armor on ships

[Ned]

After re-reading this thread, I have to revise my remarks somewhat. Full automatic for most of your navy is preferred. The AI knows where the enemy is and seeks out and destroys. The primary reason for a navy for most of the game is to control the sea lanes to your empire. Human control is vastly inferior for this purpose.

For sea control, I build best armor (no -p or -r) medium weapon marine cruisers.

Later, I build (or upgrade) best weapon, medium armor, AA, to attack seabases.

I find shore bombardment of land bases not very effective. However, it helps to soften bases up - especially by taking out nearby sensors.

For those who would like increase the effectiveness of seapower against land units, one can make the adjustment in the Alphax.txt file.

I haven't done, this because I think the change from CIV was mostly for the better. However, I do think that ships should be able to totally destroy airpower sitting on the ground. However, there is no setting that is specific for air units.

[NorthSwordsman]

Ned, do you just use one general purpose naval chassis, and then upgrade to what you need at the moment for situation? Seems like you would have one specific unit design for bombardment, and the other for taking sea bases (mostly varying in weapons strength). That would give you the maximum flexibility. I see do not see the need for armor, really. Doesn't really help at the higher levels of the game when everyone has the bigger weapons. A missle takes out a cruiser whether it has armor or not. I've never had a ship with armor withstand much in the way of attack.

[Kirnwaffen]

A missle takes out a cruiser whether it has armor or not. I've never had a ship with armor withstand much in the way of attack.

I've had AAA Shard Cruisers withstand a missile hit in the open and in bases (of course most of them that survive are pretty high morale). I usually put on as much armor as possible to deter air strikes. In SP, the AI tends to stay away unless the ship in question is in port.

[cbn]

I still advocate a mix of ships. The power of any given ship is a shadow of what it was in the CIV2 days when a single Battleship would destroy a bunch of units in a single turn. I think the SMAX approach is "fairer" since you only get to kill one enemy before thay get a shot at you. In this environment ships are vulnerable !! I usually go for high weapon ships with the best armour that does not increase the build time.

In a recent game I actually did see a purpose in armouring ships. My enemy was the Cult and I built some 1-3rt foils to stack with my 4e-1 foils. Since I had the Neural amplifier, my 3rt units are almost invulnerable to psionic attack even with a high Planet rating attacker.

I have considered Blakes comments about bombarding IODs and I still favour them as my transport of choice. As someone stated, even if you go best-best, any single unit will have to be vulnerable to some form of attack . To avoid the bombardment problem of IODs I would stack them with my highest weapon foil. With weapons parity theres an even chance of winning the duel.

I still advocate numbers as the best strategy in naval warfare. A missle ship is able to take out available armour for a fairly long time. (heck even an impact ship beats the 3 armour that is available for quite some time.) I would tend to mainly build high weapon ships and live with the fact that they are expendable