I don't believe for a moment ships actually do that. I've done a lot of testing with 10 destroyers vs 5 battleships and when my DS's forgo defenses they all die in a single salvo anyway. not 5 first and then another 5 after that.

I think it would be interesting to add bonuses to dreadnoughts, even small bonuses, for instance weapons (+15%) + defense (+15%), so that their utility becomes obvious to everybody.

I play Sophons (SP), and I love Dreds. I typically spend about 50% on Shields and armor (the +35 +3%) and get several thousand Health that automatically repairs 10% per phase, then about 30% on defences (20% beam, 8% missle, 2% kennetics{depending on my tech levels}). The last 20 percent I usually spend in beams, just beams and with my 15 hightech beams hitting enemy ships they seems to go down very quickly. So quickly that most fleets do not have a chance to fire missles at me. Kennetics are next to useless and only a small amount of defences are needed. Which is why most of my defences go to beams.



This build is strong enough to take more hits then BS and Cruisers, and repair enough (especially if you use the repair card) that it makes it hard to loose your ships. While also providing enough fire power to kill the smaller ships 1 per round. Making 3 per phase.

Since dreadnoughts have the same tonnage per CP as cruisers (less if you use the space-increasing module) and no tonnage bonus to invasion you will get more invasion per CP if you use cruisers.



Highly unnecessary though. I've never needed a siege fleet to take systems in a reasonable amount of time (though sometimes it's taken two battle fleets). Learn to love Ground Pounder on your admirals.

Quick question...do people make siege ships out of dreads? I know cruisers get the bonus for support modules, but does the shear tonnage of a dreadnaught give them an advantage? One advantage I can see of a siege cruiser over a siege dn is that I can put more of them in a fleet making better use of +%fleet bonuses.



Quick note...I've been making siege fleets with an adventure hero and having them do an invasion while covering with an assault fleet of 5 DNs and a support cruiser with a regular (hopefully) pilot hero.

I sometimes build a dreadnought or two to have a sense of a 'capitol' ship or flag ship to make things cooler :P But still, nontheless, i rely on battleships and a usual fleet of mine would consist of 3/4 battleships equipped with 40:60 attack/defense and 1/4 battleships equipped with 80/5/15 defense/attack/support modules. This way i have those support battleship that give repair boosts and speed boosts.

Azhrarn wrote:
While we're on the subject of Dreadnought Fitting, is it advisable to fit the Dread (and other high tonnage hulls) with a mix of weapons, or is focusing the design on a single type a better idea?

The same question goes for the defences.

For small hulls a focused approach is better due to weight limitations, but I'm not so sure on the big stuff.



I've only recently bought the game, and I was wondering about that.



For games like MOO2 and GalCiv2 I usually use very focused designs, but here you have 3 distinct phases of combat, and focusing on 1 type of weapon essentially locks a ship out of 2 phases.

How I've been doing it is a general omni tank with dummy fleets of the other two damage types to keep the enemy guessing and just adapt the Dread to one damage type that isn't the greatest defense on enemy ships.

While we're on the subject of Dreadnought Fitting, is it advisable to fit the Dread (and other high tonnage hulls) with a mix of weapons, or is focusing the design on a single type a better idea?

The same question goes for the defences.

For small hulls a focused approach is better due to weight limitations, but I'm not so sure on the big stuff.



I've only recently bought the game, and I was wondering about that.



For games like MOO2 and GalCiv2 I usually use very focused designs, but here you have 3 distinct phases of combat, and focusing on 1 type of weapon essentially locks a ship out of 2 phases.

Alright here is is the rundown and why I will forever build Dreadnoughts as support to my fleets. I have a multiplayer game going on with a couple of friends who are Ameoba and Sophon (so they out tech me heavily) and I am playing as Hissho. It's a fast game and we just recently broke 100 turns. I have been single handedly taking them both on with 4 fleets and two heros of cruiser/battleship/dread mix and have only lost maybe one or two ships every few turns, nothing I can't replace in an instant. I have inferior tech, inferior number of fleets, but have proven to myself and them that destroyer glass cannon suicide darts can't hold a finger to a well placed hero and Hissho Bushido bonuses. I have enough planets and monetary income to rotate the builds on my ships to adapt to their damage types and defenses after each battle on one of my systems.



I don't know about you guys, but Dreadnoughts massive tonnage backed up by the staying power and defensives of battleships and repair support of cruisers is pretty damn awesome. Not to mention my one hero is level 19 with almost all the offensive/defensive bonuses giving +120% to min/max damage and +124% to all defensive mods. Even with superior tech they can barely scratch the paint.



((Oh yeah, pumping one or two battleships a turn out of my core systems plus a dreadnought for every fleet as backup. Haven't terraformed crap all, don't have the tech for it.))

vaendryl wrote:
hero certainly makes a fleet. even at level 10 your ships get somewhere between 50% and 100% boost in stats which is insane.

This. Massive boost to offense, defense, and invasion power without any increase in production cost. Plus, some of the best defensive tactic cards if you want to spend the ability points on them.

hero certainly makes a fleet. even at level 10 your ships get somewhere between 50% and 100% boost in stats which is insane.



this is probably not the best place to suggest this and rather off topic but I feel a hero should reduce the damage an attack does that punctures your defences instead of buffing the defences outright. right now a fleet without a hero needs to vastly outtech and/or outnumber anothet fleet with a hero to even scratch the paint. it'd be more interesting if a laser shot instead of doing 100 damage doing 40 thanks to the hero.



on the offensive side, going for more accurate weapons (holy shit effective kinetics? can it be?) and more moderate damage boosts would probably be preferred.



also, diminishing returns. yes please.

The only time I have had dreadnoughts work well is when I have given them some decent defenses with a hero that is specializing on the defense side of things.



Specifically, I had a fleet of 3 dreadnoughts take out ~10 enemy fleets made up of a greater number of command point destroyer and battleship fleets. I had been ignoring military tech and was caught with my pants down as it were. The hero gained 10 levels (went from level 10 to 20) in one turn before they managed to wear down my dreadnoughts. I had something like a 90%+ efficiency rate on defenses and was taking only 250 combined damage a fight at the worst. A few turns later, with upgraded military tech (got 6 military techs in one turn), I returned with the same hero and upgraded dreadnoughts to take out his remaining fleets. Either they upgraded how the big guys work or a hero makes the fleet in this case.

vaendryl wrote:
I don't believe for a moment ships actually do that. I've done a lot of testing with 10 destroyers vs 5 battleships and when my DS's forgo defenses they all die in a single salvo anyway. not 5 first and then another 5 after that.

Honestly I don't know. The gfx give the impression they fire at one ship at a time. The gfx could be not 1:1 though, so :/. If dreadnoughts do spread their damage, then I'd consider them near-useless. Battleships/destroyers would be the only combat ships worth their salt.



No defenses isn't really a good way to test it. There's always the possibility excess damage leaks over to other ships.

Greetings. I am very very busy here at work at my desk behind my monitor!



What support modules (if any) do you put on your Dreadnoughts? I asked a similar question about how you do Battleships and forgot to also ask how you all equip/build your largest ship in the fleet.





Since I have found the mouse-wheel for 'support modules, I am wondering if putting engines and eyes on a Dread makes sense OR if I should just plain out just ultra gun it and just make it a death platform...





Your suggestions are welcome!

Benjiro wrote:
Dreadnaughts, my weak Destroyer fleets eat them for breakfast.



The problem with Dreadnaughts, is that they only target there massive firepower on one ship at a time. While lets say, 10 to 18 destroyers loaded with torpedoes, take out most of your support ships in the first phase of combat. By the time you are mid combat, the leftover Destroyers, blow the Dreadnaughts to hell.



One of the problems with the paper - scissor - rock that the game implements, is the fact when all defenses on cheap ships are sacrificed, all support modules on large vessels end up being useless. Dreadnaughts are too expensive, for the firepower they bring to the combat. Especially, when the game has the bad habit of only focus firing on one target. 1 Ship <-> 1 Ship. 15 Destroyers vs 3 Dreadnaughts = 15 vs 3 firing while on the Dreadnaughts side, its 3 vs 3 firing.



Some changes are needed to the game, to make Dreadnaughts more useful. As they are now nothing more then glorified support vessels. While there basic design = ships to fear. When you can use a fleet that cost you 1500 production, vs fleets that cost 5 times the amount, and you come out victorious almost all the time...



Lets just stay, stay away from Dreadnaughts until the game undergoes some changes to deal with this weakness.

Dreadnoughts shooting one target is a good thing. Think about it, a destroyer can only have 100w(eight) of defense. A dreadnought can have 400w of offense. This means dreadnoughts can easily shred any destroyer in one round and still have plenty of room for defense. That 15 vs 3... 9 destroyers dead by the second phase. That's more then half your offensive power.



Of course, the RPS system trumps all of this in the end.

Dreadnaughts, my weak Destroyer fleets eat them for breakfast.



The problem with Dreadnaughts, is that they only target there massive firepower on one ship at a time. While lets say, 10 to 18 destroyers loaded with torpedoes, take out most of your support ships in the first phase of combat. By the time you are mid combat, the leftover Destroyers, blow the Dreadnaughts to hell.



One of the problems with the paper - scissor - rock that the game implements, is the fact when all defenses on cheap ships are sacrificed, all support modules on large vessels end up being useless. Dreadnaughts are too expensive, for the firepower they bring to the combat. Especially, when the game has the bad habit of only focus firing on one target. 1 Ship <-> 1 Ship. 15 Destroyers vs 3 Dreadnaughts = 15 vs 3 firing while on the Dreadnaughts side, its 3 vs 3 firing.



Some changes are needed to the game, to make Dreadnaughts more useful. As they are now nothing more then glorified support vessels. While there basic design = ships to fear. When you can use a fleet that cost you 1500 production, vs fleets that cost 5 times the amount, and you come out victorious almost all the time...



Lets just stay, stay away from Dreadnaughts until the game undergoes some changes to deal with this weakness.

Is there a general ship building guide? I need to start at the beginning?

I always use Deads. Two or three per fleet, with all-around defense, two loaded then with equal kinetic and beam and one with beam and missile. And the rest of the fleet comprised of Battleships, and maybe a Destroyers if I have a CP left over. The only time I've ever lost a Dreadnought with my builds was when, somehow, the Horatio just threw ten max CP fleets at me. Was left with just two Dreads at the end of it, and a Hero that went up so many levels...

my testing (and that of others) have pointed out that if you outnumber the enemy he will only shoot at your smallest class of ship. this means that you can build 6 battleships with mostly defences and 2 glass cannon dreadies that REALLY pack a massive punch and won't get hit... as long as your opponent doesn't field more ships than you.



I also feel dreadnoughts are perfect ships to put modules on that give a fleet wide bonus.



also, they look cool. that should be enough in and of itself

liq3 wrote:
I'm not 100% certain on this, but ships appear to attack only one other ship in fights. This means dreadnoughts can have nearly 4x the power of destroyers focused on a single ship. Quite powerful really.

One at a time would be more correct to say - This works really bad together with missiles since you use your entire salvo on a single ship. Especially if you're fielding Dreadnoughts against Small or Medium ships (anything smaller than a dread). The added health is good if you use cards and modules that complement it - otherwise you might as well stick with battleships for the added "targets" per combat.



This all depends on your enemy fleet.