Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Dark,
As to how to achieve a military victory, it's easiest if that is the only victory condition, or the only one with capital control victory. it's possible to do it on other settings, especially if you find the enemy's planets quickly, and eliminate all but Earth or Bolivar then take that last, but it's extremely unlikely as a scenario. Military victories are fun, but time consuming ways to play the game.
As to fleet composition, this honestly is a matter of taste. I like destroyer wolf packs for exploration and strike forces to slow up large enemy concentrations. Since a fleet must stop and fight if it's in a square with enemy ships, using interceptors or destroyers to slow down advancing enemy fleets while you build defenses can be very effective.
However, that said, having a large fleet of battleships is very deadly as well.
The real advantages of the different ships are these:
Destroyers gain 1 more square of movement making them by far the fastest ships. They lose this advantage in fleets.
Edit: They lose this advantage when part of a fleet that has anything which is not a destroyer.
Frigate allows salvage of capital ships giving 1 credit per destroyed capital ship in a fight. For instance, in the tutorial game I played yesterday, the AI sent a fleet of 21 interceptors, a destroyer, and two battleships to a planet. When I destroyed this fleet, I gained 3 credits income because of having a surviving frigate.
Cruisers can repair other ships. This is more important in defense, but it can be useful when traveling across the board, as cruisers can bring ships damaged by hazards back up to speed before they engage the enemy.
Battleships can fire on more distant ships, and hold fleets together. The second is the more useful ability. Long range fire is inaccurate, and while it helps, it's sometimes less effective than one might like.
When we first began play testing, I used almost exclusively destroyer fleets. They were fast and hit fairly hard. However, as we retooled the AI and he began using more and more battleships, this became a more and more dicey proposition. Further, once we introduced the larger ships' abilities, it became harder to ignore the benefits of having the others.
Nowadays, I generally like to have a colony ship, as many battleships as I think I can afford, one to three cruisers, a frigate, and round out the rest of my income with destroyers. I send these small attack fleets out to colonize and rampage, while I build larger fleets to take out hard targets or for assaults on the capital.
One of the beauties of the game though is that it supports a number of play styles. As Michael mentioned earlier, he virtually builds only three or four large fleets, and just sends them around the board colonizing and destroying enemy forces. I prefer a number of smaller attack fleets. One of our other beta testers uses something of a hybrid. Aaron generally uses mostly battleships and little else. All of these work, they just take various amounts of time to accomplish.
If you'd like a different style game, but don't wish to go off normal mode, you might try matching optimal start. This provides both alliances with three earthlike planets to begin with. It's a subtle change, but it makes a large difference over time.
The game takes a while to really understand. Our beta testers were hitting around a month or so before they hit their stride, but once you begin to see what your preferred playing style is, the game can be very rewarding. Then you switch difficulty levels, and you have to change I'll warn you, I know with me at least, going up difficulty levels forced a complete rethink of strategy.
Take care,
Jeremy
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