Jumping in at the deep end

[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
EDIT: In purely combat terms, how important are battleships with their heavy mounts, and are there improvements on them? I'm asking becasue of the emphasis people have put on the CL's 10% bonus and someone having mentioned that the heavy mount on a carrier is large and vulnerable in combat - and in simulator battles my carrier wasn't much of a fleet-conquering hero.

Actually, the greatest benefit of battleships is the extra tonnage - 200 kt more than battlecruisers. The heavy mount is just a nice extra - unless you're going up against large heavily-crystalline-armored ships, in which case it's essential.

Once you get light cruisers, ship construction just isn't a very important tech for quite a while. The step up to cruisers is only an effective 80 kt with the extra CQ/LS requirement, and comes at the cost of the 10% defense bonus. Battlecruisers get you another 100 kt, which is nice but isn't as big of a deal as ECM, CS, and good weapons and the specialty armors. Battleships are the first really major improvement in combat power with a full 200 kt extra, but you need good stuff to put on them to really make good use of them, and better engines and solar sails are highly desirable to offset their lower number of engines.

Jtownsend said:
EDIT2: I know a methane breather who is likely to oblige - there's a lot of Oxys in this game - Do I need to remove the existing population of my domed worlds? This would be something of a project, I'd think.

For a planet to be undomed, all of the population on it must breathe its atmosphere. However, there is no requirement that you dispose of the previous inhabitants in a humanitarian manner (i.e. moving them to other planets), and just stationing a transport in orbit for one turn and repeatedly transferring population and jettisonning it out into space until only the breathers are left has no negative effect besides the actual loss of population. It doesn't even lower happiness on the planet you do it on. In stock, compared with the bonus from suddenly having 5 times as many facility spaces on the planet, the population loss is inconsequential unless the planet was very highly populated. So what if you lose a 2% production bonus for having 40M population? That's nothing compared to the 400% bonus the extra space gives you.

[Fyron]

The heavy mount is just a nice extra - unless you're going up against large heavily-crystalline-armored ships, in which case it's essential.

I would have to disagree. The following are calculations of Damage Percent / Tonnage Percent to show the increase in the damage ratio compared to the unmounted version of the weapon.

Large mount: 200 / 150 = 1.33x base damage
Heavy mount: 300 / 200 = 1.5x base damage
Massive mount: 500 / 300 = 1.67x base damage

Now to look at increases in damage between mounts:

Large mounted weapons do 33% more damage than unmounted weapons.
Heavy mounted weapons do 12.7% more damage than large mounted weapons.
Massive mounted weapons do 11.3% more damage than heavy mounted weapons.

While the increase from large to heavy mount is smaller than the increase from unmounted to large, it is still 12.7% more damage than you would do from a battlecruiser. This is quite significant, and should not be underscored. In my assessment, heavy mounts are most certainly not just a "nice extra," but are as necessary to use ASAP as large mounts are.

[Jtownsend]

I take it on a largish world it's going to take a good long time even to, eh colonize space? My cargo is handled atm by 2 cargo hold minelaying destroyers. So, one ship's worth per turn?

[douglas]

I'm not sure what you're asking about. Please clarify.

[Jtownsend]

Spacing the non-breathing pop points. In a simultaneous game, that'll mean turn after turn of moving pop to orbiting ships and then jettisoning cargo?

[douglas]

No, you can do it all in one turn for each planet. You just have to use the cargo transfer screen rather than the load population order. This requires that the cargo ship be at the planet at the start of the turn. Both transferring and jettisoning cargo happens instantaneously rather than waiting for turn processing, so you can repeatedly transfer and jettison as much as necessary all in one turn.

[TurinTurambar]

Hey, no one's mentioning any repeat orders strategy. Get a fleet of transports automated to move population off your homeworlds and out to your new large "breathers." Having 3 or 4 Huge planets full of pop. when it's time to build Stellar Manip ships is pretty major.
Also, I do believe a Large size breather full to 4000M will turn out a sophisticated Light Cruiser every 2 turns.

Edit: Let me know if I need to "i.e." that strategy for you.

[Jtownsend]

It seemed pretty clear, but I'm not sure if I'll have a heavy-enough cargo fleet when I get my breathers for it to be worthwhile - unless repeat orders means something more complex and evilly brilliant than having the computer do ferrying for me over time.

Incidentally - the word is out that I'm fielding PPBs. Do Phased Shields make PBBs really sad, or do they simply act like normal shields, making PPBs like normal weapons? The damage on PPBs is quite adequate for my needs, but if phased shields actually make them useless that'd be good to know.

And on that note, what is next after PPBs for direct fire weapons? High Energy Discharge? Seems a bit far off, although the numbers look tasty. Need more research.

[Fyron]

Phased shields cause Phased Polaron Beams to act as normal weapons.

Note that every single shield point on the ship must be from phased generators, otherwise they will count as normal, non-phased shields.

Anti-Proton Beams (energy stream weapons) are the most powerful general purpose weapon. Far cheaper to build than Phased Polaron Beams, and they have one of the highest damage ratios in the game. Combined with long range (8), they are killer. Very expensive to research, but well worth it.

Wave-Motion Beams are very weak weapons. In situations where you are only going to get one shot, they are ok. But for combats that last more than 3 rounds, Anti-Proton Beams are vastly more powerful. Damage ratios (damage / kiloton (size) / rate of fire) are a very important comparison tool.

[Jtownsend]

Ah! Good point, I had actually failed to give thought to weapon size differing.