The more homeplanets the merrier?

[x4000]

It's a fun version but very different.

That's pretty much the goal, in general.  I view it as being almost a quasi "deathmatch" mode to use the term from other RTS games, especially when you max out the planets.  But this is also something that gets a lot harder as the game progresses, because you have so many weak beating hearts to lose.  I think this is one that tends to feel very overpowered, but then you will inexplicably lose at the wrong times if you aren't careful.  So, like you say, a very different sort of strategy to it.

[laxrulz777]

Havings said all that, I would say that I found 3 planets to be INCREDIBLY easy (to the point where you may want to consider tweaking some of the ship caps). It's a small enough number that you aren't that much more vulnerable (in fact, I found that on many map seeds I could get a nice little corner triangle and actually have FEWER points to defend then if I'd just had one system). Also, you still get the max ship cap (whereas with 8 planets your ship cap will never go up). I cruised through an 80 planet map in about 4 hours (whereas my previous 80 planet maps were 8-10 hour affairs).

[x4000]

Yeah... this is pretty much where I'm still accumulating more data before making any shifts.  Thanks for the input, though -- that definitely adds to my store of data.  It's entirely possible that some sort of shift might be needed, but what specifically that would be I can't yet fully say.  I'm as concerned over the influx of resources as I am over the ship cap, to be honest.

[laxrulz777]

The resources is a weird think. My sense was that the huge resource influx is more of a trap than anything else. I found myself (with 8 planets) ramping up production so much that I quickly hit my energy cap and found that I didn't have sufficient reserve energy to fortify the 8 or so wormholes I needed to defend. Energy is at SUCH a premium (as someone already pointed out, 8 independent people would be able to build reactors on eachother's planets) that it just changes the dynamic for build prioritization.

[x4000]

That's certainly a good point as well.

[El-Ravager]

I am currently in a game agaisnt 2 lvl 7 AIs, sitting on a fleet of over 7.000 MK2-4 ships and I am now adding starships to the mix. That is at 6 1/2 hours of game time. I started with 3 home planets so the 7.000 is close to my aboslute max for ships, but I have yet to upgrade one ship type and capture one tech so I could get my fleet up to over 9.000 xD

I have about the same points as the AIs have combined and from the graphs I have more MK2, 3 and 4 ships then they do individually. I think if I just took my 1.600+ Raiders out right now, I could bomb the AI progress all the way back to 1 by destroying all of the datacenters that are left. Id loose the lot of them but it might be worth it...

I am not really complaining, but I dont really feel at a disadvantage compared to the AIs right now, not like it was with one planet.

[Haagenti II]

There is of course the obvious DIY-balancing method of ramping up the AI: 9 or so would do the trick

[El-Ravager]

I realize that of course. I guess the fact that you really play like 2+ people is not fully advertized in the little confirmation box at the beginning. That is just talking about having more resources. Of course fleet size is a kind of resource, but its not really the 1st thing to come to mind.

[OniRyo]

Well -- the AI does get 16 raids at a time against you instead of the normal 8.  And if they should happen to slip through and take out any one of those planets of yours, you're history.  Often those multi-planet starts can end sooner than you'd think just from that.  And the AI will also be correspondingly larger in general, even with a lower AI Progress.

So if you lose a single home planet you lose? I thought whatever team had to have ALL home planets wiped to lose, 8 starting home planets means you have to lose 8 specific key planets to lose. It would be like if in multiplayer if a single player lost his/her home planet everyone instantly gets a loss. Not really understanding the logic behind losing 1 out of the 8 planets causing a full loss unless I'm misunderstanding something - which could easily be the case since I'm still on the core game (plan to be getting the expansion fairly soon though, just haven't had much time to play lately...sucks ).

[x4000]

Well -- the AI does get 16 raids at a time against you instead of the normal 8.  And if they should happen to slip through and take out any one of those planets of yours, you're history.  Often those multi-planet starts can end sooner than you'd think just from that.  And the AI will also be correspondingly larger in general, even with a lower AI Progress.

So if you lose a single home planet you lose? I thought whatever team had to have ALL home planets wiped to lose, 8 starting home planets means you have to lose 8 specific key planets to lose. It would be like if in multiplayer if a single player lost his/her home planet everyone instantly gets a loss. Not really understanding the logic behind losing 1 out of the 8 planets causing a full loss unless I'm misunderstanding something - which could easily be the case since I'm still on the core game (plan to be getting the expansion fairly soon though, just haven't had much time to play lately...sucks ).

When a single player loses any home command station, that player loses all of their command stations.  As long as any player on a team still has one or more home command stations, then the game is not yet lost.  So if we play two player and you have four home planets and I have four, then if I lose one of my home planets I lose all four -- but yours are unaffected as usual.

The reason for this is to make the multi-home-planet scenarios a tad more balanced, basically upping the risk/reward cycle.  Otherwise, the multi-planet starts are extremely easy and low risk, which would be a problem.  Note that you don't need the expansion to use a multi-planet start, just click multiple planets in the galaxy map when starting the game.

[TheWordWillSetYouFree]

Shouldn't the AI progress increase by 20 each time you select another home world?

Makes sense noh?

[x4000]

Shouldn't the AI progress increase by 20 each time you select another home world?

Makes sense noh?

Actually, it's much worse than that.  It treats you as having more players per each additional homeworld you select.  So, for instance, with two homeworlds there are twice as many waves, and the reinforcements are much stronger as well.  With five homeworlds, it's 5x as many waves, etc.  That's vastly, incredibly more dangerous than a mere 20 AI Progress, and is closer to what happens in multiplayer games at the start.