Building Spyships

fixed in what way? it seems like a valid strategy to me...

fixed in what way? it seems like a valid strategy to me...

Yeah, Starbases will do several things that your little sensor boats will never be able to do (defend territory, increase profits or spread word of your great new adult beverage; you know, the one that makes you look thin, rich and scores you all the tail you want)!

Building starbases to just increase sensor range is wasteful, and the additional scan range should be waaaay down on your list of priorities for enhancements.

Cheers,
Reaver

har, didnt think this compleatly threw.
your ship sounds like it has 4-7 maintance. My starbase has 0.
so it will take somewhere in teh vicinity of 70 turns before they are equal then at that point the starebase is a better idea.
Also make sure you not making your constructors to complex, make it so that you atleast have enough different models anybase could biuld 1 in 1 turn.

Unless your small ship can pack 100+ fire power and huge defense of multple weapon types as well as give outside bonues in a radius, I'll stick with the starbase.

Eyes of the Universe + Lots of Trade Routes = Spy Network

Unless your small ship can pack 100+ fire power and huge defense of multple weapon types as well as give outside bonues in a radius, I'll stick with the starbase.

thats not what he means
he means building the starbase and instead of getting sensor bonuses on it you just get a small ship with sensors. Very practicle alows you to move ships to places that need sight from places that dont.
You lose.

The computer Ai uses this feature. If you look you see they have tons of little scout ships running around and then they place others at key areas. There is nothing wrong with the fact that the ships can be effective. Starbases are stationary and have no maintenance. A spy ship has mobility but it has a maintenance cost. It is not a fault with the game but it is a feature that you have to think about.

I never upgrade a starbase's sensors. It is a waste. Not that the starbase is a waste, just sending constructors to upgrade the sensors. Also, sensor only ships are maintenance free. I know it looks like there will be maintenence while you are designing one, but if you put no weapons on it, it will drop to 0 after you save it. The same is with constructors etc.

It is a hassle to keep up with a lot of these IMO, but dropping one on the same tiles of your starbases (so they will be defended) or having a scout in each fleet can be useful when needed. Just have to be sure you don't sacrific speed of the fleet and only use small ones that can fill the cracks in your logistics. I normally don't use them once I get Eyes of the Universe, but if an AI someday decided to and beat me to the eyes, sensor ships are a decent fallback.

Just pointing out that the two items, starbases and spy ships are both viable and frankly, not even mutally exclusive. In fact, it seems to me that using both is probably a good idea since they each do very different things. Even with Eyes, a few of these spy boats would likely still be an asset to the empire.

Cheers,
John

Spy ships r excellent value for production/money. Early in the game u can have a couple of those going around keeping an eye on what other races r doing. U can easily have spd 4, sensors 12+ virtually at game start and they rapidly get better. I use them to spot anomolies for my survey ship early on, find resources quickly, planets etc... Later u can upgrade to warships if needed. I always put one packed with sensors on guard at my planets, thus never get caught out with a surprise attack later on.

Never built the sensors upgrade on a starbase, bit of a waste i think.

But starbases r vital, i like to build 1 economy, 1 military per planetary system and then the mining starbases of course. As soon as i have got 1 military starbase, 1 huge sensor ship and a war fleet i have never lost a system to the AI even on suicidal level. I see them coming and my 1 defending fleet backed by a military stabase can hold an invasion force off long enough for more fleets to arrive/ships to be built.

Building starbases to just increase sensor range is wasteful, and the additional scan range should be waaaay down on your list of priorities for enhancements.

And this is a problem. The original poster makes a valid point; this is something the developers should look into for 1.2.

I don't mean that Starbases are useless, only senors much more effective on small ships

Overall you can use that taktik to any ships, you could even install a lot of engines to transporter, small ships (with just one weapon for unarmed AI troopers) and construkturs that they are fast like 23pc per turn.
The AI never use that kind of taktik in my games.

So what i mean is, that there should be a maximum of components that is allowed to build on small ships.

at game start I usually pack a freighter class hull with all the engines I can, with just a sensor, and upgrade every so often . after all the miconization and drive techs were built (just for fun) I put one sensor suite on there, and packed it with hyperwarp 3s.... 55pc/turn