Waging war in SE5

[aegisx]

Gone are the days of sending in a few ships for an extended campaign.

[tmcc]

I don't know. I have been quite successful against nuetrals with small attack fleets. I send in a couple of missile frigates a colony ship loaded with a cargo of missile based WPs, ordnance and supplies. I glass their weakest colonizable world, colonize it and then emergency build a resupply depot, a space yard and then troops while sending a troop transport from home. The rest is history. This strategy also worked to take out the Xiata's home system.

I believe that this works mainly because it exploits the stock game's point defense weakness. Have not tried with the Balance Mod yet.

I believe that this works mainly because it exploits the stock game's point defense weakness. Have not tried with the Balance Mod yet.

[aegisx]

Kwok is working on giving the AI PD capabilities in the balanced mod.

Rushing and building a resupply depot is a good idea. I have been fighting them without one in the system.

[Q]

tmcc said:
I don't know. I have been quite successful against nuetrals with small attack fleets. I send in a couple of missile frigates a colony ship loaded with a cargo of missile based WPs, ordnance and supplies. I glass their weakest colonizable world, colonize it and then emergency build a resupply depot, a space yard and then troops while sending a troop transport from home. The rest is history. This strategy also worked to take out the Xiata's home system.

I believe that this works mainly because it exploits the stock game's point defense weakness. Have not tried with the Balance Mod yet.

I believe that this works mainly because it exploits the stock game's point defense weakness. Have not tried with the Balance Mod yet.

It is even easier if you use a small troop transport and conquer their colonies instead of glassing them. In the demo version I conquered both the entire Xiati and Abbidon empire like that.

[Barnacle Bill]

tmcc said:
I believe that this works mainly because it exploits the stock game's point defense weakness.

What weakness is that?

[tmcc]

Point defense is close to useless in the stock game unless present in overwhelming numbers. Right now the AI does not build enough point defense on WPs or Bases and I have not seen any on ships. I also have not seen an AI ship armed with anything other than a DUC. This makes missile based ships with sufficient ordnance storage very overpowered. As an example one FG with 3 CSMs and 650 points of ordnance attacked a planet and destroyed the 6 defending Destroyers and 2 Starbases

I think that the Balance Mod addresses the PD issue, but maybe too far the other way. In V1.08 of the stock game PD is still very weak.

[Baron Munchausen]

I haven't seen the AI use PDC at all on ships in stock. At least it does put them on WPs for planets.

PD weapons with a reasonable level of attack sensors are quite effective in stock from my experience.

[tmcc]

I disagree on the effectiveness of PD in stock. I ran several tests in the simulator. Assuming all components at lvl 5 a ship with 4 PDCs and Combat Sensors never hits more than 1 of 3 incoming missiles. PDCs on vehicles not targeted by seekers almost always miss seekers aimed at other vehicles.

[pujal]

I also have not seen an AI ship armed with anything other than a DUC

Yea, same.