commercial CIWS and the AI

[Deoxy (OP)]

So, if you've got an opponent that relies largely on missiles, would it be worth making a commercial ship with nothing but engines and a lot of CIWS to bleed their ammo supply?  Toss a couple of those into their system, and let them through missiles at it until they run dry, but you don't have to worry about maintenance...

Just thinking about how that might work... I really hate maintenance.  (But not enough to turn it off... heh.)

[Brian Neumann]

Add a bunch of armour to this and you have an excellent soak for missiles.  Put it in front of your warships, or have it be the only active sensor so they tend to concentrate fire on it.  I have done this a couple of times.  While it expensive to build, it is no where near as expensive as warships and it will take a lot of damage.  They may vary well kill it, but it will probably take at least 1 full ammo load from their ships.  By the time they get back to their colliers and re ammo up you are a lot closer to their world and they have less room to maneuver.  If you do this do not leave your amm on, but do put your beam pd weapons online.  You want to use up as many of their missiles without using yours.  Also very few if any computer designed missiles include sensors on the missiles so everything that is fired at the monster ship will not be targeted on your warships even if the original target is destroyed.

Brian

[Deoxy (OP)]

OK, I've been leading with one of these, 61k tons with 200 5x8 CIWS and 50 layers of armor, to deal with Precursors.  I ran into one system with more Precursor ships than I was used to, and I had to send my fighters back to reload their missiles, leaving only the Brick (that's it's name) to take fire for a while...

Well, they ran out of missiles... so they rammed it:

Brick 001 hit by 310 points of damage from Ramming Attack
The ship has no shields
All damage absorbed by armor
Beshaba 001 hit by 124 points of damage from Ramming Attack
Beshaba 001 has been destroyed

I just had to share that with somebody.  This particular Brick has been on point for several enagements and had already taken hundreds of points of damage... and then this.

SO satifying.  :-)

[LtWarhound]

I'd rename that ship, to Troy.