Best Race.

[Master Marcus]

Originally posted by Thue
People seem to like heavy-duty defensive systems on their ships. But I found that (at least in end-game) a much better tactic was just making the ships fast (hard to hit) and then using the extra space for more weapons.

I agree, though I personally like the "heavy duty defense" approach. That shows how incredibly customizable is MoO2's ship design "workshop" - and at the time of its release in 1996, this was considered almost revolutionary but overly complex.

[The Mad Monk]

I tend to build mixed fleets of specialized ships:

'Ships of the Line'or 'Slayers': Best defenses, best weapons without scacrificing defense, some capture ability (tractors or transporters, whichever is more compact); meant to neutralize enemy heavies before they can come into play, and absorb fire for the other ships. A must for hitting planetary defenses.

'Reapers': Standard capture vessels, first battleships, then titans (I find I rarely use doomstars--too boring).

'Escorts': Best defense, best non-heavy beam weapons, typically cruisers, occasionally battleships; specifically designed to take out fighter/missle swarms.

'Strikers': Best missles with 2-shot magazine, minimum defense, typically destroyers; designed to lay down massive barrages (before anyone else can move), and get the hell out. Can dump entire magazine and jump in one turn with fast missle racks.

'Stalkers': Best heavy weapon with armor/shield piercing ability, minimum defense, cloaked, typically battleship; designed to sneak in, blow up largest defense, get out.

'Watchers': NO weaponry, best defenses allowing for equipment, any/all 'wide effect' items (jump dampers, wide-spec ecm, etc.), cloaked if available, typically frigate or destroyer; designed to carry all that nifty stuff so that the larger ships don't have to (at greater space and construction cost, to boot).

[Admiral]

despite all the enthusiasm towards the plasma cannon, i find that i can build a few achilles/structural analyser/Hv Gauss/Disrupter ships (usually titans, sometimes doomstars) and can take out 10-20 ships a turn. Admittefly. this can get boring...

[Like2frolick]

Personally...I don't like Plasma Cannons.

Yeah, they're effective, and if the opposition get's em while you're using MIRV Nukes and ENV Fusion cannons, you have to go whole hog to catch up(I've had that happen before..the freaking MrrShan got Plasma-Cannons and Class VII Shields without me noticing....and I had Class III and MIRV Nukes..But I was at the other side of the galaxy, and had better research, so I went whole hog for physics, and caught up before they finished killing the few outposts at that side of the universe)

But..if you have Plasma Cannons, and decent shields...basically the game is over.

[Bkeela]

Psilion are my fav.

[Thunderfire]

Creative is overrated. Those 8 points can be spent
much better if you know what you want.

[Shatter]

Favourite Race

I prefer this custom race:

Subterranean Low-G Homeworld
Lithovore -10 Ground Combat
Warlord -10 Spying

I like the race simply because it will ensure almost unobstructed expansion, -any- planet will become at least a decent science or production center and many of your worlds will be able to build battleships and titans very fast. (often you'll get 28+ pop gaia worlds from critter protected systems, kinda nice) And I hate the usual struggle with food and freighters on starting colonies and command points when you can start cranking out ships.

Or: Unification, Subterranean, Creative (8p) (which seems rather easier for advanced games, but possibly worse for pre-warp or average)

Or a blitz race:

Unification, Telepathic, Warlord + bonusses to production, science or homeworld.

I usually try to go for positronic comp, neutron blaster and class III shields for ships with Pd, Co, Env fusion beams for defense; Hv, AP, AF mass drivers can be deadly to ships too.

Shatter