Hi
I think I am just beginning to get the game but I never feel confident that I am doing things efficiently.
Although I am a min-maxer, I am fully aware I am failing badly so would be grateful if someone could offer a research map.
I would be interested in a couple of ideas e.g.
A general style
Tourist (though these should still be able to look after themselves)
Combat
I take it you don't need to focus on each weapon techs right?
Thanks!
Will someone share order research please?
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AndysonofBob
- Posts: 13
- Joined: Fri Aug 21, 2015 12:27 pm
RE: Will someone share order research please?
A thread which might interest you:
tm.asp?m=3868291
To my mind there are three major 'primary' weapon types (weapons that you'll use as the primary armament on a design) - missiles, torpedoes, and blasters. There are two more weapon types that can serve as 'primary' weapons (phasers and railguns), though in my opinion phasers work better as secondary weapons and railguns are just awkward.
Missiles should generally not be chosen as a sole-focus weapon, as they are only good for standoff designs (and possibly for capture designs, but capture designs are special purpose rather than main line designs). If you do choose to try using missiles as a sole-focus weapon, then I'd strongly suggest making sublight drive and maneuvering thrusters a priority in Energy and Construction; mainline pure-missile designs need to be able to keep the range open because the other primary weapon types greatly outperform missiles in DPS and armor penetration at shorter ranges (railguns are a possible exception; their anti-armor performance per shot is worse, but they have a higher rate of fire than similarly-advanced missiles). If you do take missiles as one of a pair of weapons to focus development upon, I'd suggest either torpedoes or blasters as a second focus weapon; both torpedoes and blasters can cover for the low DPS and poor anti-armor performance of missiles at short ranges, and missiles will cover for the lack of standoff capability on blaster designs and improve the standoff capability of torpedo designs. Phasers can probably work as a secondary focus weapon with missiles; while both are low-DPS weapons, phasers cover for the anti-armor weakness of missiles. I rather doubt that missiles pair well with railguns; both weapons are low-DPS weapons with poor anti-armor performance, and railguns have so little range that they're not even that useful for discouraging ships from closing with missile ships. In the early game, it's not a bad idea to get at least the initial Concussion Missiles technology because Epsilon Torpedoes are rather poor early weapons and because it opens up point defense technology even if you're not intending to focus on missiles at all.
Torpedoes are a good sole-focus weapon for three reasons: they're at least adequate for all engagement range settings (they're outperformed by missiles at standoff, and blasters might be better at point blank, but missiles are garbage at anything other than extreme range and blasters can't stand off beyond the range of most of a target's weapons), they have good anti-armor performance out to midrange, and they're required for advanced fighter research. Torpedoes also work reasonably well as a complement to blasters (providing standoff capability and improving anti-armor performance, particularly at mid-range) or missiles (which need a lot of help at anything other than standoff range and have poor anti-armor performance at any range). Be aware that Epsilon Torpedoes are not that great; you're probably better off sticking to Concussion or even Seeker Missiles for early standoff weapons, but you have to go through Epsilon Torpedoes to get to Velocity Shards and Shockwave Torpedoes.
Blasters can work as a sole-focus weapon more or less entirely because of their DPS, especially at point blank range (where they also tend to have fairly good anti-armor performance), but I personally would rather pair them with another weapon system; blasters will not give you any significant standoff capability as there are few or no default designs which will carry only weapons with less range than blasters (only railguns and phasers have less range than blasters, and for phasers the range difference is so low it may as well not exist, unless you're comparing Phaser Cannons to Shatterforce Lasers or Titan Beams), and blaster anti-armor performance can be somewhat lackluster at mid-range. Blasters can work as sort of poor man's point defense weapon due to their high rate of fire and small size per weapon, but will preferentially target real ships should one come within firing range. Phasers tend to have ranges comparable to blasters and better anti-armor performance and so make a reasonable secondary armament on blaster designs, but will not provide any improvement in standoff capability. Torpedoes provide both standoff capability and anti-armor performance, missiles provide better standoff capability but don't improve anti-armor performance. Blaster/Phaser designs should probably lean heavily towards the blasters as the phasers are only really there to break armor, and there's not usually that much armor on most ships and bases; blaster/torpedo and blaster/missile designs might more evenly split the weapons or favor the non-blaster component of the armament as standoff capability is fairly valuable in and of itself.
Phasers in my opinion do not really work as a sole-focus weapon, nor do I care for pure-phaser ship designs. Phasers have enough DPS to be workable mid-range primary weapons or even the sole armament of a mid-range ship, but phaser DPS will take a long time to penetrate shields by comparison to blasters in the same range band. I personally prefer to combine phasers with blasters to combine high DPS and good anti-armor performance over the full range band, though other combinations may be workable. Phaser/Missile is awkward because neither missiles nor phasers have particularly good DPS and making use of the phasers forces the missiles into mid-range or lower, where they're greatly outclassed by other weapons. Phaser/Missile does provide both standoff capability and anti-armor performance, but to me this is basically a torpedo ship (both torpedo and phaser/missile designs have kind of average mid-range DPS and reasonably good anti-armor performance out to mid-range, and both are standoff-capable; torpedoes offer better short- to mid-range DPS by late game, however, and missiles are not really all that useful anywhere but standoff). Torpedo/Phaser is awkward because torpedoes don't really need anything that phasers can give them; torpedoes have more range, already have reasonable DPS within phaser range (and although you can improve DPS by combining mid-game torpedoes with mid-game phasers slightly, blasters generally work better for boosting DPS), and already have reasonable anti-armor performance within phaser range, so I'd sooner go pure-torpedo than torpedo/phaser. Phaser/railgun is a bit awkward because neither weapon really helps the other. Sure, railguns need help against armor, but phasers aren't going to give them that as long as the shields are up, and railguns cannot help against the shields until the armor is penetrated (at which point they can start taking down shield generators, but of course hitting and destroying a shield generator rather than some other component is somewhat luck-dependent, and the railguns kind of don't need the phasers once the armor is broken).
Railguns are a weapon that I'm a bit ambivalent about classing as a primary weapon, but on the other hand they don't really work that well as a secondary weapon, either. Railguns have fairly poor DPS, cannot hit shields (doesn't matter to a pure-railgun design, but will matter if you were counting on having something break the armor for the railguns), have poor armor penetration, and have less range than any equally-advanced weapon in the game (and many less advanced weapons). Their ability to cover for the weaknesses of other weapon types is therefore somewhat limited, though as ships generally back off once they start losing components railguns can function as a way to get hostile ships to keep back from standoff designs (though in this role they are hampered by their relatively large size per component and their poor armor penetration). Railguns are most attractive when armor is weak or nonexistent, or when your opponents are capable of wiping the floor with your more normal designs (e.g. pirates against pre-warp or newly warp-capable empires; pirate ships are generally larger and more powerful than the early-game ships of a prewarp empire, and so relying on railguns to start damaging components can be as or sometimes more effective than attempting to concentrate enough fire to bring down the shields of the larger pirate vessels). Railguns are the one primary weapon type that in my opinion cannot be used as a sole-focus weapon; their lack of range, low DPS, and poor anti-armor performance renders them virtually useless for taking down colony defenses such as medium or large spaceports and defense bases, as they'll be exposed to the full firepower of the station(s) and most likely have significantly less powerful defenses. Blasters and phasers aren't great for sieges, either, but at least they generally have the range to not be exposed to the fire of multiple stations simultaneously (sometimes you can't avoid that even with blasters and phasers, but railguns are much worse about it).
Some other things to bear in mind:
While it's important to have armor, it's not necessarily important to have advanced armor. Not many default designs make heavy use of railguns, and if you do come up against such ships you can usually counter just by staying at range, graviton beams can bypass armor anyways, and all other weapons have to go through shields first.
Infantry attack and defense bonuses are more useful early on than later in the game, as cloning facilities (available in the High Tech tree if you advance down the medical line) can provide more or less the same effect since they cause newly-recruited infantry to have the same strength as your most powerful currently extant infantry unit. Armored, special forces, and planetary defense units are all useful to have but not essential, and armored and special forces units are primarily there for opposed invasions or attacks on pirate facilities. Not really something you need to prioritize, though starting the buildup of such forces early won't hurt. Planetary Defense Units, as the name implies, are mostly there to be part of the garrison, and they're expensive enough that they'll be a fairly small part of your army, mostly present only on important worlds with large garrisons.
Fighters are excellent siege weapons and can be adequate for fleet actions, but developing advanced fighters other than missile bombers requires that you develop torpedoes to some degree (advanced missile bombers, as you might expect, require missile technology). Be careful with fighters, however, as dedicated carriers can be quite vulnerable to standard warships despite their size, and fleets of full-size carriers can be rather costly.
Boarding pods are a special-purpose weapon; capturing vessels and stations is more a gimmick (particularly later in the game) than a useful strategy, as the captured vessels will typically be in poor condition. Nevertheless, it's useful to unlock boarding pods early on because each pod provides some defense against hostile boarding actions, and because capturing a few pirate ships early in the game can give you useful technologies that wouldn't have been an immediate priority.
In Energy and Construction, you want to focus on reactors, hyperdrives, shields, and construction size, and may want to improve sublight drive and maneuvering thrusters. Energy collectors are important to have but not necessarily to enhance, as the initial energy collector is more than adequate for most ship designs and probably won't take too much space on most bases. Jump inhibition is useful if you're trying to hunt down some ships, though it's not strictly necessary, and it's something where simply having the first component can be sufficient for a long time, especially as increasing the size of the area of effect isn't strictly an improvement (it catches enemy ships better, but it also catches your ships better - jump inhibitors do not distinguish between friend and foe, and installing them on your ships can cost you if you trap one of your ships next to a relatively powerful enemy vessel). Damage control and repair is useful, but repair is buried kind of deep in the tree and the upgraded damage control unit isn't really a lot better than the initial version, and you get more or less the same effect against most weapons by improving your shields.
In High Tech, long-range sensors are a big bonus; pirate hunting becomes much easier when you don't need to send a ship to each system to check for bases, or risk a spy on a steal (territory/galaxy/operations) map or deep cover mission (granted, risking your spy is the only fast way to enhance their abilities). Countermeasures and targeting are variably useful; sometimes you get a fleet admiral who gives more or less the same bonus (or a bigger one), other times you might never see an admiral pop up. Other than that, crew systems, command systems, the colonization techs, and wonders are the big draws of the High Tech tree; getting to at least standard fuel cells and cargo bays on a prewarp start is also a good idea.
tm.asp?m=3868291
Not at all. Focusing on one or two weapons is much better than spreading research between all weapons; I'd much rather have, say, Titan Beams alone than Velocity Torpedoes + Shatterforce Lasers + Concussion Missiles + Derasian Shockwaves.I take it you don't need to focus on each weapon techs right?
To my mind there are three major 'primary' weapon types (weapons that you'll use as the primary armament on a design) - missiles, torpedoes, and blasters. There are two more weapon types that can serve as 'primary' weapons (phasers and railguns), though in my opinion phasers work better as secondary weapons and railguns are just awkward.
Missiles should generally not be chosen as a sole-focus weapon, as they are only good for standoff designs (and possibly for capture designs, but capture designs are special purpose rather than main line designs). If you do choose to try using missiles as a sole-focus weapon, then I'd strongly suggest making sublight drive and maneuvering thrusters a priority in Energy and Construction; mainline pure-missile designs need to be able to keep the range open because the other primary weapon types greatly outperform missiles in DPS and armor penetration at shorter ranges (railguns are a possible exception; their anti-armor performance per shot is worse, but they have a higher rate of fire than similarly-advanced missiles). If you do take missiles as one of a pair of weapons to focus development upon, I'd suggest either torpedoes or blasters as a second focus weapon; both torpedoes and blasters can cover for the low DPS and poor anti-armor performance of missiles at short ranges, and missiles will cover for the lack of standoff capability on blaster designs and improve the standoff capability of torpedo designs. Phasers can probably work as a secondary focus weapon with missiles; while both are low-DPS weapons, phasers cover for the anti-armor weakness of missiles. I rather doubt that missiles pair well with railguns; both weapons are low-DPS weapons with poor anti-armor performance, and railguns have so little range that they're not even that useful for discouraging ships from closing with missile ships. In the early game, it's not a bad idea to get at least the initial Concussion Missiles technology because Epsilon Torpedoes are rather poor early weapons and because it opens up point defense technology even if you're not intending to focus on missiles at all.
Torpedoes are a good sole-focus weapon for three reasons: they're at least adequate for all engagement range settings (they're outperformed by missiles at standoff, and blasters might be better at point blank, but missiles are garbage at anything other than extreme range and blasters can't stand off beyond the range of most of a target's weapons), they have good anti-armor performance out to midrange, and they're required for advanced fighter research. Torpedoes also work reasonably well as a complement to blasters (providing standoff capability and improving anti-armor performance, particularly at mid-range) or missiles (which need a lot of help at anything other than standoff range and have poor anti-armor performance at any range). Be aware that Epsilon Torpedoes are not that great; you're probably better off sticking to Concussion or even Seeker Missiles for early standoff weapons, but you have to go through Epsilon Torpedoes to get to Velocity Shards and Shockwave Torpedoes.
Blasters can work as a sole-focus weapon more or less entirely because of their DPS, especially at point blank range (where they also tend to have fairly good anti-armor performance), but I personally would rather pair them with another weapon system; blasters will not give you any significant standoff capability as there are few or no default designs which will carry only weapons with less range than blasters (only railguns and phasers have less range than blasters, and for phasers the range difference is so low it may as well not exist, unless you're comparing Phaser Cannons to Shatterforce Lasers or Titan Beams), and blaster anti-armor performance can be somewhat lackluster at mid-range. Blasters can work as sort of poor man's point defense weapon due to their high rate of fire and small size per weapon, but will preferentially target real ships should one come within firing range. Phasers tend to have ranges comparable to blasters and better anti-armor performance and so make a reasonable secondary armament on blaster designs, but will not provide any improvement in standoff capability. Torpedoes provide both standoff capability and anti-armor performance, missiles provide better standoff capability but don't improve anti-armor performance. Blaster/Phaser designs should probably lean heavily towards the blasters as the phasers are only really there to break armor, and there's not usually that much armor on most ships and bases; blaster/torpedo and blaster/missile designs might more evenly split the weapons or favor the non-blaster component of the armament as standoff capability is fairly valuable in and of itself.
Phasers in my opinion do not really work as a sole-focus weapon, nor do I care for pure-phaser ship designs. Phasers have enough DPS to be workable mid-range primary weapons or even the sole armament of a mid-range ship, but phaser DPS will take a long time to penetrate shields by comparison to blasters in the same range band. I personally prefer to combine phasers with blasters to combine high DPS and good anti-armor performance over the full range band, though other combinations may be workable. Phaser/Missile is awkward because neither missiles nor phasers have particularly good DPS and making use of the phasers forces the missiles into mid-range or lower, where they're greatly outclassed by other weapons. Phaser/Missile does provide both standoff capability and anti-armor performance, but to me this is basically a torpedo ship (both torpedo and phaser/missile designs have kind of average mid-range DPS and reasonably good anti-armor performance out to mid-range, and both are standoff-capable; torpedoes offer better short- to mid-range DPS by late game, however, and missiles are not really all that useful anywhere but standoff). Torpedo/Phaser is awkward because torpedoes don't really need anything that phasers can give them; torpedoes have more range, already have reasonable DPS within phaser range (and although you can improve DPS by combining mid-game torpedoes with mid-game phasers slightly, blasters generally work better for boosting DPS), and already have reasonable anti-armor performance within phaser range, so I'd sooner go pure-torpedo than torpedo/phaser. Phaser/railgun is a bit awkward because neither weapon really helps the other. Sure, railguns need help against armor, but phasers aren't going to give them that as long as the shields are up, and railguns cannot help against the shields until the armor is penetrated (at which point they can start taking down shield generators, but of course hitting and destroying a shield generator rather than some other component is somewhat luck-dependent, and the railguns kind of don't need the phasers once the armor is broken).
Railguns are a weapon that I'm a bit ambivalent about classing as a primary weapon, but on the other hand they don't really work that well as a secondary weapon, either. Railguns have fairly poor DPS, cannot hit shields (doesn't matter to a pure-railgun design, but will matter if you were counting on having something break the armor for the railguns), have poor armor penetration, and have less range than any equally-advanced weapon in the game (and many less advanced weapons). Their ability to cover for the weaknesses of other weapon types is therefore somewhat limited, though as ships generally back off once they start losing components railguns can function as a way to get hostile ships to keep back from standoff designs (though in this role they are hampered by their relatively large size per component and their poor armor penetration). Railguns are most attractive when armor is weak or nonexistent, or when your opponents are capable of wiping the floor with your more normal designs (e.g. pirates against pre-warp or newly warp-capable empires; pirate ships are generally larger and more powerful than the early-game ships of a prewarp empire, and so relying on railguns to start damaging components can be as or sometimes more effective than attempting to concentrate enough fire to bring down the shields of the larger pirate vessels). Railguns are the one primary weapon type that in my opinion cannot be used as a sole-focus weapon; their lack of range, low DPS, and poor anti-armor performance renders them virtually useless for taking down colony defenses such as medium or large spaceports and defense bases, as they'll be exposed to the full firepower of the station(s) and most likely have significantly less powerful defenses. Blasters and phasers aren't great for sieges, either, but at least they generally have the range to not be exposed to the fire of multiple stations simultaneously (sometimes you can't avoid that even with blasters and phasers, but railguns are much worse about it).
Some other things to bear in mind:
While it's important to have armor, it's not necessarily important to have advanced armor. Not many default designs make heavy use of railguns, and if you do come up against such ships you can usually counter just by staying at range, graviton beams can bypass armor anyways, and all other weapons have to go through shields first.
Infantry attack and defense bonuses are more useful early on than later in the game, as cloning facilities (available in the High Tech tree if you advance down the medical line) can provide more or less the same effect since they cause newly-recruited infantry to have the same strength as your most powerful currently extant infantry unit. Armored, special forces, and planetary defense units are all useful to have but not essential, and armored and special forces units are primarily there for opposed invasions or attacks on pirate facilities. Not really something you need to prioritize, though starting the buildup of such forces early won't hurt. Planetary Defense Units, as the name implies, are mostly there to be part of the garrison, and they're expensive enough that they'll be a fairly small part of your army, mostly present only on important worlds with large garrisons.
Fighters are excellent siege weapons and can be adequate for fleet actions, but developing advanced fighters other than missile bombers requires that you develop torpedoes to some degree (advanced missile bombers, as you might expect, require missile technology). Be careful with fighters, however, as dedicated carriers can be quite vulnerable to standard warships despite their size, and fleets of full-size carriers can be rather costly.
Boarding pods are a special-purpose weapon; capturing vessels and stations is more a gimmick (particularly later in the game) than a useful strategy, as the captured vessels will typically be in poor condition. Nevertheless, it's useful to unlock boarding pods early on because each pod provides some defense against hostile boarding actions, and because capturing a few pirate ships early in the game can give you useful technologies that wouldn't have been an immediate priority.
In Energy and Construction, you want to focus on reactors, hyperdrives, shields, and construction size, and may want to improve sublight drive and maneuvering thrusters. Energy collectors are important to have but not necessarily to enhance, as the initial energy collector is more than adequate for most ship designs and probably won't take too much space on most bases. Jump inhibition is useful if you're trying to hunt down some ships, though it's not strictly necessary, and it's something where simply having the first component can be sufficient for a long time, especially as increasing the size of the area of effect isn't strictly an improvement (it catches enemy ships better, but it also catches your ships better - jump inhibitors do not distinguish between friend and foe, and installing them on your ships can cost you if you trap one of your ships next to a relatively powerful enemy vessel). Damage control and repair is useful, but repair is buried kind of deep in the tree and the upgraded damage control unit isn't really a lot better than the initial version, and you get more or less the same effect against most weapons by improving your shields.
In High Tech, long-range sensors are a big bonus; pirate hunting becomes much easier when you don't need to send a ship to each system to check for bases, or risk a spy on a steal (territory/galaxy/operations) map or deep cover mission (granted, risking your spy is the only fast way to enhance their abilities). Countermeasures and targeting are variably useful; sometimes you get a fleet admiral who gives more or less the same bonus (or a bigger one), other times you might never see an admiral pop up. Other than that, crew systems, command systems, the colonization techs, and wonders are the big draws of the High Tech tree; getting to at least standard fuel cells and cargo bays on a prewarp start is also a good idea.
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AndysonofBob
- Posts: 13
- Joined: Fri Aug 21, 2015 12:27 pm
RE: Will someone share order research please?
That was so helpful that I have printed it out and made notes on it.
I can't think of any follow up questions because it was so complete.
AWESOME!!!!
I can't think of any follow up questions because it was so complete.
AWESOME!!!!
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ehsumrell1
- Posts: 2529
- Joined: Tue Aug 17, 2010 7:53 am
- Location: The Briar Patch Nebula
- Contact:
RE: Will someone share order research please?
Very well stated Aeson!
[&o]
[&o]
Shields are useless in "The Briar Patch"...
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fierceking
- Posts: 236
- Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2010 9:54 pm
RE: Will someone share order research please?
I'm assuming you're playing the vanilla game.
Less detail but to the point
If playing pre-warp, get warp bubble as soon as possible
Next highest priority is Trade Bazaar because of the boost to income.
Then
weapon
shield
construction size
repairbot
Less detail but to the point
If playing pre-warp, get warp bubble as soon as possible
Next highest priority is Trade Bazaar because of the boost to income.
Then
weapon
shield
construction size
repairbot
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CyclopsSlayer
- Posts: 583
- Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2012 11:49 pm
RE: Will someone share order research please?
@Aeson
Very good analysis.
In my opinion Gravitic and Area weapons are non-starters due to the potential for Fratricide. Great weapons against enemy fighter swarms, area weapons work even better at killing your own fighters and small units.
In most games I focus on Torpedoes and Fighters as my two primary weapons, preferring standoff operations to knife-fighting.
@Andysonofbob
Boarding Pods may cost you ships early, but are also one of the easiest things to defend against. Nothing makes you 100% safe, but stack an extra few Hab modules to reach ~300 Boarding Strength and you will lose few ships and mines to boarders. NO TECH REQUIRED
As Fierceking says, Warp Bubble and Trade Bazaar are two important techs. In addition to the rest of his list.
Energy Converters - A must on all bases. Highly desired on warships that spend a lot of time idle on patrol. Useless on explorers that never should be sitting still to operate them. Will save you tons of fuel expenses.
Long Range Scanners - Want to watch those pirate and enemy fleets in motion before they hit? LRS is the Key. Park some scouts with an LRS in an overlapping grid and nothing moves in the covered area unseen.
One tech that is rarely mentioned but will let your explorers function MUCH better. Improved Planetary Resource Scanner. Sending the range from a few hundred to a few thousand means they will complete the scan of even monster defended asteroids on the first pass and not try to go back time and time again.
Choose your reactor path carefully based on the resources in your empire. Caslon rich, Fission. Caslon poor, Fusion, etc...
Very good analysis.
In my opinion Gravitic and Area weapons are non-starters due to the potential for Fratricide. Great weapons against enemy fighter swarms, area weapons work even better at killing your own fighters and small units.
In most games I focus on Torpedoes and Fighters as my two primary weapons, preferring standoff operations to knife-fighting.
@Andysonofbob
Boarding Pods may cost you ships early, but are also one of the easiest things to defend against. Nothing makes you 100% safe, but stack an extra few Hab modules to reach ~300 Boarding Strength and you will lose few ships and mines to boarders. NO TECH REQUIRED
As Fierceking says, Warp Bubble and Trade Bazaar are two important techs. In addition to the rest of his list.
Energy Converters - A must on all bases. Highly desired on warships that spend a lot of time idle on patrol. Useless on explorers that never should be sitting still to operate them. Will save you tons of fuel expenses.
Long Range Scanners - Want to watch those pirate and enemy fleets in motion before they hit? LRS is the Key. Park some scouts with an LRS in an overlapping grid and nothing moves in the covered area unseen.
One tech that is rarely mentioned but will let your explorers function MUCH better. Improved Planetary Resource Scanner. Sending the range from a few hundred to a few thousand means they will complete the scan of even monster defended asteroids on the first pass and not try to go back time and time again.
Choose your reactor path carefully based on the resources in your empire. Caslon rich, Fission. Caslon poor, Fusion, etc...
RE: Will someone share order research please?
The reason I didn't cover graviton or area weapons is because in my view they are unsuited to being used as primary weapons on mainline designs, and also because I really don't have much to say about area weapons. I kind of got burned out on area weapons in Legends when the computer put Devastator Pulses on my defensive bases and spaceports, which led to large freighter losses whenever a random pirate frigate came knocking, and I think it ended up costing me a station or two. Area weapons are supposed to be better about friendly fire now, though I've never put standard area weapons on any ship design intended to be part of a fleet or on any station design intended to see a lot of ship traffic since then. Once burned, twice shy as they say. At any rate, standard area weapons seem to me as though they're more a weapon for lone raiders; fly a single ship with a lot of shields and armor and area weapons into a busy space port and open up, and in theory do a lot of damage to the bunched up freighters and other ships at the station for relatively little investment. Ion Pulses and area gravity weapons are decent for stalling until reinforcements arrive or until your other weapons can kill or drive off the attacker, though, and the ion pulse at least cannot directly kill anything.In my opinion Gravitic and Area weapons are non-starters due to the potential for Fratricide.
The graviton beams, as far as I can tell, have no potential for fratricide; their issue is that they provide very little DPS for the size invested, and they're stuck engaging at blaster range or less. For the size invested, graviton and resonant graviton beams have less DPS than missiles, and on top of that their damage is supposed to be reduced in some way by the target's size, and their range is kind of bad from mid-game onwards (early graviton beams have ranges comparable to similarly-advanced blasters, but later-game graviton beams are more comparable in range to similarly-advanced railguns). Graviton beams do get to hold the target in place, but you only need one or two graviton beams to get this benefit, and this is basically a less versatile version of the benefit of tractor beams. The only advantage graviton beams have that makes them seem attractive as a primary weapon is their ability to bypass shields and armor, but that's not, in my experience, sufficient to make them work as a design's primary armament; other weapons simply cause so much more damage for the size invested that the shield and armor bypass of graviton weapons kind of doesn't matter, especially once ships have damage control units or, worse for the graviton beams, repair bots.
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AndysonofBob
- Posts: 13
- Joined: Fri Aug 21, 2015 12:27 pm
RE: Will someone share order research please?
Righteeoo
Aeson bigged up torps mentioning fighters making good siege weapons, with the only con of having to research torps! And CS extolled the virtues of Torps and fighters. It's torps and fighters then!
I knew I had a question: "Stand off", "Knife fights" etc. Is this something that must be controlled manually or will the AI do this? If I stack my fleet with fighters and torps which I assume to be fairly rangey will the AI snipe? Or do you guys manually control your fleets?
Thanks!
Aeson bigged up torps mentioning fighters making good siege weapons, with the only con of having to research torps! And CS extolled the virtues of Torps and fighters. It's torps and fighters then!
I knew I had a question: "Stand off", "Knife fights" etc. Is this something that must be controlled manually or will the AI do this? If I stack my fleet with fighters and torps which I assume to be fairly rangey will the AI snipe? Or do you guys manually control your fleets?
Thanks!
RE: Will someone share order research please?
The design says what tactic (range setting) is to be used. This can be changed at any time.
At worst you have to override the AI once for each design that i made, the link to the design is easily available when a ship is selected (in the selection panel).
I manually control my fleets, but I will only mess with their in battle behavior at specific situations. Manually herding ships in combat is beyond hard, they have a will of their own
The settings are rather obvious, keep in mind that the game defaults to two weapons used (like blasters and torpedoes). Standoff - max range of the longest range weapons. All weapons - max range of the shorter range weapons. Point blank - knife fight.
When do I mess with detailed orders? Attacking certain special pirate bases to only attack one structure at first (the fleet circles its target by default). And during war, I may manually boss ships around on attacks on my defended colony. I manually ask a few ships to target each troop transport.
I am a player that enjoy managing fleets this way, and I can happily automate just about anything else.
At worst you have to override the AI once for each design that i made, the link to the design is easily available when a ship is selected (in the selection panel).
I manually control my fleets, but I will only mess with their in battle behavior at specific situations. Manually herding ships in combat is beyond hard, they have a will of their own
The settings are rather obvious, keep in mind that the game defaults to two weapons used (like blasters and torpedoes). Standoff - max range of the longest range weapons. All weapons - max range of the shorter range weapons. Point blank - knife fight.
When do I mess with detailed orders? Attacking certain special pirate bases to only attack one structure at first (the fleet circles its target by default). And during war, I may manually boss ships around on attacks on my defended colony. I manually ask a few ships to target each troop transport.
I am a player that enjoy managing fleets this way, and I can happily automate just about anything else.
RE: Will someone share order research please?
There are two settings in the ship design that set how closely it will engage an enemy (one for "stronger" enemies, another for "weaker" enemies, with the determination for stronger and weaker based entirely off of firepower according to the game manual; I think the manual says "stronger" enemies are those with a firepower more than 30% greater than your own ship's firepower and everything else is "weaker"). Evade, Standoff, All Weapons, and Point Blank are the engagement range settings. Setting a design to evade will result in ships of that design closing with their targets until they are just beyond the range of the longest-ranged weapon on the target; it appears that the design's own weapons are not considered for the range that the ships will attempt to hold, so if your evading ships come up against something which has a similar maximum range, you can expect your evading ships to be pursued (if the opponent is mobile) or to stand off beyond their own weapon range (if the opponent is immobile). Setting a design to standoff will result in ships of that design attempting to remain at a distance from their targets which is roughly equal to the maximum range of the longest-ranged weapon carried by the design, while setting a design to all weapons will result in ships of that design attempting to remain at a distance from their targets which is roughly equal to the maximum range of the shortest-ranged weapon carried by the design (this means that all weapons and standoff are equivalent for designs which carry only one type of weapon or which carry multiple weapons which all have the same maximum range). Setting a design to point blank will result in ships of that design closing with their targets to a very short range; this is the primary 'knife fight' setting, though you can get a similar effect with all weapons set if you include a railgun or other similarly short-ranged weapon (I believe, however, that point blank will still generally get the ship to try to close further than all weapons will even when the all weapons design carries a short-range weapon).I knew I had a question: "Stand off", "Knife fights" etc. Is this something that must be controlled manually or will the AI do this? If I stack my fleet with fighters and torps which I assume to be fairly rangey will the AI snipe? Or do you guys manually control your fleets?
If you really wanted to, you can control the engagement range manually by issuing movement orders during battles to force ships to move to engage at ranges which the vessels would not use if left to their own devices. I don't usually bother; the settings in the design files generally work well enough for me. The main exception is during an assault on a fortified postion (sometimes pirate space ports, usually well-defended colonies; when there are three or four defensive bases and a large space port, controlling where your ships are relative to the stations can make a big difference in the losses you take, and it's not as much of a hassle as attempting to control where all the ships are relative to the enemy ships in a straight fleet action).