Are fleet/ship training facilities all that useful?

[Elowan]

What about the Neural Net - it takes up a lot of space on a ship.

Here's another question in that area: how valuable are the computer tech enhancements? Especially ship-wise.

[Suicide Junkie]

The value of the neural net is questionable, but training is definitely required.

By doing both ship and fleet training to the max, your ships get +40% to both attack and defense. That is equivalent to two extra tech levels in Sensors and ECM, and can easily make the difference between crushing blows and invulnerability.

If you normally get some ships with +50% legendary status, then the neural net may be worthwhile, especially on the dreadnoughts and baseships.
Place one of the legendaries in each fleet, and all the new recruits get +30% to attack and defense, beyond the training.

With those kinds of stats, enemy fleets will be nothing more than trivial annoyances.

Re: computer tech.
Master computers are OK in most cases, but nearly required against psychic races. Against Allegiance subverters, the only things you can do are:
- use master computers and hope they miss with the computer virus weapons
- use swarms of small ships, so they can't capture them all at once.

Against other races, the MCs will save small amounts of space, freeing up room for an extra shield generator or small weapon.
You main benefit from the computer tech area will be in resource bonuses.

[ July 31, 2002, 20:01: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[DirectorTsaarx]

(EDIT: Dammit, SJ beat me to the answer)

We had a whole thread devoted to ship/training facilities; the general consensus was that using them in a single-player vs. AI game is almost like cheating, since the AI doesn't use them. So the answer to your question is yes, the training facilities are useful; a ship with 20% experience gets a +20 modifier to attack and a +20 to defense (which means 20% greater chance of hitting the other guy, and a 20% greater chance that the enemy will MISS). If you use both types of training facility, and send out a fully-trained fleet with fully-trained ships, the ship and fleet experience combine to create 40% bonuses for attack and defense. Considering that it's VERY difficult to increase fleet experience without the training facility, this is a MAJOR bonus.

I tend to ignore the Neural Net, partly because it's so big and partly because it would really need to be on every ship to offer an advantage. Although I guess it would be a nice trick to train a single ship (in a one-ship fleet, of course) while building lots of other ships, each with a Neural Net. Then, when you fleet the new ships with the trained ship, you have the effect of a fully trained fleet without having to keep all those ships over the training facilities.

Not certain what you mean by the computer tech enhancements for ships; if you mean Master Computers, they add a fair amount of expense to smaller ships, but since they replace the Bridge/CQ/LS components, you can save a lot of space, particularly on the larger ships; and on the largest ships (Baseship, Battle Station, Starbase) you can actually SAVE money, as the Master Computer is cheaper than a Bridge + 4 CQ + 4 LS components. The Master Computer is also immune to the Psychic weapon Allegiance Converter; this is supposed to be balanced by the Master Computer being vulnerable to the Computer Virus weapon, but the AI's don't use computer viruses (nor do they use the Master Computers).

If, by computer tech enhancements, you mean the robotoid factories, computer complexes, and databank complexes, they are also quite useful, if used properly. Since they give up to a 30% production bonus, as long as you have 4 or more of a particular facility affected by the bonus (for instance, 4 mineral miner facilities on a planet, plus a Robotoid Factory), the bonus will generate more than a single facility could. Also note that facilities affecting a single planet do not "stack", so a Robotoid Factory plus a Mineral Scanner will only provide bonus from one of those two facilities (whichever bonus is higher). System bonuses DO stack with planetary bonuses, but again you can only have one facility providing a particular bonus per system.

I hope that's clear enough - I kinda started rambling near the end. But I'm sure many others will also post answers here...

[ July 31, 2002, 20:16: Message edited by: DirectorTsaarx ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Others have already pointed out that training is very useful.

I think the cleverest use for the Neural Combat Net would be to get a ship to 'Legendary' status and then convert it to some sort of support ship (Supply? Repair?) without weapons that does not actually fight. This makes it far less likely to be lost in combat. Then give it and all the fighting ships the Neural Combat Net. When the fleet goes into combat, this 'support' ship will run away into the corner but still contribute it's +50 percent experience to all the ships that actually fight. Unless your enemy is using missiles or has the Talisman this is going to be a crippling situation because you will be able to replace any losses, with full training, as fast as you can build. Your opponent cannot possibly keep up both in quantity and quality unless he also has the NCN.

[ July 31, 2002, 21:14: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Silent Sorrow]

Wait a second--mineral scanners and robotoid factories don't stack? If so, what's the point of researching the scanners since you can already get a 30 percent bonus with the robotoid factory III--and get to it much earlier than you can the scanner, IIRC.

Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
Also note that facilities affecting a single planet do not "stack", so a Robotoid Factory plus a Mineral Scanner will only provide bonus from one of those two facilities (whichever bonus is higher). System bonuses DO stack with planetary bonuses, but again you can only have one facility providing a particular bonus per system.

[Puke]

retrofitting is always a good use for NCN ships. better if you can plan longer in advance.

you can keep two designs of your warships, build them with the NCN and then retrofit the device out in favor of more armor/weapons/shields once they have been trained up to 50%.

and since its comparatively easy for point defense ships to gain experience, you can use one of them to train all your other ships, without having to have some fleet actually prove its self in battle.

[Fyron]

Wait a second--mineral scanners and robotoid factories don't stack? If so, what's the point of researching the scanners since you can already get a 30 percent bonus with the robotoid factory III--and get to it much earlier than you can the scanner, IIRC.

That's the problem: there is no point to them. Esp. since the Robotoid Factories affect all 3 resources, unlike the Scanners, that only affect 1. If the Scanners add more than the Robotoid Factories, say, 5-10% more, then they could be useful.

[Baron Munchausen]

This is why I have modded the resource extraction tech fields. It also makes no sense for a single facility to improve all three resources on a planet. Completely different technologies have to be involved for each. So I've ditched the resource extraction modifiers in the three resource extraction tech fields and replaced them with of single-resource 'enrichers' -- and removed the Value Improvement Plant, leaving only Climate Control and Atmosphere Converters in the Planet Utilization field.

[ July 31, 2002, 21:45: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[geoschmo]

The hard part with getting your ships to legendary status is few enemies Last long enough to actually "train" your fleets properly, battles being the incredibly one-sided affairs they are. Yes fighter heavy races tend to offer more chances for training, but fighter heavy races go poof even faster.

Geoschmo

[Elowan]

Thanks troops! I guess I should have looked harder in the Archives for the thread. But this thread is concise and to the point.