Unconventional Warfare: Suicide FG's/DD's and Kamikaze Fighters

[Bowden Russell]

Has anyone worked with designing Suicide Frigates and DD's or swarms of Kamikaze fighters? Just curious.

Any tactics would help.

Bowden

[Puke]

tried two patches back, found them to be inefficient and wastefull. usually do better damage with real weapons, and you get to re-use the ships.

[dmm]

I don't know about fighters, but ramming ships are effective in the early game, if you've got armor and repair. (Contrary to popular belief, rammers are not necessarily suicide ships, and can be reused indefinitely if you repair them.) And even if you don't normally use ramming, if your ships are way outgunned, then by all means use ramming. At least you'll take some of the enemy with you. But you must use tactical combat -- the AI doesn't look far enough ahead to see the benefit.

A strategy hint: once you've got armor III and repair III, research boarding parties. Now you can turn all of those heavily armored rammers into boarders. This can be done very quickly, long before anyone has self-destruct or "antiboarding" (I forget the official term) on their ships. Then analyze your stolen ships for quick tech boosts. (This is a REALLY cost-effective way to get colonization techs, and you don't have to trade yours away to a competitor.)

[Taqwus]

Ramming fighters --

Hmmm. I think Rocket Pods are more cost-efficient than warhead-laden fighters. Pods are cheap research (Missiles is cheap compared to fighters, IIRC, and Small Weapons is *very* cheap so it's not that much of a problem), do huge damage (e.g. 100 each for Pod III's), and don't kill your fighter; in fact, in extremis you could fire the pods *and* ram afterwards if absolutely necessary.

I don't like losing fighters, at least in enemy space, because replacing them means a trip home, or HOMM-style carrier[hero]-chaining, or bringing along shipyards and *waiting*. Damaged components can be repaired quickly and for free; lost fighters are gone.


Ramming ships, OTOH, might be very interesting with organic armor, since it'll regenerate during battle...

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Nyx]

Ramming would be useful if the ramming components did more damage. Right now I only use it when an unarmed ship of mine gets attacked, or when one of my ships has all its guns destroyed.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[Tampa_Gamer]

Also, the AI's strategy "Ram" that the Kamikaze Ship is supposed to use does not work. This has been forwarded to MM as part of my bug-list.

[Atrocities]

Ramming is as effective as scraping your fighters. Its better to design specific types of fighters for specific task such as Rockets, Bombs, and Beams. I use a strong combination of these, and have seldom been forced to RAM anything with anything. All ramming seems to do for me is put me down by one ship.

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"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Patric Stewart as Captain Picard
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