The Ship Class You Use Most

[apache]

Not me. I use colony ship hulls only through the first part of the game. Once I get to light cruisers though, I upgrade my colonizers and make them faster, longer range, and higher capacity colonizers. Can even mount defensive stuff if needed.
But this does not necessarily mean CLs are the most used. I put most warship production into battle cruisers, but my support, stellar manipulation, and pretty much any other miscellaneous ships are primarily standard cruisers.
So for me, I use the 3 cruiser hulls the most.

[HAL]

Warships - Battle Cruisers without a doubt.

Civilian - Small Transports. I am always moving things about.

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[Nyx]

Out of curiosity. My stellar manipulation ships tend to be frigates, just engines, crew, and one component each. How many other people try to minimize ship size like that?

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[WhiteHojo]

Nyx - I used to do the minimum size thing on Warp ships, Planet makers, etc. But got tired of having to return to a shipyard to make repairs so I upped the ship size to hold a repair unit & fill any extra space w/supply units. The extra cost is offset by the extra freedom. - I think I use a Lt. Cruiser design...

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[Sabre21]

I have created 2 additional ship classes I use within my own games. The first is a science ship..I use the medium size transport hull minus the cargo requirements. This allows me to build construction ships, deep space science ships, medical ships, just a large variety of different types without using my warship classes. I use the star trek ship sets..so I dont like using warships as transports. The other ship class is bigger than a dreadnought, (Battlestar) up to 1500 Kt. I schedule it to become available at tech level 10. I have found that all AI races use both designs quite extensively. I hope eventually we will be able to create ship designs available to only a specific race, same thing with facilities and components.

[UmberGryphon]

My early colonizers are colony ship hulls, and my late colonizers are light cruisers (with solar sails, either supply storage/solar panel or a quantum reactor, and the rest being cargo storage).

My warships are almost all dreadnoughts. I try to play purely defensively until I have dreadnoughts and combat sensor 3s (it's amazing how often I can get away with this, and I don't even use mines). I'd use baseships if it weren't for the fact that they are allowed 2 fewer engines (which costs them a point of movement in tactical combat).

Lately, my troop transports have been BASESHIPS. Let me explain. I decided I wanted my troop transports to be able to handle lots and lots of planets by themselves, at least the ones that didn't have warships in orbit. So I wanted my troop transports to have: the usual stuff (bridge, crew quarters, life support, engines, solar sail, supply storage/solar panel or quantum reactor), tons of point-defense cannons (to deal with satellites and fighters), tons of shielding (to take fire from weapons platforms on the way in), a repair bay and at least eight emergency propulsion 5s (to take as many planets as possible in a turn), and enough cargo storage to hold enough troops to take out the militias created by several billion people. Baseships are the only thing that can hold all that, but it works like a charm--taking every planet and moon of an entire system in 1 turn is not unheard of.

[Taqwus]

Here's an odd bit -- in my most recent game (finished Last night when the Praetorians collapsed -- they couldn't handle 10 CIs a turn combined with numerous raiders...) -- my first few recon/warships were DNs, but the latter warships were BBs.

DNs -- because they were recon (full sensor/scanner) package, with boarding stuff (in case somebody filled a tech hole -- I'd been going mostly-infrastructure research-wise), repair component and so forth. Normal weaponry was minimal.

Later warships were BBs for the extra engine -- for shipyards (just one design, capable of coming along reasonably safely during an invasion), bombers (a few wandering around, doing lots of damage), and the main anti-ship ships.

The BC hull was used purely for Aegis ships (never used), and biowarfare ships (used early on before the first few bombers were constructed).

LTs were used for a few cloaked minelayers (few; actually, very very few mines built, fewer deployed, and none actually detonated), population transport (including a medical bay once that was researched), and troop transports (but the Troop minister appears to be largely idle; it doesn't do squat, say, to put down riots. Incidentally, filling a planet's 400kt cargo space with heavily-armed Large Troops -- manual control of TT -- with 5 DNs in orbit, did nothing about a riot. Bizarre).

I never did build any non-CS colonizers, 'tho; just two main variations of each (cargo versus solar power, the latter completely replacing the former).

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[General Hawkwing]

quote:

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Originally posted by Nyx:
Out of curiosity. My stellar manipulation ships tend to be frigates, just engines, crew, and one component each. How many other people try to minimize ship size like that?

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quote:

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Originally posted by WhiteHojo
Nyx - I used to do the minimum size thing on Warp ships, Planet makers, etc. But got tired of having to return to a shipyard to make repairs so I upped the ship size to hold a repair unit & fill any extra space w/supply units. The extra cost is offset by the extra freedom. - I think I use a Lt. Cruiser design...

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My question to both of you: Are you using this design to exploit the bug where stellar manip devices do not consume the supplies they are suppose to? They are suppose to use 1000 - 4000 supplies each from the description. I emailed MM about this bug, but have not heard a reply yet.
WhiteHojo, I believe with the right supply storage level a lt. cruiser could work, my design is like yours, but since I've yet to research QR component, I include solar collectors to regain lost supplies. I can not recall if it fits on a lt. cruiser or if I use the next biggest size.

[WhiteHojo]

I was not aware that there was a bug w/the supply usage of Stellar Manip... now I feel like I've been cheating. Thanks alot!!!!

Seriously, on a Lt Cruiser there is room for SM comp'nt, engines, essentials and 2 supply pods I think. If there is a bug w/the supply usage, fixing it would do away w/mine and Nyx's usage of small SM ships. oh well.

You guys seem to be on the board alot and in the know as much as anyone (except maybe Mephisto). I've got a problem - trying to build a disposable mine sweeper component to use on warships (kindof a one shot thing, sweep the mines and then be destroyed like an emergency propulsion pod or emer supply pod)... I've got the component to work, all except the destroyed after use part - it sweeps a zone but won't destroy itself after the sweep - not sure what I'm doin wrong - here's the text I'm using.

Name := Mini Sweeper I
Description := Beams for detecting and destroying mines in space and are then destroyed after use.
Pic Num := 16
Tonnage Space Taken := 10
Tonnage Structure := 10
Cost Minerals := 300
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 0
Vehicle Type := Ship
Supply Amount Used := 0
Restrictions := None
General Group := Unit Launch
Family := 22
Roman Numeral := 1
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Mines
Tech Level Req 1 := 1
Number of Abilities := 2
Ability 1 Type := Mine Sweeping
Ability 1 Descr := Can sweep 10 mines per use.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 10
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Ability 2 Type := Component Destroyed On Use
Ability 2 Descr := Component is destroyed after use.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 0
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None


any help would be appreciated.



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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[SunDevil]

WhiteHojo:

Try one thing:

Instead of this line
Vehicle Type := Ship

Use this:
Vehicle Type := Ship\Base

I just went through the components file and couldn't find a vehicle type with just a ship option. I hope this helps.