Strong Alloy(40% Ship HP) + Cruisers(armor tonnage reduction) + Defensive Lensing(220 and 11% hp) + Living Hulls(2% HP fleet repair per battle PHASE) = Invincible

A fleet of craver cruisers(13 of em) can repair 78% total HP per combat. Thats more than taking the Repair card 3 times. And when you have over 10k HP per cruiser, 78% repair is all kinds of lulzy.

Thanks guys. That's useful stuff. The only thing with the system of defenses countering certain weapons is that you need to build specific fleets to fight each enemy at each stage of the game, doing one battle to get to know what they're fielding then building a fleet to counter it. What do you do with your other fleets then? Retrofitting is good, but very expensive, meaning that it's still worth creating disposable fleets because they're basically useless after the enemy sees you've countered their current design and changes their loadout (and the same when they see your weapons and build ships to stop those weapons).



So I'm interested in what you guys do - do you scrap ships, use a few for scaring off pirates, perhaps retrofit a few as money allows, or throw them at the enemy anyway in the hope of taking a few of them out with you along the way (and hey, you don't get any other reward for scrapping, so why not just hurl them at a fight you can't win)?



I'm intrigued by other peoples' way of dealing with this.

Apheirox wrote:
If you are invading with a weak fleet with no invasion modules and the opponent has several defensive buildings it is quite possible it would be impossible to invade the system at all. You said you were invading a main world - those are powerful when they have bunkers.

That was my guess.

That makes sense. On the other hand, if you have just captured a colony, it is incredibly vulnerable to liberation it there is an unopposed fleet.

If you are invading with a weak fleet with no invasion modules and the opponent has several defensive buildings it is quite possible it would be impossible to invade the system at all. You said you were invading a main world - those are powerful when they have bunkers.

Oh believe me, I hit the invade button. Seems that the game disagrees with me.

Okay, yes that's been my experience too, Bentley. I was just checking if anyone knew things I didn't (which happens all the time, of course!). Certainly I've never had Tir's experience of a fleet's progress bar not advancing - like you said, you have to clear defending fleets and hit the 'invade' icon, but otherwise it seems to go swimmingly every time.

It is not enough to block the system, you also have to clear the defenders. (and hit the two fists) (you probably already know this.) I haven't had any trouble with invasion, even early in the game with just basic defenders, although the modules certainly speed things along.

Titan wrote:
Interesting. Thanks for that, Tiriondil. I've found that invading without any invasion speciality modules takes about 3-4 turns (depending on the system being invaded). I don't consider that too long, so haven't been bothering with invasion-specific ships or modules on my other ships.



When you say, "invasions need a pretty long time", how long do you usually take to invade?

Didn't count but I had a fleet without any special invasion moduls at the main world of one Hissho empire blocking the system for about five to six turns without any progress bar growing. In fact I didn't see ANY progress bar at all. Had the same experience with several other systems. (After that I had two or three invasion ships at the scene.) An invasion fleet with no hero and no invasion module seems not to invade at all.

According to the wiki there is a hard minimum cap of four turns to invade a system.



Many players don't think much of invasion modules but they're really very valuable. Being able to invade as swiftly as possible - giving the opponent less time to build a fleet that counters yours - is obviously very strong.



As for how I deal with the problem of constant retrofitting etc: I don't. On multiplayer I would definitely have to but against the AI a generalist build works just fine. Ships get flak and shields but only light deflectors. The idea is to kill off the AI fleets before close combat even happens which mostly succeeds. Owing to how effective flak is (Tiriondil's posted setup above is overkill, flak apparently counters three missiles so 8 flak is too much, especially on a destroyer) even if the opponent knows the build these designs aren't overly easy to counter. Another option is of course to use less defenses and heavy armor (using a cruiser design) - these ships have defenses against any setup but less so than if they were using the 'correct' defense. Some players swear by extremely heavily armored designs and playing cards that support this (repair & barrier/dust barrier), the idea being that ships regain so much health all the time they become invulnerable. Again, not likely to work against human opponents.

Interesting. Thanks for that, Tiriondil. I've found that invading without any invasion speciality modules takes about 3-4 turns (depending on the system being invaded). I don't consider that too long, so haven't been bothering with invasion-specific ships or modules on my other ships.



When you say, "invasions need a pretty long time", how long do you usually take to invade?

Titan wrote:
Thanks guys. That's useful stuff. The only thing with the system of defenses countering certain weapons is that you need to build specific fleets to fight each enemy at each stage of the game, doing one battle to get to know what they're fielding then building a fleet to counter it. What do you do with your other fleets then? Retrofitting is good, but very expensive, meaning that it's still worth creating disposable fleets because they're basically useless after the enemy sees you've countered their current design and changes their loadout (and the same when they see your weapons and build ships to stop those weapons).



So I'm interested in what you guys do - do you scrap ships, use a few for scaring off pirates, perhaps retrofit a few as money allows, or throw them at the enemy anyway in the hope of taking a few of them out with you along the way (and hey, you don't get any other reward for scrapping, so why not just hurl them at a fight you can't win)?



I'm intrigued by other peoples' way of dealing with this.

On the weekend yesterday and the day before I learned that the ship design that works best for me is a destroyer with

* a repair kit

* the right defense module (as the Hissho were using missiles I stacked about 8 anti missile modules)

* lasers

* high energy coupling and

* advanced containers



The result was (resp. is when I will continue to play) that all the 2 CP-ships of my enemies were outnumbered at least 2:1. All missiles were shot down every single turn. So I moved out of each battle mostly after the longe-range phase without any damage. I was able to defend several invasions with a stack of about seven to ten fleets with seven ships each (with and without enemy heroes) without taking one scratch. Try that with glass cannons!



A word to invasion ships. I chose cruisers for that and equipped them with

* a repair kit

* the right defense module (as the Hissho were using missiles I stacked about 8 anti missile modules)

* invasion modules

* a few (2-3) lasers (so they can engage combat without being sitting ducks)

* high energy coupling and

* advanced containers



The idea behind that is that I don't need a special invasion fleet that is not able to defend itself and needs support to fight back. The drawback is that those invasions need a pretty long time.

My battleships are about 70% defense, usually with about 8 of each defense (Baring the enemy specializing from which i adapt) they rarely get more the 1% efficiency from beams.

Titan wrote:
It puzzles me. Apart from the macho factor of having the biggest ship in the galaxy... why would anyone not play with the little ships?

I think the point here is about what category the ship types receive their discount in. If we assume your opponent has a large destroyer fleet and you know its loadouts due to having fought it before, what is the best way to counter it? According to your logic, the answer is destroyers. The problem with that is destroyers are super heavy on weapons and nothing else. What will most likely happen is you kill the enemy fleet and they kill yours. If you instead use battleships you get the discount on defenses and can exactly counter the enemy weapons pound for pound (which a destroyer could not). This battleship fleet will kill the enemy fleet and survive, clearly a better outcome.



Along the same lines, if I want to build a repair/support ship it's a corvette, not a destroyer. When I need to invade it's a cruiser, not a destroyer.



That's how I see it: Larger ship types aren't necessarily better, but they provide you with more options.



The weak point of this is of course the Dreadnought since it has no discount - it's just big and overly expensive. I tend to agree there's little point in using them though I suppose they do benefit more from both power, repair and engine modules than any other ship class.

I should probably point out that since you cannot build anything that takes a strategic resource without having at least one you get 10% off every module that take that resource by having the ability to build that module. This will change the cost effectiveness ratios a little bit. I'm still not completely sold on glass cannon DDs winning the day. I still need to run cost comparisons between defenses and weapons, but just eyeballing the numbers it looks like defenses are cheaper and add less weight to the ship they are added to. On a 1 to 1 cost and weight, defenses should come out ahead. Just a feeling I have in my gut not something I can prove at the moment.



I edited the damage tables in post #65 with a more complete list.



Something that jumped out at me when doing the numbers:





7500 RP

[code]

Positron Torpedoes

Cost: 28i

Weight: 12i

Crit Chance: 20%

DMG: 160-240



288 DPR1

224 DPR2

128 DPR3



640 DMG+3RND

23 INDMG

53 WMG

[/code]



140000 RP

[code]



Decay Shells

Cost: 36i

Weight: 14w

Crit Chance: 20%

DMG: 200-300



360 DPR1

280 DPR2

160 DPR3



800 DMG+3RND

22 INDMG

57 WMG

[/code]



Decaying Shells are barely better than Positron Torpedoes. In my opinion Decaying Shells are not worth the RP cost of the tech compared to Positron Torpedoes.

Titan wrote:
So let's see if I have this right:



Any given ship can only fire at one target in each round with all weapons of the same type always going into a single volley against that target



and



Larger ships deliver the same tonnage per command point as smaller ships, but cost more production points to make per point of tonnage



It seems to me that there's no reason to do anything other than build a fleet of the best small ships you can. Your fleet's CPs will still get you the same tonnage (i.e. the same defence and offence), but you're better off against a fleet of small enemy ships (no massed overkill means a more effective set of kills) and against a fleet of big enemy ships (they can only attack one of your small ships per round and suffer from massive overkill, but you get to gang-attack against them with multiple ships, still killing the big boys as fast as if you'd had big ships yourself).



It puzzles me. Apart from the macho factor of having the biggest ship in the galaxy... why would anyone not play with the little ships?



EDIT: I see vector78 went into this in detail in his thread back in May, and I don't see anything has much changed since. I massively despise the idea of kamikaze fleets, preferring the idea of fleets that gain experience, have balanced offence and defence, heal between battles, etc. That's just my style. But even with that, I can't see a reason why I'd go for big ships over small ships as long as I don't let my tech lag and I keep doing what I always do... get an economy that can pay the retrofits regularly. Still, I appreciate he's right, the efficiency of kamikaze over tech-n-retrofit is undeniable. Seems like two ongoing game balance issues here:



1) Small ships are always better than big ships.

2) Disposable is always better than experience/upgrade gaining.



Of course, in a balanced system both options on both issues would be equally valid and in either mix (i.e. small ship kamikaze = small ship upgraders = big ship kamikaze = big ship upgraders) to support most play styles and keep the gameplay unpredictable.



Am I missing anything?

The discussion you're basing this on is from a Beta build. Ship survivability was massively increased before launch, and battleships are quite survivable now, thanks to the defenses having been improved since this thread started coupled with their tonnage discount on defenses. Battleships facing destroyers don't need many weapons at all to take out the dessies, and can dedicate the rest of their space to defenses and armor. (Some people swear by some BB designs with truly obscene amounts of HP.)



My understanding of MP is that right now, it's still glass cannons > tanks > cheap glass cannons > glass cannons.

Ships should have the reduction applied in the design screen. When you add a module that qualifies for the reduced weight it will be listed at the reduction for the ship you are adding it on. You will have either compare two ships in the design screen or check the tech tree for the weight requirement and then check the final space requirement in the ship design screen. For example; a DD has a 20% weight savings for weapon, the tech tree lists the weapon as taking 10W in the design screen for the destroyer it would list the weapon at 8W automatically.



This assumes you are adding a module that qualifies for a weight savings.



Transports get % off of Seed Modules

Frigates get % off of engine, sensor, and repair support modules

Destroyers get % off of weapons

Cruisers get % off of Armor, Power, and Invasion support modules

Battleships get % off of Defense modules



Hope that helps, Titan.

As an aside, how can you tell when you're getting your 20% off for weapon modules (or whatever) in a given chassis? When I look at the interface, the tonnage of a given module seems identical in every chassis type, even when it should be discounted, so I was wondering where I should see the discount.



Thanks for your help, guys.

So let's see if I have this right:



Any given ship can only fire at one target in each round with all weapons of the same type always going into a single volley against that target



and



Larger ships deliver the same tonnage per command point as smaller ships, but cost more production points to make per point of tonnage



It seems to me that there's no reason to do anything other than build a fleet of the best small ships you can. Your fleet's CPs will still get you the same tonnage (i.e. the same defence and offence), but you're better off against a fleet of small enemy ships (no massed overkill means a more effective set of kills) and against a fleet of big enemy ships (they can only attack one of your small ships per round and suffer from massive overkill, but you get to gang-attack against them with multiple ships, still killing the big boys as fast as if you'd had big ships yourself).



It puzzles me. Apart from the macho factor of having the biggest ship in the galaxy... why would anyone not play with the little ships?



EDIT: I see vector78 went into this in detail in his thread back in May, and I don't see anything has much changed since. I massively despise the idea of kamikaze fleets, preferring the idea of fleets that gain experience, have balanced offence and defence, heal between battles, etc. That's just my style. But even with that, I can't see a reason why I'd go for big ships over small ships as long as I don't let my tech lag and I keep doing what I always do... get an economy that can pay the retrofits regularly. Still, I appreciate he's right, the efficiency of kamikaze over tech-n-retrofit is undeniable. Seems like two ongoing game balance issues here:



1) Small ships are always better than big ships.

2) Disposable is always better than experience/upgrade gaining.



Of course, in a balanced system both options on both issues would be equally valid and in either mix (i.e. small ship kamikaze = small ship upgraders = big ship kamikaze = big ship upgraders) to support most play styles and keep the gameplay unpredictable.



Am I missing anything?

I just go all around-ish, 20% defenses(flak,shields,armor) 30% Hp ups, 20% missile & beams, and the last 10% is kinetics or extras of the others.