Are battles always one sided?

geoschmo · #1 October 15th, 2001, 08:22 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Spoo:
Actually, my ships (not fleet -they were set to break formation) did have point blank strategy. And half of them were cruisers. And we had equal engines tech.

Geo,

You forget that quantum torpedoes do much more damge than PPB. It should only take about TWO hits to cripple one of his ships. The point is I only hit ONE of his ships more than ONCE (even w/ combat sensors 3).

Actually Askan, as SJ points out Qtorps don't do more damage that PBB. Actually they do the same damage at max range. The Qt does 100 damage every 2 turns, and the PBB does 50 damage every turn. And by moving to point blank you actually make it worse for yourself because at point blank the PBB does 60 per turn, so it actually does more damage than the Qtorp. Add to that the fact that the PBB takes up less space, and your enemy has bigger ships, and your numerical "advantage" is getting smaller all the time.

It's impossible to calculate exactly the ratio unless you want to post the ship designs. Or at least how many weapons did each ship have. Then we could calculate precisly the differance in force between fleets. But it's going to be less than 2 to 1. Probably more than 1 to 1. Somewhere between those two would be my guess, with you having the slight edge.

Also remember that each of his ships can do more damage than each of your ships on an individual basis. With 130 ships in a firefight, more of your ships are going to be out of range than his are in any particular turn, simply becasue you have more. So this means he can bring even more fire to bear on the ships that are in range than you can.

Altogether what you have is two fleets that are much more equally match than you thought, with his ships having a large advantage in experience. End result is the rout you ended up with. I still believe if the experience, sensors, so on had been equal, it would have been a close, bloody fight with high damage on both sides. You might have won, but you wouldn't have much left to celebrate with.

One other thing you didn't mention, or if you did I didn't see it, was this a warp point battle? If it was then that could account for some of the difference if your enemy had a lower player number than you. Someone mentioned this before in the thread, but I didn't see if you responded to that point. If so all of his ships would have fired before any of yours did. Probably could have knocked out half your fleet before you got a shot off.

Geoschmo

Rich04 · #2 October 15th, 2001, 08:26 PM

Tweaking Ship/Fleet Strategy is very important.
In my 1st PBW game I lost several battles that looked even without inflicting significant losses to the enemy fleet. Upon viewing the battles I finally figured out what was happening. My ships were failing to kill off damaged ships. They would fire until the opponent was disabled and move on to the next target. The opponent had enough repair ships to fix his fleet each turn. This is the default setting for SE4 and what very often turns a battle into a one sided slaughter. If your opponent has more ships you will almost always lose without inflicting any losses, all else being equal.

Spoo · #3 October 15th, 2001, 09:59 PM

Thanks for the numbers S_J. So I guess PPB really are king (although wavemotion guns with their 30% bonus look nice too). BTW when is the 30% added? Does it guarantee a 31% to-hit, no matter what?

------------------
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E=mc^2
E=1kg(3x10^8m/s)^2=9x10^16J
which, if I'm not mistaken, is equivilent to roughly a 50 megaton nuclear bomb.
Fear the squirrel.

capnq · #4 October 15th, 2001, 10:10 PM

quote:
That's why I always play religious tech - that Talisman can be a HUGE factor in combat....

Assuming you can survive long enough to research it...

quote:
Once I've seen my ships (with order to fire at optimum range) moving away from the enemies right next to them FIRST and THEN fire on them (and missed)

I think that's because "optimum" range includes minimizing the potential damage the enemy can do, according to the manual.

------------------
Cap'n Q
My first mod! Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Suicide Junkie · #5 October 15th, 2001, 10:19 PM

quote:
BTW when is the 30% added? Does it guarantee a 31% to-hit, no matter what?

Yes. Yes it does

I was playing a game once where I took max -ve on offense, didn't bother to research sensors, and kept "max range" strategies.

I had maxed out defensiveness, ECM, and was running up stealth tech, and using small ships (defense bonus), so nobody could hit me, and it worked out great.

Using Quantum Torpedoes (+15% to +25% accuracy in P&N, as tech improves):
I got a 16% to 26% to hit, and they were letting fly with 1% accuracy, even at point-blank, against my torpedo frigates

Cheeze · #6 October 15th, 2001, 10:40 PM

It is annoying when battles are repeatedly blowouts, particularly when there are large fleets of ships with seeming equal firepower. The combat sequence bug that the lower number player always goes first is something that ought to be fixed. I guess if the damage results would be simultaneous would be the most fair. Even adjusting for weapon types, accuracy, training and the like and strategies, the vast battle imbalances seems very odd and unfair.

On the formations, I guess it would be nice if one fix could be made: A lead ship changing direction would cause the other ships to change relative positions in their fleet. How often does a fleet get demolished because the lead ship turns around, and the other ships get roasted as they change places.

geoschmo · #7 October 15th, 2001, 10:43 PM

quote:
Originally posted by suicide_junkie:

Quote:

BTW when is the 30% added? Does it guarantee a 31% to-hit, no matter what?
Yes. Yes it does
I was playing a game once where I took max -ve on offense, didn't bother to research sensors, and kept "max range" strategies.

I had maxed out defensiveness, ECM, and was running up stealth tech, and using small ships (defense bonus), so nobody could hit me, and it worked out great.

Using Quantum Torpedoes (+15% to +25% accuracy in P&N, as tech improves):
I got a 16% to 26% to hit, and they were letting fly with 1% accuracy, even at point-blank, against my torpedo frigates

Of course that strategy can backfire on you. I tried something similer in a game once. I had Frigate's and a few destroyers with tailsman's. I figured I could stay at max range and with my defensive bonuses he wouldn't land many hits before my tailsman powered weapons had chewed him up.

What I didn't know was this was a fleet that had just returned from a succesful mission against a race that used a lot of missles. His fleet and ships were legendary which negated my defensive bonuses. So my disadvantage in ship size and tech shined through glaringly.

Geoschmo

[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 15 October 2001).]