racial trait +20% and evasive armors

[Ragnarok-X]

Hey everyone,

i figured this has been asked before but i wasnt able to find the thread. In an ongoing Devnull mod game, actually the first pbw game i ever played the game is hitting a critical stage. Because of my dumbness i wanted to play rpg-ish and gave myself huge reproduction bonuses and stuff, instead of racial offense and defensive modifers. Now i have an enemy, which has both at superior, +20%. He just recently aquired battleships, now using scattering armor, cloaking armor and ecm 3. While i am both more advanced and a lot bigger, in simulations i need at least a 2:1 ratio of ships to beat him, simply because my vessels cant hit him. Im even forced to use Pulsed mount because of its small to-hit-bonus, still, even at range 1 my vessels have a hitchance of about 40%, give or take 5, im not sure. Of course simulator doesnt include training, but since my vessels and fleets are at 20% each, his ships could be as well.
Im using combat sensor III, and without the pulse mount i barely get one hit out of five shots. Instead of using standart anti-proton beams and large mount / battleships i optimized my vessels with 3 tractorbeams, shield depleters and incinerator beams. Still i need to heavily outmass the enemy.
Any suggestions oh what to do ? I could of course EASILY outproduce him, still it is pissing me off.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Get cloaking tech and stellar manipulation ASAP. Also, use Intel to make sure he can't detect your ships. Then, simply park a cloaked starkiller over his homeworld star and watch the fireworks over your victory celebration..... no, but really, this is almost ALWAYS a good idea. If you've got at least one - several is better - starkiller(s) parked over his homeworld star, preferably accompanied by a cave troll of a defensive fleet, you've got something to bargain with - his life.

Also, use Fighters. Lots and lots of fighters. Use their to-hit bonuses and your race's ability to outproduce him to face him with swarms of nasty little buggers which have a fairly good chance of hitting his ships and a reasonably good chance of evading his shots.

Note: I myself have no experience with Devnull, so my advice could very well be an empty piece of text.

[Alneyan]

Yup, Stellar Manipulation. It is dirty cheap in Devnull, as you actually gain money by retrofitting, instead of having to pay extra. A Star Destroyer or two at the border, more if possible, and blast'em as they come within sight. Warp Openers and a riot run are always fun too, or simply Warp Closers: if they cannot reach you, they are dead. Or all of the above. And let's not forget about the Sentry Star Destroyer, with a handful of vessels protecting the wormholes, to take down enemy scouts. Risky, but *fun* if it works.

Of course, they are likely either protected against Stellar Manipulation, or already using the same things themselves. If not... I would go for it. You may be the worst tactician ever (I am), and Stellar Manipulation can still save the day.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Alneyan said:
Yup, Stellar Manipulation. It is dirty cheap in Devnull, as you actually gain money by retrofitting, instead of having to pay extra. A Star Destroyer or two at the border, more if possible, and blast'em as they come within sight. Warp Openers and a riot run are always fun too, or simply Warp Closers: if they cannot reach you, they are dead. Or all of the above. And let's not forget about the Sentry Star Destroyer, with a handful of vessels protecting the wormholes, to take down enemy scouts. Risky, but *fun* if it works.

Even more fun is gained by sending cloaked sunkillers into his very systems, with the main target being his home system. Then, if he isn't begging for his life after one turn, push the Big Red Button and all that'll be left of him are several rapidly expanding clouds of monatomic gas and several stray ships which can be hunted down and destroyed with ease.

[geoschmo]

You've already hit on the only real course open to you at this point. Massively outproduce him, and be prepared to lose a lot of ship. And make absolutly sure all your ships are trained before commiting them to battle. Otherwise you are going to see some utterly horrendous battle results, like losing entire fleets and only slightly damaging a handful of his ships even when you have him outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1.

Some people more helpful then me may come up with some things to try, but honestly they aren't likely to be very effective.

My only suggestion is to take combat modifiers next time.

[Suicide Junkie]

Or a mod in which those modifiers are either not as important, or are priced appropriately to their benefit.

[Atrocities]

geoschmo said:
And make absolutly sure all your ships are trained before commiting them to battle. Otherwise you are going to see some utterly horrendous battle results

And he ain't joking about that neither!

[douglas]

Atrocities said:

And he ain't joking about that neither!

I can certainly testify about that, having lost only one of 18 ships against a total of 90 in one turn once on PBW. It was actually three separate battles, but I was outnumbered 5 to 1 in each of them and that one light cruiser was my only ship that even took damage while all of my enemy's ships (cruisers and battlecruisers mostly) were completely destroyed.

Besides stellar manipulation, you could try overwhelming his PD with missile swarms, but that probably won't get you much better required force ratios than you currently have. If Devnull didn't change it from stock, Wave Motion Guns have a +30% to hit bonus which could help quite a bit. You could search for other high-accuracy weapons by searching for "Weapon Modifier" in components.txt and glancing at the number before hitting find next (F3 in most programs I know).

[Ragnarok-X]

Wave Motions Guns are pretty expensive to achieve since we are playing a high techcost game. I get like 600k rp per turn, still...

[tesco samoa]

also... perhaps you should change your target areas... Use the space to your advantage. If there are nebulas that cancel shields use an all armor fleet to fight the player there... If you have ways into the players systems... Then attack their planets instead. Going on a running riot can be fun and it will hurt the enemy's production and may even cause planets to riot and rebel. Which would hurt more in the long run. Remember you out build so the player must concentrate their forces to match your 2 to 1 , 3 to 1 fleets. You have already won that battle. The concentration of fleets. Now use it to your advantage. Have a 1.5 to 1 fleet as well as the 2 to 1 fleet and have it doing something new that the enemy must counter. Hopefully pulling his fleets apart. Make them react and you should prevail unless the seiv combat engine decides it no longer likes you and lets you take part in one of those you lose 300 ships they have 3 ships damaged....