newby's guide to ship and fleet strategy

[Suicide Junkie]

Woah, there.
Your simulations seem to be very biased! You've got battles with armor vs no protection!

Compare CA to the Walmart armor.
CA 1: 100hp in 30KT.
WA 1: 90hp in 30KT.
WA 2: 105hp in 30KT.
WA 3: 120hp in 30KT.

Get regular armor for a fraction of the research cost, and get way more hitpoints!

Crystalline armor's advantage only appears once you've got at least one shield generator in the mix, to make use of the crystalline effect.

[Phoenix-D]

As long as you're talking armor, try Organic. Organic armor w/ no weapons ships make really handy battering rams. That extra research cost really kills the "rush" idea though.

"SO take your "balanced" approach and chuck a few capital missiles and try to fight "smart"."

Heh. Screw the balanced approach, it's not a good idea. Specialization. Just ran a test. 10 destroyers armed with 4 CSMI, speed 6, destroys your "uber crystal" ships almost 100% of the time. Most of the time they don't even loose a ship doing it! And these ships can be built much sooner than your destroyers.

Phoenix-D

[Phoenix-D]

"comabt turn, my fleet can take 4000kt before EVEN BEING DMANAGED."

Wrong. Your fleet can take *100kt* of damage before being hurt. Then you start loosing armor. Once you've taken 400kt of damage, you start loosing internal components. Your fleet isn't just one big ship!

Phoenix-D

[tesco samoa]

and if your enemy always attacks with lots of armor and shilds then a lovely super sized null should clean up that mess...... Or the often over looked temporal weapons.....

[Phoenix-D]

His attack would be too early in the game for null-space. Besides, why waste the cash when CSMI ships can bLast the attacks away until he gets PD?

EDIT: If you're speaking in general, yeah. null-space really shines when you're attacking heavily-defended targets.

Phoenix-D

[ 03 March 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[oleg]

The best way to handle crystalline armor is PPB.
Untill the guy with crystalline armor gets phased shields (looong way to research), crystalline effect gives no protection whatsoever.

I almost always finish physics I + physics II before turn 20.

[Suicide Junkie]

Missiles are good too, since all of them stack into one hit.

5 CSM 1's do 375 damage: you'd need 750KT of crystalline armor III's, plus 400 shield points to defend against that.

And by the time you've got that defensive tech (Dreadnaughts, Crystal 3, shields x), your opponent will have reached bigger missiles