Didn't know that but figured there would be a hard cap. More than most people would need though.

It often find the Jack of All trades a good plan, generally. I like to put 1 of every Def and Weapon module on my attacking ships but also focus on a few modules as well. So people with no beam def will be pinged away with a few beams, a lot of missiles and a little kinetic. Etc.



But im still learning and playtesting this, not on my own computer however :l

Ash_F wrote:
K__, I usually just hold out for battleships. Two destroyers can have more weapons than one cruiser and still have a decent tank, while a cruiser can not have double the tank of one destroyer and double the amount of weapons. Therefore, two destroyers on the other side would beat it. Of course having better tech makes everything easier, but you can't always count on that. :P





No it's per ship. You definitely don't want to be doing that.





Read this if you have not already: http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Combat



A few quick notes:

• There are 5 phases - 1 is arrival, 2 is long range, 3 is medium, 4 is short and 5 is conclusion
• Phases 2-4 are the shooting phases and have 4 rounds within them each - 1,2,3,4 for a total of 12 rounds per battle
• During each round, every ship picks one enemy ship and fires one volley at it. The strongest ships tend to shoot at each other
• Missiles are a slight exception to this as they fire only once per phase instead of 4. They launch on round 2 and hit on round 4.
• Defense mods are per ship and recharge once per round.
  
  

If you watch the animation closely, you can see all of this transpire. With the fleet design you had above, you should have been seeing your defensive ship blocking everything while your undefended ships had munitions slamming into their sides.





I hope this information is helpful in designing your ships.

Ya I wasn't sure. Thanks for clarifying.

Ash_F wrote:
K__, I usually just hold out for battleships. Two destroyers can have more weapons than one cruiser and still have a decent tank, while a cruiser can not have double the tank of one destroyer and double the amount of weapons. Therefore, two destroyers on the other side would beat it.

I find that in cruiser vs. destroyer battles, the fact that the cruisers are firing individual cruiser weapons at individual destroyers' defenses at a 2-1 ratio kills the first group of destroyers in Long or Medium, and then the rest of the battle is just clean-up and Repair cards as the destroyers only have half the total firepower that they started with and can't punch through the cruisers' defenses at all when only one destroyer is firing on one cruiser.



Crits also seem to kill destroyers quite easily and prevent them from using their firepower very early, so it tends to make battle very swingy and not in their favor if they are beam or kinetic cruisers.



Destroyers do benefit from the space-enhancing modules more, but that gets eaten up if you use Repair modules since destroyers need two modules to equal the healing of one on a cruiser. (Running any kind of fleet without repair modules cuts their lifespan dramatically and thus reduces the chance of getting high-level ships, but you could get slightly more weapons on destroyers if you cared about battles and not the war.)



Of course, I do my wars well before fleet-wide modules come into play, so things may change when you have high CP and fleet modules.

K__, I usually just hold out for battleships. Two destroyers can have more weapons than one cruiser and still have a decent tank, while a cruiser can not have double the tank of one destroyer and double the amount of weapons. Therefore, two destroyers on the other side would beat it. Of course having better tech makes everything easier, but you can't always count on that. :P

kmo_9000 wrote:
I can see how building two specialized fleets can be useful.



When you combine a fleet though, do things like defense stack on the whole fleet? That's what I've read in the wiki so I've been building dedicated support ships for the entire fleet little or no weapons on them, then I don't put any defense on my attack ships and instead load them with weapons.

No it's per ship. You definitely don't want to be doing that.





Read this if you have not already: http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Combat



A few quick notes:

• There are 5 phases - 1 is arrival, 2 is long range, 3 is medium, 4 is short and 5 is conclusion
• Phases 2-4 are the shooting phases and have 4 rounds within them each - 1,2,3,4 for a total of 12 rounds per battle
• During each round, every ship picks one enemy ship and fires one volley at it. The strongest ships tend to shoot at each other
• Missiles are a slight exception to this as they fire only once per phase instead of 4. They launch on round 2 and hit on round 4.
• Defense mods are per ship and recharge once per round.
  
  

If you watch the animation closely, you can see all of this transpire. With the fleet design you had above, you should have been seeing your defensive ship blocking everything while your undefended ships had munitions slamming into their sides.





I hope this information is helpful in designing your ships.

kmo_9000 wrote:


When you combine a fleet though, do things like defense stack on the whole fleet? That's what I've read in the wiki so I've been building dedicated support ships for the entire fleet little or no weapons on them, then I don't put any defense on my attack ships and instead load them with weapons.

That's an incorrect statement. Each ship uses only it's own Defenses, though there is a Support module that helps an entire fleet's defense and it needs there to be defenses on the ship in order to boost them.



There are some Support modules that affect the entire fleet by either increasing weapon damage, defenses, repair, or ship speed, but anything that affects a fleet will say so.

The_Doctor wrote:
I agree generally - I don't usually need more than 10, but:



A) I'd like more than 10... It'd be fun occasionally to play around.

B) Sometimes, when faced with numerous fronts and different enemies, I do need more than 10.

C) Nobody would be forced to use more than 10, nor would the retrofit system lose out.



There's no reason why it should be limited to 10 - the GUI isn't limiting it, there are fully functioning scroll bars in both the designs list and the ship construction tab, it's just... They capped it at 10. Really annoys me.



As far as I can see, we can't change mod this in the XML, either.

Agree, I often find myself at war with 7 factions and need more ship designs.

I can see how building two specialized fleets can be useful.



When you combine a fleet though, do things like defense stack on the whole fleet? That's what I've read in the wiki so I've been building dedicated support ships for the entire fleet little or no weapons on them, then I don't put any defense on my attack ships and instead load them with weapons.

I use Cruisers. They seem to be the right size to split enemy firepower AND survive any focused fire long enough for my weapons to kill attackers.



I think the most important thing is just to bring a bigger tech weapon by at least two tiers. Slightly better systems or specialized builds don't beat heavier weapons.

Ash_F wrote:
Didn't know that but figured there would be a hard cap. More than most people would need though.

I agree generally - I don't usually need more than 10, but:



A) I'd like more than 10... It'd be fun occasionally to play around.

B) Sometimes, when faced with numerous fronts and different enemies, I do need more than 10.

C) Nobody would be forced to use more than 10, nor would the retrofit system lose out.



There's no reason why it should be limited to 10 - the GUI isn't limiting it, there are fully functioning scroll bars in both the designs list and the ship construction tab, it's just... They capped it at 10. Really annoys me.



As far as I can see, we can't change mod this in the XML, either.

I'm just wondering how everyone goes about researching weapons technologies and building fleets. I've noticed the AI players always seem to have multiple fleets where one will be loaded with missiles, one with beams or one with projectiles. I see one fleet with beams, research shields, but then a couple turns later they will have ships with missiles.



Should I be building multiple fleets with different weapons and defense specs? How do you all do this?

Ash_F wrote:
You can have as many ship designs as you want..

Sadly not true. The game (really really annoyingly) only allows 10 ship designs at once. Which is usually plenty, but there's no reason I shouldn't be free to experiment with as many as my heart desires.

Doesn't hurt to have three or four different fleets if your enemy is mixing it up on you. You can have as many ship designs as you want. If they bring a weapon your fleet doesn't have a defense for, retreat in round one and bring the right fleet in. Also, it is worth it to suicide a small cheap scout to find out what a fleet is composed of. Send it in and click intercept, forcing them to attack you and robbing them of their attack option for that turn. Then pick retreat in the first phase and hope for the best. If they are using missiles, you won't even loose it!



If they are using a relatively even mix of weapons systems, then I suggest making mixed defense ships of your own with a ratio that looks like flak>shield>deflect for best results. Also, don't go crazy on weapon modules. Early to mid game, I usually have 3 on repair scouts, 6 on destroyers and 12 on battleships. The rest of my tonnage goes into defense. I don't use cruisers. I think they are underpowered because armor is an inefficient module.



You can't always expect to win if you don't invest at least as much as the enemy does in fleets.

fixou wrote:
one piece of advice, no matter what happens, put some anti-missile défense on ships bigger than destroyers. Very big missile salvos can wipe out entire fleets and it doesn't matter if you destroy these ships with your lasers seconds after, missiles will still trash your fleet and you don't want that.



I prefer build big ships (cruisers and dreadnaught) as i found them a lot more durable against destroyer swarms.

Definitely agree with this. There is a beautiful trade-off, though - the big ships have a lot of hull space available, and if you have appropriately advanced flak technology, they can be easily made to be entirely impervious to enemy missile weapons... Resulting in wiping through numerous enemy fleets without even taking any damage.

one piece of advice, no matter what happens, put some anti-missile défense on ships bigger than destroyers. Very big missile salvos can wipe out entire fleets and it doesn't matter if you destroy these ships with your lasers seconds after, missiles will still trash your fleet and you don't want that.



I prefer build big ships (cruisers and dreadnaught) as i found them a lot more durable against destroyer swarms.

maceman wrote:
I thought beams went 'bzzt bzzt bzzt'

Actually it's more like 'Pcheew Pcheew'.

I thought beams went 'bzzt bzzt bzzt'

I usually find myself not doing Jack of All Trades, but doing Jack of two trades - and then doing them pretty damn well.



I find most enemies can usually be entirely countered (even when they start adapting their ships to your weapon and defence loadouts) by a careful combination of two types of weapon and defence modules - just yesterday it was beam/missile with deflect/flak - the setup guided both by needing to fight some very missile-heavy Automaton ships with good deflection, and also to maintain viability against a lot of pirates from the unexplored centre of the galaxy that had some huge cruisers with a lot of kinetics.





Battles against the Automatons were glorious in my technological advantage and tailored ships. I was going MP 1000 vs their fleets having MP 3000 or more, and trashing them without losing a single hitpoint... They had hundreds of MP worth of missiles, which could take out half my fleet in one salvo; but my flak defences were so well developed and concentrated that I'd watch each round as their missiles were detonated harmlessly before they reached my fleet, and the enemy were ripped apart by a combination of my own missiles and beams. Pew Pew Pew.

I find myself doing the same as Roflrocket, "jack of all trades" have not realy played in MP yet so i'm sure my designing will change greatly in there. Being real player's & all

I tend to make all my ships multi-weapon and multi-defense just because I usually have to fight against multiple enemies at once(large galaxy, 8 players). My navies motto is "Jack of all trades, master of none". In general this strategy works well but it requires a large amount of dust income and production to keep my ships up to date to give them every bit of advantage they can, seeing as how many enemies they encounter will have stacked weapons. Overall it is your choice and I would recommend you experiment to find the system that works best for you.