ship designs in mid and late game

[vmxa1]

I was just wondering what designs are being use at the three stages of the game. Ok, not the first stage as early comes down to missile boats or laser battleships.
I will skip the mid game as there are too many varibales, such as what tech you have and your research and situation. Altough I would like to hear others on it.
Late game or after all 3500 rp research at least. This is also affected by tech you have. If non creative, I will go to plasma cannons as that is one field I can be sure to pick a good beam, I may have none of the others. Once I get dispupters, I may switch or put them on new ships to handle things that the cannons are not good at. If I have phasors, I may use them instead of the cannons with most of the mods they are very good. Not much changes if I have creative, except later I will be able to make better ships with good computer and specials. I normally do not make Doom stars and only a few titans. In fact most of the time I will not have the tech to make titans or doom stars, unless I steal it. In the past I tended to only put either H. armor (if I had it or reinforced hulls. Battle scanner and weapons until I was really rolling and then I may add HEF and Stabilizers. I did play a game that I was creative recently and when very late into it, so I made a doom stars with all of the good stuff. HA, R. Hull, Nullifier, Archilles, structure Anal, pods, damper (from Orion) andI forgot the other. I put one stellar on to destory planets and the rest phasors with CO,SP,AF,HV (miss any?) no PD. This was a fun ship as even with out Time/cloaks and X-caps it was bullet proof and tore up everything in sight. This has made me reconsider using these specials. If the ship can not be bust or nearly so, that is very nice. In the game someone made they had made the space dragons much tougher and it was able earlier to wreck 6 BB and 1 titan with out any return fire. This Doom Star took the hits with nearly no damage and killed it with ease. Oh, the other spcial was ARU. I noticed the dooms and titans did not have shields? Maybe that is normal, since I hardly use them, I had not realized it.

[ravagon]

Re: ship designs in mid and late game

Hey! You stole my Doomstar!
Or very nearly anyway.

I tend to use the same combo of specials on all my later ships (battleships and above) except for maybe a phase-cloaked small ship with a wide-area jammer and a warp dissipator, and maybe a DS with a stellar converter for taking out planetary defenses.

Pods (obviously)
Auto-repair
Reinforced hull
Hi Energy Focus
Achilles (penetrates shields? or is that the Structural analyser?)
Time Warp Fac.
Damper (reduces damage taken to 1/4 and works fabulously with the auto-repair and reinforced hull).
Don't remember the last one - possibly the other of SA or achilles - above

Or something along those lines.
Weapons are basically all phasors (mix of heavy and medium) with all the trimmings, plus a battery of plasma guns for anti-missile defense (for some reason these are utterly lethal to missile volleys ? ).

Vmxa - Titans/DS's do have shields until you equip the damper, which removes/replaces them, to great effect but with very little size difference between the two.

The real killers IMO are the shield/armour penetrating phasers and the damper-auto-repair combos. Has to be seen to be believed.

[vmxa1]

Re: Re: ship designs in mid and late game

Originally posted by ravagon

Vmxa - Titans/DS's do have shields until you equip the damper, which removes/replaces them, to great effect but with very little size difference between the two.

The real killers IMO are the shield/armour penetrating phasers and the damper-auto-repair combos. Has to be seen to be believed.

Ah, that was it. I was too lazy to dig in the doc to figure it out. That makes sense as I can't recall using it before. I usually don't bother making unkillable ships, but figured it might be fun and it was. A DS with X-armor and the the goodies listed had 4500 points for arm and structure. With the ARU, it would be very hard to take down. I know that phased cloaks and TWF can make it even harder. I will be incorporating some of these things into future ships. The problem is that without creative it is hard to get the tech needed until the game is in the bag. I did it because the map was huge and many systems were still occupied. I wanted a ship that could go out on its own and hammer down some of those planets.

[moomin]

Late game?

Battle scanner
Battle pods
Heavy armour
High energy focus
Achilles tag
Structural analyser
Damper field

Biggest hull (so, Doomstar) best Armour (if Xentronium, skip heavy armour above)

Fill upp with as many auto-firing disruptors as you can fit into it.

[vmxa1]

Moom, I like and use disrupters as well. If you drop the heavy armor it cost you triple armor.
DS with HA and X-armor 4500 structure 4500 armor 220 beam attack 217 beam defense.
DS with Achilles instead of HA (has X-arm) 4500 structure 1500 armor 190 BA 185 BD. I do not know if the boost to hit chances and bypass armor will make it worth doing. I would rather take the increase survivability. If I live, I can eventually kill them. It may be situational. Against the AI, you will not see too many ships that can take the DS out.

[ravagon]

Question :-

Reinforced hull or heavy armour? (Assuming you only have 1 slot to assign to one of these)

Advantages/disadvantages to both but I'm curious as to which seems to work better for most matchups people have gone into.

[vmxa1]

HA triples armor and Reenforced Hulls triples structure. In games that I am not creative, I have only the hulls, so thats what I use. If I have both, I use both now. If you know what the AI is using for weapons, you could use one only. Early, most use missiles or beams that do not bypass armor, so HA is best. Later when you have much better armor and they switch to structure destroying weapons, the Hull is better. AP and SP weapons are the ones that make you change.

[moomin]

One reason to go for heavy armour - if possible - is that it negates armour piercing weapons. Xentronium does this all by itself, so there's no need for heavy armour with it.

[MaxisDugan85]

Beamfreaks Anonymous

Ditto (more or less) on the Doomstar above. Auto/ap/sp phasers are my favs because at later stages of the game you can pack soooo many of them onto a DS. I have cleaned out many a game with a fleet of six of these monsters. (leaving a few to gaurd the homefront , of course) I have recently discovered the beauty of auto Disrupters and sometimes refit my DS's with batterys of them as "main guns" One stellar converter each is also a must , for softening planet defenses and to handle those lovely moments where the AI decides to throw everything they have at you at once. With strc anyl/bat scan and high en foc you can take out one DS with each (usually) I especially target thier stellar gunships first with this tactic. Those things hurt!

Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?!?!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by moominparatrooper
One reason to go for heavy armour - if possible - is that it negates armour piercing weapons. Xentronium does this all by itself, so there's no need for heavy armour with it.

Not so. Heavy armour gives you triple armour points.

[Urban Ranger]

Special systems:

Heavy armour
reinforced hull
battlepods
structural analyzer
high energy focus
achilles targeting system
damper shield
automatic repair

best armour available

weapon - phasor with shield piercing and autofire. No use for heavy and continuous

A stellar converter if I need to attack planets

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Not so. Heavy armour gives you triple armour points.

Even if it did negate AP, it still triples the armor value. I would like to have it, if I have it. X-arm + HA is 4500 points. I can afford to do with out some extra offensive special, since I will be around after they fire.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Heavy armour/reinforced hull/battlepods/structural analyzer/high energy focus/achilles targeting system
damper shield/automatic repair
best armour available
weapon - phasor with shield piercing and autofire. No use for heavy and continuous
A stellar converter if I need to attack planets

This is the one I most often use on BB or Titan without the ARU. Then DOOM star with stellar if I have then and repalce th phasor with disrupter. Now I can handle anything, ships or planets. One problem is I often do not have structure anal/achilles/HA. I may have them by the time I get to making DS.

[Garth Vader]

Even if it did negate AP,

It does negate AP, but not Achilles.

[vmxa1]

Ok, I was too lazy to verify it, but was sure that AP and EMP bypass armour, except for X-arm and HA. Those do block AP. No upgrade or armor has any effect on EMP. This is a good reason to add R-Hulls, to get the triple structure boost. Anyway, I normally do not have HA, so it is a moot point, but interesting.