Oh, this is fun!

[JLS]

Originally posted by dbt1949:
From light cruisers on up there seem to be 2-3 point defense guns per ship.
There doesn't seem to be too many(if any) on weapons platforms tho,from what I see.
I seldom run across base ships but there's only 2-3 on them too.
AI small satellites are a joke but their mines can be trouble whenever I forget to take a minesweeper or two with me.
The AI,once it researchs dreadnaughts never makes anything smaller,altho it will use old light cruisers and such.
The largest fleet I've ever seen is 16 dreadnaughts.I took it apart with only a couple of dreadnaughts and hordes of DDs and CLs.

Sure, why not.

Did you tackle the 16 dreadnaughts with any of your fighters?

[dbt1949]

Did you tackle the 16 dreadnaughts with any of your fighters?

.
.
.
In that particular battle I didn't. I've now got a good size battle fleet,for me,(44 ships) and I've got a heavy carrier with heavy(large) fighters,but haven't had a chance to go tactical yet to see how they work out. I did build a large cargo ship to carry extra fighter to replace those that are lost. It holds almost 300 heavy fighters.It travels with the fleet too.
The AI is starting to stiffen up somemore so I may be going to tactical again pretty soon
.

[Will]

Originally posted by dbt1949:
In order to increase my other racial stats my physical strength is only 50% so ground combat is out.

I used to set physical strength at 50%, and I made every attempt to capture planets intact (once in a while, a small colony with WPs gets glassed, but oh well). I kinda considered it a bit of a challenge, but not much since many AIs don't build troops. I would tweak settings so that ground combat Lasted 3-5 turns instead of 10, and I used destroyers as troop drop ships (usually max engines, 1 shield, one small weapon (ie. PPB or HPB), 1 PDC, and two or three cargo containers). Load up about 20 of those in an attack fleet, attempt to capture every planet in the system. If I succeed, I set spaceyards to work to replace any ship losses, and non-SY planets build replacement troops (lots of them).

Of course, if I tried this against a human player, I'd have to be much more cautious. With the AI, you can get away with two minesweepers at the warps, and move freely past that point, and less is needed to guard the remaining warps against reinforcements. Which is why PBW games routinely see 100+ ship attack fleets, and why single-player AI games get away with no fleet needing to go above 40 ships.

But that just adds to the fun!

[dbt1949]

That's interesting!
I like heavy satellites myself.40-50 of those will take out any AI fleets. If I arm them with missles I seem to lose quit a few.So I stick to something like the phased energy beams.
I've seen too many enemy dreadnaughts equiped as mine sweepers to trust mines in the end game.
I assume everybody uses master computers for their ships too. For some reason I've never seen the AI use computer virus weapons.

[Master Belisarius]

Originally posted by dbt1949:
That's interesting!
I like heavy satellites myself.40-50 of those will take out any AI fleets.

Seems to be that you never found an AI fleet with more than 100 Baseships...

Originally posted by dbt1949:

I assume everybody uses master computers for their ships too.

This is the AI behavior now...

Originally posted by dbt1949:

For some reason I've never seen the AI use computer virus weapons.

Because only modded AIs use Virus weapons...

[dbt1949]

I've never played this game against a human and I'm sure I'd get my butt beat a few times before I learned the ropes.
In other games where I've played pbem it always amazes me how different humans play as opposed to the AI.
In my latest game I think I'll drag it out so the computer gets bigger and more powerful fleets to give some of my tactics a serious try.
One problem I have tho is unless I choose a warlike race my people are always getting unhappy when I defeat an invading fleet. Even with religous facilities or urban pacification centers.
Stupid ingrates!

[minipol]

Originally posted by Loser:

If I recall correctly, the AI will not warp-tunnel into a system that it knows. Give them the star charts and they shouldn't even knock a hole in your wall.

They don't? Hmm. I didn't know that. If i'm not mistaken they did open a WP in a system they had explored but i'm not sure. I'll keep an eye on that once i'm at war with them.