Noob Help

from GalCiv2 Forums
I'm new to the game and I think I have a pretty good handle on everything except combat. I've been using stock ships to build with, but figured I better get into custom ships for combat. I got lost at the ship editor. There doesn't appear to be any specification detail for the stock ships. I was hoping to use those as a baseline. I don't understand how the editor works or how to build ships that perform well. I can find no documentation on combat tactics. Anyone have any help to offer.

Thanks,

- Craig
6,875 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
well to start off with just take a small hull, plop 1 or 2 offensive weapons on there, some engines and a defensive weapon.... just experiment a bit, and you'll get the hang of it quickly enough...
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
yeah, give it a whirl....Luckily its not rocket science and pretty soon you'll be churning out monster battlecruisers
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Heh, one learns quickly that the stock ships suck... Sure they look cool, sometimes, but they are rather worthless for combat since they don't maximize available space since I am guessing they were all designed with the possibilty of having no miniaturization bonuses.

My thing is, I see what the A.I. starts building, 95% of the time that is, they do missle offense and defense. I usually start out with beam offense, missle defense, then switch to mass driver offense and adjust defense to work against what A.I. is mostly using. Finally, just play it by ear from their.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
My thing is, I see what the A.I. starts building, 95% of the time that is, they do missle offense and defense. I usually start out with beam offense, missle defense, then switch to mass driver offense and adjust defense to work against what A.I. is mostly using. Finally, just play it by ear from their.



Yeah, that's pretty much the secret there. See what the other civilizations are doing (and for some reason, they tend to follow the same weapon tech path initially), then counter with an offense/defense that negates their fleet. Eventually the AI will start researching and adding defenses to counter your weapons. One mistake I made early on was trying to research all the branches of the weapon systems. Pick two to be good at and that should be sufficient.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If your ships are too slow, put on more engines. If they're not killing things well enough, put on more guns. If they don't travel far enough, put on life support. Really, it's pretty simple to figure out what modules to place.

For example, a fast interceptor designed to pick off troop transports in your territory probably needs engines and guns but no life support (as they won't be leaving your planets by very far).
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Alright quick answer first what about the ship editor do you not understand and two what types of hulls are avaible and three what is the miniturization number on the editor screen for the hull you wish to use would be usefull to post some screenshots for examples of what you are confused about...

for screenshots on the editor or anywere for that matter.

step 1... go to the wanted screen to shoot your pic

step 2.. use the button on the keyborard that says prt scr (Print Screen to clipboard)

step 3.. paste the pic to a paint document and save as a .jpg file

step 4.. go to an imagehosting site like www.photbucket.com and make an account with them..

step 5.. upload the files to photobucket or any of the other imagehosting sites

step 6... use the photo link the third link below the pic and copy it to a post...

this should give you more viable answers to your problem here...
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Problem with the ship editor is there's very little documentation on it. I think the game is a bit lacking in that department. It needs good documentation and a built-in help system because it's a pretty complicated game, at least compared to other genres (like popular FPS games). But, I think I got a handle on it now. So far I've scored one influence victory, one alliance victory, and one military victory. For the military victory, I actually had quite a bit of fun building and using a killer war ship.

When learing how to use the ship editor, one problem I had is that it's not clear that things have to be placed exactly on the little red arrows before they'll stick. I got a little frustrated until I figured that out. Another thing that got me is the check box in the options menu that strips a saved ship everytime you open it. It should *not* be checked by default. I couldn't understand why ships were not opening the way I saved them. The list of items doesn't seem to sort at all. It would make it easier if the most advanced item was highlighted at the top of each list. When you click on a mounted item, the editor doesn't tell you what it is other than showing a small icon. It should have better indication.

Well, thanks for the great tips. Learning ship setup and combat was pretty straight forward. The main problem for me was the ship editor. Hopefully they'll make it more user friendly in future updates.

- Craig