racial trait +20% and evasive armors

[rdouglass]

Are you guys talking about playing the AI here? I suspect you may not be dedicating 30 planetary SY's on emeregency build to produce these star destroyers when you're playing humans. If you are, you must be in a very strong position and able to outproduce with regular ships anyways.

Hey, let's face it, if you're thinking about a campaign of 15 or more star destryers, you're talking about a significant allocation of resources (not just minerals, etc. but SY production). You're sacrificing significant production of defensive support as well as offensive fleets here. You would leave yourself quite vulnerable to a decent human player IMO.

So IMO, that is probably only a wise tactic against the AI. A few "terrorist" strikes against a human opponent, maybe; but a large number against a human opponent is not going to be all that effective. Any respectable opponent would probably have Hyper Optics so your cloaking endeavors would meet only with minimal sucess.

Just IMO.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

I say Stellar Manipulation. If that's not possible (say, he has large defensive fleets in his systems which will destroy your sunkillers on sight) go for the bullying option.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Build up massive battlefleets to counter his attacks. Make sure you have at least a 5 to 1 advantage, and focus on defense only.

Then, begin building swarms of stellar manipulation ships - and I mean swarms. Go to the star systems bordering both your empires and nuke their stars if he's got ships in the system, otherwise make nebulae out of them. You could also do both

Then, send your defensive fleets forward into these (hopefully) shield-negating nebulae and watch his ships die by the masses.

Rinse and repeat until all that's left is his home system, then build masses of construction bases in the systems surrounding it and churn out a massive fleet consisting of both warships and landing ships. Use the warships to take down his defenses, but do not glass his homeworld! Instead, land lots and lots of troops on it. Then, if there are still other colonies in the system, simply use his own homeworld's massive production capabilities to build a fleet of approx. 100-200 orbital bombers, then glass his planets. If you're feeling really cruel (or you don't need the system at all), pull out all of your ships and nuke the star.

*****

Another approach:
Build massive fleets of ships armed only with shield depleters, then build swarms of boarding ships. Use the depleter ships to sap his shields, then capture his ships and use his own weapons against him.

[El_Phil]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:
*****

Another approach:
Build massive fleets of ships armed only with shield depleters, then build swarms of boarding ships. Use the depleter ships to sap his shields, then capture his ships and use his own weapons against him.

But if he's got any sense he'll start chucking SSDs on all his ships the first time you pull that trick. Now that could be a good thing, if you've got production superiority you can afford to trade several small destroyers for one of his battleships.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

What are SSDs?

Yes, he's got the production capacity (he said so himself) so it's a viable tactic.

[Fyron]

SDD, Self-Destruct Device.

[geoschmo]

I doubt destroyers are going to get it done. A smart enemy is more likely to use security stations to prevent you from pulling this off as a method of getting him to blow up his own ships. Destroyers don't get the high damage mounts, so you are going to have to use a lot of space for shield depleters, which won't leave much for shields or more boarding parties to overcome his Secusrity stations. You might manage to get lucky and snag a couple battleships, but you are going to need more than 4 or 5 to one odds to do it I think. And if you do manage to capture a battleship it will be toast. It won't have any shields, and it will be at an instant 20+20% disadvantage against it's identical ex-fleetmates. (Actually, might be as high as 40+40% since your captured ships won't be part of a fleet, and his will and presumably will have fleet training)

I think to pull off capturing you are going to need to use bigger ships, but then the economics stop making sense. It might be useful as a suprise, or in desperation if you don't have time to train you ships. But I don't think you are going to have much success with it.

I think you'd do better just loading them up with shields and armor and setting them to ram. Your ships will be just as dead, but your chances are better of taking some of his out with you.

[El_Phil]

What I was thinking was larger ships doing the shield depleteting and the smaller destroyers just carrying boarding partys for the capturing.

Your not going to efficently capture his ships this way, but if you out produce and out tech him (if I'm reading your posts right) then do you even want to capture his ships?

Whatever it's just a variation on the same theme - Grind him down with shear numbers. As for which one would work best, that depends on the other guys reaction, ship design, etc.

Or just a few stellar manip ships to try and even the odds. Your heavily armoured ships in shield negating nebulas might stand a slightly better chance. That add him losing an entire system which he probably wont appreciate.

Stellar manipulation: 'How not to win friends and influence people.'

[rdouglass]

Just as a side note:

I've never found the "Star Destroyer" tactic too sucessful except on small-scale operations. Thos suckers are quite expensive and take a while to build.

By the time you build any significant amount of them, you're enemy has caught up or surpassed you in the ship-count category.

And once you've done 1 or 2, the enemy starts mining stars. Yes, I know, you send mine sweepers with 'em. But before you do, you may have lost a few to mines beforehand and wasted all that production you could have spent on warships.

Star destryers IMO only work like terrrorist activity; once or twice, they work. After that, their effectiveness diminishes significantly. Unless of course, you're fighting the AI.

IMO you're better off raiding systems and causing them to riot instead of blowing them up. Spend the production you'd use on a Star Destroyer to build a few small, fast raiding fleets. If you haven't tried that tactic, as said before, riots can bring huge empires to thier knees.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Perhaps your enemy is also reading this thread, and is using the BS-5 design to throw you off guard, thinking you have an advantage, then to strike with the BS-3s. Perhaps the BS-5s are just decoys.