Colony or Outpost?

[JetJaguar2000]

Obviously a lot remains to be seen as far as how the game develops, but as of right now things seem off to me. Mugen, I think you are overstating things, though. My entire point is that I don't have to worry about other players fleets at all, since even my undefended planets can hold off up to 20 dreads at a time. I would be really surprised if anyone can field 20 dreads any time soon.

The idea of using smaller ships for "general conflict and defense" doesn't add up. What kind of conflict can you even hope to get involved in with these smaller ships? You're obviously not going to be attacking planets with them, since they have absolutely no chance to defeat one, and they contribute nothing to the defense of a planet that can hold off 20 dreadnoughts on its own. So again, what is their role? From what I can tell, you have a tiny window of opportunity to use them if you catch someone in the act of deploying an outpost or colony ship, but once that colony is established, forget about it.

That said, I'm not sure "dread rushing" is actually possible either. This brings up something that has been bothering me too: on the server I have been micromanaging the most, between my 4 colonies and 10 outposts I have maybe 500 RO. This is not enough to build anything big, even if I did research up to capital ships. I am stuck building lesser ships that are useless.

Meanwhile, in my other game, I have barely done anything beyond setting up one colony and a couple of outposts, and I have something like 7k RO. Granted, I am a Trader in this game, and I have a jovian planet next to my home sector, but is that really enough of a difference to justify over an order of magnitude difference in RO production? I feel like the first game is already lost for me, since I don't have the RO production to sustain the higher end techs (despite colonizing every RO generating world I've found, only to have them generate +1 or +2 with the colony inplace, WTF?). As a result I've hitched my wagon to the non-RO ships, which I now realize are worthless.

[VanderLegion]

The idea of using smaller ships for "general conflict and defense" doesn't add up. What kind of conflict can you even hope to get involved in with these smaller ships? You're obviously not going to be attacking planets with them, since they have absolutely no chance to defeat one, and they contribute nothing to the defense of a planet that can hold off 20 dreadnoughts on its own. So again, what is their role? From what I can tell, you have a tiny window of opportunity to use them if you catch someone in the act of deploying an outpost or colony ship, but once that colony is established, forget about it.

Sure, smaller ships may not be useful for attacking colonies, but you have more than a "tiny window of opportunity" when it comes to outposts. Outposts don't generate population, so their defense doesn't change over time. The only time it changes is if you set up orbital defenses (minefields etc). Otherwise, outposts are easily captured with a small fleet of small ships. If someone has 5 colonies and 20 outposts, and you go capture their 20 outposts with small ships, they're not gonna be getting much income to do a lot about it while you work on building your bigger ships to kill their colonies.

That said, I'm not sure "dread rushing" is actually possible either. This brings up something that has been bothering me too: on the server I have been micromanaging the most, between my 4 colonies and 10 outposts I have maybe 500 RO. This is not enough to build anything big, even if I did research up to capital ships. I am stuck building lesser ships that are useless.

Meanwhile, in my other game, I have barely done anything beyond setting up one colony and a couple of outposts, and I have something like 7k RO. Granted, I am a Trader in this game, and I have a jovian planet next to my home sector, but is that really enough of a difference to justify over an order of magnitude difference in RO production? I feel like the first game is already lost for me, since I don't have the RO production to sustain the higher end techs (despite colonizing every RO generating world I've found, only to have them generate +1 or +2 with the colony inplace, WTF?). As a result I've hitched my wagon to the non-RO ships, which I now realize are worthless.

Being a trader makes a HUGE difference in RO production. My trader game I've made a lot of 500 RO cargo ships, while my non-trader game is probably around the same place as yours for RO.

[catswift]

Sure, smaller ships may not be useful for attacking colonies, but you have more than a "tiny window of opportunity" when it comes to outposts. Outposts don't generate population, so their defense doesn't change over time. The only time it changes is if you set up orbital defenses (minefields etc). Otherwise, outposts are easily captured with a small fleet of small ships. If someone has 5 colonies and 20 outposts, and you go capture their 20 outposts with small ships, they're not gonna be getting much income to do a lot about it while you work on building your bigger ships to kill their colonies.

I would agree with this if cruisers could not be auto-converted to beam defenses. Since no one really knew about this hidden feature, there was a fairly large window in which a lot of back and forth with little ships happened.

Now I know I can rush cruisers, capture a bunch of outposts and insta-protect them all in less than two days. Mammetum is going to be a whole different ball game.

[Tsagoth]

Now I know I can rush cruisers, capture a bunch of outposts and insta-protect them all in less than two days. Mammetum is going to be a whole different ball game.

One of the bigger problems identified during beta was that mining outposts were easily captured, since they could not build ships/orbitals locally with no population. The cruiser/battleship conversion was put in specifically to address this situation.