The Face of the Enemy (Destroy this Ship!)

[Suicide Junkie]

If you make a black hole at one of your empire's chokepoints, you can then decide whether to fight with shields or without.
Just move from one side of the wormhole to the other, and you get to disable the enemy shields OR make full advantage of your own.

You can put shields on your ships and fight outside the BH, or use armor & long-range WMGs to fight inside the blackhole.

The enemy has a 50/50 chance of guessing correctly, and will either have useless shields(by BH) or few shield points(by design), if they guess wrong. In case they guess right, you can use the other strategies mentioned in this thread.

Armored boarding ships in a Blackhole system would rule against baseships, since his shields would be gone

Research stellar manipulation to destroy stars in his industrial systems. Go cloaked with two minesweeper DN sweep 100+. Of course by the time you pay for the stellar he will have researched sensors and put up sensor sats - but is worth a try ? It seems likely that his maintenance free option is going to kill you unless you get him FAST.

[Taqwus]

Hrrrrrrrm.

What's the range on your engine-killing beams? Given that he has NO missiles, and no range-7 or range-8 weapons of any kind, engine killers might be helpful.

Since you have all technology and a propulsion advantage, you may want to go for speed/range. Say --

BC chassis/propulsion:
6xQE III, Solar Sail III => 13/7 speed
All ships use maximum weapons range, tweaked so that second movement strategy may need to be 'Don't Get Hurt'. Try it in the simulator -- it's smarter than it used to be.

Weapons to favor:
Engine-killing beams if range is good. Don't bother with missiles unless you've got a LOT of them -- his PD will probably shoot them down. PD is probably more space-efficient than most of the missiles in terms of shots needed to kill a missile and shots available while it closes.
Shield depleters, if you WON'T be fighting in a nebula.
High-energy magnifiers (range 7) or possibly WMGs (range 8). His armor is insignificant, so it's not like you need to rely on low-damage shard cannons. Incidentally, his shields won't help at all in minefields.

As a Last-ditch scorched-galaxy defense, have a cloaked star destroyer ready IF your opponent prefers the Main Fleet approach.

Does your opponent have supply ships at all? I'd be tempted to (simulate first!) try to designate a few ships to kill only unarmed ships if it looks like they're vulnerable... probably wouldn't be, but maybe.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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It seems likely that his maintenance free option is going to kill you unless you get him FAST

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Time is definitely NOT on your side. You'll have to go on the offensive, which puts your ships at a slight disadvantage, but means that the destruction will occur on his industrial base.

[Nitram Draw]

One of the biggest problems I see is if you have 150 ships and he has 150 ships how can anyone maneuver? If you could disable the engines of the first rank of ships then all his other ships would be sitting ducks!

[Menschenfresser]

Since you are looking to knock out most of his fleet and counter attack, without, I assume, leaving your system completely devoid of ships, traditional ship to ship battle is not the way.

Granted, I've never actually fielded or fought such a fleet, but I'd go with an all out non-ship to ship offensive. Wear him down and scatter his fleet. First turn on the intel machine. Change it up all the time. Find out what works. I usually go for ship insurrection, because it seems that even in the face of large counter intel it works. I believe you said something about 200,000 points. That can field a counter intel project and three SIs.

Next I would send numerous cloaked, fast wolf packs, with enough solar collectors to stay in the field forever. Equip these with sun destoryers or plague bombs or standard weapons or mine layers. Cause havok wherever you can, no matter how small. Plague his planets. Attack small Groups of ships when you can (ie colony, transport, mine layers, etc.) More than likely he will take the time to replace these. This really isn't meant to knock out his capacity for building (that is for your main offensive) this is just to keep him moving and producing ships other than those for his main attack fleet.

Next you'll have to play George Washington and try to guess where his main fleet will strike. Set a star destroyer over the star of the system you think he will enter first. Preferably one with just asteroids or at worst a few of your own colonies. As soon as his death fleet enters "BOOM." He'll never know what happened, especially if he thinks he's entering a system with a few of your colonies. I know it's sick to vaporize one's own people, but don't the good of the many out weigh the good of the few.

Keep us updated as to how it comes out. And once it's over I'd really like to hear what strategies and tactics you employed.

[Mordante]

Some good ideas and interesting points everyone;

1)choice of battlefields/choke points – not an option I fear, I already have 3 maximum range (500ly) renewable (ie. Onboard repair) warp point constructors myself (each tied to a fleet) and I expect a similar capacity from my enemy. From my front line I can target his rear territory and I expect a similar advance from him when the time comes. Thus choke point defence (mines/satellites etc) will be irrelevant since the warp points will be newly placed. I can see able practical way to force the battle in nebulas either.

2)“attrition tactics” – although my opponent has no-maintenance advantage, my resource income is approximately twice his and my planetary shipyards outnumber his by over a hundred (we have 200 space bases each). If both fleets were annihilated I believe I could replace mine faster.

3)“wave motion gun” – I didn’t know it had +30% to hit, interesting but it does depend on the launching vessel getting out of range effectively during recharge.

4)“fighter combination attacks” – fighters to draw the big guns, yes, I could see that working – until he orders standard base ship designs to ignore them and lets the custom pdc’s engage the skirmishers! But a battle could be won that way I think.

5)“Sun-destroying” – I have several sun-destroyer craft on standby in potential target systems of mine – what worries me about their offensive capabilities is the fact that a) they need to start the turn above the target start, and b) does the detonation occur immediately in the simultaneous turn sequence or at the end of movement and combat?

6)“cloaking” – rendered impotent by high level sensor nets – all my systems have sensor satellites capable of detecting the maximum cloak available in the game. (no psychic or temporal players left alive) I expect the same of my enemy…

7)“engine-killing beam” – I think they max out at range six, I can certainly rush the base ships and burn engines on individual ships in the enemy fleet but at the cost of the engine-killer hull’s existence by massive retaliation at range six from polaron beams.

8)“enemy supply strategy” – not sure, I imagine he will add one or two quantum reactor equipped ships to the grand fleet to replenish everything. (all of my ships have quantum reactors so no supply hassles for me)

9)“Manoeuvre with 300 ships!” – not sure what will happen, even the combat simulator on strategic takes a long time to do a battle of that size … interesting to see his fleet lumber around immobile hulks though …

10) “guerrilla tactics with wolf-packs” – I was think of doing this with range eight cannon cruisers to pick off lone colonies and support craft …

kind regards all, i will certainly let people know what happens ....

[DirectorTsaarx]

Put the minefields around your planets if your opponent has warp-point generators. He has to come after your colonies sometime, and like others have said, mines ignore shields. As for engine-destroying weapons, build a couple (large) ships with lots of the engine-destroying missiles. Overwhelm the PDC (and maybe add some fighters, just for flavor, and to keep more PDC busy). And, of course, load up on armor (or phased shields) so the Phased-Polaron Beams are less scary. I'm up against an AI that uses PPB's and got used to staying out of range (I only had standard shields on the ships in that region), and in one battle (tactical, not strategic) thought I was in trouble when I failed to stay out of range. Then, as I watched the enemy fire, I realized I had finally gotten ships with phased shields deployed... what a relief...

[Vger]

Hi,

I find your dilemma fascinating. I'm just glad I'm not in your shoes. I know I'm an SE4 neophyte, but looking at weapon mounts, if you use Extended Range or Dreadnought mounts your engine killing weapons will outrange his PPBs by 2. (Unless he's using D mounts also, which I take it he's not.)

You can put ER mounts on anything Destroyer sized or larger, so you could put cheap shield depleater/engine killers against his big guys and leave them sitting ducks for your main fleet, assuming your main fleet was using ER or D mounts also.

Forgive me if I'm suggesting an unworkable option, but this just jumped out at me. You have one big advantage and that is tactical and strategic maneuverablility. Those Monitors are slow. Even if they can form any warp point they like, it still takes them time to move around to kill/take your planets. If you build SDs and smaller you can move c50% faster around systems. You can also collect replacements faster, which should allow you at least a local, temporary superiority.

Hope some of this has helped.


Vaya con nukes,
V'ger gone

[Mordante]

"dreadnaught and extended range mounts" - what are these? do they exist in the standard game ... I know that starbase weapons get range bonuses but do any basic ship mounts?

"mines for planet defence" - well, one problem is the units in space limit (4000) - I have 270 odd planets to defend (about 14 mines a planet!) another is the limit of mines per sector 100 + deployment load ... say 175 as a maximum with an abusive mine layer strat - it's childs play to design a large mine-sweeper that can clear 100 mines a turn - 2 of these babies with every fleet and the mines are worthless.

......

Dilemma aside, it is a damned amusing game and the closest thing to a competitive space opera I've ever played ...