MIRV Missile Attack?

[ShinZed]

I keep hearing over and over again how great MIRV Nukes are in the early stages of MoO2... but how does everyone use them? I keep trying to conquer the universe with them and they keep getting shot to pieces!

Coupled with the problem that its hard to make lots of them. They're quick to build (using the Destroyer chassis here) but I never seem to have enough support points / money to pay for them.

Any tips or should I just go back to teching up to where beams become useful?

[Zealot]

Well, you can't expect to rule the galaxy with missiles if you're playing large maps! Even in a medium size map you have to be fast in developing yourself. This way your economy can support several ships with MIRV missiles, which are expensive.
Try this way in a small map first. But don't expect to really succeed in larger maps, because you will need either Research Points to develop fuel cells technology or Industry Points from colonies to build lots of Outposts in order to reach your enemy.

Get it?

[Garth Vader]

I prefer armor piercing auto fire lasers in the early game. I only use mirv nukes if somebody has a lot of planetary defences I need to take out.

[vmxa1]

I never use missiles on my ships.

[LordEd]

What seems to work for me is creating two separate types of ships.

The first type usually is armored and shielded to the max, is relatively fast, and contains mostly close fire energy weapons. The second type of ship is lightly armored and employs mostly missiles of mass destruction. I send in the Type I ships to close with the enemy and utterly crush them with a salvo of missiles. The Type II ships stay back and provide support. Early in the game, Mass Drivers are also extremely useful. Heavy Mount mass drivers on the Type II ships allow them to stay back, give missile support, and still pack a direct-fire punch when needed. The only flaw in this plan is when I am either outmached badly in technology or am attacked (and they decide to go after the missile ships).

[Forrest Gimp]

OK - Here's advice from someone who wins impossible 9/10 times:
what you do with missle boats.
#1. NEVER use auto battle. the computer is an idiot as far as tactics are concerned. never trust it with your ships.
#2. you need at least pollution processor or above to miniaturize your nukes enuf for mirv, fast eccm. (I personally prefer cruiser boats bec my screw race is Unification Telepathic.) Also you need battle pods to max out the space on your ship. with this in mind the most useful crusier design is: 2 mrv, eccm,arm, fast, 3x3 mrv,fast, eccm. making a total of 4 slots. USE 2 shot fire- this means ALL your payload is emptied in 2 shots, anything more is a waste.
#3 ALWAYS HIT AND RUN - dump your missles and run the other way. it takes them time to chase you if at least one ship heads toward a far corner away from the enemy esp in the beginning with crappy slow missles and fusion beams. By the time they reach your evading ship - the enemy collides w your fast missle. Dont be afraid to warp out, remember - as long as you take out a ship or star base, it makes it worthwhile =). What i like to do if i have 3 or more cruisers is to warp the middle ones out (they have a vertical formation) after they dump the 2nd shot and have the two wing ships U-turn and head toward opposite corners. It works great! If you win the battle your warped ships still hang around the planet, hehe a computer bug.

THATS THE BASICS. If you need any more help, just ask....

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

Missiles are important in early gaming (especially defensively: planetary missile base) and for a first war (fitted to small ships).

My winning strategy on huge/impossible ?

Get to plasma cannons as fast as you can ... you don't need anything else. (occasionally AI gets there much faster, beware then!).

AJ

[Zealot]

You really need to come by to Kali and learn what "you don't need anything else" is all about.

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

I was talking about MOO2 SP, MP is quite another thing (never have MP'ed before).

Once my ships have (had, not playing anymore, waiting for MOO3) plasma cannons, I'll always use those in big masses (of course you'll always need to upgrade your ships (computer, shields, armor). AI's usually have big but outdated fleets.

At Kali, is it easy playing MP?

Remind you, I'm not a Pc wizard at all.

AJ

PS: Last year I've made a trip in Portugal: from Porto down along the Atlantic to Sagres and back to Lisbao, also visiting the nun-turistic inland cities, whilst avoiding Albufeira

[Zealot]

Well, you can't expect to arrive at Kali and start winning, but it's relativelly easy for you to start playing and compare the information charts. You also learn some good tactics, so that you can say, like I do, "I don't know what Plasma Cannons are for about 3 years already"!

[Forrest Gimp]

Originally posted by Zealot
Well, you can't expect to rule the galaxy with missiles if you're playing large maps!

Geez vs 7 cpu opponents with Unification Telepathic you can take out 2-4 of them with nuke boats, an extra two with merculite boats w zortrium, and the last guy with Orion tech. And this is on impossible/huge. My fastest game BTW on huge/impossible is 111 turns, when I took out the sakkra & silicoids(when they were subterranean) and voted myself emperor..

[Forrest Gimp]

Originally posted by Zealot
You also learn some good tactics, so that you can say, like I do, "I don't know what Plasma Cannons are for about 3 years already"!

Besides, if you MUST have beams and you dont have death ray, shouldn't you be using heavy, continuous, graviton beams at the same level? It's listed having +50% extra structure damage and extra minituarization gives a better punch. Even at disrupter cannon level old ships with heavy gravitons STILL hurt.

Also, lets say you DONT have pulson or merculite missle with emissions guidance to take out the guardian. With titanium armor( the guardian has achilles targeting so armor doesnt matter), reinforced hull, battle scanner, cybertronic computer, it takes 3-5 battleships to knock out Orion, with graviton beams. AND THIS IS AT PHASOR LEVEL, one step b4 plasma cannons.

[vmxa1]

Forrest, I suspect there are many ways to win. I would like to try your technic for missiles. If you have the inclination, I would like to get a saved game at the start point and as many blow by blows as you would be willing to supply. I would be able to loaded it up and try to follow your process. The early part needs the most info, then maybe a few milestones. The choices you use for research and building. I normally play hard, small universe and have not use missles at all for ships. Once I get to Plasma Cannons, I take down the guardian and start eliminating races. My fav trait is creative, but I ran my highest score without it (not quit 14000 on med universe. Thanks. Just ignore this if you are not interested.

[Forrest Gimp]

Originally posted by vmxa1
...The choices you use for research and building.

OK sorry for sounding so haughty but i'm usually on a caffeine high after doing turbo assembler coding... Where to start? As far as research and building it really depends on what race u choose, how big the galaxy is, and your next door neighbors.

I'll put up some posts for the screw races i use vs the cpu and other players, under the 'best race' thread.

Here's the move order in the beginning, at pre-warp:
Put 1 man on labor, the minimal amount 4 farming, and the rest 4 research. 90% of the time there's usually an extra planet in your system, so build colony base to collect labor points. Research electronic computer->research lab. After u research it, queue up research lab in front of colony base, for an instant build. If the neighbors are peaceful, then go 4 hydroponic farm. This will free up a farmer 4 research after building it. If not, research nukes to make simple 2 shot nuke frigates, just in case (with hit and run tactics u can take out 2 destroyers with each frigate!). If the map is small and the neighbors are really onery then max out your command points with nuke frigates (1 per turn), and continue on.

OK, barring that go for the three areas - colony ship, transport, etc. so u can at least colonize other systems. After researching those, place all your researchers into labor to build your colony base. Que up freighter fleet (to feed the extra base) and colony ships (if u havent met with anyone). Research deuterium with your lab (or tritanium armor for small map).

OK after this there is a number of paths u can take depending on your a builder or conqueror race, and how u like to play. I like mrv missle boats bec theyre the first ships that can take out monsters guarding nice planets. But against other players who know what their doin, use HV autofire, cont, armor piercing lasers OR heavy auto fire mass drivers. I like the mass drivers bec. they're great long range with your missle boats, and can retreat easily if things get hairy. Other players like gyro destab. battleships, but these ships cant do crap against planetary missle base. If i do use gyro destab, (i.e. i stole it early off somebody) , then i always couple them with missle boats.

Err.. I hope this helps

[Zealot]

I love to see how tough guys can kick in the AI's butt, but they don't mention multiplayer.

[vmxa1]

Yeah, I never use Gyros either, I like HV mass drivers early. I just want to test out the missle route, I have one last scenario on a Homm4 campaign, then I will fire up Moo2.

[Forrest Gimp]

Originally posted by Zealot
I love to see how tough guys can kick in the AI's butt, but they don't mention multiplayer.

Yea, like the quote with "well ive played for three years and i never use plasma cannons". You dont need to pay $20 to Kali to use your brain.


And BTW, if you actually READ the post, I specifically say vs. OTHER PLAYERS, you have to mix up missle boats with other ships. The missle boats are there to knock out planetary defenses. If you play vs other good players you knock out their ships with mass drivers or lasers.

PS.
And maybe you should post something constructive for beginners rather than say DUH your not cool if you're not Kali.

[Zealot]

Kali is free now, so come on over for a 1v1.

http://www.kali.net

Sorry for just replying this, but my IE window crashed in the precise moment I was clicking on the "Submit Reply" button.

[vmxa1]

What do you do when you look up and see one of the races has 6 systems and you have just barely got your second colony base running? I mean other than not get in that spot? I see no way around it on impossible, small universe at prewarp, even with Rich and large traits, it takes 45-50 turns to build a corvette at the sub 900 RP level. To me there is not much leeway in what to do at this early stage as your pop can not be useful at food past the min needs and labor is not productive once it is at the point where it is generating waste.
Unification, telepathic, Rich, Large, -ship attack (maybe low g and + spy or something). Elec computer then lab , work toward frieghter, then basicly lowest available until pollution processor availble. At hard you get behind a fair amount and if you start at adv tech you can hold on till you start to get even. At impossible, that is not something I have been able to do very often.
The issue of MP or SP is a red herring to me. If you can figure how to do one, you can figure out how to do the other. They are just differnet, not worse or better. If you run up on some one that has better tactics then you, so be it. Someone has to be the best and someone has to be the worse. In between it is basiclly take turns. I mean the best player is not going to beat the 50th best player every time, maybe the 1000th best player, but not others that know how to play. It will mostly be decided by the luck of the draw among more less equal players (assuming no bad plays).
BTW I am assuming that all this is based on fair play, no editors, no cheat codes. Using those and not mentioning it is misleading at best.

[vmxa1]

As to missile boats I can not see them as very practical. In a small map, they may be of value. In a huge map, by the time you find someone they have progressed to the point that they are able to hit you right away and are on the base in one round. The AI seems to have lots of beams to destroy incoming missles. By the time you are attacking they seem to have the warp so you can not leave after firing missiles either. Is it just me?

[Zealot]

Well, Forrest? I'm waiting for you!

[vmxa1]

To me it is not unlike Civ3. On a smaller map with max players, you can often get to someone right away and whack them with low level units. Fewer players or larger maps, changes that as you often are not in contact early enough to do that. As you raise the difficulty levels it gets harder to do, because the AI's boost makes it much stronger at the start. At deity they get so many extra units, you can not attack them easily. In Moo2 your handicap makes it slower going.

[Forrest Gimp]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Zealot
Kali is free now, so come on over for a 1v1.

http://www.kali.net QUOTE]

Sorry dude, tried to go to Kali on a departmental computer, but they filtered it out. (I wonder why...)

The only time i get to play internet/LAN games is at the comic shop, and then i gotta play vs. the other guys multiplayer or I got to pay a $2 an hour.

We do play against internet players, but only with Unreal and quake. I'll try to convince Guy, the owner, to install Kali on one of them. Wish me luck.....

[vmxa1]

Ok , good luck.

[Zealot]

Best of luck!
Because I want newbie soup for dinner!

[Garth Vader]

How stable is Moo2 over kali? I have played a number of MP games over a local network and besides being unbelieveably slow the combat would crash often.

After the last experience of playing for several hours, just to get to the good part and being unable to finish a battle I vowed I would never play Moo2 MP again

[Zealot]

It's pretty stable, Garth! But we play the dos version, since it's a lot faster than the win version. Yeah, go figure...
But beyond the known bugs we avoid (and they're easy to avoid) so the game won't crash, you can have over half a dozen hours of moo non-stop!

All you need is to have Win 95/98/Me so you can run the Dos version. We don't play the win version precisely due to speed problems.

[Forrest Gimp]

Because I want newbie soup for dinner!

Hungry? Well then eat this!!

I think I can run kahncentral on the departmental computers, I have to force it to dos instead of w2k. Give me a time either next wed or thurs, bec my last final is tues and im getting drunk that night. friday im leaving and im not doin internet games on aol at my parents, so choose a reasonable slot then. Im central time US.

BTW, contemplate huge/impossible 1v1v6 cpu. You gave the challenge, I choose the settings (how/when/where).

[Garth Vader]

Do you have to install the game differently, or just boot up in dos mode and play the windows install?

[Forrest Gimp]

Earth calling Zealot....finish your soup and give a time to duel....

To Garth: it really depends what OS you have, and if you have a plug and play card for multiplayer. If you exit to dos in 98 you need a separate cd and NIC dos driver loaded in autoexec.dos and config.dos. If you go to the www.kali.net, (I can't bec i'm in a classroom computer and they filtered it), there's instructions on how to load the dos version off a copy on your hard drive, so you dont have to wait for the CD music pauses which are irritating....