MIRV Missile Attack?

[Zealot]

Originally posted by Garth Vader
I always put battle scanner on my beam ships. In the early game I just use PD lasers, autofire and continous. They are great at shooting down nuke missiles but get worse as the missile tech increases.

If you have Battle Scanners, and lasers with af, continuous and no range dissipation you'll wipe out all missiles until the opponent has zortium armor. If they get zortium and you don't then you're screwed anyway...

[vmxa1]

Yes. I have to pass on Battle Scanners most of the time for TacComm (I think) and the + to commnd points. If I want to use Tol and make BB, I will then get the BS as I do not need the command points and a laser BB with BS is going to whack down Star Bases early on using just laser gun with a few mods. I will then make the left over space as lasers with PD, but they are not worth much. If the game goes far enough to switch to beamers (either I lost or I am taken over), I do not care much about missiles. I will likely have taken Orion and have ships that are not going to be bother by missiles. In short, missiles are either too few and too weak to take me down or I am doomed anyway. Either way I do not concern myself with anti missile stuff other than an after thought. I am more concerned with them sending boarding parties to grab my ship or star base as I often have taken -ground combat and poor research for marines (no troop pods, no assault shuttles). I have lost more planets because they captured my SB. If they do not grab it, I would have won the battle. Of course if I had planetary missile bases, I would have been ok too.
Often I do not have even fighters.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Yeah,

I try really hard to trade for the planet defenses early on, even if it means giving up something way better. After the beginning of the game, it does not seem to pay to make trades. I really do not like the tech trading scheme. Civ3 is much better with being able to table what you want. The ai in Moo2 seems to have this option while you do not!

[Garth Vader]

If they get zortium and you don't then you're screwed anyway...

Only if they have class 3 shields or higher, or heavy armor, or are cybernetic.

I am usually cybernetic and I have cut down neutronium armored enemies when I had only tritanium with armor piercing lasers.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I'm sorry. I've forgotten what cybernetic was. And how doth is help you in combat?

[vmxa1]

Cybers has auto repair as a trait. It is IMO a very poor pick for play against AI at impossible. Of course like any pick it can be taken and over come (so can Feudal), but it is not a real useful choice. In a Huge map you will not make contact very soon, very often, so by the time you go to battle, you do not need it. How many put auto repair unit in their ships? I never do. How many rounds do early battles go? Two or three rounds maybe. Yes I have had battle where my star base went down and would not have if I was Cyber, but that was not my biggest problem. Yes you could capture a star base and defeat a planet if you were CybTele as it would repair each round until the planetary defences were defeated. Do you really need that? Would it ot be better to have a boost in production or research? Most of the time I am able to beat their ships anyway ortherwise I am in big trouble. It does 10% per round. ARU is cumultive and and Leader traits would be added as well. Against humans I think it would be poor as they would direct all fire to one target until it was gone, hence no reair. If they could not destory the ship, it would not matter if you have Cyber or not, would it.

[Garth Vader]

True, it's not the best pick against humans, but in a close battle against the AI it's a life saver. When using missiles the AI sends enough that it thinks will win, then switches targets. So the repairing is the difference between keeping and loosing the ship.

Guess it's just a difference in play styles!

[Spaced Cowboy]

So, is that the only cyber trait?

[vmxa1]

Yup, it will put you over the hump if the difference is less than 10% armor damage or 5% systems damage. In the beginning you would have say a Cruiser with 90/30 structure and armor (reinforce hulls no Heav Arm). So your margin is at most 12 hit points. That can work. It more likely pays off with a Star base. Soon you will be at the point where you do not care as once you go on the attack, you have the best of it, otherwise you would wait. Those 4 picks can do some good in production or research or food. In fact just avoiding having to take negatives to offset that pick is useful. IMO it does not matter what you choose for any level other than Impossible, you can win regardless on lower settings. I do not think that is true at Impossible level. You can lose there with just a bad location, let alone some of the racial picks. Feudal and Uncreative come to mind as two that can be deadly. Cyber is not deadly, just not required IMO. I am not trying to change anyones play stye, only want to give an assement for others. Especially if someone can point out where I got it wrong, in case I missed a point or misunderstood the workings. I mean it may be fun or funny to see the ship come back to health. One thing that is useful about it is if your are not in your own system and are out blasting planets, being Cyber can get and keep your ships healthly for faster assaults. Again though, do I need that?

[Spaced Cowboy]

doesn't autorepair tech take care of the after battle injuries?

[vmxa1]

Yes ARU will do 10% repair to armor and structure and 5% to systems each round. If you are at a home system all is repaired automaticaly done, if not some is repair anyway and the ARU will kick in its part. The only gotcha is if you have a battle and goto your planet and are jumped as you enter, the repair for being home is not applied until after the battle (if you survive). A trick can be used where you bring an outpost ship and drop on a planet in the system you want to attack. If you do that, you get the full repair as if you are home. This allows you to attack again with repaired ships.

[genius23]

after battle your ships will be repaired if u are either cybernetic, have an ARU on board, you have the adv dmg controll tech or the ship is piloted by a leader with the engineer ability. iirc ARU repairs twice as much as cybernetic repairs and both stacks.
cybernetic is a bad pick if you are playing on a high difficulty or vs humans because ur pop will consume 1/2 production unit each turn per pop unit and that slows down early devellopment (maybe it works out with tolerant+production bonus) but there is a cheesy way to use the cybernetic pick, initially start the game as lithovore, which helps u devellop, once you research genetic mutation, go cybernetic, which frees up the picks from lithovore as those 2 are mutually exclusive and invest them in something like warlord/+ship offence/+ship defence now massproduce with ur well develloped productionbase selfrepairing ships with experienced crew (absence of farming tech should not hurt at that point, since u only require 1/2 food per pop) and win the game.
however I do like cybernetic, imagine a transdimensional, +50 ship defence, cybernetic warlord, incorporating some more devices like augmented engines, inertial stabilizer, reinforced hull and one of your ships could defeat a whole fleet of the ai alone by dodging most of the shots and repairing the damage they do take. ofcourse that would be pointless vs a human player, who would simply design ships with weapons that allways hit and with a powerrace would have virtually won the game even before the cyber transD warlord has finished building automated factories. i simply like it when a small fleet of my newly designed shipclasses can stand against an enemy superior in number and technology, as vader said, they might have neutronium and you tritanium, now that will be a glorious battle. CHARGE!

[vmxa1]

My only question is on the evolution. I am not sure you could make the change you mentioned. I have tried a few times to switch race traits on the far right list and it did not let me change them. I could not even drop a pick from there. The same for Gov picks. This makes sense and would be wise to prohibits that. Those picks are part of you. Picks like +food and production and such are not and can be changed or add or removed. If you have spare picks you can add some such as Warlord or Omi. I can not recall if I ever tried to add a pick that is mutually exclusive such as Creative and UnCreative, when I had one.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Hey, when you guys are talking about the ARU, it is automatically added to your ships once you get the tech right?

[vmxa1]

Sorry you have to build it. Go to design and it is shown as a special (if you have the tech). Cybers have the racial trait that does the same thing. It is as if you had one built on all ships. Same thing if Sparky is in your fleet.