racial trait +20% and evasive armors

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Or, like I said, fighters.

Again, I have no experience with Devnull, but if fighters still have their intrinsic to-hit bonuses (both offence and defence) they're very handy, especially because they're so cheap. Depending on the kind of guns he's slinging, this might also give you the advantage of rendering a certain amount of the weapons on his ships useless.

Or, if there are more players in the game, seek contact with other empires and request that they attack your enemy in return for trade goods (resources, outdated ships/units, defense bases which have become useless, listening post bases which have become useless due to your exploration, planets with low value and no population as a result of, say a plague, etc.).

Or, building on the above paragraph, build up a powerful static defense line of bases, sats and especially mines, then find another (preferably weaker) empire and simply outproduce them, then bully them into attacking your enemy. If he doesn't listen take/glass a few unimportant planets and post traffic regulators on the warp points to avoid his ships colliding with each other on their way to your enemy

[Ragnarok-X]

I think i will take the stellar manipulation then. I already have about a douzen of planet creators in use, right now im researching dreadnoughts, because they have a to-hit-mount as well and will immediatly go for star creation and destruction. Any more advises are welcome as well.

[Alneyan]

Standard fighters are very poor actually: they may have a good bonus to offence, but they will not get Ship training (-20% to offence), their Combat Sensors are much harder to research and weaker (-35% to offence), and they will have a hard time breaking through all the defences on an enemy ship. In defence, fighters lack Stealth and Scattering Armour (-30% to defence), ship training (-20% to defence), and their ECM is weaker (-30% to defence), so even regular weapons are going to eat them for breakfast at point blank range. In this particular case, add -20% to both offence and defence.

Fighters can still do a good job, but you will need to lure the enemy into attacking a particular wormhole, and put all the fighters there. If you do not care much about losing the bulk of your fighters, a force of ten thousands or twenty thousands should do some real damage, combined with a nice fleet. I would not bother with low numbers of fighters: if you want to him them with fighters, hit them hard.

Devnull improves fighters somewhat if memory serves, mostly by giving bigger fighters, but those will lose part of their offence bonuses, if memory serves. There might be other things of interest in Devnull too; the weakened PDC will not be much of a deal though. If you can get big weapons and big shields for your fighters, plus fleet training and the best fighter CS/ECM, it could work. It is probably too late for all of that, however.

[rdouglass]

Haven't played that mod in a long time but I've found a ramming strategy can equalize the playing field significantly against an opponent with much higher offence/defence bonuses.

As stated, outproduce 'em and swarm 'em. Try building 10-20 destroyers / LC's with nothing but engines, armor, and warheads. If you outnumber them significantly and have good speed, it can be effective.

[parabolize]

Alneyan said:
Standard fighters are very poor actually: they may have a good bonus to offence, but they will not get Ship training (-20% to offence), their Combat Sensors are much harder to research and weaker (-35% to offence), and they will have a hard time breaking through all the defences on an enemy ship. In defence, fighters lack Stealth and Scattering Armour (-30% to defence), ship training (-20% to defence), and their ECM is weaker (-30% to defence), so even regular weapons are going to eat them for breakfast at point blank range. In this particular case, add -20% to both offence and defence.

Fighters can still do a good job, but you will need to lure the enemy into attacking a particular wormhole, and put all the fighters there. If you do not care much about losing the bulk of your fighters, a force of ten thousands or twenty thousands should do some real damage, combined with a nice fleet. I would not bother with low numbers of fighters: if you want to him them with fighters, hit them hard.

Devnull improves fighters somewhat if memory serves, mostly by giving bigger fighters, but those will lose part of their offence bonuses, if memory serves. There might be other things of interest in Devnull too; the weakened PDC will not be much of a deal though. If you can get big weapons and big shields for your fighters, plus fleet training and the best fighter CS/ECM, it could work. It is probably too late for all of that, however.

They gain offence bonuses and loss defense bonuses as you go up in hull size. This is the problem.

[Ed Kolis]

What does small emissive armor have anything to do with anything? The emissive ability doesn't work on units...

[parabolize]

Oops. I was hoping this in the history log meant they had shield and armor now. "2. Fixed - Shield Depeleters will now work properly against units."

I knew I should have tested something.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Do NOT do that! There's a great chance that even with emergency build on, it'll take more than one year to finish the thing, at after a year it'll be another year in which you have 25% efficiency in your spaceyards, perhaps even causing the ships to be completed after an even longer time than when you would have them built at normal speed.

[Ragnarok-X]

heh i know that Usually it takes me 11 turns to get planet creators, so i usually go emergency after the first normal turn.

[Alneyan]

Ragnarok-X said:
heh i know that Usually it takes me 11 turns to get planet creators, so i usually go emergency after the first normal turn.

Emergency Build lasts for 11 turns, not 10, so you can switch it on the first turn. Basically, if the ETA is 1.6 year, EB will drop that figure to 1.1 year, and it will be completed before EB goes off.