Intelligent Outpost Use

[Xpytrov]

Hi all,

Like a few others on this board I'm a long time player - exclusively offline. I'm pretty tempted by the challenge of an online game but would likely be quite handidly crushed as I still have trouble with Impossible in game.

I had a question that wasn't directly answered by Cybersaber's fantastic guide.

I've always been rubbish at use of Outpost ships. I've had the game since launch and I only just NOW found out that if you build an outpost on a planet you get a free marine baracks if you colonize it later. WHAT???

So given my complete ignorance of the OP ship, I'd be very keen to hear what tips people had for using them? Do they get used in competitive games? Apart from their good use at expanding ship range, are there any sneaky ways to take advantage of them? Most of the time they seem like a waste of production queue time.

Thoughts?

[Matthew]

Yes, they get used often. If you first few systems are crap, you can use them to find a better system to colonize. You can also use them for rushing an opponent early on.

[Xpytrov]

Gotcha- so mainly used only in situations where a colony isn't viable?

Does anyone use them for the Marine Base perk? I can see how that would be vaguely attractive to a demo or feudo civ, but it doesn't seem terribly cost effective...

[Gusset]

If I'm playing a Dictatorship race, I'll use the marine barracks perk sometimes, especially on poor or low-g worlds where the 25% hit hurts the most.

Another tactic that gets some use is to bring multiple OP ships with invasion fleets. Initially they are used to just extend range to reach enemy colonies, but then it is fairly common for a player to build multiple outposts in the same system once the attack fleet gets into enemy space.

Once this is done, it takes multiple turns for the "victim" empire to eliminate the forward base, because you can only attack one thing in a given system per turn...for example, if I've got 3 outposts set up in the XYZ system in your space, and I don't want to leave ships to defend that system, it will take you at least 3 turns to completely remove all of those outposts.