Attacking the Antarans at Orion...

[Arnelos]

I want to destroy those evil Antarans and wipe them off the face of Orion... the grand world those foul beasts of the nether have defiled and from which they must be expelled!

But, oh... the difficulties in exterminating the vile Antarans...

10 armadas of Superdreadnaughts filled with phaser-fighters (approx. 3,000 phaser interceptors) could destroy the Antaran fleet, but could not take on their planets or orbitals.

10 armadas of Behemoths filled with desrupter-fighters (approx. 4,000 of those suckers) fared no better.

I am loathe to once again exploit the PD bug, but that might be my best bet since fighters appear absolutely worthless.

Beam weapons might work as well... but beam ships cost a lot more and would do A LOT less total damage (though if damage per shot is high enough and I don't have to worry about enemy PD, I might actually be doing damage AT ALL...).

So this is the thread to discuss strategies for wiping out the vile Antaran menace...

[Jamski]

Combined Arms, my friend. I'm locked in war with the Orions now, and a combination of fighters, missiles, LR and SR is doing the job very nicely. I'm using 4 Armadas of each sort, each with 10 Core, 6 Escort and 2 Recon. The Escorts are PD Titans, each with 111 PD Lightning Field Generators. The LR ships are Superdreads with Dark Matter Beams. The SR Ships have Plasma. I take about 40% casualties in each battle, but I made sure to have lots of reserves. This last few turns have been fun. Attacking the Orion planets brings the most awsome battles.

-Jam

[Arnelos]

Ok, finally beat Orion... it was MAJOR overkill once I found the correct strategy:

LONG-RANGE BEAMS.

Missiles didn't do jack squat to these guys... I can't figure out for the life of me why. I guess their ECM values must have been godlike or something.

Fighters, even disruptor fighters and/or plasma fighters (and over 3,000 of each at that) simply couldn't do enough damage to dent the Antarans' shields. I was making nothing but shield hits and the impervious Antaran fleets would come out to destroy all of my Carrier TF's while my fighters were being frantically useless at chipping away Antaran shields

Long-range beams, however, worked so well that I only lost 2 ships (a recon ship and a PD ship) of my fleet in the first battle!

The long-range beam ship used dark matter projectors (I think that's what they're called) with the improved spinal mount (those things do a WALLOPING amount of damage per hit). With 100 Leviathans carrying about 8-10 of those suckers each, the Antarans never stood a chance.

I had 60 point-defense Titans with the same weapon on a point-defense mount (10 per ship I think) and that cleared out fighters and missiles pretty well, though in retrospect I probably should have used a lighter weapon so that I could hit more targets (fighters and missiles) at once (I was using the auto-build for the point-defense design... oh well).

I also had 20 stealth scouts which were Titan-sized recon vessels with I think 12 ECCM V's and a Ghost Device so they didn't get taken down in the opening volley (and thus their ECCM would still be around and useful as the battle went onward).

Each TF (all 10 of them Armadas) was thus:

10 Long-Range Leviathans
6 PD Titans
2 Stealth Recon Titans

All vessels had the Depression Field (or whatever they're called) form of shields and Very Heavy Adamantium Armor along with the highest warp engine I had and trilithium crystals for their impulse engines.

As I said, all of the battles were clearly overkill and the Antarans never stood a chance. I think I lost a total of 12 ships in all of the battles combined.

Each of the planets I bombarded was glazed by hitting the "bombard" button.

No contest.

So I suppose here's my recommendation and what I figure I'll do next time...

Obviously, long-range beams seem to be the killer strategy for fighting the Antarans in the Orion system. Their shields are just too tough for fighters and I guess their anti-missile defenses were too much for even my advance missile techologies (not to mention their point-defense).

Long-range beams could both outrange their orbitals, QUICKLY blast away their approaching short-range beam fleets, and generally decimate anything the Antarans could throw at me.

The trick is that I didn't need to wait to build 100 Leviathans with Dark Matter Projectors to pull it off... Given the overkill of that set-up, I'm guessing that perhaps even 10 armadas of Superdreadnaughts with something like Phasers might even be able to do the trick (with some luck and skill...).

Anyone have anything to share on this?

[Arnelos]

crosspost

[Jamski]

You're definitely overkilling a bit, I'd say. I find Superdreads are easily big enough. The only reason I built so many Titan PD ships is because I was under-point-defended the first time I tryed to attack the Orions. I didn't want to get fightered to death again. With these babies an attack wave of NO fighters was dead in about 3-4 seconds. Sweet.

-Jam

[Jack_www]

In my game I tried attacking the Orions with every damn ships I had in my navy and they all got destoryed. But Now I see I need 100 super dreadnots with dark matter beams to destory the damn Orions. Well I can still use my old ships to draw the fire of the Orions Ships.

I figured I would need to attack with Super Dreadnots to be able to defeat the evil orions.

[Jack_www]

Last time I attack I sent an armada of 90 ships or various types of ships, they all got wiped out by the orions.

[Master Marcus]

Originally posted by War of Art
You're definitely overkilling a bit, I'd say. I find Superdreads are easily big enough. The only reason I built so many Titan PD ships is because I was under-point-defended the first time I tryed to attack the Orions. I didn't want to get fightered to death again. With these babies an attack wave of NO fighters was dead in about 3-4 seconds. Sweet.

-Jam

Superdreads should be enough, w LR beams and missles and I've found the fighters ( w plasma dual pods ) extremly useful - in my game I've just beaten the NOs at turn 391 after 7-8 turns of awesome space combat. It's just that by the time you have amassed a huge fleet ( I had something like 25 Behem+Leviat armadas ), you should already have reached the Leviathan hull size+Mil Design Center. On my most productive planets ( 30000 PPs +), a powerful LR/I.F./Carr Leviathan is built within 4-5 turns.

The NOs had 65 system ships, but at my surprise they have left all their attack ships in reserves: something like an impressive 300+ units . Impressive, but again activated only when you attack the system ( part of the AI agressivness "bug") - or when a player succeeds in persuading the NOs to attack another AI ( not experienced that yet ). 165 additional NO ships ( mainly I.F. and Carr armadas ) at the second turn of Orion attack, and then another additional 164 units at turn 3. Turn 4: something like 114, turn 5: 64.... begun to bombard at turn 7 ( control combat instead of watch ).

[Eric S]

I've seen the case where all the fighters in the world wouldn't do more than shield hits against a TF. That's why I always deploy at least one LR TF with any carrier group. Once the LR TF puts a big dent in the shield, the fighters will shread the TF itself. I once had a battle that went on for 8 minutes without more than a shield hit, until the victim decided to charge my carrier group, and the escorts shot at the victim. Even though the victim was still well in the green after the escorts fired, it didn't survive another two seconds against the fighters.

[Proteus_MST]

I attacked with an Armada of ~75 Ships.

Maybe 7 of them Titans and the Rest mostly Superdreadnoughts and Battleships.
A couple of I.F. Ships,
very much Carriers (1 Titan, and 10 Battleships or Dreadnoughts and some more)
And of Course PD-Ships and Picket Ships.
And supplementing the Taskforces were the occasional Short- or Long Range Ship.

The Orions had 18 Ships lleft in the System.
My Ships had mostly Level 7 Shield Technology, Darkmatter- and Desintegrator Beams and I had my Fighters equipped with Gauss Cannons.

I decided to attack one of the Worlds at once, which had 9 Orbitals

The Battle lastet for maybe 7 Minutes and I lost 33% of my Ships.
Whereby the 18 Antaran Ships were really hard to kill. All of my Fighters shot continuisly at them (and I started several Waves of them) But it took maybe 5 of the 7 Minutes to kille them.
My Direct Fire Weaposn were a great help in bringing the Antaran Ships down.

After destroying the Ships the remaining Fighters finished the Planetary Bases and the Orbitals in short time.

[Jack_www]

One thing I am going to try is using cloaked dreadnots attack the orion ships and see if that will work.

After readin other posts I have come up with this plan:
I am going to take a make about 70 superdreadnots and other large ships with Plasma cannons, I think that is the best cannon I got at the moment, might be a level higher. I will have level 5 shields since that is the best shielding I got.
I will also have PD ships with the dreadnots, of curiser size.

I have a lot of ships that are old and orginal ships I put into my fleet. These ships I will send and they will draw the fire so that the main battle fleet can attack for at least a couple of mininutes with out getting hit and the older ships taking most of the damage for them. Of course this will take me a long time to put the fleet I need togather, but I do have planets that can build a dreadnot in 4 to 5 turns.

[Eric S]

Cloaked IF SDs did the trick for me when I went after Orion. Really want to try that again after the PD bug is fixed, though. Never blockade a planet if you use that tactic though, blockading doesn't stuff you into a side/corner of the map.

[Proteus_MST]

But don´t overestimate the Time those older Ships will survive, Jack.

And I should also mention that the Orbitals are able to hit your Fleet everywhere if they see them (and they will see all of the Ships in your Fleet, because the enemy Fleet will move toward your Taskforces).

Just wanted to mention it, so you can take it into account.
But try it with cloaked Dreadnoughts and tell us how much Success you had with the Attack. Maybe your Plan is susccessful.

[Jack_www]

well i am basing this time on the first attack I made on Orion with same ships I plan on using to draw the fire of the orion ships. Of corse I saved the game before the attack so I could test the ships out. So that is why I say a couple of mins, because that is how long they survived in the first attack.

[bakalov]

Hm, the New Orions are using damper fields - no doubt, and you'll have to inflict quite a lot damage to kill them. I personally killed them with 2 armadas of Damper Field-ed Leviathans, various weapons - this was not very hard at all.

Hint: the damper field is a very thick shield (more than 40K with heavy shield generator) which regenerates very fast, so you need a great concentration of fire to penetrate it ;-)