Post your optimal base/ship design tips and why!?!

[justmax]

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

The fact that this debate can even take place is because the game is woefully unchallenging at the moment.

You actually nailed it on the head while missing the point in the process. The game isn't particularly challenging, so gaming what are obvious exploits - and these are, indeed, painfully obvious exploits that the AI doesn't use and can't adapt to - makes it even less of a challenge. Pointing out that the tactics are gamey, not WAD, and will reduce the challenge are ALSO part of the conversation.

Again, if that's what you want, then have at it. Me, if I want an easy, lazy game I'd just open the editor and slap a few extra continental worlds into my home system at game start. Much more straightforward, I think.

[jpwrunyan]

ORIGINAL: justmax

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

The fact that this debate can even take place is because the game is woefully unchallenging at the moment.

You actually nailed it on the head while missing the point in the process. The game isn't particularly challenging, so gaming what are obvious exploits - and these are, indeed, painfully obvious exploits that the AI doesn't use and can't adapt to - makes it even less of a challenge. Pointing out that the tactics are gamey, not WAD, and will reduce the challenge are ALSO part of the conversation.

And you are missing my point, which is that your continued obsession about "gaming" and "challenge" is maddog boring. Can we please drop it? This is the last reply I am making to you regarding the "ethics" of using game exploits. How many possible ways can I say no one in this thread cares as much about it as you? There is a thread dedicated to this called "how do you make the game more difficult" which is more appropriate. EDIT: I see you have found it already!

Nothing personal. But I have heard what you have to say. I understand your opinion. No need to continue repeating it. It's been established.

ORIGINAL: justmax
Again, if that's what you want, then have at it. Me, if I want an easy, lazy game I'd just open the editor and slap a few extra continental worlds into my home system at game start. Much more straightforward, I think.

Can you not see how this comes accross as a douchey thing to say? Of course you can't because you are not naturally a douchebag. I, on the other hand, troll people all the time so let me tell you on authority that it reads as douchey and trolly. If you realized how douchey and trolly it reads, you would of course not have written it.

[justmax]

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan
This is the last reply I am making to you regarding the "ethics" of using game exploits.

Whoah, time to chill there. I never said anything about "ethics". The only person who mentioned ethics is you. "Gamey" does not mean unethical, which I think I made pretty damned clear. "Gamey" means "less challenging" - which may indeed be "optimal", but is also more boring. You can make optimal designs without sticking it to the AI because of a bug. That's a valid point to make, regardless of how much it throws you into an inexplicable tizzy.

But hey - since holding a contrary opinion apparently makes me a "douchebag", I'll leave this thread to you.

[Limulus]

It's interesting that there are so much tips for economic designs. I never bothered so much for economy, since I usually have no lack of ressources in my games. I just ensure that private ships are fast (hyper and sub light).
However, lot of things are worthy to consider and test in my future games.

For me the bigger fun part was to design military ships and I did quite some in-field testing and calculations in excel.
To give an idea on how my general fighting philosophy is:
1) I want ships that are fast and maneuverable to quickky hunt down enemies.
2) Ships should be able to stand against bigger fleets on their own.
3) If a ship is getting damaged it should be capable to self-repair up to a certain limit instead of needing beeing repaired at a SP (however, if hyper is damaged I usually scrap a ship in 95% of cases)

So this led me to the following design aspects:
Shields:
I consider shields as THE essential part of a ship. The reason why is: I once tried to build a ship without shields, but only with armor and tons of repair bots (I liked the demper field in MoO3 and wanted to copy this design aspect to DW). Apparently only one repair bot can repair at a time, they are not working simultaniously. And even more horrific: when the ship is hit, all fired weapons are stopped. So it wasn't able to deal any damage.
So I build in strong shields favouring higher shield recharge rate over base strength (that's why I implement Zenox Z4 shields as soon as I "aquire" them). In early game usually 1k to 1,5k. In late game usually 2,5k.
Of course, the overall strength is dependant on my opponents ship designs.

Engines:
Newest and fastest hyper drive. Importance of jump ignition time comes direct after hyper speed.
Sub light engines (SLEs) should be sufficient to outrun most enemy ships. So have a close look at what your opponents have. If there are some Slukens around you definitely should consider to send your spies to get access to the star burner <3
It is hard to tell a specific number here, but consider the following when putting in engines:
Best efficiency is achieved if you do not put in more engines than one reactor could support.
The SLE usually should not claim more space than ~35% of the total size of the ship.

Weapons:
Usually I am not too concerned about firepower. I tech straight forward to the Titan beam (I must say: I do not possess DW-Legends, yet ). And that's (almost) the only weapon I use on my military ships. If the opponent is using a hell of fighters on his ships I also add a few point defense weapons.
I like to have the overall firepower sllightly below the firepower of my opponents ships. They will consider my ships as weaker and will come closer - exactly where I want them to be. My superior shields and shield recharge rate will guarantee that I will win the fight though and quickly recover from it. ECM and targeting systems should equal the inbalance in firepower, too.
Superior range is not an issue as you will see from the set tactics below.

Armor:
One can argue about how to handly this. Here is what I like to do:
In early game armor is just used help your ships escape when shields really should drop down. Once the tech level is better (availability of repair bots and better armor) I tend to put 200-400 armor and like 5 repair bots. It also helps to reduce incoming damage when shields are down.
Why more than one repair bot? If armor is down and vital components are hit I want to ensure that even if a repair bot is damaged there is a replacement to maintain the self-repair capability of the ship.

Tactic:
This is one of the most important things for me to set correctly. The behaviour is:
weaker opponents: point blank
stronger opponent: point blank
Flee when: shields at 50%
Classification: escourte

This will ensure that maximum firepower is released and there are no dmg losses over the distance. Once the shields are dropping the ship will make a fly by and hyper-jump away. Since the shields recover quickly it is able to engage again fast.

Normally a single of such a ship is capable to fight, dodge and kill a whole enemy fleet. Fleets of such a ship are deadly and losses are quite rare.


Chronological order of components:
It has been mentioned before: the order DOES matter.
To ensure shields will charge during construction I always put in these components in the following order:
1) command center
2) energy collector
3) reactor
4) fuel cell
5) shields
6-x) other stuff

In most cases shields are at full strength by the time the ship is finished.


I hope I didn't forget some vital things to tell. Just one more thing:
My personal ship-style is the ring (normally used as a resort base from some races). This reminds me of the ships from the Ren Dhark series (if known to somebody).

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Limulus
Weapons:
Usually I am not too concerned about firepower.

Absurd. More firepower == quicker kill. "Not concerned" is quite possibly the most absurd position on weapons that I've heard.

ORIGINAL: Limulus
Superior range is not an issue as you will see from the set tactics below.

*blink* Really?

ORIGINAL: Limulus
I tend to put 200-400 armor and like 5 repair bots.

This is a joke, right? You DO realize what you could do with 200-400 space -PLUS- 16 more for the -EXTRA- repair bots. 216-416 space. I can think of a LOT of better uses for that space. Weapons, shields, engines (more speed in combat) - the list goes on and on and on.

ORIGINAL: Limulus
Tactic:

This section is entirely without value.

This post is entirely bereft of any useful advice for a beginner.

[Limulus]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Limulus
Weapons:
Usually I am not too concerned about firepower.

Absurd. More firepower == quicker kill. "Not concerned" is quite possibly the most absurd position on weapons that I've heard.

Maybe I should specify in more detail, why I'm not too concerned about firepower: I did NOT say, it's unimportant or one shouldn't take care of it. I suppose, you are not going to equip military ships with just one maxos blaster.
I consider firepower as a part to the sum of the whole warship concept. Of course you can build ships up to the current size limit and fill them up with weapons and shields and engines. They will do dmg like hell. Exactly here is the point why I started with the design philosophy. I want agil ships and want to get the maximum out of the smallest necessary size. The bigger ships are the harder it is to keep them at high speed (I guess you know the formula how the speed is calculated?). Last but not least the energy consumption is going up just for normal patrol service and stuff. If you aim to run and maintain 4000-10000 ships in late game you will run into fuel trouble.
Keeping this in mind there is a - not exactly settleable - natural limit for my mentioned concept in ship size. And here you start thinking about how to use the space available. You may go with 350 firepower or like to add up to 550 or even more. At the end of the day it's up to oneself and how your fighting style is and what you like. That's the nice thing about the individual ship designs.
I do not say that my concept or design is the ultimate design and that everybody should agree with it. There is no such thing. And I suggested one possible and proven design concept.

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Limulus
Superior range is not an issue as you will see from the set tactics below.

*blink* Really?

Really. What is the point of superior range if you set tactic to point blank and outrun other ships? Ah, I see. You didn't read tactics as you consider it as without value?

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Limulus
I tend to put 200-400 armor and like 5 repair bots.

This is a joke, right? You DO realize what you could do with 200-400 space -PLUS- 16 more for the -EXTRA- repair bots. 216-416 space. I can think of a LOT of better uses for that space. Weapons, shields, engines (more speed in combat) - the list goes on and on and on.

Not 200-400 armor components, but armor rating (5-10 components + bots).

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Limulus
Tactic:

This section is entirely without value.

I assume you never really used and tested it. It enables you to fully control the behaviour of your ships and I wish it would even allow more detailed settings.

ORIGINAL: Kayoz
This post is entirely bereft of any useful advice for a beginner.

I thought this is a discussion thread. Not a beginners guide. However, thanks for your opinion. I only wish there would have been more constructive criticism. For instance you would like to rebuild the design on your own and check it in combat by yourself - and then discuss what weaknesses it shows. I am always open minded to optimization and I see here are a lot of people around with different ideas and which have already tried different things. I would find it very interesting to hear from their concepts and design ideas like some already shared experiences with regard to economical design aspects in this thread.

[HectorOfTroy]

@ Limulus and Justmax

People are getting quite unfriendly it seems.

But, DW forums are not like that usually and most of us are nice and civil around here. Maybe they just had a bad day or something.

[feelotraveller]

Nice post Limulus. Thanks for sharing your design ideas. [:)]

A few, hopefully helpful, comments...

Fast hyperdrives are nice and the ones I use most too. Quick jump hyperdrives are very good for fleets defending areas (perhaps sector wide) of your empire. Over short distances the quick jump trumps the travel speed. Another possibility here is to use two hyperdrives, a high speed one and a quick jump one to get the best of both worlds. It takes up extra space but allows for redundancy in the case of damage. (As far as sublight goes Starburner's aren't my favourites, I find the Ackdarian drives to be better value...)

Your approach to weapons is certainly valid and many of my ships use a similar philosophy. An example of an alternate philosophy which might be worth trying sometime is to have faster ships than your enemy, outrange them and then set your orders to stand off. (Try this out on early pirate bases which can be destroyed by missiles without your ships coming into blaster range.) Generally having a couple of types of ships works better for me. I find Carriers to be almost indispensable in Legends.

Good outline of the chronological order of the components. It's been a while but if I remember correctly you do not need the fuel cells to charge the shields (and indeed they are not fueled until the ship is completed). I don't remember if you need life support/habitation to enable weapons fire, do you?

I don't really emphasise repair bots all that much but after reading your post I'm thinking that I might want to revise this approach. [8D]

[Limulus]

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller

Nice post Limulus. Thanks for sharing your design ideas. [:)]

A few, hopefully helpful, comments...

Fast hyperdrives are nice and the ones I use most too. Quick jump hyperdrives are very good for fleets defending areas (perhaps sector wide) of your empire. Over short distances the quick jump trumps the travel speed. Another possibility here is to use two hyperdrives, a high speed one and a quick jump one to get the best of both worlds. It takes up extra space but allows for redundancy in the case of damage. (As far as sublight goes Starburner's aren't my favourites, I find the Ackdarian drives to be better value...)

Your approach to weapons is certainly valid and many of my ships use a similar philosophy. An example of an alternate philosophy which might be worth trying sometime is to have faster ships than your enemy, outrange them and then set your orders to stand off. (Try this out on early pirate bases which can be destroyed by missiles without your ships coming into blaster range.) Generally having a couple of types of ships works better for me. I find Carriers to be almost indispensable in Legends.

Good outline of the chronological order of the components. It's been a while but if I remember correctly you do not need the fuel cells to charge the shields (and indeed they are not fueled until the ship is completed). I don't remember if you need life support/habitation to enable weapons fire, do you?

I don't really emphasise repair bots all that much but after reading your post I'm thinking that I might want to revise this approach. [8D]

Let me state a little bit why I emphasis Starburner most. Of course, at the end it's again a little bit dependend of design philosophy. I made a quick and dirty excel file to give a better understanding of my design background (attached).
I took one of my latest escorte ship sizes for late game which currently has 12 Vortex engines, as I do not have access to the latest sluken star burner technology level. It has a max speed of 70. To achieve the same speed with Star Burner you only need 10 engines, or 13 with Ackdarian Turbothrusters. Comparing Star Burner with Turbothruster directly, this means a saving of 3*8 - (6,8-4) = 21,2 space which you most likely would like to put into shields or weapons -> 116 fire power / 490 shield strength with 4 * titans / 2 * Z4, still saving some extra space.

My energy output on warships is going the safe way (energy usage at max speed + energy usage during hyper + energy usage per second < energy output reactor). I want them to have access to energy even in tough fighting situations.
So mostly you will have a small surplus in energy generation (as it is hard to design a fully balanced energy level when looking at speed first and want a minimal ship size) and should be able to use this for the higher energy demand of the Star Burners.

Taking a look at the energy consumption the Ackdarian Turbothruster of course is way better. It only uses 59% of the energy the Star Burner needs.
Thinking a little bit about it, it might be efficient to use the Turbothruster on smaller ships as they can be brought to speed easier with less engines and go for the star burner on bigger ships. I think this needs some more calculations.

Actually the double-hyper design was also a thing I already tested. It's nice to have the benefit of fast jump initiation AND high speed at the same time. It was quite nice in the mid-game if you didn't had access to the Velocity drive from the Dhaughty. Considering the late game I am a little bit unsure of wheather it is wise to spend this extra space as it will only save 1 sec. But just yesterday I had a situation where I was starting to think of it again. My opponent and I had both the latest Torrent Drive and our ships were jumping in and out and my ships weren't really were able to take down his private frighters in a system I blockaded.

So far for the engine part. For the weapon part:
As mentioned, I currently lack of the possession of Legends, so I can't tell about carrier designs Still need to fix this status...
In the beginning I also tested missile boats wanting to take advantage of the superior weapon range. This lead to excessive usage of energy torpedos as they have the better range. The design worked and in early game - you are right - it works very well against pirates. What I didn't liked was the overall inefficiency (see attached excel sheet). These calculations made me just go for Titan beams for ships and heavily improve my shields.
For imobile platforms I still consider energy torpedos and fighters, so that they cannot be outranged if no support is available.

For the chronological order:
I have no prove for the fuel cell thing. It was an observation I made. You may be right that the hab / life support is the more important thing. They normally come direct after my fuel cell, so most probably that's the key component.

[EDIT]Corrected typo[/EDIT]

[Limulus]

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller
An example of an alternate philosophy which might be worth trying sometime is to have faster ships than your enemy, outrange them and then set your orders to stand off. (Try this out on early pirate bases which can be destroyed by missiles without your ships coming into blaster range.)

Ah, there is one more thing I wanted to bring into consideration on this strategy part. Energy Torpedos are quite slow. If I fight ships which are trying to escape from me and I have set the rule to "stand off" this means, that the energy torpedo looses a lot of dmg potential on it's way to the ship.
(While Missile weapons are not loosing damage over the distance and are a bit faster they have a terrifying efficiency considering dps or even worse dps also considering space usage. So I never ever had put them into my ships so far. I think they need to be reworked at least in the way that they use even less energy).

[feelotraveller]

Hm, they're interesting figures for the engines.&nbsp; The Starburners are better than I thought.&nbsp; You have partly convinced me but I still have a couple of reservations.&nbsp;&nbsp;[;)]&nbsp;&nbsp;Firstly, fuel, the Starburners need more which means more fuel tanks (or less range/weapons fire) but perhaps the amounts involved are largely insignificant?; and secondly, upgrades, the TurboThrusters fare better at the earlier tech levels since the energy differences are more significant, but again perhaps not enough?&nbsp; (Oh, and you have overrated the Vortex engines since they are size 8 as opposed to the size 7 of the other two.)&nbsp; Realistically&nbsp;a given game may not give you the luxury of choosing.&nbsp; And&nbsp;I&nbsp;agree&nbsp;that the uses may well be situational to particular designs and available energy.
&nbsp;
Titan beams, mmm...&nbsp; They are my favourites too.&nbsp; But I still think you underrate the torpedoes for a few reasons.&nbsp; One factor is the damage reduction properties of armour.&nbsp; As far as I understand it&nbsp;armour reduces damage per hit, and as a consequence quick firing but lower damage weapons suffer worse against it.&nbsp; (E.g. 5x titans=100 damage but against ultradense armour this reduces to 50, whereas 2x thunderbolt=100 only reduces to 80, and yes I've fudged a bit in this example as titans upgrade to 29...)&nbsp; This brings torpedoes back into the game a bit (and devastators as well but I tend not to use them).&nbsp; The second factor is the space equivalent of combined arms.&nbsp; My chosen recipe is to have heavily shielded beamers as my quickest ships (to soak up early damage and chase fleeing ships), medium shielded torpedo boats with medium&nbsp;speed (for maximum damage in close and early shots from range)&nbsp;and slower lighter shielded carriers (legendary [:'(]).&nbsp; The beamers are on point blank, the carriers on standoff and the torps usually also on point blank but arriving a bit later.&nbsp; There are lots of other possible combinations (without carriers missile frigates in standoff might work well).

[Limulus]

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller

Hm, they're interesting figures for the engines.  The Starburners are better than I thought.  You have partly convinced me but I still have a couple of reservations.  [;)]  Firstly, fuel, the Starburners need more which means more fuel tanks (or less range/weapons fire) but perhaps the amounts involved are largely insignificant?; and secondly, upgrades, the TurboThrusters fare better at the earlier tech levels since the energy differences are more significant, but again perhaps not enough?  (Oh, and you have overrated the Vortex engines since they are size 8 as opposed to the size 7 of the other two.)  Realistically a given game may not give you the luxury of choosing.  And I agree that the uses may well be situational to particular designs and available energy.

I just checked the size not only in the tech tree, but also in the ship designer. I suppose there has been a change in Legends as all engine types (except proton thruster) are size 8. But you can easily adjust this in my excel sheet and check for your demands.
As it was a quick and dirty excel sheet I did not considered the space usage from hab / life support, too, and left the fuel cell part out. The excel sheet considering this is at the computer at work

But you are right that this is also a component to consider. I face that at some point fuel reserves of 560 are not sufficient any more. However, this is mostly when my ships are going into battle. This shows, that most energy is used when weapons start firing and engines are more often used to sprint.

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller
Titan beams, mmm...  They are my favourites too.  But I still think you underrate the torpedoes for a few reasons.  One factor is the damage reduction properties of armour.  As far as I understand it armour reduces damage per hit, and as a consequence quick firing but lower damage weapons suffer worse against it.  (E.g. 5x titans=100 damage but against ultradense armour this reduces to 50, whereas 2x thunderbolt=100 only reduces to 80, and yes I've fudged a bit in this example as titans upgrade to 29...)  This brings torpedoes back into the game a bit (and devastators as well but I tend not to use them).  The second factor is the space equivalent of combined arms.  My chosen recipe is to have heavily shielded beamers as my quickest ships (to soak up early damage and chase fleeing ships), medium shielded torpedo boats with medium speed (for maximum damage in close and early shots from range) and slower lighter shielded carriers (legendary [:'(]).  The beamers are on point blank, the carriers on standoff and the torps usually also on point blank but arriving a bit later.  There are lots of other possible combinations (without carriers missile frigates in standoff might work well).

I updated the sheet for the armor reflective rating. You will see that all weapon types kept at maximum distance are just dealing 1 dmg, wheather beam or torpedo. So the superior firing rate of lasers beats torpedos.
There is also an assumption to that: that at least 1 dmg is made and it can't drop to zero. I have no proove for that, but I had the feeling that my ships were taking slowly dmg from beams though they were at max distance to the opponent's ships.

If this assumption is right, titans would even beat torpedos though they are capable to deliver more dmg to & past the armor of the enemies vessel -> they still would have the better dps&size effectiveness.

If I am wrong and titans would get down to 0 dmg, than in late game there should be torpedos only or close combat is a must.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Limulus
Not 200-400 armor components, but armor rating (5-10 components + bots).

You specify 5 repair components and mix it in with "armour rating" without bothering to specify the difference in your use of numbers. Your poor sentence structure is at fault for the confusion.

ORIGINAL: Limulus
I thought this is a discussion thread. Not a beginners guide.

If you bothered to read the OP's questions, it's quite obvious that he wanted advice and an explanation - hence a "beginner's guide" position is quite appropriate to any answers you might offer.

High speed (thrusters), short range weapon armed ships are useful for anti-piracy where you want to close and kill before the attackers can damage your mining stations. But for large scale combats against opposing "main fleets" and attacking planetary defenses - range trumps speed. Long range allows you to focus the firepower of the majority of your ships on specific threats - troop transports trying to land troops, or some big, badass ship that the opponent has. High speed ships need time to turn and close, which is time you won't often have. Not to mention when the Shak show up, whose speeds severely outmatch yours and you won't be able to close with them, much less destroy them before they warp out of the fight. For them, you really need lots of long range firepower - if you have more firepower but it's all short-range, they'll just keep moving away and you'll never be able to catch them to do serious damage.

For attacking planets, it's much better if you can retreat your damaged/shield-depleted ships before they go pop. If your ships are kitted out with short-range weapons, once your ships start trying to get away, it's probably too late and they'll go pop.

That is, of course, if you micromanage the battle. If you let the computer do everything, it's random choice of targets means your short-range ships will be spending a lot of time running around and fighting at poor range effectiveness; while long-range weapon armed ships will be far less troubled by the random target allocation.

[Limulus]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Limulus
Not 200-400 armor components, but armor rating (5-10 components + bots).

You specify 5 repair components and mix it in with "armour rating" without bothering to specify the difference in your use of numbers. Your poor sentence structure is at fault for the confusion.

Logical thinking would have helped to avoid my poor sentence structure. Considering shields as important and adding up to 16k armor rating? Sounds crazy and illogical. But I didn't blame you and just stated how it was ment. I don't understand why you continue to be insulting even for such a minor thing which has been annotated.

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Limulus
I thought this is a discussion thread. Not a beginners guide.

If you bothered to read the OP's questions, it's quite obvious that he wanted advice and an explanation - hence a "beginner's guide" position is quite appropriate to any answers you might offer.

That's your interpretation. I don't agree. Only the thread starter knows better then we do. And yes, I bothered to read. Why else should I have made detailed explanations instead of just posting a ship design.

ORIGINAL: Kayoz
High speed (thrusters), short range weapon armed ships are useful for anti-piracy where you want to close and kill before the attackers can damage your mining stations. But for large scale combats against opposing "main fleets" and attacking planetary defenses - range trumps speed. Long range allows you to focus the firepower of the majority of your ships on specific threats - troop transports trying to land troops, or some big, badass ship that the opponent has. High speed ships need time to turn and close, which is time you won't often have. Not to mention when the Shak show up, whose speeds severely outmatch yours and you won't be able to close with them, much less destroy them before they warp out of the fight. For them, you really need lots of long range firepower - if you have more firepower but it's all short-range, they'll just keep moving away and you'll never be able to catch them to do serious damage.

I think range trumps speed makes it a little bit to easy. Maybe you took a look at my excel sheet for weapon dmg calculation. If your opponent can stand off, range won't do enough dmg in most cases. High shield recharge rates will compensate the dmg you do unless your ship isn't packed with a hell of amount of torpedos. But I think even then it will be hard to do substantial dmg before your opponent gets away. Furthermore: if you can't jump block, your opponent will simply flee. And if you can't follow your opponent he will even run out of the block range before you kill him.
Regarding the Shaks ships speed: they also just make recourse to the tech tree and hence have the same possibilities as you have. Thus depending on your tech level at the time they show up you should be able to have at least equal speed.
And even long range won't help to fend of invading troops if you just are not there in time. It may give you an advantage of a few seconds for the first engagement (comparing fast close combat ships with long range ships arriving at the same time) - but since you are firing at long range the dmg inflicted is low and I doubt it will be enough to destroy the troop transports in time.

ORIGINAL: Kayoz
For attacking planets, it's much better if you can retreat your damaged/shield-depleted ships before they go pop. If your ships are kitted out with short-range weapons, once your ships start trying to get away, it's probably too late and they'll go pop.

That is, of course, if you micromanage the battle. If you let the computer do everything, it's random choice of targets means your short-range ships will be spending a lot of time running around and fighting at poor range effectiveness; while long-range weapon armed ships will be far less troubled by the random target allocation.

I think this is perfectly handled by the "flee when shields are at x%" setting and how to engage enemies (close range <--> stand off). It almost control the ships the way I would micromanage them. They go on close range, destroy their target and then target one of the nearest enemy ships. I only need to micromanage in rare cases like if I see my ships just running into death zones (a bunch of enemy ships where their shields would not withstand for long) or when they (opponent) are faster - I just order the ships a distance to jump in front of the way they are trying to escape. Then it's their turn to turn.

But as mentioned in my earlier posts - the design philosophy determines the tactics. You choose long range fights. I considered short distance as the way of my choice. I don't believe there is a right and wrong, but my feeling is, that short distance fights are more effective right now.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

High speed (thrusters), short range weapon armed ships are useful for anti-piracy where you want to close and kill before the attackers can damage your mining stations. But for large scale combats against opposing "main fleets" and attacking planetary defenses - range trumps speed. Long range allows you to focus the firepower of the majority of your ships on specific threats - troop transports trying to land troops, or some big, badass ship that the opponent has. High speed ships need time to turn and close, which is time you won't often have. Not to mention when the Shak show up, whose speeds severely outmatch yours and you won't be able to close with them, much less destroy them before they warp out of the fight. For them, you really need lots of long range firepower - if you have more firepower but it's all short-range, they'll just keep moving away and you'll never be able to catch them to do serious damage.

For attacking planets, it's much better if you can retreat your damaged/shield-depleted ships before they go pop. If your ships are kitted out with short-range weapons, once your ships start trying to get away, it's probably too late and they'll go pop.

That is, of course, if you micromanage the battle. If you let the computer do everything, it's random choice of targets means your short-range ships will be spending a lot of time running around and fighting at poor range effectiveness; while long-range weapon armed ships will be far less troubled by the random target allocation.

I don't design much, and spend my abusive power in micro management of combat (when needed). There are only so much effort you can spend before the game is lost to boredom, so I leave designs alone...

The fast moving pirate hunter is mostly relevant in early game, when pirates are a threat. Once some tech and development is in place, pirates are pushed far away, and are easily killed. In addition long range scanners help a lot in catching them. Also, shields on mines become better with tech. They may also be lucky enough to be built on the "AI side" of the galaxy, and not killed by me. I think that is major reason for their absence after a while, they are all far away prospering on poor AI.

I prefer my ships powerful and with good shields. Once I have new (AI) designs out, and notice them stopping at an distance to pop the defensive base (or similar), it is straight into the design file to specify "stronger opponent - all weapons". This is not in a prime spot to get away, but usually I don't lose much brawlers after the "early phase". Cruisers with some tech usually manage to limp out.

I think my last AAR was typical for me. Battle fleets of 10-12 cruisers and 5 or so carriers. In that game the cruisers were short range with good damage (like I prefer them), and what was usually lost was carriers. And my carriers are not on "all weapons"... The carrier should stand off or evade, but once enemy ships target them they are stupid and too lightly shielded/armored to get away. The AI manages to try keep range to one opponent, once there are two, it seems to just notice one of them, and could if necessary try to escape its aggressor by going through the enemy spaceport.

For the micro managed planetary defense, I don't think speed/range is too important. When a fleet is incoming I tell my fleet to move to the colony. They will end up somewhat circling it, either in arrival, or in "drifting away". On enemy landing, I tell groups of ships to target nearby troop transports. If the AI is control, I doubt it matters much, as targeting is probably quite random. Whatever method used, stopping all transports is hard, as they tend to not die instantly when targeted.

When I notice a ship taking serious damage some way into the game, I figure it is mostly fighters to blame. A somewhat upgraded fighter cloud carries a serious punch, and they seem to focus fire at the start of combat. And if I order my fleet to "kill defensive base", then "kill spaceport", enemy ships present adds some pain too once shields are depleted.

When doing assaults on dangerous targets, I try to fight one at a time. Even if sometimes arriving a tad too close.



That fleet was extra strong, built to bust powerful defenses, which include legendaries. The AAR reported "1 cruiser missing" afterwards. It was possibly disabled and not killed.

I think you can be very fancy in ship designs, but brute force in deploying them works too.

[Limulus]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling
I don't design much, and spend my abusive power in micro management of combat (when needed). There are only so much effort you can spend before the game is lost to boredom, so I leave designs alone...

Heh, for me designing ships is one of the most fun parts in the game [:)]. Quite interesting how different people favour different parts of the game and all enjoy it in their kind.

ORIGINAL: Bingeling
For the micro managed planetary defense, I don't think speed/range is too important. When a fleet is incoming I tell my fleet to move to the colony. They will end up somewhat circling it, either in arrival, or in "drifting away". On enemy landing, I tell groups of ships to target nearby troop transports. If the AI is control, I doubt it matters much, as targeting is probably quite random. Whatever method used, stopping all transports is hard, as they tend to not die instantly when targeted.

I did (do) this, too -> Ordering nearby ships or fleets to move direct to the colony. Problem with that is, that the ships will only start firing once they completed their movement. So I tend to micromanage their movement in critical situations when they are close enough.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: Limulus

ORIGINAL: Bingeling
For the micro managed planetary defense, I don't think speed/range is too important. When a fleet is incoming I tell my fleet to move to the colony. They will end up somewhat circling it, either in arrival, or in "drifting away". On enemy landing, I tell groups of ships to target nearby troop transports. If the AI is control, I doubt it matters much, as targeting is probably quite random. Whatever method used, stopping all transports is hard, as they tend to not die instantly when targeted.

I did (do) this, too -> Ordering nearby ships or fleets to move direct to the colony. Problem with that is, that the ships will only start firing once they completed their movement. So I tend to micromanage their movement in critical situations when they are close enough.

Usually my defensive fleet is in the system, and I tell them to move to make sure they are not at the wrong end of the system. When attackers arrive, I manually select groups of ships and tell them to attack single nearby troop transports in numbers of 3-4. Once the main targets of a fight are taken care of, I let them do as they please.

For general battles, ordering them to attack the fleet works. When it is important enough, battles become pretty micro managed. And as I don't enjoy losing colonies, defenses are not left to chance...

[Ralzakark]

Excellent posts Limulus, I like how you have clearly thought through relating the design to the tactics you are going to employ with it.

I also spend a lot of time designing ships and find it great fun!

[Bloodly]

I am a newbie. I am also a fighter freak from following Star Wars and the Homeworld games. So I put Fighter Bays on everything possible save for Troop Transports(Which are semi-sacrificial; as long as they get the troops down, I don't care if they die afterwards). Other weapons too, of course, but mostly Fighters. I am not entirely sure how many is 'enough' when it comes to a base. Are the AI amounts(Usually 2-4 based on base size) sufficient? I can't tell. I won't start designing ships/bases till I have Fighters.

I follow the trend of 'one ship for most jobs'. The 'Escort' isn't. It does most things since it's usually at the size limit or close to. As sizes improve, more STUFF(Weapons, Bays, Armour, etc) gets added to the base design. Simple, but it works....kinda. The AI loves making and building it's own, poorer designs though. This is especially galling when it comes to mining bases-the privates keep making the less-defended designs when there's a perfectly good design I've made that won't fold to a gentle breath[:@].

I'm not sure what to do with Freighters, to be honest. I understand why the cap was put on-hell, I was around when they put it on in response to shenanigans with ship design. Even so, a single weapon is worse than useless. They should be able to defend themselves better. I'd gladly give them some defensive fighters but that's not allowed. Wish I could change it.

[Bingeling]

I don't like weapons on freighters. They are of little use, and could be a problem. I am not exactly what happens if an area weapon hits a fighter which manages to fire back, but it is probably nothing good when it comes to diplomatic relations.

"What is enough?". That depends on what you want to achieve. In some other thread we had the "spaceport design to defeat an attack alone". The AI designs are not designed to manage that.

The AI designs set a level of power. This is not the maximum level of power (you can manage to put more shields and weapons on stuff), and some players love to mini-max and complain that the AI designs suck.

Also keep in mind that you pay maintenance on everything. The privates pay for private stuff, but the more they pay, the less there is left to tax. If money is not a problem at all, the game is probably already won