Ripper Beams

[Nitram Draw]

You may find it difficult to hit those fighters at long range, accuracy goes down 10% per square and they are hard to hit to begin with. You might want to build a bunch of PD sats if you are going to face a lot of fighters or build a training facility to get you base a high level of experiance.

quote:

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Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
You may find it difficult to hit those fighters at long range

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I know, that's why I must include PD ships and my own 400 fighters everywhere. I am not really worried about fleets, because I will usually have range on them with massive mounts. But fighters move so fast in combat that they can blow me away with rocket pods if not intercepted. I plan on having all the ships and bases collected into fleets with BASES as the fleet leaders so the ships will stay close to papa.

Last night I was once again looking at base designs to see whether they would be capable versus waves of fighters, and thought that I had overlooked the shield and armor penetrating Null Space Projector NSP. But here is a comparison versus Ripper Beams RB to blow away my own base design with 3000 shields, 750 armor, and 4310 damage in a single salvo engagement.
NSP must hit 4310, MM shoots 420 so you need 11. Cost is 44000 0 44000 at 2200/3850.
RB must hit 8060, MM shoots 350 so you need 23. Cost is 18400 0 14270 at 1840/3220.
So RB cost is 41% same 32%, while space is 84% and damage absorbed is 84%.
The RB blow away the same enemy in a single salvo engagement, at less than half the cost, slightly less space, and are cheaper for damage absorbtion by a factor of two. At range 9 or less (versus 11 for NSP) RB RULE!
Now the only problem is an enemy armed with NSP at range 11 blowing away your RB only equipped base. That's why you must also have the PPB and APB, which outrange the NSP.

The only other thing I can think of to make NSP attractive are those organic and crystalline armors that feed damage back to shields. If you cannot blow up the ship in a single combat turn, then this could cause a big problem. Could the experts on these armors give their opinion on RB versus NSP here ?

[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 12 June 2001).]

[Nitram Draw]

I wouldn't want to attack a starbase with ships armed with rippers. The 3 range is to short. Baseships equipped with these would face 2-3 salvos before getting into range.
They do make good base defense weapons though, although nothing beats an APB XII on a base. You can almost fire to the edge of the screen!

[jc173]

If you are only considering being able to destroy every component possible than the RB is more effective. But you don't have to destroy the entire target to render it combat ineffective. So if a NSP skips past armor and shields and manages to knock out the critical components, in this case probably weapons, bridge, possibly ECM, sensors, and multiple... then you don't need to destroy everything else on board the target. I think combat loss grouping might be a bigger factor with an NSP armed force, ie the quicker you knock down one enemy the more rapidly you will dispatch the others because you can concentrate fire on the survivors.

I'd be perfectly willing to use the damage until no weapons strategy and finish off the stragglers later even if they still had shields and armor.

Ok the same effects apply to the ripper beam somewhat also, but to me that's diluted by the fact that you must burn through the shields and the armor first. Which means that you have that much more damage to do before you can hit the internals.

[Sinapus]

Actually, if you're defending a planet you still need to finish off those cripples since they count as a blockade.

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"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Good ideas!
For my 27 warp points to be defended I am considering having one or two baseships with heavy shields and armor whose only weapons are three each of weapon and engine destroying weapons. That way I can disable but not destroy attacking baseships for capture. Also I will have a boarding parties base ship with heavy s/a, null space projectors to take out any SDD, a couple shield destroying weapons, and lots of boarding parties.
But I will not build them until I see lots of baseships attacking, because maintenance on three baseships would eat me alive unless I could depend on capturing an average of two baseships per turn. The mothball/ unmothball is almost as bad as regular maintenance if attacks come frequently.

I was not suggesting an attack on a starbase by RB equipped baseships. As you say, it would be foolish. But a baseship can be presumed to have damage stats similar to my starbase design, and I did not take the time to design my own baseship. It will be a LONG time in my game before I can afford to go on the offensive.