Ship Design Advice for Crystal

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

I thought defense bonuses didn't stack.....?

Then again, it could just be my using of SEIVG 1.61 that can be confusing at times.

It is hard (read: impossible) to fully control it when assigning fleets, yes, but if you're playing Classic turns and tactical combat it can be done, you just have to add all ships to the Combat Group in the right order.

However, you could have a fleet with a custom strategy that includes "Break Formation for Warships" to move lots of ships at the same time, but keep them out of formation in battle. They'd fight as an unorganised mob, but if you make the Cover Defenders slightly faster than the Offensive Warships, it might still work.

Then again, the religious enemy could be using very fast ships with batteries of WMGs, Plasma Missiles/CSMs and assorted other long-range weaponry.....

[Suicide Junkie]

Defense bonuses don't stack for components in the same family...

IE you can't stack ECM I, ECM II, and ECM III.
But you can stack an ECM with the hull ability, and the stealth armor, and the scattering armor, and any modded bonus you add if it has a unique family number.

[Zereth]

Wow, Stealth and Scattering armor stack? I didn't know that. Better go revise my usual ship designs then.

[Suicide Junkie]

Click the "To Hit Modifiers" button on the design screen, and you can see the total effects of the components you are adding.

[Enigma]

Wow thanks for all the advice. So far the ship that Douglas recommended seems to work the best in the simulators. We are fighting two major enemies with large fleets. One is religious the other is not, so I can not abandon my defensive bonus's. I have not had a chance to try it out in a real battle yet.

I have two designs - 1 with Anti-proton Beams and 1 with Shield depleters and shard cannon.

I have also used a "Shield-Ship" as my fleet leader and looking replays indicates that he tends to suckup alot of fire in the first round so I usually put one in a fleet.

[Sivran]

Douglas is a master, after all.

[douglas]

Sivran said:
Douglas is a master, after all.

Indeed. I find my first post in the Race to SEV thread (quoted below) quite ironic now, considering I am now one of the finalists, and took the fewest turns to reach that status - the one game still going is already almost 30 turns past the point where I was declared the victor. And, of course, there's that climb from last of ten to first place in the Shattered Hopes game - IIRC I was in first place even before I sent out the 30 star destroyers .

douglas said:
One complete noob joining in. I can thrash the AI in single-player with ease, but this will be my very first PBW game. Maybe I'll get one of the random prizes.

[Spoo]

Sivran said:
Douglas is a master, after all.

And modest.