Oh, this is fun!

[JLS]

What have you been seeing for Point Defense with the AI desighns, dbt1949?

[ June 13, 2003, 17:18: Message edited by: JLS ]

[dbt1949]

From light cruisers on up there seem to be 2-3 point defense guns per ship.
There doesn't seem to be too many(if any) on weapons platforms tho,from what I see.
I seldom run across base ships but there's only 2-3 on them too.
AI small satellites are a joke but their mines can be trouble whenever I forget to take a minesweeper or two with me.
The AI,once it researchs dreadnaughts never makes anything smaller,altho it will use old light cruisers and such.
The largest fleet I've ever seen is 16 dreadnaughts.I took it apart with only a couple of dreadnaughts and hordes of DDs and CLs.

[Fyron]

Something like 72 billion population. I've been transfering people to it like crazy.Have it over half filled now.

You get no bonuses past 10 billion, so it is wasteful to have more than 10 billion on a RW or SW (esp. agaisnt the AI).

Originally posted by JLS:
I have a habit of setting Physical strength low, too, dbt1949.
Around 80% works for me. Some planets can only hold a few troops
Don't forget adding Armor, for those troops.

Don't use armor on your troops. Shields are much stronger, and they count as generic hit points on troops, not actual shield layers. So, things like PPBs and SDs don't make a difference.

DDs and CLs.

Technically, it is DS and LC in SE4. Check VehicleSizes.txt.

[ June 13, 2003, 20:16: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[dbt1949]

You're right about the designations of the ship sizes.
However,I'm old school(and very old too!) and I like to use the designations used in WW2 for my ships rather than names.Makes it much easier for me to know what I have.

[PvK]

Yeah, in SE3 you could change those without modding the game data.

PvK

Originally posted by dbt1949:
You're right about the designations of the ship sizes.
However,I'm old school(and very old too!) and I like to use the designations used in WW2 for my ships rather than names.Makes it much easier for me to know what I have.

[JLS]

Originally posted by dbt1949:
From light cruisers on up there seem to be 2-3 point defense guns per ship.
There doesn't seem to be too many(if any) on weapons platforms tho,from what I see.
I seldom run across base ships but there's only 2-3 on them too.
AI small satellites are a joke but their mines can be trouble whenever I forget to take a minesweeper or two with me.
The AI,once it researchs dreadnaughts never makes anything smaller,altho it will use old light cruisers and such.
The largest fleet I've ever seen is 16 dreadnaughts.I took it apart with only a couple of dreadnaughts and hordes of DDs and CLs.

Sure, why not.

Did you tackle the 16 dreadnaughts with any of your fighters?

[dbt1949]

Did you tackle the 16 dreadnaughts with any of your fighters?

.
.
.
In that particular battle I didn't. I've now got a good size battle fleet,for me,(44 ships) and I've got a heavy carrier with heavy(large) fighters,but haven't had a chance to go tactical yet to see how they work out. I did build a large cargo ship to carry extra fighter to replace those that are lost. It holds almost 300 heavy fighters.It travels with the fleet too.
The AI is starting to stiffen up somemore so I may be going to tactical again pretty soon
.

[minipol]

30 ship fleets is what i call a backup system defense fleet. For catching small enemy fleets.
In the endgame I usually have some 100-200 spare DB's lying around mothballed. I have 2 100+ fleets. So when a war is coming my way, i can bump the fleet up to 200 with the mothballed onces and still have some smaller fleets in the backsystems.

Once i have installed system shields, i can bring those smaller fleets to the front also. Anway, then the real fun is going to start: in my recent game against TDM AI, i have 2 ringworlds, 2 almost finised and another 4 will be finished within 8 turns. Yummy.
I cut down my fleet size down by mothballing ships
so the AI doesn't immediately attack me. That would slow things down because of the heavy cost of constructing 6 ringworlds at the same time. If they would do it now, i'm ready. Only 1 system has an open waypoint to another system of the AI (so i can jump in and toy with their planets). I already began concentrating forces there since the AI will probably start an attack soon as i am completing the ringworlds.

On of my gripes with SEIV is that while you are at peace with a race, they send in smaller fleets (+-8 to 10 ships) into your space and once they are at war, these little fleets can cause problems so you always have to keep some smaller fleets around yourself. I use the smaller fleets and large WP for that. Not sure what's best for this kind of defense. Maybe fighters are better, i don't know. I do know that building WP on all your planets ( what i did ) is very costly.

Anyway, that's why i like war, you always can keep your systems clean from those little enemy fleets and once you have system shields, nobody can come in through the back door so you know when and where they are going to come
Makes for a "cleaner" less chaotic game

[Will]

Originally posted by dbt1949:
In order to increase my other racial stats my physical strength is only 50% so ground combat is out.

I used to set physical strength at 50%, and I made every attempt to capture planets intact (once in a while, a small colony with WPs gets glassed, but oh well). I kinda considered it a bit of a challenge, but not much since many AIs don't build troops. I would tweak settings so that ground combat Lasted 3-5 turns instead of 10, and I used destroyers as troop drop ships (usually max engines, 1 shield, one small weapon (ie. PPB or HPB), 1 PDC, and two or three cargo containers). Load up about 20 of those in an attack fleet, attempt to capture every planet in the system. If I succeed, I set spaceyards to work to replace any ship losses, and non-SY planets build replacement troops (lots of them).

Of course, if I tried this against a human player, I'd have to be much more cautious. With the AI, you can get away with two minesweepers at the warps, and move freely past that point, and less is needed to guard the remaining warps against reinforcements. Which is why PBW games routinely see 100+ ship attack fleets, and why single-player AI games get away with no fleet needing to go above 40 ships.

But that just adds to the fun!

[dbt1949]

That's interesting!
I like heavy satellites myself.40-50 of those will take out any AI fleets. If I arm them with missles I seem to lose quit a few.So I stick to something like the phased energy beams.
I've seen too many enemy dreadnaughts equiped as mine sweepers to trust mines in the end game.
I assume everybody uses master computers for their ships too. For some reason I've never seen the AI use computer virus weapons.