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Wicky -> RE: Did you know? (4/27/2010 5:45:31 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: lostsm
hey galactic hero!! you have gone so quiet
was the tip about troop transports and not having to babysit them?
this thread is [X(][:D]
Yep! You got it. Troop Transports was the nr.1 matter of my tip.
Since you guessed it right, I might as well explain it... you know you can design escorts with size 1500 and cap ships with size 200? Yeah you knew that... but did you also know you can design a ship as explorer with 50 weapons instead of a resource sensor, but then it will randomly try to explore enemy planets? And if you also set it's agressive mode to use "all weapons in range, flee at 20% shield" and it will try to raid enemy mining stations one after the other, until intercepted, and it will go back to repair/refuel, then keep on raiding enemy stations? Well well, it's all about what the AI does.
So, basically my tip is designing a troop transport in a special way. It will have it's primary goal set to load troops, then go idle. But we don't have to design it as a troop transport, do we? Hehe, of course not: a battleship with loads of weapons would be a much better design for a troop transport.
Let me explain the major problem of capturing enemy planets in a galaxy with 20 races with 80+ planets each: You have to micro your fleets (limited to 10), select individual troop transports to reload and capture, refuel them, repair them, wait for one single ship to refuel while the rest of your fleet is waiting.
So here is my "galactic hero" tip of the day: Scrap all your military ships. All of them :) Just redesign every ship as troop transport. Those ships will load troops, refuel and repair then go into Idle mode, when they are ready for action, waiting to be picked up with the "I" (idle) key.
And while normal military ships like escorts seem to be busy with patrolling mining stations which are already armed, you will now experience a totally new game, I call it "ping-pong".
Ping: you order loads of troop transport, which are really battleships.
They are now under AI command when built, will load some troops, refuel, and then wait. The AI does "pong" and puts them in the "idle" pool when finished.
Ping: you press the "I" key and everytime you press it, you select a fully ready for battle ship, and order it to capture a planet... maybe press I one time for capturing an outpost, 2 times for a developed planet and 4 times for a capital enemy planet.
Pong: The AI will now assign all those ships to capture the planet, destroy the spaceport and all vehicles around it, and when it's finished it sends you the message "colony captured".
At this point, you only have to order a s/m/l spaceport at this planet, drag a rectangle around your manual ships nearby and press "A" to put them back into automation mode. This means you don't have to care about anything anymore. The AI will automatically load excessive troops from the capture back onto the ships, they will repair/refuel, and reload lost troops at other next nearest colonies (coz that is their prime directive)
Basically all your troop transport will end up in the "idle" pool sooner or later, even those who have long battles behind them, or those which have been newly built. All you have to do is wait of them to gain in numbers. You assign them a task, and put them back into automation mode when you receive the message that their task is complete :) With this trick, I was able to capture like 50 planets per month with as little as 2 clicks per enemy planet.
In my current game, I have 0 escorts, 0 destroyers and 0 cap ships. But i have 200 troop transports. Each one has 95% weapons and shields, armors etc and just three or four troops. When I see a planet I want, I just press: I + rclick
This will select the nearest idle ship and attack the planet. Because troop transports only idle when fully loaded and refueled, it was always a fully battle-read ship which has been given the order.
Some minutes later I get a message, planet captured! I respond by building a small spaceport and put the ships around the planet back into automation. I don't care that it loads troops and refuels, all that matters is then when it is ready for battle again, it will be available in the idle pool by pressing "I" again.
If its a capital planet, I'd just press I+rclick+I+rclick... on it a couply of times and lots of "so-called troop transports" will engage in battle, wipe out the spaceport and land their troops...
And best of all, did you know whenever a ship is destroyed by enemy forces, the game will instantly queue a new one in your shipyards? And of course, because this ship is also a troop transport, and it's prime directive is also to load troops, refuel/repair first and then go into the idle pool too, you don't have to spend 1 second thinking about capturing planets.
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