Ship Experience?

[Noble713]

Is there a way to change how quickly your ships gain experience in the data files? Since 1.19 came out, my ships have been getting almost NO experience without Ship/Fleet Training facilities. Before it seemed like .5 or 1% for each ship destroyed, now my ships will fight dozens of battles and not get any experience. What gives?

[Talenn]

I havent seen that problem at all. In a hotseat game Last night we had ships at 11+ experience in no time. I'm sure it was a result of all the PDs vs Missiles flying around though. Maybe experience gaining was slowed down a bit as a result of the PD vs fighters/missiles item mentioned a while back?

Talenn

[Blue Lord]

Yeap, since my ships mainly use missiles, it didn't take long for me to realize that the more direct fire a ship take's, the more exp. they get. In a missile duel, they mainly don't get experience unless they go into close combat.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Not much experience for missile duels? That hurts - my main opponent right now is the Terrans, and all they use are missiles (and I'm trying to research point defense - started with low tech, so I had to research combat science or something first, then PD weapons... arrrggghhhh...)

[Cryptotec88]

Since the manual is rather vaque on this, would someone please explain the in's and out's of fleet experience?

My guess is that if a fleet has a XP of say 15% that any ships in the fleet would get the fleet experience in combat. If a ship has a ship experience of 10%, and the fleet has a XP of 15%, does the ship get 10%, 15%, or 25% (added)?

[Tomgs]

You don't get experience for firing missles to hit other ships but you still get a lot of experience if you destroy missles and fighters with point defence. I went through 2 battles against mixed fighter and missle fleets and one of my ships got 17% exp just for those two fights. Of course that was my Light cruiser I had just built with 3 point defence V's just to take out those pesky fighters and missles. I had 4 older Frigates also in that fleet that only had missles, they got no experience even though I am sure they got a few kills in there also. It was fun to take my 8 ship fleet up against an AI 8 ship fleet they had missles V and point defence II I had Missles III and IV and Point Def V. It seems Defence is sometimes the best Offence .

To answer your questain Cryptotech I had a fleet with 10% experience sitting over a world with an enemy Light Cruiser so I experimented. A fleet with 10% exp the three ships in it had 8%, 10%, and 14% exp. In the fleet with 10% exp they had 93%, 95%, and 99% to hit the light cruiser from one square away. I reloaded the game removed the ships from that fleet started a new fleet with no fleet exp and the ships had identical chances to hit with the new fleet. So it seems at least with one test case the fleet exp is just an average of the experience that the ships gained while in that fleet and does not seem to help the chance to hit in combat. Even after the combat where the ships experience raised to 9%, 10%, and 15% the new fleet had no experience.

I don't usually use the fleet experience facility does it raise the experience of each ship in the fleet while they are in the system? If so how is it different than the ship experience facility or are they cumulative?

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 26 December 2000).]