How to beat Crystallurgy with Organic?

[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.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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one type of ship armed with PPB's and another type armed with Shard Cannons

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Then just go for missile ships, and hammer him from range 20 with your seeker spores. Stay out of range of his weapons, and load up on missiles rather than defenses.

Blow them away before he gets in range.

As a long-term goal, get those phased shields, and you'll be able to get in close to use your beam weapons again.

[Jubala]

His ships are packed so full of PDC's missiles would be no good. Like throwing snowballs into hell, they'll just melt away.

[Marty Ward]

Make some big ships with shields, shield regenerators and armor only. If you can get phased shields you will have it made. You can put a lot of shields and armor on a BB. Make smaller ships with your weapons.
The computer usually targets the largest ships first. Let the enemy fleet pound at your "target" ships while you fire back in relative freedom.

[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...