this Strategy must be broke

[Gandalf Parker]

I have alot of different little strategies Im trying and I can usually see the pros and cons. This one seems like I must be missing something. Its probably a "formula answer" that someone will give me in algebraic code since thats my weak point.

Anyway... I was having trouble developing a frontline fleet to stave off the AI. building large ships at safe backside shipyards then flying them forward had them all strung out and easy to pick off. I cried at the lost build time for losing a large ship that was meant to be a support-type unit in a fleet and not fighting alone.

So, I developed multiple Versions of the ship. 3 or 4 specialized combat Versions. And a shell which had only what was needed to fly it like hull, cabins, and engines. The backside shipyards built these shell ships then flew them to the more frontline shipyards. There I had them "refitted" to combat Versions. It seems like multiples can be refitted at the same time. My frontline fleet was intimidating even if it was mostly shells. And the repairs had them becoming combat ready gradually so in the event of an attack it might have a weapon, or two, or a shield. Sure they die if attacked while having 1 weapon but I only lose the shell and one weapon so it was still more usefull than before.

With some tinkering Ive improved things abit. Sometimes I add a solar sail or a couple of cargo holds so it will move forward faster and can carry some sats or mines while its going forward anyway. If the refit undoes that small add-on its not a big thing. I also found that I can send the shells to the farthest-forward shipyard for the refit command, then fly the ship farther forward to a fleet that has a repair ship so it can sit impressively in a fleet while it rebuilds itself.

So instead of a dozen dreadnoughts spread out trying to reach the front, I have a dozen dreadnoughts that quickly get built and sent to the front sitting there in a fleet on a forward planet with fleet training facilities (even though they are shells being armed). Surely there is some horrendous waste of resources or time that Im missing here?

[Fyron]

Adding components via retrofit is more expensive than building them in the first place.

You can just group the ships together at a way point behind the front lines, in a safe system. Then send the fleets to the front lines. This will prevent individual ships from being picked off one by one.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

If you have warp-point openers, find a huge planet, fill it up with cargo facilities, then fill it up with WepP, add some bases and make a WarpP to the front. You now have a secure pipeline. Never tried it, but it should work.

[Parasite]

Also if your retrofit location has a training facility, they can be trained and repaired at once.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats what Im thinking. Even with added cost the other advantages seem to make it a viable tactic. You are training while you are "building" most of the ship. Plus you can quickly have a number of back locations whip off these shells and send them forward to be an "impressive" fleet (the other guy doesnt know they are shells). It seems to work to stave off the AI. Possibly human players also.

Ive also discovered that by building the ship this way Im ending up with better ships. By the time they are at the front I have already upgraded the end design once or twice. So instead of taking 1.2 to build a ship that is out of tech when its done; Im whipping out shells in .3, moving them forward, and then retrofitting them into the best I have available.

It also lets me put my newly researched ship size (apparently) into my fleets much quicker.

[Kana]

Interesting strategy....

Kana

[Will]

Works great against AIs. But once a human opponent decides to take a pot-shot at that "impressive" fleet, and sees that a lot of them are only semi-built, they'll start bringing Long Range Scanners to see when there's a nice big juicy target for them to hit. You could compensate for this by placing a scanner jammer on each shell and warship, but then your opponents could also look for a large number of your repair-class ships to find a potentially easy target.

The main problem with the strategy though is cost. Once the shells are built, they start costing maintainence, and in vanilla SEIV, that equates to the cost of a new shell about every six turns IIRC. There's also the extra time and cost from retrofitting, and the 150% cost limitation, potentially causing the need for retro-series. Once you refit a ship, it starts costing the FULL maintainence for that design, while you might have to wait at least one turn for it to become active. It depends on your playstyle on whether this extra cost offsets the ability to have "bleeding-edge" tech on your fleets.

Generally, the better strategy is waypointing ships to a training planet (in vanilla, usually set up at a planet with two moons, to take advantage of three training facilities) to join a fleet, and go to the front from there, or to have a few construction centers with insane numbers of shipyards (depends on empire size, I've gone up to 100 BSYs against AIs before) in one spot, and either send the ships straight to the front lines, or train and send out.

The fortified WP over the Huge planet is one technique to bring large numbers of ships from one of the uber-yards to a front line. It usually cuts down a lot of the travel time for the mid-to-end game where warp openers/closers become common.

[Fyron]

Will said:
Once the shells are built, they start costing maintainence, and in vanilla SEIV, that equates to the cost of a new shell about every six turns IIRC.

Without any maintenance bonuses, you pay 25% of the cost of every ship (which is not mothballed), every turn. A measely 500 racial points gets you a score of 110 in Maintenance Aptitude, which drops the rate to 15% of ship cost paid every turn... Pretty silly, but Aaron never wanted to fix this in SE4...

[Raging Deadstar]

It is however a good way of keeping ahead in the Technology upgrade game. As Races build ships and retrofit them or wait for the old obsolete class get destroyed you add the latest tech to your upgrades for the shell and retrofit pretty quick, It may cost more but you can be assured around 20% of your fleets are top of the line..

Against a Human this strategy would be defeated, the Ai however would probably get it's backside handed to it.

[Possum]

There are some things I regard as "must have's" (speaking here of plain-vanilla SEIV Classic)

Bonuses to Research and Maintenance are at the top of that list