Well, if you destroy all their ships on the first shot, they never get to fire. So, it's not useless, but yeah, I wouldn't rate it real high either...

Hi!

Not exactly. The higher the firepower of your fleets, the better it gets. Super Warrior race is the only one that can make real use of logistics: the more ships, the bigger the firepower. Enough of FP and there will not remain anything to fire back in the second round of the combat.

BR, Iztok

Let's take a typical fleet with 100 attack and 150 hit points, no defenses and three ships in the fleet. A typical battle would go like that:

Pre-Battle: 100 / 150 vs. 100 / 150 (attack / hitpoints, only half of the attack hits)
After first round: 66.6 / 100 vs. 66.6 / 100
After second round: 66.6 / 66.6 vs. 66.6 / 66.6
After third round: 33.3 / 33.3 vs. 33.3 / 33.3
After fourth round: 33.3 / 16.7 vs. 33.3 / 16.7
After fifth round: 33.3 / 1 vs. 0 / 0, if you have the luck to be rated as the strongest design. If you are unlucky, then the other one wins. In either case, you expect that only one ship of the original six ships survives.

Now with Super-Warrior:
After first round: 100 / 116.6 vs. 66.6 / 100
After second round: 66.6 / 83.3 vs. 33.3 / 50
After third round: 66.6 / 57.6 vs. 33.3 / 16.7
After fourth round: 33.3 / 40 vs. 0 / 0

So with Super-Warrior, you are winning and you are left in a better shape. Even if that is synthetic example, it shows the use of Super Warrior: Win battles and keep your ships alive and ready for the next bout.

So, a Super Warrior ability is useful in the following situations:
1. You fight an opponent on par when you expect a lot of space battles to happen and want to grind him down. It is useful for a war of attrition.
2. You want to free a planet from its defenders. You can then use heavily loaded cargo hulls that pick off every defender with the first salvo.

Having said that, I still prefer Super Breeder.

Sorry but i disagree. I think this is one of the most powerful super abilities. I think if you use it you will see why. If your ships dont have defenses you will notice that you will talke damage even if you have 10X the offense of your enemy; because they can fire back. If you attack with a huge fleets of small shipos you can still lose a couple. With the super warrior, when you attack, you can get out withoput the lose of a single hitpoint if you take out your enemy in the first strike.

I t hink this is the only way that small or maybe even tiny hulls are useful without a lot of miniturization to get weapons, defences and engines at the saem time. But then, with super warrior you can forego the defences mostly. (not necessarily entirely). Depends if your enemies have enough ships to go on the offensive and for how long.

IMHO, focusing on either tech or military spending can be very efficient. In my games, once I have enough planets and structures, I usually "go for the kill" where I stop expanding, stop improving my structures, stop improving my planets, etc. I then put 100% into research and research far into the weapons and defenses branches. I also always go for at least medium hull or large hull with decent miniturization.

Once I feel my tech is good enough, I then stop bothering with researching, and go 100% into military spending. I then focus all my attention on building my powerful military.... I do not stop until they (meaning everyone else) are all Dead!!!

Spore ships are extremely efficient. The problem with spore ships is they take out all population making it difficult to pay the costs for new planets. What I used to do is I would get rid of all buildings on spored planets, meaning I only pay for the colony structure. That way I don't run into the red while killing the galaxy. I usually never bother with improving conqured planets... it take resources and time to do so, and I would rather just continue destroying everyone!

Then again, I have only played up to the "challenging" level (one above normal).

Oh and always, always go for bonuses to economy and bonus to morale with ability points.... who cares about the other crap when you have a rich treasurey? Who cares if other races have natural bonuses to soldiering when you are much more technologically advanced due to a stronger economy AND HAVE BONUSES to soldiering anyway due to the soldiering techs you have researched?

IMHO, the ability point system when you set up a new race is heavily unblanced toward the bonuses to economy and morale.