Avogadro6: Well, it's certainly more fun than blowing them up. It also allows to overcome technology disadvantages and win otherwise impossible battles. In one recent game I had quite a bad start, was falling behind in research, had only two planets, and the Psilons decided to backstab me for no reason.
My ships were no match for them (I still had tritanium armor... they had zortrium and shields) but I managed to refit my only battleship with assault shuttles before the Psilon fleet reached my homeworld. I then captured enough ships to reverse engeneer Zortrium Armor and some other goodies, and could retailate in a few turns. That was a nice comeback.

Techromancer: That reminds me of one piece of special equipment I use a lot - transporters (memory must be going ....). Neutron Blasters or Death Rays plus transporters are an excellent combination. It's usually faster to kill the marines and steal the ship or Starbase than to blow it up, plus there's the potential for recovering tech. Captured ships seem to draw more fire, too.

Techromancer: That reminds me of one piece of special equipment I use a lot - transporters (memory must be going ....). Neutron Blasters or Death Rays plus transporters are an excellent combination. It's usually faster to kill the marines and steal the ship or Starbase than to blow it up, plus there's the potential for recovering tech. Captured ships seem to draw more fire, too.

Les229: Do you manually manage the battle, or do you build the ships and let the computer manage the battle?

Techromancer: I design the ships and control them in battle. Experimenting with ship designs is a more interesting to me than letting the computer do it - plus the the AI that would otherwise be responsible is dumber than a bag of hammers.

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