It was an enjoyable defeat in my first play of FreeOrion

[utilae]

Morning All,

I have played version v0.4.4-7641 of FreeOrion on Windows 7.
This was my first play of FreeOrion in a long time. I have played a few earlier versions.

I chose the Gyisache. I quite like their combination of industry and science race bonus.
Because it was my first game, I didn't do very well. But it was enjoyable.
I built some ships thinking they were uber strong lol. My Tiger 5 had plasma cannons !
Couldn't really find any nearby planets that were that good, except for the planet
owned by the Trith. So I attacked one of their fleets, a scout. Haha, that was a mistake.
Little did I know that they were the most powerful race in the game.
Up until that point I was stealthy enough to be unnoticed. But my attack of their scout ship
led them to eventually invade my planet. And so I ended the game in defeat.

Notes:
- Built a colony base, but couldn't use it as their were no other planets in my system it turned out
- Encountered some space monsters, they are pretty strong, but I had two planets with space monsters nearby.
- Could not figure out how to build ships with a Robotic hull. The designs I made did not show up in my list of buildable items.
- Built a few Tiger 5 ships (plasma cannonx2, zortrium armour, shield, large hull) - but they disappeared. So I only go 2 out of the 4 expected.
- Tech Tree does get confusing once you unlock a large number of techs. It becomes a big spider web. When we designed it, it was not my first choice.
- Can the window that describes the Tech (top-middle) go into the bottom of the sidebar on the left ? Or can the player move it there ? Would be less cluttered.

Overall - Very good game - Fun to play - Easy to learn - Similar to the Moo games !

[Dilvish]

Our QuickPlay Guide is not 100% up-to-date, but probably would still be a big help getting up to speed on the current form of the game.

I built some ships thinking they were uber strong lol. My Tiger 5 had plasma cannons ! ... (plasma cannonx2, zortrium armour, shield, large hull)

That is a fairly strong ship design, that could be at least viable into the start of what I would think of as the endgame. Of course all such assessments have to be relative to your opponents, and they can get quite strong as the game advances. Also, quite critical these days, you might not have noticed that Gysache are "Poor Pilots", meaning that they get a very significant penalty against their ship attack values (25% penalty rounded up). They are great for growth, industry, and research, but it is critical to promptly conquer a better pilot species and then build all combat ships with that species. Most species are of course average; Hhhoh and Etty are good pilots with a 25% bonus; Mu-ursh and Eaxaw are great pilots with a very hefty 50% bonus. This can make a huge difference especially once empires start outfitting their ships with shields (which on ships act as Damage Reduction these days). It could be that you ran into enemy ships that you simply couldn't damage with your penalized attack.

- Built a colony base, but couldn't use it as their were no other planets in my system it turned out

Ack! I've done that a couple times by accident, meaning to queue a ship instead. It might be more friendly if we added a location requirement that there be at least one additional planet in system that is not 'uninhabitable' for the species building the base.

- Encountered some space monsters, they are pretty strong, but I had two planets with space monsters nearby.

You might want to try playing Low Monsters; there will still be all the same fixed-location guards, but at least there will be much fewer roving monsters.

- Could not figure out how to build ships with a Robotic hull. The designs I made did not show up in my list of buildable items.

On the Production Build window you can select the 'unavailable' button so that all known designs show up even if not buildable at that location, and then if you mouse-hover over an item you will get a tooltip showing its requirements and whether or not that location meets them (on a case by case basis). If you had the robotic hull tech then such a ship should have been buildable at your initial planet, but if you had tried building at a later colony that didn't have a Drydock then the ship wouldn't be buildable there.

- Built a few Tiger 5 ships ... - but they disappeared. So I only go 2 out of the 4 expected.

Hmm, that's very odd, we haven't had any reported problems with such a thing happening. Did you have a block of 4 queued up, or 4 individual ships in a sequence, or two pairs? Is it possible you accidentally double-clicked on an entry in the production queue? That deletes them from the queue; we should get around to adding a confirmation dialog for that, it happens by accident to me sometimes.

[MatGB]

Other issue with the Robotic design-Robotic Interface Shields can only be built by Robotic species, if they're part of the design they'll never show up normally. So if the ship had that, Gysache can't use it.

[utilae]

Other issue with the Robotic design-Robotic Interface Shields can only be built by Robotic species, if they're part of the design they'll never show up normally. So if the ship had that, Gysache can't use it.

That would be why. I had the robotic interface shields !

[MatGB]

Heh, RIS can be great fun to play around with, the tactical choices involved in splitting fleets up for various purposes add a different twist to the game, and the temptation to keep effectively obsolete early hulls around near the end game just because they make your titans nigh-invulnerable is sometimes a bit much, but you basically need to be playing Etty or Cray to really effectively use them. At some point we'll probably want to put them into a separate tech, partially to avoid the problem of being used in designs just because they're there, and partially as I'm very unhappy with the position of Robotic Hull on the tech tree anyway.