Ship Design for Dummies, weapons, armor, shields, oh my!

[geoschmo]

The subject has come up and frankly I don't have a good answer. I know what I do, and I have a feel for what I see other people do in games. But I don't have any good method of determining subjectively what is best.

So how do you design your ships? Frankly I tend to go balls out all weapons and little or no armor or shields. I will use stealth and scattering armor for their defensive bonuses, and on very large ships will start to put some high level phased shields on them once I have them.

Prior to that it's all about the guns. The strongest ones I can find and cram as many on there as I can. I might use a single shield as anti-boarding if my enemy is big on that. The normal armor I almost never use unless I need to fill a hole in a ship and nothing else fits.

I will grant that my method may not be particularly wise. And given my record in PBW games this is as good a reason as any as to why I lose more then my fair share.

I tried to do some simulations just now and with ships of similer weapons (Destroyers, DUC3's) one having armor and the other not. There did seem to be an advantage in performace of the armored ships at first glance. I haven't quite worked out the best ratio of guns to armor, but I did get some results that suggest some amount of armor is better then none, as long as you don't use too much to where you are pitifully outnumbered in the number of gun barrels.

However, upon reflectionI don't think my test was that conclusive. It occured to me that if one player took the time and research to develop armor they might not have equal weapons tech. So repeating my tests with destoryers with one with all DUC 3's and the other destroyers with armor and DUC 2's. In that test it did not seem to matter how much armor I used, the DUC 3 no armor ships did better.

So, it appears at least from my test that given equal weapons some armor is better then none, but armor will not make up for a deficency of weapons tech.

So how does an aspiring galactic emperor put this knowledge to use? Can anyone affer me some further enlightenment? Perhaps someone has developed a method of mathematically analyzing the problem rahter then brute force modeling?

And what about shields? There is just so much to consider....

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

In general for fleet combat, you will want to maximize your hitpoints * damage output.
Where hitpoints include all internals, armor and shields.

Be sure to take to-hit chances into account, as this will increase your effective hitpoints and reduce your effective damage.

This will maximize the amount of punishment you can dish out before being destroyed. (Or minimize the losses you take before winning)

Note that there will be a lot of rounding effects due to firing first, and crippled ships (for tiny fleets or single ships), and stuff like that.
Also, Special Tactics or Strategies, such as longer range weapons, or custom formations can also influence the results.

[Fyron]

Having all guns means your ship loses weapons on the first shot a very large portion of the time, as they have lots of HPs and are likely to be hit first. Armor/shields allow the ship to absorb some hits before it loses any offensive capability. As armor and shields have much greater than 1 HP/kT, they are better for receiving those first impacts than your weapons (or engines!) are.

How much shielding and armor you use is not really an exact science, because you can never accurately predict exactly what your ships will encounter. The enemy could easily change their designs at any time. I usually stick ~40-50kT armor/shields on Destroyers and Light Cruisers. I rarely build Cruisers because they are an innefficient hull and BCs are always just a few turns away by the time I start researching Ship Construction past 4. Battlecruisers get ~80kT armor/shields (not counting stealth/scattering armor). Battleships get 120-160kT, depending on the nature of the enemy and what is more effective. I never build Dreadnoughts or Baseships because they are too slow for my tastes.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Having all guns means your ship loses weapons on the first shot a very large portion of the time, as they have lots of HPs and are likely to be hit first. Armor/shields allow the ship to absorb some hits before it loses any offensive capability.

I understand that and have always been aware of it. But in my mind I felt that the trade off was that I had more weapons to lose then the other guy so I could afford to lose more. Now I am not so sure this is correct, but how do you come up with a good ratio is what I am trying to determine. And where do you factor in the additional research cost of going for armor. If my second set of tests was accurate, all it took was a tech deficency of one level in weapons to make the armor irrelevant. Of course I am sure that there are more variables to consider, and different weapons might have different results even.

Maybe there is no good method and it's just throwing darts and seeing what sticks.

[Gryphin]

My non scientific method only playing against TDM AI:
Max speed
Max guns
Add 2 PDC (if needed)
Add 3 Armor
Remove guns to fit
Ballence to fill every space by adding and subtracting armor and guns and PDC.
This usualy leaves 2 to 3 Armor III 1 or 2 PDC.

Against AI it seems to work.

[Slynky]

I guess I go at it a bit differently.

I build my ships according to what I see on my enemy ships. In general, if I am in a defensive posture, I build ships with lots of firepower and wait at warp holes. If I'm on offensive mode, I'll use a bit more armor and shielding.

So, in the "Slynky Book of Ship Design", how ships are built depend on several factors and vary from game-to-game.

For example, if I find myself facing Asmala, I just go ahead and put the "coffin components" on board to save time

[Fyron]

Well... when you have played many PBW games, you get an innate feel for what you will need at various times in the game. My ship designs do vary depending on the enemies and other game situations and such; they just end up being rather similar from game to game.

Geo, I normally research to DUC V and PDC III before getting Chemistry or armor. Destroyers with 5-6 PDCs slaughter all early game fighter/missile rush strategies.

[geoschmo]

Ok, adding a little more indecision to the mix. I ran some new tests. This time with LC's and large mount DUC V's. One fleet of all DUC V's and the other of DUC V's and armor. With armor I it was no contest. The All weapon ships had a clear advantage. If I stepped it up to Armor 3 it was not so clear. On balance the all weapon ships still won more battles, but they were dinged up pretty badly and the armored ships won a few.

So this get's me back to the research question. If I compensate for the higher cost in researching Armor 3 I will have to penalize that empire by giving it a lower tech weapon. But as even as it is now that will clearly push the advantage to the all weapon ships.

The more tests I run on the this the more I get to the conculsion that for fleet combat less armor or even no armor and all weapons is the way to go. What am I missing?

Now, clearly in a one on one fight the armor ship would have an advantage since he could survive the first couple shots. Shots which have a good chance of crippeling the all weapon guy by taking out his bridge or engines. But I think this advantage disappears in the mass of a fleet battle.

Help me understand it.

Geoschmo

[ July 25, 2003, 18:11: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Geo, I normally research to DUC V and PDC III before getting Chemistry or armor. Destroyers with 5-6 PDCs slaughter all early game fighter/missile rush strategies.

Ok, well that makes sense. But if that's the case why bother ever researching armor at all? Go to LC's and start researching shields. You need Physics anyway for all the better beam waepons, you can't stick with DUC's forever. And the only other good thing to come from the chemestry branch is resource manipulation. And you can do without that for a long time. Am I wrong? I am just trying to figure out when the armor should come into play.

Geoschmo

[oleg]

It is not easy to instruct ships to gang up on one ship and pound it. You must use "most damaged" as a first firing priority, but I often see such ships moving aimesly (poor pathfinding) and fire ineffectively from a long distance. IMHO, the most effective priority is "nearest" but that may lead to the spreading of fire and armored/shielded ships can Last longer even in fleet battles !