This is all sound advice!
btw: I put MOOrion3 back on the shelf as I walked out of Fry's yesterday... GALCIVII is more than enough for me I realized... I don't need another 4x strat game... this one has me all tied up.
Maaaan... guys, a new problem arose for me last night. Go ahead and laugh at my pathetic being: w/comps AIs still on level 2 from the bottom (dunce I think) (on a tiny galaxy):
Iconians/Thalans/a custom race that I designed to be ALL military/and 2 minor races:
Everything went fine for most of the 3+ hr game.... I had the best military going in the galaxy... My custom race went all Ballistic attack and armor defense... I went lasers and armor defense along with shields.
I still have 'small' hulled ships... and OUT OF NOWHERE, my custom race opponent (The Judicators, I know...lol. what a cool name ehlol) they "found" some "Ranger" class ship with crazy high ballistic attack rating and SERIOUS armor... OUT OF NOWHERE... and now... my 3 ship "fleets" have no effect on this thing...
And I spent most of my treasury on these fighter ships I was building only to have to 'upgrade' all of them as new technologies were coming out (and before I knew it, I lost just about ALL of my treasury). I'm also wondering if there's a simple way to simply "upgrade Defender MK1 - Defender MK2" across the board for every single model of that name... VS. having to click e a c h ship one by one and do the 'upgrade'..?...
Anyway, now I have no clue how to mess with this "Ranger" class ship when I'm still on 8 HP small ships. Maybe I simply suck more than anyone when it comes to these games, but I'm not understanding for the life of me how I'm going to be able to 'hang' with the AI when it's economy is = to mine... if it's "finding" Huge hulled ships out of nowhere...
And please don't take all this as whining, guys...(I'm in love with the game, etc)... and simply talkin out loud : )
What's a Ballistic attack? There are only Mass Drivers(Guns), Missiles and Beam Weapons(Lasers). I suppose you mean Mass Drivers.
Missiles are easily the most powerful, but take the longest to research. Beam Weapons are weaker, but are easy to research. Mass Drivers are cheap, but they are the weakest of the 3 options.
"Maaaan... guys, a new problem arose for me last night. Go ahead and laugh at my pathetic being: w/comps AIs still on level 2 from the bottom (dunce I think) (on a tiny galaxy):"
To learn the game, do what I did. Spend weeks reading the wiki and pestering these guys, then hit the galaxy and own it. Read 'First Game - The Altarian Resurgance'. Challenging Difficulty, Bright AIs, Large Galaxy.
"they "found" some "Ranger" class ship with crazy high ballistic attack rating and SERIOUS armor... OUT OF NOWHERE... and now... my 3 ship "fleets" have no effect on this thing..."
The Precursor Ranger is an ancient ship built by the Arnor, whose power was out of this universe and beyond anything you can do. Also, this Ranger is just an archaeological find that your custom opponent managed to dig up and realized that it was still working.
Since it was dug up and hot-wired into service by the Judicators, it appears to come 'out of nowhere'.
For now, don't use small hulls. Turn up your research, get Medium Hulls, grab yourself some nice Torpedoes if you can, or else go for Phasors, and research the defensive path you need to stop the Ranger's attack.
If you choose Good Alignment, you can research the tech 'Arnorian Battle Armor'. This is a powerful armor that 'lives', and regrows itself. It was created by those very same Arnor, who built the Ranger. If the Ranger is using Mass Drivers(aka. Guns), then Arnorian Battle Armor will do a good job of protecting you from it, provided you add enough of it on your ships.
To see what kind of power the Arnor really had, play against the Dread Lords(who are a group of 100 rebel Arnor). If you think the Ranger was powerful, wait 'til you see who created them. Wyndstar has apparently seen a Dread Lords dreadnought with an attack rating of
2000!!!