How do you set up (and play) your multiplayer games?

[Nenad]

I'm just curious how people play their multiplayer games. I would like as much as information as possible but here are some questions I am specially interested in:

• With how many allies do you play?
• Which difficulty setting?
• Minor factions?
• Available ships? (Simple, Normal, Complex) Do you turn off any kind of ships?
• In game: Do you have some specialization system with tech unlocks?
• Any other multiplayer-related in-game strategies/tactics?
• Do you use voice chat or text?

[Tharrick]

My games tend to be 2 or 3 player, difficulties 5-7. We tend to use fallen spire, zenith traders, human resistance and rebellions. Complex ships, with core shields off.

We tend not to specialise too much with unlocks, we each unlock the things we would normally do in a singleplayer game. Tactics include using one or two players' fleets to attack while the third hangs back to defend if necessary. And we communicate through voice chat, or play as a LAN in the same room

[Nenad]

My games tend to be 2 or 3 player, difficulties 5-7. We tend to use fallen spire, zenith traders, human resistance and rebellions. Complex ships, with core shields off.

We tend not to specialise too much with unlocks, we each unlock the things we would normally do in a singleplayer game. Tactics include using one or two players' fleets to attack while the third hangs back to defend if necessary. And we communicate through voice chat, or play as a LAN in the same room

Ahh, LAN in the same room, how I wish we could do that. So you don't turn on Golems? Why?
And is it hard playing with complex ships?

Thanks for the answers by the way!

[Tharrick]

Sometimes I have golems, sometimes I don't.

Complex ships aren't too hard, I find, just more varied.

[Irxallis]

- Allies: 2 people in the same room

- Difficulty: 7

- Minor factions: varied, but we always have:
--- Golems and Spire, at the moment one on easy and one on hard (trying to graduate to both on hard)
--- Dyson
--- Traders
--- Human Colony Rebellions
--- Hybrids (non-advanced ones)
--- Others are also introduced, but it depends on what we feel to have this particular game.

- Exclusions: we never turn off any ships. And we absolutely love core shields (similarly to us 'loving' hybrids).

- In game:

If Hybrids are present in the game (and lately they are ;-) ) I specialize in Gravity turrets, Military Stations III, turrets and fortresses (in this order) - mostly Basic, MLRS, Missile, Laser, Tractor ones.

My role is to fortify those worlds which are to be the 'border worlds'. Meanwhile my partner focuses more on Economic Stations III and offense - she loves Raid Starships to complement her fleet ships. We both always get to tier 4 fleetships (at least the triangle and one more), starships are used mostly to deal with AI Eyes or as a support to the fleet. I always unlock Cloaker Starships - I love those. Ah, and I am also responsible for scouting (scouts mk2, sometimes mk3).

One additional constraint: we play in such a way that we always start with the bordering worlds. That way we never play with the same ships - even if she takes the ship she knows (which is not that usual), I get something I don't know very well. This is important, as it reduces the number of bordering hostile planets and additionally allows us to help each other from the first minute.

Until now we have always played on Realistic map style, it is the most unpredictable and interesting one from our point of view.

- Our USUAL Tactics:

First thing we do is to build a miniscule fleet of ships, even 10-20 is enough and go gate raid bordering systems. Especially hers (I am way better at micromanagement). One of those bordering systems will be a lv1 system - that one will lose the command station. Colonize it before the first wave hits, place a forcefiled on the wormhole bordering the home planet and get all 4 waves over there. Ah, that world needs to have Military Station placed next to the homeworld warp - even Military Station 1 (under a forcefield) with a small help of a fleet and 1-2 gravity turrets will be enough to hold that first wave.

What more... first Zenith power generator is mine (fortresses). We always turn on the 'build reactor mk2 and mk3 on every planet you own' and build them (sadly, manually) on every planet of an ally. Most of those generators are obviously paused. We get like... 30-40 planets on average 80 planet map and try to select 2-3 chokepoints we can fortify and get all those pesky waves. Due to the high number of planets we possess we don't have too large problems with knowledge and respecialization to offense and I get the economic stations mk3 eventually as well.

We usually have two roaming fleets, both on offense. We also have a defense grid which is very hard to breach (fort lv3 + fort lv2 + fort lv1 + lots of tractor and gravity turrets under a forcefield and those other turrets, and Military Station 3). In case something really dangerous appears (say, 'hard' spire exogalactic wave) we pull back both our fleets and engage enemies with everything we have.

Large waves are greatly harmed by two full caps of Pysite Spire Attritioners. Before the Penetrator change we used also as many Xampite Attritioners as possible, but now we use them sparingly.

If Zenith Trader visits a 'proper' world, we try to place a Superfortress there. Takes a lot of time, but is so worth it.

Until we fortify our borders we do not attempt to attack any homeworld.

AI homeworld attacks: we neuter one homeworld of all guard posts and then we attack the second homeworld doing the same. When we have two lonely homeworlds one of them gets two caps of raid starships (tier 1, 1, 2, 3) under a cloaker starship and the other most of ou fleet. We try to destroy both homeworlds simultaneously to prevent Avengers or +100 AIP bonus.

Our usual game takes ~20~30h.

- Communication type: voice chat. As in: "Let's make a pause to eat a dinner." "Just one more planet please...".

[Wingflier]

Right now I've been playing with 2 people I recently introduced.
We've been playing on 7.
No minor factions but Cross-Planet Attacks.
Normal or Complex ships.
It all depends on the game which strategies we use.  Something really interesting one of my teammates did was Tanks + Frigates + Siege Starships.  It's slow as hell but god does it pack a punch and it counters just about everything if you micro it right.
Voice Chat

edit:  No mines, no core shield gens

[Nalgas]

• With how many allies do you play?
• Which difficulty setting?
• Minor factions?
• Available ships? (Simple, Normal, Complex) Do you turn off any kind of ships?
• In game: Do you have some specialization system with tech unlocks?
• Any other multiplayer-related in-game strategies/tactics?
• Do you use voice chat or text?

Occasionally there are as few as three of us, but usually these days it's anywhere from 4-6.  It's massively harder with that many people, especially when half of them haven't been playing as long and we're mostly playing for fun because not everyone is a hardcore RTS player, so we've been playing on 6/6 for the past few months, and it's moderately challenging without being frustrating.  When I've played with only two of us when we're both "games are Serious Business" people, we've completely stomped 7/7 with little effort, though.  It's much easier to keep two people coordinated than six (and also much easier to deal with the little tiny waves instead of 2340734602 ships at once that I've gotten used to).

I like Golems and the Dyson Sphere and stuff like that, but we've been playing pretty vanilla games lately so people can figure out what the heck they're doing without having to learn how to deal with so many things all at once.  We do still use complex ships without disabling anything, though.

We don't specialize too heavily, but different people will sometimes get higher level turrets of different types and build them for each other's systems that need them, and some of the more aggressive people tend to go for bigger offensive fleets.  I'm the biggest turtle of the group and usually end up being in charge of scouting and fortresses and stuff like that and keeping an eye on the general strategic overview of the galaxy while other people handle specific tactical attack/defense events.

Voice chat is mandatory.  It's hard enough keeping everyone on the same page even with it sometimes, but it would be completely impossible without it.  I don't know how people can even play games that take a non-trivial amount of communication/coordination with only text anymore, unless it's a very slow-paced game (although somehow we managed, way back in the day).  It would also be much less fun.  "Blowing Up Spaceships with the Guys" Night wouldn't be the same without us all making stupid jokes and just rambling about random crap.

[Sunshine!]

One method:
Two players: 8 planets each to start, snake map, +300% player handicap

Turn on: everything.
Low ship cap.

AI: two AI 10 raid engines with +300% handicap.

Preferred ship unlocks: autobombs, neinzul, anything else that can build ridonkulously fast.