Your most effective designs

Kouvb593kdnuewnd

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Jul 3, 2012
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So what is your best designs yet?

Mine is right now is to focus on the two starting ships:

Shields and Armor is the big things with these 2 at level 8 pretty much the only treats are torpedoes or that shields get critical damaged.
If you are lucky to get the two wonders that make your ships imune to torpedoes and critical hits your ships will be nearly unkillable.

Firepower gets maybe only 20% of the energy, cannons and torpedoes are the main weapons.

Engine is uppgrades to have around 4 SP.
 
So far I've tried the following:

Engines, shields, cannon

Shields, lasers, torpedoes

They both worked well.

I want to try an engines, stealth, fighters next.
 
I notice Sid was trying a speed (engines) and close-range weapons (cannons) combo in one of the playthroughs. I tried it in my first game and it worked well.

I'm also fond of laying back and firing a spread of torpedoes, since the AI tends to want to run into them :cry:
 
I just ran one with engines and fighters. I didn't end up using stealth like I though I would. When you get the wonders that let your ships do two actions and the Hyper Launch that gives fighters full range on the first turn, watch out baby. 7 fighter squadrons per ship, 4 ships, I can get all 28 fighters out in 4 turns. It just swarms the hell out of the enemy. And putting science into AI makes the fighter craft somewhat more hearty.

Enemies always target fighters before your capital ships, so they act as cannon fodder too. I hardly received any damage.
 
I just ran one with engines and fighters. I didn't end up using stealth like I though I would. When you get the wonders that let your ships do two actions and the Hyper Launch that gives fighters full range on the first turn, watch out baby. 7 fighter squadrons per ship, 4 ships, I can get all 28 fighters out in 4 turns. It just swarms the hell out of the enemy. And putting science into AI makes the fighter craft somewhat more hearty.

Enemies always target fighters before your capital ships, so they act as cannon fodder too. I hardly received any damage.

Why engines? I mass fighters also, but I usually just hide behind asteroids with the capital ships and upgrade armor a bit.
 
First thing i usually buy is engines 2-3 and fighers 1 (as cannon fodder or scouts for labyrinths). I manage to make 4 missions with that if i get some energy on the way (and depending on how much repairs i have to make. Manouverability is key, especcially when using cannons. In Turn 2 i upgrade weapons and armor a bit and in Turn 3 i add a third ship. Then the upgrade path depends on the wonders i manage to unlock. I really like "Dual Command" or "Cloaked". Both allow me to be practically cloaked all the time, which is when i heavily invest in stealth. In the Endgame my few ships are Behemoths with cannons and stealth on 4-5, 2 lasers (for taking out fighters long range), 7 speed (usually 4 engines, sometimes 5), 4 shield, 4 armor (not that i would need it any more), sensors on one or two frontline ships and 1 fighter bay. I usually only load torpedoes 1 on my one or two laser destroyers to flush out enemies or destroy incoming torps. use them seldom though. Because i don't need much energy for repairs (due to stealth and bait fighters), most goes into new ships at that point.
What i noticed is that stealth and sensors are only useful if you pack a lot of them to get significantly over/under the standard sight range.

Playing on "hard"
 
Why engines? I mass fighters also, but I usually just hide behind asteroids with the capital ships and upgrade armor a bit.

It usually seems like the enemy is 2 turns away from my starting point, so I get as close as possible with my capital ships then launch fighters. That way I can use the ranges of both my capital ships and my fighters to hit the enemy on turn 1.

Also, there is no needs to hide behind asteroids when you have a lot of fighters. The enemy targets fighters first. They are cannon fodder. While the enemy is hitting them, you launch another round of fighters and overwhelm them with fighter spam.
 
It usually seems like the enemy is 2 turns away from my starting point, so I get as close as possible with my capital ships then launch fighters. That way I can use the ranges of both my capital ships and my fighters to hit the enemy on turn 1.

Also, there is no needs to hide behind asteroids when you have a lot of fighters. The enemy targets fighters first. They are cannon fodder. While the enemy is hitting them, you launch another round of fighters and overwhelm them with fighter spam.

I've ran into situations where they would ignore my fighters and aim directly at my ships with long range lasers.
 
What i noticed is that stealth and sensors are only useful if you pack a lot of them to get significantly over/under the standard sight range.

Yeah, I ignore stealth in most of my games. Why try to hide when you can just blow up the enemy? :D

Stealth has its uses. I think stealth is worth it if you have the cloaking wonder. And as you pointed out, you need to really focus heavily on stealth to make it effective. If your stealth radius is small and the enemy lacks sensors, stealth can be quite effective. Also, there are missions where you only get your flagship and you need to survive for 5 turns. Stealth is very useful for those missions, since you can just cloak and run away until the 5 turns are up. Without stealth, you can still run away, but the enemy could shoot at you. With stealth, you can hide for 5 turns and the enemy can't do anything about it.

My preferred design is a "tank" ship that emphasizes shields, armor, cannons, enough engines for speed 5 and one torpedo and one fighter module. The torpedo and fighter give me a little flexibility at long range until my ships close in for the kill. The shields, armor and cannons make my ships really tough and able to dish out serious damage at close range. I also like to use this "tank" design on all my ships rather than specialize each ship for a different purpose.
 
I've been making all my ships the same too. I haven't really noticed a need to diversify my designs. And you can tailor your science research to your ships better if they are all the same design.
 
Fighters and dual command 4tw.

Won impossible, epic game this way. You zerg everything down and the enemy always preferred to shoot my fighters, which saves a lot on repair costs.

Glide is nice for fighters (3 instead of 1 moves for the impulse), did not get the option to build hyper launch.
 
Fighters and dual command 4tw.

Won impossible, epic game this way. You zerg everything down and the enemy always preferred to shoot my fighters, which saves a lot on repair costs.

Glide is nice for fighters (3 instead of 1 moves for the impulse), did not get the option to build hyper launch.

I just came on to post that build with fighters/dual command option is overpowered. In my opinion, the game is broken. There's no way to lose. I don't even do engine upgrades at all. Just straight fighters and artificial intelligence research (and some shield and armor in the early game). I literally sell off plasma and cannon guns on my capital ships after a certain time to maintain a 2 tile movement speed (which I don't really need anyway).
 
I've only played very little yet, but I liked to improve my lasers. With the corresponding research, and the "Converging Light" wonder, you can single shot most targets across most of the map.

This is only on the starter difficulty...I suppose that on higher difficulty the opponents get a lot more shields and hp? Which would make that tactic less useful..
 
I've been playing on moderate and had great success with fighters.

Admittedly the Hyperlaunch wonder is, who not requisite, a gigantic help when using fighters. (Tight Squeeze is also nice, but not nearly as big a deal).

Basically my ships get loaded with fighter bays and engines, and some plasma cannons as an afterthought. I also go shields over armor, to save weight.

I just launch wave after wave of fighters and only send in the carriers if I've reached my ship limit and can't launch fighters no more :)
 
I just came on to post that build with fighters/dual command option is overpowered. In my opinion, the game is broken.

I find the cloaking wonder to be rather OP, especially if combined with lots of stealth upgrades. I won 2 games easily with the cloaking wonder, about 4-5 stealth modules on every ship and a few stealth techs. My stealth radius was only 2 hexes, and being able to fire while cloak, I always got the first shot even at close range. The enemy did not stand a chance.

In fact, I think the game is designed on purpose that certain wonders combined with lvl 6 of a certain tech are designed to make a particular module OP. For example, the convergent light wonder + laser techs makes lasers super good and essentially turns your ships into perfect snipers, able to one shot kill an enemy at long range. Cloaking wonder plus stealth techs turns your ships into ghosts. Hyper Launch wonder plus fighter techs means you can launch powerful fighters that can strike on the first turn. it lets your ships strike at a safe distance. The torpedo booster wonder plus torpedo techs makes your torpedoes super powerful. A torpedo spread can take out half or more of an enemy fleet.

There is a reason why you win the game with 7 wonders. That's because if you have 7 wonders, you are powerful enough to conquer the whole map.
 
I happen to enjoy using high speed stealth ships to skirmish right now. Zip in and out hiding with some ships to flank while using others to draw the enemy out. Dual command and the stealth wonders obviously help this stratagem.
 
I find the cloaking wonder to be rather OP, especially if combined with lots of stealth upgrades. I won 2 games easily with the cloaking wonder, about 4-5 stealth modules on every ship and a few stealth techs. My stealth radius was only 2 hexes, and being able to fire while cloak, I always got the first shot even at close range. The enemy did not stand a chance.

In fact, I think the game is designed on purpose that certain wonders combined with lvl 6 of a certain tech are designed to make a particular module OP. For example, the convergent light wonder + laser techs makes lasers super good and essentially turns your ships into perfect snipers, able to one shot kill an enemy at long range. Cloaking wonder plus stealth techs turns your ships into ghosts. Hyper Launch wonder plus fighter techs means you can launch powerful fighters that can strike on the first turn. it lets your ships strike at a safe distance. The torpedo booster wonder plus torpedo techs makes your torpedoes super powerful. A torpedo spread can take out half or more of an enemy fleet.

There is a reason why you win the game with 7 wonders. That's because if you have 7 wonders, you are powerful enough to conquer the whole map.
Yeah, you're definitely right. Try Intelli-Shields with max shield modules and max field theory (improve shield tech). The A.I. will literally just stop shooting at you and you can just steamroll the map.
 
I discovered something interesting. You can usually only invest up to 8 levels in any one component on a given starship. And some missions will reward you with an upgrade. However, if you are already maxed out in that component, when the mission rewards you, it will stack with the invested upgrades.

So at one point I had a starship with 8 points in cannon and a planet rewarded me by upgrading all my cannons. That starship then had 9 points.

8 points was probably already overkill, so you could sell that free upgrade and use the energy elsewhere.
 
Stealth, cannon, engines is a fun combo. Especially with the wonder that grants the auto stealthing.

Yeah, I finished my first game using that for two of my ships -- it was pretty wicked. I had the cloaking wonder available in one of my early cities, plus I had an early city that specialized in stealth, so my upgrades were cheaper. I would charge behind ships and shotgun them, haha.

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I can't help thinking about XCOM when I design my ships, so I had two "Assault" ships that were tanky, fast, and focused on cannons (along with stealth).

My other two ships I modeled around the "Sniper". I focused on lasers, stealth, and torpedoes, with a little less emphasis on engines and shields/armor.

This next game I want to create a type of carrier ship that just focuses on releasing fighters each turn. Has anybody here tried this yet; is it somewhat viable?
 
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