Stealth

[Cheerio]

so im going to go out on a limb here... but it feels like trade is a little overpowered right now. with our access to resources at a much faster rate compared to other players and ability to harvest effectively 12 jumps away with cargo ships... its really easy to amass a huge DN, BC fleet before other players can really defend themselves (science excluded) and fleet isn't in the game... ok so maybe combat isn't well prepared to take on a mad trader? I guess i should think this out some more and let it play out...
disregard this for now i guess - maybe im just feeling a little too powerful as trade, when the leaderboards are up and i can compare to other players it'll be nice.

[Spartanius]

Everyone gets cargoships, its freighters that are special.

[Cheerio]

yes but 500RO is extremely limiting for every other specialization - i've been able to use cargoships for almost all my routes and still spam off a very sizable conquest fleets
freighters don't really offer much benefit in my book. you're better off setting up a new colony if your looking at harvest from 24 spaces away unless you are planning on stashing all your RO on one planet

- and when you can oneshot mining colonies (with a very limited number of bc - sorry, not giving up a magic number =p )... you can resource starve everyone within a few galaxies of you if you put in enough time

[Leedot]

It's a little hard to say really. The fact that the Defense Orbital Conversions and Mine Field Drones are busted really throws the defensive balance out of wack at the moment. Not that it helps someone going pure combat early on but it's definitely a significant defensive factor to consider. The combat players do lack any early game bonuses unlike Trade and Science so that's something we may need to look into further.

[Cheerio]

i guess i just feel like combat is at the mercy of everyone unless combat comes into the game with a trade alliance... unless they go the route of cruisers + advanced shipyards and go around with a 500cruiser fleet till they can make up some RO. I guess combat would work if you try to not be noticed, make your stuff really really difficult to take and then make a lucky nab at someones RO stock, make a PK and get lucky.
I think that traders are set up to be the big bullies in the playground but if you look at the actual win conditions its pretty even (although we haven't seen fleet yet)

[Zerosignal]

With RO accumulation being broken for any planet that accumulates less than 13 RO per tick, you get nothing on these worlds.

For science on your home world, in order to get RO you need 5 points in Mining... which is pretty extreme in my opinion.

In the long run science may have some advantage when researching those 150+ hour items but you have to survive until then, by that point a capable trader should be able to lock down most of the Jovian planets in the game.

[Cheerio]

yeah - this is the kind of thing im talking about
although, if you look at win conditions, a science person would probably want to ideally lock down like 25 good planets with obscene amounts of defense until they collect enough ore to collapse a bunch of stars and ascend in one go.

same for combat, except stash ore till you have one or two planet busters and scout out peoples homeworlds.

[Tsagoth]

With RO accumulation being broken for any planet that accumulates less than 13 RO per tick, you get nothing on these worlds.

This -should- be fixed now. You'll only get the RO every hour though.

[Spartanius]

freighters don't really offer much benefit in my book

50 Freighters + rank 9 smuggling + rank 9 blockade running + rank 1 money laundering and we'll see where the benefit is. I call it the Wraith strategy 0_o Stargate Atlantis anyone?!?!?! I shall Cull all your worlds RAWR

THIS ^ is why trade owns, we have ---> Options on how to take you down, we are ---> not dependent on other races to be able to do it, and we can ---> quickly switch strategies/options because of our fast build rate and quick resource generation as well as our ---> ability to build our largest ships on our most distant worlds/newest colonies(Matter Transmitters) in our empire.

Scenario 1: Trader vs Researcher - Researcher builds lots of stealth things to prepare for future wars. Trader has not yet declared war, but has researched smuggling to rank 9 for 45% culling bonus (hehe), remote harvesting to rank 9 for an additional 18% culling bonus, and money laundering to rank 1 to allow for trading with enemies/without needing to lift embargo, and has built a small fleet of 50 freighters. Freighter fleet moves in to Researcher's home world and in a period of 1 minute of loading time culls the entire planet's population. The Trader was able to setup a nearby mining colony and in less than an hour the freighters are out taking another helpless planet. When the Researcher finally declares war so the freighters will be fired on the Trader has prepared himself by researching Mercantile diplomacy giving an 88% chance of avoiding being fired at unless the researcher sees the freighters within the one minute window of loading time. It seems all of the efforts of the research empire were for folly as the WRAITH RULE SUPREME


Scenario 2: Trader vs Combat -Trader techs for max AMC, researches dreadnaughts (with skills max improvement is 520% increase in damage because of stacking bonuses which sets a normal dreadnaught up with more firepower than a super dreadnaught and just under 1/3rd the firepower of a monitor for 1/33rd the RO cost of a monitor and 1/9th the RO cost of a super dread). The trader has a potential of having the RO of building more than 3 dreads for every one dread a combat can build and in 10% less time per factory which the trader also has many more of which means the Trader has the potential of 27 dreadnaughts for every one of the combat players super dreads(smaller ships are more efficient, but take up object cap). The combat player is quickly overwhelmed by dreadnaught fleets of the trader.

Or the trader could just cull EVERYTHING RAWR WRAITH FOR THE WIN

[Cheerio]

^ this is why i allied with him. hes scary