Favorite ship defenses? (MoO2)

[creamcheese]

I have been experimenting with various ship designs and wondering what people like to equip their ships with to keep them alive.

For low tech early game I usually always go with:
Reinforced hull
Heavy Armor (if creative or traded for it)
Shields (class 3 if I have them, class 1 not worth it probably)
This provides excellent protection for the space used, and makes ships much harder to kill than they first appear. Heavy armor is immune to armor piercing weapons and this can ruin the day of someone trying for an early armor piercing gambit.

For the mid to late game cleanup I like a decked out battleship or titan with:
Reinforced hull
Heavy Armor
Best available shields
Auto repair unit (suitably miniaturized)
Hard shields
This combo gives resistance to armor- and shield-piercing weapons, so they have to blow through all of your defenses. It also gives you the ability to regenerate all types of defenses; so if you get into a slugging match lasting many turns with another heavily defended opponent or it is your high tech ship vs. many weaker ships, you can repair and keep fighting.

Actually I should mention that the Auto repair unit is actually better the larger the ship you put it on. Since it repairs a percentage, a hull/armored Doom Star can regenerate a frightening amount of damage per turn.

 

[vmxa]

If you have all those techs, I normally will not, and stick all that stuff in a ship it is not going to be be able to pack many guns. I do not care that much about defense, I would rather try to kill all of them and replace any losses.

I just use reinforced hull and pack in more guns.

 

[creamcheese]

You can still pack in plenty of guns, or enough for me anyway. Usually this type of setup, especially the mid-game version is for a beam ship, If I can take many turns of punishment from the enemy I usually take no losses.

 

[vmxa]

So what you are saying is that all those items take no space? I mean come on you have to give up guns to add in defensive items and you have to have the tech to have them. They are not free.

Mid game to me is I am going on a scortch planet spree and not taking losses anyway. Battles go one round or two. I have Loknbar and I know where their fleets are and what size and I hunt them down.

I would expect you have to give up at least 25% of the guns you could have on a BB. This means I need to have 25% more ships and that means I need CP or pay for maint and I need more time to make the extra ships or commit more planets and production to make the ships.

Everything has a cost and I am better off to not be on defense and not have more combat rounds. The main thing is unless you play creative, you tend to not have all those goodies and the techs needed. Things like Heavy Armor.

 

[creamcheese]

Of course they take space, the point is the trade-off between offense and defense. The longer you last the more you can put out, although most combat is relatively short. Obviously battle pods are a must.

The idea is you don't need more ships, a ship that can take insane amounts of punishment simply lasts long enough to do a lot of damage. I'm not sure why you think I need more command points, I usually run under my total allowed. A battleship with nice defenses can blow its' way through a lot.

As for creative or not, I do run creative a fair bit of the time, but even when I don't I usually look to trade for heavy armor and other nice techs I have to skip.

I guess we just play very differently .

 

[vmxa]

I don't allow myself to trade as it seems to much of an exploit for humans. On the CP, if I need 25% more shipping to field the same guns, then I probably need additional CP. Once I start on the war path, I will field as many ships as I can afford.

Even is trades were allowed, nothing says they will have all the things you want for defense. No need for defense, swoop in and kill them and they do not get a turn to shoot back. Once in a while they will have enough ships that I cannot take them all out in the first round, but they will not have enough left to do much as I am going to be using heavy mounts and they tend to not be able to shot that far.

Rarely they will manage to kill a ship or tow, but ships are coming out all the time and it means nothing, should that occur. I bomb the planet to ashes and move to the next planet. I no longer bother to capture and build up planets, once I take down Orion and go on the hunt.

 

[creamcheese]

Yes this seems more a matter of play style than anything else, You seem to be the production race guy who builds ships quickly and smashes things in war. I am the research race guy who sits quietly in the corner and builds supercomputers and cackles with delight every time he terraforms a planet.

 

[El_Machinae]

Looking back, I tend to be a shields/mass driver guy. Once I started min-maxing, I'd use mirv missiles with over-whelming barrages (destroyers dumping both loads (x2) and then retreating), but I've preferred the mass-drivers emotionally.

I also strive to capture Antaran tech, so once I get their dampeners and armour, I can do whatever I want. I still tend to focus on mass-driver tech, since I like the armor-piercing option and the ability to point-defense vs. missiles easily.

 

[creamcheese]

I do like mass drivers, and their upgrades, the gauss cannon and the disruptor (although they can't be PD). The no range dissipation is one of my favorite things. You can sit back with your Hv versions and blast away the enemy starbases and they have trouble hitting you back for any large amount of damage.

 

[Aabraxan]

It's been while since I looked at MOO2 (which reminds me that I need to play it again soon), but I take the position that the best defense is a good offense. To that end, my ships usually come with:
Augmented engines
Reinforced Hull

I skip the Heavy Armor, and don't bother with shields until Class III.

As far as weapons go, I'll go with the best that I have at that point. That usually means whatever has a level or two of mods available. Early game, that's mirved missiles and fast racks. Once beams become available, I'll usually (IIRC) skip lasers in favor of jumping to mass drivers. I have to admit to having a soft spot for plasma cannons, though.

 

[vmxa]

I cannot recall the last time I used plasma cannons, but I am sure it was because I loved to hear them roar. One of the patches nerfed them, so I go mass driver, phasors and maybe disruptors if it last that long.

They are not better per se, but can deal with any planet shielding, where phasors can be blocked.

Plamsa cannons are like the Plasmatron in Ascendancy, I just like to hear them shoot.

 

[creamcheese]

Plasma cannons are quite nice for the natural enveloping. If you have a damage enhancing special they can be quite deadly. 4x damage +bonus. They do have cool effects too .

 

[Aabraxan]

At one time, it seems like I ran the numbers on plasma cannons vs. phasors, and phasors came out better on a damager-per-space-used. Be that as it may, I seem to kill lots more stuff using PCs. Often, I will put on PC on a ship, then fill the remaining space with phasors. That usually takes care of those pesky shields!

 

[vmxa]

Patch 1.3 increased the space required for Plasma Cannons to 25 and that was enough of a nerf to make them less effective. They (pc) hit all four shields, so they do damage to shielding. Not sure about the Barrier, but phasors cannot touch barrier.

 

[scratchthepitch]

What I use on defense depends upon what I got to use. The funny thing is, if I have all the techs I prefer to have, I hardly use any defense at all. When my choices are limited, then I tend to use defenses more, to compensate for the lack of a good offense. I like to pile all the targeting specials on to my ships, rather than the defensive specials.

When I first started playing the game, I used defenses a lot more. Now if I have a decent tech suite, about the only defenses I use are shields and the inertial stabilizer/nullifiers. And augmented engines for those ships designed to close. I prefer damper shields because they use less space than the regular shields, but ironically, when going after Antares, I find shields with hard shields are better than damper shields because of the reflector shields the Antaran ships there carry. Although, if I mount stellar converters, those Antaran reflectors don't reflect anything back, in which case, I then stick with the space saving dampers. The inertial stabilizer/augmented engine combo makes ships very hard to hit with beam weapons, and gives the added bonus of making them fast and maneuverable. A different way of defense from heavy armor/reinforced hull combo, which uses around the same amount of space, in that you dodge the bullets, rather than absorb them. I find that more useful to my play style.

I also used to try and put a variety of weapons on ships, missiles, fighters, several types of beams, now I specialize the ships for different roles and arm them accordingly. There will be long range beam ships with no range dissipation heavy beams. These get shields for defense, and later, also inertial stabilizers when miniaturization allows. Closing ships will be armed with combinations of fusion, neutron blasters, plasma, ion pulse, graviton beams, as per their role, and defended by shields and augmented engines and inertial stabilizers later when space allows. Some of these short range ships also get assault shuttles, transporters and troops pods as these become available. As the AI tends to target these latter, I ma put heavy armor or reinforced hull on these till inertial stabilizers are available. These are ideal ships used when all the requisite techs are available. I'll use fighters and missiles in the early part of the game, on unprotected destroyers, which I can build quickly and use in swarms, but I only use a token amount of those weapons later in the game once beams are able to hit accurately enough, which means at least 75% hitting bonus.

Those are ships when I have the right techs. When I don't, then I make do with what I got. Which means anything goes. It also means I may not be able to design ships for some of the roles I like to do and have to change tactics drastically.

Patch 1.3 increased the space required for Plasma Cannons to 25 and that was enough of a nerf to make them less effective. They (pc) hit all four shields, so they do damage to shielding. Not sure about the Barrier, but phasors cannot touch barrier.

I believe regular phasors do 20 max damage and barrier shields block 20 damage. To determine if a beam can penetrate a planet shield, the game apparently uses the max regular weapon damage vs the shield strength, even for heavy beams attacking. This is why a heavy phasor, with a max rating of 30 wont get through a barrier shield, since the regular damage rating is 20, the same as what barrier shields block. Plasma, with regular max damage of 30, should be able to penetrate barrier shields some of the time. I have not played the stock game in years, but I remember heavy plasma having no trouble getting through barrier shields. In the stock game, heavy plasma was my friend. Once I got the tech, that was the main weapon I used and it was basically game over at that point. Even used to attack Antares. It was so overpowering, I ended up taking away the heavy choice and making it a short range beam when I modded the game.

 

[creamcheese]

Yes, the fast and hard to hit is another possible defensive combo that can work well, just have to keep them from getting to 0 range where they can hit easily. It do tend to prefer just taking it all on the chin with a armor/hull/shields combo though. It fits better with my "sit back and shoot" with heavy mass drivers. No need to close for maximum damage.

That's interesting that you specialize your ships so much, I usually go with standard designs and weapons across much of the fleet. Usually my cruisers and destroyers are missile boats for the early game (and cheap expendable ships for later), maybe only a reinforced hull so they survive to get the second salvo off. After I have production for battleships I go with them almost exclusively, and outfit them with the same beams (often mass drivers or enveloping fusion beams early on), some hardcore defensive systems, and maybe a beam damage/hit enhancer if I have one.

 

[scratchthepitch]

My ship designs are all of specialized function now. I forgot to mention some other ways I use defense specials. There are a few items that affect all the ships in a fleet: wide area jammer, warp dissipator & scout lab. I'll put these on frigates, along with whatever defense special might fit and just have these ship retreat away from the action in a battle. They're usually not attacked that way and their specials are more important for helping the fleet than for defending themselves.

The wide area jammer provides 70% defense to the whole fleet. I usually don't use ecm jammers because I prefer to attack the missiles/fighters directly, so I don't have to worry about them. But it's nice to have the extra insurance. My usual method is arming most ships with 1 or 2 AF/AP mass drivers or enveloping fusion beams and equipping half a dozen destroyers per fleet with just these weapons. Originally I used frigates armed with pd versions of these weapons, but found out the regular weapons work much better at destroying missiles and fighters and are effective against other things also. Usually the surviving missile/fighter armed destroyers built during the early part of the game get converted to this role. Some games I have to use jammers because I don't have decent hitting bonuses or beams for destroying missiles and fighters. If I don't have the beam or targeting tech, then I have to rely upon interceptors, which use a lot more space and are less sure of destroying them, and a passive defense of jammers, along with heavier reliance on shields, heavy armor and reinforced hull since fast ships get no bonuses against missile/fighter attack. Jammers are also useful against torpedoes, in fact they are the only thing short of destroying the ship before it fires. That's another benefit of the wide area jammer later in the game when the AI starts arming its ships with torpedoes, it saves having to equip each ship with a jammer.

Warp dissipator just prevents the AI retreating, which is useful when you want to capture them. One ship equipped per fleet is all you need.

Scout lab is actually an attack special, but I don't use it except on very specialized designs. For regular fleets against the AI, a frigate equipped with one is useful for when Antarans pop in unexpectedly. They are also useful to have along for the Orion quest or the trip to Antares. I also use one in the destroyer fleets I use to attack space monsters with early in the game. For use in capturing Antaran ships, I'm not sure scout labs are of any use, since the fighting is done by marines and I think scout labs only affect ship vs ship or monster combat. But I use them for that anyways, in case it does. The ships used to capture Antaran raiders are destroyers and cruisers packed full of assault shuttles initially, and later given transporters and troops pods also. The idea being to get as many marines boarding the Antaran ships as possible.

In some situations, it is pointless to put some defenses on ships. Such as arming ships with shields if they are intended to attack Antarans (and their shield penetrating particle beams), unless you have hard shields. Against Antarans, fast ships are not that effective, either, due to the Antaran's high tech, so heavy armor is a better choice than inertial stabilizer, since you'll be getting hit. And hit before it's your turn to attack. When attacking space monsters, I strip the destroyers of all defenses and use all the space for fighters and missiles. No early destroyer could possibly survive being hit by the weaponry these monsters carry, no matter how many defenses were piled on. Same for the destroyers used to attack the Orion guardian.

There is also a defensive ruse I sometimes employ. This involves ship design 1 size larger than the majority of your fleet. This will make sure it's positioned front and center on the battle screen and will catch the eye of the AI. I arm these with fighters, missiles and bombs, the AI tends to target ships armed this way, and put heavy defenses on the design. It's role is to draw AI fire, allowing the rest of my fleet to be able to put more space towards weapons and targeting specials instead of defense specials. I'll also use captured AI titans and battleships in that role.

 

[creamcheese]

Yes, warp dissipator and wide area jammer are good fleet wide specials. I usually stick them in a destroyer or frigate and bring one or two with me and run away, just as you do. I can't say I've ever experimented with scout labs, they don't really seem worth the trouble. Aren't they a beam bonus? I usually mass missiles for monsters and let my starbases kill Antarans.

I'm not much in to boarding Antarans either. The tech they give you is only maybe worth the trouble. I'd rather just conquer the AI and then tech my way to defeating the Antarans.

 

[scratchthepitch]

I can't say I've ever experimented with scout labs, they don't really seem worth the trouble. Aren't they a beam bonus? I usually mass missiles for monsters and let my starbases kill Antarans.

Scout lab gives 10% bonus to the attack. Add in a leader with the legend lore trait, such as Kronos or Lockner, and you can have an extra 30-40-50% added to your attack factor, since the scout lab bonus should add on to the leader bonus. I'm pretty sure the scout lab bonus is for all ship attack forms, beams, missiles, torpedoes and fighters. It may also apply that bonus to your defense against attack by Antarans and monsters, but I don't know.

I'm not much in to boarding Antarans either. The tech they give you is only maybe worth the trouble. I'd rather just conquer the AI and then tech my way to defeating the Antarans.

If I'm using creative, the Antaran techs are not such a big deal, since I will eventually get close enough to that level without those techs (and probably get half of them from Orion). When not playing a creative race, those techs can be very welcome, especially when I've been shafted by the tech rng and/or one of the others get to Orion first. Also if I manage to capture one of the first raiders, getting the best armor or particle beams at that point in the game is not too shabby, either.

 

[creamcheese]

Scout lab gives 10% bonus to the attack. Add in a leader with the legend lore trait, such as Kronos or Lockner, and you can have an extra 30-40-50% added to your attack factor, since the scout lab bonus should add on to the leader bonus. I'm pretty sure the scout lab bonus is for all ship attack forms, beams, missiles, torpedoes and fighters. It may also apply that bonus to your defense against attack by Antarans and monsters, but I don't know.



If I'm using creative, the Antaran techs are not such a big deal, since I will eventually get close enough to that level without those techs (and probably get half of them from Orion). When not playing a creative race, those techs can be very welcome, especially when I've been shafted by the tech rng and/or one of the others get to Orion first. Also if I manage to capture one of the first raiders, getting the best armor or particle beams at that point in the game is not too shabby, either.

Well, considering most things that say +X attack only apply to beams... Scout labs still don't excite me. Just go with the leader and not the lab. If an extra 10% is the difference between winning and losing against a monster, just build another destroyer.

Well, I still don't think it is worth the trouble to refit any ships to board Antarans. I'd rather use those resources to build a horde of missile ships and take Orion early on. You'll get a lot of the same tech and can use those ships to conquer your enemies as well. If you pick your techs wisely you shouldn't be wanting for tech anyway.

I guess the real problem with the Orion/Antaran techs is that they don't miniaturize. Only the armor is worth anything really.