is it just me or....

What do you mean 'massing' ?

Hi!

There's a very simple way to produce a colonizer on the HW each second turn, and keep producing them for at least a half of a year. At the very beginning AIs are a bit faster by outright buying some, but that kills their early game economy, and as consequence their production of colonizers. On medium difficulty levels they're never a match to a skilled human player. So you're either playing on very high difficulty level, where AIs get huge bonuses, or you don't develop you HW properly.

BR, Iztok

In DA it is advantageous to rush build Colonizers on Small hulls without engines. The Speed limitations are not as important. A small hull Colonizer will cost around 660 BC, compared to around 1100 BC for one on a full cargo hull. You can pump out almost twice as many this way

Take the Speed Bonus when you set up your race and you will still have 2 or 3 speed colonizers at half the cost.

Hi Oldstatesman,

That is a neat trick you propose. Can't wait to try it out!

Have fun

I can't take credit for this ...there is a whole thread in the Strategy Section here...

https://forums.galciv2.com/?forumid=347&aid=149365#1183491

BTW, you can extend this to Miners, Constructors, Frieghters and Troop Ships too.

I like to build some of my Asteroid Miner ships with small hulls...they get 8 Hit Points. Later on when I get high miniaturization, I can upgrade them and add an engine, a Laser or two, and maybe some defense....then they are not sitting duck targets and can be used to attack undefended enemy aI Troopships, miners, and Trade routes. Kinda like GC 'Millenium Falcons', lol.

Of coarse, the maintainence fee on them is higher...but by the time I can do this I am making a lot of credits anyway.

With Enhanced Miniaturization (or just Basic with the Yor), you can bring the cost down to 55 production per colony ship by using Tiny Hulls. This is fairly relevant in very fast tech rate games.

Another trick I use to speed up colony ship production while conserving money is to build or buy "incomplete" colony ship hulls during the first few turns of the game, and then upgrade them to colony ships. I don't know the precise formulas for purchase cost, but I have found that buying, say, a 125 production item outright is several hundred credits more expensive than building/buying a 55 production item and then upgrading it next turn. You do usually lose a turn of movement when using this tactic (since you have to wait until post-upgrade to load the colony ship), but rushing 3-speed colony ships in this manner is cheaper than rushing 2-speed colony ships the normal way so the tradeoff is almost always worth it. Furthermore, this tactic can be adapted to fight the problem of wasted overflow military production -- suppose your homeworld production is 62 and you're building 125 cost 3-speed colony ships. Normally this would take 3 turns a ship. But you can design some random hull with slightly lower cost (just dump a whole bunch of life support or sensor modules on it to get the cost where you want it) which you can build in two turns, and upgrade these hulls at a very cheap price to the final design (and in this case, you only lose 1/3 or 1/4 a turn of movement because you can make your cheaper hull include a colony module and one Ion Drive, and move it toward its intended target on the first turn before you upgrade it). Yeah, the usual solution to this problem is to build or buy another factory, but it's useful to have this tool in your arsenal as well, and they can be used in concert with each other (e.g. when buying one more factory is just barely insufficient to finish the next colony ship in the time you want...).

Oh, a random note on rush-buying: when the cost is below around 240 bc, the first lease is usually STRICTLY BETTER than paying up front (i.e. you actually pay less total money!). The difference is small, but when you're constantly making these small-scale purchases it might add up.

And one last micromanagement observation: you can often save a unit or two of movement by using rally points. Normally when you launch a ship from a planet, it comes out at the lower right; but when you've assigned a rally point to the shipyard, newly produced ships will auto-launch in the direction of that rally point. This can save your constructors a turn (or occasionally, even two) of travel time. However, this does NOT usually help you with colony ships or transports since the auto-launch does not load population, and if you return to the planet to load population you can then only do the usual lower right launch.

Actually, not so. In DA, you can choose any adjacent square to be the launch square for a planet, on a per planet basis. You can even change launch directions several times within one turn. This tactic has many uses.

Actually, not so. In DA, you can choose any adjacent square to be the launch square for a planet, on a per planet basis. You can even change launch directions several times within one turn. This tactic has many uses.

Really?! How do you do this?

*starts dreaming of moving engineless ships a full sector per turn by just hopping from planet to planet*

Talk about micro managing a game...

Thinking about trying to do this on a gigantic abundant gives me the heebee geebees!

Hi!

Even worse. The landing and launching on/from a planet doesnt't count as a move. If you have planets 1 square apart you can move ships accros them for free. A resurected GC-1 glitch IMO.

BR, Iztok

Select a planet. In the interface where the ships are shown when in orbit around your planet, there should be some writing saying "ships in orbit". Just to the left, as in right next to the text, there should be a hard to see button. Press it, and you should be able to assign the default launch path.

Please note, you have to have your mouse pointer hovering over the square in question when you assign, not merely having it glow, otherwise it will not assign. Its some sort of bug.

If you zoom in, there is actually a little arrowhead which indicates the current launch direction. It's good for double checking that you have the direction right.

This re-assignment of the launch direction is very confusing to me. I had done it before, I think in DL, actually. But in DA, I've been at a planet, clicked on a ship, clicked "L", then clicked on a square around the planet (with areas glowing or not), and it still launches at the old location. I'll try the button (which I've never actually seen), but I suspect a bug at this point.

I'll post here again when I see whether I can make this work.

You have to change the default launch location before launching the ship.

Also the square that's highlighted doesn't always change to become the new launch location unless you are really zoomed in....So zoom in really close when you want to change the launch locale.

I thought you did this by hitting "L", when just clicked on the planet. Is that not the case? I used to know how to do it, but it isn't working for me right now.

I'm not sure what "L" does and I'm not at the game computer...I do know that when you click on the planet that an icon appears down in the planet description area that will let you change the launch location and that this icon works. "L" probably does the same thing.

Ah, I've found it. In the latest DA version (beta 1), "L" makes it seem like it will change launch location, in that you get the option of choosing where to launch ships, but it doesn't take. Only hitting that TINY box around the "ships in orbit" area in the planet box at the bottom middle of the main screen will allow you to really change the launch point.

If someone has figured out how to make "L" work, please let me know.