I need help to counter AMM barrages

[consiefe (OP)]

I had this precursor fight and their remains camped on their planet with hundreds of AMM launchers which fires 68k speed size 1s seeming indefinately.  Although I abandoned that game as it was v1. 80 and starting anew, it still bothers me. 

My fleet composed of powerful ships which had 40x twin gauss turrets 4/5s in total and 70ish AMM launchers with 84k speed size1s loaded.  I neither was able to shoot down their missiles (out of god know how many I hit maybe 1/4 of them and got 250dmg per salvo).  It seems really excessive.  What is the most practical way to eradicate them? Was I basically outteched or even though my fleet seemed huge do I need moar of everything?

[Zincat]

I had this precursor fight and their remains camped on their planet with hundreds of AMM launchers which fires 68k speed size 1s seeming indefinately.  Although I abandoned that game as it was v1. 80 and starting anew, it still bothers me. 

My fleet composed of powerful ships which had 40x twin gauss turrets 4/5s in total and 70ish AMM launchers with 84k speed size1s loaded.  I neither was able to shoot down their missiles (out of god know how many I hit maybe 1/4 of them and got 250dmg per salvo).  It seems really excessive.  What is the most practical way to eradicate them? Was I basically outteched or even though my fleet seemed huge do I need moar of everything?

Precursors defense bases have a tendency to do that. They're really bothersome. I have to ask, what was your tracking speed? Gauss should hit a LOT more often than that, maybe you had low tracking speed?

They will use up all missiles eventually. They tend to have thousands so, so it takes tens of waves. One possible way to do it, if you have shields, is go just about inside their range and stop. Let them shoot at you. Once your shields get dangerously low, move out of their range and let the shields regenerate. Rinse and repeat. You do need a defense that can thin out the incoming missiles considerably though
Or you can use armor, and go back to base to repair the armor from time to time. Once again, needs a decent defense first so your ships do not get destroyed instantly.

[Cosinus]

I fought against a much smaller force of precursors earlier and was successful. Granted, they had only 4 ships which fired salvos of about 30 AMMs at my fleet of about 10 ships (Ion to Magneto Plasma tech level). Since AMMs are only dealing 1 damage, a good way to deal with them are shields. All of my cruisers had a strength ~35 shield and 2 gauss turrets. The gauss turrets take a chunk of the salvo, the shields take the first salvo entirely and then regenerate until the next one and the rest was absorbed by 5-6 layers of armor. Whenever my ships got severely damaged (which mostly happened to my destroyers without shields), I moved them out of firing range. The aliens change targets at random so there is always some downtime where your shields can recharge.

Of course if you have salvos of 250 AMMs, you need a lot more shields and PD turrets to pull this strategy off, but it should work the same way.

[consiefe (OP)]

Precursors defense bases have a tendency to do that.  They're really bothersome.  I have to ask, what was your tracking speed? Gauss should hit a LOT more often than that, maybe you had low tracking speed?

They will use up all missiles eventually.  They tend to have thousands so, so it takes tens of waves.  One possible way to do it, if you have shields, is go just about inside their range and stop.  Let them shoot at you.  Once your shields get dangerously low, move out of their range and let the shields regenerate.  Rinse and repeat.  You do need a defense that can thin out the incoming missiles considerably though
Or you can use armor, and go back to base to repair the armor from time to time.  Once again, needs a decent defense first so your ships do not get destroyed instantly.

My tracking speed was 25k and I tried to go in and out of range.  That was just endless and overwhelming.  Do precursors produce missiles to replenish themselves?

I fought against a much smaller force of precursors earlier and was successful.  Granted, they had only 4 ships which fired salvos of about 30 AMMs at my fleet of about 10 ships (Ion to Magneto Plasma tech level).  Since AMMs are only dealing 1 damage, a good way to deal with them are shields.  All of my cruisers had a strength ~35 shield and 2 gauss turrets.  The gauss turrets take a chunk of the salvo, the shields take the first salvo entirely and then regenerate until the next one and the rest was absorbed by 5-6 layers of armor.  Whenever my ships got severely damaged (which mostly happened to my destroyers without shields), I moved them out of firing range.  The aliens change targets at random so there is always some downtime where your shields can recharge.

Of course if you have salvos of 250 AMMs, you need a lot more shields and PD turrets to pull this strategy off, but it should work the same way.

I managed the tore down lots of their ships when I got there because as you said they were in much smaller groups and I have tons of firepower and 100/300 shields on top of 10 layers of armor.  They are no match for me if it wouldn't come down to AMMs.  They have 40 ships on top of that planet not moving by inch.

[Zincat]

I have not yet really fought any large precursor force in c# Aurora, so my information may be outdated. I'm pretty sure they do not produce AMM. But...
In vb6 aurora precursor AMM bases often had 10000 AMM each. So yes, it's a lot to go through...

[consiefe (OP)]

I have not yet really fought any large precursor force in c# Aurora, so my information may be outdated.  I'm pretty sure they do not produce AMM.  But. . .
In vb6 aurora precursor AMM bases often had 10000 AMM each.  So yes, it's a lot to go through. . .

Wow, I suspected the same thing.  For the science, I let my ships to march on to see what's what and even my ships are very durable they couldn't close 2. 5m distance as each   5s 1000 amms flew at them.  Mind bogglingly many AMMs they have.  Also I specially designed  84k amms for them and all my salvos got successfully hit by their energy weapons, none of it got through.  They seem invincible.

[Iceranger]

What's the tonnage of their defending fleet? What's the tonnage of your fleet?

The lawful approach would be increasing your number of PD guns.

The chaos approach would be dancing around the edge of their AMM range, and bait their missiles

[consiefe (OP)]

What's the tonnage of their defending fleet? What's the tonnage of your fleet?

The lawful approach would be increasing your number of PD guns.

The chaos approach would be dancing around the edge of their AMM range, and bait their missiles

Their fleet has 10 20kt ships which have the S1 launchers. Others are just loaded with PDs I think(?) My fleet has 4x 35kt cruisers, 4x 28kt DDs, 2x 17kt Missile Frgts, 6x 10kt missile boats. CAs and DDs have 100 shield and 10, 7 armor respectively. and slowest ships are CA and Missile ships with 8500.

Also when I tried bait missiles around range first time it worked flawlessly but I got bored and pulled back. The second time I couldn't manage to pick the spot so they hit me everytime.

Damn spoilers just had their fun with us!

[Nori]

I vote shields. Shields are really good at massed low damage stuff. I think the AI tends to target the biggest ship, so try and build a bunker buster big heavily shielded ship. Don't know what tech you were but around magneto plasma you can get 500 shields pretty easily.

[Father Tim]

Do precursors produce missiles to replenish themselves?

In VB Aurora they did not, but in C# Aurora they will (eventually -- it's probably not implemented yet).

[Father Tim]

The lawful approach would be increasing your number of PD guns.

The chaos approach would be dancing around the edge of their AMM range, and bait their missiles

And the evil approach is to build ships that are cheaper than the missiles needed to destroy them, and simply absorb the Precursors' fire.

[Energyz]

And the evil approach is to build ships that are cheaper than the missiles needed to destroy them, and simply absorb the Precursors' fire.

Behold the migthy :


Has 7500 point of armor

But at this point it's more abuse than real strategy

[Person012345]

My solution to PD heavy spoilers went like this:


Sure, all told they shot down maybe 600-700 missiles but they can only shoot down so many at one time.

Also, shields can help if you want to spend time wasting the missiles. I played a fun game with them where my heavier shielded ships got close, ate a couple of hundred amms each (depending how they decided to target) then retreated out of range to regenerate.

[consiefe (OP)]

Hmm, at this stage I wonder which approach is cheeper. FatherTim, the final dmg on me (after I shot down maybe 1/3) is 230ish. Doesn't throwing ships at them cost a fortune? I really need to fiddle with design.

The situation is in my new v1.95 game I have very poor systems so far. 20 of them surveyed and very little minerals. Aaand again in of the three jump away systems there are my dear old friends. I only lost a survey ship and got away immediately. Now designed 58k s1 missiles with 3.8m range to test their PDs and more agile 40k s1s in hopes maybe I can shoot down some missiles. I beelined for PD tech and got quad RoF5 vel50k tracking 25k gauss turrets.

Thinking of composing 8x missile boats with 20launchers and again 8x cheap pd ships along with 4 shielded frigates and 2 destroyers. At this stage I have little hope guys. To saturate their pds, I feel I need like 10.000 missiles and it seems my economy will fall apart.

Edit: grammar

[Jorgen_CAB]

It is just weight of volume... you simply have to bring a larger fleet to do the job.

Never ever use AMM to intercept enemy AMM unless you are seriously out teching them, but then your PD should be even more powerful.

A combination of PD, shields and armour should be sufficient to weather the AMM spam until you get really close. Once you are close you fire all your close range torpeoes and engage in beam combat and obliterate them.

Of they have 200.000 tons of shipping you bring 400.00 ton... it is that simple really.