How to beat Crystallurgy with Organic?

[Jubala]

I searched around for strategies to use as an Organic player to beat a Crystallurgy player but I couldn't find any. I'm getting my *** kicked royally in a pbem game by a Crystallurgy player. It's damn annoying to see my nice big expensive Dreadnoughts being pulverized by smaller number of Battleships and I need to know how to build Organic ships that can beat Crystal ships. Any ideas?

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, if the enemy is relying heavily on those armor-piercing shard cannons, ditch the organic armor.

Instead, you can layer on the shield generators, and use your organic seeker spores to stay outta range of shard cannon while overloading their PDCs with seekers every other turn.

If the enemy in using the AP shard missiles, shields & PDC will hold them off, since shard missiles are have horribly low damage Ratings.

Against the HEM deathbeams, you can't use armor (see Shard cannon), so you'll just have to stay outta range and hit em with your missiles.

Basically, use your organic missile weapons and shields to the max, adding PDCs to fit.

If you force a long-range missile battle, you'll win since your seekers do twice the damage of the crystalline seekers.

[Alpha Kodiak]

Build a class of ships that uses shields instead of organic armor. Your organic weapons typically pack more punch than his crystaline weapons, and shields will give you protection where armor won't.

(edit: SJ, yah beat me by a minute!)

[This message has been edited by Alpha Kodiak (edited 30 May 2001).]

[geoschmo]

What SJ and AK said, plus fighters with small acid globule's are pretty tough. That's about the best anti-ship fighter weapon in my mind. Plus you can crank them out fast because they are more balanced resource wise. Not all minerals like DUC fighters.

Organic's best asset is production. You are not going to design a super-ship to take him on one-on-one. But you ought to be able to out-produce and out-build him. If you have him outnumbered 5 to 1 in every battle, you are going to win more than you lose.

Geo

[Baron Munchausen]

It's dangerous to assume that a 'special' advantage you have chosen will be the key to winning the game. History is littered with ruined military forces who thought they had a "special angle" that would carry them to victory in all situations. The only real 'trick' that the Crystalline tech tree gives against Organic tech is armor-ignoring weapons. Since your regenerating armor is effectively neutralized, just approach the problem as if you were a "normal" tech player -- as you should approach ALL problems, btw.

You, and everyone, would face the extra problem of destroying a ship equipped with crystalline armor, of course. But the solution to the armor-ignoring is roughly the same as the solution to the crystalline armor problem. You need to either attack from extreme range so they cannot shoot at you in the first place (missile strategy as suggested by others here) or you need to move very fast to avoid being hit -- 'dance' in and out of range. Also, you want to hit with few attacks and as high a damage as possible for each attack because this reduces the amount of shield regeneration they will gain from the hits. This is easy with missiles. They do lots of damage per hit. If your enemy has lots of PDC then if you didn't have the Acid Globule or Env. Acid Globule I'd say research torpedoes quick, or a special weapon that also skips armor like the Null Space Weapon... it has less range though and makes the "hit and run" strategy harder to use. Ships equipped with as many of the largest mount Acid Globule they can carry and max engines plus at least some shields will give the crystalline ships a lot of trouble if they are given a "max weapons range" strategy.

As in all games, ECM and Combat Sensors are very important. If your enemy has the same or better level in these than you do, you are in trouble no matter what. Make sure to use Ship and Fleet training facilities, also. It effectively adds a number of turns to 'construction' of your military forces but the advantage can be very important.

Something I have never been able to do with strategic combat is get missile ships to use their "missile dance" independently of beam ships maneuvers. If you could send in two seperate fleets, one full of beam ships and the other full of torpedo ships, the coordinated attack of these two forces could be very difficult to deal with. Unfortunately, the two fleets tend to get in each other's way. This can be very powerful in tactical combat though.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 30 May 2001).]

[rdouglass]

I've had pretty good luck with the standard weapons against all racial techs using the (well mentioned in these Posts) Phased Polaron Beams and the (not so well metioned) Null Space weapons. They seem to do especially well against both Organic and Crystalline 'cause NS weapons skip both armor and shields. The downfall is you have a slow reload time (3) and a relatively short range (5 IIRC) so you'd better have decent engine tech to get you in and outa' there. But, once you get a shot in, the damage to vital components (weapons, engines, etc.) racks up quite quickly and can shift the tide in your direction.

Another downfall is ships I've equipped with NS weapons don't seem to do well at all in strategic combat. But in tactical (with my favorite component - the Talisman), I have taken out 4 dreadnaughts with 1 LC using just NS weapons and standard mounts!!!

Of course, the PPB's do well 'cause of their quick reload, decent range, and of course, shield skipping for non-phased shields (for early game advantages).

(EDIT)
...and to Baron:

quote:

---

If you could send in two seperate fleets, one full of beam ships and the other full of torpedo ships, the coordinated attack of these two forces could be very difficult to deal with...

---

I too would like to do this. I have made a suggestion before (and other posters have as well) about a 'Battle Group' feature - being able to combine more than 1 fleet into a group. Give each fleet different combat orders, yet move them as fleets work now. That way you could have for instance, a group of missle ships working as a fleet doung their 'dance' and direct fire ships flanking to close off their escape and at the same time, fighter Groups from a mini-fleet of carriers closing in close to overwhelm any PDC's and mop up the straglers...

[This message has been edited by rdouglass (edited 31 May 2001).]