Is the Horatio "Dux" a role playing nod to Horatio bring beautiful people even into battle? -60% civilian module tonnage doesnt strike me as in any way useful or practical. Does it still incur the pop growth penalty? Is there a reason to put more than one of these per ship? Is there a way to use the module without consuming the ship too?



"maybe there is as another race but the biggest just arent cost efficient across the board" Well ya they are Horatio..price of beauty and all...not suppose to be efficient.

Colonization cruisers can be an moderately industry efficient way to move population to your manufacturing/science/dust systems. A colony ship with high tier engine runs around 150-200 industry, and can probably hold 1-2 pop depending on your Storage tech level.



A the dux should be able to hold 7+ pop and costs ~600 plus industry. Slight savings?

What I find a bit meh is that even though effort was put in to make factions more unique via ship classes, all transports share the same focus: civilian module tonnage.



I personally would like transport hulls to have a little more versatility, maybe as support ships for certain factions.



For instance, UE could have it useable as a light defence vessel (armour-based), Sophons could use it as a fleet's main sensor ship, Horatio should just keep the full civilian focus, Hissho could use it as a repair ship, Cravers could use it for fleet speed, Sowers could use it for a light siege ship, Amoeba could use it for point defence, Pilgrims could use it as a light defence vessel (defence module-based), Sheredyn could use it as a light invasion ship (think marine commando transport), Automatons could get an cost reduction on all non-civilian support modules and Harmony could use it as an air to surface bomber.



The above is just an example, and by no means a solid idea for this. I would just like to have 6 hulls max with combat uses (depending on factions) rather than 5, as it would make gameplay more interesting.



Also, I think weapon ranges could be given more uniqueness rather than just following certain patterns, and instead of having a certain set style per range with a change of effectiveness.



For example, long range kinetics could be like a heavy cannon, dealing relatively accurate, high damage; mid range kinetics could be machine-gun like sort of how the short range currently is; close range kinetics could be more shotgun-like, hitting multiple ships at once with low accuracy, especially outside of melee range; long range beams could be actual laser beams that shoot like a sniper rifle with high accuracy but less damage than missiles and kinetic long ranges; mid range beams should be as-is; close ranged beams could be fired like gattling guns in the same proper-beam style as long range, with high close-range accuracy and many shots per round, but the lowest damage output; long ranged missiles should be as-is; mid-ranged missiles could fire in large clusters in a sort of area-of-effect, meaning a greater change of actually getting a hit, but a reduced chance of getting a high number of hits due to a reduction in tracking; and short ranged missiles could fire in a shotgun style, similar to kinetics, but with less salvos per round (maybe even 1 every 3 rounds) and greater accuracy/damage.



Also, I feel it might be interesting to be able to mix-and-match more in the ship design, so instead getting a choice of a single range per weapon type, you could say fill a ship with both long and short range beam weapon etc.

NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Colonization cruisers can be an moderately industry efficient way to move population to your manufacturing/science/dust systems. A colony ship with high tier engine runs around 150-200 industry, and can probably hold 1-2 pop depending on your Storage tech level.



A the dux should be able to hold 7+ pop and costs ~600 plus industry. Slight savings?

I do not have tested the new features of the Horatios yet, but the colonization cruisers you describe could synergize a lot with the ability of the Horatios to produce mass food. I mean that with a full food system, such croiser could be very powerfull for fast (& fat) expansion purpose.

I already wrote in the FAQ thread but let me write it here again.



I read the thread and played the game and I'm confused about the weapons still.



From what I played weapon seem to fire at all stages, so if it's like before Missiles are best at long, Laser at Medium and Kinetics at short what exactly is the advantage of using the others for their not intended ranges?



I mean I get that you'd maybe want to place all your weapons on long range to kill the opponent as soon as possible but what advantages do missles give at short range. The defenses always block 100% it seems so what advantage is there? I mean sure lasers seem to be more accurate at long range but if they do only 40% of the damage what use is there? I'd rather fire at 100% damage at little less accuracy. The DPS will be higher.



So what exactly are the advantages for each at different distances? I don't get it. Maybe I'm dumb I don't know...

Using a weapon outside of its intended range is a conscious decision to counter tech or change when you can use a battle card effectively. If the enemy is packing lots of long range weapons but you've focused on kinetics you're at a disadvantage in the "long range" phase because you're making poor early trades and therefore losing ships before you close to your effective range. If you don;t have missile tech setting your other weapons to long range will allow you to do greater damage before you lose ships, at the cost of loss in effective damage (and extra tonnage taken).

@Mew

In addition to what Autocthon said, the different weapon ranges also correlate exactly with how often they fire. Each phase of battle is 4 rounds long, and long fires once in the first round, medium fires twice (every other round), and melee fires every round. Probably the most important consequence of this is that you might be wasting damage with weapons at medium and long range because of the larger interval between changing targets once you've made a kill. Especially if you use the nosebreaker targeting, you could potentially have a lot of overkill damage that would have been distributed to the next target a lot sooner with melee or medium settings than long setting.