but he wrote "qued", so no matter what it was improperly spelled.

i'd say that's diction: choice of words to convey a particular meaning. but it's all linguistics to some extent.

nice try but

Couple questions I have.....please keep in mind I still am playing dl, hope to fix that soon when I get a few bucks.

1. Where can I find the "0 year victory strategy"?  I have an idea on how it can be done, but I really would not want to waste time doing it. Seems its good for boosting your metaverse score though.

2. I find that defending my colonys with ships in orbit is a waste of time (playing on masochistic or below). Does anyone really spend a lot of resources defending colonys?

3. What is the 1hp bug/error?

4. when setting my science on very slow. Does this just effect me, or  all races? Because it seems the computer players are not effected. Though with tec trading this can be offset.

I looked for post on some of these things. There are so many in the forums, it just seems easier to ask here then to spend all day looking.

Thanks for the help in advance. Also I hope my spellling was not taht bad. lol

Sorry, One more thing.

Playing good is the most evil thing you can do. After locking in good, you can be as evil as you want and the other races still love you. This can really be exploited.

The only real victory is when you stand on the runes of the last surviving races homeworld and eat thier young!

If you're talking about the technology rate at the game setup screen, that is a cost modifier to all techs, so it affects everyone equally.  Galaxy size also has a cost modifier to techs.

1. I'll PM you my ZYW write-up, but it is for DA games, not DL.  You hould be able to apply some of the basic ideas to DL though.  Let me know if you have any questions!

2.  I never leave ships in orbit unless they are repairing or on my planet with the Spin Control Center.  I much prefer to have mobile defenses than static ones, and not let the enemy get near my planets to begin with.

3. I'm not sure what you are referring to here.  Maybe you mean that when a ship is upgrading it drops to one HP?

4. One thing to consider is that a higher tech rate setting will consequently increase your game score, because you generally will be doing things faster overall.

Well said...spoken like a true predator!

Sentient species taste better...

I don't defend my planets in the traditional sense. to stop troop ships, which is all you really need to be careful of, just place an empty hull on a planet. then use your battle groups to destroy approaching vessels. Simple.

I think it's when you have a ship down to 1hp, but in a battle, the opponent cannot breach your defenses to kill you and you them.  So a stalemate is created and the person with te largest attack (and defense?) wins the fight with 1hp remaining.  If your fights are chosen correctly, you can go indefinitly running on 1 hp.

The one thing you will need to adjust for DL from KP's ZYW writeup is the fact that you won't be using Spore Ships to do the fighting.  You'll need to learn Planetary Invasion.

Well Thanks guys.

A couple comments.

Sole Soul:

your right, I was talking about technology rate. The computer must be killing me on research. I dont mind, I just steal thier tec's when I take thier planets.

KzintiPatriarch:

Thanks for the PM on the zero year win. (though I have no idea what a spore is yet). I really need to get the expanision packs.

I dont defend my planets either in orbit, I use very fast long range ships (cargo hulls loaded with engines and one gun) to kill transports before they group with escorts or enter my space. And if fast enough, return my attackers to safe area's on same turn. Works great if the enemy has you out numbered and out guned. Also my transports are loaded with engines so I can recover a lost planet the very next round. Really slows the enemys advance when they gotta keep wasting transports to take the same planet.

I also like playing the gigantic games, many stars, many planets, max races (random). So max tec always happens. (What I dont like is that the other races still have discovery spheres everywhere after they have max tec.)

mADDYman:

The empty hulls is a good idea, You could direct hostle attacks where you want that way. (seems the computer always gos for undefended planets first, many times with unescorted transports)

Loupdinour:

Still no idea about spore ships, But if I could get planetary invasion fast enough, maybe I could take someone out fast. I will have to see if I could do that, never really tryed.

You know, all those years I spent playing wing commander must have been for a reason.

Spore ships come into play in Dark Avatar.  Each race got given a Super Ability.  Some get an ambush attack if they initiate the battle, others can rally people of the same ethical alignment to their side when someone declares war on them...then there is one that enables a module to put on a ship.

A ship with that module will auto-win a ground combat, but leave the planet at a rediculously small population as well as toxify the air.  Essentially, they let loose an organism that destroys all life on the planet, then recolonize it with the little number of people on the ship.

These ships don't need population to fill them up, so you could fly an empty cargo hull ship towards a planet, then upgrade it to a spore ship right next to the planet and invade it.  Whereas if you do that with a normal troop ship, you wouldn't have any troops really on the ship to invade with.

Spore ships reduce the time involved to take people out do to less micro-management, as well as letting you devote your research to other parts of the tech tree instead of running for Planetary Invasion.

Which is why Information Warfare and Mass Drivers are your friends!

With Mass Drivers and two transports (as you would have if following my write-up) you might be able to take out the homeworld.  PI certanly wouldnt score as high when using Spore, but it could be done.  I'll fiddle around with it and see what I can come up with.

Sentient species taste better...

In my last game I put that to the test. I took over a homework with 2 tandard transports. both carried 1000 people. I had 2000mil people up againest rough 16000mil, I did this 3 or 4 times through out the game and 1/4 times it suceeded. I used different methods of invasion. surprisingly mass driver lost and information warfare won, micro soldiers also lost along with Tidal disruption.

When I used info warfare I managed to get 3000-4000 people on my side. I had their entire empire under my cultural influence which aidded my invasion.

Generally speaking, Information Warfare is one of the best attacks to use, especially once the AI have "established" themselves, as they tend to keep their morale levels right on the cusp.  When invading a world that has at least 8 billion, you can usually sap off at least 1000 soldiers, if not 2000.  In general, figure 1000 soldiers for every 4 billion above 8.  At below 8 billion, figure on about 500.  In the end, all you really need is the higher soldiering and tech advantage.

In order to get PI to work in a gigantic ZYW, a lot of changes are needed.  Research order would be about 80% different, and your racial setup would also be significantly changed.  I dont think you could score as high as when using Spore, but when I have a chance, I'll figure something out.  The biggest problem will be to get enough troops to the enemy homeworld by April 8th.

Grats to Snarkotamus for his highest scoring game yet of just under 300k!    Did you try using the Swindle or go for a more straightforard approach?

Thanks to Loup and Silver for always being helpful too.

Sentient species taste better...

In addition to them running the red line for morale, they typically have morale structures that in DA/TA can be nullified to create even MORE troops upon landing.  But we were talking about DL strats here....move along, nothing to see here.

~sweeps his spies under the rug~

I'm using my "evolving hybrid ToA swindle". It is a twisted pepretration of ruthless diplomacy (usually 200+%), influence, war profiteering, and plain old-fashioned devious backstabbing. I still lack the patience to grind out a huge military score, so I am concentrating on improving the front-end scoring.

 sounds impressive.

hey KP, are you still interested in the D&D game? if not, it's totally fine. i actually wouldn't mind a smaller group.

same for SS.

Still interested, but no idea at this point if I'm still able, in more ways than one, time being one of them.

Status update in the appropriate thread mayhaps?  I'm not even sure where we stand, except that Neilo has internet again, which is obviously a good thing.

will do. maybe tonight, but probably tmrw some time. though i did try to get everyone to check in about a week and a half ago.

Same here Dys...my free-time has been seriously reduced, mainly because I'm employed again.  Like Sole Soul said, what's up with everyone else?  Are people close to being ready to play?

Sentient species taste better...

But that's a good thing, right?

In most ways yes...but it does reduce my gaming time.

The Empire broke through 33 million today!  Congrats everyone!

Sentient species taste better...

Piz is itching to play, SB seems ready to get stuff going, Neilo asked me about it the other day. not sure about DA, but i think he's probably still in. my sense is that they want to start, but Neilo and DA in particular still don't have a firm grasp of exactly what that entails because they've never played before. i can completely understand about the time constraints, too. i would greatly value your experience and insight, but on the other hand i think experience could frustrate you a bit. i'm sure it'll be slow going at first, partly due to everyone learning the game (Piz played 2.0 once upon a time, so he'll still be learning the 3.5 rules). plus... well, given the group, i think there will be a lot of goofing off and out-of-game chatter.

i think what i'd like to do is schedule a "training" session with those four. run through a few combat encounters, level up a couple times, and deal with some non-combat situations. i think it'll give them all a firmer grasp of how the game actually works. and then i'd like to get started. i think until we get some momentum into the campaign, it'll be better to keep the group small. there's certainly no reason your character couldn't come in after we've already started.

Congratulations on the new job KP; especially in these times it's quite an achievement in itself