Satellites, Weapons Platforms and Bases

[God Emperor]

Have been playing the demo for a while and am wondering how useful Satellites, Weapons Platforms and Bases are. Their lack of movement means that they can be picked off one at a time and if an enemy develops a weapon of longer range they are sitting ducks.
Apart from mining warp points, the best defensive unit seems to be fighters - they cost no maintenance and can be built on any planet (even those that have low population and no structures).
My style of playing seems to be moving towards mining key warp points, building hundreds of fighters (that repeat build command is very useful - one turn of production on repeat), and building a lots of ships (many of which I keep mothballed if they are in quiet sectors).
What do the rest of you find?

[Resident Alien]

quote:

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Originally posted by God Emperor:
Have been playing the demo for a while and am wondering how useful Satellites, Weapons Platforms and Bases are. Their lack of movement means that they can be picked off one at a time and if an enemy develops a weapon of longer range they are sitting ducks.
Apart from mining warp points, the best defensive unit seems to be fighters - they cost no maintenance and can be built on any planet (even those that have low population and no structures).
My style of playing seems to be moving towards mining key warp points, building hundreds of fighters (that repeat build command is very useful - one turn of production on repeat), and building a lots of ships (many of which I keep mothballed if they are in quiet sectors).
What do the rest of you find?

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I like to have weapons platforms defending all frontier and key planets. At the beginning of the game small size, later medium and then large as research advances.

A large weapons platform can mount Massive weapons. You would need a Baseship to match that firepower in a ship.

In one of my current games the spec for a large WP (600kT) is: Computer, Combat sensors and ECM III, 3 x Phased Shield V (1250), 3 x point defense, 1 x massive Phased Poloron III (200@range 6), 1 x massive Wave Motion Gun II (600@8), 1x large phased poloron III (80@6).

For comparison a battleship/dreadnaught could mount up to a heavy WMG II for 360@range 8.

Put 5 of them on a planet and those alien scum would would need a serious fleet to take you out. Small raiding Groups would be toasted.

Add in fighters and it would be even harder, with the fighters supplying long range attack to supplement the planet defenses.

Fighters require some extra research. WP's use the same components as ships. Sattelites seem a bit weak for planet defense. Large bases cost a lot of maintenance so I don't used them except for construction yards..

You can pack a lot of WP's and fighters into a big planet, maintenance free


[This message has been edited by Resident Alien (edited 12 December 2000).]

[Puke]

Im rather new at the game to, so my tactics may not be the best. I do appreciate all the great comments on this board though, reading through them has really helped me out.

as has been pointed out before, mines work great against the AI unless you want to be challenged so what I have been doing is building strong weapon platforms on core planets and hauling them out to the frontier as it expands.

i like to load missiles on the WPs for range, but you need to change it up every so often and throw in direct fire weapons to take things down when they get close (and when a fleet has heavy point defense)

for defending warp points, I like to throw up 2 space stations (yeah, takes time. drop off mines or fighters in the short term) and you see some real synergy take place when their point defense systems work together taking out fighters or missiles. what one does not catch, the other will (mostly). I had 2 bases setup with null space guns and lots of point defense, hordes and hordes came at them but nothing ever got through. every so often i would drop off some disposable point defense or missile sats to help them out, but that was probably a waste of resources when you think about what mines or fighters could have done (or a third, smaller station).

[Maximus]

I like to use Satellites in the very beginning of the game. Create a frigate with 2 uranium cannons, a sat bay, and a cargo bay.

Now create a Sat with 1 capital ship missile, and a supply bay. Not sure if the supply bay is needed, anybody know?

Now load up 2 Sats on your frigate and send it out to explore. It will be a match for any other frigate at this tech level. Just deploy your sats first thing, and wait till they soften up the enemy ship. Then have your frigate move in for the kill with its cannons so it will get the experience

The only drawback I have found is it seems you can only deploy Sats if you attack another ship. Not if your ship is attacked. Not sure if this is a bug or part of the game? But if you let the AI control your ship for one turn, it will deploy you Sats automatically in either case. Another bug