allegiance is very important.

First, it gives YOU a 10% boost to income to your planets under your influance...

however... if the enemy gets influence on you, you will start losing income (1% every 33.3 seconds) untill your planets rebel.

That means, not only whe you get the 10% culture warning on your planets are you about to lose those planets, also your losing 90%* of your potential icome from em. 

also culture grants bonuses that help your fleets in battle, with research.

First question. Well capital ships can fight off culture but not nearly as well as Broadcast Centers. Plus Broadcast Centers are the only thing that will raise it.

Second question. 99% of all AoEs affect only the enemy. The one exception is the self-destructing starbase. It gets everything.

Third question. Capital ships have a max level of 10. No higher, not even with modding. You can see their XP progression on their info card that pops up.

Fourth question. The train crew of capital ship is limited to the first three levels (goes up to the fourth with research). If you reach the 3rd (4th) level without using that option, it will disappear. As far as it's cost going down, the closer you are reaching that level from combat the less you have to spend on training. Some times I use it to hit that next level when I have all the ships in the current gravwell taken out and I am really close to the next level.

Fifth question. When you order carriers to jump out their strikecraft autodock. The point of manually docking is more to protect your strikecraft. An example is if the enemy has a lot of fighters and you have a lot of bombers and lots of flak. You keep your bombers docked while your flak clears the skies, then you release the bombers, which will now have little issue with fighters.

actually.... even if your things dont dock, they will still magicly appear back onto your carriers when the carriers jump.

I often tell, say, if my sova is running away, tell it to move to the edge of the gravity well, so that the fighters keep fighting, and then tell it to jump as soon as it gets close.  the strike craft dont have time to dock, but they are not left behind. 1337 hax.

The will show a red "No squadron host!" note in their infocard and will be slowly losing health at the rate of about 1% per second all the way down to zero. And then they go KABOOM BABY (as marauders say in SC2) and are out of your mind. They still can do some harm during that time, though.

I think the bonuses you are referring to (besides the alligence bonus that is always given to your planets) are the ones that are given when researching the culture rate upgrades. You can see what each method does in game, but basically, when in a gravity well under the influence of your culture (with at least one of the upgrades)...

All TEC ships will get a bonus to antimatter generation.

All Advent ships will get an increase to shield mitigation.

All Vasari ships get a damage bonus.

The magnitude of each of these bonuses increase as you research more and more culture rate improvements. But remember they only work when in a gravity well which your culture has a presence.

too much time jumping back and forth IMHO but others might feel different

Thanks so much. Odd that this isn't documented in the wiki or elsewhere. My main problem is that when playing the game, I am under constant attention-drain, because it seems that everything needs my attention at once and I don't have time to look at it all at once. I still haven't seen all aspects of the TEC tech trees (the only race I've played so far, so as to try to at least understand one). I'm not good at RTSs. Usually, during big battles, which I try to manage, I look up at some point and be like: Oh wow I've accumulated tons of gold and resources and all my planets are idle and I'm not researching anything! Must ... fix... that... then I neglegt the battle a bit and be like: Oh no, the battle! Then I realize that I haven't been paying attention to my scouts for the last 9 minutes ... and so didnt really see what was going on where ... and 3/5ths of my scouts are now dead. Rinse and repeat. I'm not saying I don't love it, only that I suck.

I'm on my fourth game now, and started a random medium map for the first time and with more than 1 AI for the first time so that I can see what diplomacy does. Frankly, I'm obviously not getting all of it. On the f1 and f11 screens, I can see that I need 255 diplo points to win a diplo victory, but so far no one has earned any (I think I can see their diplo points too), we're all at zero. I don't really get it. I have accepted every mission offered to me and have completed quite a few of them, but that doesn't seem to help. It almost seems ironic: I accept a mission from X, go and hurt Y a bit for him, and while I'm doing that, he runs in and hurts me, so I hurt him back, but also manage to hurt Y for him and hence I collect money from him and get a somewhat improved rating with him while I kick his ass ...? Apparently. He's never accepted a cease fire however. So I figure I must research a bit in the diplo tree, not really understanding what for and how exactly, but I get the envoy tech, make an envoy cruiser, and send it out to X (Y is much closer to me and he's no match for me, apparently). I had thought that these envoys are immune, but no, they're apparently only immune temporarily, but ok, he makes it there, sits around X's gravity well for a while, then (when its immunity runs out) gets shot down by X. Ah, so much for diplomacy.

Obviously, I am missing something. I find it hard to formulate concrete, easily answerable questions that aren't too far reaching and abstract. I suppose the closest I can come to is this:

- I'm actually not sure if I've turned diplo VC on or off; hoping I didnt turn it off, how does one earn 255 diplo points (ANYone) when we're all doing missions for each other and simultaneously kicking each other's ass? Is there a trick to this envoy? I thought I would use him to get a cease-fire, but apparently you need one BEFORE you send them out, otherwise the envoy is meat. Or maybe there is a trick I'm missing. I read a few threads where "diplomacy" was in the title, but I haven't been enlightened yet. In the last thread I read, I heard that many players turn off diplo -- I'd kind of like to not do that just yet, so any basic tips are greatly appreciated.

If I may:

- I notice that when I load games, it seems  that you can actually change the AI type of an already existing game...? So I can start a game on normal (like what I did), and then boost it up or down later? Does that work?

- What do you consider "end game"? I mean, the games I played so far were on small maps, 1v1, and at least twice the game was over before I could even research heavy cruisers. I wanted a bigger map so it would go longer so I would learn more about the tech tree. I'm not sure if I've reached late game yet. I'm at a point that if I wanted to, I think I could simply turtle a bit and tech up. I want to try to just see what a Novalis Cannon is and does, and I think the TEC also are supposed to have some nice über-tech in economics, but havent found out much about that yet. Is end game, in your opinion, when you start to get these techs?

So far, I haven't really needed these. Maybe I would have in one game, the game I gave up on because I didnt realize what culture was before too late. Now, I think I have a good balance of economy and military, although my fleet management sucks. I think this is my last problelm:

- I don't have enough hotkeys. 10 isn't enough for me, at least not on this medium random map. I hotkey as many planets as I can, so I can manage them and their production without too much problem, so that usually only leaves me with 3 or 4 hotkeys I spare for fleets. And because that's so few, I tend to aggregate my fleets into big, unwieldly masses, instead of splitting them up and making more specialized forces or hit-and-run attacks, which I'd like to do. But it seems I don't have "time" for that; usually, when I make ships, they join the fleet they're near, and then it doesn't matter what hotkeys I use anymore, because they take off with fleet #2 even if I assign them another hotkey because I forget to micromanage each ship to leave a fleet and make a new one. I suppose there is no tip for that except get an additional brain, but would you happen to know if I can use more hotkeys than ctrl-1-0?

Oh no, another wall of questions, erm sorry, and thanks so much for your patience 

for the diplo victory, I think you have to have better than .5 relationship with everybody on average before you start earning points.  so... if your at .3 with person a and .6 with person b, your at .45, and not earning points, but if your at .3 with person a and .8 with person b, you should be at .55 and you should start seeing that diplo counter start to tick up.  if you then piss off person b, and drop below .5, that diplo counter will actually start dropping.

pause the game! pause the game and take a good look at the tech trees, nothing wrong with that. you can even order ships, que research and ships, everything while paused.

yep, you can change a few settings between gaming sessions.  It might cause funny things with the replays however.

"end game" ya, is generally when the lv 8 techs start poppin out. this doesnt nessasarlly mean BFG9000, it could be phase stabilizers, or P. econ.  and you are correct, most games dont reach end game. heck, most games dotn even reach late game, where the kodiaks, and the high tier utility cruisers start appearing (and as a tec, you kinda dont really want your enemy to be reaching this point... a complete advent battle ball, or a well developed vasari fleet will generally... well, a battle ball with tear you up, and a vasari will shut you down. )

my general hotkey strat is: dont use em.   well, thats not true.  I most certainly use the qwertasdf hotkeys, (this saves me sooooo much time, and i think its one of the main reasons i generally do well in multiplayer) but I uasually leave fleets off, and use shift+click and Ctrl+click and the empire tree to micro my various unit types.  if things start to get unwieldy, I may say, set all my capital ships to 1, and the entier fleet to 2, and maybe special units to 3 (hoshikos, or overseers, generally)  if two fleets i just repeat with cap ships on 4, entire fleet on 5, and specials on 6.   Usually ill use the find button to find say, colony ships, or whatever.  and of course, there is a hotkey combo... i forget what it is, that finds planets that are not completely developed, making planet development rather simple.

The Advent Iconus Guardian has an ability called "shield projection" that absorbs damage taken by nearby friendly units.  The Advent Progenitor Mothership has an ability called "shield restore" that regenerates the shields of all nearby friendly units.  People essentially use this combo to produce massive shield regeneration across their entire fleet.  A large amount of the damage gets diverted to the guardians, which are restored by the Progenitor(s).  However, this works best if you keep your units tightly packed into a small area under the spherical protection of shield projection, earning this tactic the nickname the "battleball".

This tactic is made even more powerful by the "repulsion" ability of the Iconus Guardian which can push away threatening enemy units, and the "telekinetic push" ability of the Halcyon that can push away enemy strike craft.

If you hoover your cursor over your credit income, it will show any planet that's suffering underdevelopment penalties with a red number, making them easy to spot.

they are VERY important in multiplayer.  any pocket player should be getting these at some point, the earlier the better.  THe thing is, in multiplayer, the teams are already locked, so you dont have to worry about trying to make allies, you just send over the envoy ships and make pacts.

The worst battle I ever fought was when a tec player never upgraded his fleet size, he just went straight for the +800 fleet supply pact... and bam, he and an ally were at 900 fleet supply with 0 upkeep.  since he had 8 civis, he was also really close to P. econ, as well.   he got 3 military labs, and just built a shizzton of carriers and could preety much just walk over everything.