First Big Combat.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

Well, so here we are. Finally have the fleet and science ships assembled and I moved into the Luyten system to clear it of what I think is a single precursor ship (like what I have encountered before).

In the approach I find out via the science ships thermal sensors its a ship I have never encountered before. So I am thinking this will be interesting. But due to the lack of a contact location I decided to move the ships towards the first planet around the 1st star of this binary system.

As we approach I notice there are now three thermal contacts but no marks on the screen. So I stop the science ship and have the fleet move closer. Eventualy I turn on active scanners once I am well within range.

Suddenly there are 5 ships and all of them are now pissed off.

I am so glad I updated my fleet before I did this.

*EDIT*

This is mean. My Deutchlands have 3 single gauss turrets with full size gauss cannons firing 3 rounds each and have a whopping 102% hit chance against the incoming missiles. This just got easy. 4 Deutchlands with a combined total of 12 turreted gauss cannons. Not to mention the other ships in the fleet having twin half size gauss cannon turrets as well.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

Wow do battles take a long time at 5 second increments.

Battle report so far (which is marked with spoilers).


The precurser missiles cannot get past my gauss cannon point defense. I have been hit by some missiles while I was trying to figure out how to get the point defense working correctly, now nothing can get past.

My ships have more then enough armor to take a precursor missile, survive, and carry on fighting.

The precurser ships have enough armor to shrug off my strength 27 power missiles. So their armor is at least 5 thick. I have been very stingy with missiles because I only carry 10 of them per ship since instead of fitting my Adam Class missile cruisers with smaller launchers firing more rockets I just designed a big missile with a 27 strength warhead, armor, and its own sensors. All while still going faster then my old missiles.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Glad it's going well!  Note that currently, NPR missiles are really slow owing to a bug in their design code. In future games it may be much more difficult to intercept them

[GenJeFT (OP)]

Battle is over now. I just need to do a mop up operation.


Their missiles do travel at 28k/kms part of the reason why I did so well is that I spent almost a year training this fleet and my tracking bonus was nearly 20% because I could track them for so long. Those faster missiles leaked by my PD once in a great while. They had bigger missiles that traveled about 20k/kms but those never hit (thankfully).

Several of my ships ended up combat ineffective because of a beam ship but the worst thing was the bloody ramming. I lost two 10,000 ton ships due to ramming, utterly unacceptable losses. I need faster engines and longer range beam weapons. It is satisfying to see a massive damage list from 10 ships pelting a target with 2 twin gauss cannon turrets plus four more ships with 3 single gauss cannon turrets with a near 100% hit chance for the entire fleet. I was doing upwards of 60 to 80 damage every 5 seconds. Unfortunately the precursor armor seems like its 6 layers deep.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

One of my Cruisers just got hit by nearly 300 missiles in less then 45 seconds and survived! Its speed is now 2400 instead of 3000 but holy crap. Armor is absolutely wiped out. Its lost a turret, half its fuel, and engine, and 38 men.

Waves of 50 to 60 AMM every 5 seconds and they traveled at nearly 60k/kms.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

I just lost all my heavy ships.

Just how many AMMs do the guys have?

It takes 7 waves of 56 AMMs to destroy my Heavy Cruisers that weigh in at 10,000 tons. I had 6 of them. THAT'S 2352 AMMS LAUNCHED AT ME! How many do they have!? Then there is the additional 14 waves (2 waves each) that hit my missile ships for another 784 missiles (those are still alive at the moment but probably wont last).

3136 missiles! What kind of precursor madness is this! They travel at 60,000km/s, there is nothing I can use to stop them.

*EDIT*

New Plan.

Get the rebuilt fleet within 3 hours of the target, then hit the 3 hour turn increment. Once there, turn on all scanners and point blank the blasted Precurser stations with rockets and point blank beam fire. To hell with this lets slowly move in with 2 minute increments because its getting me killed and stuck with 5 second time increments while trying to run away.

I hope they like getting hit by strength 40 warheads.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Orbital Bases have deep magazines.  AMM spam is madness indeed

The only way into short range of the AMM bases is to expend enough ships and/or missiles to deplete their stocks.

[metalax]

It is possible to drain missile stockpiles of an enemy AI without a massive cost on your side, if you have sufficiently fast ships. Find the maximum range at which they will fire and the maximum range of their missiles/active sensors. As long as their active sensors and missile range don't greatly exceed their fire-control range you can skip your ship back and forth over the boundaries causing them to waste their missiles at only the cost of some fuel and time. Of course this is really taking advantage of the AI as against a human opponent after the first time you did this they would hold fire until you had approached too far to be able to withdraw before firing.

[Elouda]

Alternatively, if you have a couple of big (10+) missile launchers in your fleet, design a missile that is mostly armour and no warhead and just keep throwing these at the stations until they run out of AMMs.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

They ran out.

After 4 to 5 thousand missiles. Maybe even 6 I am not sure, they ran out. What a stupid way to lose some crack ships.

[GenJeFT (OP)]

Well. Lessons learned from this battle.

FACs suck. Never building them again, they all died without achieving anything every time I have used them.

I lost almost my entire fleet. Lost all my crack ships (no medals for this, everyone is fired, I dont care if its mostly my fault, my crew did not do their job which did not help in the end).

Dont use 1 day or 5 day time increments to close. Your fleet WILL move faster then you think, they WILL be ON TOP of the enemy ships at the end of the time increment, they WILL NOT shoot ANYTHING until the fleet is nearly destroyed.

I did win. I lost 14 of around 20 ships. I do not have the minerals at the moment to replace that. All those experienced crews are dead (mostly). I am scrapping every last ship of that fleet, deleting the ship class including the heavy cruiser class despite how well it actually worked. It was over for the Adams class missile cruiser anyway, I was only keeping them because of the crew experience, now they are all dead and I dont want to be reminded of that disaster.

[sloanjh]

Dont use 1 day or 5 day time increments to close. Your fleet WILL move faster then you think, they WILL be ON TOP of the enemy ships at the end of the time increment, they WILL NOT shoot ANYTHING until the fleet is nearly destroyed.

This is why I tend to do a save before every "big" increment where there's a chance that I might encounter bad guys.  If you end the big increment with a bad guy deep inside your sensor envelope, simply roll back to the save and run smaller updates until you pick them up.*

John

*  For those who worry about this being a cheat, it's not (as long as you don't change any ship orders before the bad guys show up on your sensor) - you're simply doing by hand what the movement algorithm tries (and fails) to do for you.

[Charlie Beeler]

When facing Precursor defense bases that severly out tech you there is really only one option if you don't want to loose most of your ships.  Stay at maximum missile engagement range.  Your fleet should be 3-4 times greater than the bases in hull spaces and dedicated missile platforms.  Brings reloads.

As long as there are no mobile forces to oppose you, this is the cheapest way to deal with them.