newby's guide to ship and fleet strategy

[PvK]

I meant PDC are weapons for purposes of AI maneuver. I am confident that I have seen PDC-only ships retreat while valid PDC targets were absent, and then advance as soon as valid PDC targets were launched by the enemy. You're right about them not being eligible for main weapon mounts.

PvK

quote:

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Originally posted by dumbluck:
PvK:
Are you sure???? I thought it was a well established fact that PDC were not weapons. For instance, it explains why they aren't affected by the default weapons mounts. Other weapons get damage bonuses with the mounts, while PDC damage stays the same, and isn't even listed in the ship creation screen as being altered by the mount (while all the weapons get the little "L" in their picture for Large mount, etc.).

As to the shield depleters, I don't know. I've never used them.

[ 18 February 2002: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

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[dumbluck]

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:
I meant PDC are weapons for purposes of AI maneuver. I am confident that I have seen PDC-only ships retreat while valid PDC targets were absent, and then advance as soon as valid PDC targets were launched by the enemy. You're right about them not being eligible for main weapon mounts.

PvK

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You may be right about that. Without valid targets, the PD cruisers would default to "don't get hurt". I guess I never paid attention to whether they tried to come out of their corners for a turn whilst my front line ships got pounded by the missles that the PD cruisers were out of range of (because they ran for the corners).

And that is the crux of the problem. Unless your enemy has either fighters or some of the upper-upper-tier missle tech weapons, there aren't going to be any valid PDC targets on turn 1. Or turn 2, or 3, or 4, or 5, or 6. And by that time, your PD cruiser is hiding in a corner where it will do your front line ships absolutely no good.

I will have to test that in a game sometime. If I set the strategy for weaponless ships to hold formation, and the PD cruisers break formation anyway, we will know that PDC are considered weapons. If they hold formation, then they aren't weapons. The concensus of the forums till now has been that PDC aren't weapons, but you have brought up an interesting point.

[ 26 February 2002: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[Gryphin]

As much as I like "specialty" ships like an "Aegis" PDC Crusier, I have taken to putting 3 or more PDC on most front line ships. If I am in a two front war and one race does not use suitable targets for a PDC, I create an apropriate Front Line Ship for that front. I don't like it, but to hard code a suitable behavior for this situation would probably cost too much.

[PsychoTechFreak]

I remember, one of the TDM races has got a PDC strategy, I will take a look into the ai files tonight. Maybe Romulans, Klingons or Drakol.

[GUTB]

All you guys are missing the boat on this one.

Killer strategy for ship design:

Escort. As much beam firepower as you can fit. For instance, early game get an escort with:

x3 engines
x3 cannons

If you give a significant bonus to research in your racial points, you will literally have upgradeded cannon tech in one turn. What I did was give a sigificant bonus to research and a huge bonus to lower maintenence. You have to be smart to work the game system, foklks. And I made my people hard workers.

Step two, build a space yard base or two (with my stats it took one turn for each one) and start pumping these escorts out ( I call them Assault) with emergency build. Once you have 12-15 of these, build 4-6 supply ships. Once you're done with that, you will have several upgraded levels of cannons. Retrofit.

There you go, a force that cream anything in battle at this stage of the game. You don't even have to run tactical combat, the firepower is so overwhelming none of yoru ships is in danger of really dying.

Once you get repair bays, send these ships along with the fleet to give them staying power. You will defeat any player, AI or human this way.

After twenty or so turns of a game, how are you supposed to defend againt an enemy that shows up to combat with 45 advanced guns? In ONE combat turn with several of such assault vessels hammering a frigate it will be killed or near-dead. Even a cruiser will be severaly damaged in ONE turn, in which it only manages to severally damage or kill one of your many ships. Of course, the next turn it has a only a few guns left so it's effectiveness is basically nill. In the twenty or so turns it took to build this fleet, you would NEVER EVER be able to build a fleet of larger ships that have the same level of firepower and overal effectiveness.

Too many people bother with nonsense that doesn't matter, like armor, sheilds, engines, etc. Guys get with the program. THIS is the ultimate forumla for ship design:

0. ESCORT full size
1. MINIMUM crew facilities
2. Three engines
3. Three rail guns
4. ECM (when you're advanced enough to fit it)
5. Point-defenses (when your're advanced enough to fit it)

You might ask why ECM and PD and not another gun. That's because they actually make a difference. Avoiding being hit makes yoru fleet overall more effective overall, AND you have to have space for PD, which is extremely important to have once the enemy starts going wild on missiles. A swarm of assault vessels with PDs will massacre to death ANY missiles or fighters.

[Gryphin]

GUTB, I'll try that. In general I find "Finesse, not Force" will carry the day, but that is more against humans. The AI in Stratiec mode may not appricate finess. An interesting almost disturbing thought.

[Growltigga]

GUTB, good design but are you missing the point on this? even my inexperience at this game shows that there is no right or wrong method of ship design.

Your design will work fine against the AI but apologies if I say it doesn't take rocket science to design a mean close assault vessel or something the AI finds hard to handle.

You will have problems against human players with this design. Sure, your ships will be unpleasant in a furball but I can already think of quite a few ways I would give any fleet of these ships a nasty surprise

I am playing a hot seat game against my friend Khanuk. He developed and built a very similar design of gunboat based on an escort hull. True, the first few battles were horrible from my point of view as 40 or 50 of these gunboats bLasted my fleets apart but then, massed fighter strikes, long range weapons fire, mines, swamping attacks, hit and run attacks, APB armed and heavily armoured battlecruisers etc blew him away and then some

the point of this game is that no design is perfect and nearly everything has a counter. Think of it as a game of scissors, paper, stone