1. Each ships defenses apply only to that ship and the total value defends against each type of weapon attack.

2. Influence starbases should be placed near your borders to push them out. You won't notice much effectiveness out of them until you upgrade them a couple times by sending more constructors to it.

3. After you reach high espionage it is a matter of time until you steal techs, and they aren't too frequent.

I may have encountered a bug then because i have taken hits of 0 damage from ships that had mixed beams/guns with my lucky ranger. It made no sense :/

If your shields are greater than or equal to his weapons then this will happen fairly frequently. Basically, the attacker rolls an attack value between 1 and his attack rating, and the defender rolls a defense value between 1 and his defense rating. If the defense roll is equal or greater than the attack roll, then you take no damage. Otherwise you take the difference between the two numbers.

Defense systems which don't match up with the attacking weapon type only count at the square root of their value. So if you have 4 shields versus missiles, you will roll a defense between 1 and 2.

Daniel

Influence starbases should be placed near your borders to push them out.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but an Influence Starbase (IS) can serve three purposes in extending your overall influence:

1. Exactly as HEEGZ has said - Placed on your borders, they increase your physical range of influence.

2. Influence is Relative - It applies to your empire as a whole. By building an IS anywhere, its output contributes to your entire sphere of influence (i.e., its bonuses apply to your overall influence progression -- the "growth" of your overall area of influence).

3. To Piss Off Your Enemies! In lower difficulty levels you can build these near an AI planet to try to decrease his hold on said planet. If the race doesn't destroy the IS, you have a decent chance of taking the planet over (if it currently has a low morale -- 40% or less). This can take time, though (not too sure how long, but it's dependent on the current morale level of the planet).

If I'm wrong on any of these issues, feel free to clarify (because if I am, I've been playing wrong so far!! )

Eveeryone is not killed, only the soldiers are.(and some of the diplomatic leaders)

I wouldn't say only soldiers are killed, fighting and bombings in populated areas do result in civilian deaths. But I do agree that the numbers involved in fighting for planets is a bit ridiculous, but hey, it is just a game. If someone can change it through mods or what have you, I'd be interested, but I've come to just accept it as part of the games inherent "gaminess" (pun intended).

would they have as many sick and crippled years from now? maybe they'd have better medicine to let everyone within a set age fight...
anyway, u got enough answers from these guys, so, in order to just stop the useless repeating of information, read them.

As to the lucky rangers, if you add "luck" as one of your bonuses you get a bunch of these. They are very helpful in pushing up your military score early in the game. In one game I ended up with 12 of them, and they often came in pairs (one found one week, a second found the next week). By getting these I can usually avoid others declaring war on me.

Cool the lucky rangers do kick ass!!

I just lost mine though, got into war with the trader guys, the peacefull yellow dudes and the angry reds im now bieng systematically destroyed planet to planet. Even the humans are starting to think im against them, my super culture is making them angry lol.

I think this is going to be my first loss. But the cool thing is its fun getting a whupping Thats what i get for being the super civilized nation with crap weaponry, and trading away all my super lazer tech!