Weak Ship Screens

[ShadowKitsune]

EDIT:  This underscores anotehr point brought up by others about technology -- superior technology allows you greater efficiency in ship design.  There's that 'efficiency' word again.  One wonders how anybody can efficiently manage an empire without a decent spreadsheet.

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That, Mr. Sunflower, is truly a mystery to me.

 

-SK

[octagon999]

Hrm... Necromancy is a bad thing, mkay?

[EternusIV]

Hrm... Necromancy is a bad thing, mkay?

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Don't worry, I put the zombie back into his grave and pat the plot down with the back of my shovel and threw it away

[ShadowKitsune]

Hrm... Necromancy is a bad thing, mkay?

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Don't worry, I put the zombie back into his grave and pat the plot down with the back of my shovel and threw it away

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Aaaah!!

 

You forgot the salt! You must salt the earth, too. (Pepper is optional.)

[EternusIV]

Thanks for teh reminder man.

 

I realized that when I saw him pawing at my patio door this morning. He's in the tool shed for now but we plan to put him back in later tonight.

[ShadowKitsune]

Thanks for teh reminder man.

 

I realized that when I saw him pawing at my patio door this morning.  He's in the tool shed for now but we plan to put him back in later tonight.

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Bad Zombie! Bad, bad zombie! <thwap> No brains for you ...

[Locklyn]

Actually the massive screen fleet strategy is still highly viable once you have high end shields or armor and at least a gen 4-5 weapon. I pump out 200 screen ships a turn, of course having 230 Shipyard Slips is a bit of investment but it pays in the long run.

 

 

Cheers

/locklyn

[WKE235]

Actually the massive screen fleet strategy is still highly viable once you have high end shields or armor and at least a gen 4-5 weapon. I pump out 200 screen ships a turn, of course having 230 Shipyard Slips is a bit of investment but it pays in the long run.

 

 

Cheers

/locklyn

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So now we have folks pumping out 200+ screen ships per turn, in order to make up for potential enemy increases in fire rates due to tech advances. This whole naval combat system is turning into a farce. Is this what the game is degenerating into? Everyone building huge fleets of tiny screen ships, to sit in front of the capital ships and act as the most efficent defenses in the game? Battles involving thousands and thousands of 1K ton ships, and a few mega ships hiding behind them. Multiple hundred page battle reports showing all the tiny ships destroyed on page after page (I bet that will go over well with the email).

 

And the tech advances are making the tiny ships into defenses that absorb incredible amounts of damage. A 1K ship with 1 Engine, 1 Jump Drive, some fuel tanks, and mostly Trizenium Flex Plate will have 250,000 Integrity points. You put 1000 of those in front of the big ships and you have a 250,000,000 point wall protecting the fleet. Heck, even Superior class weapons will require quite a lot of weapons or quite a lot of time to get through that.

 

The old SN game suffered from everyone building huge drone fleets which were almost unbeatable. The new game is suffering the similar way, from huge screen fleets which are nearly undefeatable, espeically in someonw home system.

[Ur Lord Tedric]

We're sorry, but we have to completely disagree with this one.

 

The drone fleets of SN2 were an offensive arm. Once you had it you went round and took out everything.

 

The defensive screen fleets of this game are just that. Their offensive capability is extemely limited due to extremely slow strategic movement (one system per turn) unless you put TWDs on them - which suddenly makes them a lot bigger and more expensive. And using them in a WP assault is a good way to get them all destroyed (if WP assaults occur as advertised??? ).

 

HWs, and the systems they're in, are supposed to be extremely tough nuts to crack and the defensive screen fleets help enable that. Even a partially played empire will not be an easy walkover.

 

We strongly recommend not thinking of these 'screens' as ships, but as 'minefields' - then their effect is correctly represented.

 

Also strongly recommended is a pre-Xmas re-read of the Weber-White series and in particular the pair to do with the 'Bugs'.

 

40 turns of production of 200 screens per turn can be destroyed with 40 individual ships in a single turnsheet.

 

All we need to know is how to be able to design those ships - and that's what is really needed.....

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric

[Paradigm]

So now we have folks pumping out 200+ screen ships per turn, in order to make up for potential enemy increases in fire rates due to tech advances.  This whole naval combat system is turning into a farce.  Is this what the game is degenerating into?  Everyone building huge fleets of tiny screen ships, to sit in front of the capital ships and act as the most efficent defenses in the game?  Battles involving thousands and thousands of 1K ton ships, and a few mega ships hiding behind them.  Multiple hundred page battle reports showing all the tiny ships destroyed on page after page (I bet that will go over well with the email). 

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That's what several of us have been warning about for a long time now. Pete swears there is a simple counter to it.

[Laserwolf]

I always looked at those <10k ships as just big fighters, thats all they really are and are acting like. They just are not cut down by PD fire.

 

A space fleet with hundreds or thousands of 2k ton figs? Doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

[Clan Elder 'Keen]

Also strongly recommended is a pre-Xmas re-read of the Weber-White series and in particular the pair to do with the 'Bugs'.

 

Fantastic read, especially the first book (the second dragged a bit once you knew where it was headed).

 

As for the screen ship issue, we already know there are at least 3 counters: 1) research fire control improvements, 2) your own screens, and 3) a phased assault to clear out screens. I don't see any problem here.

[Paradigm]

40 turns of production of 200 screens per turn can be destroyed with 40 individual ships in a single turnsheet.

 

You have single ships with a targeting ability of 200 and that can do 40 million damage in one round? If so then I guess swarms don't bother you. It would take over 40% of a ship's mass in Mk VII Computer Systems to have a targeting rating of 200.

 

And what happens when you issue those 40 orders to move 40 fleets each containing such a ship only to find the enemy swarm fleet moved in order block #1? That's a lot of order blocks.

 

Any battle tactic or counter tactic that requires issuing 40 orders is fundamentally wrong. I don't believe RTG is that greedy.

 

The achilles heel of swarm attacks are warp point assaults, especially through a narrow warp point. Swarm defenses of such warp points are another matter.

[Locklyn]

I can today build a 1000 ton ship that has 500 000 integrity, engines, jumpdrive, fuel tanks and space left for a superior weapon or two that actually does some damage or exchange one weapon slot with a computer system that helps me with high FC. With good jumpdrives these babies have a bubble of one. Sure they're still best for warp point defense but when the bubble is one that also means you can a bunch of em through every turn. Combine that with Carriers launching Combat Gunboats through on the first attack pulse and the other guy will have his hands full.

 

When it comes to killing screens I guess still the only real way to go is to use naval commanders on heavy ships which makes these even more valuable

 

/Locklyn

[Paradigm]

I can today build a 1000 ton ship that has 500 000  integrity . . .

 

Only with T'ckon 68 armor which you may have but I would wager not even a majority of the elder races have yet. Trizenium Flex Plate is probably more common for the purposes of general discussion. Let's keep this general and not a contest to design a custom fleet to crush Locklyn's homeworld.

 

You could certainly assault a WP with swarm ships, especially if backed up by good fighters and/or drones. But you would loose a lot of the advantage of the swarm in that situation depending on WP size and targeting ability of the enemy plus of course their CIDS capability. That's getting in to too many variables for this topic of discussion.

 

The more important point is being able to build more swarm ships than can be handled by most race's current fire control in a reasonably number of rounds. That's essentially min/max 'ing the system which is the bane of good game design. If in open space no fleet of roughly equivalent mass and technology level can defeat say, 10,000 swarm ships backed up by a few battleships, except by a mirror of that force, then I think there's a problem. Whenever one strategy is undefeatable, even in only certain situations, there's a problem.

 

This has been discussed before. People have pointed out situations where the swarm fleet can be defeated when it's in a disadvantaged position. I've yet to see anyone show it being defeated in level ground except with another swarm. All else being equal. Don't pull out Mk XX Computer Systems unless you know such are within grasp.