Gameplay tips & tricks

[Smolf]

Rathar said:
Amazing how a bit of drink can cause one to leave out the whole point of one post, heh heh

I guess, thats a tip too. Don't drink and post!

Or make sure that everybody reading the post are drunk too... That way it all makes sense

[Slick]

Suicide Junkie said:
Oddly enough I just tested this.

<snip>

Overall Conclusions:
- Shield generation counts double on platforms.
Presumably once as shields, and again as hull structure.

Has anyone tested the "double shield effect" for other units?

[Slick]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:
Also, do NOT underestimate the sheer defensive power of a Large Weapons Platform design containing nothing but shields, regenerators and armor. Place a few of these on your planets and orbital bombers will have a hard time bombing as they're up against heavy regenerating shielding AND armor, while WPs keep pounding away at them from the surface.

I also tested this and here are my results:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I started a new high tech game with 2 human controlled empires, turn based. On homeworld A I built Weapon Platforms. On homeworld B I built 2 dreads with heavy mounted APB's. I conducted tactical combat at homeworld A using 1 weapon at a time, checking for surviving WP's after each shot.

Series 1
On Homeworld A I built 6 WP's as follows:
1 small WP with only WP computer core
1 medium WP with only WP computer core
1 large WP with only WP computer core
1 small WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's
1 medium WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's
1 large WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's

Result: the first shot would always kill the 3 empty WP's then the remaining would be successively killed in order from small to large. 20 tries, exact same result in all cases.

This result is what might lead one to believe that WP's are destroyed from weakest to strongest since there usually is a significant difference in WP hitpoints in real games. And at first, I thought I proved it worked this way.

But then I started wondering if my test method was valid. After consideration I realized that randomly applied damage would still show the same results. This is because a small amount of damage would destroy a weak WP while it would "accumulate against" the strong WP without destroying it. So this test series didn't really prove anything.

Series 2
On Homeworld A I built 10 WP's as follows:
1 small WP with WP computer core
1 small WP with WP computer core and 1 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 2 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 3 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 4 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 5 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 6 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 7 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 8 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 9 PDC 5

The idea here is that there is only 20 kt difference between successive WP's.

Result: 20 runs. The WP's were NOT destroyed in order from weakest to strongest. Weaker ones TENDED to be destroyed before stronger ones. But there were several cases where the stronger WP's were destroyed before weaker ones. This validates the "random damage" position. If you randomly apply damage, you would expect this result.

Conclusion: WP's are not destroyed randomly but are damaged randomly; WP's with less hit points tend to be destroyed first because it takes less random hits to destroy them. [edit] This makes the idea of "shield platforms" interesting. Shield WP's will help absorb random hits to keep your weapon WP's alive longer, but only so far as they add more targets for the random damage - NOT that they get hit before or after other WP's.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

It can pay to keep a small number of ships with WMGs in your fleets. If the enemy uses mainly, say, APBs, you can get a rather large advantage over the enemy if you can get off a WMG volley from a few of your ships before the enemy ships are in range of their weapons. You might deal critical damage to them, perhaps even destroy a ship (or perhaps two, if they are weakly armored) before they're in conventional weapon range. I don't know how the AI handles it if a fleet/combatgroup leader loses all of his movement, but I think the fleet would just hang motionless in space. This would be ideal for you (especially fighting AI enemies in a classic turn tactical combat) if you kill the engines on the lead enemy ship and then stay out of weapons range and patiently pummel them with WMGs until their weapons are mostly gone, then close in for the kill with the rest of your warships.

(The following tip is especially true for mods with very fast ships, speed 10-20 or above on strategic map) It can really pay to have a few very fast strike ships armed with Ripper Beams. They can wait patiently until the enemy ships are nearer, dart into enemy range, fire a powerful volley and then retreat out of enemy range again. This is also handy in massive fleet actions, if a large fleet of yours and a large fleet of the enemy duke it out over a planet with these strike ships as defenders. While the fleets pound away at each other, the strike ships can pick away at the enemy and wither them down. This can be especially handy if the enemy utilizes long-range seeker-armed ships that stay out of your fleet's weapons range, the strike ships can destroy these fire-support ships to give your fleet an edge over the enemy, then pick away at medium/long-range warships that pour (heavy) fire into your fleet from a good distance.

If the above makes no sense at all, please let me know and I'll try to explain.

[El_Phil]

I'm not sure of the exact point but AI fleets definetly break when the leader is too heavily damaged. I think its percentage based as it seems fairly random, on the other hand it could be just no weapons and/or low movement and I just haven't been paying enough attention.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Yes, but if your warships stay in tight formation that will mean increased protection to the more vulnerable ships (less armor/shields, more weapons) while the enemy mobs provide for easy kills for you, as you can just kill off the lesser-armored enemies easily.

[Parasite]

A tactic I am starting to use against deadly foes concerns fleet experience.

I make sure I always put one or two ships in each fleet with "Do not get hurt" and "Break from fleet" orders. If a few ships survive a multi-fleet battle it should be them. This will save the fleet experience for use when it is reconstituted later. The fleet could even gain experience if the only survivor was the one who ran away.

[Atrocities]

Unless they are hunted down and destroyed. I just keep a couple of skilled ships at all my training facilities and have all my construction yards send ships there. (I use the neural net). Share the experience and your off and running while only training a minimal amount of your ships. The most trained ships are heavily armored with shields and armor.

[Fyron]

In my assessment, Neural Combat Nets are dubious at best.

With two moons, it only takes 3 turns to get full training (training facilities on the planet and both moons will stack). 2 turns for 18% if you need the ships much more quickly.

Also, you can even set up routes to move your ships along to get training. Training occurs if the ship ends up in a sector with a training facility at the end of the turn. You can move your ship to a planet with a training facility and it will recieve training on the next turn. Move it to another planet with a training facility, it recieves more training. By carefully setting up training routes, you can get your ships trained to 20% while they are moving to the front lines with a minimal amount of time wasted sitting at training planets.

Why do you think I eliminated sector training entirely in Adamant and replaced it all with (1% per turn max for non-psychic races) system-wide training facilities?

[El_Phil]

Also system wide gives the AI a chance of actually training their ships/fleets, if only by complete accident.