[quote who="Chibiabos" reply="28" id="3564054"] Quoting Semipiratical, reply 27 Destroyed fighters already take a few turns to replace; I've lost carrier fleets by foolishly engaging several times in succession and having only 1/4 of my fighter complement available on the last fight.  
Destroyed fighters already take a few turns to replace; I've lost carrier fleets by foolishly engaging several times in succession and having only 1/4 of my fighter complement available on the last fight. Anyway, any idea that requires the fighters to be built separately is a non-starter for the same reason small hulls are already useless in the mid to late-game: you'd waste an entire turn building one small ship. My ideal fix would be to
[quote who="marigoldran"]Tech trading is a "legitimate" part of the game. Totally broken, I agree, but it doesn't do anything to hurt his achievement.[/quote] Yes, it does. That's what "broken" means in this context. To give another example, I believe that carriers are hideously overpowered in their current implementation (and this is not a controversial opinion). I also abuse them relentlessly in suicidal games. My victories would be a lot more impressive if I could win
Did you achieve this by stacking maintenance reduction technologies/events/resources, or does it have a negative upkeep even without those? Obviously it's broken either way (maintenance should not go below zero), but there may be different causes. Also, did you check if it's just a display issue vs. actually working that way (i.e. did you build some and see if maintenance goes down?).
Not to rain on your parade, but tech trading is broken in about a hundred different ways, and on top of that you're using an overpowered custom race. I disable tech trading in all games at this point--it's just too easy to take advantage of the AI with it. I also don't like the idea of getting each race's "special" technologies via trade--playing as the Terrans feels less authentic when I'm rocking gravitonics and building hives on every world.
You don't control the Crusader in the second mission. Generally, you want to preserve your starting capitals and fill out your fleets with fodder. This should keep you alive long enough to move down the tech tree and put together fleets that are competitive with the Drengin. Fleet composition isn't as important here as tech, but in general you want high-firepower "capitals" and high-durability "escorts". Carriers are also very strong in al
The AI not building anything to defend their worlds seems to be a consequence of high map size and habitable planet density. On the settings I play on (large, uncommon stars, uncommon habitable planets) there are only 30 or so worlds in total and they are all occupied long before it is possible to get transports. Once the galaxy is settled, the AI players start to produce warships. I do not think an early-game rush is feasible without tech trading, which I prefer to disable. Even with very fa
I have also observed this after moving the difficulty up to Suicidal. The Yor are winning by a wide margin. I don't know the exact cause (it's not my custom ships; they're using default designs), but I suspect their ability to build population is synergizing too well with the enormous production bonuses that AI players get on higher difficulty levels. I'm playing on Large maps with stars/habitable planets both set to "uncommon". In my last game, the Yor started in the center o
I've played a few games against "Genius" level AI opponents (one step below the max) and have noticed a few things the AI consistently does poorly, apart from the obvious planet specialization problems. 1) Small Fleets: the AI seems to either be unable to group its ships or to severely undervalue doing so. I often see 8 or 9 fleets of 2-3 ships each, which are all mowed down without losses by my own fleet of 6 ships. Even thoughtlessly-composed fleets with essential