Combatting Telekinetic races

[Mylon]

How do I take on telekenetic races effectively? So far I've had limited success with telling all of my planets to build fighters and guard warp points, but I can't get anywhere near matching them in ship to ship combat. The first difficulty is the obvious allegience subverter. This weapon in itself quickly spell doom for a crewed ship regardless of anything (and self destruct devices don't help in this case!) and master computers add nearly two turns onto production time for my ships, in addition to the relatively large maintenance cost. And then there's those telekinetic projectors that do a pretty large sum of damage... So how do I effectively combat them with practically 3/4ths the ship power thanks to computers? Unfortunately I can't get enough armor on a single ship to try boarding tactics because they can easily do 840 damage per turn (4 telekinetic projectors or so). Any suggestions?

[Rainstorm]

Against those nasty psychic races I just go all master computers, it's slow and expensive but there's not a lot of other choices. Besides that, I've found good results using a heavy mix of shield-skipping weapons like PBBs, and engine destroying weapons. A few ships loaded with these will usually knock out enough components that you will often kill their AS, or one of their few but heavy hitting TPs, or at least slow them down so they can't close with you. The AI at least seems to like to be at near point blank range before they use their subverters.

[PvK]

Yep. Another thing is to use bait ships. Small, faster in combat than your main ships, max defensive bonuses. The idea is to get them to fire and miss with their subverters, wasting their chance (since the subverters take forever to reload) and / or having them capture ships that are no big deal to lose. A variation is to build cheap weak ships to just absorb the subverter attacks.

Another idea is drones.

PvK

[Tezzezar]

Master computers, sheild V's and Heavy/massive mount Phased polaron beams. PPB's have a higher damage per ton per turn factor than any other weapon in the game.

Also, ECM III+ Stealth Armor III + Scatterin Armor III. The defense bonus stacks decreasing the chance those nasty Psychic weapons will actully hit you.

Design a few ships and try them out in the combat simulator.

T-

[Wardad]

The AS has a limited range, the damage rating is actually % chance to subvert, and a they have a very long reload time. The % chance to subvert is lower at long range. Like all direct fire weapons there is a chance to miss that increases with distance. When the AS are finally maxed out in development and placed on the larger weapon mounts the chance to subvert goes to 100%.

Using a MAX range strategy and long range weapons can really help Make Then Miss, and the very slow reload rate is the AS's greatest weakness.
( unless the race is religious/pyschic and uses the Talisman )

The telekinetic projectors are decent weapons but not great weapons. They and the AS take up a lot Kt of space, so don't expect a ship to have many.

Master Computers are actually cost effective for the larger hulls. But... the computer virus (CV)is an incredably effective weapon. I heard if you have both the MC and Crews the crews can't be converted until the MC is destroyed. It can be an effective combination.
Since the (CV) damaged rating is a % chance to work, and there is chance to miss, and it has a reload time of 3, and the MC must be destroyed first, and the AS has a long reload time, you might survive long enough to knock the stuffing out of them.

The AS fodder (bait) ships are a good idea. Go cheap, go fast, and place an DUC 1 on it to force it into combat (simultaneous mode combat).

[ September 12, 2002, 23:32: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Tezzezar:
Master computers, sheild V's and Heavy/massive mount Phased polaron beams. PPB's have a higher damage per ton per turn factor than any other weapon in the game.

Actually... that is wrong. APB XI and XII have higher damage ratios than PPBs. So do Ripper Beams, Telekinetic Projectors (at long range), and Time Distortion Bursts (against shields).