ship designs in mid and late game

[Kaptain Ken]

When you defeat the Guardian it is one of the possible techs that you gain, almost a 50% chance, 3 of 7 plus Death Ray on IBM comp Machines or 4 of 8 on Apple OS.
You can also get it by capturing and scrapping their ships from raids.

[mufa]

Originally posted by Kaptain Ken
You can also get it by capturing and scrapping their ships from raids.

And how do I scrap a captured ship ?

[vmxa1]

Only two ways to get it legitametly 1) orion 2) capture antarian ship and scrap it and get lucky.
I almost never have it and do not use it when I do.
The special DS with all the goodies is not something I do in a regular game.

UR I still play Moo1 nearly every week. Only time I do not get in a Moo1 game is if I am in the middle of an RPG. That sometimes uses up all my time for that week, and if I get in any other game with it , good Moo1 for that week.
What is you game setting and race. Of course I play Klacs most of the time.
I have been doing Small maps at impossible wiht 4 players lately.

[Kaptain Ken]

mufa,

Take it to a planet where you have at least a starbase, then using the fleet screen, highlight the ship and the scrap button will be activated. You will get a random number of techs between 0-3 IIRC.

[bakalov]

Yes, this is also the key to get all of the eight antarian techs - even the smallest antarian ships have the first four (damper field, particle beam, quantum detonator, xentronium armor) and after having these four from scrapping, capture Orion to get the other four.

[Whoha]

in addition, you can get wide area jammers,fighter bays, the best computer, and other goodies from the antarans.

[Kaptain Ken]

Nice to see people still reading these threads, thanks for the bump guys. There is a lot of good info in these threads.

[The Mad Monk]

Yeah, this is a great thread.

[bakalov]

Yes, the "Sustom race - best stats" is the other good one

[Aabraxan]

OK. I've been able to figure out most of the abbreviations used in this and other threads, but what is "IIRC?"

[Garth Vader]

If I remember correctly

[Aabraxan]

It seems that most of the experienced players here move to almost exclusively beam weapons towards the end of the game. I've always kept a few of my best missiles on my warships, battleships and titans, even late in the game. This may be utterly ineffective in MP games, but it forces the other side to choose between shooting down my rockets or getting slammed by the rockets. Also allows me to use forward-firing beam weapons & still send something to chase down ships that get behind me. Also allows my beam weapons to concentrate on killing the other side's fleet, while sending the missiles at planetary defenses (starbase, missile base, etc.). Also, I get tired of the Antarans' reflector fields (term?) bouncing my beams back at me.

Speaking of the Antarans, I see a lot of talk about capturing one, but I've never been able to do that. If my ships are powerful enough to stand up to the Antarans, I usually end up just destroying their ships. I'd sure like to capture a couple for tech. Any tips here?

My usual game is impossible, huge, 8, average age, average tech (hard level while I'm experimenting with new race picks & ship designs, which I'm currently doing). Ship design is currently in flux, as I'm experimenting with heavy mount, shield piercing, autofire phasors (but I may drop shield piercing to save space in one of my current games (AI races don't have great shields & Antarans don't use 'em at all)). Traditionally, my ship design, when I have all the techs I like, looked like this:

Battlepods
Heavy Armor
Reinforced Hull
Augmented Engines
Battle Scanner
Structural Analyzer
High energy focus
Achilles Targeting Unit

(Many) plasma cannons or disruptors
(3-5) x5 best missiles

As I said, I'm currently experimenting different ship designs, including damper fields, a different missile setup (several more x2 packs, mirvs, etc), and inertial stabilizers/nullifiers.

Also, from mid- to late game, I like to refit several smaller ships to send out as a harassment fleet. Its sole purpose is to go out, destroy ships & star bases, avoid dying, if possible, and run. If I capture enemy ships that don't have tech that I want, they just join the harassment fleet.

[P-K]

Ship about u wrote in ur post GameGeek at ( i assume ) very high level techs would die in turn ONE of battle. By that time beamers are most uneffective ships of whole game.

PK

[vmxa1]

P-K I am sorry, but I could not follow what you were pointing out. Were you saying beams are not good in mid to late game?

Anyway in SP games you have no need of missile by the time you get a decent computer. Missiles become too slow as the game pogresses for ship to ship and I don't need them for planets either.

Phasors are great and the use of AP mod is a function of what you expect to face. Normally I would rather just have more guns than more mods. Autofire is one I use.

I never use Plasma Cannons any more, I go with phasors and then disrupters.

The augmented engines is not needed in SP as you will be the attacker and go first anyway. The HV mount lets you hit from the starting location.

SA I don't use, but it is fine. I just do not see any need for many specials in a BB. Same with ATU. I don't need it.

Since the AI is not going to kill any or rarely any of my ships, I do not need to have missiles. This could make it harder for me to destroy their ships in the first round.

There are whole article about capturing ships for techs, I just don't bother with. I don't need the tech and will not use it if I get, excep for X armor.

[Aabraxan]

Originally posted by P-K
Ship about u wrote in ur post GameGeek at ( i assume ) very high level techs would die in turn ONE of battle. By that time beamers are most uneffective ships of whole game.

PK

It's a design that has fared decently against all AI opponents, excepting the Antarans. My tactic has generally been to build lots of general purpose assault ships, capable of ship to ship combat or planetary assault. As I said, I'm currently experimenting with ship designs. Suggestions? If beamers are the least effective ships of the game at high tech levels, what are the most effective? Do you, or others on this board, build fleets of a variety of specialty ships, or, as I've done, lots of general purpose ships?