Are battles always one sided?

[geoschmo]

Askan,

Not only were his ships bigger than yours, but he was using PBB, which take up 30 Kt of space and fire every turn, and you were using Quantum Torps, which take 40 Kt of space and fire every other turn. So your 3-1 numerical advantage in ships is now down really worse than 2- 1, to almost equal strength in terms of force of firepower.

In my experience, ship experience won't overcome a huge advantage by the other side, but it will turn an otherwise even fight into a complete rout. You didn't have the huge advantage you thought you did, because you were merely looking at the raw numbers of ships instead of the total amount of firepower in the fleet.

Had your fleets had similer levels of experience, then it would have most likely been an very even fight, and quite a blood bath. Probably high damage on both sides with very few ships from either side capable of leaving the field of battle undamaged.

Geoschmo

[CW]

Also try ordering your ships to fire at point blank range. Once I've seen my ships (with order to fire at optimum range) moving away from the enemies right next to them FIRST and THEN fire on them (and missed), after that fight point blank became my standard strategy.

Also any sort of modifier can be a REAL advantage. I was helping a newbie friend of mine to design his ships. He gave me a new cruiser of his to try out against my DN in the simulator. ONE single dreadnought of mine beat THIRTY of his cruisers, and I bet I would have won even if he threw 100 of those cruisers at me. Wonder why? Because he forgot to put in a combat sensor and in 30 turns I took only ONE hit out of the hundreds of shots his ships fired. Overwhelming firepower alone won't help you one bit unless you score hits...


[This message has been edited by CW (edited 15 October 2001).]

[Taqwus]

Yup. A ship can have a lot of defense bonuses (up to +50% from fleet experience, up to +50% from ship experience, plus +10% and +15% from stealth and scattering armor, plus +60% from ECM, plus +5% cultural once that's fixed, plus some percentage I don't remember from certain racial facilities, plus racial bonus). And if the other side lacks the Talisman or enough offensive bonuses to hit, well... yes, it'll be one-sided, especially if the high-offense side also got a range advantage and no speed disadvantage (so he can maintain maximum range and thus the other guy's difficulty to hit).

That's one way to design a planetary assault transport that can waltz up to a planet w/ 16Mtons of weapons platforms without backup, and without losing more than a tiny fraction of its shields. *shrug*


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Spoo]

Actually, my ships (not fleet -they were set to break formation) did have point blank strategy. And half of them were cruisers. And we had equal engines tech.

Geo,

You forget that quantum torpedoes do much more damge than PPB. It should only take about TWO hits to cripple one of his ships. The point is I only hit ONE of his ships more than ONCE (even w/ combat sensors 3).

And I agree that the odds were closer to 2-1 -um, shouldn't I win 2-1 odds? The thing is, my ships were firing like they had 1% accuracy. Is it possible that Askan had 160% defense?? I don't mean to whine, I'm just wondering how to avoid future slaughters (or how to be on the winning side of a slaughter).

Maybe there should be a limit of 100% defense and 100% to-hit.

------------------
Assume you have a 1kg squirrel
E=mc^2
E=1kg(3x10^8m/s)^2=9x10^16J
which, if I'm not mistaken, is equivilent to roughly a 50 megaton nuclear bomb.
Fear the squirrel.

[edit = typos]

[This message has been edited by Spoo (edited 15 October 2001).]

[Phoenix-D]

1% accuracy can be had, I think.

Watch:
ECMIII: 60%
Stealth+Scattering: 30%
Legendary Ship: 40%
Legendary Fleet: 40%
Total: 170% (it can get worse, too- I think ship XP goes up t 50)

In comparision, the best attack:
Combat Sensors III: 65%
Legnedary Ship: 40%
Legendary Fleet: 40%
Total: 145%

Now, that's a 25% disadvantage just to start, and assumes the fleets and ships are equal in XP. Add in unequal fleets and the range modifier (10% per square) and things get ugly, fast.

Phoenix-D

[Master Belisarius]

Phoenix-D: I'm pretty sure that the Stealth and Scattering bonus, are not cumulative.

[Suicide Junkie]

Stealth and Scattering most definitely ARE cumulative

Also note that Quantum Torpedoes are exactly 62.5% as strong as PPBs from point blank range and 75% as strong from max range.

quote:

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APB XII: 2.1 - 1.5, normal
CSM V: 0.8, seeker
MB: 1.75, normal
AMT V: 0.625, normal
QT V: 1.25, normal
PM V: 1.0 - 0.27, seeker
PDC V: 3.25, pointdefence, +70%
PPB V: 2.0 - 1.67, phased
RB IV: 2.5, normal
IB III: 0.9, normal, +10%
WMG III: 0.67, normal, +30%
TPC V: 0.375 - 0.188, Weapons only
ID V: 1.3, engines only
IPM V: 0.625, engines only, seeker
PN V: 15.0, planets only
NB V: 5.0, planet population only
GHB V: 1.21 - 0.33, normal
SD V: 7.5, shields only
DUC V: 1.33, normal
PC V: 1.33 - 1.0, normal, organic
HPB V: 1.67 - 1.0, normal, organic
ED III: 1.5 - 0.5, normal, organic
LR III: 2.0 - 0.5, normal, organic
SP V: 1.0, seeker, organic
AG V: 0.56, normal, organic
EAG V: 1.25, normal, organic
SC X: 1.17, skip armor, crystalline
HEM III: 0.917, normal, crystalline
TDB V: 1.0 (4.0), quad2shields, temporal
TS III: 0.33, skips all, temporal
TKP V: 1.75, normal, psychic
CW III: 6.0, warhead
MSD: 10.0, one shot, RuinsTech
MID: 5.0, one shot, RuinsTech
NSP: 0.4, skips all
CT V: 0.45, ships armor, seeker
SA V: 9.0, shields only, temporal
TC III: 1.2, normal, temporal, +10%
MSG III: 0.68, normal, psychic, +20%

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Where the damage rating is: Damage/KT/Turn
Accurate as of SE4 v1.35

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Spoo:
Actually, my ships (not fleet -they were set to break formation) did have point blank strategy. And half of them were cruisers. And we had equal engines tech.

Geo,

You forget that quantum torpedoes do much more damge than PPB. It should only take about TWO hits to cripple one of his ships. The point is I only hit ONE of his ships more than ONCE (even w/ combat sensors 3).

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Actually Askan, as SJ points out Qtorps don't do more damage that PBB. Actually they do the same damage at max range. The Qt does 100 damage every 2 turns, and the PBB does 50 damage every turn. And by moving to point blank you actually make it worse for yourself because at point blank the PBB does 60 per turn, so it actually does more damage than the Qtorp. Add to that the fact that the PBB takes up less space, and your enemy has bigger ships, and your numerical "advantage" is getting smaller all the time.

It's impossible to calculate exactly the ratio unless you want to post the ship designs. Or at least how many weapons did each ship have. Then we could calculate precisly the differance in force between fleets. But it's going to be less than 2 to 1. Probably more than 1 to 1. Somewhere between those two would be my guess, with you having the slight edge.

Also remember that each of his ships can do more damage than each of your ships on an individual basis. With 130 ships in a firefight, more of your ships are going to be out of range than his are in any particular turn, simply becasue you have more. So this means he can bring even more fire to bear on the ships that are in range than you can.

Altogether what you have is two fleets that are much more equally match than you thought, with his ships having a large advantage in experience. End result is the rout you ended up with. I still believe if the experience, sensors, so on had been equal, it would have been a close, bloody fight with high damage on both sides. You might have won, but you wouldn't have much left to celebrate with.

One other thing you didn't mention, or if you did I didn't see it, was this a warp point battle? If it was then that could account for some of the difference if your enemy had a lower player number than you. Someone mentioned this before in the thread, but I didn't see if you responded to that point. If so all of his ships would have fired before any of yours did. Probably could have knocked out half your fleet before you got a shot off.

Geoschmo

[Rich04]

Tweaking Ship/Fleet Strategy is very important.
In my 1st PBW game I lost several battles that looked even without inflicting significant losses to the enemy fleet. Upon viewing the battles I finally figured out what was happening. My ships were failing to kill off damaged ships. They would fire until the opponent was disabled and move on to the next target. The opponent had enough repair ships to fix his fleet each turn. This is the default setting for SE4 and what very often turns a battle into a one sided slaughter. If your opponent has more ships you will almost always lose without inflicting any losses, all else being equal.

[Spoo]

Thanks for the numbers S_J. So I guess PPB really are king (although wavemotion guns with their 30% bonus look nice too). BTW when is the 30% added? Does it guarantee a 31% to-hit, no matter what?

------------------
Assume you have a 1kg squirrel
E=mc^2
E=1kg(3x10^8m/s)^2=9x10^16J
which, if I'm not mistaken, is equivilent to roughly a 50 megaton nuclear bomb.
Fear the squirrel.