First game - Undefeatable enemy

[Styledatol (OP)]

First of all, hello everyone o/

Found this game/community while searching for games similar to ascIIsector.       Was blown away by the detail of the game and decided to give a try.     
So far it's been an amazing experience, aside from the small detail below.     

Been playing my first game, following the tutorial closely, for several days now.     
Mapped several systems, and recovered tech from some unknown wrecks, so far no encounter with other aliens, except for this one race I found when exploring Sirious.     
Cant contact them, as they're too alien, and know nothing about them except for the fact they have a massive fleet of seemingly indestructible ships with 60k km range mason blasters that turn a ship to dust in one volley - Partially because: at first encounter they've had the modest number of 20 ships, 17 years later there are about 130 of them.     


My latest ship design, the only one that was able to do some sort of damage, before being vaporized.    I've had about 20 of them, but they were destroyed in less than 5 minutes of engaging, while only managing to cause atmospheric (or fluid) venting in one enemy ship:

Heretic class Destroyer    4,450 tons     382 Crew     582.      5 BP      TCS 89  TH 160  EM 0
1797 km/s     Armour 4-24     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 10.      4
Maint Life 1.      92 Years     MSP 164    AFR 79%    IFR 1.      1%    1YR 58    5YR 868    Max Repair 144 MSP

Nuclear Pulse Engine E10M (4)    Power 40    Fuel Use 100%    Signature 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 20.      2 billion km   (130 days at full power)

Single 15cm C2 Visible Light Laser Turret (2x1)    Range 120,000km     TS: 12000 km/s     Power 6-2     RM 2    ROF 15        6 6 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S16 64-12000 H70 (2)    Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 37 30 22
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PO-3 (2)     Total Power Output 6    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Previously attempted missile boats didnt work, as missiles weren't fast enough to track those ships, and my sensors can't pick them up till they're a few mil km away.     

Though I am no stranger to games with difficult learning curves (I play EVE and Dwarf Fortress regularly), I find this first, and only, encounter very daunting.       Although I did expect to die horribly in my first game, this seems to be quite brutal.   After reading the tutorials, wiki, and others' ship designs Im still at a loss of how I should fight those monsters.       What fleet size should I be aiming for? Should I focus on developing some sort of special weapons? Was it all just my fault for taking it easy with expansion and letting an enemy become unstoppable?


Thanks in advance,
Style

[Marski]

Research your active and electromagnetic (EM sensors increase active sensor range) sensors, and research atleast Ion engines so you get access to faster missiles.

What is the usual tonnage of the hostile ships?

[Styledatol (OP)]

They're all 800 tons.

Style

[xeryon]

Oh, this is a fun one.  How to advise without giving away the surprise.

You need to evaluate your technology and see what you have that would give you an advantage.  Are you faster then your enemies or can you develop a ship that is?  You noted not being able to see them until they were right on top of you.  You can build active search sensors specifically tailored to the size craft you want to track.  A search sensor can find anything regardless of configuration but if the size ship is outside the ideal range it was designed for your detection range is reduced by the ratio of how far out of spec your target is.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

There's nothing basically wrong with your ship design for a beam engagement, though I could quibble over a lot of the particulars.  The real problem here is one of technology;  your ships are tech level 2 at best and your opponents are likely Magneto-plasma grade. Meson tech is extra brutal for this, you can't even soak their damage in any way. And of course the odds sucked.  

You need to upgrade the waveband of your lasers and ideally the capacitor as well.   Your tracking speed should be sufficient, but you need more power and DPS on your lasers.   Once you go past the visible spectrum, you could also go to 10cm or 12cm lasers; on a per-weight basis you can probably do better than with 15cms.  20cms should also have enough punch at that range band to perform well.  

It is more than possible, even at nuclear pulse tech, to build missile warships adequate for facing the ships you are fighting.  However, it pretty much requires experience with the game - sort of like dealing with hostile biomes in Dwarf Fortress.  The two key problems are getting adequate targeting on FAC sized targets and missiles capable of hitting fast targets - ideally while still doing useful amounts of damage.

Final point - armor is useless against Mesons. If you're developing vessels specifically to combat this threat, you can save some time and money by stripping your armor.  You can always retrofit it on the survivors later.

[Styledatol (OP)]

Thanks for the advice everyone =D

Style

[Panopticon]

Honestly though at your tech level you are going to have a rough time against this particular enemy, there is information about this enemy in the spoiler section of the forums if you want actual details.

[Styledatol (OP)]

Read a bit, from my understanding they're some sort of super enemy?
Encouraging to know that not every AI I meet will be like that.  Designing LR missiles to fight them, as it seems the only way to fight them.
They havn't moved in 20 years, which I find good, since they're less than two months away from Earth.  Should I destroy the return JG to prevent them from moving towards earth? or do they have jumpdrives?

Style

[Icecoon]

You have a stellarator generator on your ship and you are still using nuclear pulse engines? I suggest you should exchange them to ion engines if you don't have the magneto-plasma drive researched yet.  

[Panopticon]

I wouldn't call them a super enemy really, the other two spoiler races qualify for that, these guys just have a few quirks that make them a unique challenge.

Your plan for long range missiles is a good one, as you have discovered they are Meson armed so you can hit without fear of retaliation... if you can detect them in time, remember 800 tons is hard to see without sensors and fire controls with the appropriate resolution.

[Marski]

To me they are one trick enemy, really. Mass fast, atleast medium range missiles, and keep your distance of the incoming vessels as much as you can. After you have dealt with them, the big sucker becomes a glorified practice target.

[Styledatol (OP)]

Worked like a charm, in a way.
Posting incase other newbies will run into same daunting task in the future.

Drake class Cruiser    4,300 tons     488 Crew     597. 4 BP      TCS 86  TH 160  EM 0
1860 km/s     Armour 2-23     Shields 0-0     Sensors 20/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 12     PPV 24
Maint Life 9. 57 Years     MSP 1174    AFR 73%    IFR 1%    1YR 23    5YR 347    Max Repair 84 MSP
Magazine 126   

Nuclear Pulse Engine E10M (4)    Power 40    Fuel Use 100%    Signature 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 41. 9 billion km   (260 days at full power)

Size 6 Missile Launcher (4)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 40
Missile Fire Control FC17-R16 (1)     Range 17. 3m km    Resolution 16

Active Search Sensor MR20-R16 (1)     GPS 1344     Range 20. 2m km    Resolution 16
Thermal Sensor TH4-20 (1)     Sensitivity 20     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  20m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

After developing Ion engines I was able to build a missile design with 50% chance hit.
Once my missile boats got in range (about 20 of them), I turned around and started running like a little girl, firing about 8 missilies into each enemy craft.
Took a very long time, and had to sacrifice two boats as a diversion, but I managed to take down all the enemy crafts (there were about 180 of them).

Fast-forward 10 days:
- The 'workers' (1k km/s vessals) got no weapons, but they do love to ram into your ships.
- The Mothership is slow but it resilient, took me 600-800 missiles to take her down; luckily, her PD can only shoot down 3 missiles at a time.
- Bring lots of supply ships, spent close to 2000 missiles on this enemy, though from seeing screenshots of others, it's not very common to face 200 ships at a time.

Thanks everyone for the help, and I hope this will help others too.

Now. . .  if I could only figure out how to post images. . . .


Style

[Marski]

Very good, however for a Ion-tech, 4,300 ton "cruiser" it is quite slow. The average speed of Ion-tech military ships of that size go about 3000-4000 km/s. But then again that class is cheap and fast to construct with relatively small usage of resources, good design.

For the pictures I suggest uploading them to imageshack(slow but you can upload dozens of pictures at once), tinypic (fast, but you have to upload one picture at a time), or photobucket which is average at everything and requires you to register.