In a recent ES game, I had a rather interesting fleet sent at me by one of the AI players:







If I'm reading this right, this is a ship with no weapons, no siege, no troops or fighters or bombers. Literally, nothing at all.



I'm a newcomer to ES; I just started playing last week. So I really should ask, is there any value to sending empty ships around the galaxy?

That ship does have defenses on it though. It is not smart of the AI to send a lonely defense ship at you, but I use ships like that all the time. If you have ships like that to defend your other ships that are loaded with weapons, they work really well together. And remember to use the defensive formation.

Ah, I see! Yeah, being able to screen a fleet with some heavily-armored ships does sound like a good idea. But yeah, I couldn't make heads or tails out of the AI's choices of ship design or fleet placement here...

I've seen this too. Whole fleets of defensive ships with no attack, fighters/bombers or siege capability.



The Sheredyn kept building those things and sending them at me over and over.



I mentioned it here with my settings. I assume you're on a different difficulty level, so it might be something to do with the Sheredyn. No other faction did this during that game.



To be honest, I didn't check what the other factions were sending for very long, since without a challenge, it gets boring. Still, it's interesting that we both saw this from the Sheredyn.

Such odd ships are actually supposed to be carriers with lots of fighters and bombers on board. Sadly, the AI builds carriers even when it has no techs unlocking strike craft researched.

3vilTwin wrote:
I've seen this too. Whole fleets of defensive ships with no attack, fighters/bombers or siege capability.



The Sheredyn kept building those things and sending them at me over and over.



I mentioned it here with my settings. I assume you're on a different difficulty level, so it might be something to do with the Sheredyn. No other faction did this during that game.



To be honest, I didn't check what the other factions were sending for very long, since without a challenge, it gets boring. Still, it's interesting that we both saw this from the Sheredyn.

I THOUGHT I saw this too (vs the sherydan)... then I lost some battles to them. I couldn't understand how until I looked more carefully and saw them loaded with bombers

I think vicarious is right and you encountered a bug where the AI is building carriers without actually putting bombers / fighters on them

FYI, I've just now seen the Amoeba doing the same "empty carrier" thing, so it isn't just the Sheredyn...

I use regularly empty hulls with maybe just one simple defense (otherwise the design is not valid) to help protect my attack fleets (long range bullets glass cannons). In most early encounters, the AI chooses to attack 1 ship at a time, and if you put "weaker first", they will concentrate all their firepower on a really vulnerable but cheap ship (overkill), while your other ships pound them away. For 40-50 resources, you can get very effective chaff, easy to replace (yes more logistics to keep replenishing all those fleets). Later in the game, the enemy tends to chose "attack first 3" especially when the fleets are getting bigger, and I put 3 such chaffs in each of my fleets. For a very cheap cost, my main ships remains almost 100% intact, and their fleet is decimated.

And they don't learn. It even becomes boring.

YucaFrita wrote:
I use regularly empty hulls with maybe just one simple defense (otherwise the design is not valid) to help protect my attack fleets (long range bullets glass cannons). In most early encounters, the AI chooses to attack 1 ship at a time, and if you put "weaker first", they will concentrate all their firepower on a really vulnerable but cheap ship (overkill), while your other ships pound them away. For 40-50 resources, you can get very effective chaff, easy to replace (yes more logistics to keep replenishing all those fleets). Later in the game, the enemy tends to chose "attack first 3" especially when the fleets are getting bigger, and I put 3 such chaffs in each of my fleets. For a very cheap cost, my main ships remains almost 100% intact, and their fleet is decimated.

And they don't learn. It even becomes boring.

Why not save yourself the logistics of constantly replenishing the chaff and load those front ships with defenses, armor, and repair?

taltamir wrote:
Why not save yourself the logistics of constantly replenishing the chaff and load those front ships with defenses, armor, and repair?

Well the objective is to have them extremely cheap, because they will be destroyed. I have not done the calculation but in the first 50-70 turns I would guess it is less hurtful for the economy this way. Building 3 expensive ships per fleet with your suggested design in order to get them destroyed would seem to be a waste to me. And the logistics of supplying them not necessarily easier.



Note: in the later wars (turn 150 and + maybe), the AI changes tactics and sometimes you loose glass cannons and keep chaff ships in your fleets (if they survive at all of course); so it doesn't work so well anymore. In all cases, it's not anymore the time for glass cannons either, you rather need heavily defended attack ships in big fleets at that time.



Back on the original question of this thread, I found the "no-weapon" ships quite hard to destroy in later stages of the game. I had to have significant superior fleets and many more of them to be able to kill them one by one with the nosebraker tactic. They repair so fast that, with other tactics, after my long range lasers were shot, they still had half their life left and almost repaired in the following 2 phases, ready for another battle... They stopped me in several occasions to invade a system in the time I intended, I had to keep killing them for several turns, killing the fresh troops coming in as well, in order to finally free the orbit and be able to invade. Have you had this experience? Any advice?

Use bombers. They do heaps of damage but don't really register on the military power pt count

wgd wrote:
Use bombers. They do heaps of damage but don't really register on the military power pt count

do you mean bombers against those "defense-only" ships? Good Idea, I'll try just that. Of the three types of bombers, do you recommend mix type or combat only? I used fighters but very seldom the bombers...

This bug, this quirk, this unexplained ship-making algorithm, it actually clued me in on a viable counter-strategy to focus-fire tactics in battle. I tend to make big, stompy ships early, which is countered by the AI, usually, by choosing ot hit just one ship at a time and at least maximize damage. But after being stymied in one game, multiple times, by Ameoba ships with uber defenses and nothing else I cottoned onto this idea of a "turtle" or "shield" ship. It's a ship that you fly out with heavy defenses, lots of armor (at least three layers, and easily more later in the game), and a repair module. I swear, it's the most hilarious/frustrating thing in multiplayer to watch 70% of incoming damage be negated, with the remaining 30% having to bite into 54,000hp, that regenerates 5,400-7,500hp or more every single phase.



I've almost ruined a friendship this way, and had to tell my opponent the secret of what I was doing. XD!!!

YucaFrita wrote:
Well the objective is to have them extremely cheap, because they will be destroyed.

No they won't, its actually pretty easy to make indestructible ships.

YucaFrita wrote:
but in the first 50-70 turns

that should be mid game if you are expanding correctly...

but i see now that you mean the early game. I can see it being used at that point