Fleet experience requirements?

[Slaughtermeyer]

There was a crippled enemy ship nearby to which I sent one of my 0 experience ships to destroy it primarily to gain experience. I also put my ship into a new fleet in hopes that the fleet would gain experience too. The ship did gain experience, but the fleet did not. What are the requirements for fleets to gain experience? Does the fleet have to be of certain size, or does it need to have a certain amount of ships for experience gain?

[Fyron]

Fleets gain experience much more slowly than ships. There is also a random chance that each kill does not give them any experience. I do not forget the exact values, but it is something like a chance to get 1/10th of an experience point for the fleet for each ship killed by a member of the fleet.

[Slaughtermeyer]

So I should not disband the fleet because it might actually have an experience value of 1/10.

[douglas]

For ship experience, each enemy ship destroyed gives 1%, and each enemy unit or seeker group destroyed gives .1%.

For fleet experience, each enemy ship destroyed has a 25% chance of giving .1%, and each enemy unit or seeker group destroyed also has a 25% chance of giving .1%. No, that is not a mistake - unit and seeker groups really do give the same fleet experience as ships, yet another reason to avoid missile weapons.

All kills must be by direct fire weapons in order to gain experience.

The 25% figure is from a very long ago post repeating what Aaron said in an email, but the testing I just conducted seems to indicate the rate is actually somewhat lower, around 20%.

[Parasite]

If possible you should train your ships up to 20% before sending them into battle for experience. The need to kill approximitly 40 ships for one fleet Exp point makes this even more applicable. You would need to kill 800 ships with one fleet just to get to the 20% mark. Much better to get to 40% after killing that many ships starting from the base of 20% than just get to 20% starting from scratch.

[Slick]

Parasite said:
If possible you should train your ships up to 20% before sending them into battle for experience. The need to kill approximitly 40 ships for one fleet Exp point makes this even more applicable. You would need to kill 800 ships with one fleet just to get to the 20% mark. Much better to get to 40% after killing that many ships starting from the base of 20% than just get to 20% starting from scratch.

Yeah, this assumes you were lucky enough to not be obliterated along the way.

This post made me think of an evil idea: Mass building of minimum cost, no-movement, weaponless escorts. Then "gift" them to an enemy in the presence of your fleet for experience fodder.

Let the "Cheese", "gaminess" and other customary banter begin!

[douglas]

Slick said:This post made me think of an evil idea: Mass building of minimum cost, no-movement, weaponless escorts. Then "gift" them to an enemy in the presence of your fleet for experience fodder.

Let the "Cheese", "gaminess" and other customary banter begin!

You've got it all wrong! Make it a bunch of no-movement quantum reactor equipped escorts with one missile launcher each. It's an endless xp mine! Just keep sending PDC-only armed ships (in a fleet) to wrack up huge gains for both the ship and the fleet. With just 30 missile launching escorts, a fleet can gain 4 or 5% experience every battle (actual test results)! If necessary to force your ships to actually get in range, put a shield generator and regenerator on the escorts (might need to make them frigates) and equip your xp ships with one shield depleter each. Unfortunately, arming the "gift" ships makes it possible to get rid of all but one of them by firing on the rest, so you may have to construct them in a wide spread, 1 per sector.

Not that I would ever actually do this in a PBW game...

[Will]

But don't PDC-only ships start to run away, because they have "no weapons"? The shield-depleter scheme fixes that, but it adds some extra cost to the venture.

And I think that in a simultaneous game, you could end up having 30 combats (one a 'day') if you have the the fleet already in position. It's been a while since I've played, but I do remember a few cases where there were 30 combats in a single sector in a single turn.

And don't forget, instead of giving a fire&destroy, your enemy could also gift the ships back, or even better, to a third party, possibly someone you're allied with.

[Ragnarok-X]

On a slighty changed topic, i know training is stock capped at 20% each ship and fleet. If a maxed fleets kills like 100 ships, can it go beyond the 20% cap ?

[douglas]

Will said:
But don't PDC-only ships start to run away, because they have "no weapons"? The shield-depleter scheme fixes that, but it adds some extra cost to the venture.

Who cares about cost when you're talking about a way to get 50% ship and fleet experience? That's a 60% offense and defense bonus that no one else has unless they've also been exploiting this.

Will said:And I think that in a simultaneous game, you could end up having 30 combats (one a 'day') if you have the the fleet already in position. It's been a while since I've played, but I do remember a few cases where there were 30 combats in a single sector in a single turn.

I'm not sure what, exactly, is required to get combat on all 30 days, but in most cases triggering a second combat in the same turn requires having another ship enter the sector, and sometimes having a ship take damage in the first battle suffices. I was unable to ascertain the full criteria for when another battle will take place in my test games.

Will said:And don't forget, instead of giving a fire&destroy, your enemy could also gift the ships back, or even better, to a third party, possibly someone you're allied with.

Ah, but gifts can be refused and you can warn all your allies not to accept these worse than worthless ships. Of course, this brings up the issue of how to trick your enemy into accepting them in the first place... I think backstabbing an ally is the most likely tactic to work. Find someone friendly who's losing a war, rename all your worthless escorts to your biggest, most powerful warship design, and offer to trade this giant "battle" fleet at a substantial discount. When he accepts, take the proceeds, break your treaty, and start raking in the xp. Who needs the Talisman when you've got so much experience?

Ragnarok-X said:
On a slighty changed topic, i know training is stock capped at 20% each ship and fleet. If a maxed fleets kills like 100 ships, can it go beyond the 20% cap ?

There is a hardcoded maximum of 50% for ship and fleet experience individually, for a maximum combined bonus of 100%. Other than that, there are no limits on experience gained through actual combat.