Feedback for 0.4.8 RC3

Describe your experience with the latest version of FreeOrion to help us improve it.

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Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
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Feedback for 0.4.8 RC3

#1 Post by Oberlus »

Playing 0.4.8 2018-07-31

Played several games till turn 200+.
Found no bugs or weird behaviour.
AI is noticeably better than a month ago, kudos!
I've lost a game! Had to replay it 5 times to beat it. Solution was to go full carriers early. Which brings me to this:
Fighters seem OP. The best counter for any other strategy is fighters. The best counter against fighters is fighters. The best fighter is "fighter" from early to late game. This is, obviously, not a 0.4.8 issue (it comes from 0.4.7).

I praise developers for their great job.

Jaumito
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Location: Catalonia, France, Europe, Earth, Sol, Orion Arm, Milky Way, Virgo Cluster

Re: Feedback for 0.4.8 RC3

#2 Post by Jaumito »

Oberlus wrote: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:37 am I've lost a game! Had to replay it 5 times to beat it. Solution was to go full carriers early.
Let me guess... you were playing a slow-tech species, right?

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Oberlus
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Re: Feedback for 0.4.8 RC3

#3 Post by Oberlus »

Jaumito wrote: Sat Aug 11, 2018 12:38 pmLet me guess... you were playing a slow-tech species, right?
I was Human (standard, "quick start", game). There were two adequate planets at 5 and 6 hops from HW. Colonising/outposting them was a drawback since the nearby (east) Abaddoni would conquer them fast. The Cray (south) also would put some pressue on me. The Chato (far southeast) would be the great enemy in mid to late game.
I first tried my "standard" strategy, that is giving preference to research and production techs, secondary growth techs and tertiary weapons/shield/armour techs. Two rounds of that ended similarly: I could hold against the Abaddoni and Cray but eventually the Chato would come with 10x my strength.
Then I tried two rounds of exobots + robotic interface: shields (RIS). I coudln't get a Cray planet early on (if I went for them, Abaddoni would wreak havoc on my planets). That was better than going laser+shields but still a loss after Chato came with crowds of self-gravitating hulls against my 60-ship stacks of 20-shield exobot robocruisers.
Then I tried changing Human for Egassem (going laser plus shields) and I would get a clear win (more research, production, population and military strength than any other enemy) before turn 100. But I got back to Human to get over my sadness. I had forbidden myself from going full-fighters because that was always too easy against AI (it used to neglect fighters and flaks) but I had to try it for this scenario. And it worked out just fine. Before turn 100 Abaddonni were my happy slaves, Cray had lost a huge stack trying to get one of my colonies (guarded by some robocarriers) and when Chato came to my area I already had several self-grav carriers with 2 fighter bays and 3 launch bays that works charms against anything with less than 2xPPs my stack.

Jaumito
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Location: Catalonia, France, Europe, Earth, Sol, Orion Arm, Milky Way, Virgo Cluster

Re: Feedback for 0.4.8 RC3

#4 Post by Jaumito »

By "slow-tech", I mean either you're lagging behind in (weapon/ship) research, or have average or better research in these fields but a crappy production output, thus no way to produce newer ship designs in significant numbers to cope with enemy threats. Can depend on your starting species, your luck with the planet spread and natives, your own research priorities and strategic decisions. That's when going full fighters works best in my experience, as they're never outdated. Sometimes it gets ridiculous: I've won easy games mostly with large/crystallized asteroids hulls full of fighters and armor, where I had struggled or lost going robotic with only energy weapons.

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Oberlus
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Re: Feedback for 0.4.8 RC3

#5 Post by Oberlus »

Well, then I was certainly slow-tech. If I kept the research focus I then was dragging behind in production, and going for Adaptive Automation too early meant a loss since only 3 planets when the enemies had 5+ was too much delay for the weapon/armour/shield techs. If I go for robo+laser+defense grid and then switched to production focus I was dragging behind too. Going for fighters and armour before switching for production and adaptive automation was great.

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Oberlus
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Re: Feedback for 0.4.8 RC3

#6 Post by Oberlus »

I'm consistently finding tough AI empires in every standard game. I really think the AI strategy has greatly improved from 0.4.7. I would put that in bold in the release changelog :D

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