Re: What\'s tthe secret to Fighters & Missles?
 

This isn’t really a secret for fighters and missiles, but it is related. Should you run into a new race with fighters and missiles, or your opponent has switched on you, it is tough to refit everything with a couple of PDC. A common design, that I have seen talked about a lot and have personally found effective, is the fighter killer. Take a fairly small hull and fill it to the brim with PDC. Put on one small beam weapon to ensure that the ships stays in the heart of strategic battles. Send it out and you have a SEIV equivalent of an Aegis cruiser. They are fairly cheap, quick to build and change the balance of weapons in your favour. They also make nice additions to planet busting fleets, as they eat up sats.

When using fighters, I find sending launching them in the biggest possible Groups is more effective. The small Groups tend to get eaten up by PDC before they get to fire. As another person mentioned, launching them in space before the battle to get very large Groups is also useful, as it leads to the same effect.

Re: What\'s tthe secret to Fighters & Missles?
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by geoschmo:
However, point defenses are smaller and cheaper than missles. Which is the main reason it's hard to get enough missles to overwhelm the PDC.

...
[ 26 March 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]<hr></blockquote>

If you are using Organic Missles then they are cheaper in build time than Point Defenses because almost every ship design I have ever seen is bounded by Mineral costs. Rarely do Organic races even hit the bound for Organic resources at their shipyard. A beam ship needs to dedicate time in training to fight at optimal level. A missleship can go to battle immediately. I played against an Organic race once that would create massive fleets of Organic missleships and consider trading 3 ships for 2 of mine a victory. Of course he built enough direct fire ships to keep me honest. My ships were costly because I had to put so many point defenses on them. The other nuance about missles is that in a large battle (80 on 80 for example), point defenses are spread out with the ships where as the blob of missles tends to be concentrated. As a defender my ships could not mass close enough to take out all the missles. When you have 400 missles to target, it is hard to get every ship to use its point defenses. I should also add that combat replay for such a battle takes hours (fast mode) as it pauses for each missle launch.

Re: What\'s tthe secret to Fighters & Missles?
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by LGM:


If you are using Organic Missles then they are cheaper in build time than Point Defenses because almost every ship design I have ever seen is bounded by Mineral costs. Rarely do Organic races even hit the bound for Organic resources at their shipyard. A beam ship needs to dedicate time in training to fight at optimal level. A missleship can go to battle immediately. I played against an Organic race once that would create massive fleets of Organic missleships and consider trading 3 ships for 2 of mine a victory. Of course he built enough direct fire ships to keep me honest. My ships were costly because I had to put so many point defenses on them. The other nuance about missles is that in a large battle (80 on 80 for example), point defenses are spread out with the ships where as the blob of missles tends to be concentrated. As a defender my ships could not mass close enough to take out all the missles. When you have 400 missles to target, it is hard to get every ship to use its point defenses. I should also add that combat replay for such a battle takes hours (fast mode) as it pauses for each missle launch.<hr></blockquote>


So you'd hate me if I posted a mod I've been toying with that adds five more levels of seeker weapons for Organic and Crysalline Weapons, three new levels for Capital Ship Missiles and one for plasma missiles? All have higher damage Ratings and (more painfully) higher seeker damage values.

(Crystal Torp X is the worst one, seeker resistance-wise, though the damage inflicted is lower than the others.)

[ 28 March 2002: Message edited by: Sinapus ]</p>

Re: What\'s tthe secret to Fighters & Missles?
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Sinapus:
If you fight in tactical mode, try designing fighters with heavy defenses and send them in first to soak up the point-defense cannon fire, then send fighters w/heavier weapons in.

Of course, in strategic mode this doesn't work very well unless you are lucky.<hr></blockquote>

It is possible in strategic: design some ships with one or two fighter bays. Load them with fighters with one or two shields. Load normal carriers with attack fighters and assign to launch in big Groups. You may want to just fighters speed so anti-PD fighters arrives first. Works really nice if you have crystalline energy tramsmission lens: +60 shield to each fighter group. It is NOT easy to shut down a fighter with 180 shield points and high ECM. AFAIK, point defence cannons are made less accurate in Gold. Your oppenent may spent 3 or even 4 PD shots per fighter.

Re: What\'s tthe secret to Fighters & Missles?
 

trading 3-2 ill trade 3-1 or 4-1 i don't care i can make roughly 15 of my 1 turn organic missleships with lvl 4 or 5 each turn and when i engage the enemy 60-10 it isn't fair at all. a lot of smaller crappy 1 turn produced ships is better than super high tech 3 turn behemoths, think about it you get 3x more ships.