How to beat Crystallurgy with Organic?

[Master Belisarius]

Then Jubala, you should surrender to him!!!!

Hey, but you can use PPB too! Also, never forget to use fighters.

[Baron Munchausen]

That's very intresting. He has both armor skipping and shield skipping weapons. Here we have an example of a problem caused by too many 'special' abilities being too easy to acquire. Maybe you need to visit the other thread talking about how races with special abilities need to have a disadvantage when researching other 'standard' technologies?

But setting aside the game design implications, this sounds like a situation where you need to radically change tactics. There are other considerations than special weapon abilities at the strategic level. Are mines available in this game? Especially when placed at warp points they can be very effective. Might be a good idea to spend some research on those. I'd suggest a switch to fighter tactics, but if he's got enough PDC to make missile attacks useless he'll be quite devastating against fighters, too. Do you have stealth armor or cloaking yet? Build some cloaked ships and try to slip into his systems and raid his colonies, damaging his economic base. Think "submarine warfare" for guidelines on how to design cloaked task forces. He can't build these killer ships if he doesn't have the resources to pay for them. On the defense front, you've got to stop letting him dictate the time and place of battle. You've got to think and use old fashioned strategy to out-maneuver him. Concentration of forces can make a technologically inferior enemy superior locally. Find his fleets with your cloaked ships before they can reach your borders and drop mines in their path. Find his ships before they mass into fleets and destroy them piecemeal.

[Suicide Junkie]

You really need to get phased shields. Once you get phased shields, you won't be slaughtered.
You could try to design a ramming ship in the meantime...

[Jubala]

All good ideas, thanks guys. There's only one little problem. My enemy uses a mixed fleet with one type of ship armed with PPB's and another type armed with Shard Cannons. I can design a counter for each of those designs that whip them good, but then that design is a complete sitting duck for the other enemy design. If I try to design a ship that can stand up to both of them it gets clobbered by both of them. And since there is no way to control which ships engage which enemy ships in strategic combat (pbem game) building two designs that can beat one of his but is mauled by the other doesn't seem very appealing.

[Jubala]

I'm researching Phased Shields as fast as I can, which aint all that fast any longer. I tried using Fighters. I had a mixed fleet of about one hundred ships that broke down something like this:

Carriers 20
Light Cruisers 17
Dreadnoughts 42
Battleships 4
Battle Cruisers 11
Non-armed 20 (sweepers, repair and transports)

The Carriers had about 1000 medium and large fighters on board armed with small electric discharge III split about even between medium and large.

That fleet they went up against was an enemy fleet of about 70 ships broken down like this:

Battlecruisers 31
Battleships 21
Boarding Ships 15 (DD's and LC's)
Carriers 3
Noncombatants 5

My entire fleet was destroyed for the following enemy losses:

LC 4
BC 10
BB 5
LX 3

Losing close to 100 ships and destroying less than 25 in return is not a favourable rate of exchange. Unfortunatley that's about the best I've been able to do most of the time. I took down a fleet of his with 30 ships in it with a fleet of mine with 50 but lost close to 30 doing it. Many of his remaining ships from this latest battle are heavily damaged but I don't know how damaged or what is damaged on them because of the very poor after action reports you get from Strategic Combat.

I think I should mention that we are about equal in technology when it comes to weapons and protection except for shields. He has Phased shields and I do not. Not the best of them yet, but he's getting there.

With the result of my latest battle above I'm kind of wondering what the point of fighters are. One would think that 1000 fighters should be able to cause some serious damage but as you can see they did not. That probably has something to do with the AI's piss poor handling of them in strategic since I suspect it doesn't hoard them and fling them all the enemy in a big wave but launch and fly at once so they come in staggered and gets eaten alive. But still, they should be able to do something!!!

And I will not surrender! Never! I always try to play my games to the bitter end. I often keep playing even after it's clearly pointless to continue and all that is left for my opponent to do is mopping the remains. As long as I can build ships I will do so and throw them defiantly into the face of my enemy! No retreat no surrender!

It's late and I'm tired. Good night.

[geoschmo]

Fighters are awesome in certain circumstances, but up against a fleet of 40+ heavily shielded ships with lots of PDC, they will get pounded. Of course you don't need me to tell you that.

No tactic or tech is going to be right in every situation. It's basically a great big game of rock/paper/scissors.

I agree with SJ you need to close the gap in shield technology. Perhaps you should play a defensive battle for a time. Mine the crap out of your planets. Make him pay for every inch of ground, but keep the bulk of your ships out of harms way. Small fleets roaming around picking of straglers.

Get some ships in his rear either by stealth or outflanking. Then go after his smaller less defended colonies. Make him spend ships defending his colonies and going after your raiders and that's less he can send after you. Don't try attacking his big colonies. They will be too heavily defended, and will tend to have ships in orbit as well.

Wiping out a couple of small colonies in a system can have a devestating effect. The remaining colonies will start to get angry which causes him to lose production. This way you can eliminate the larger colonies without actually attacking them, which would be futile.

I agree that allowing him to set the time and place for battle is getting you nowhere. Make him react to you for a while. That will take some pressure off and allow you to build up your fleets.

Geo

[Baron Munchausen]

There is always the diplomacy option, if you have contact with any other empires. Is there anyone you could form an alliance with? A 'second front' can sure be helpful in a war with a superior foe. Trading technologies effectively doubles up both of your research abilities.

As far as other research areas, have you got an bio-weapons? Especially if this is something you don't usually use, it could be a surprise and he might not have medical technology. All you need to do is get ONE hit on a planet, too. Not destroy it. If you can get at least level 3 plague bombs and catch him flat footed, you could do a LOT of damage.