Black Nova Traders

Why so overbalanced towards the sector defenses as opposed to planetary defence? A ship with a good cloak will get through sector defences easily a lot of the time, and all a large space-borne defence force does it let people exploring know that somebody wants them to stay out of that system.

Focus more on a good planet defence.

And 10k IS pretty light for planetary defence, hell, my ship carries more fighters than that, and I'm not even trying to build up an aggressive ship.

First time I've ever played the game. Give a newbie a break, okay?!

The first rule regarding planetary defence is that you can never have too much.

Stack on fighters, torpedoes and energy until you think it's a comically absurd amount, then add some more for good measure.

Nautica you've done really well for a newbie, quite honestly I considered you one of the bigger threats to my complete (errr, I mean Our complete, really, cross my heart) domination of the galaxy. I consider ecky the other, because both of you are just too damn smart. Consider my hostile takeovers a measure of respect and not simply random plunder.

If I could find ecky I'd totally try to wack his worlds.

By the way 200K fighters just might save you, simply because I don't want to risk that yet.

I'll post composite (without listing # of planets) in a minute.

Gee...so, umm..."I raped you because you were the prettiest", huh? Sorry if that doesn't make me feel any better.

Actually, I'm finding this game REALLY fun--have wasted away HUGE chunks of my weekend on it. And it is *quite* the learning process. I'll do it differently next game--not spend so much time wandering aimlessly, and not spread out to so many planets so quickly. Also it took my about half my turns to figure out the whole Trade Route thing.

And you all are right about defenses--what is apparently a stout defense involves RIDICULOUSLY LARGE numbers of fighters and torps.

Still wish I could:
a) figure out which tech level to increase to allow for more fighters on my ship. I don't think it's Hull, because I had a larger hull but lower fighter capacity before I tried to retake my system from Capn Chewie and got blowed up. Now I've got smaller Hull size, but >2x the fighter capacity.
b) find that Global Trader Settings controls so it doesn't try to automatically trade all my energy away at each Port. I'd rather handle that manually.
c) magically acquire several hundred more turns, as that's what limiting me these days.

Composite of all worlds:


..ore....organics..goods.....energy......population...credits.......fighters....torps
30,020 55,879 15,976,939 2,837,275 97,509,270 498,397,079 770,849 966,459

I do want to say that the only reason I am messing with people is because it is fun. If anyone womps my key worlds I damn well say they deserve the plunder and peeps. Right now I am certainly the best fighting ship in the game, but going out and wasting 100+ turns wacking someone's planets means that the guys figuring stuff out have that many more turns to beef up their money to build an even better ship than mine.

As far as I am concerned, anyone who wacks me knows something I don't and I'm damn sure going to do what they want to learn it, rather than gun for them (since they'd just kill me again anyway!).

Good luck to those allied against me, and Foley I not only paid you off, I told you how to make damn good cash and built a few worlds for you, considering the plunder I got from your information was worth maybe 5 million total, giving you that information and 19 million (sorry didn't realize the bank would take a million from the transfer) I think you probably came out ahead, if you don't think so, tell me what you think would even the score. I am very reasonable to anyone working with me, provided that they can give me a decent understanding of what their time is worth.

Oh, and I do want to say that I want you guys to think of me as River. That is, if you mess with my fellow Browncoats I will do my damndest to hunt you down and kill you with my bare hands.

No worries if you're gunning for me, hell I expect it at this point. But I will *not* call my alliance out just to mess with anyone that attacks me, consider me the kinda guy that would pilot a Firefly...opportunistic, deadly when needed, and honorable when the chips are down. I've got no ill will against anyone, but I am going to make my mark on this 'Verse damnit, even if everyone allies against me!

Biggest problem you had was naming a world Hyperion. I've always loved the Ousters (in fact, I built a few ships for them based off the B5 wars system) and I errr just hadda take it over.

Computer bumps fighters - I can carry over 50k. (Which means if you have less that 25K fighters on a planet/sector I am prolly going to whomp you if I find it)

Trade your energy when you're planning to go for cash, its worth it. HOWEVER, there seems to be a bug where you only trade energy on one leg of the trip. If you can handle the manual stuff, then more power to you, I automate quite a bit of my empire knowing that I lose efficiency doing so.

As far as I can tell, there are two ways of magically getting more turns:

Cheat (ie. make a dupe account) - ok so you can scout out the universe in total with two dupe accounts. Scum like this should never be allowed to play again. Hell ANYONE who dupes should be castrated and left to stare at all the Playboy bunnies rubbing hot oil on each other for eternity. It simply isn't cool to have more than one account...hell I am a killer, and I am more interesting in killing off dupes than taking over any other world.

Sleep = seems to me that you magically wake up with hundreds of turns to spend hunting down Nautica's. I mean trading in goods that your worlds have made overnight so you can bump your computer up to 15 and wipe out those pesky little worlds that other people think are really swank.

Hope that helps you Nautica and I am glad that you're having fun. I mean no harm by attacking your stuff and hope that you totally surprise me and wipe my ship at some point in the future. Afterall, this game is the first after about a year, I hope next game develops some nasty competition!

You tried to retake the system? I feel my automated systems should have notified me about that.

BTW, its computers that boost fighter capability. I had to upgrade before I took your system.

Edit:
Quick tip: Don't have your worlds produce resources. If you want them to manufacture their own base material, fine, but if there's a base on the planet there's absolutely NO reason for them to build Ore, Goods, or Organics. A planet should be building more energy than anything else (torps or fighters) but never dedicate more than 50% to anything but credits unless you are in trouble. Its quicker and cheaper just to generate credits than to spend dozens of turns unloading all the stuff you sell.

Does anyone remember the downsides to landing on a planet? You risk losing your ship since it will stay to add to a planets defences rather than using the EWD right?

^ You really don't want to land around Homecoming or Prom time.



Meanwhile -- who just started dumping sand out of the sandbox??

Where is everyone as well? All this talk of people conquering planets and the like and the most interaction I have had with anyone is Chewie once trying to scan my ship in a random sector.

So, is this game worth getting into?

Well, to be fair, there's 5000 sectors and about 15 active players. Any system you go to has about a 1-in-60 chance of having someone/something in it, and I only have personal holdings in 5 sectors.

Is there any advantage to having a lot of sectors (other than keeping your resources harder to find?).

If you have more sectors, its harder to 'wipe you out'. I try to keep my planets "worthless", with only population, fighters, and torps on them. Keep your credits in a bank, and that way even if you're destroyed or a world is captured you only lose a fraction of your wealth.

I prefer a few good sectors to "hundreds of worlds", but at some point a player gets so big, wealthy, and powerful that you just can't beat them unless they get stupid.

Last time around, Soma was giagantically unassailable, and only lost because he attacked a planet without remembering to buy fighters or something like that. Once you blow up a ship, the tech of the worlds that player owns goes down accordingly.

well, i'm close to have 2 million fighters and torps on each world, when i hit 10 of each maybe i'll pay someone to sell you info on one world and see what happens

If I remember correctly, it was even better than that. He was using an "attack, get ship destroyed, rebuild, attack again" strategy and forgot to buy an escape pod, so he lost ownership of all planets.

i just prodded a hornets nest by capturing, then blowing up, one of faisents planets

Ooh! This is going to get good!

it was only a widdle planet, but it was fun

That planet was one I took from Nautica, hadn't even really thought about doing anything with it. Of course, no I know who you are in game so I can hunt you down pretty easily.

As far as I can tell 2million fightes is overkill at this point and a waste of 100million creds that should be in the bank making you money.

Sure, I can't take that world yet (unless my stealth is higher than your sensors ) but the amount of production of energy just to keep them active is time not going to making more creds (and if you're not making the energy, you're losing fighters...)

and dans one planet, a lot of materials and colonists down too...

got my colonists working overtime... i think they're mexicans

i've one planet churning out ore, 3 churning out weaponry - my aims to build up a planets defences, then get it producing goods - i'm very much looking at playing a long and short game in terms of cash and property.

i feel bad. but in a good way

Yes, at IGN you transfer from your bank (upto 25% of what you have) to another player's ship. You lose 5% on the transfer though.

BTW I'd pay really good money for the location of one of Ecky's better planets, if only to file away for later...