ship designs in mid and late game

[P-K]

SP games vxma .... sp games! Mindless AI ships with their horrible designs... no further comment needed about AI playin.

Humans are different. Its possible to build ships so effective that battle will be won or lost in turn ONE. And those ships dont have almoust any beams.

PK

[Aabraxan]

Originally posted by vmxa1
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.

I didn't use phasors for a long time, just skipped straight from graviton to plasma cannons. I never used heavy mount plasma cannons, because I wanted to be able to target missiles or interceptors if the need arose. So augmented engines was my (somewhat crude) solution to the range dissipation problem that PCs have.


[I edited this post. I'm beginning to see a huge difference between regular mount phasors, which I never liked, and heavy mount phasors.]

[Garth Vader]

I generally have heavy mount beams, a few regular mount, and some PD mount. This way I get the benefit of the range and power of the heavies, but can still shoot down missiles and fighters.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by P-K
SP games vxma .... sp games! Mindless AI ships with their horrible designs... no further comment needed about AI playin.

Humans are different. Its possible to build ships so effective that battle will be won or lost in turn ONE. And those ships dont have almoust any beams.

PK

He is not playing MP, so who cares about it right now? You keep giving MP advice to a player that has never played a single game of it?

Much of it is not applicable to SP, which is what he is playing.

[vmxa1]

GameGeek forget about shooting down missiles, the are not a concern. At first combat you wil not ave enough tech to do much with missiles. This means either you shoot and scoot or stay and take the damage.

By the time you get phasors, you do not worry much about missiles either. You bust the fleet/planet before it can hurt you.

I may stick in a few PD beams with the left over space at that stage or just before it, but when I get disrupters, I no longer care about what they have for weapons. I am going to dust them with no damage or so little as to not be noticed.

[Zoetrope]

Regarding PK's comments:

(1) In the late game, battles are decided in the first round regardless.

(2) It's unlikely that an MP game would last to high tech levels. If it's not over by the time Gauss Cannons are in play, then everyone's been holding back.

(3) There were some ship design tests back in the days of Antares. (See my website at ftp.sff.net:/pub/people/zoetrope/MOO2/.) The best performing ships in one-on-one combat at the highest non-Advanced tech level used Gauss Cannon, Phasor, Missile, or Capture designs. The battles were very close.

(4) I'm intrigued to know just one of PK's superior ship models at the alt-Einstein level, or at any other nominated tech level.

With respect to the initiative question:

(1) I use version 1.31 exclusively.

(2) Individual Ship Initiative makes ship design more important (and even gives the AI a chance to do some damage as its turns and mine are often interleaved.)

[Aabraxan]

Zoetrope,
I'm on version 1.3, so there's no initiative, as far as I've been able to tell. My new ship designs are, as I'm discovering, much more effective thatn the old ones. Thanks to you, vxma, and others for the tips.

[vmxa1]

Init was added in 1.31

[P-K]

To finish enemy in first strike u need two separate designs :
1. hyper drive bb with eug engines and bscanner and 4 tractors at plasma rifle miniaturization plus some serveral pd mass drv and no or c3 shields. Pds will stop emgs, shield will stop raiders from transporter ships but this is not important much cos all u need is attack before enemy will. Moving at 27/8 speed bb will reach enemy in first move - run tractors and raid. If troopers have same battle bonus, raid will succed in 80%.
2. anti matter bb with same tractors/stuff and teleporter. Tele will give u 20 free fields and bb will move also very fast.

To sum up u dont need einstein codes to build super ships. I think about 3rd design :
3. anti drv bb with emg merc at neutronium armor level. stuff simmilar to above. However im not sure if this ship would match the speed of tractor raider and overrun his pd defences. Its also risky when enemy has good shields and many pds.

PK

[GTPoompt]

and what do you guys use for mid game in SP.
I find that in SP late game ship design doesn't really matter that much becuase the AI is so horrible at it you get an advantage there. (i play hard btw)

I run into trouble in the post-missle boat era. i usually just toss in whatever beams and some other crap and just play suck up to the computer until i can hurry up and get phasors and or plasma cannons.

A simple beam ship with just a ton of plasma cannons + battle scanner etc etc works pretty well.

Although I once did experiment with anti-matter missles and they weren't so bad. they got a bit bettter when i could get enveloping on them, but by then there were much better choices. Gauss cannons seem pretty good too with AP.

[vmxa1]

First I always take Class V shields over gauss cannons. The first shift to beams could be any of several of the earliest ones, but likely I will use Mass Driver with a few mods and any left over can be put in as Mass Driver PD's.

Chances are good that I will stick with those untill I get Phasors. You can often see the Mass Drivers doing more damage at the point where you get Phasors, due to the miniturization and mods.

I will have my best armor and shields and engine, plus computer. Specials will be Reenforced Hulls/Battle Scanner/Interial Stabilizer. Later I will add the HEF. This is for battleships. Should I every get titans, I will add a few more specials.

I just do not want to put more specials in a BB as I need the space for the guns. They will all have HV, except PD ones. All will face forward only.

This build holds up till I get Disrupters. Then I switch to those, but change nothing else. That is the final design for the game.

I only build BB's, unless I am a tele or someone attacks early and I have to use a missile ship. Very late in the game, if get Dooms, I may make one with stellar to destroy planets, so I do not have to come back over and over to bust a race or colonize it.

[Aabraxan]

GTPoompt,
I seem to run into exactly the opposite problem. I'm usually OK if I can get to plasma cannons. (And I'm trying to break the PC habit by using phasors). By that time, I can usually produce enough ships to bludgeon my (AI) opponents into submission. I'm trying to trim down my fleets, improve my strategies, and make for faster wins. The ship design I posted above has traditionally started as early in the game as possible, simply adding specials as I got them. Usually started with reinforced hulls, battle scanners, and mass drivers. Those ships played defense until I could get graviton beams, at which point I refitted.

Last night, however, I had to go to war much earlier than I like, because I was pinned into a corner by the Klackons, who seemed perfectly happy to begin colonizing in my systems. (Hard, huge, advanced tech, average, age, 8 players). I had to go to war with 2 battleships, 1 cruiser, and 4 transports. Yikes!

IIRC, my BBs were outfitted with
Zort armor
Class I shield
Reinforced hull
Electronic computer (& not a ship leader to be found)
Heavy, env fusion beams
Heavy, autofire lasers (may have also been armor piercing?)
1x2 fast nukes
2x2 mirv nukes
2x2 mirv nukes

The cruiser had Class I shield, reinforced hull, and heavy env fusion beams.

Got my *** handed to me by the Klackons who, somehow, had come up with Class III shields, zort armor, pulsars and ion cannons. There are some posts in here that advise taking mass drivers over Class I shields. I guess I shoulda taken that advice, I guess. I could barely take down a star base, much less a starbase protected by any sort of sizable fleet. My only complaint about mass drivers is that, IIRC, they're useless against a planet with a radiation shield. If I'm wrong about this, someone please correct me.

Anyway, back to the drawing board, I guess . . .

[vmxa1]

Beams of any flavor will be very poor if you only EC for a computer. This is one reason to avoid major conflicts until you get a better computer.

Steal it, if you can. I have to skip Positronic for Super Comps. I have to skip Cybertronic for Autolabs. So Molecular is my first new computer in most games.

If I can't steal one before then, I will have problems with beams. I played a game that was posted here a few days ago, where I was Charismatic and got the top scientist. One came with autolabs, so I could research Cyber.

[Aabraxan]

Yeah, part of my problem is that I always played Creative races for a long time. Now I'm tired of spending the 8 points for Creative and am having to figure out which techs to choose in each level.

[GTPoompt]

See the problem i run into is that missles are just too slow and alot of them get shot down because the computer seems to use lots of PD beams

vxma1: do you usually research mass driver? I usually take class 1 shield but i suppose the computer usually goes for MD so its easy to steal.

IMO i usually would go for cybertronic comps over autolab. Autolab is nice but i end up not building that many autolabs later on in the game. Also, I usually play 6 race hard large so usually someone gets autolabs, i'll either trade for it (i usually don't play rep) or steal. Especially nice when theres a psilon.

You guys take the graviton beam or planet grav gen.

As for a fun game, i remember building a lot of smaller ships and using sub tele and mauler devices and 0Bpods. . heh, that didn't last for long

However, I have noticed the effectiveness from the AI with the heavy fighters. (2 PD beams and 2 bombs). The AI always seems to have good bomb tech for some reason, i never waste my time and just blast the planets with lasers. But its shared with another very good tech.

Quick Question: Is there any way to set what attributes the computer gets? I would like to play a game where EVERYONE is uncreative and repulsive (double )