Author Topic: Joining the big leagues  (Read 13824 times)

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Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #15 on: August 12, 2015, 06:31:42 PM »
Nebulas, ok, but that is a very special situation, so equipping your main fleet for that is wasteful.
Commerce as said can be done by one ship alone, even a fighter. The fighter is guaranteed to save the micromanagement, as it only has that one weapon and thus can go to auto-fire mode, so you don't even have to retarget by hand.
Biological spoilers, I would say no. Unless your engines are better, which allows you to outrange+outmaneuver them. But in face of such superiority you again would be sufficiently equipped with just one beam attack ship instead of a whole class section of a fleet.(see the beginning of that Astral Republic thread where one tiny ship single-handedly destroyed mothership, supports and massive numbers of facs) ..Otherwise, when you don't hold these advantages, the main counter for beam attack spec. is either missile ship or amm/mini-asm.
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Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #16 on: August 12, 2015, 08:39:18 PM »
It's not a beam attack ship, it's a multi-role warship equipped with a beam secondary armament.

Size 1 missiles are powerful but if you are forced to expend them as antimissiles you are in trouble if they were also your beam armament. 

 

Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #17 on: August 13, 2015, 01:55:25 AM »
Okay, having a powerful spinal laser on every ship I can understand, though it takes a bit away from optimum efficiency.

There are two options I can currently think of for why you could mean choosing missile as beam attack(not pd) replacer gets you into trouble. One is if the enemy is generally a good bit stronger (mass or tech) but then this is no efficiency argument anymore, so it wouldn't matter. The other is that you could think in fleets there are times were all ammunition is spent, and then the beam attack ships would come out and shine. (..but if the enemy still has some missiles, it will actually just end in disaster, and maybe you would have won if those extra beam ships would have been some extra missile ones, or ammunition transports for better logistics...)

Point is if you are really fighting something of identical mass and similar technology, then a size-1 asm specialist can't be overcome.
- A beam attack ship has not nearly enough counter fire to even survive the 4th to 6th salvo.
- A beam pd ship might resist at least a quarter to a third of attacks, but that extends its salvo survive time by maximum 50%, so it goes too.
- Even if you have to expend part of the ammunition as anti-missiles against a equal sized missile ship, you will outlive the enemy missile ship's magazines by shooting down most of all incoming attacks (chose between 1-2 salvos per counter), and then still have a couple salvos left to finish them of thanks to the much greater firing endurance. *
Only when the enemy is faster they would probably get away with both ships short on ammunition, but that only means the setup is either win or stalemate.

* = As a special bonus on top, any missile based anti-missile fire is not so much concerned with enemy salvo density (just launch more in advance), which means launcher miniaturization wont help the enemy unless they spent the saved space in magazines instead of more launchers.

Sure you can't do anything once the magazines are empty, but that only means you have fought an enemy outside of your weight class to begin with, because (as above) you sure had enough to deal with any equal encounter, so it is an admiralty error.

...I think we will need a greater discussion for this to be clear, with example designs, and some fleet composition 1 vs. fleet composition 2 scenarios.
Not that this how it has to be of course, because RP reasons are always stronger, so I myself would compose differently no matter what. But that doesn't take away that this here is really efficient. Only poor ammunition supply lines can break it, but that would also break missile based fleets, and pure beam fleets would simply lose if the AI could handle how to assemble amm ships (or even artillery) into a firing line.(since they don't, 'pure pd-beam' works actually quite well in the practical game though)
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Offline sneer

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #18 on: August 13, 2015, 04:50:46 AM »
Well, I guess we can all agree that Invaders always need some special treatment. :) They are so rare and need such specialization to be beatable on lower tech levels though, that I have personally found it not to be worth to take into general design considerations.
Not very rare - I have 3 active wormholes within 2 jumps of my colonies since like 2040 and expect opening wh in habitatet system anytime
If only Steve made invaders AI more aggressive like they should be you would find them a bit more often and more dangerous ( I had games where I did not see them at all )

I had situations when surveying chain I got to system previously opened by NPR so WH was really old and consisted like 20 their ships 2/3 combat ones , I also had 500kt Invaders fleet entering Sol relatively early ( I was very very lucky )
it is highest danger and most fun TBH
also
If you design ships able to hunt invaders that means they will do their job vs anything else
(mix of box launchers + some beams + some PD on medium sized ships (20-50kt) anytime in 2050-2100 range) preferable one class with variants for shipyard efficiecies
I usually find comfortable with my designs ( tech wise) around 2060

this is my fleet workhorse -total 15 ( with 2 subvariants in use ) -  designed 2072 as 2nd generation of fleet cruiser, built in 2075 , now in 2085 they are shortly ahead of mk3 upgrade ( level 3 ew , better beam FC , next class of gausses)

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Myoko - mk2 class Cruiser    18 750 tons     476 Crew     5040.8 BP      TCS 375  TH 3000  EM 0
8000 km/s     Armour 6-62     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 7     PPV 135.16
Maint Life 1.08 Years     MSP 1176    AFR 401%    IFR 5.6%    1YR 1012    5YR 15177    Max Repair 750 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 350   

1500 EP Internal Fusion Drive (2)    Power 1500    Fuel Use 68.89%    Signature 1500    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 2 925 000 Litres    Range 40.8 billion km   (58 days at full power)

30cm C6 Soft X-ray Laser (4)    Range 320 000km     TS: 8000 km/s     Power 24-6     RM 6    ROF 20        24 24 24 24 24 24 20 18 16 14
Triple GC R3-100 Turret (2x9)    Range 30 000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
pd mk3  Fire Control S03 60-20000 (1)    Max Range: 120 000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     92 83 75 67 58 50 42 33 25 17
lazor mk3  Fire Control S04 160-10000 (1)    Max Range: 320 000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
p20/2 Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Size 15 Box Launcher (10)    Missile Size 15    Hangar Reload 112.5 minutes    MF Reload 18.7 hours
Size 5 Box Launcher mk1 (40)    Missile Size 5    Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes    MF Reload 6.2 hours
Missile Fire Control FC294-R200 (2)     Range 294.0m km    Resolution 200
Size 15 Torp 47-60-44 (10)  Speed: 60 000 km/s   End: 12.1m    Range: 43.7m km   WH: 47    Size: 15    TH: 260/156/78
Size 5 ASM 18-60-44 (40)  Speed: 60 000 km/s   End: 12.1m    Range: 43.7m km   WH: 18    Size: 5    TH: 260/156/78

Active Search Sensor MR11-R1 (1)     GPS 84     Range 11.8m km    MCR 1.3m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR242-R240 (1)     GPS 26880     Range 242.9m km    Resolution 240

ECCM-2 (4)         ECM 20

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

there are 2 other very similar variant but with generally similar combat abilities

in total 280kt tonnage with 8km/s 600 size 5 and 150 size 15 missles broadside , 30 triple gauss turrets for PD and 53 med beams for finishing cripples
missles lack range but I assume I can survive enemy missle attack and strike as 2nd ,
it is 1st game I mix bigger ASM with smaller ones and I find advantages of such setup so far
« Last Edit: August 13, 2015, 05:01:23 AM by sneer »
 

Offline AL (OP)

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #19 on: August 13, 2015, 06:22:09 AM »
Sorry, I completely intended to reply to you earlier Vandermeer but I must have gotten distracted somewhere, and as usual one thing leads to another... and the draft I started is still lying around collecting dust to this day.
After all the tweaking about, I sort of just decided that I'll wait until reaching 200kt shipyards before making the true do-everything capitals. It seems I'm getting a more diverse spread of opinions regarding design now, so I'll have to see what I can do to reconcile some of these apparently clashing ideals.

In any case, an opportunity for combat trials just popped up - one of my survey flotillas discovered what I believe is a precursor outpost. The battlegroup I sent was composed of one of each of the capital ship designs - the carrier and Anatus A more or less as shown previously (I think), and the B-variant with ~40 reduced size torpedo launchers. Parasites include some passive sensor ships and shuttles, and ~80 fighters divided evenly between 250t box launcher bombers and and 500t laser equipped "escorts".
The first ship I spotted turned tail the moment my caps were detected, but I did come across two AMM PDC's on one of the system's planets. Leaving the carrier behind, I sent the two cruisers (rename to dreadnaughts?) forward to engage. At max launch range, I fired off a salvo of torpedoes to test the waters. The torps were a new MIRV design with 5 of those size-1 shells each, so that broadside put out an effective salvo size of 200 missiles. Aside from providing heavy anti-missile fire, the PDC's also appeared to have a respectable meson point-defense armament. Out of those 200 missiles, I think only around 30 made it through.

I then decided to push forward into the AMM envelope of those bases, thinking to try another torpedo salvo once their magazines are depleted. As of this moment, I have just finished weathering the (first?) AMM storm of ~70 missiles per 10 seconds for quite a few increments (left on auto-turns for a while). Between my CIWS and shields, not a scratch was inflicted on my armour belt (shhh, pretend those escort fighters still docked on the carrier were engaged elsewhere at the time). This was a bit of a relief considering Vandermeer's comment about AMM bases being one of the only entities which could pierce my shielding.
If the next torpedo strike still proves ineffective, then I will close to beam engagement and use the hopefully superior range of my large caliber railguns to obliterate the bases from orbit.

Some design considerations from this scenario:
It seems I have more than enough shielding, so I could try redistributing some weight dedicated to shields to other areas.
I need some bigger passives than the size-5's that my scouts have.
I did try sending a wing of bombers to pursue the fleeing ship at the beginning, but they started taking AMM fire before they could get in range so I recalled them. Should I have sent them with the beam fighters to protect against missile threats, or do I need to invest further into thermal reduction?
The journey out to the system in question left my fleet on around 60% fuel (22bkm from Sol). I'm not too happy with this number so I will be looking into improving the range for the next set of designs.

Re: nebulae - my designs in this game tended to have decent to heavy shielding and feature mostly missile-based offensive armaments, so I may need to design a whole new fleet if I ever encounter a chain of nebula systems and find the need to battle within them. Since this doesn't occur too often, I think it is safe to say the fleet doesn't require any immediate and drastic changes.

Just as a side note, most if not all of my previous games were very beam-heavy, to the point of almost disregarding missiles completely. I'm missing the beam ships almost as much as some of you seem to be, but my energy weapons researcher died/retired a bit back, so I'm waiting for his replacement to train up before I can get some serious beams designed.
« Last Edit: August 13, 2015, 06:29:21 AM by AL »
 

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #20 on: August 13, 2015, 06:37:43 AM »
Unless you are using a truely superior # of escort fighters, its unlikely they'll prove effective in abating AMM fire. Thermal reduction won't work either, assuming the active sensor is on.  Longer range fire controls are generally the most effective way to keep your bombers safe.


 

Offline AL (OP)

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #21 on: August 13, 2015, 06:43:59 AM »
The actives on the fighters were off the whole time since I was tracking the target via passives, and was planning to activate them only once I got within firing range. My EM's told me the area was clear of hostile actives so I'm not sure how the bombers were detected if not for their thermals, let alone how a target lock was established. I suppose perhaps there were some really low GPS sensors lurking around?
 

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #22 on: August 13, 2015, 07:00:19 AM »
Yeah, resolution 1 sensors have extremely low GPS.  That's the (enemy) active I was referring to, sorry.
 

Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #23 on: August 14, 2015, 06:56:06 AM »
Not very rare - I have 3 active wormholes within 2 jumps of my colonies since like 2040 and expect opening wh in habitatet system anytime
Then it must be that either you are lucky or it is my selective misfortune. I have sadly still only met them once over the years of play, but I had them activated in every main game after the second and also in numerous test games.

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it is highest danger and most fun TBH
I am still waiting for this to happen, because my first encounter was over relatively quickly, as it was one of those more test-ish than serious games, where I already had all technology to build some stuff that I wanted. They were fast, but could do nothing against the 30k shields of the mothership I had on explore cruise there. A wasted first experience.

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If you design ships able to hunt invaders that means they will do their job vs anything else
Ok, that is a fair point, but on the other hand such a setup turns out to be somewhat uncomfortable in the rest of the game where it isn't needed to that extent. I wonder how you do the box launcher thing; do you have a carrier for 1-2 cruiser sizes behind the lines, or do you actually fly back the ship to rearm on planetary base or something? Anyway, I assume it is quite the click work after every encounter. Against NPR, and all the other threats you could fare a way more leaned back approach that spares all that and still easily be successful.

Nonetheless, the firing power is impressive, and surely much more optimized as long as your logistic skill is good. One of the reasons that makes you play a capital ship game is exactly though, that you don't want bother with too much micromanagement, like too many moving parts that need to be organized.(manually re-arm single units after every shot? horror!) I think I described that before somewhere; the capital ship fleet is the fleet of the lazy admiral. All in one and done.

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it is 1st game I mix bigger ASM with smaller ones and I find advantages of such setup so far
I puzzled why you did that when the larger missiles even have identical range, but I think I understand now. When you have much oversaturated the enemies PD-capacity already, then indeed you can start to mix in some quota of larger warheads easily to achieve greater penetration + better warhead ratio, as they will likely make it through anyway. Nice idea.

After all the tweaking about, I sort of just decided that I'll wait until reaching 200kt shipyards before making the true do-everything capitals. It seems I'm getting a more diverse spread of opinions regarding design now, so I'll have to see what I can do to reconcile some of these apparently clashing ideals.
The positions here are often presented in form of "it should be this"/"it should be that", but really mostly mean "I would do this/that" and actually just represent a personal favorite of gameplay style rather than a game truth. For example the 'large fuel range or tanker' thing is purely taste matter. I might say it belongs to capital ships to be capable of large independence, including from tankers, but that is an arbitrary definition, and capital ship can mean many different things for someone else.

That is not to say that there aren't some real game mechanical truths that simply work or don't.(sometimes with some cushion realm of personal freedom around to chose from) To figure out your personalized version of the right way, I would summon what Steve recently said in another thread, that you will see what is effective via what works in the true game and battle tests. To achieve a working answer for such a new thing like capital ships, you need to test many things probably, but as long as you stay unbiased or don't start to filter for what you would like to be true, you are bound to realize what really works out eventually.
You can look for good arguments to get a direction and hopefully discover shortcuts, but the best way in truth finding is of course always to test rather than to believe. Testing(/nature) is immune to human errors and follies.

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Leaving the carrier behind, I sent the two cruisers (rename to dreadnaughts?)
Class naming conventions are also one of those topics with greatly diverging valid standpoints. The real world standpoint seems to be a mere naming after size mindset ("bigger than destroyer" or something), yet many here (and much fiction, including Star Trek) seem to enjoy to name after mission type instead. I guess cruiser often means something like "a destroyer in gun matters, but also with range /independent capacity", which makes it naturally bigger than destroyers again.
This is also why it seems so destined to be the classical capital ship per se, and so the reason why I said dreadnought before is because it went of that often attributed independency path and now looks very much like a ship that was built as a pure artillery platform, just like the original dreadnoughts.(which I guess is much tighter defined through this)
However, many interpretations exist for the cruiser, and so I've seen players having much smaller cruisers than their destroyers even.
In short: If you want to name it cruiser, it is probably a cruiser.

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This was a bit of a relief considering Vandermeer's comment about AMM bases being one of the only entities which could pierce my shielding.
Heyhey, I said they are the only danger to shields up to a size (unless having to go close combat with invaders), but also that your shields were already superior enough to go through all of that.

Here:
You did designate quite a lot to shields. I know that is the core strength of large ships and you reduced it in the revision already, but it is still about 15% of the hull, so maybe 30% or more of the available mission tonnage. As center ship of a larger fleet I would say it is great, but for a ship of the line combatant I think it is too wasteful. Even the 300kt cruiser which managed to survive that whole big NPR war in my thread unscratched, despite close combat and such, had only 900 shields at the time.(though it should have been a bit more here)
Though I have to agree that no matter if you rebalance or not, the first current layout will most likely be able to conquer all but heavily fortified NPR worlds.(and Invaders ofc.) My first 120kt and partially 180kt ships couldn't shield wise stand against spoiler amm PDCs alone, but I guess that was because of the heavy cuts that maintenance takes when activated.

Quote from: AL
It seems I have more than enough shielding, so I could try redistributing some weight dedicated to shields to other areas.
Yes! See, there is some verification through praxis right there already. :)

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I did try sending a wing of bombers to pursue the fleeing ship at the beginning, but they started taking AMM fire before they could get in range so I recalled them. Should I have sent them with the beam fighters to protect against missile threats, or do I need to invest further into thermal reduction?
Yes and no, depending on what you faced. You have 80 fighters to equal proportions beam and bomber you say? That should be easily enough to deal with many small to maybe even mid sized formations and their counter fire.(though your bombers don't have the option to expend main fire to emergency aid in pd as a buffer if needed, so be careful not to overestimate)
I think you also had problems with the thermal reduction here, right? I found that even my 10m+ km range bombers were spotted just before they could fire and received counter missiles, so they had to retreat. That was at a thermal of 250, so for your shell's range you need to get it under 100 I would say to be able to make safe approaches.
..Of course that does nothing if the enemy already has actives on, but often enough they won't (or only activate ship search ones), and it would be a shame to waste those good opportunities.

For reference on the escort fighters: I had a (yet undocumented) NPR war in the Astral game featuring the new heavy cruiser that houses 20 beam fighters and 20 bombers. The fighters and bombers together completely took the enemies fleet apart by themselves, without the capital ship needing to fire or even leave its course to their home planet. This time the enemy was (maybe coincidentally) smart enough to even assemble most of his ships in a tighter protected formation, but the combined fighters and bombers managed to fend the incoming asm's off and systematically destroyed the ships in a couple of runs.(some of which still successful surprise attacks because of thermal reduction btw.)
I had 3 tech levels engine advantage though, which makes enemy missiles relatively puny here.(fighters had far over 100% chance, and even the shells hit over 100% despite only being emergency amm)
On same tech level you can only expect about 50-66% from your fighters. Probing in advance what salvo an enemy is capable of and comparing that to the escort pd expectations might sometimes be crucial to the survival of already flagged bombers.

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The journey out to the system in question left my fleet on around 60% fuel (22bkm from Sol). I'm not too happy with this number so I will be looking into improving the range for the next set of designs.
So you did want them to work without tanker or station like I thought? In that case I can recommend either 200-300b as a mark, or the two years flight time provision I mentioned before. Speed grows faster than range though, so maybe the second is not the best measurement in very early or very late game stages.

Unless you are using a truely superior # of escort fighters, its unlikely they'll prove effective in abating AMM fire. Thermal reduction won't work either, assuming the active sensor is on.  Longer range fire controls are generally the most effective way to keep your bombers safe.
If you use larger than size-1 missiles (or maybe even 2 or 3), I would fully agree. Rather make the missile range and fire control larger, and you could probably completely give up on the escort fighter concept.(except leaving one for civil ship hunt) If it lies in your tech potential to shoot from outside the enemies (fighter-)sensor range, then you should always go for that.
Otherwise, when using really small missiles for maximum damage per magazine ratios, I have to say escort fighters are effective.
Calculation example: A 30kt missile ship can hold about 24 unreduced size-5 launchers. A fighter on same tech lever hits those with approx. 50-66%, so you need 750t-1kt fighter mass per missile (likely only point blank will do), so with a 50-50 fighter-bomber ratio, you would have 15-20 secure counter shots when you approach with equal mass. This ratio is better than even a specialized PD ship of same size despite that only half the mass was PD for the fighter squadron. ( The combination of naturally amazing targeting speed and the special fighter combat pilot bonus return unparalleled Pd per mass)
Mind you I imagined only meson or laser pd fighters, were actually railgun or gauss would make even better PD weapons.(style choice, but useless unless you can really swarm an enemy with them)

The reason fighters are perceived to be somewhat inferior in pd still, is just caused by that you rarely have an equal mass of them available to face an enemy, and while overwhelmed they will as any other ship of course perform sub-optimal. Technically they are better, and a fully specialized carrier fleet would probably come to see those benefits.(I have not yet tested this in praxis though)
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Offline sneer

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #24 on: August 14, 2015, 07:31:35 AM »
Vandermeer
box launcher auto reloads on orbits with simple " load ordnance" order for the fleet precisely like standard ones
so there is no more micromanagement - it takes few hours but in 99.8% of cases time doesn't matter after mission

as for other fights and scenarios
sometimes you want small single salvos  or less intensive play
you can choose 0-30 missile controls to get this effect ( ofc there is always possibility of reassigning tubes manually up to you needs - flexibility of such design is simply stunning )

as for mixing standard and big missiles - sometimes even such salvo is not enough vs superior deep armor - big missiles offer shock damage - such damage cause often engine damage so ships are falling off enemy formation with lower speed than main group - even if they are not heavily damaged
it is tactical opportunity to use beams in fleet vs separated vessels
that's why range is close - I even tend to shoot them from 10 mil km only - what is right time to manouver and pick enemy one by one

p.s. after clearing last spawn I have even nastier guests next door than I described so far
something I fear may be stronger than my currently shown fleet
« Last Edit: August 14, 2015, 08:11:44 AM by sneer »
 

Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #25 on: August 14, 2015, 08:40:02 AM »
Vandermeer
box launcher auto reloads on orbits with simple " load ordnance" order for the fleet precisely like standard ones
so there is no more micromanagement - it takes few hours but in 99.8% of cases time doesn't matter after mission
That is what I meant with "flying back to planetary base". :) You still have to do all the flying around through who knows how many jump points.., . Oh wait, is it that you have ammo transports close that just dump their ammo on random sites for this to work?
Even if not, that would seem really efficient. Slightly uncomfortable still, but actually worth it for that trade of power. Now I wonder why "TT" even bothered to make carrier cruisers for his box launcher frigates.

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p.s. after clearing last spawn I have even nastier guests next door than I described so far
something I fear may be stronger than my currently shown fleet
I really want to know if others see this often too, or if you just encountered a singularity (get it?). I need some statistics, so it must be a poll.
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Offline sneer

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #26 on: August 14, 2015, 08:59:30 AM »
it is hijacking Al's thread - maybe Eric could cut and move out our conversation to place better suited
but answering you
I can provide some stats - I played like 10-15 games within time frame I can remember
Usually when I hit invaders in game setup from the beginning I see them and very often I see them fast - for this reason I sometimes postopne exploration past SOL to at least 2040
I'd say 2/3to 3/4  chances  with such setup or even higher - they also vary a lot in terms of technnology carried
If I decide to turn invaders later in game when I feel more comfortable I see problems with them apearing even in very long games - say 1/3 of all games have them - tough to say as I stopped playing like that - due to not having enemy for my uber fancy designs

so my advice is to have them in game setup from beginning no matter how scary it is
being destroyed by them is the only good ending I know in this game
and yes it happened to me few times when 10-15years in game wormhole opens 1j of sol so you are toasted no matter how good you are

« Last Edit: August 14, 2015, 09:14:58 AM by sneer »
 

Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #27 on: August 14, 2015, 09:11:35 AM »
I also had them on from the start all the time. You would say one third of games have them? Given that I played around 5 serious and many test games to that, that means Aurora owes me around 3-4 Invader encounters. :D Probably much more if time is a beneficial factor.

@Eric: Maybe if you cut that out, could you then directly attach it to the new poll about Invader frequency? That would be fitting.
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Offline sneer

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #28 on: August 14, 2015, 09:17:44 AM »
if chosen from beginning they were in majority of my games
but ....
I was testing faster game setups
I also had many games without any NPR from start ( but 50-100% of probability of their appearance ) - so the only space systems created were mine in terms of visibility

 

Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Joining the big leagues
« Reply #29 on: August 14, 2015, 09:45:44 AM »
I play any game without pre-generated NPR! And for the exactly same reason that I want them to go lightning fast, so I don't leave NPR with fleet around to avoid snowball slowdown effect.(higher generation chance for rebalance on my side too)
On the side: I also kill all civils, which is why my games run smooth as at the point of generation even after year 300.
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