Dude, how long did it take you to type that, Limz. Lol. Credit anyway. I would love to have a conversation with you, you sound extremely intelligent, not to mention nice. =P

I feel the need to repeat something. Strategy comes much more in to play in larger maps. In smaller maps, it is much more tactical play. Of course on small maps you're going to get rushed. Small maps and large maps require to entirely different types of play.

And here's the kicker. If you survive their full fleets(I don't even know what that MEANS. Their full caps? I'm asking for clarifcation. There's a severe limit on what they're capable of doing. I can't help but feel there there is some exaggeration on your part. Please clarify what happened with their fleet. How big was it, how many caps, what level were there.) you could be able to easily demolish them, since they have no real economy, and probably no research, and they just wasted all their infrastructure on a tactic that failed. Easy win.

Play larger maps. Don't judge the game on one game, when the game was obviously not even suited to you in the first place. Large maps are MUCH MUCH MUCH more forgiving to mistakes.

It's not an exploit. With experience, you'll soon learn the layout of the more popular maps and will be able to use that knowledge to your advantage.


Why not remove pirates altogether, then? Because making the timing invisible simply makes it the luck of the draw as to who happens to have the highest bounty. Letting everybody know exactly when the next pirate raid will launch keeps the playing field level, which is exactly what you're asking for.


"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

If that's true then look at it this way: If you had been prepared with a suitable counter (and you should have seen this coming if you had your scouts out doing their job) then you would have caught them with their pants down, and their underdeveloped empires would have been easy pickings for you and your partner.

You see how this works? Learn from your mistakes and you'll get better.


Then why not host your own games in the future and choose "random" for the map type? I'm sure you'll do much better (yeah, I'm being a little sarcastic here).

So you think you're gonna buy it, blamin8or?

From the original post's description, BigDogBigFeet I think you were just soundly beat by players who had an effective strategy and good execution. What do you expect from a team of two players when you go at it with somebody you don't know at all?

Just because you couldn't counter an effective strategy don't blame the game. Try playing StarCraft or WC3 on BattleNet and you'll see the same exact thing.

A ceasefire won't help anything, it'll just move the goal posts. For any set of rules the game runs by, people are going to analyse them to try and gain an advantage on the opponent.
Take the ceasefire for example: I take it this applies only to other players, and not the independent planets you want to take over at the start? Well in that case, I'm gonna come and take planets near you before I take them near me. Then I'm going to work back toward my home. You aren't allowed to take them off me, are you, because of the ceasefire? In fact, are you even allowed in my systems? That seems unfair if you are, since you can scout me out freely, which is something no power wants a soon-to-be opponent to be capable of. So I just walled you into a tiny box, and by the time the ceasefire ends I'm gonna have a much better eco, and therefor fleet, than you.
And then you say: well, how about you are only allowed to expand to neighbouring planets? And you've restricted the available options yet again, and I'm gonna go away and find the next thing that I can take advantage of, again, and then you're gonna ban that too... Never mind that even if we just played the ceasefire head-up, with me taking my planets and you taking yours then I'm still gonna have a bigger fleet than you when the ceasefire ends because my build order is better than yours (that, after all, is what rushing is: getting a better fleet than your opponent, quicker). I'm casting myself as the competitive player here, not suggesting I'm leet or anything. I'll leave that to HunterX

Sorry, my point was more that no matter how you change the game people are going to find out ways to use the system to their advantage, which I think was beside your point

If you're interested in a more defensive game then you could use the new options in 1.03 to tailor the game to the one you want: I suggest changing build rate and ship speed.

Never mind. I give up. I'm unwilling to participate in this at all. What an annoyance.

This guy is a ideot he shod have plad more games and not bene a emo abaut lusin

Yea thats what I was thinking.

Wow, reading endless diatribes has exhausted me!
I was going to suggest to the OP that we play a few games, but I can't bring myself to. Having played MP online for what seems like ages, I can say that the learning curve is usually painful, and there are always children around. Stick it out and things get better.
In the meantime, anyone else want a game?

These are the kind of people who hack their lag times on Starcraft so they appear to be all "Greens" but end up being on really crappy connections. Or the type who lure people into "4v4" games, with 4 friends on one team and 3 bots (or other friends) on the other team who all drop just under a minute so they don't get the loss, but you do.

I really can't say what drives these people, in many cases they really do get a hard-on from ruining the game for everyone else, they think it's funny. You get mad and storm off and they sit in their dark little computer rooms and laugh and talk about how bad they ticked you off. Then they log out and troll the forums for awhile and cause havoc and unrest there.

Just chalk it up to people who really have nothing better to do with their time than to ruin everyone else's entertainment and utterly destroy an otherwise mediocre game. That's why I haven't even bothered to attempt MP after reading these forums, because I could see for myself what kind of nonsense likely goes on in Multiplayer. So, I have to agree with you, MP isn't worth it. I just learned the lesson by research instead of getting virtual-raped by a couple of children.

As far as some of the comments I've seen here, like "Awesome, you gave them $40 and not using IC's bandwidth." Well, all I have to say is I am interested to see exactly what type of community IC chooses to cater to and exactly who they decide to allow to stick around. If they are not willing to put forth some effort to "rake out the trash" then you are probably saving yourself a great deal of misery by leaving now.

Eventually it will clean up, however, both through patches, balance fixes, and the children finding a new target game to exploit and ruin for everyone else. The trash does have it's uses in that they tend to flagrantly abuse problems until they become undeniably obvious and later get fixed. Starcraft wasn't a perfect game when it first came out either, and we have Korea to thank for the aesthetic beauty it is today. So thank them for demonstrating how broken MP is and wait for it to get fixed.

Or...play SP. I've been having enough fun with that. It's a good distraction.

Might I suggest Battlefield 2142, BTW? It's a pretty addicting online game. First person shooter but....offers a good challenge, some RPG style "upgrades" as you level up, but nothing that makes advanced players unbalanced against new players, just gives them some new weapon options. Just a suggestion.

Planetside also might suit your fancy for space faring multiplayability.