Hello everyone.



I'm still in the same play I spoke in "DiplomacAI", but a bit later : one of the Amoeba empires has been whipped out, and now, my ally told me that...he wasn't my ally anymore. So I decided to declare war.



After the last war, I decided to rethink my fleet, with more beam weapons, and small ships carrying lots of missiles.

2 Dreadnought (Beam)

1 Cruiser (Invasion and Beam)

2 Battleships (Beam)

7 Destroyers (Missiles)

1 Destroyer - Scout (Missiles)



The first few fights, I didn't even have the time to say "Hello", that the AI chose "Auto" for me...Grrrrr...So my fleets took heavy damage. Then, I took command. My fleet, commanded by a lev 7 hero, had only the Battleships and Dreadnoughts left...They destroyed 20 fleets without taking damage, and in only one phase each time.

So...Ok. Damn the missile, full Beam, and only big ships...and lets rock and roll !



New fleets :

3 Dreadnoughts

5 Battleships...

All Beams.



And it seems the AI doesn't have anything against that...But you must do all battles in manual.

Hi,



New play, with same custom race (based on the Empire, with only one weakness : greedy, so I don't have any dust at the start of the game). 8-arm huge galaxy, 8 players.

I try to develop as fast as I can, but only a very few planets are colonizable.

After several turns, a Craver's fleet enter my territory. Well, it wasn't a fleet, but rather a lonely ship. It took me 5 fights to shot it down with my scouts (2). This action is quickly followed by a Craver offensive, against one of my systems. They have a complete fleet, while I just have 2 scouts...

My first plan is to quickly build a fleet of cruisers, armed with missiles and kinetics. They will be led by Admiral Bademdi - who already led the hunt for the Craver's scout.

It will be a victory, though I quickly understand the enemy makes extensive use of Beam weapons. I decide to declare war, in order to invade their space. It quickly seems that they have more and bigger fleets. Yeah !

New ships plans lead to the construction of ARES-ONE, my first battlefleet, consisting of 2, then 4 Cruisers and several destroyers (11 CP at the edge of the war). These new ships are armed with Beam weapons, and protected against missiles and beams only. I do not expect any battle to last more than medium range.



Ares One will show its power, crushing fleet after fleet, losing only one ship ; but will be heavily damaged in one of the first few fights, before the new cruisers enter play.

Quickly joined by Terra Nova, build on the same basis, Ares One will then conquer its first Craver's system, before attempting a second one.

At this moment, the Cravers offer Cease Fire ; which I accepted, because I need to build civilian structures.



A last fight, occuring under the cease fire, above the skies of my newly conquered planet will show the complete control of Ares One and its beam weapons over enemy's fleets.

Against the heaviest fleets, I had up to 36% beam efficiency, but I destroyed the enemy in one phase (sometimes two, but only the remaining hulks...) ; and always over 90-95% in Shields and Flaks.



I will continue to specialise in Beam weapons, as it seems they are indeed REALLY powerful and accurate.

Last battle, against the Sophon : my poor 6k fleet was attacked by a 14k enemy fleet (with two Dreadnought it seemed.)

They lost. I took very heavy damage, but I won this battle. But I will end the game soon, cause it's boring (couldn't develop cause of the Cravers, now, everyone has a great territory but me, meaning no tech, no FIDS, nothing...). Could do something if I had lot of time for that, but I can only play once a week, so...

Sounds like you've discovered how immensely powerful beam weapons are. I generally disagree with using large ships, though. I can outfit a Destroyer-class ship with nearly as much firepower as a Dreadnought, and can fit 20 of them into a fleet as opposed to 5. That means that my fleet of small ships have nearly four times the firepower of an all-Dreadnought fleet, which almost guarantees a first-phase victory every battle. Destroyers are also cheap and easy to replace.



It's been discussed elsewhere in the forum how overpowered beam weapons are.



Edit: You should also be aware that defenses don't currently work the way they're advertised: Each kinetic and deflector module *completely negates* a kinetic/beam module, *then* gives its listed protection to any further damage. If/Until that's patched, it means that you get more mileage out of your defenses than you're supposed to, and that HP-heavy Dreadnoughts are even less useful.

Personally, I have had a great experience with dreadnoughts on normal difficulty. With proper card usage, my dreads can survive missile attacks from 3-4 enemy ships unscathed, and around 6-8 with a good chunk of health left.

I personally enjoy having a mix of everything. Although I admit the beam weapon is the strongest I've been naive enough to think Kinetic is useless in the late game. Try telling that to the AI Dreadnought that demolished my entire fleet with 2000+ Kinetic; on the first tern it took out 4 rather large cruses and then my beam intensive destroyers. So when I play now I get a range of ships for each level of combat

I tend to play games where I restrict my weapon choices.



So, I have my Star Fleet Battles "Kzinti" who only use drones (read: missiles) with a smattering of beam weapons here and there. So load outs are typically four times missiles compared to a secondary weapon type. Makes the game interesting because my ships are NOT optimal for much of anything.

Interesting, I might have to give that a try. As for the HP, I wouldn't have assumed HP would matter much, unless all else is already equal, and against AI, that shouldn't happen too often.



Sorry, that was supposed to be in response to ObsidianWarlock's response... >_<

Believe me, once the free-addon is out, ship designs and fleet composition will matter against the AI!

I've seen an AI fleet with 107K MP (22/22 UE with Lvl 20 Hero, mix of big, medium and small ships). I had no means to beat it. Was not even close.