Ship Experience

[Hydro]

Hi all,

Does someone have some insight on ship experience? I’m less interested in how to get it (obviously - kill enemy ships) than what your experience level means. For instance, I have a trusty cruiser (medium hull) with an experience level of 39 (he was the sole survivor of a nasty battle with a Drengin fleet, who had much superior firepower). Is that good? I assume this gives me extra…something. Hit points? A combat multiplier of some sort? It seems my ships hit points to increase when they win, but I’m not sure.

Any idea on what the ‘levels’ of experience might be (green, vet, legendary, etc)? I’d like to know when I should invest gobs of cash to upgrade a ship, or just let it fight and die for the glory of my empire.

Hydro

[Main_Brain]

In normal GC it gave your Ship more HP i think. Got another Ship of the Same Class to check it out?

I never nutured my Old Ships, instead I preferred selling/gifting them to the others to cripple their economy
You got Techs/buildings which improved the HP of newbuilt Ships anyway so..

[Solver]

More experience = more HP.

Which is why the Drengin have the most horrible super ability you can imagine. Their super ability is "give the human enemy free experience".

I think it's a nice overall touch, some of your ships do get more powerful with time to the point where it really makes a difference...

[Main_Brain]

Do they really?

I say the Most experienced Ships .[Notoriously the Flagship] are usually the oldest ones. [1XP/Round +Anomalies +battles]
Which get obsolete when New Hulls with more HP(+Firepower) get available.

Now Ships cannot be upgraded to bigger hulls [which makes Sense] so the small,experienced Ships are bound to be outgunned by bigger enemy Hulls after a while.

I never had Ships get so experienced that they´d be save worthy.
On the other Hand, this could be more a Sign of my playing Style than anything else

[Solver]

Well, flagships are an exception, they're useless later on. And I'm not a fan of survey vessels anyway.

But I do find all other veterans useful, no matter what hull. Fighters still have a use in the mid-game and late game, outfitted with maximum weapons, they can pack quite a punch. Of course, veteran fighters are also likely to be destroyed vs. capital ships (particularly in DA), but you can always use them for other purposes. Like taking down fleets consisting of Transports + escorts, or starbases.

And for capital ships veterancy really matters. The good thing about those ships is that they can take a beating - and veterans can take even more of a beating.

This is all while remaining balanced - eventually, a Small hulled veteran will die, and veterancy alone doesn't help if you're outgunned and outnumbered.

[Hydro]

OK, but how do I evaluate if a ship has enough experience to be worth saving?

What I guess I’m looking for is a scale with an experience grade attached to it. As a purely made up example:

0-8 xp: green
8-16 xp: average
16-24 xp: veteran
24-48 xp: commando
48-96 xp: uber-super-terrific
96+ xp: legendary

They had something like this in SMAC, so it was easy to see what units were good and which was mere cannon fodder (or 'gifts' to cripple a 'friend'! Hehe - I like that idea, expecially if they're so far away that they'll be totally useless!).

Hydro

[Solver]

Well, you do get an indication of which level the unit is on-screen. It doesn't have fancy names attached to it, but does the job.

[Hydro]

OK.

Hmmm. Sounds like a mini project: correlate XP to extra hit points, or percentage increase in HP.

Then I can assign my own names!

Hydro

[Solver]

Well, for Small ships, it was 1 level = +1 XP .