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Peace is a Lie, but so is War. And everything else, come to think of it.  I'll take a bit here to update the current situation. Domestically, we are building Weather Controllers on any planet with a significant number of farmers. Three colony ships are getting built, and I plan on having two un-needed extras operational at any given time from here on so I can take advantadge of any ... opportunities. You can see that Alaozar II is pretty much the extra-food producer. I've not been at the point in quite a while where it needed any assistance - large fully-terraformed planets build enough for themselves, and then Alazoar II handles whatever else is needed. That'll get easier once its weather controller comes online. We have 19 planets in 12 systems right now. Labor Division We last visited this 32 turns ago. ** Total: 153M(+34M) - 5M Mrrshan, the rest are TechnoGeek(96.7%) ** Farming: 37M - 24.2% ** Industry: 71M - 46.4% ** Research: 45M - 29.4% Still about a quarter is required for farming, but we are gradually saving money on the shipping-about of foodstuffs. The industry/research balance shifts about based on whatever the current needs are. Usually it's more of an even split, but as we acquire stuff like terraforming or weather controllers, or need more ships out there, adjustments are made.  As you can see here, we are spending only 56% of our income. With a balance of well over +200 per turn, regular investment in buying whatever-the-heck early is the general pattern. In terms of research, we're still neck-and-neck with the Klackons, with the Silicoids a very distant third and everyone else an irrelevancy.  On the other hand, nobody with a brain wants to fight the rocks right now.  I expect we'll get a research deal with the bugs soon to boost our mutual advantadge even higher. It's worth nothing that our war with the Darloks is the only active one in the entire galaxy. I'm sure that won't last long. Maybe the Klackons and Silicoids would like to come to blows?  The latest starchart. In theory, what I'd like to do now is grab up the empty systems between ourselves and the Klackons, then secure Madira and Quercia, 'liberating' the riches the Space Hydras are guarding there, and wrap up by giving the Darloks a sizable piece of my mind. More likely other events will force my hand, but if given the time that's what I'll work on.  All of our big planets will naturally be prioritizing these. Maintenance cost is 4, so smaller planets can't support them. Right now my cutoff is 17M or higher - we have a bunch of those, but smaller farming worlds like Pund, or the formerly radiated stuff in Lerion will stay far away from this kind of investment.  Choices are getting harder all the time. Microlite Construction uses nano technology to build things with less metal but the same strength and durability, for +1 worker production. Nano Disassemblers further double the amount of pollution-free production you get, and Zortrium Armor will make our ships tougher. SD 3522.7 - Told ya it wouldn't take long. Meklar and Sakkra are at war. The Sakkra are gradually snatching up territory from the weaker races around them, though they didn't do too well against the Darloks a while back. Still, they appear to be making smart moves since then and trying to become relevant.  Next turn it's time to vote again. Third time I think? We have 17 votes, the Sakkra 15, and Meklar side with us with their five. Everyone else abstains. So nobody is close to veto or winning. Peace with Meklar/Sakkra after exactly one turn of blather, but Darlok-Alkari step into the void and declare hostilities.  Very nice. The two systems we were scouting along the bottom edge are totally empty - no asteroids, no gas giants, no anything - so the only one left is Fieras. Which our fleet can't reach. A colony ship is en route, so it's all about whether it has a friendly reception or not. But that's all we can do in this neck of the woods.  Thanks, fellas! Now if one of them wins decisively, this could be bad for us in making them even more powerful. I think it's more likely though that it buys me time to do the things I want to do in peace.  Add this to the fact that the Bogina system he oversees was recently fully-terraformed, and it's a veritable cash cow - and does pretty well at building stuff too.  Is it just me, or do these look suspiciously like a Kilrathi fighter?  Jump Gates are a poor man's version of the Stargates from MOO1 - increasing travel speed by 3 parsecs between planets that have them. All colonies automatically get them; I'm kinda disappointed by that. A high maintenance cost would make you choose, although perhaps be crippling to the AI. Sub Space Communications is the real prize here I think. +2 command points for each base, so we'll be able to field a much larger fleet, and any fleet within 6 parsecs of a base can be re-routed at any time.  Feeling a need for a battleship-level design, I came up with the Silencer. There's a saying that he who tries to do everything does nothing well. I'm hoping these are big enough to support versatility. Slightly more mass drivers than our Interdictor cruisers, and Auto-Fire for the standard ones. The Battle Scanner should help our accuracy - I'm counting on the guns to knock out missiles/fighters and dispensing with the ECM Jammer. Didn't have enough room for both defensive specials and having a half-decent payload. The Graviton Beams are for dealing with unshielded opposition such as the Antarans. For most situations the mass drivers will be better, but perhaps they will help in concern with missile defenses from planets/battlestations. It is also hoped that these will be a start towards being able to go toe-to-toe with the multi-battleship task forces that the Klackons and Silicoids are throwing about. And also make for a nice thing to sink stockpiled industry into. Colony Ships really aren't big enough to be convenient for that anymore. 3523.1 - The Antarans are back, headed for Pund (3 Destroyers, 3 Frigates). Our fleet is too far away and couldn't stop them even it wasn't. We're about to do something else. Battle of Madira So it turns out that mass drivers work pretty well against organic tissue, and that our cruisers can take a few shots from whatever a 'Plasma Breath' is. And as for Commissioner Necron, well ... that isn't much of a choice is it. He was hired of course.  The second planet is actually bigger and a Tundra, but not as rich. So we'll lose a decent planet in Pund, but we're gaining a lot more at the same time. I'll take that trade. Klackon-Silicoid war is over, and we've snatched up all the free systems - though there is that other planet yet in Fieras.  Much as it pains me, there was some reassignment to do, and Magistrate Rash-lki was relieved of her duties. She has served with distinction in both games. Necron takes over in Bogina, Grogg will handle the homeworld, and since I want to keep a slot open it's hasta la bye bye.  It hasn't been that long, but I'd forgot this was even happening.  Surprisingly, we didn't even lose the planet. Would have showed the battle if I knew it was going to be that close. We destroyed their three frigates - this is what the destroyers accomplished. I had Starbase, Missile Base, and Radiation Shield for protection. The Starbase had heavy graviton beams which did some damage to them. A more concentrated defense supported by the fleet just might have been able to get the job done. Meanwhile, the Mrrshans on Tah II have been fully assimilated.  Meanwhile, a new chapter is about to begin. As our fleet heads over to snag Quercia from the second Hydra, the Silicoids are headed to Willow. They have said nothing. They are just coming. I've gotten a missile base up in haste, but that's not going to be enough. The first group is battleship/destroyer, second one has a bunch of transports. So we know who our next enemy is, even if they haven't had the courtesy to declare it. The Darloks will have to wait.
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May 29, 2019 21:41
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The Silicoids look pretty behind in tech, you never know, maybe your missile base can chunk a decent number of their ships.
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May 29, 2019 22:00
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Thotimx posted:
Yup, that looks like a Dralthi. .JPG)
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May 30, 2019 01:54
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Thotimx posted:
The hell they are. Autolabs produce 30 RP with no scientist investment and only cost 3 BC to maintain. You should put them literally everywhere.
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May 30, 2019 18:48
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Sure, those would be really good but the point was there's really good stuff in most of the available options to research right now (and that one is more expensive than most). I'd argue that the fact that I'm keeping up in research (way ahead of all but the bugs) suggested that perhaps boosting research more wasn't the biggest priority when they have much larger fleets roaming about.
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May 30, 2019 21:13
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Thotimx posted:Sure, those would be really good but the point was there's really good stuff in most of the available options to research right now (and that one is more expensive than most). I'd argue that the fact that I'm keeping up in research (way ahead of all but the bugs) suggested that perhaps boosting research more wasn't the biggest priority when they have much larger fleets roaming about. You've more or less reached the stage of the game where a regular victory is a certainty if you push for it - you've grown large enough and have a sufficiently secure tech base that none of the AIs can compete with you on research, and despite the AI's inscrutable and substantial bonuses to industry, they're pretty dumb about building things or recognizing when they need to rapidly scale up to deal with a threat. The question isn't really can you smash the rest of the AI, the question is how you want to do it. If you stopped researching right now, odds are very good that you could simply build more and bigger ships and aggressively roll up the rest of the galaxy without much in the way of meaningful resistance.
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May 30, 2019 21:45
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ulmont posted:The hell they are. Autolabs produce 30 RP with no scientist investment and only cost 3 BC to maintain. You should put them literally everywhere. Autolabs are amazing if you get Mentox around turn 20, but where Thot is at already, they're nice but as he said there are other very good choices on that table.
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May 31, 2019 04:30
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Olesh posted:You've more or less reached the stage of the game where a regular victory is a certainty if you push for it - Hmm. I was going to talk about this at the top of the next update, but basically I'm not quite this confident in it yet. I've been looking at it more as this Silicoid war is the galaxy's last chance to stop me. I think I can beat them due to the tech gap, but if the Klackons joined in with them - and I think it's a good bet they either do that or join me and attack the rocks, because we are their only neighbors and they aren't known for sitting idly by - I'm not sure I could defeat both of them. If, however, I were to decisively defeat the Silicoids then yeah I figure it'd be strategically over. In any case, I definitely have a little more wariness with regards to the 3-5 battleship task forces that I've seen floating around than that level of confidence in the outcome would indicate. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 07:55 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 07:52
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Thotimx posted:Hmm. I was going to talk about this at the top of the next update, but basically I'm not quite this confident in it yet. I've been looking at it more as this Silicoid war is the galaxy's last chance to stop me. I think I can beat them due to the tech gap, but if the Klackons joined in with them - and I think it's a good bet they either do that or join me and attack the rocks, because we are their only neighbors and they aren't known for sitting idly by - I'm not sure I could defeat both of them. If, however, I were to decisively defeat the Silicoids then yeah I figure it'd be strategically over. In any case, I definitely have a little more wariness with regards to the 3-5 battleship task forces that I've seen floating around than that level of confidence in the outcome would indicate. Considering that Silicoid's diplomacy malus, the Klackons will probably declare war on both of you: can't remember if they've whined about your population yet, so they probably won't form "team gently caress-science" until they do.
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Jun 1, 2019 06:01
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Nobody's complained about population. Yet.
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Jun 2, 2019 21:50
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This Galaxy Blows Turns out I hadn't saved at the end of the last session and had to replay a couple turns. Antaran attack on Pund II went basically the same and the Silicoids still moved against Willow. A couple things went different though: I decided to invest in getting a Starbase up there, which I barely had time for, instead of the Missile Base/Radiation Shield combo. Also ...  This came in one year earlier than last time.  Astro Construction. ** Battleoids are the next work in ground combat, with a +10 combat bonus and 3 HP. ** Ground Batteries are a beam-weapon installation for planetary defense. I don't plan on building any immediately, but using them as an option if I need to get something up quickly to help with an Antaran attack. ** Titan Construction allows for stupid-big warships to be built, the next size above Battleships. This is just a 'clean out the cheapest option' selection.  And here's our notification of hostilities. You will pay for flexing your muscles in this way. Defending Willow I was pleasantly surprised with the ease at which we were able to repulse their attack. Less so with myself, I'm still not that comfortable with the space combat and did cool stuff here like unnecessarily and unsuccessfully try to target the first torpedoes we've seen with the PD weapons. Which are, hilariously, still Lasers! The Silicoids will have to come in force to take down any of our fortified systems. Unfortunately they are poised to do precisely that, with one of their 5-Battleships (and a cruiser for fun) task forces en route. So we'll get that missile base and shield up ASAP and see how much damage we can do. I've switched our fleet to intercept, but it won't get there in time ...  Things are starting to get real now. The Sakkra have unofficially joined the fray, sending a single destroyer to Willow. Smallish Silicoid task forces are also headed to Tah and Lerion. As you can see our command points have boosted significantly - up from 28 to 36 - but it'll take some time to get battleships operational. So the question here is where to send the fleet? What's the best use of what we have? I think the answer to that at the moment is defending Tah and Lerion. Assuming that Willow does significant damage to their main force but falls in the effort, we can't get there in time anyway. Can't reach Tah either - a year late - but Lerion can be defended. I'm confident in our ability to defend the core worlds, but not so much in projecting power out to the frontier.  Apparently showing the orbital scaffolding around the Titan, this is the least impressive of the three images for this field actually.  Staying in the Construction field for Advanced Manufacturing. ** Planet Construction - We can now turn an asteroid belt or gas giant into a habitable planet, as has been discussed in the thread. Naturally I'll have to do this just because I can. ** Automated Repair Unit - Repairs 20% of armor/structure and 10% of internals each turn during combat. ** Recyclotron - Recycled materials contribute +1 construction per population, and does not count toward pollution. The way it is worded makes it sound like it doesn't depend on how many workers you have, just how many citizens are on the planet. This is fairly cheap, and the first one is just plain cool while the other two are definitely going to be useful.  NO. Notably, they do not do as I expected and declare war.  Rather amusingly, the big Silicoid fleet just sits in Willow blockading! Well, I don't want to give them time to second-guess their decision. We're going to keep building defenses there - I can still add a fighter garrison and ground batteries. The Sakkra incoming is a bunch of transports and very little in the way of combat fleets. If the Silicoids fear our defenses this much - I can think of no other reason why they wouldn't just attack - then I can commit my fleet to the undefended systems and hold them off.  Missed this in all the activity, but I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it anyway.  A weird thing to say a turn after we told you to go shove your demand - but you're welcome.  What is this, blow sunshine up our arse day?  Nope. I suggest you shove your demand because, while I wouldn't mind giving it to you, we could care less what you think. Look in the mirror if you want an example of a pathetic empire. Something completely bizarre happened next. The entirety of the Silicoid combat battle group in Willow - 5 Battleships and a cruiser, not counting the additional Battleship that was incoming - up and disappeared. I think their AI said it was time to scrap some ships. In the long run that may be bad news, as it may mean a new and improved design is on the way. But for now, Willow doesn't have to add any more defenses and can go back to normal building up. We'll incinerate the limited Sakkra force if they are dumb enough to attack. Also, Klackons are headed to Tah, so a war announcement from them is quite likely. They can fight the rocks for it. We don't have much industry stockpiled there, so ...  Yeah, this is expensive. Most of our bankroll. On the other hand, this is also why I keep at least a thousand in reserve, and we'll quickly reconstitute the lost funding. It'll save me the trouble of recapturing it later. Those bloody cats better freaking appreciate this investment. They're getting a Starbase ahead of time, which based on what we've seen will have no trouble eliminating all of the incoming while the fleet awaits the attack in Lerion. Also, this incident convinces me to up the savings to 2k. Never know when I might need it.  Another surprise attack. We didn't have much left there after the Antarans hit it. I don't know why I couldn't see this fleet - it was the big group previously mentioned that I thought they'd scrapped. At the same time, the Silicoid battleship was knocked out by our expensive starbase at Tah II, and the official word of war with the bugs - worded exactly the same as the rocks did, conspiratorial asshats - was delivered. They had a cruiser and two frigates, but it was a much tougher fight. They are more advanced of course, and that was particularly true of their beam defense which comes in at better-than-Antaran levels of +142. They took down the Starbase's shields, but we still won the day with missiles doing most of the damage for us. And two Klackon ship officers at least were among the dead. A fine day's work, and I'm told the Mrrshan citizens on the planet celebrated heartily. Oh, and we're at war with the Sakkra as well. They just didn't announce it, but they are blockading Willow.  This galaxy sucks. We sign a NAP with the Meklar and demand that they declare war on the Sakkra. The reply that our 'suggestion is found acceptable'. It wasn't a suggestion, servant! Umm, I mean good. It's strange - after seeing our latest toys in action, I'm pretty confident here despite having almost literally everyone we know united against us. Biggest concern is the Council, because right now they would be close to having enough to elect Sauron out of spite.  Umm ... huh? How are we producing pollution when there's nobody here?? And why do we have housing with no citizens? Why wasn't the planet destroyed? The Lerion engagement told us that it would take our mass drivers a while to wear down the defenses of a Silicoid Fury-class battleship. They didn't wait around for that to happen, retreating at the first opportunity.  I don't even want to know how expensive that framework alone is. FWIW, it costs less than a battleship - 800 Industry - to do this. That's either obscenely cheap or my frame of reference on how stupid-powerful these starships are is way off. I was thinking a few thousand.  We'll take the leap to Cybertronics now. ** Autolab - As mentioned, 30 RP with no need for labor. ** Cybertronic Computer - +100 beam attack, the next upgrade in that line of things. ** Structural Analyzer - Doubles the damage of anything that penetrates the shields of a target. Seems like that'd be very useful against the Antarans, effectively halving the usefulness of their Damper Fields. And the Pund situation was resolved. MOOII posted:Lost colony at Pund II due to all people dead LOL. So the bombardment itself didn't do the job, just their cursed bioweapons. How very Silicoid of them. This is a new one for me.  The main Silicoid fleet is just hanging out at Pund. I think that's because Willow is too well-defended and they don't know what else to do, as they can't reach any of our other systems. I think of counterattacking, but we need a battleship group to make that work. Our Interdictors are too fragile to take on their main force. But there's no reason we can't still wipe out some of them. We'll reach Carcosa before their retreating battleship down here due to our superior warp engines.  The other two planets are a gas giant and a large Tundra Poor. Plenty of room for more TechnoGeeks to live.  We've got a significant edge in ground combat here. The conquered population is Klackon, not Silicoid - the Mrrshan had it, Klackons destroyed and re-colonized, then Silicoids invaded, now us. Carcosa IV hasn't been a fun place to live. We've begun to hit back, and that big Silicoid fleet has dissipated, splitting up in to several smaller ones and retreating into their territory. I think that serves our purposes, and despite everyone hating us they don't seem to really be able to do anything about it. I'm taking that as an invitation to begin to attack more aggressively, particularly once we get some bigger ships out there. In less than half a year battleships will begin rolling ... well, flying ... off the assembly line at the shipyards.
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Jun 3, 2019 10:21
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Well poo poo, that's a lot of sudden hostility. But yeah, the MoO2 AI hates the player, it feels like. Very rarely you'll have one staunch ally that actually sticks with you, but anyone you're not outright allied with will be an aggressive dickhead... much like human players, really.
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Jun 3, 2019 10:53
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The Fury VI battleship looks impressive at first, but holy poo poo, that loadout is awful. It wastes a shitload of space on bioweapons and bombs, has no specials, and a paper-thin shield. If that thing had ignored you starbase and gone right for the planet, it would've hosed the place up real bad, but I don't think the AI wanted to do bombardment against a target that wasn't shooting at it, while the star base was there and being dangerous. Those two five-shot MIRV Pulsons are dangerous, but you have enough point defense on your station to render those harmless, and your weapons ensured that you would win a slugging match. Which you did. I'm not going to say "pfft don't worry about any Silicoid battleships from here on out," but the Fury VI is a paper tiger.
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Jun 3, 2019 15:33
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Thotimx, I just wanted to thank you for getting me into MoO1 with the previous LP. I initially dismissed it in favor of MoO2's "Civilization in space" approach, but it really is quite elegant (and I never realized how much I missed non-retarded automation options in games, holy gently caress).
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Jun 3, 2019 15:49
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MechaCrash posted:The Fury VI battleship looks impressive at first, but holy poo poo, that loadout is awful. It wastes a shitload of space on bioweapons and bombs, has no specials, and a paper-thin shield. If that thing had ignored you starbase and gone right for the planet, it would've hosed the place up real bad, but I don't think the AI wanted to do bombardment against a target that wasn't shooting at it, while the star base was there and being dangerous. Those two five-shot MIRV Pulsons are dangerous, but you have enough point defense on your station to render those harmless, and your weapons ensured that you would win a slugging match. Which you did. The AI will often waste precious ship space with bombs, I don't know why.
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Jun 3, 2019 15:52
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Thanks to this thread, I have learned that there is a very professionally done fan patch available, that, among a ton of bug fixes and some QoL improvements, also provides the option for better AI ship blueprints. http://moo2mod.com/ Needless to say, I've reinstalled the game.
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Jun 4, 2019 01:34
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I'm legitimately unsure as to why it's equipped that Star Base with PD Laser Cannons. It's a mystery! Normally, you get equipped with the "best" PD weapon available for the PD slot, which goes in the order Laser Cannon, Fusion Beam, Mass Driver, Phasor, Particle Beam* (if you ever manage to obtain it). It's possible that the auto-ship design sees that your Physics-based weapons are more miniaturized than Mass Drivers, but in that case it should still be picking Fusion Beams over Laser Cannons, and based on my experience Star Bases and Ground Batteries don't give two shits about whether or not what they select is miniaturized (it'll pick exotic techs even if regular but miniaturized techs would be more effective for the available space). Torpedoes are weird - in many ways, they are the real late-game equivalents to missiles, as they can't be shot down by beam weapons (or anti-missile rockets) and have unlimited ammo, but require a turn of not firing between shots. They don't miniaturize as well as missiles and beam weapons (down to a minimum of 40% vs 25%) and use missile evasion for hit calculation (and are effected by ECM). Some words about Structural Analyzer and why Creative Beam weapons end up vastly outperforming everything else late game.... In the early game, miniaturized nuclear missile spam is the order of the day. It's cheap, it's effective, and can be done reasonably well from range with minimal risk. Nuclear missiles are effective against early shields, and the AI is not reasonably capable of defending against this tactic. Missiles, however, don't get better fast enough - there aren't enough intermediate Chemistry researches to reasonably miniaturize-to-MIRV follow up missiles, and beam damage scales up faster than your ability to outlay missile HP, so the non-Antaran AI steadily gets better at defending against an exclusively missile-based strategy as it techs up. Fast Missile Racks can give something of a last gasp to a heavily missile-focused technology base, but eventually you can be forced to diversify if you don't win rapidly enough. Enter the Structural Analyzer - it's not the first example of a Special System that makes all of your beam weapons better (that would be Battle Scanner), but the Structural Analyzer is where you start to see a substantial jump where "big ships" start simply outclassing equal or greater CP worth of small ships - a Structural Analyzer costs the same no matter what size of ship it's mounted on, but it costs a much smaller proportion of total space on a larger ship, leaving room for more beam weapons to benefit from the Structural Analyzer, et cetera. It's a multiplier, it's a strong one, and it's not the only one. Late game ships can benefit from multiple special systems that improve the effectiveness of all beam weapons. The end result is that, pound for pound, beam weapons end up being tremendously efficient at dealing damage. They can be countered, but doing so generally requires purpose-building ships with a technology advantage (an advantage that gets less and less possible as the game continues). Creatives ALWAYS get to do this, given sufficient time. Non-creatives can choose all the same technologies, but at the expense of other useful techs, and may not have the defensive techs available to effectively counter another civilization with access to the same offensive technologies.
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Jun 4, 2019 01:55
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Hannibal Rex posted:Thanks to this thread, I have learned that there is a very professionally done fan patch available, that, among a ton of bug fixes and some QoL improvements, also provides the option for better AI ship blueprints. Check you have that address right? I'm getting what looks like a Dutch error page.
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Jun 4, 2019 06:59
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nweismuller posted:Check you have that address right? I'm getting what looks like a Dutch error page. Huh. The address was working earlier today, but it looks like the have provider trouble. I hope they get things sorted soon. Anyway, my favorite part of MoO2 is duking it out with the Antarans, and it took me way too long to figure out how to best go about doing that; Small galaxy, Impossible, 2 players. Pick Uncreative, and whatever else you like. With only one AI opponent and uncreative, quite a few technologies won't be available each game. In my current one, I had to use titanium armor all the way until i could research adamantium; needless to say, I had to rebuild a lot of wiped out colonies. But fighting Antarans with limited tech is quite a challenge. On the flip side, I had to realize how poor the AI really is. Without multiple AI players who freely trade tech with each other, it's pathetic even on impossible.
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Jun 5, 2019 01:56
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Klackon Krush Profitability is not what it once was. The Klackons have two different designs of battleships that I've seen, but they have nothing heading our way. Yet. For now, I think I want to hold the line in Carcosa until we have bigger and better ships in place. I don't think I'm quite ready to be more aggressive.  With the Silicoids shrinking back from the idea of attacking our fortified positions, and nobody else doing more than just making random noise, the Klackons appear to be the only real threat. But I want to do more than just stop them - I'd like to invade every last rock they inhabit, putting them all to work in our manufacturing centers. The bugs are the most prodigious race in the galaxy at making things, and I'd like to take advantage of that. If we defeat them, nobody has a chance of stopping us. Well, nobody that calls the Orion Galaxy home, at any rate.  I had to try, though this makes sense. We'll have to wait to assimilate our new servants in Carcosa. SD 3524.5 - The Klackons sent a battlegroup to Tah. Those Mrrshans just can't catch a break. Our fleet intercepted to try and hold them off ...  Looks a lot like a starbase, but there's only so many ways to draw things I suppose.  We don't really need anything in this field, except that with the way things are going I think relocating ships around the galaxy quickly is going to become more important. The bugs chose to blockade Tah rather than confront us. Some cats will starve, but that's better than being glassed.  None of them have been built yet, so I didn't add a new 'mark' number here or anything. The improved Silencer battleship design adds a Structural Analyzer and a couple more heavy-mount mass drivers, while getting rid of the graviton beam. The whole point of it was to do more damage against unshielded vessels, and I think this should do that better. I'm still conflicted over whether I want, for example, the engines/stabilizer combo or if I should switch one out for shield capacitors. In the end I just said screw it and left it as is. And for those clamoring for it, I naturally added Autolabs to the build queues of all developed worlds. That's a shockingly small minority, not much over a third of the total empire these days. SD 3524.6 - Next turn. First two battleships are 'finally' finished. Thanks to our jump gates, it'll only take three turns to get them to the front. Then we'll start to see what's what. Battle of Carcosa IV (10:32) I'm going to start putting the length of the video here in the title, because as has been discussed some of these are really long. Esp. with only a vaguely competent personage in command :P. The Klackon Battleships finally agreed to fight here. It wasn't a good day for either side, but a better one for us. Their fast Pulson missiles did a lot of damage and I never got a good handle on how far away to be. I decided to close the distance so that our standard mounts could participate in the fight. Either way, we lost a few cruisers but held them off - and we'll be replacing them with bigger ships soon anyway.  Here's our first 'homemade planet'. There was no fanfare when it was finished, and it'll need work. I built this to facilitate a massive Klackon-breeding campaign and also just to see what it was like. The existing population incubators in Alaozar and Mentar will also be used. On all of them I'm going to build every production-enhancing building I have - funded from the outside of course - and Cloning Centers eventually, and have them send as many Klackons as possible throughout the empire. Right now, we have only one assimilated, en route to Alaozar. The second we'll get in a few turns. This initiative will take some time, but of course there are plenty of other Klackon worlds out there for us to 'liberate'. Also noteworthy is that the Autolabs have us up over 1k research every turn now.  Look! Another candlestick, only new and improved!! The bomb and torpedoes are also cool-looking.  Electromagnetic Refraction just to get it out of the way. ** Personal Shield works as you might expect, +20 combat to all ground troops. ** Stealth Field. Aka the 'Darlok Device'. Fleets cannot be detected on the galactic map. ** Stealth Suit. Personalized cloaking or whatnot, adding +10 to spy rolls. Our agents have done well for quite some time, but we can always use the help.  Soon we were close to having enough battleships for a full fleet. So I designed this next. The Obscenity-class, our first Titan warship, is just meant to do everything; show up and obliterate whatever it has to. Planetary defenses, opposing ships, whatever is required. It will only be built on our large Rich/Ultra planets, and even then it will take significant effort. But we've got the time, and I doubt even the Antarans will easily fancy their chances against them.  The Klackons have a destroyer, a cruiser, and every single planet has the Starbase/Missile Base/Fighter Garrison combo. They won't be easy to crack - but at least they don't have battlestations or any big ships around. It might not be wise to attack just yet. But I'm gonna try anyway. I select Tatiana II, one of the terran planets ... Battle of Tatiana II(21:00) Yeah I know. If you think the length is horrifying, wait till you watch the action *rimshot*. In other words - Warning: this battle is both stupid, and stupid-long. Think of your brain cells and don't watch all of it, just enough to get the flavor. Ok so we have a problem; our mass drivers are ineffective against their latest missiles. Everything else is kind of ok - we lost a few cruisers but again so what. Fighters aren't too much of a problem, reinforced starbase can take a pounding but we can eventually get through that. Since they are equipping ECCM mods as well, I don't think going back to ECM Jammer is the answer. I could try Anti-Missile Rockets, but they are useless against Fighters. Not really knowing what to do, I'll cut off this update a bit early and whine to the thread about it. AP Mass Drivers? Continuous Graviton Beams? Clearly I need something that packs more of a punch against these missiles, which are both harder to hit and more resistant to damage. Just pack on more AF Mass Drivers seems pretty useless, cause I fired a LOT of them and I think only one or two missiles were taken down. Trying to engage them at closer range more consistently would clearly help hit them more, but obviously I need more than that in this situation. I could always just go conquer someone else first until I get Technology XYZ, but I think I should have a better option given that I'm more advanced than they are. There has to be a better solution, but I admit I don't know what it is.
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Jun 5, 2019 20:47
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Torrannor posted:The AI will often waste precious ship space with bombs, I don't know why. I think it's a 'kitchen sink' approach so they don't wind up in situations they can't handle; i.e, attacking a planet when they can't get through the shielding or whatever. Of course the flip side is the whole jack of all trades and master of none idea. Pierzak posted:I just wanted to thank you for getting me into MoO1 with the previous LP. I initially dismissed it in favor of MoO2's "Civilization in space" approach, but it really is quite elegant (and I never realized how much I missed non-retarded automation options in games, holy gently caress). You're welcome, and glad you've enjoyed it!
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Jun 5, 2019 21:06
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Thotimx posted:There has to be a better solution, but I admit I don't know what it is. Phasors are pretty poo poo hot from what I can remember from playing MOO2 a few years ago, especially after a few levels of miniaturisation. You've possibly out-lived the usefulness of mass drivers as damage output isn't high enough.
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Jun 5, 2019 21:45
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Thotimx posted:Ok so we have a problem; our mass drivers are ineffective against their latest missiles. Everything else is kind of ok - we lost a few cruisers but again so what. Fighters aren't too much of a problem, reinforced starbase can take a pounding but we can eventually get through that. I've been only skimming this thread up until now, but here's what I noticed from watching the last video: -Your ships are pretty under-gunned for their size. Also, heavy mount weapons can't shoot at missiles and fighters, you don't need to yellow them out. -Pulson missiles have 12 hp, except they're also armored, which doubles that to 24. You mostly had only two normal auto-firing mass drivers, doing 6x6 damage. So each of your ships can take down a grand total of one and a half missiles each turn, provided all the shots hit. Which they didn't. Missiles are hard to hit. -I usually just advance the targeted ship until I get the missile warning, because range matters a lot for accuracy, so you have a better chance to hit point-blank. I'll have a look back through the thread at which techs you have available; but for reference, to shoot down 3 such missiles, you'd need 4 af mass drivers. And missile defense at point-blank range is what the point defense mod is for. With 8 or more pd af mass drivers on each ship, you'd have had a lot less trouble. Do you have better beam weapons, or Lightning Field? Interceptors also can target missiles.
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Jun 5, 2019 21:57
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You're slowly killing me by not adding Auto Fire to your Heavy Mount Mass Drivers, I hope you realize this. Especially since your new ship designs do now include Battle Scanners. You haven't functionally upgraded your offensive capabilities in a long time; neither researching anything to replace your mass drivers nor done research to miniaturize them. But at this point, it's time for: Let's Talk About Missiles Some More Some of this information will be repeated from other posts. Bear with me! Okay, so missiles. Missiles are great! They launch independently, they have a really good base chance to hit (90%) before any modifiers come into play, and they do really solid damage and they get even better with upgrades. There are four types of missiles in the game - here's the damage and HP per missile. Note that missile HP is dependent upon the type of missile, and independent of any armor upgrades you may have researched. Nuclear - 8 damage, 4 HP Merculite - 14 damage, 8 HP Pulson - 20 damage, 12 HP Zeon - 30 damage, 16 HP There are five possible modifications that can be applied to missiles, and all missiles have access to them (although, as per usual, most modifications require some miniaturization before they can be used). Multiple modifications can be applied to the same weapon, and the stacking space/production costs are additive. Two modifications that are +100% (x2) together sum up to +200% (x3). They do not multiply to +300% (x4). No miniaturization required: Emissions Guidance - +300%. Damage that penetrates shields gets dealt to the drive system. Usually not worth the cost, but destroyed drives tend to explode and thus you usually don't require as much damage to actually take out a ship this way. 1 level of miniaturization: Fast - +25%. Adds 4 Combat Speed to the missile. This also affects the missile's Beam Defence. Armored - +25%. Doubles the HP of each missile. ECCM - +25%. Halves the defensive effects of any jammers protecting the target. 2 levels of miniaturization: MIRV - +100%. Each missile has 4 warheads, quadrupling the effective damage. Does not increase HP of the missile. -- Missile Stats: Missiles have a base combat speed of 10, modified by drive technology. Effectively, they're as fast as a fully loaded frigate. Each drive upgrade past Nuclear adds +2 to the combat speed, and then the Fast modification can add an additional +4, meaning that a Fast missile with Interphased Drivers moves at a combat speed of 24. "Missile Attack": Missiles use a formula basically identical in practice to the Beam Attack formula, but with an attack value of 50. Everything that modifies missile chance to hit does so by modifying Missile Evasion, not Missile Attack. Beam Defense: Missiles have a BD rating based on their Combat Speed x 5. In practice, this means that their BD ranges from between 50 (combat speed 10) to 120 (combat speed 24). Hit points - Each "missile group" has a shared HP pool, removing whole missiles as the pool takes damage. Visually, damage dealt to the pool is only displayed in terms of whole numbers of missiles removed. However, a single shot can remove multiple missiles - damage dealt in excess of any single missile's hit points rolls over and continues to destroy missiles. I feel a practical example is needed here - let's say there's a volley of 10 Nuclear Missiles. The whole group has 40 HP. I'm firing PD Laser Cannons at a range that isn't point blank, so each Laser Cannon hit only deals 1 damage. I have one ship that hits with 10 laser cannons on the missile group, dealing 10 damage. The missile group is reduced to 30 HP, and the group is reduced to 8 effective missiles - the combat display will show a "2" as the damage number, since 2 missiles were destroyed. Now, if I pull another ship in and hit with another 10 laser cannons, the missile group is reduced to 20 HP and the group is reduced to 5 effective missiles - the combat display will show a "3" as the damage number, since 3 missiles were destroyed. If, instead, I were firing regular Mass Drivers, each mass driver would deal 6 damage to the whole missile volley - every 2 mass driver hits would destroy 3 missiles. Missile Evasion: Hoo boy, okay. Ships natively have an ME of 0, and there are fewer things that modify ME than affect beam defense. Things that Boost ME: ECM - +70/100/130/(70), halved for ECCM missiles. ECM is the most obvious defense against missiles, although it's mitigated (but not completely countered) by ECCM. The best ECM system (Wide Area Jammer, at +130) also provides +70 missile evasion to other ships in the fleet. Inertial Stabilizer/Nullifier - +25/+50. Inertial systems provide half the listed bonus to Beam Defense as a bonus to Missile Evasion. Crew Skill - between +0 for Green crews and +37 for Ultra-Elite. Like Inertial systems, this is the listed Beam Defense bonus, but halved. Racial Ship Defense - +25 or +50 (or a -20 penalty). Unlike Crew Skill or Inertial systems, the full value actually applies here. Things that Penalize ME: ECCM - doesn't really penalize it directly, but halves the bonuses from ECM. Scanners - Tachyon Scanners, Neutron Scanners, and Sensors penalize enemy ships' Missile Evasion (-20, -40, and -70, respectively). Without factoring in Crew Skill, a ship with the best possible ECM system and Inertial Nullifiers has +115 ME against ECCM missiles, and +180 ME otherwise. Sensors can reduce this to +45 and +110 respectively, meaning that a ship that puts the maximum effort into improving its missile evasion is still going to get hit by roughly half of all ECCM missiles unless they also have strong crew skill and/or racial defensive bonuses. The Current Situation At Hand: Let's look at some numbers real quick. Regular Pulson missile: 12 HP Armored Pulson Missile: 24 HP The Missile Base fired Pulson missiles in groups of 20 (2x10, technically, but missiles fired like that combine into a single group), meaning that each group had a minimum of 240 HP to chew through in order to wipe them out. The Star Base was equipped with 7 Armored Fast ECCM Pulson missiles. Each Star Base missile group had 148 HP to wipe out (and an extra 20 Beam Defense) You had two ship designs in play - your new Silencer redesign (2x) and the revised Interdictors (5x). Each ship had two regular AF Mass Drivers as part of their armament. This gives you a total of 14 AF Mass Drivers. Your Silencers had Battle Scanners, which helped, but you simply did not have enough Mass Drivers on the field to shoot down the incoming fire arrayed against you. Without needing any additional technology research, your "better solution" really is bringing more Mass Drivers - nothing you have is as effective. Take a look at your new Obscenity. You've got: 48 space in Ion Pulse Cannons 35 space in Anti-Matter Bombs 130 Space in Heavy Mount (non-AF) Mass Drivers. (90 damage) 40 space in AF Mass Drivers. (72 damage) Total Space spent on weapons: 253 Heavy Mount weapons cost double the space for +50% more damage and range. Auto Fire weapons cost 50% more space for +200% more damage (and a -20 Beam Attack penalty, which is more than offset by Battle Scanners). Here's a suggested revamp: Ditch the current weapons and make sure you have Battle Scanners. Probably get rid of the Automated Repair Unit to make space. Using Mass Drivers, create three groups of weapons: Heavy AF Mass Drivers AF Mass Drivers PD AF Mass Drivers Then assign your space evenly between groups. This will give you a roughly 1:2:4 ratio of heavy/regular/PD weapons. This is actually a little inefficient - you probably should ditch the PD weapons and assign the space to the regular mass drivers, but you'll want the help against missiles. Then, assign a certain amount of leftover space for bombs. This should get you something like: 4 Hv AF Mass Drivers 8 AF Mass Drivers 16 PD AF Mass Drivers 2 Anti-Matter Bombs Longer term solutions include advancing your Force Fields research, which will give you better defense options, miniaturize your mass drivers (so you can carry more), give you access to Gauss Cannons as a long-term replacement for your Mass Drivers (although they won't be a better option until you miniaturize them), better shields and ECM, and some esoteric defensive options (like the aforementioned Lightning Field). Alternatively, a push into Physics will give you better beam weapons - Phasors are the best PD weapons you can research and make an excellent "workhorse" weapon, able to be upgraded with Auto Fire and Shield Piercing after some miniaturization, while Plasma Cannons are naturally Enveloping with the effective x4 damage multiplier that entails and are extremely solid out the gate (and only get better as you can mount more of them/upgrade them with Continuous).
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Jun 5, 2019 23:35
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It also occurred to me, watching the video, that you don't seem to know that your ships can rotate in place with the right mouse button. So, short summary: Get more mass drivers. Use fewer Heavy Mounts, turn your heavy mounts into heavy mount auto fire versions, and use more regular mounts (and also possibly some point defenses). Get closer before shooting missiles/fighters. Start researching improved weapons and defenses - even if you don't use them right away, the miniaturization in space and cost for your existing systems is extremely worthwhile.
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Jun 6, 2019 01:01
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I just think that Mass Drivers are pretty far in the tech-tree's rear view mirror by now. Wouldn't graviton beams be getting better performance by now? I'm not sure how they stack up in terms of space used, but the damage has to be better.
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Jun 6, 2019 01:08
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Olesh posted:Here's a suggested revamp: On Titan+ ships, you really need the repair unit. It can easily mean the difference between losing a Titan, or being essentially immune to the enemy weapons. And somewhat related, that's how you deal with enemy missiles and fighters - you plow into them and take out the source. And you still weren't boarding the station. 
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Jun 6, 2019 01:50
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MechaCrash posted:I just think that Mass Drivers are pretty far in the tech-tree's rear view mirror by now. Wouldn't graviton beams be getting better performance by now? I'm not sure how they stack up in terms of space used, but the damage has to be better. It can be tricky. One of the reasons Mass Drivers hold up so well is because they have no range dissipation. Beam damage isn't really random, so Mass Drivers get to hold on to their base damage at longer ranges, where other beam weapons are reduced to 35% of the listed value at max range (more or less where ships start in combat). Likewise, the Auto Fire upgrade is very solid - +50% space required for shooting three times. This effectively doubles your damage output for a given amount of space, assuming you can compensate for the -20 Beam Attack penalty. Beam weapons typically start with a base 10 size, and then miniaturization kicks in and reduces the size/cost down to a minimum of 25% (for beams and missiles; other systems miniaturize down to 40%). Graviton Beams are a "special" beam weapon that deal bonus structure damage, but they are base 15 size and lack the useful damage multiplier modifications to keep them competitive with other alternatives. When you first research Laser Cannons, Fusion Beams, or Mass Drivers, this means they all take 10 space. It's miniaturization kicking in that gives you the choice between a shiny new Fusion Beam at 10 space, or a Laser Cannon at 8. Most weapon modifications also have a certain level of miniaturization as a prerequisite. What this boils down to is that as a non-Creative, you don't have to explicitly upgrade your weapons in order to upgrade your armament. Auto Fire Mass Drivers do 6x3 damage, and at the current level of miniaturization each AF Mass Driver takes 10 space - that'll go down once Thotimx finishes the Electromagnetic Refraction research, as the space req of his Mass Drivers will drop from 7 to 5 and he'll be able to fit more on each of his ships. If he were to push all the way to Gauss Cannon, at Subspace Fields (2750 RP, after the 2000 RP Warp Fields), he'd have fully miniaturized Mass Drivers at the same time he unlocked Gauss Cannons. Sure, Gauss Cannons do 3x the damage, but each Mass Driver being fully miniaturized means they clock in at 25% of their original cost, making them more efficient in terms of damage per space spent even before you apply Auto Fire (which requires 2 levels of miniaturization to unlock). This means that, all else being equal, Thotimx is still better off using Mass Drivers until he's researched past Gauss Cannons to miniaturize them, probably as far as unlocking Auto Fire. However, all else is not equal. Mass Drivers don't do 18 damage (or 27 for heavy mount version) - they do 3x6 (or 3x9). The Class III shields that Thotimx has been rocking for a while represent a substantial decrease in incoming damage, chopping half the damage off his regular mass drivers and 1/3rd off his heavy mounts. By comparison, a regular Gauss Cannon shot would do 15 damage to Class III shields - five times as much per shot, and heavy mount Gauss Cannons would do 24 damage to shields - 4x as much as heavy mount Mass Drivers. On the other hand, missiles and fighters don't have shields - ships, starbases, and planetary installations do. So, a mix of firepower is warranted. Regular AF Mass Drivers are still going to be the most useful option for Thotimx to mass to shoot down incoming ordinance until he has the opportunity to research better beam weapon options, and incoming ordinance is the problem.
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Jun 6, 2019 01:56
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Thanks all for the posts. Some more real good info, which I will put into practice so your time isn't wasted  . Olesh posted:You're slowly killing me by not adding Auto Fire to your Heavy Mount Mass Drivers, I hope you realize this. Especially since your new ship designs do now include Battle Scanners. Well I was going by advice earlier in the thread to do heavy mass drivers for the long-range stuff and AF ones for anti-fighter/missile. Either I misunderstood said advice, or adhered too closely to it, or whatever. GuavaMoment posted:that's how you deal with enemy missiles and fighters - you plow into them and take out the source. Noted. I promise to board the station the next time I remember. Which may be around heat death of our actual universe, but still will keep it in mind. Lookie here, I just made a note in the file I use to do the writeups to remind myself. Olesh posted:You haven't functionally upgraded your offensive capabilities in a long time; neither researching anything to replace your mass drivers nor done research to miniaturize them. Well I got Graviton Beams since then and I'm advancing Force Fields at the moment, so I think this might be a bit off. HannibalRex posted:Do you have better beam weapons, or Lightning Field? Interceptors also can target missiles. Not unless you consider Graviton Beams to be better. Point on engaging at closer range is well-taken. HannibalRex posted:Your ships are pretty under-gunned for their size. What specials would you recommend removing to remedy this? I've thought about going with a 50-50 split (weapons and specials space allocation) but ended up just doing a more 'tank' style. Olesh posted:you don't seem to know that your ships can rotate in place with the right mouse button. *Thud*. Yeah, I had no clue that was a thing. Is there an easy way to target fighters when they are basically 'on top' of a ship? I had the most annoying time with that, it seemed the cursor had to be precisely in the right location.
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Jun 6, 2019 07:13
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Redesign Proposal Ok, here's the thing - at the current stardate of 3525.1, I'm guaranteed to get the next tech in on the next turn, so I figure I wait/stockpile industry and go with further miniaturized mass drivers for the short-term solution.   These are proposed plans based on what's been said so far for replacement ships - I want a battleship and titan option since only the Rich systems can build the titans faster than the speed of continental drift. Notably, the Silencer II is armed better but has dropped the augmented engines so it's slower and more vulnerable to enemy beam weapons. Similarly, the redesign of the Obscenity jettisons the inertial stabilizer in order to retain repair ability and pack a bunch of guns on. I will yield to the consensus on whether these tradeoffs are justified, since there seem to be somewhat differing opinions, but there's no question these would be able to kill stuff faster.
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Jun 6, 2019 07:40
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Thotimx posted:Well I was going by advice earlier in the thread to do heavy mass drivers for the long-range stuff and AF ones for anti-fighter/missile. Either I misunderstood said advice, or adhered too closely to it, or whatever. Auto Fire is a 50% increase in space/cost for tripling your firepower; there is no reason not to use it on every weapon that can be equipped with it. Likewise, Enveloping is a 100% increase in space/cost for quadrupling your firepower (but spread out across all four facings). It's like the MIRV upgrade for missiles. I prefer Auto Fire weapons because you don't have to chew through all four shield facings, but both upgrades represent a 100% increase in damage output per space used. In case it matters, Enveloping weapons still do 4x damage when attacking a target without shields or facings (such as missiles, fighters, and planets). Thotimx posted:Well I got Graviton Beams since then and I'm advancing Force Fields at the moment, so I think this might be a bit off. Still, I like to go very Force Field heavy; especially if I'm a Creative race, between Mass Drivers, strong shields, and the other ancillary defensive techs available in Force Fields, you can conquer the galaxy on the weight of Class III shields and Auto Fire mass drivers if you get there and start deploying them fast enough. You're past that point now, but there are some extremely good techs in Force Fields that can supplement any strategy. Offensively, however, there is no substitute for Physics. Thotimx posted:What specials would you recommend removing to remedy this? I've thought about going with a 50-50 split (weapons and specials space allocation) but ended up just doing a more 'tank' style. If you're going to go for a "tank" style, you should just go all out. Heavy Armor, Auto-Repair, ECM, Augmented Engines, Inertial Stabilizer... the problem with investing heavily in special systems is most of them occupy a percentage of the ship's total space, so packing in a bunch of special systems requires a fair amount of miniaturization. This, in part, is why you don't have any space... weapons occupy fixed amounts of space no matter what size ship you put them on. Guava's strategy is a good one, but there's a breakpoint where you can make your singular Titan ship basically indestructible by just no-selling most of the damage. You do this, in part, by having a big pool of armor and then reducing the success of incoming attacks such that you never take enough damage to overwhelm your ability to repair it. If you're not going to do that, however, you should go the other way - take Battle Pods and a Battle Scanner and Structural Analyzer, and just load up on guns. Take more guns to shoot down missiles and otherwise rely on blowing stuff up before it has a chance to severely damage you or reach you. Thotimx posted:*Thud*. Yeah, I had no clue that was a thing. Is there an easy way to target fighters when they are basically 'on top' of a ship? I had the most annoying time with that, it seemed the cursor had to be precisely in the right location. Unfortunately, there's no easy way. You just have to find the magic pixel.
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Jun 6, 2019 08:03
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What's even the point of heavy mounts right now? To be better at penetrating shields? If your ships are tankier and the vast majority of the enemy's damage output is missiles, you should I think just go pure AF and close to spitting distance to maximise hit rate.
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Jun 6, 2019 10:41
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Fangz posted:What's even the point of heavy mounts right now? To be better at penetrating shields? If your ships are tankier and the vast majority of the enemy's damage output is missiles, you should I think just go pure AF and close to spitting distance to maximise hit rate. Against anything with Class III shields, the heavy mass drivers do twice as much damage. This puts them at parity in terms of pure damage/weight. Heavy mount weapons also suffer half the accuracy penalty for range (point defense weapons double it), and have approximately twice the range to boot (penalties are the same at their maximum ranges). With a defensive strategy, leveraging decent shields, Inertial Stabilizers, and firing from range to reduce the opponents' beam accuracy, Heavy Mount weapons are pretty great! They also suffer damage drop-off at roughly half the rate of normal weapons (which obviously doesn't matter for Mass Drivers). From a pure efficiency standpoint, sure, ditching the heavy mounts makes a certain amount of sense - your standard beams are generally about 33% more efficient in terms of space used compared to heavy mounts before you factor in shields, and for Mass Drivers against Class III shields they're break even. As to why you would want to use heavy mounts in general, well... the damage drop-off is a big factor. Normal guns do 100% of the listed base damage at point blank range (within 3 squares), and lose 10% of their damage every 3 squares down to a minimum of 35% at max range. Heavy mounts do 150% of the listed base damage at point blank range (within 9 squares), and lose 10% of their damage every 6] squares down to a minimum of 85% at max range. (Remember, base damage is the damage for a normal, non-heavy mount version of the weapon.) The range is another; running around with large amounts of heavy mount weapons can effectively give you an extra turn of shooting before the enemy gets into range, as well as a turn or two of shooting where the enemy's weapons are severely reduced in effectiveness (while yours don't take nearly as substantial a hit).
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Jun 6, 2019 12:38
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Well, like one thing Thotimx is doing that I basically didn't do at all back when I played was use a range of different weapons. I basically would always pile on one weapon type on to each ship. It didn't really make sense to me to have a range of weapons for a variety of ranges, because I would plan on getting into the optimal range for my firepower. If I wanted a different capability I would design an entirely different ship class, for example one that is 100% long range weapons. Then my close range ships would close in for the knife fight/shoot missiles/raid immobilised vessels while the long range ships knock out shields or whatever. Usually just the close ranged ships are sufficient, especially once you have stuff like tractor beams and gyro destabilisers. (You don't have to be worried about getting shot if their rear end is facing you and they can't turn) Given almost all the enemy's weapons are on the front arcs, I would definitely consider adding tractor beams to the mix, anyway. EDIT: The design I'd go with would be basically: Battle pods Structural analyser Augmented engines (or 1x gyro destabiliser) 2x (or 4x) Tractor beams All the AF/Enveloping beams you can put on. Fangz fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jun 6, 2019 |
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Jun 6, 2019 13:45
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For me, there's a relatively easy explanation for why Thotimx is having so much trouble? Not a single ship in his fleet had dedicated anti-missile weapons. I never sent out a fleet where no ship had some kind of PD weapons to defend against missiles and fighters. They don't need to be on every ship, but you really want some kind of defensive fire capabilities. And yes, Mass Drivers start to become obsolete. The next few physics research levels all have fantastic new weapons. Phasors are the "best "PD weapons, though your Mass Drivers are probably still better until you miniaturize the Phasors enough.They are also useful as full anti-ship weapons if you can leverage the shield piercing option. Plasma weapons come with auto-enveloping. Disruptors have no range dissipation.
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Jun 6, 2019 14:18
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I really do think it's the lack of firepower that's the problem. I've literally never seen an entire fleet focus fire on one battleship and... oh, do 50% damage to armour. It's especially amusing when you consider that you've *built* these ships to be knife fighters (with the augmented engines and inertia stabilisers) but all you are doing in the battles is trade piddling shots at extreme range. Thotimx is typically outnumbering the enemy in these battles and all their damage output is missiles. So again, the logic of that is to strip defenses and maximise firepower. Armour is doing you no good if you aren't getting shot at. Right now the Silencer class is doing a base damage of 81 of which 36 can hit missiles. Convert everything to AF Mass drivers, and you get that up to 144 damage all of which can hit missiles, increasing your pd capability by 300%. Remove some armour and junk to get up to a 50:50 weapon ratio and your can up your firepower to 234, almost trebling the firepower of your fleet and over sextupling your PD capability. Fangz fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Jun 6, 2019 |
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Jun 6, 2019 14:49
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Olesh posted:Auto Fire is a 50% increase in space/cost for tripling your firepower; there is no reason not to use it on every weapon that can be equipped with it. I guess I just don't get the accuracy math (not a great surprise), because it seems to me a 20% accuracy malus ought to take an awful lot of the sting out of that. Torranor posted:Not a single ship in his fleet had dedicated anti-missile weapons. I never sent out a fleet where no ship had some kind of PD weapons to defend against missiles and fighters. They don't need to be on every ship, but you really want some kind of defensive fire capabilities. Basically because earlier in the thread people were saying PD weapons are a waste and you should just use standard mounts. *shrug* Fangz posted:one thing Thotimx is doing that I basically didn't do at all back when I played was use a range of different weapons. I basically would always pile on one weapon type on to each ship. I Adding more ship types is fine if you know how many of each you need, but since I don't I'd end up in a world of hurt if I didn't have the right mix. In MOO1 I could solve that by just overbuilding ships to an extent, but the command points make that less viable here. If I'm going to build bigger ships - and I do agree that's the right move at this time - then I need to make sure the ones I have are useful. I think I'd have to be a lot more comfortable knowing exactly what works and what doesn't in combat before taking that kind of approach. I like the gyro/tractor idea, except that a lot of what I'm going to be doing is fighting static defenses, and stuff like Starbases etc. could care less what direction they are facing so it'd be useless against them.
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Jun 7, 2019 08:49
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The thing is, standard mount AF/enveloping *are* the most flexible option, because they are able to shoot at anything. Speccing into heavy mounts and PD just means that you can't fire all your weapons at once. (Like, PD isn't even necessarily better than standard mounts *at* shooting missiles because the range penalty means your ships can't mutually support each other) As far as I can tell, trying to build an unspecialised build of a mix of weapon types just makes a ship that is worse at *anything* than a ship with 100% standard weapons. In terms of fighting starbases, I think closing to melee range and raiding with boarding would be a good idea for you. Your crews actually have a higher experience level than theirs so you should do good damage. You might even be able to capture the base. Here's some maths (based on https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/197873-master-of-orion-ii-battle-at-antares/faqs/16743 ) You've got ships with 80 BA (100 - 20 racial). They've got a range of vessels - their hardest to hit ships have 90 BD, most of their ships are 60 BD, and their star bases are -5 BD. (It actually looks a bit more favourable than that due to crew veterancy effects that are show on the scan screen but not the ship designer. but I'll go with these numbers) Right now you are engaging at range 16 or thereabouts. So in the worst case scenario, vs 90 BD at 16 range, you have in terms of damage done per unit space: 0.293 AF Mass Driver (13% hit rate * 3 * 6 dam / 8 space) 0.288 Hv AF Mass Driver (16% hit rate * 3 * 9/15) 0.245 Hv Mass Driver (30% hit rate * 9/11) So at the ranges you are engaging in, standard mount AF are actually the best - I'm not sure what Hv mounts cost you right now, if they are 10 space that's a bit better but still worst than HvAF. As targets get easier to hit, for example if you stick on a battle scanner, or if you are shooting the 60 BD enemies, or you get closer, the advantage of AF gets bigger. vs 60 BD at 8 range 0.945 AF Mass Driver 0.828 Hv AF Mass Driver 0.548 Hv Mass Driver Finally you've got starbases, which as I said, has a lousy -5 BD. vs -5 BD at 8 range 2.07 AF Mass Driver 1.66 Hv AF Mass Driver 0.785 Hv Mass Driver So yeah, standard mass drivers kick rear end against this kind of enemy. You can also turn their battleships into immobile, easy to shoot 'star bases' with tractor beams, or alternatively stick on a battle scanner for the juicy +50 Beam Attack. Of course, as you get closer to the enemy their ability to shoot you also increases. But well, their beam weapons suck. Their star base does a lousy 75 damage with its graviton beam if all their shots hit and you are at point blank range. The only sort of situation where your heavy mounts actually have an advantage over regular AF when shooting at enemies they both can shoot at is vs heavily shielded hard to hit enemies *as long as the shield is up* (and for class 3 shields, the benefit is pretty small). Or if you want to snipe at extreme range, where extreme = you start the battle, and turn your ships 180, and fight the battle while running away from the enemy. tl;dr Standard AF Mass Drivers rock Heavy mount is only worthwhile for weapons with beam dissipation and if you want to snipe at long range vs immobile enemies that have a beam weapon focus Tractor beams are good actually Try boarding If you are finding combat tedious, you need to be more  . You can be doing about 10x the damage you are currently doing and the AI can't really punish you for being much more aggressive.EDIT: Also scan that planet to see how much structure points the missile base actually has. Rushing the planet to shoot the poo poo out of the missile base could potentially work. Fangz fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Jun 7, 2019 |
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Jun 7, 2019 12:48
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Thotimx posted:I guess I just don't get the accuracy math (not a great surprise), because it seems to me a 20% accuracy malus ought to take an awful lot of the sting out of that. Remember, it's not really a 20% accuracy malus, it's a -20 to your Beam Attack, If your beam attack is very high, then a -20 really only drops it a few percentage points. If you're beam attack is only pretty high, it might take the accuracy down from 90% to around ~75%. It's a lot easier to understand if you know that there's only three breakpoints you need to really care about in the accuracy math, and it revolves around what I'm going to call the HIT number. HIT is your total modified Beam Attack minus the target's Beam Defense. For the most part, the game will calculate all of this for you except for the distance penalty and the penalties/bonuses from modifications (i.e., Auto Fire, Point Defense, and Continuous). With Auto Fire Mass Drivers, you look at your Beam Attack, subtract the target's Beam Defense, and then subtract 20 to get your HIT before worrying about range. Here are the breakpoints... If your HIT is 50, that's a 90% chance to hit. If your HIT is 0, that's a 50% chance to hit. If your HIT is -50, that's a 10% chance to hit. At point blank range, you don't need to worry about it any further - those numbers will be accurate. The further away the target is, the lower your HIT. The key takeaway here is that if your HIT is over 50, you can still get a 90% chance to hit at a distance. The higher your HIT, the further away you can shoot while still getting that 90% hit rate. Again, laying it out as straightforward as I can. HIT of... -50 = 10% chance 0 = 50% chance +50 = 90% chance I'll give you another example - the Klackon Hornet VI in your last video has a BD of 90. That's 60 from a combat speed of 12 and +30 from Veteran crew. Your Silencers, out the gate, have a BA of 150 before counting any veterancy bonuses. Assuming you have a Space Academy where you're building the ships, they're starting out as Regulars, at least, so that gives them a BA of 165. 165 - 90 gives you a HIT of 75. Factoring in the -20 from auto fire, that means your mass drivers are hitting a bit better than 90% of the time at point blank range. Conversely, your Silencers had a BD of 150 (165 if they start as Regulars). The enemy Star Base had Battle Scanners, giving them a BA of 140, meaning that the enemy star base only had about a base 25-30% chance to hit your Silencers at point blank range. As far as PD weapons go, the damage dropoff calculation due to range means that PD Laser Cannons and PD Fusion Beams are incredibly crap - PD weapons only do 40% of the listed base damage at point blank range, instead of 50% (the ship screen lies to you). This means Lasers and Fusion Beams do only 1 point of damage except at point blank range (where they do 2). Mass Drivers do 3 points of damage at any range, which makes them okay but they're really mostly there to automatically fire at point blank at any incoming missiles to reduce incoming damage. I personally prefer to use regular weapons and to manually shoot missiles and fighters down, because then the space I'm spending is also useful for shooting at other ships and it lets my ships do a better job covering each other. So I don't use PD weapons myself, but I do allocate space as if I were - this means that my ship weaponry tends to be 1/3rd heavy mounts, 2/3rds regular mounts by weight.
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Jun 7, 2019 13:58
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| # ? May 12, 2024 16:32 |
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I lik e it when the lazors go pew, pew
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Jun 7, 2019 20:55
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