100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

100 ships versus 100 ships

Dreadnaught Hull

All the necessities (Control components, sensors, self-destruct, supply, engines)
10 Crystalline Armor
3 Phased Shield V
3 APBXII Heavy
3 Shield Depleter Heavy

I can only get a 50% kill ratio, at best, and inconsistently in the simulator. I usually lose. I've tried many variations of build. Shield depletion, shield killing, null-space weapons, etc. The 10 Crystalline Armors always seems to win it out.

Some help please. Suggest ship designs and I'll plug it into the sim. Chances are, your idea won't work cause I've tried it already.

Brian

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Try an armor skipping weapon - they don't trigger the crystalline armor ability.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Unfortunately, is not Shard Cannon the only armor skipping weapon? I don't have the luxury of a shard cannon.

Brian

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Oh, and I've tried a ship built like this,

Necessities
4x Phased Shield V
6x Heavy Null-Space weapons

This class can hold its own against the crystalline ships, but only inconsistently. Most of the time it loses.

Brian

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Shield Disruptors can ruin their defenses, converting them to merely slightly improved normal armor.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

You seem to have forgotten the Stealth and Scattering armour for the Crystalline ship. Or does it fall under the essentials? Likewise, you could put some Armour III on the Crystalline vessel, to draw more shots to the non-Crystalline armour (or simply put more Crystalline Armour, and remove one or two shields).

Ah, you weren't asking for a better Crystalline design? I have to agree with you; the Crystalline armour is more powerful than virtually anything else, costs being equal. The Talisman is, of course, the exception. A swarm of fighters could also work well, if you launch them in big stacks; they are treated as a single weapon, and will wreak havoc on the Crystalline armour.

That aside, the most common design is Shield Depleter/APB/Shield Depleter/APB and so on. This works quite well, but requires you to score hits fairly often, to avoid breaking the sequence. And this design is only useful against the Crystalline armour special effect, still leaving a pretty good defence on the target ship. The other easy solution would be to go with heavier weapons, such as the Enveloping Acide Globul (very expensive to research, and Organic only, but with a higher damage ratio AND a faster reload rate than the WMG). Again, having good odds to hit is more or less required.

So I feel you will need to put more ships and/or more expensive designs to take care of a Crystalline fleet. That, or simply kill them early on, and/or use the Equalizers (happiness and Stellar Manipulation). I know I have failed to come up with a working design to nullify the Crystalline Armour, without being at a disadvantage.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

The Shard Cannon is the only weapon skipping Armour, and happens to belong to the Crystalline Empires. Annoying that.

Shield Disruptors are very good, but fairly expensive, and with a low range (requiring either bases/weapon platofmrs or an enemy strategy of Short Range/Point Blank). If it does hit, that will hurt however; the problem being to make those shots.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Yes. It looks like Asmala knew exactly what he was doing picking Crystalline =D.

The shield depleter/APB/shield depleter/etc idea kind of works, but only if you have more ships than him. Or else it turns into a rout with the crystal ships killing all your ships and you killing about half of his.

Oh well, I just won't be able to defeat him myself then http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image.../firedevil.gif

Brian

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Thanks for the warning. I didn't know Asmala belonged to the Secret Circle of the Crystalline Worshippers (Primitive is another such member, and he made me reflect on the virtues of this trait). Of course, you should be glad you aren't playing against a Crystalline AND Religious Empire.

The standard recommendations apply then: outmanoeuver him, try the riot run, cross your fingers, and start becoming Deeply Religious. But since your foe is Asmala... Well, he is likely more ready than most to repel a riot run, as evidenced by the legendary Pairs game (a game between Asmala and Primitive is magnificent. Unless you are caught in the middle of the slaughter)

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

What about a combination of shield depleters, engine destroyers, apb's and repulser beams? Your ships can move in, break down shields, hit his engines and do a little extra damage. With heavy and up mount repulsers, even if he has supplies you'll limit the number of ships you're fighting. Wormhole weapons too, even though they could throw ships behind your front lines it would allow your approaching ships to attack someone, and the wormhole beams have a better range than repulsers

Also for short range (but they have a slow fire rate, those shield component destroyers)
If you have a basic game layout to run simulations on the empires, I'd give that a shot.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Attack his 100 crystalline ships with 200 ships. Your results will be much better. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Do Repulser Beams require your ship to be bigger than the target, or is it enough to be as big as the target? (So can a Dreadnought repulse another Dreadnought?) If you have to be bigger, it will require bases or Baseships, and the latter would not be your best notion in this situation.

Wormhole beams do not have this limitation, and would do the trick on defence. Beware while being on the offensive however; you could very well send enemy ships near your support ships, which might ruin your day. (You do not want to lose these minesweepers after all)

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

what about the APB/Shield depleter combo but add an engine killer and a wormhole beam to the end of your list. If the shield depleters can get their shields down, then the engine killers could, at the very least, slow them down and the Wormhole beams will scatter them enough that your ships still in fleets can overpower isolated ships. Worth a try.

Before the patch that changed engine killers skipping shields, this made for a devesatating weapon arrangment. And still is quite formiable.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Shield depleters + engine destroyers + APB + repulsor doesn't work. You repulse his ships, but with all the shield depletion and repulsion beams and engine destruction weapons there isn't much room for the APB's.

His crystalline armors act as really powerful armor III's.

Don't beleive me, you can try, its a rout =D. I put 4 heavy shield depletion, 4 heavy APB, 2 engine destruction, 1 repulsor, and 4 phased shields with essentials on dread.

Brian

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Plus, a supply component nullifies the main advantage of engine destroying components -- running the guy out of supplies so he can't shoot.

Brian

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Theoretically, the wormhole idea should kick ***.

But the wormhole idea sucks, I just tried it. Most of their main force stays together, and most of your ships try to chase around the isolated ships, meaning you are running from their main force and they get potshots at you.

Brian

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

If your ships are not set to point blank range, they will fall back, tending to leave various engineless enemy ships behind...

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

You need to alter the firing priorities in your strategies. Try firing on nearest ships first, so that your ships don't go chasing down far away warships...

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

If you use the wormhole beam, install it on your ship Last, and be sure to alter strategies so the "nearest" and is at the top of the list. You ships will find another target for the next round, instead of chaseing. An engine destroyer may get lucky, and his ships will have to limp around.

And don't depend on the null space gun. It's slow reload is what prevents it from ruleing the game.

Suggestion:
Basics, Shield depleter, engine destroyer, null space, wormhole beam, ripper beams

Eventually you will start hurting the ships, scattering them, and then you'll clean up the half damaged hulls. That's what the rippers are for.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Fire on the nearest ships first.

*Echo, echo, echo....

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

shhsh the crystal secert is getting out...

I like to play them as well...

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Brian, as I said, the engine destroyers won't stop his ships from firing, but if you bring down his ships THEN fire the engine destroyer THEN hit him with repulsers...that ship cannot return to combat, only fight from wherever it winds up. As for the taking up space you are correct. However, since you are fighting dreads, you don't need 2 engine destroyers (the combat system generally keeps striking the same target). One is enough, and in fact you may not need a Heavy mount against dreads, since you only need to do 80 points of engine damage.

That being said, I'm sure the 100 crystalline ships are still too much....but alter your ship's targeting priorities

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

I see several things being missed here, but I'll keep out of it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

PvK

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

What do you mean? The secret has been pubically known and documented for years...

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

What, you're planning to attack me!? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Try placing some combat sensors, ECMs, stealth, and scattering armor on your ship. Then pop a few tachyon cannons on your ships : )

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

brianeyci, be grateful that your opponent doesn't use more than 10 crystalline armor. According to my calculations, best effect is got with 11 crystalline armor and those over that are reserve when one gets broken. Best result I have gotten is with 11 crystal armor and 1 phased shield max level.

My weapon placement against such ships.

1 or 2 shield depleters + engine destroying weapon + 1 depleter (this one optional) +1 APB (or any other high damage ratio gun) + 1 depleter +1 APB... You see the pattern.

Idea: 2 Depleters at first consume shields of crystal ship before engine destroying weapon fires. Then every other weapon is depeter and every other normal damage gun. Notice that any normal damage gun must make more that 150 damage, othervise it is useless. There are plenty of those. Strategy: Point Blank or Short Weapons Range (depending on your hit ratio)

Idea2: Make a bigger ship model than your enemy (ie. baseship if he uses dreadnoughts). Equip it with Tractor beam(s) first, then 1 or 2 shield depleter(s), engine destroying weapon and fourth weapon is a weapon which make high damage on close range (ie. Graviton hellbore, though it is risky because it is useless on any other distance than point blank). Strategy: Point Blank, of course.

Idea3: Fight in a storm which makes shields useless (haven't tried that).

Feel free to shoot me down with these ideas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

I would definitively advise against using Baseships, since you would be just begging your opponent to switch to Maximum weapon range, and the range would likely still matter with only two hundred ships in the battle (how many ships are needed to come down to a contest of numbers is a matter of debate).

Interesting idea about fighting in a storm, or much better, in a nebulae (they eat 5,000 shield points if memory serves). I must admit I do not know if these will stop the actual regeneration of shield points however; I have a hunch it only removes the shield points at the start of the battle, and creating shield points should still work. *Hurries to the laboratory*

*Rushes back to this thread, and takes off his lab coat* I was quite wrong. A nebulae stops both shield generation and regeneration of shields in the course of a battle. Interesting to say the least. Now you merely need to lure the Fiend into one such system, and voilà!

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Not when the best combat simulations give me a 2 to one death ratio. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Brian

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Best idea so far. 2 to one death ratio when combined with a wormhole beam at the end to scatter the crystal ships. If there's no wormhole beam, death. 100 ships versus 100, with crystal ships having 13 crystal. Try urself.

<edit> That's two of my deaths for one crystal death. And in larger numbers, this design doesn't work as well and the crystals stomp them </edit>

Brian

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Alneyan, you have a good point. Baseships are not known of their agility. But they have 2 advantages over dreadnoughts which may weight more. First, Bigger mount. You need high one shot damage to break Crystal armor defence. Wave motion gun makes a good damage on smaller mounts either, yes, but its reload time is 3. APB makes a good deal of damage and fires every turn, though it needs a bigger mount (ie. baseship). Second point is, that Crystal player is propably using dreadnoughts, so using same size class ships you can't use tractor beam any useful way.

I was thinking of putting wormhole beam at the end of all weapons. It is useful, but the weapon placement I suggested requires a lot of space itself too (many more shield depleters than in normal ship design, therefore less space for normal weapons). So if you can fit wormhole beam Last, good for you.

Also drones with shield depleters might surprise your enemy. They soak enemy fire and with any luck they deplete eney shields too.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Hmmm, too bad. I've always had amazing success with that. Mind you, I've never faced 100 crystalline ships at one shot before either...

What about shear firepower (All APB's) with a Wormhole beam on the end? Enough of those should scatter even a large fleet.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Firepower can work. I probably eliminated a couple of the items he considers in the necessities, but putting 14 Armor III's in place of the crystalline armor and his phased shields and firing 3 shield depleters {hvy) along with 9 APP's (hvy) I managed to win 20/20 battles in the simulator. In each I destroyed all the crystalline ships while losing between 13 ships (the best) and 56 ships (the worst, average losses were 20-23). This design makes the crystalline ships depleters worthless since this design has no shields and while the 14 Armor IIIs don't measure up to the 10 crystalline armors it does allow the ships to Last long enough for three times the firepower to make its mark after the depleters deplete the initial shield strength. Its here, having a 9-3 edge in APP's that made the difference. Of course YMMV.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

100 Baseships each with essentials, 15x Massive Mounted Time Distortion Bursts, and no shields. They win 4 to 1.

Edit: spelling

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Only works if you have Temporal Technology... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Try ramming ships. Fill a ship with command and control, engines, and armor. Booooooooom...

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

I haven't see weapon bearing drones to be very effective, they don't get much chance to do damage before they're destroyed or rammed.

But, if the simulator says your design will survive opponent point defense long enough, and you're inclined to build enough, their high yield warheads will take down lots of shield points.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

I've tried putting lots of crystalline armor on my ships, and indeed it makes them a lot tougher. This ship design works well! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif It seems that crystalline armor is much better than organic armor, is that right?

Why is 11 crystalline armors better than 10? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Crystalline Vs Organic:
Crystalline dosen't care how fast the damage comes in. You get the same effect from 100 torpedo hits in one round as 4 torpedo hits per round for 25 rounds.

Organic Armor needs to survive to work, and the slower you take damage, the faster you regen.

One on One, the Organic armor will beat the Crystalline.
100 on 100, Organic provides no benefit at all.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

That, and an Organic ship needs to survive one turn to see the regeneration kick in, while the Crystalline effect will work after each and every hit (well, barring weapons bypassing armour or shields). So the Crystalline armour is much better if your ships aren't expected to survive one turn, where their regeneration ability might improve the odds of the rest of your fleet.

Putting more than 10 Crystalline Armours increase the number of hits you can take while keeping your maximum regeneration ability (you cannot shrug off more than 149 points of damage, regardless of how many Crystalline Armours you have on board the ship). So, having 20 Crystalline Armours would require the attacker to destroy at least ten pieces of armour before breaking the "improved Emissive Armour" effect of the Crystalline Armour.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Wow! I didn't know that. How/where did you find that out?

Slick.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

I think it's because one piece of crystalline armor has a damage resistance of 150 kT, so a hit that does more than 149 kT of damage would destroy it.

EDIT:
Hmm, that's only if your ship has 0 shields left, and then it gets hit by 150 or more damage, right?

If your ship has 10 crystalline armor and say, 100 shields, what would happen?
A 150 damage hit will use up 100 shield points and 50 will get through to the armor, which is not enough to destroy a piece. Then the shield will regenerate by 150 so next turn you would have no damage and 150 shields.

But then if you get hit again, 150 shields will be gone so you would have no shields left, and you get hit a third time by 150 damage, one of your armor would be destroyed.

This doesn't seem to make sense: you are better off to start off with 100 shields than it is to start with 150 shields, because 150 shields would be exactly cancelled out and there will be no regeneration. If you have 100 shields, part of the damage will get through and trigger regeneration, so you end up with more shields at the end of the turn.

But what happens to the 50 damage that got through? Is it carried over to the damage for the next hit?

Also, if you had 20 pieces of crystalline armor, would a hit that reaches the armor cause the shields to regenerate by 300 points? Then it seems that the more crystalline armor you have, the much better it would be, because any hit that doesn't destroy a full piece of armor gives you more shields back. ...or am I misunderstanding something?

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

20 Crystalline Armours would give you 300 points of shielding; the problem being to have enough shields to hold all these points (not a matter if you have Shields X), and a ship big enough to carry all of these, plus the essentials, and weaponry. I did forget to mention that, which was the obvious advantage of having more than 10 Crystalline Armour.

The actual workings of the armour have been explained by an user,whose name I have forgotten (oops) back in 2001, and is available in the Dubious guide. I have posted the full quote in the Tips and Tricks thread, minus a section about the CA, no longer accurate since Gold. The specifics, or why it works in this manner, are unknown to me.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

That's where you went off the tracks.
Only 50 damage was done to the hull, so you only get a 50 point shield boost.

After taking out your 50 shields, the next hit will do 100 (+50 partial from Last hit) and destroy your first CA. The 100+50 hull damage then gives you 150 shields for when the third hit comes along.

Re: 100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships
 

Thanks for the explaination! OK, I understand now! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif