[Eagle of Fire]

Originally Posted by Philos73

Hello guys,

even though I answered Juogo's question I'm still a bit of a Newbie at this game myself.

So noone seems to have figured out my question on the Arbryls above? There is no way to unblock a lane blocked by the Arbryls? If they block the only lane out of a restricted area you cannot get out? Well, I abandoned the game in question and started a new one. Doesn't happen all of the time. Still kinda bugs me that I cannot get my hands on the Arbryls homeworld...

I'm not really sure of what you are talking about. You probably mean those red blockers which prevent you from entering a lane. Those things are lame: just shoot them down and get thru. If you can't it would simply be because you don't have strong enough weapons.

Now I have another question as well. The game limits the display on ship stats. If you build giant ships you can easily reach the limit of the display for energy supply and for weapon power. For instance if you put 8 to 10 Van Creek Hyper Splicers into a ship this will exceed what can be displayed in terms of generator power in the ship strength display.

My question now is - is that energy still available in battle just the same or does the program simply cut off what is in excess of what can be displayed? The extra energy is actually needed in battles. That way you can keep your shields up longer than the enemy does. The AI seems to tend to build underpowered ships.

It does work with the weapons though, since each weapon slot is handled separately. For example if you have more than 6 Hyper Drivers (or even stronger weapons) the weapon strength of your ship will exceed what can be displayed in the ship strength diagram. You can still use all these weapons as long as you have enough energy - but the question is - does it work likewise with the generator power?

The problem does not arise with shields and with propulsion speed though. I found out there is no use in putting more than 2 shields into any ship since it's more a question of having enough juice to keep them powered up than a question of absolute shield strength.

Same thing with the propulsion drives (intra starsystem drives). Once you have the Ion Banger (and that comes along early in the game) there is no need to use more than one propulsion drive on any ship. Normally only my very first ship will have the Tonklin motor. And that will be a small ship - since my homeworld will still be in the build-up process. As soon as I build my second ship I already have the Ion Banger - so I never need more than one propulsion drive. It is possible to bust the display limit for shield strength and propulsion strength as well - it just doesn't make sense to put in that many of these two. So the only problem is knowing whether generator strength actually gets wasted once you fit in more than can be displayed in the diagram.

I don't understand why you are asking the question. There is not much use for so much energy on a ship. There is also next to no use for shields in the whole game either. All you need is a big enough ship to be able to take damage in rare circumstances in which you happen to get in range of the ennemy plannets as soon as you exit the lanes (and even then I use those shields which don't use any power and are always on) and enough weapons to blow everything to bits.

The more engines you add, the further away you can go in one click. This is very usefull to get away from ennemy ships and out of range of planetary missiles... And thus why you don't need much shielding if any. The computer AIs are so lame... I often simply custom build ships with enough engines to slip past thru all the ennemy defense and colonise all their worlds they didn't bother to colonize themselves. The game is half won already.

Also, the more lane engines you put, the faster you will go in those lanes. Save a lot of time for long travel. Oftentime your home world and the surrounding worlds are very well developed while border worlds have trouble doing anything, so I often produce huge ships at my home worlds with a lot of lane engines and then retrofit them in the core worlds.

But believe me when I say this: even with the patch (which for me change absolutely nothing whatsoever), if you didn't win already before you even come close to getting to 2/3 of the total tech in the game then you are doing something wrong... This game is way too easy to win when you know what you are doing.