Yippiekayee MF!

[Raptor]

Hmm... 5 a.m., let's try to get some kip. Pirates for breakfast after around 2 hours  

[Matamaure001]

Raptor: my power ratio between Att and DEF is about 50/50. Once the attack is started, I lower my attack to be able to beat ship by ship plus a contingency of about 20%. I also lower my shields when needed. I have Vipers but I never use then in the attack because you are not sure to hit with them and also they have only one use. I use MAU for the attacks because they never misses and they fire up to 10 times (with 10% less power each time).

[Raptor]

Hmm... just returned to the crime scene, activated the tracking device in my cargo bay, and got a message along the lines of "thanks for eliminating them, here's 24k". Originally, I was meant to make over 70k from this mission. Is it because I didn't take all of them out in one go? There's nothing left there now.

[sargas]

no, you should get what you were promised. I have never been gypped by the game concerning NPC pirates.

[Raptor]

In that case, I must've mis-read 24 for 74.

[JoolzVern]

And maybe I just missed it but if nobody has yet answered your question, the combat tactics categories max out at levels 5 and 10 so they don't go too high.

Personally, where Mata goes 50/50 on weapons/shields, I tend to go a little heavier than that on weapons usually, but then I also diversified a bit with some vipers etc.

Why? I could build them faster than the same firepower in MAUs (and I just recently got some of those past mk200). So vipers were right for a time because even if I'd put my resources into MAUs I'd have to do tons of SOS missions etc. to finance it and take a long time building them.

Even with a manufacturing officer, building a mk200(50750 marines) from scratch takes you 12 days and a mk 100 viper takes half the time and has 51500 attack power. Of course I think it's best to do a 'rolling upgrade' but there's still considerable time to invest in high mk tech.

Building the vipers cost me a bit more but it's still cheaper than lasers for the firepower.

[Raptor]

I love all the different viewpoints. A case can be made for pretty much all of them, which makes the game diverse and less predictable.

Thanks for answering the question on the tactics tree, didn't know for sure until now. Am almost at the highest level there now then. Good, because there's much more to research

[Raptor]

When attacking pirate looters, it's better to attack twice. Use the loot option for the first attack, and then the capture/destroy for the second. Doing this will increase your profit and take less time. 

Just had the opportunity to put this advice into practice, and it worked a treat 
The loot is worth twice as much as the actual bounty lol.

[JoolzVern]

I love all the different viewpoints. A case can be made for pretty much all of them, which makes the game diverse and less predictable.

Yes it's nice that much of the time there is no "wrong answer". That is really one of the game's best features.

As Mata pointed out with vipers, they miss quite a bit which is why I had to go with more than 50% weapon power, sometimes up to 60%+ to win those coms.

So I'd say perhaps the best advice I can give in that regard is to make sure your strategy is well thought out and tailored to your play style and plan ahead, taking into account the nuances like that one. It helps to get advice from guys like Mata or Jam etc. that have been playing a while, and thought about it a lot themselves, but ultimately it's all about how you want to play. Some people are miners and some prefer SOS while some prefer to log in every few days or week so they want coms with long timers and high payouts.

Other than that it often comes out to balance, not just as far as a weapon:shield ratio(which is important) but balancing these things with the rest of your strategy and play style.