Post reply

Warning - while you were reading 5 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.
Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days.
Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic.

Note: this post will not display until it's been approved by a moderator.

Name:
Email:
Subject:
Message icon:

shortcuts: hit alt+s to submit/post or alt+p to preview

Please read the rules before you post!


Topic Summary

Posted by: boolybooly
« on: February 22, 2023, 10:33:09 AM »

But they love you, with or without condiments.



Posted by: Michael Sandy
« on: April 26, 2022, 03:13:40 AM »

The first trick to dealing with any alien, especially the Star Swarm, is scouting.

Always have small, long endurance scouts that probe at least the main planets first.  Always have a sensor satellite places on both sides of every jump point.  If you do discover a boojum, do not lead it out.  Never transit a ship that the enemy is tracking.

If you can find them without them finding you, you then scout to find out their weapon's mix, speed and range.  If you discover an enemy that doesn't have missiles, consider going for short ranged 1 MSP missiles.  Yes, you will be sandpapering the enemy, but if you only need 5 million km range or so you can fire to disable, and the small launchers can reload quickly too.

If you have the capacity to blow through the shields of the mother ship, do so, otherwise, just avoid it until you do.

The problem with the Swarm, in my opinion, is people think they are a huge menace and so they go in with their whole fleet, and there will therefore be ships that the Swarm can overtake and destroy.  If you only let the swarm see ships that are faster than them, they are manageable.  Yes, your swarm hunters will be overengined fuel hogs that can't carry enough missiles to defeat all of the parasites, but they can outrange them and withdraw and lather rinse repeat if necessary.

If you have good information on the enemy, and enough time to retool and build ordnance, you can often have a flawless victory even at low tech level.  But to do that you need that information and time.

Having fast scouts is absolutely of critical importance, because they can also buy you significant time as the enemy tries to chase them down, sometimes with their whole fleet.

Once you are absolutely certain you have killed the parasite craft, including gotten some of your fast missile boats in range to fire missiles at the mommy, if that doesn't prompt a reserve launch, THEN bring in that mommy swatters.  You don't need particularly fast or accurate missiles to hit that slow ship.  You just want the most warhead you can fit into 1 MSP.  And you either want a huge launch to kill it in one blow, or rapid fire to peel it apart before the shields regenerate.

I ended up with a lot of different missile categories, as my missile tech advanced while I expanded my ordnance factories.  So to be efficient, I made sure that all the missiles of a particular volley would be of the same type.  You can also attempt stunts like firing the older and slower missiles first, then the progressively newer and faster ones, so that they cluster on target a bit.

As you start cleansing infestations, you will get a better idea of how many missiles and launchers you need to kill how many ships, and that will determine your pace of operations.

Always scout.  Don't bring anything in range of sensors that can't run away.  Kill bugs!
Posted by: ExChairman
« on: January 11, 2022, 03:44:20 AM »

Only way to be sure is to take off and nuke them from orbit.... :)

Yea I know, but no ships in orbit... ;D  Oh well had a few test Mechanoid companies, (Super heavies with a huge gun and large auto cannons), they love the attention and are killing bugs in their thousands, well being a test unit, they had to little of supply, but they still might get the job done...

Had a space battle over Gliese 430 and managed to bag his troop transports, lost a couple of BCs and a lot of destroyer escorts... They I had to "bug" out, when a major bug fleet appeared, I managed to evade it and my 5th fleet is now 2 jumps away, waiting for 3rd and 4th fleet to join the war... I thought I had a fast and advanced fleet, speed around 9200, and ECM/ECCM of 4, but very thin armor (5-12), so glad I introduced shielding, acids are bad after a battle is won/lost... :'( But fighting ships with 16000 km/s, thin armor from 10... ECM of 6... Lasers that hit with 212 in damage... This will be a costly war
Posted by: Arwyn
« on: January 10, 2022, 01:03:24 PM »

Only way to be sure is to take off and nuke them from orbit.... :)
Posted by: ExChairman
« on: January 09, 2022, 04:54:30 AM »

Damn, they land on planets to....  :o

Oh that's good a reinforced infantry division, this should be fun! ;D

"Enemy in sight! Open fire!" Guns, lasers & cannon fire in the background...

"smeg, these are some tough bugs...!"

"Sir! we have reports of bugs attacking our reserve formations..."

"Sir, they have penetrated our defence perimeter... OH GOD, they are inside the command po...."

smeg!  :-X

I lost some 5000 groundtroops, ground to space installations, tanks... they lost 42 "men, bugs or whatever called..." Bloody HELL!!!  In the first days of fighting... :o

After a few days I am down to less than 60 tanks, 60 soldiers and a lot of support units with little or no ammo left...

Last communication from division command... "You are on your own now!"

Perhaps a 120-150 bugs killed, I lost many, many thousands of troops, need the navy....

Last count on enemy strength, around 10 000 of them...
Posted by: brondi00
« on: August 09, 2021, 09:58:20 PM »

I'm actually not.  LOL.  USAF.  But because of my job I was regularly stationed with army and marines.

Plus it's one of my favorite sayings because it communicates a truth.  Nothing worth doing is easy and if you want to achieve you have to embrace the hard parts that lead to the goal.
Posted by: Arwyn
« on: August 09, 2021, 09:54:19 AM »

So my suggestion is to turn them off until you think your ready or embrace the suck.  Losing is fun.

lol, "embrace the suck" Echo Tango Sierra! Or, spot the former infantry! :)
Posted by: brondi00
« on: August 08, 2021, 09:02:56 PM »

The reality is they are hard early game and in a low research game
  And IMO this is good.

If you aren't at least ion level you probably don't stand a chance unless you use some gamey tactics.

So my suggestion is to turn them off until you think your ready or embrace the suck.  Losing is fun.
Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth
« on: August 05, 2021, 09:52:20 PM »

I'm not 100% on that "hit the hull" thing.

Also, they do use (small) lasers with high rate of fire. So shields can and do get stripped away.
Posted by: Droll
« on: August 05, 2021, 05:34:30 PM »

Does acid affect energy shields? If that isn't the case I think shields would do much better than armor.
Star swarms use meson cannons, which means they ignore armor and shields entirely. More resilience would come from using things like turret armor, and empty missile magazines with internal armor.
C# swarm don't use mesons. They use microwaves, boarding, and lasers that (if they hit hull) start applying some sort of damage over time effect (the rules of which I don't understand).

The "if they hit hull" is what I wanted to hear. So given how poor microwaves are at getting through shields (2 dmg per shot) you could do quite well for yourself with energy shields, thereby avoiding DoT as long as the shields are still up.

However the idea of using armored magazines as an internal bulkhead of sorts is an interesting one regardless.
Posted by: iceball3
« on: August 05, 2021, 12:41:47 PM »

Does acid affect energy shields? If that isn't the case I think shields would do much better than armor.
Star swarms use meson cannons, which means they ignore armor and shields entirely. More resilience would come from using things like turret armor, and empty missile magazines with internal armor.
C# swarm don't use mesons. They use microwaves, boarding, and lasers that (if they hit hull) start applying some sort of damage over time effect (the rules of which I don't understand).
Wow, that's new. My bad!
Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth
« on: August 05, 2021, 12:39:32 PM »

Does acid affect energy shields? If that isn't the case I think shields would do much better than armor.
Star swarms use meson cannons, which means they ignore armor and shields entirely. More resilience would come from using things like turret armor, and empty missile magazines with internal armor.
C# swarm don't use mesons. They use microwaves, boarding, and lasers that (if they hit hull) start applying some sort of damage over time effect (the rules of which I don't understand).
Posted by: iceball3
« on: August 05, 2021, 11:35:02 AM »

Does acid affect energy shields? If that isn't the case I think shields would do much better than armor.
Star swarms use meson cannons, which means they ignore armor and shields entirely. More resilience would come from using things like turret armor, and empty missile magazines with internal armor.
Posted by: Droll
« on: August 05, 2021, 10:25:56 AM »

/message repeats

Yet another game goes down in flames due to Star Swarm. Running into them early is just game over for me every time.

I just dont see how you can viably fight the damn things early game. Anyone manage to stop them early?
Tried missiles yet?

Sure have. Early on, the missile velocity is pretty low, and swarm have a lot of energy weapons. I fired the entire complement of missiles on 6 destroyers and 2 cruisers at them and achieved zero hits. All were intercepted.

To my earlier post, early game, I have not found anything that is really viable in fighting them effectively. Massed railgun fire does damage to them, but you will find that exchanging broadsides with them will have your ships melting, literally! :)

Does acid affect energy shields? If that isn't the case I think shields would do much better than armor.
Posted by: Arwyn
« on: August 05, 2021, 09:39:38 AM »

Quote from: Stormtrooper link=topic=12669. msg154101#msg154101 date=1628116562
Quote from: Arwyn link=topic=12669. msg154026#msg154026 date=1627914838
If you havent run into them before, you must have incredible luck.  I have had multiple games die due to early encounters with them. 

I have turned them off in my latest game, just to give my empire a chance to get established.

I haven't run into them at all and I consider THIS a bad luck.  They seem like super fun and something challenging, unlike invaders who suffered a nerf and don't increase tech so they're not that dangerous, but they always bugged out for me and refused to spawn even with sm.

I explore a lot early on, and that is the usual trigger. That game I had pushed out about 70+ systems due to a lot of starless nexus. The more you explore, the higher the chance to have them spawn.
I've never seen them either.  I wish I would! I keep seeing people complaining about them, and hoping to run into them but so far nada.