SEV early game battle strategy vs. SEIV

[Captain Kwok]

Fighters are probably overpowered in stock and will be helpful against the AI - although their combat hull bonuses are not being applied.

Which AIs are being aggressive in your experience?

[tmcc]

In this game the Abbidon are being very aggressive about getting me out of their home system. I sorta started it by killing one of their ships that was blocking a warp point in my home system, but since that they really took the gloves off.

[StarShadow]

Personally, I'd consider that reasonable behavior. You attacked them and then settled in their home system..

[tmcc]

I agree completely that it is reasonable behavior. That's why I am surprised. The stock AI in SEIV rarely acted that realistically.

[StarShadow]

LOL, true, very true!

[AgentZero]

Captain Kwok said:
Fighters are probably overpowered in stock and will be helpful against the AI - although their combat hull bonuses are not being applied.

Which AIs are being aggressive in your experience?

"Proabably" overpowered? Unless you're going up against a dedicated PD ship (which I haven't seen the AI field yet), fighters will obliterate any ship. For example, my current battleship designs carry enough PDCs to effectively counter the missile barrages of enemy battleships, and take 5 turns to construct. I can build 25 fighters in 5 turns, and those 25 fighters have managed to destroy 3-4 battleships quite easily. So yeah, if you want to cause the AI serious pain, go with fighters.
Just not too many, since the demo crashes when a large group of fighters all fire at the same time.

As for the OP, I'd guess your problem probably comes from the missiles. What unfortunately seems to happen in SE5 is that the AI will unload all it's missiles at the first target to enter firing range. I've had cases where a planet capable of launching 100 missiles at a time has been attacked by frigates that die after one or two hits. But what ends up happening is the first frigate to enter range gets 100 missiles launched at it, and the others close to firing range while the missiles are reloading. End result is usually one dead ship and a glassed planet, which is kinda crap, given that the planet theoretically had the ability to wipe out the entire attacking force before it entered weapons range.

[tmcc]

Does sound like a bug in the weapon allocation routine. It should only assign a 150% overkill as a default, and this should be adjustable, not 100 missiles at one frigate

TM

[StarShadow]

AFAIK, it is adjustable, in Settings.txt

This section:

Estimated Targeting Damage Percent for Torpedo Weapon := 50
Estimated Targeting Damage Percent for Directed Torpedo Weapon := 50
Estimated Targeting Damage Percent for Beam Weapon := 50
Estimated Targeting Damage Percent for Bolt Weapon := 50

[AngleWyrm]

One possible difference: Are Overkills being computed once per target or once per targetting ship?

If fire allocation can be done on a more global basis, rather than an individual shooter basis, then better performance will result.

With this in mind, here's an interesting idea for a useful technology: Have "Target Linking" that allows several ships to make Overkill calculations as a group.

[Phoenix-D]

Its adjustable, but the problem is the targetting AI sees "ok, only one target in range, might as well shoot everything".

The damage percent is also adjustable in the strategies.