesn't pay upkeep?

That's only true for the Harmony but the human player has the same advantage when playing them.



It always has done so. There even was a bug where the AI could go broke due to not handling upkeep correctly.

The devs eventually fixed it by having the AI stop making ships and building "Ind=>Dust" when they would have to increase their tax-right higher then where they would no longer be in "white" happyness.



I also made great progress with my mod.



And it turns out that almost all medium-sized ships are completely useless since they neither make good tanks nor do they make sense as glass-cannons.

I edited several savegames (removing my Steam ID) so that i can choose wich faction of that save game i want to play. ( I done that quite often to look behind and study the strategy of other Players in Multiplayer)



i also used that trick to exermine what the A.I was actually building...what ship desgins templates they made etc...



result was that often the A.I had no Dust at all and several hundreds of Dust minus per turn cause of the ship upkeep.



but when i reload the game from another perspective the very same A.I keeps on building ships and not struggling with the -1000 Dust per turn at all.



so thats why i came to this conclusion.

Who sayd the AI doesn't pay upkeep?

That's only true for the Harmony but the human player has the same advantage when playing them.



It always has done so. There even was a bug where the AI could go broke due to not handling upkeep correctly.

The devs eventually fixed it by having the AI stop making ships and building "Ind=>Dust" when they would have to increase their tax-right higher then where they would no longer be in "white" happyness.



I also made great progress with my mod.



And it turns out that almost all medium-sized ships are completely useless since they neither make good tanks nor do they make sense as glass-cannons.

Wait, the AI doesn't pay maintenance on their ships? No wonder why they always win economic victories so fast!!! Plus invading any of their systems is nearly impossible when they have like 10 fleets of extremely terrible ships. The ships are easy to beat but the fact that there are so many make it the hard part since you can't start invading until their ships are destroyed. Although once their ships are destroyed they usually don't produce much more.



I couldn't tell you which weapons to put on the ships but in one game I made a ton of ships with strong defense (so they're not destroyed easily) and put them all in separate fleets and moved them to an AI system. Each one of my ships attacked each one of their fleets. Although most retreated it cleared out all the AI ships and fleets there so I could invade.



Also I think it's ridiculous that the end of game score says I have the most powerful military if you combine all the AI scores together with like 3 to 5 big fleets, but the least command points out of everyone.

Sovereign wrote:
Exactly A.I. should pay upkeep maybe the solution is that easy.



And a maximum number of retreats per turn for the A.I. would be also improvment for the game experience alot (but maybe this wouldnt even be necessary if the A.I. hadnt one bazzilion useless fleets)

Yup, when I could play (last night before my game started to crash like crazy.. :cry: ), especially in this latest iteration... it was driving me nuts. I love all the added combat mechanics, but the constant retreating is bullpucky.