Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Ok I am in an advanced game and most tech has been discoverd. What is the optimal balance of Defense and Offense for a Dreadnaught for a Crystal Race? I find that I have placed 10 or 11 Armor (8 or 9 Crystal plus scattering and stealth) on my ships with 3 or 4 shields. But that leaves little room for weapons. On a 1 to 1 fight my ships win easily. But in fleet actions they have not done that well.

I have one design mounting 5 Heavy Anti-Proton Beam and a Energy Dampener III.

I have another design with an Energy Dampener III, 2 Heavy Shield Depleters V, and 5 Heavy Shard Cannon X

Both designs seem to do worse in fleet actions. I think it is because the weight of their firepower is light.

Any ideas?

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Enough Crystal armor for 150 (10 I think), 1 or 2 shield (since you have LOT of armor), and Anti-proton beam and 1 energy dampener. The Shard cannon is useful only against other crystallines, and Energy Dampener may be useful if ennemy have only a few big ship (like Baseship), or in WP defence. If you play in stratégic only, the dampeneur is far less useful 'cause your ship still shoot at the dampened even if it is harmless.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Well one of my enemies uses Organic Armor exclusively (darn Religious Organic) and the Shard Cannon I thought would be pretty effective tearing up his ships because he does not use that many shields and would bypass his armor.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Here's what I do, and it works pretty well in my experience:

No master computer
Max quantum engines
Solar sail
quantum reactor
multiplex tracking
combat sensors
ECM
scattering armor
stealth armor
crystalline armor x10
emmissive armor x3
phased shield generator
heavy mount shield depleter
heavy mount APB x4
PDC x3

If you're willing to pay the cost for a master computer, you can add another shield depleter or take off a PDC or multiplex tracking and add another APB. I include three emmissive armors because the emmissive ability greatly increases the durability of this design, but the emmissive armor is much easier to destroy than the rest. The 10 crystalline armors are not something you can compromise on - you need all 10 to get maximum benefit from the shields from damage ability, and if I had space for them I'd add spares. For this reason, baseships might actually not be a bad idea, despite their 40% defense penalty.

Edit: If your primary opponent is using lots of organic armor instead of shields, the shard cannon might be a good choice as main armament. Make two designs, one with standard weapons and one with shard cannons and try them both out in the simulator.

Edit2: Your opponent is religious? In that case, you may want to strip out the stealth and scattering armors, and maybe the ECM as well, and replace them with a spare crystalline armor and another big gun. Just be careful to use such a design only against your religious enemies unless you don't have a choice.

Edit3: Oh yeah, if you can tolerate their slower speed, baseships are definitely the way to go against religious enemies, as their 40% defense penalty will have absolutely no effect, plus you'll get 500 kt more space and the massive mount, and the space-saving master computer no longer costs more than the alternative.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Thanks that is good advice. We are in a truly epic war in this game. The top three players against everyone else. In the past 5 turns the main battlefleets of each player has been destroyed in combat in a series of battles.

I have been using a mix of Shard Cannon and APB XII. The APB ships are piplelined from base yards and my Shard Cannon from planet yards. I test your design and see how it works.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

My advice if you go with baseships: switch to a master computer instead of bridge/CQ/LS, add another 5-6 crystalline armors, add another backup emissive armor or two, switch all your weapons to massive mount, and fill up the rest of the space with more massive mount weapons.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Speed is somewhat important. My race is a propulsion expert so I can get 9. But 10 is what we need. I have some Baseships which I am retrofitting this turn. They are the survivors of the last big battle. I have new DNs with your design going into production. The simulator showed better performance than what I was using. Thanks for the help and long live the Grand Alliance.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

9 and 10 are the same for me : speed of 5 in battle

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

In battle speed is not as important as strategic speed. I have to maneuver with other races and the speed difference could have half our fleet arriving the day after the battle:-)

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

If the battle is won by your ally's fleets, it would be only beneficial to you; because then you'd have a full combat-ready fleet ready to take on enemies.

Lessen your use of Crystalline armor slightly (speaking about the number in first post) and increase the amount of top-lev Phased Shields. What you could also do; create some (small) fast support ships with as much movement as possible, light armor and 1-2 Phased gens max. Then put (possibly mounted) Ripper Beams on them and use them to close with you enemy and cause considerable damage AND draw away enemy fire for long enough to allow your large warships to close in for the kill.

I'm speaking about stock here, or are you using a mod.....?

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

10 Cristal armor is very important to max out the effect of cristal armor in my opinion

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Yes, at least 10 crystal armor is absolutely essential for crystal to be useful. It's the only way to get the full benefit of the shielding ability.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

If you remember to USE shield generators..... unless of course CA generates shields anyways, generator or not. (I don't know, I've never paid much attention to it)

You mustn't forget weapons, though; Stealth/Scattering armor is OK, but if the enemy has the sensors to look through your Stealth Armor it's generally useless, as the 15% defense bonus won't stack with Scattering Armor and ECM. If you take away the Stealth Armor and replace it for, say, 20kT with armor and 30kT with weapons, you still get pretty good armor protection with increased firepower.

What you could also do is use two or more types of ships, a Cover Defender and an Offensive Warship. Cover ships would have a lot of armor and shields but little weapons; they'd be hard to destroy but wouldn't pack much firepower. The Offensive Warships would have less armor/shields but would pack a lot more firepower. If you keep your ships in, say, Decoy Arrowhead formation (with an Offensive lead ship) with Cover ships as the front arrow and Warships as the rear, the enemy will be faced with a choice; pound away at the heavily shielded Defenders who are hard to kill but can keep pouring fire into the enemy for a long time and ignore the heavily-armed Warships, but if (s)he chooses to attack the heavily-armed formation of Warships they'll be left with tough ships difficult to kill that can keep firing for pretty long.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Incorrect. One each of stealth armor, scattering armor, and ECM all stack for a total defense bonus of 90%. This stacking is completely independent of anything else, you still get stealth armor's defense bonus even if your opponent has the sensors to see through the cloak. Unfortunately, the Religious Talisman makes all defense bonuses irrelevent, so replacing the stealth and scattering armor with other stuff makes sense against a religious enemy.

It's a nice idea, but it's not doable in SEIV because you can't specify which ships go where in the formation other than the lead ship.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

I thought defense bonuses didn't stack.....?

Then again, it could just be my using of SEIVG 1.61 that can be confusing at times.

It is hard (read: impossible) to fully control it when assigning fleets, yes, but if you're playing Classic turns and tactical combat it can be done, you just have to add all ships to the Combat Group in the right order.

However, you could have a fleet with a custom strategy that includes "Break Formation for Warships" to move lots of ships at the same time, but keep them out of formation in battle. They'd fight as an unorganised mob, but if you make the Cover Defenders slightly faster than the Offensive Warships, it might still work.

Then again, the religious enemy could be using very fast ships with batteries of WMGs, Plasma Missiles/CSMs and assorted other long-range weaponry.....

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Defense (and offense, but that's irrelevent in stock) bonuses stack if they come from different component families. Within a component family, only the highest bonus applies. These bonuses also stack with a bonus from the hull.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Defense bonuses don't stack for components in the same family...

IE you can't stack ECM I, ECM II, and ECM III.
But you can stack an ECM with the hull ability, and the stealth armor, and the scattering armor, and any modded bonus you add if it has a unique family number.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Wow, Stealth and Scattering armor stack? I didn't know that. Better go revise my usual ship designs then.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Click the "To Hit Modifiers" button on the design screen, and you can see the total effects of the components you are adding.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Wow thanks for all the advice. So far the ship that Douglas recommended seems to work the best in the simulators. We are fighting two major enemies with large fleets. One is religious the other is not, so I can not abandon my defensive bonus's. I have not had a chance to try it out in a real battle yet.

I have two designs - 1 with Anti-proton Beams and 1 with Shield depleters and shard cannon.

I have also used a "Shield-Ship" as my fleet leader and looking replays indicates that he tends to suckup alot of fire in the first round so I usually put one in a fleet.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Douglas is a master, after all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Try to completely kill off the heretic enemy ASAP. (or at least cripple them beyond any hopes of quick repair) When that is done, you can refit your ships and remove the ECM/Scattering/Stealth armor and place normal/emissive armor on it, and more weapons.

You could also try to build several shield ships in your fleet, if the enemy concentrates on them first it'll be even longer until they can fire on your ships. This is espeically handy if they use a lot of weapons with a ROF of 2 or more.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

Indeed. I find my first post in the Race to SEV thread (quoted below) quite ironic now, considering I am now one of the finalists, and took the fewest turns to reach that status - the one game still going is already almost 30 turns past the point where I was declared the victor. And, of course, there's that climb from last of ten to first place in the Shattered Hopes game - IIRC I was in first place even before I sent out the 30 star destroyers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif.

Re: Ship Design Advice for Crystal
 

And modest. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif