Are battles always one sided?

Dragonlord · #1 October 16th, 2001, 04:22 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Rich04:
Tweaking Ship/Fleet Strategy is very important.
In my 1st PBW game I lost several battles that looked even without inflicting significant losses to the enemy fleet. Upon viewing the battles I finally figured out what was happening. My ships were failing to kill off damaged ships. They would fire until the opponent was disabled and move on to the next target. The opponent had enough repair ships to fix his fleet each turn. This is the default setting for SE4 and what very often turns a battle into a one sided slaughter. If your opponent has more ships you will almost always lose without inflicting any losses, all else being equal.

Uhm AFAIK, repairs don't get made during combat. Only after combat. So I think it's a perfectly viable strategy to use the "fire till no more weapons" option, disable his ships, then hunt down the sitting ducks once none of them can fire back anymore.
In fact the only time I can imagine you would NOT want to use this option is if the fleets involved are so large (and/or slow) that you can't disable, hunt down and then destroy everything within 30 combat turns.

Anybody? Why is "fire until weapons gone" not turned on by default?

Rich04 · #2 October 16th, 2001, 04:42 AM

I never said they repaired during combat Dragonlord.

What was happening was my 30 ship fleet engaged a 50 ship fleet with enough repair ships to repair 40+ components each turn. Every time my fleet engaged they were wiped out without inflicting any losses or even slowing the opposing fleet. This happened 3 turns in a row. My ships even had the edge tech wise. Each engagement disabled a dozen or more enemy ships. If they had finished them off the attacking fleet would have been whittled down each turn rather than total blowouts. I might have won the second engagement and if not for sure the third one for by then 'I' would have had the larger fleet.

Gimboid · #3 October 16th, 2001, 04:59 AM

quote:
Of course that strategy can backfire on you. I tried something similer in a game once. I had Frigate's and a few destroyers with tailsman's. I figured I could stay at max range and with my defensive bonuses he wouldn't land many hits before my tailsman powered weapons had chewed him up.

What I didn't know was this was a fleet that had just returned from a succesful mission against a race that used a lot of missles. His fleet and ships were legendary which negated my defensive bonuses. So my disadvantage in ship size and tech shined through glaringly.

Geoschmo

True it backfired that time. But what if your fleet had had the legendary bonus (and mine hadn't)?

The word 'unstoppable' comes to mind... small ships (virtually) unhittable but that always hit with direct fire weapons.

My homeworlds would have died as fast as you could get your ships down to my homesystem.

Master Belisarius · #4 October 16th, 2001, 05:12 AM

quote:
Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Stealth and Scattering most definitely ARE cumulative

Yes, you're right and I was wrong!

I was confused, because in the past, the stealth and scattering bonus were not stacking with the ECM, and believed that when Aaron fixed it, also forced to stealth and scattering to doesn't stack between them.
Sorry.

Askan Nightbringer · #5 October 16th, 2001, 11:07 AM

Hello again,

I've run Spoo's 101 ships vs my 35 ships in the combat simulator several times and I lost convincly each time (although I kill about 30 ships).

So as my fleet wiped the floor against his 101 ships in the real world ("space") I assume it was all down to fleet and ship experience.

This doesn't quite seem satisfactory to me.
I reckon either
1) Tone down the effect of experience.
2) Give all weapons an innate bonus to hit like the WMG so at least any shots has 15-20% chance of hitting.
3) Make sure offensive bonuses grossly outsize the defence bonuses.

Askan

Cyrus · #6 October 16th, 2001, 02:33 PM

Why doesn't that seem satisfactory? He stated that his ships had no experience at all while yours were legendary.

I'm not exactly certain, but I beleive that legendary ships start at 30 experience. If he would have gone through the simple step of building a ship and fleet traing facility he could have easily gotten his ships up to 20 experience, which would have mostly offset your advantage and probably resulted in what happened in the simulator. It's not the fault of experience. He lost due to lack of preperation. You wouldn't send a ship into combat without guns would you? Then don't send one in that isn't trained.

geoschmo · #7 October 16th, 2001, 03:01 PM

quote:
2) Give all weapons an innate bonus to hit like the WMG so at least any shots has 15-20% chance of hitting.

I would be in favor of this. It does seem odd that even at point blank range you could have only a 1% chance to hit just because the other guy had more experience than you. Even if it was the cook manning the guns you would think he could hit more than one in a hundred shots from that close.

Maybe The bonuses could be toned down a bit so that they have less of an effect on chance to hit, and more of an effect on amount of damage if they do hit. A more experienced gunner would be able to pinpoint the shot to do the maximum damage right? I guess that's probably too complicated.

Geoschmo