Hi,

Glad you are discover this gem of a game.

I can't answer your question concerning the mods since unlike other games I have played I haven't felt the need to expand on the core elements of the basic game.

Concerning logistics you can add more logistics points to your race's abilities. Most races recieve  up to 8-10 additional bonus ability points on top of their core racial stats. However I focus more on larger ships with more defenses and weapons via miniaturization techs and worry less about logistics.

I usually see several race constistently top the charts. Usually it's the Yor, Krynn, and the Thalens that expand and dominate the other races in most areas early to mid game. It usually depends on how much expansion room the Race recieves at the start of the game as well as how lucky the race was with bonus tiles on the planets they possess. I do notice that some races ( usually Iconians, Thalens, and Krynn ) will grow really rapidly with huge economies but tend to neglect their military tech trees and as a result are pushovers militarily.  The Dregin and Korath do focus alot on weapons techs and if they are the leaders well your in for a up hill battle with them. I try to convince  other races to gang up on the leaders or pit the strongest two races against each other. This usually buys me time to build up a force strong enough to conquer some lesser races. One Key concept I notice is maintain a strong military force always. If the AI discovers you haven't maintained an adequate force they will come after you. Don't neglect your intelligence gathering from spies either.

Production tiles, economic starbase mining bonuses, and number of asteroid mining resources effecting your planet impacts the rate your factories can pump out the miltary hardware. You can divert Asteroid resources to any of your planets at any time. You can really see the difference those asteroid mines have on your planets production. That is why you may have notice that one planet exceeds another planet in production despite one planet having more factories.  Check out the details on each of your planets to see what production, economic, and morale bonuses that planet is receiving.

You should have a mining ship at the start of your game. You build mines on Asteriods fields to increase the production on your planet. When you mine the asteriod you should see a dotted line headed to one of your planets. This indicates the planets is recieving a production bonus from the asteroid mine. Like I said above you can divert the dotted line to any of your planets. With a high influence rate you can passively capture your opponents asteriod mines within your sphere of influence.

Hope this help to answer your questions.

Yes Econ starbases stack, but you wont be building 20 I can tell you that  Leaving aside the cost and resources to build anyting like that many for a single world, there is a per-sector limit on stabases. However, for industrially rich worlds stacking multiple econ bases can certainly be worthwhile.

wondered around a bit.

I find getting tons of stock exchanges on big planets bring in the major cash.

I split evenly manufacturing planets, and economy planets, works out well, split ou t econ starbases between em, i'm in a huge war with the terrans right now we are really the only two people left.  I am technologically supperior but they have a way stronger military.  I'm too poor to fund a war with them as im converting some planets into economy planets because i have far too many manufacturing ones and they are draining my war funds, plenty o production, not enough money to feed em.

The computer AI's do in fact know where everything is located, resources, planets, your ships. They don't have fog-of-war, but you can actually make use of it and try getting an esp. level on them, so you can see where a ship is going to.

In one way this is giving the AI a major advantage, but in the end it's the human player who can design strategies to which the AI's can't adapt to.

No, although I haven't read the opposite, either. But if I would, my oppinion still would stand tight because it's actually clearly visible in the game itself, which is a solid proof. I guess you are a long-term player and by that, couldn't simply have overlooked these AI "traits".

But I've read something along the line that the AI needs to scout out worlds first, before colonizing. Which can easily be disproven by starting a 'Battle of the Gods' Szenario in a Tiny Galaxy setup. You will have armed and rush-bought Colonizers zipping across the map heading directly towards uninhabitant planets, while in fact, everybody draws erratic lines when going through the fog-of-war (if you go zig-zag you can actually de-cover more fog, while pacing at the same speed to your destination) or using the Small Map in combination with "Stellar Cartagrophy" to target a system - but this doesn't give you the distinction between inhabitable/uninhabitable planets, so can't serve for an explanation why the AI is *always* heading towards a habitable planet.

But, undoubtely, the AI has a set roule to sent Scouts to systems, and this does also lead to the paradoxical behaviour that the Scout will follow when in fact the system is already colonized by him. A second thing is that if his Scout has extensive speed attached to him, this ship will scout into your system, and then move back and forth until his move-points are drained. Very "silly" actually. Or not quite. Because to make this assessment the AI needs to possess "intelligence" (or lack thereof) while, in fact, the AI simply plays out a set of behaviour rules, and he can't even break free of them.

Just got the Ultimate Edition in a store yesterday. Bit confused. As each game/expansion has it's own exe, does that mean I should play DL then DA then TA via the exe's? I notice if I choose the TA exe I get the 'Ultimate Edition' screen, so do i miss anything if I just play via the shortcut that start the launch exe, am I missing out on any story or anything?

Thanks for the help!

In the UE the launcher will only execute TA, thus, you need to launch DL via the executable, same for DA.

You can actually play all 3 campaigns from TA, but the it will change the ones for DL/DA, so best would be to start the campaigns from the version they belong to.

Personally I find the TA campaign interesting, because you're going to have Arnor-ships (that you can keep and therefore amount from game to game) with which you can blast the Dread Lords badly, all the while colonizing outside planets to get in reach to the DL's planets. Can't remember the name now, but the one (I think) Immense map with those 4 DL's planets at the opposite corner of the I remember as a hell of a game.

Then, the TA tournaments are very special. They actually keep what they promise, and display the wide range of methods and strategies that the game allows you to develop. I played most of these maps multiple times and was astonished to find that once the right tactic or approach was found, it was pretty easy to dominate, while in my first attempts (unadapted playstyle) I suffered to the very least (even lost!) I wish there would be more of them.