Ships Orders

[geoschmo]

David, did the enemy ships have SDD's? This will cause your boarding ships to not try to board. It's like they know if they board they die, so they don't attempt it.

Geoschmo

[DavidG]

SDD's??? Good thing that Acronym thread is here. No I don't think they had them. Howver they were all CA's or BC's. I gathers from SJ's post that my ships would probably not have had the boarding strength to take these ships thus did not try. If this is the case a message from the ship captian would have been nice.

One thing I am 99.99% of certain of is that there is a bug with fleets not obeying their 'Don't Hurt Me' orders.

I'm not sure I understand the weapons/no weapons comments. With Ram and Capture orders does it make a difference if the ship has other weapons on it?

[Grandpa Kim]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
David, did the enemy ships have SDD's? This will cause your boarding ships to not try to board. It's like they know if they board they die, so they don't attempt it.

Geoschmo

I'm playing a solo game at home. I just sent three newly constructed capture ships after three lone enemy ships (three separate battles). As it turned out all the enemy ships had SDD. There are now six less ships in the universe. My ships attempted boarding without hesitation after using their shield depleters to bring down the shields.

Its this type of inconsistency that drives me nuts. One person says black, the other say white and they are both right!

Kim

[tbontob]

Originally posted by DavidG:
SDD's??? Good thing that Acronym thread is here.

First known published example of the Acronym thread being used

Incidentally, it was SDD acronym that got it all started.

[DavidG]

Another thing I've just had happen the Last 2 turns in my current game is missle ships not firing their weapons and getting killed. (crystalline type missles) They had suppies (1400 about) and they did not have any orders that said do not fire on a certain type. So they get killed by 3 ships that had no point defense and should have been an easy kill.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:I'm playing a solo game at home. I just sent three newly constructed capture ships after three lone enemy ships (three separate battles). As it turned out all the enemy ships had SDD. There are now six less ships in the universe. My ships attempted boarding without hesitation after using their shield depleters to bring down the shields.

Its this type of inconsistency that drives me nuts. One person says black, the other say white and they are both right!

Kim

Mea Culpa Grandpa Kim. I was incorrect when I made that statement before. I was going by something I had seen in a game a few weeks ago, and I just figured out that what was really happening is the attacking ships were not attempting to board because the defending ship had security stations, not because of the SDD. As you have seen they will attack in spite of SDD, and both will be destroyed.

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Were you fighting a Psychic race, by any chance? Or perhaps a Cruiser or larger?

Psychic races get double the normal boarding defense, and swashbucklers are not very strong.

Sj this is incorrect. Psychics do not get any advantage in boarding or defense against boarding. Unless you are talking about something specific to a mod? If so how were you able to do this?

I have done some analysis and come up with the following definitive results regarding boarding:

• Ships will calculate the "attack strength" of boarding parties and "defense strength" of target ship, and will not attempt to board if they cannot achieve success.
• Boarding ship will achieve success if attack strength is greater than OR equal too defense strength of target ship.
• Attack strength of boarding ship is total number of Space Marines of all Boarding party components on ship.
• Defense strength of target ship is total turrets from security stations + total strength of boarding party components (used for defense) + 20 for each crew quarter component.
• Master Computers, Life Support, Bridge, Aux Control, and troops in cargo offer no assistance to Defense strength of target ship.
• Ship size does not factor into Boarding defense, other than the fact that larger ships require more crew quarters.
• Increasing the size or structure of crew quarters through a mod has no effect on boarding defense. Their strength is 20 per component, regardless.
• Racial characteristics do not appear to have any effect on calulation of boarding succes, for either attacker or defender. (85% sure on this Last point)
  

I do not have any idea whether or not the various racial faciliites that offer bonuses to weapon damage in system have any effect. I would guess not, but I have not confirmed it.
Hope this helps.
Geoschmo

[ October 27, 2002, 21:23: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Grandpa Kim]

From Geoschmo:

Mea Culpa Grandpa Kim.

No worries, Geo. I made a mistake once myself, back in 1950.... er, no it was my parents that made the mistake!

Geo, based on your analysis, it would be better to use security stations rather than SDD. You would be much more likely to keep your ship intact and end up destroying the boarding ships. This would be an especially good idea if your ships are large (and expensive) and the boarding ships are small (and cheap).

Kim

[Taera]

GK, the security stations do not destroy the boarding ship. Interesting analysis, geo.

[geoschmo]

Grandpa Kim if your enemy is using cheap boarding ships to get your vessels to self destruct, then yes Security stations would be better than SDD. Security stations are the same size and cost as boarding parties of the same tech level, and between 2 to 3 times as effective, depending on tech level.

However one 10K SDD will stop as many boarding parties as the enemy puts on their ship. And it has another use, eliminating those pesky maint costing ships that are out of fuel or damaged and out of reach of a yard. So like everything else there are tradeoffs. And there is nothing stopping you form using both.

Also, as discussed in another thread recently, shields and one shield regenerator comp will prevent boarding, at least until the regenerator comp is destroyed.

Geoschmo

[DavidG]

Nice info Geo!!!

So in my P&N game a ship with one Swashbuckler would have an attack equal to 12. (40 guys at 30% effective) and thus could not capture any ship with a crew quarter. So if I put 2 of then on I could capture a ship with one crew quarter but not one with 2 or more. This could certainly explain all my problems.