I feel like Creative is often just used as sort of a noob pick by people who want to experience every single tech in the game. And that's fine, but I'm looking to use it more, uh, "creatively." I'm inspired by this line from Strategy Wiki:

"Yet some players regard Creative as "primarily a war pick", because ships designed by a good Creative player can often beat 2-3 times as many non-Creative ships that have 1 or 2 grades better armor and weapons; once again the secret sauce is techs that non-Creatives usually have to forgo, in this case special systems that give a huge boost to the combat effectiveness of Creatives' ships (in good Creative ship designs the whole is much more than the sum of the parts). Not surprisingly in online games experienced players gang up on any Creatives without needing any diplomatic collusion."

What are some of these ship designs that can defeat multiple, more advanced ships? I guess having both Augmented Engines and Inertial Stabilizer would give you great beam defense. Or grab optronic computers, mass driver, ECM jammer, and mass driver for an early ship with great missile defense. But I'm not sure how to take advantage of creative as the game gets deep into the tech tree.

Cool use of creative is to have trash techs to bribe all of the races that you can trade with. You never have to go to war with anyone you don't want to (unless they are repulsive).

-edit- As far as ship design goes, I love fully upgraded phasors with all the gizmos that enhance energy weapons.

Yeah that's a great idea! I didn't think of it because I usually pick repulsive, but all the extra junk techs you get from creative would be great for diplo.

I'm wondering: is there any specific tech that makes creative pop, or is it the cumulative effect of lots of special systems? 8 picks is an awful lot for something that doesn't kick in until the late game.

A few that I've found:

2nd level engineering gives Heavy Armor, Automated Factories, and Missile bases. All excellent techs for the early game. Automated factories give you a huge jump in production, heavy armor let's you build the first tanky ship, and missile bases are a cheap way to defend planets, much cheaper and more powerful than a starbase. I think most people choose Automated Factories here to boost their production, but creative let's you get those plus the others for early wartech, and the wartech stays good for most of the game. Heavy armor is especially good late in the game when armor piercing beam weapons are available.

1st level Chemistry gives Tritanium Armor and Deuterium Fuel Cells. Deuterium is often a must if you want to actually get anywhere, but Tritanium doubles your hit points. Combo that with heavy armor, reinforced hull and you've got 6x the health in the early game, way more than any non-creative race can get without sacrificing economy.

1st level Force Fields: ECM Jammer and level 1 Shields together will make you almost immune to a lot of stuff in the arly game. Downside is they take up a lot of space so you won't have a lot of weapons. But you can sit back at long range and plink away with mass drivers. Combos well with the above to build a really invincible early battleship.


1st level Biology: Biospheres and Hydroponic Farms both good for early pop growth.



1st level Computers gives both Optronic computers and Research Labs. Research Labs are a huge boost for early research, sometimes more than regular scientists even. But Optronic computers are the first chance to make beams that actually hit things.

1st level Physics gives both fusion beams and fusion rifles. 2nd level gives battle scanners and tachyon communications. put them both together with the computers above and you've decent beam weapons that can actually hit a missile, plus more command points to build small ships, and a better ground invasion force. Combos well with feudal warlord to build lots of early small ships.

Yes, these and other techs force you to make very difficult choices if you aren't creative. However, if you are creative and you have all these techs then you have to commit to building all this stuff (including much more expensive ships with this tech) that the tech enables. This ultimately takes more time to make use of these techs.

It snowballs over time, as more time spent building the industry enhancements let you get new enhancements and ships built faster. But you have to put in all the turns to build up that industry, and research enhancements, and super ships. This is the delay that non-creatives can exploit. If they don't stop you in time, though, you have ships they can't hit that can destroy anything they can field.

That's what i don't see though. Are you talking about all the way at the very end of the game when every single tech has been researched? Because otherwise, all else being equal, the non-creatives will have more advanced tech to make up for missing basic stuff. EG, maybe the creatives have Augmented Engines and Inertial Stabilizers to make their ships hard to hit, but the non-creatives can have level 3 shields. Usually I'd rather have more advanced tech than a lot of basic tech, especially since, as you mentioned, the creatives have trouble fitting all that special stuff onto their ships.

It depends for which purpose of course. For fun, I designed this titan that can single-handedly defeat Antares at turn 200 (impossible, average start, with patch 1.50 improved with ship initiative):

(megafluxers of course)
Achilles Targeting unit
Battle Pods
Battle Scanner
High Energy Focus
Phasing cloak (necessary to get initiative on turn 1)
2 stasis field (to stasis the star base)
Sub Space Teleporter (to get close to targets with your plasma canons and stasis the star base)
Plasma cannons (After some testing, I never found a better weapon. Strangely, alternating between 5 HV, 5 normal, 5 HV, 5 normal,... gives better results. With decent miniaturization and megafluxers, you can fit about 30 plasmas in total).

At least Class VII shields.
At least cybertronic computer
At least neutronium armor