AI War "Tip of the Day" -- What do you wish you'd known?

[Lancefighter]

attack move is no longer alt, it defaults to x nowadays

[Ktoff]

whatwhatwhat?

Apparently i don't play the game enough atm..... But thanks

[Lancefighter]

question: are these tagged by expansion? for instance, stuff regarding cloaker starships or hybrids would only come into play when ZR or CoN is enabled

edit
also, one of mine mentioned spider guardians.. I'm fairly sure that was spider-nest era, but I'm not sure any guardians do engine-damage. Yet. Add them soon 

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Tip:

Defending the path between a strategic target and a wormhole is often similar to "Tower Defense." Experiment with FRD mode for ships (V+ right click) and different turret placement to build incredible defensive outposts.

[Ktoff]

Tip:

*You can prioritize planets on the galaxy map. This helps you to plan your long-term strategy by marking high-value targets.

*Tired of the standard planet names? Create your own list of planetnames and insert it into the altplanetnames.txt in the game directory. Any game that you start afterwards will take the names from your list instead of randomly generating them.

[Vinraith]

When faced with a cross planet attack, keep a few transports near your largest concentrations of ships. If you need to rapidly redeploy those ships to deal with unexpected AI movements, the extra transport speed may make the difference between keeping and losing whole systems.

[Winter Born]

The F1 key lets you look at all the ships in the game and their tooltip descriptions. Keep hitting F1 to cycle through all the mark levels and back to the current planetary ship summary. You can also use Shift+F1 to jump right back to your planetary summary.

[Collic]

You can add written notes to the galaxy map as well. This can be useful if you need to remember something important over a long game.

[Ozymandiaz]

Bring some Mobile Repair Stations with you if you use Leech Starships or other capture units.

Maybe a given for old vetereans, but handy to know fior new players I guess

[Sarnian]

Keep a transport near your fleet when attacking a hostile planet. If a high-value unit (like a siege starship) is being targeted and running out of health, you probably won't be able to repair it as it's being hit too often. Load it into the transport, then unload again a moment later -the attackers will have moved to a new target (if available), giving you time to repair the damaged ship back to full health.

[Winter Born]

You can use the new Reference Tab backwards to figure out how to kill a tough opponent like a superfortress.


Q: If I have something hard to kill like a Superfortress how can I find the best ships to kill it?

A: Select the target (Superfortress) in the drop down, then sort the Win/Loss column for "Loss" These are your winners (the ships you want to use) because the target(Superfortress) will lose against them.

[lanstro]

You can micromanage the teleporting ships to avoid getting hit by any projectile weapons (ie non-instant hit weapons).  Put the teleporters into their own control group, teleport in to the target to hit it, teleport away straight afterwards, and then teleport back in to hit again once they are ready to shoot again.  Keep repeating until there are too many enemy shots and missiles following your teleporters, then exit that planet via a wormhole.  All the shots that were following your teleporters will disappear and you can start fresh again.

[Admiral]

Capturing Ion Cannons really helps out in the early part of the game and for planets that you think will get a lot of enemy traffic.

Bringing Leech Starships (or parasites) and Engineers (preferably Mk III on free-roaming-defender mode) with you when you attack a higher tech level planet early on the game can get you a bunch of nice Mk II and III ships before you'd otherwise be able to get them.

I almost always research Engineer Mk III off the bat so I can have a fast-moving repair crew go with my primary and secondary attack fleets.

[zebramatt]

Watch out for AI Eyes!

These not only operate as Warp Gates for the AI but will respond with extreme force to any incursion of a player army outnumbering the AI ships on the planet by more than 2:1. High level AI ships will continue to warp through the Eye until between a 2:1 and 1:1 ratio has been re-established, so be careful!

Of course, some skilful players will no doubt see this as an opportunity...

[Winter Born]

The dificulty of Waves is set by the dificulty setting of AI #1 -- If you want easier waves keep AI 1 at a lower dificulty.