The planet defenses.

[Tsagoth]

2745/7136

Seriously.

Edit: In beta people were slashing at each other with fleets of 800 cruisers.

[zarkwizard]

So you need 63 dreadnaughts or 234 battleships. Seriously devs?

Ok that's funny.. As you level up in skills you need a lot less ships. Home worlds are designed to eliminate grunt rushing, something which we saw a lot of in beta. If you have rank 8 skills you might need 15 dreads to take a regular home world size planet. If you get up to planet killers it's a whole other world of damage.

We saw fleets of 800 Cruisers taking out home worlds and capturing them. In the later game things start moving REALLY fast. The universe is young. Right now it's about building your empire to withstand the test of time.

[Strongbad]

These players will never recover IMHO particularly when a new orbital takes 24 h to build, their hw will remain starved a long time

[Strongbad]

So instead of warships the way to win is to spam indestructible colonies , all because that makes for better strategy??

[catswift]

When life gives you lemons...

[ChickenHawk07]

So instead of warships the way to win is to spam indestructible colonies , all because that makes for better strategy??

I think Zark just disproved this theory with the PKs, you get one of those and it sounds like no matter the defense of your colony you're going to see it vaporized. Think 'Return of the Jedi'.

[ravenzachary]

Strongbad - the way to win is to expand like mad land grab style until you bump into your neighbors, build up economic wealth and talent points until you can pursue your victory condition. If that's Warlord, use Dreadnaughts and Planet Killers to take out other players. If that's Trader, hoard wealth. If that's Researcher, collapse stars.

Warfare is only the requirement of one skill tree - Warlord. Wars happen, but if you can avoid them, you're better off. Warfare in the endgame is where it gets interesting. Warfare prior to the endgame is frankly, just a waste of resources.

[Strongbad]

If you don't fight for the best planets early on, you loose, you won't see endgame!!

[ravenzachary]

If you don't fight for the best planets early on, you loose, you won't see endgame!!

It depends on how you define "fight". If you define fight as racing to the unclaimed planets and taking control of them before other players get there, YES. If you mean warfare, then you're going to spend way too much time and resources early on fighting small wars that keep you small while other players who took the peaceful route, grow faster than you.

[Strongbad]

When I started, there was 3 players nearby, and 3 systems to take, I smashed them all and took their stuff and won...I don't see how trade would have really done anything here except make me loose those systems and the game. If you don't have any income I don't see how you can research your way out of that. Later on, I met another aggressive player, it turned into a slugfest and he won, the rest of the people in the sector are now toast in oh so many ways..

Trade your way out of that.