Very true Igncom1 - especially fleets with Heroes achieve crazy invasion power without any invasion modules whatsoever.



Hopefully they can rectify this in one of the expansion, it would be nice to see this vastly reduced for weapons and increasing a need for invasion modules and other modules which directly contribute to planetary assault.

As a new player of Disharmony, I found your guide to ES tremendously helpful. When will you publish a similar guide for "Disharmony"?



I've played only one game in the original version; it seemed clunky. Disharmony has fixed and polished much of what ES lacked, adding many features, so I would very much like to have your advice on the newer game.

Okay i cannot say that much about Ship loadouts and i agree mostly with ShuShu62. But i would change some points definitly:





Custom Faction / Race Design

Legendary Heroes - Never underestimate this. With this you can have Administrator heroes at level 3 immediately, you can pick the first labor perk, followed by the perk which gives +15 flat production. This is an enormous boost at the very beginning of the game as your home world will have twice the production compared to anyone else.

Legendary Heroes : Due the cost increases, the Hero nerfs this trait isent that important anymore.

Avoid United Empire, Cravers and Pilgrims. They’re just not that good compared to the others.

Craver Affinity was always one of the stronger ones no idea why the OP was thinking it was weak. You have to play agressive and you have to expand fast but well thats the idea of a Locust race isent it?



Pilgrims were UP before yes but now they are totaly fine.



UE affinity formerly was only good for massive Monohull ship strategy Imo cause its bonus wasent any benefit in the early game but now they are totaly fine.

Ensure you get the technologies which increase your scientific Endless Space FIDS Science output. In particular the one which gives a flat +40 Endless Space FIDS Science science to your systems as it’s a lovely push to your science! Really, don’t slack on science!

was nerfed to +15 ... so its not THAT important anymore...but still if you arent at war i would still build it asap.

Don’t build defensive improvements everywhere. You don’t need them. Focus on defending frontier worlds. The dust you save from not having defensive improvements on systems away from borders with opponents, can be used to maintain more ships. Which you can used to actually defend said systems properly.

If your enemy is starting using soldiers in Disharmony i would build defense improvments now. Also when i have a Hissho or Craver as my neighbour i build them in very important Systems(if there is nothing better to build).

Terraforming and Exploitation

Needs an complet overhaul due the changed planet stats in Vanilla aswell as Disharmony.

Heh... with the game changes, the conversation has certainly changed a bit.



Now... more than before. Each Range selection matters. Where you might have opted for mid-range kinetics fro half your ships and mid range beams for the other half (does anyone really ever use missiles these days?), now you must also cover all three ranges.



If you follow the balanced fleet of stacked ships approach... that would require 6 ships just to cover all the variations if you stack each ship. It only takes two ships to balance all the combinations if you balance the ships as well as the fleet.



From my perspective, the conversation has come full circle making the OP right... except for the bit about the missiles.



And for the record, my current fleets tend to carry two ship types, the defended laser/kinetic at optimal range ships paired with the long range kinetic glass cannons. Until I can build the uberhulled self repairing short kinetic dreadnought and then nothing else really matters.

i replied just to comment on this and i disagree with you tali, first off your using extremely weak numbers for the enemy ships anyone fammiliar with basics for games like this knows not to do a low balance, ssecondly it is actually VERY easy to counter someone using your stratergy, i have done it before, your example ONLY works if the enemy only uses spread and if they play their battle cards right they can rip through your defenses really quick i consistently force enemies into retreating for my wins even when they are better armed and outnumber me.



all it would take is one battle to figure out your stratergy and adapt, mixing the 2 types into a single fleet helps but in my experience anyway it just makes it easier to take out your heavy hitters in long range phase especially if i play my formation right

by the way lasers tend to do more accurate damage by the end of long range phase then missles do, all in all tho it could go either way but by end of the battle you will have lost msot of your fleet besides in regards to defenses specifically, if you figure out exactly how the game calculates the defenses dual defense is invaluable against omni defense, so far i have had very little use for flak cannons as by the time your/their missles hit i have already taken out 3 of their ships and in your example your damage is spread across all my numbers.



but yea bottom line is, your opinion isnt math, its your opinion on dropping a nuke on a air raid shelter, if i go into battle with 3 deflectors 3 shields 3 flaks i would just fly straight to the enemy and hti the self destruct before a passing astroid destroys me.



if your talking math 3 reflectors 5 shields 2 flak is much more efficient than your example

EvilTactician wrote:
Thank you for the input, not sure that the specific destroyer comparison entirely works though. First, I am not suggesting to use destroyers as general purpose ships. I'll clarify that this strategy is intended for medium sized and above, ideally Dreadnoughts. (Though it did explicitly say the latter)



Second, I would never mix weapons in that capacity (equal load of multiple weapon types just doesn't work). There must be a primary weapon type, the secondary one is only to force your enemy to fit all-round defenses on their ships or suffer the consequences. A lot of players don't bother, as your design illustrates: it has no reflectors. Therefore a design with a few secondary kinetic gun batteries would quickly dispatch of those destroyers.



I do appreciate that further clarification is required - the game has so many aspects that a lot of tweaks will be required to any guide to 'perfect' it. It's obviously aimed at newer players or those with a medium level of experience, anyone more experiences is going through their own strategies to throw other experienced players off. And the nice thing about ES is that a lot of different strategies can work.

I find that destroyers are by far, the best ships in game, for one very good reason, their ratio of cost for tonnage and output is far greater. they make unstopable ships if given an advanced balance of all different weapon and defensive modules.



I do hope you try the build of ship.

Taliesyn wrote:
It's far easier to hard-counter a fleet of identical split-weapon ships than a fleet of two or three varieties of stacked-weapon ships. That's hard, cold, math, not opinion. Hard-countering part of the fleet leaves you defenseless against the rest. (The actual counters to the high-defense battleship fleets are glass cannons, anyway.)

I guess this topic is done. EvilTactician found the quoted post offensive, and my refusal to edit it to his tastes even more offensive.

Taliesyn is totally right with his point.



The AI uses Omni-Defense for 2 of it's ship-types, Battleships and Dreadnoughts.

It uses Dual-Defense for 2 of it's other ship-types and mono-defense for only one of it's ship-types (Destroyer).



Dual-Weapons are an excellent choice against Mono-Defense-Ships because you always have them countered.

But 4/5th of the ships fielded do not have mono-defense and against any ship that has Dual- or Omni-Defense, having a single weapon-type is much better because it renders 2/3 of their defense-investement useless whereas Dual-Weapons would only render 1/3rd of their defenses useless and Omni-Weapon would make all of their defenses a good investment and most likely breach none.



One more thing: Use missiles only on small ships.

Reason: One ship can only attack one other ship per round (each phase is 3 rounds) but missiles travel a whole phase and most likely do massive overkill. So a big ship could kill 3 small ones in one phase when using beams or kinetics but it can kill only 1 when it uses missiles.

EvilTactician wrote:
Hrm I find the bit on Flak particularly intriguing - on the rest it's a matter of preference / opinion. Either method works and I prefer mine as it's less subject to hard counters.



I'm currently working on all weapon modules for my mod, and the info on Flak is -extremely- useful for that. Are you absolutely positive that flak fires each round? It makes quite a bit of difference to what I'm trying to do.

It's far easier to hard-counter a fleet of identical split-weapon ships than a fleet of two or three varieties of stacked-weapon ships. That's hard, cold, math, not opinion. Hard-countering part of the fleet leaves you defenseless against the rest. (The actual counters to the high-defense battleship fleets are glass cannons, anyway.)

Indeed, I couldn't agree more. But 'our' work in the Entrenchment area has dealt partially with that by applying percentage based bonuses to systems. It's still not perfect but in the games we tried this has helped at least a little while without causing said unconquerable issues.



Ultimately the problem is with how the game works, as you say. Hopefully the expansion will correct a great deal of this, as will further enhancements to the modding capabilities of the game.

From a logical pursuit, the way it currently works makes sense with a ships weapons being able to harass a whole number of civilian orbital targets, and even ground ones for the destroyers transports and corvettes who can land.



With ships possessing troops to land and themselves to assist the invasion modules should probably work as a multiplier to the base effect.



However the problem lies in that systems are very bad at defending themselves, And as defenses increase with population even with defensive improvements it in the end comes down to the fact that a single ship has more attack then a system population can defend against. But what if you push it too far? and leave the early game with unconquerable systems?



It is a dilemma from multiple pursuits indeed.

I've released a couple of guides for turn-based strategy games (notably, Civilization V and XCOM) and was asked to do one for Endless Space as well. It's just gone live, and I'd love to get some (constructive) feedback.



You can find the guide here:



http://www.manapool.co.uk/endless-space-strategy-guide/

I did mix up the invasion stuff in one of my mods just to see how it worked, in the end a ships invasion amount is with the addition to the ower: it has, making dreadnaughts with lots of guns and the like kinda the best invasion ships around.



If ships had a set level for the invasion power without the addition of the ower: then you would find invasion modules to be much more useful.

Hrm you appear to be correct about the Flak. Interesting.



@davea - Fair enough on the primary weapon types, especially if you run 3 different ships in your fleet. I'm not sold on invasion modules though, I am yet to see their use as invasions are already incredibly quick (in vanilla anyway, I'm trying to counter that in my mod.) Have you found yourself in situations where a ship equipped with invasion modules has actually proven useful?

I agree with Taliesyn. Each ship should have an equal ratio of all three defenses, and a max load of one weapon type. In a fleet, you should have at least two types of ships, perhaps as many as four. You should have two differerent weapon types, maybe three weapon types, and maybe a fourth type which has nothing but a variety of ground attack modules. So a fleet with 3 DN should have a missile DN, a beam DN and a kinetic DN. I usually have an invasion cruiser variety which is a "second line" ship, it has no weapons or defenses or not many, just ground modules.

Hrm I find the bit on Flak particularly intriguing - on the rest it's a matter of preference / opinion. Either method works and I prefer mine as it's less subject to hard counters.



I'm currently working on all weapon modules for my mod, and the info on Flak is -extremely- useful for that. Are you absolutely positive that flak fires each round? It makes quite a bit of difference to what I'm trying to do.

Flak actually fires once per round, in rounds 2, 3, and 4 of each phase. One flak will shoot down *3* incoming missiles as long as its intercept is higher than the missiles evasion after modifications - that is pretty easily tested. You actually need at least 13 missiles to overcome 4 flak. Missiles explode in round 4, yes, but they're marked for destruction long before then.



My point, however, is that a fleet with 8 pure beam ships and 4 pure missile ships will ALWAYS do more overall damage to an equally-sized enemy fleet than one where every ship has 2/3 beams, 1/3 missiles, as long as the opposing fleet use using appropriate defenses at all. (Meaning that if they are glass cannons or went all deflector for some reason, there will be no difference because there are no applicable defenses.) It's not hard to guard well against a 2:1 weapon type ratio when every ship always fires its weapons at a single target, with limited focus firing. It's much harder (read impossible) to defend simultaneously against both ships with 12 beams and ships with 12 missiles or KEWs, both in the same fleet.



Look at it this way: you come in with 7 battleships with (and I'm using actual numbers here) 8 beams, 4 missiles, 7 flak, 7 shields, and 4 reflectors (and assorted other modules not relevant here). All my battleships come in with the same defenses as yours, but 4 of mine mount 12 lasers, while 3 mount 12 missiles. Both sides, with 7 flak, would be untouched by the opposing missile ships. That leaves us with your 7 ships attacking 7 shields with only 8 beams, meaning I'd take some structural damage on each round, but not a whole lot. Four of your ships, however, would have to fend off *12* beams with only 7 shields, meaning you'd probably lose those four ships. That means that while we'd start phase 2 (long range) with 7 ships apiece, we'd start phase 3 (medium range) with me at 7 lightly or moderately damaged ships, and you with 3 fresh ships. The resulting focus fire would mean that you would likely lose your entire fleet without taking out a single one of mine. (This does, for the sake of simplicity, ignore heroes and the interplay of the combat cards, and assumes equal tech level.)

In that case it would be 8 lasers and 4 missiles - 2 is obviously not going to do much good. (I'm quite specific on distribution ratio in my suggested builds)



Note that Flak doesn't fire that often and 1 Flak would shoot down 1 Missile in your example. (It seems like Flak only triggers when missiles are about to hit - which makes sense as Flak is a short range defense measure)



Early on, beam weapons are not much of an issue, by the time they come fully into play you definitely need reflectors as they're pretty lethal at that point unless you're extremely confident that you can take the opponent out before reaching the medium range phase.



That said - there isn't a "one strategy wins all" (despite what some nay-sayers floating nothing but missile destroyer swarms would like us to believe, they're pretty easy to counter in my experience.) But I know mine works both in multiplayer and against the harder AI levels and provides new players with a decent tactic until they're confident building things around their own play style.

I used destroyers offhand. An actual destroyer at the level I indicated, if using defenses at all, would often have 3 flak, 3 shields, and one reflector (reflectors can often be left off entirely early on when ballistic weapons only fire a few shots due to their terrible accuracy at long and medium ranges).



The concept of using two weapon types is sound, but it needs to be done with dedicated ships. 8 lasers and 2 missiles on a battleship is pointless, as the two missiles are defeated by adding a single flak. (The same applies to using 2 KEWs, too - one reflector easily trumps two ballistic weapons at along range.) Instead, use beam ships and missile ships or beam ships and KEW ships - it's impossible to fully defend against both at the same time, meaning the enemy WILL take losses. Beats the hell out of 'keeping them honest', and doesn't cost you a single dust more.

Thank you for the input, not sure that the specific destroyer comparison entirely works though. First, I am not suggesting to use destroyers as general purpose ships. I'll clarify that this strategy is intended for medium sized and above, ideally Dreadnoughts. (Though it did explicitly say the latter)



Second, I would never mix weapons in that capacity (equal load of multiple weapon types just doesn't work). There must be a primary weapon type, the secondary one is only to force your enemy to fit all-round defenses on their ships or suffer the consequences. A lot of players don't bother, as your design illustrates: it has no reflectors. Therefore a design with a few secondary kinetic gun batteries would quickly dispatch of those destroyers.



I do appreciate that further clarification is required - the game has so many aspects that a lot of tweaks will be required to any guide to 'perfect' it. It's obviously aimed at newer players or those with a medium level of experience, anyone more experiences is going through their own strategies to throw other experienced players off. And the nice thing about ES is that a lot of different strategies can work.