Researching better ships

[Tominator1946]

Hi
no matter how much i try to build up good ships they are always underarmored and under powered in offense..

i usually research titanium 2 armor and beam powered weapons then someone starts something and i get stomped. any hints appreciated...maybe cause i'm 60 years old i'm getting dumber.

Tom

 

[Supreme Shogun]

Hey there! Don't give up hope. I'll give you some tips. First off when somebody starts something with you, take note of who it is and if they have any allies (Allies may jump in too). Then try and find some of their ships on the map... Click on them, you should get to see their stats. Analyze them. If they're using beam weapons and you have Titaniam Armor, that's not the best defense. You'd go with deflectors/shields in some of your ship designs to confront this new threat similarly Titanium Armor line works best against Mass Driver weapons/Railguns and Chaff/Missile Defense against Missile weapons like Stingers/Harpoons. So you want to design ships with defences against what they are using, and use a weapon type that they don't have defences for on their ships. Also, take into account this may change over time if you're not playing easy level. The computer guys get smart eventually and try to put different defences on. Which of course, you can counter by coming up with new designs yourself.

It is best to design ships with some defense in them, though this may not be feasible at the start when component sizes take up a lot of room.

Fighter ships, Tiny hulls with as much guns as you can stick on them are cheaper effective ways defending planets. Though depending on where you are at in the game you may want fleets of Heavy Fighter (Small Hull) mixed with Frigate type ships (Medium Hull). My honest opinion is that even the Heavy Fighter/Small don't have too much room and at most stick on 1 defense.

I also make two different kinds of ships for fleets a well rounded ship (Attack & Defense) and a interceptor/raider type (Attack & 1-2 extra engines). Whenever possible shoot first and take out their fleets with your interceptors and if not your well rounded fleets will usually take care of them.


Any more questions or help needed let me know.

 

[Tominator1946]

Hi

thanks.. i'll refer to this. need all the help i can get.. the embarresing part is i'm playing on cakewalk.

Tom

 

[Berrie]

Research is also key.
For my heavy fighters (small hull), I always try to research far enough into one of the weapon trees so I can place weapons on my ship with a combined value of at least 2. The first defenders and small fighters of the ai's can easily be defeated as they have only an attack value of 1 (maybe 2). When they trow tougher ships at you, research logistics, so you can place your fighters in groups. When that trick doesn't work any more, it's time to research bigger hulls.
You see the pattern? Always be one step ahead. Adapt to the ai's adaptations. Regularly check the diplomatic screen to see what the computer players have researched and make sure you are ahead.

It is best to design ships with some defense in them, though this may not be feasible at the start when component sizes take up a lot of room.

Fighter ships, Tiny hulls with as much guns as you can stick on them are cheaper effective ways defending planets. Though depending on where you are at in the game you may want fleets of Heavy Fighter (Small Hull) mixed with Frigate type ships (Medium Hull). My honest opinion is that even the Heavy Fighter/Small don't have too much room and at most stick on 1 defense.

That's also a good tip. With your small ships, just make sure you have bigger guns. Good defense takes up a lot of room. Defense is good for your large and/or expansive ships.

Also, when your ships are victorious, they gain experience in the form of hitpoints. They become tougher. This is also a good defense as they are harder to destroy. So if possible, try to repair them and use them in battle with full hitpoints.

I hope this helps a bit

 

[oldStatesman]

Don't neglect your military starbases. Not just for defense either - building one in advance in a sector you want to attack can be a huge help. The ship assist modules can greatly increase the power of small fleets.

For defense on small ships, just put on the smallest and cheapest defensive module you can fit. Each type is specialized and fully effective agaisnt the type of weapon it was designed to counter; but they are effective against other types at the square root of the value; they can go no lower than '1'. That means it doesn't really matter which type of 1 strength module you put on a small hulled fighter - so put the smallest and cheapest one.

I have started building base hulls for my smaller ships so I can easily see which ones to upgrade. I have designed a base type for lasers, one for guns, and one for missiles. This makes it easy to upgrade them to Mark II, Mark III, Mark IV versions as new and smaller weapons and engines become available. Always upgrade as soon as you can afford it. The AI will.

Here is an example I built, the Pincer Class Laser Fighter Mark I, and Mark II on the same hull with upgraded engines, lasers and armor :

 

[warpstorm]

I just love looking at the wild designs people come up with.

 

[oldStatesman]

I just love looking at the wild designs people come up with.

When I got the game the ship design stuff was not really a selling point nor did I think I would be interested in it - but I have found it is one of the funnest parts of the game!

 

[Rik Meleet]

When I got the game the ship design stuff was not really a selling point nor did I think I would be interested in it - but I have found it is one of the funnest parts of the game!

I concur

 

[DaviddesJ]

That means it doesn't really matter which type of 1 strength module you put on a small hulled fighter - so put the smallest and cheapest one.

One case where this isn't true is if you have starbases with defensive modules. Your fighter with 1/0/0 defense becomes 2/1/1 if you have a starbase with +1 defense. So it matters which area the defense point is in.

 

[oldStatesman]

One case where this isn't true is if you have starbases with defensive modules. Your fighter with 1/0/0 defense becomes 2/1/1 if you have a starbase with +1 defense. So it matters which area the defense point is in.

Thanks - good tip!

After reading around on some other sites, there is some dispute as to the validity of the manual when it talks about armor values not going less than one - so the jury is still out on this. I'll try to research over at the official forums to see if I can discover the reality.

 

[Supreme Shogun]

I present to you the "power" of 1. The Square root of 1 is 1. IF your ship has the wrong kind of armor on, say 1 in beam defence it will get the square root of that vs missiles or railguns.. and the square root of 1 is 1.

Thus validating the argument its worth getting 1 point of armor on fighters if you can, cause it will stack up. Take your ship with def of 2/1/1 boosted by starbase... In this example for defense you can roll from 1 to 4 vs beams (2 + sqrt(1) + sqrt(1) ) and vs missiles or rails ( sqrt(2) + 1 + sqrt(1) ). A bit of bad news if its not a perfect square, I believe the answer for evaluating the sqrt gets truncated so you could roll 1 to 3. Not bad. It's better than without a starbase. In all cases you'd have 1 point (the square root of 1 is 1 ) Without the base you're at 1/0/0 in def, and with 2/1/1.


I guess I can't help myself when it comes to games and numbers. heh.

 

[oldStatesman]

I present to you the "power" of 1. The Square root of 1 is 1. IF your ship has the wrong kind of armor on, say 1 in beam defence it will get the square root of that vs missiles or railguns.. and the square root of 1 is 1.

Thus validating the argument its worth getting 1 point of armor on fighters if you can, cause it will stack up. Take your ship with def of 2/1/1 boosted by starbase... In this example for defense you can roll from 1 to 4 vs beams (2 + sqrt(1) + sqrt(1) ) and vs missiles or rails ( sqrt(2) + 1 + sqrt(1) ). A bit of bad news if its not a perfect square, I believe the answer for evaluating the sqrt gets truncated so you could roll 1 to 3. Not bad. It's better than without a starbase. In all cases you'd have 1 point (the square root of 1 is 1 ) Without the base you're at 1/0/0 in def, and with 2/1/1.


I guess I can't help myself when it comes to games and numbers. heh.

Thanks for the very clear explanation -

I thought this would be the case - but I am not able to express my self 'mathematically' (though I do have a knack for implicitly understanding the mathematical process behind things - kinda an idiot savant - maybe my handle should be RainMan lol) but have read where some alledged that the game sysyem would put in a 0 in this special case - but they were unable to provide proof of that happening. Only that they had 'seen' a zero rolled.

So I will continue to put on just 1 defense module on small fighters when possible- it does seem to help agasinst all weopens.

 

[Supreme Shogun]

I guess I'm into the numbers bit a bit too much, but hopefully that helped. The conclusion I wanted to convey was "It's really not worth the sacrificing to have more defense components than one for a fighter but it can be worth the sacrificing to have just one"

I gave Frigates some thought after writing that piece. "Four and Frigates" has a nice ring to it. Medium Hulls btw. The next perfect square is 4. You'd have 4 defense vs the correct matchup and 2 defense if you didn't. That's w/o starbases. I'm using generalizations, but usually by the time you get medium hulls (at least I do anyway ) you already are 4-6 techs down the line in a given weapon and a given defense. By then its quite easy to start making medium ships/frigates along the lines of 4-4-4 or 6-4-4. First number attack, second defense, third is base move in the ship builder. That's also how I name ships to distinguish.
Frigate M4-4-4 is an example of a ship name I'd use.

Large & Massive both have lots of room, so ships can be a lot more versatile than medium even.

 

[oldStatesman]

I gave Frigates some thought after writing that piece. "Four and Frigates" has a nice ring to it. Medium Hulls btw. The next perfect square is 4. You'd have 4 defense vs the correct matchup and 2 defense if you didn't.

Great idea on the mediums - never thought of that!

 

[Biggles]

If you are just building something to defend a planet, leave the engine out.
This gives more space for weaponry.
Do not launch it.