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It take an in game picture, press Ctrl+Print Screen. The Print Screen should be next to your F12 button or near it.

The pictures will be stored in the Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor\ScreenShots folder for your own viewing pleasure.

dnzrx1,

Thank you for the welcome and instructions.  I will try it this week.

Bob

Re #5 - I've done repairs by rush buying the same ship.  (Upgrading to the same ship).  It can take some time to complete if you're far from your empire so you need to be in a safe area.  If the enemy gets to your ship during the upgrade cycle, you'll only have 1 hit point and no weapons. A sitting duck for even a light fighter.  A real shame if you're repairing a huge hulled beasty.

re #6 - That ^^^ and if you want to post it, you'll need to host it.  Imageshack is pretty popular, as is Photobucket.  You can google them.  Both have free options.  

When you upload the picture, copy the forum code and paste it into your post or copy the direct link and use the Image Tool in the post.  It looks like a little tree to the left of the smilies.

Welcome to the forums and the game.

Yes, that is known. By your earlier description I figured you meant the law wasn't working and you could upgrade your starbases directly.

You're right. I was confusing it with the inability to upgrade a fully healed ship to the same design. Tried that a couple of times by accident before I noticed that the ship already had been upgraded. I really shouldn't post (or play), if I have slept for less than three hours.

Risking being a pest:

1) People talk about unhappiness being a problem at higher levels-- but you get tax money.   Has anyone figured-out the optimum in trade-off of squares dedicated to "Crowd Pleasers" versus population generated taxes.  This would be without any Wonders dedicated to keeping the Rabble happy.

2) If you run a Trade route to a safe trading partner, can you run the route through multiple Starbases for multiple Tarrifs, or is it one and done.

3) If you have two special squares for manufacturing etc on one planet does it make sense to use one for an assisting improvement  (ie, Fusion) ?  Or a Capitol improvement? 

4) The Dread Lords are a strange phenom.  They showed-up in my present game. I fill the planet with spies and kill-off the the DL's unarmed Scout.  They keep rebuilding (slowly) the scout.   They lost control of the Galaxy because they're dumb.  Do they ever try to clear-out the spies?  Or stop producing scouts?  Where is the Dread in Dread Lords.

5) I got two Rangers in my present game.  I'm about to quite the game because I could create a fleet that would usually not exist until the end of the game.  Yet when the AI gets these ships, they don't seem to use them  well.  I saw one CIV surrender with a Ranger in a previous game.  What is the opinion of the Gal Civ Community on these ships showing up?

Bob

Thanks for the info on switching the personality types.  It's a better game.  And because the other Civ's are progressing better, the Torian aren't as annoying-- so far.  I ran a successful freeze-out strategy on their trying to grab colonies.  And that's fun.

Small corrections to Tolmekian's answers:

1. 20B population is the highest you generally want to take it, with 5x/6x +39 morale resources, trade goods, tech, for DA.  Mining resources can go higher in TA, but even with +78 resources (Thalan tree is the only one that can get quite this high), you'll only be able to handle about 22B, without having to lower your tax rate significantly, and/or needing far too many VRCs to be worthwhile versus stock markets.

2. Trade modules on economic starbases increase the value of the trade route while the freighter is within the area of the effect.  This means you can have your freighters run through multiple economic SB arrays, but, generally speaking, only one area will have an effect at any given time.

Those are dummy modules, which are in the game purely for aesthetics, for instance if one wants a ship design with mirrored modules, but without the capacity or need for two such modules.  At least, that's how I remember it.

But really, if you want to stand up to the AI's ships, you should design your own-TA has an autodesigner as well, for the human player, but the AI autodesigns ships regardless of version.

Probably, never tested that myself-but if their influence isn't over about 3x yours (it can't flip until 4x), there's no cause for alarm.  This information shows on the bottom of the screen with the planet selected in the galaxy view.

With regards to the trade routes: True enough, just wanted to make sure you were aware that they don't stack infinitely.

I did not know this, and find myself quite worried by it - I've only run into the Dread Lords on TA once, but when I did they were pretty tough - I'm not sure I want to face "smart" Dread Lords.

The ones on DA do seem pretty dumb, though.

I went on some forum sites tonight and noticed that ship construction seems to concentrate on Offense. 

This is because the tech tree greatly favors offense over defense. It costs 2 1/2 to 3 times as much to counter a high-end weapon (like the Doom Ray, for instance) with the appropriate defense. This makes for longer build times and much higher expense. I don't care much for this system, but it is what it is.......

 But I made note of their weapons and concentrated on defense. I may have lost one or two ships in the fleet, but once passed the first salvo, they were toast.

This may work for early and mid-game, but when opponents start showing up with starship attack values well over 100, no amount of defense is going to hold up.

I play almost exclusively as the Yor (for the mini bonus) and I get as many of the "mini" TG's as I can, and research the Mini tech to it's max. This allows me to pack as much firepower on a small as most civs frigates, and as much on my mediums as most battleships or dreads. I can produce my ships much faster, so I usually win the attrition war.

 I also build my Kamikaze Class with the express intent of decimating the biggest enemy fleets I face. I take a cargo hull and pack it full of weapons, and send them in. It may take several of these fleets to get the job done, but once space is cleared of the enemy 'heavies', I send in my "regulars' to finish off anything that remains.

Military starbases are a waste of time, IMHO, but the only time I will build one is to "slingshot" my kamikaze into enemy space all buffed for battle with the bonuses granted from the starbase.

BTW, I've tried putting just minimal offense and maximum defense on ships, but in the face of the "Black Hole" weapons, or the Doom Ray, they get toasted anyways. Might as well take down as many ships as possible with my own high-end weapons........just my 2bc.