In Review: Best Fleet Strategy
 

In order to beat back the ever-encroaching night of ignorance, let us review the best fleet strategy so that our newbie players can skip much of the painful trail-and-error approach.

Start with berzerker stats, and pump up ship defense and inteligence to the max, taking from the other useless categories like strength where nescisary.

Build 15 escort hulls with x2 DUCs and ECM. Buold about five fleet supply ships to go with them. If you are smart about managing the construction by using extra space yards and researching in the correct order, you should have your fleet ready in a little over 20 turns.

With these stats, your escorts loaded with such tremendous defense bonouses will almost NEVER be hit, and will lay down CRUSHING fire against ANYTHING.

Then take your fleet and proceed to wipe out everything in your path.

Game over.

Re: In Review: Best Fleet Strategy
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>With these stats, your escorts loaded with such tremendous defense bonouses will almost NEVER be hit, and will lay down CRUSHING fire against ANYTHING.

Then take your fleet and proceed to wipe out everything in your path.<hr></blockquote>&lt;fine print&gt;Path not guaranteed beyond the first missile-using race encountered.&lt;/fine print&gt;

Re: In Review: Best Fleet Strategy
 

Geez. Can you maybe explain why any of the counters I thought up on the OTHER thread wouldn't work? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Defense bonuses don't protect against missiles. PD does, but gee, you *don't have any room*. Suppose you could build dedicated PD ships, but you still have to build and research. Meanwhile weapons platforms can bash your fleet as well- because WPs can be built faster and ton for ton carry more firepower.

Phoenix-D

Re: In Review: Best Fleet Strategy
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
Geez. Can you maybe explain why any of the counters I thought up on the OTHER thread wouldn't work? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Defense bonuses don't protect against missiles. PD does, but gee, you *don't have any room*.<hr></blockquote>

Because of my massively overwhelming, shattering, crushing firepower coupled with your complete inability to hit my ships.

Whoops, I noticed I neglected to enter the point defense on my design, so it ends up being this:

Crew/Bridge/Life ... 30t
x2 DUCs IV ......... 60t
x1 ECM I ........... 10t
x1 PD III .......... 20t
x3 Ion Engines ..... 30t

Net Wieght ......... 150t

*** THANK-YOU FOR SHOPPING PLEASE COME AGAIN ***

Let's check out what the defensive stats:

Escort hull bonus .......... 40%
Bezerker racial bonus ...... 10%
Ship Defense race bonus .... 30%
ECM I bonus ................ 20%

Net defense bonus .......... 100%

*** UNLESS YOU HAVE A TALISMAN FORGET ABOUT HITTING ANY OF MY SHIPS WITH DIRECT FIRE, EVER! ***

Missiles? *** TRY MY 15 PDs UNLOADING ONCE A TURN AT LEAST TWO TIMES BEFORE YOUR MISSILES HIT = YOU LOSE ***

So, what can you do against me?

Phase cannons? No sheilds + can't hit me anyway = GO HOME.

Torpedos? Can't hit me = TRY AGAIN

Fighters? Try my army of PDs = BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD.

Missiles? Try my army of PDs = YOU LOSE

Heavy sheilds / armor? Can't hit me + I can hit you = YOU LOSE AGAIN

[ 21 March 2002: Message edited by: GUTB ]</p>

Re: In Review: Best Fleet Strategy
 

Easy counter-

Same racial abilties. Canceled out. Add Combat Sensors I to the weapons platforms. 5% ADVANTAGE. Your actual - to hit, therefore, is 35%. Damaging but not inconqueable. And since your chance to hit the defenders will actually be even worse..

Actually it's irrelevent. Same ship. Replace the DUCs, ECM, and PD with Organic Armor I. Those ramming ships bash through your "uber fleet" like a hot knife through glue. They are also cheaper. Because of that and since they will be used on defense, more numorous. They don't even have to be more numerous to smash your DUC escorts flat.

EDIT: ran some simulator tests. 15 on each side, the WORST outcome for the Organic race was the lost of 50% of it's fleet. This for total destruction of the DUC ships, mind.

EDIT2: for that matter, Beserker *hurts your research and production*.

Phoenix-D

[ 21 March 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]</p>

Re: In Review: Best Fleet Strategy
 

Not to mention one small mine with 2 level 1 warheads will take out a whole one of your escorts. Anybody facing you would throw up a few mines at every planet, a few more on warp points.

And while you mass your escorts and launch massive suicide raids against the minefields, I'd be going around methodically capturing your planets since you took all your points out of that "useless" strength characteristic.

Your strategy might work well against an AI, but it's very easily countered by a human player.

Re: In Review: Best Fleet Strategy
 

And don't forget that those 3 movement (with only 2 in combat) ships will be easily out-manuevered. If your opponent orders his ships to use the maximum range strategy, your ships won't get to fire during half of the rounds.

[ 21 March 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

Re: In Review: Best Fleet Strategy
 

OMG he's talking about winning with speed 3 escorts? The uber strategy? Laugh...

PvK

Re: In Review: Best Fleet Strategy
 

GUTB:
Allow me to confirm,
Against AI, sure, any human with just about any strategy will win. Against a human?
Let me ask one quesiton, did you ever wonder why there are no bipedal robots in the real world today? The ansewer is that the proccessing power and algorythm required to do this exceeds any "practical" use.
The processing power of the human brain exceeds any AI anyone could write for less than several milllion? maybe billion dollars. MM is only charging $40 dollars.
EDIT: (Pulling the sting from my original post)
This example is ment as a way to explain why strategys that defeat an AI every time, will not win against a human.

[ 21 March 2002: Message edited by: Gryphin ]</p>

Re: In Review: Best Fleet Strategy
 

Han Solo: "Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy."