Post your best ship designs and what works for you!

SCANNERS SCANNERS SCANNERS!!!! High level scanners are a must, I try to get to around lvl 12 as soon as I possibly can as it makes ships in the ceneter of the system able to see the entire system, I will then push it upto level 22 in early mid game so that from the edge of a system they can see it all.

Another thing is to look at the importance of range in weapons, I try to keep my ships at leas as fast as anyone elses and use the longest range weapns I can, that way they never get close enough to fire on me.

The shield / armour balance, be aware that unless you have organic armour its far better to have sheilds than standard armour, as sheilds regen themselves from turn to turn (and sheild regenerators are a must as soon as you can get them). Once you have sheilds that produce over a couple of hundred points I tend to dump all standard armour in favour of more shields.

Older ships are great at being upgraded to be pure point defence platforms, with a mixture of long range bomblets and close range cannons (the ones you get with meason blasters).

I also tend to use frigates are colonies as they are that bit quicker. Or medium freighters as multi colonies (2 or more types of colony when i get the techs) that way I don't have to faff about with building the right type of colony ship.

The AI does use scanners, as I have watched them crawl all over a system very slowly fully exploring it. Better scanners will allow them to do this quicker with all the benefits this brings. It also gives them access to better combat scanners which will help them in combat obviously.

I currently don't even bother using ECMs because the AI doesn't develope decent scanners so its a bit of overkill for me to be hitting them more often and stopping them from hitting me at all (when they can catch me)

Hmmm... interesting point... Strikes me that Colony modules should get smaller as you tech upwards along the colonization tree (as opposed to doubling their capacity from 40 to 80).

Talking about Colonizers, what I would really love would be a Universal Colony, that you can set up on any world.

I would have it as a tech that you only gain access when you have each of the other 3. As for multipul levels of colony, I really don't see the point the tech is is so expensive and of so little benefit I would just scrap the extra levels of colony.

I have used the frigate hull for colonization and quite successfully but frigate colony ships tend to be slow compared to normal colonizers as a tl I frigate hull is 250 dt a colony module is 200 dt the bridge life support and crew quarters come to 30dt leaving 20 dt for ion engines giving the thing a move of three. They are cheap and you will colonize your starting systems in double quick time though, in spite of this.

My personal favourite are what I call scout colonizers. These have the best sensors I have on them so they can survey systems and spot targets for colonisation these also have increasing amounts of supply on them so they can cross the barren systems which I invariably find in numbers around my home systems without running out of supply and some cargo space to hold defence units fighters satellites and troops for the new colony as well as more people. Later ones also have good ECM and PD to blockade run through defended warpoints

I tend to only use them after I have gotten the hull size up enough to make em fast , There is no reason why you couldn't do the same with destroyers of even light cruisers.

My favorite ship has to be the level 10 cruiser. At 1000kT it is big enough to support a variety of designs while still being capable of attaining the max strategic speed available.

I use three main designs for this hull.

Exploration: Cloak-capable and loaded with sensors, shields, supplies, Quantum generators and solar panels. this is an endurance vessel. I arm it with plasma missiles, PD blasters and four fighter bays. I also put a drone launcher and a couple of cargo bays to hold extra fighters and drones. I use drones to warp ahead of the mothership into unexplored space, and to survey systems after transit. Lastly, I carry a boarding party just in case.

Build/Repair: This ship is big enough to mount both a spaceyard component and a repair bay. Put a lvl 7 satellite launcher on it, and you can deploy robo miner satellites, plus build and repair anything in space.

Battlecruiser: As the name suggest, a cruiser with battleship armament. You can use the Heavy ship mount on anything over 800kT, and this hull can surely do that. You can pack enough firepower on this ship to do Nelson proud.

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"No plan survives contact with the enemy"
Moltke

I made this one. This baby's got a cloaking device, solar sails, solar panels, quantum generator, quantum engines, and armament to wipe out any ship or even a homeworld in a single salvo. Shield Generators, shield regenerators, armor capable of withstanding an attack from dozens of similar ships before getting down to the structure, this baby is simply dangerous, capable of full-blown combat, and exploration. This is the pride and joy of the Tau fleet.

You can load up your ships with all the shields with all the shield generators you want. I load up my ships with Phased weapons and I’ll cut thought you like butter. By the time you phased shield your empire will be extinct.

After you wade through the heavilly armoured space stations and minefields that guard my borders, you will meet my main fleet armed with shard cannons, point defence and beam weapons. Sure they will be dented and some destroyed, but i doubt you will like the losses either

Guess who has hundreds of such Dreadnoughts? Not to mention supporting ships, like frigates with massive numbers of DUCs, Meson blasters, and anti-photon guns, and Destroyers with plasma missle batteries.

You guys are just itching for some multiplayer, aren't you...

I don't know about multiplayer. I seriously need to fine tune my strategies of growing an empire since i never start with the all tech approach. Never actually seen a hunner dreadnaugts built since in my longer games (~1.5 weeks) i've never hit a level wear i can support more than 5-7 battlegroups. And supporting even those seems kinda pointless when i can beat an AI sector with one (1) frigate Guess you could call me a research fanatic when at 200 turns into the game i have 20-30x more research than the AIs put together

Since i often produce less materials for supporting ships, i usually try to keep a fleet of highly advanced multirole ships in stock. Defence ships are usually cruiser size hulls with mediocre/heavy shielding compared to the offensive potential of my neighbors. Shield renerator and armour for a little added security. Other defensive systems are limited to ECM and perhaps stealth armour in later models. Ships are always equipped with combat sensors and no more since my spy satellites carry more advanced sensory equipment. Offense of ships depends on my level of tech. Usually 2-6 missile launchers per ship and beam weaponry. Some PD for knocking out enemy missiles.

Offensive ships are usually maxed out frigate hulls. Up to date engines, quantum reactors/solar paneling, light armor, mediocre shielding. 2 drone launchers and cargo space to carry 4-12 drones depending on tech level and drones. 1 PD cannon and 2 beam weapons for defence. Best possible sensors and a cloaking device. Strategy for combat is simple. Shoot all the drones against the enemy planets and listen to the screams. The enemy has no chance whatsover to intercept all the drones nor locate the cloaked ships.

I have a ship for every situation. If I need to chase something down, I send in a carrier, loaded with fighters. Those fighters then chase down and eradicate the target, and return to the carrier. For planetary bombardment, I use a Dreadnought or a battleship. For skirmishes with other races, I use my frigates and destroyers. And so on. One ship, one job.

I tend to avoid the really big ships as they are too slow for my liking. The only thing I use them for is in later game Asteroid Mining and in my dreams to beuild ring worlds and Dyson Spheres.

Anyone ever try making a ship-construction ship? Y'know, make a ship that can build a ship inside it? It's awesome. Then there's the fact that you can build a repair ship, and ships can re-supply themselves, and all that stuff. With all this, you don't even need a planet. Just try not to lose all your repair and reconstruction ships.

That would be embarrasing greatergood..... Setting off into the wilds of space with your fleet of building cities and then getting stumped when they all got destroyed.

Builder ships are cool thou. They are great for building star bases to defend warp points. Half a dozen large space bases with tons of shields and big weapons will stop any invasion fleet.... that is until someone plays silly bugger and opens up a new warp point in the system.

Have just been messing around with the AI races in game and am shocked by their ship design.

None of them seem to use Combat Sensors or ECM, they all make the mistake of over subscribing to life support and crew quaters (yes redundancy is nice, but not at the cost of hitting harder and more often and getting hit less often in return.) Also as has been noticed elsewhere they don't like point defense.....

Hope this helps

Well, some of my most effective designs;

Sweeper Frigates
6-8 PDB
4 DUC/APB (depending on tech progression)
Strategy= Short Range

Supression Cruisers
4-8 GTorp/CSM
2-6 Fighter Bays
4 Cargo
*4 PDB (only if fighting seeker-freaks)
Strategy= Max Range

Puncher Cruisers
8-10 HEAVY DUC/NSP (tech progression again)
Strategy= Optimal Range

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My typical task fleet runs about:
6 Sweep FF
2 Sup CA
4 Punch CA

Multipliers are applied from there.
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Frigs more or less make up the front lines, cheap and expendable - yet bothersome. By my experience one frig can handle 3-4 dedicated missles destroyers all by themself.
The second line is made up of the Puncher Cruisers which are the main source of damage in the fleet. The Third line of Supression Cruisers do just that(keep the enemy Overwhelmed/busy) and the fighters allow the fleet to catch runners.

EDIT: Laymans
PDB - Point Defense Blaster(Meson)
DUC - Depleted Uranium Cannon
APB - Anti-Proton Beam
GTorp - Gamma Torpedo
CSM - Capital Ship Missle
NSP - Null Space Projector
FF- Frigate
CA - Cruiser (technically 'Heavy Cruiser')

Its a 1000 point tech to research, ok using level 1 is fairly pointless but for a medium tech race they should be able to boost it upto level 10+ in a turn or 2 and by then it does make a significant difference. The same really applies to combat sensors, they aren't much use at lvl 1 but bung them up a few levels and they definatly are.

Again it comes down to making the AI research the right techs, which I have a feeling it is handling terribly. Looking at AI races they tend to spend loads of points on resource manipulation and such extremely expensive techs and of minimal use in the early game.

The other thing that needs altering is the AI needs to set up a minimum crew and life support check in designing ships. The AI seems to love to research Political science (i think, the one that gives improved crew quaters) upto high levels and yet never thinks to check how many CQs it needs to put on its ships and bases, I think this is because it just does a straight upgrade of existing components, rather than actually "measuring the worth of them". This also applies to its use of weapons. They tend to research at least 2 sometimes as many as 4 different types of weapon upto lvl 10 (in my current game) and only use one of them.

One of my most effective designes to date is 6 CSM 6 Drone battleships with max speed. 2 PDB's and either huge ordnance reserves or organic tech ordnance vats (I prefer the latter since organic is one of the most overall potent specials when used right equal to religious) The drones I use are just 2 DUC's or APB's depending on levels (APB in the long run is best DUC's are better in early tech levels.)

I almost never use shields or armor past the early game since their effectiveness drops to near nothing lategame.

Range and speed are supreme lategame (and in fact all through the game but become critical lategame) Anything that enhances range can be critical. combat sensors and ECM are huge lategame as are master computers that act as both. I hate the cost of the MC vs normal bridge etc. but the benefits are worth it mid-late game.

I don't use ramming drones because drones are far too expensive to replace so while drones are auto-killed it's better to use fighters. but when drones can survive a battle their stronger ECM and combat sensors plus full ship class weapons are worth it. (basically mini-frigates you can haul around in massive quantities that don't use supply to travel with your fleet hehe)

One of my other successes are "do everything" cruisers... each with a bit of this and that on weapons with a repair bay on each. Any of them that survive a battle will be back to 100% next turn if you have a large enough fleet. I tend to use ONLY APB and CSM from basic techs or if I take organic I only use electrical discharge and seeker parasites. MOST of this is due to range vs damage considerations... They just do more damage per range vs fire rate and space usage... generally I start with DUC but switch to APB once I get tech 20+ in them. BTW do everything means I put 1 or 2 PDB, a mine sweeper, a repair bay, APB/DUC, CSM, possibly a couple fighter bays etc. essentially they can fill almost any role except sattelite dispersal or build new ships. (The only specialized ship I include in a fleet of these is 1 or more pure construction ships that have fighter launch ability to resupply the fleet with fighters)

The AI desperately needs to be told to use PD period... even the worst PD guns are better than NO PD at all... so many times I sit there and win because my missile frigates have PD while their missile dreadnaughts have none.

First, formations is what needs changing - see my post here (with link to my current Formations_TaskForces.txt file). In short, I argue that the stock formations place ships uselessly far apart and most are aesthetic as they're only effective if you break formation and micromanage everything once ships make contact. At present I only use 2 custom-made formations which makes Tactical Combat much easier and effective - I plan on adding 'strafing' formations too later, but that's only useful for humans who can micromanage.

For AI, simply having much tighter formations will make their fleets fight better. What use is 30 AI ships if they get picked off one by one just from concentrated "Direct Fire" Beam weapons which reload in time for their next (or 2nd next) ship to get in range?
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The ship designs I want to make aren't feasible right now because I can't tell my ships to not automatically launch all units as fast as they can. Once that's fixed, I plan on having all my bigger warships be equipped with a single satellite bay and drone launcher (for when drone aiming and non-ramming gets fixed) with some cargo bays - a single ship stuffed full of weapons and shields cannot survive a well coordinated fleet of Frigates unless there's a serious difference in tech. So rather than pile up weapons and shields beyond what's effective/efficient, I want warships that provide their own support just by deploying satellites and non-ramming, non-warhead drones.

So for example, a ship heavy with mounted Direct Fire weapons would deploy 6 or so satellites armed with Seekers just before contact. Seeker heavy ships deploy satellites and drones armed with point defence which would be much more effective at the job because they inherently are spaced out so likely won't all waste their shots on a single seeker/fighter/etc (doubly true if we're talking of point-defence beams).

A Cargo bay holds far more tonnage than it takes up - satellites and drones manually launched can expand a single ship's arsenal far further. Satellite mounts also extend range...

Same with mines really... I want to create colony ships that lay mines as it runs away...
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Uh Ship designs... a Frigate with a Tractor Beam, shield depleters and boarding party. Likely a single Frigate won't be able to catch up to freighters etc before they get away. Use many Frigates at a time so that you lure a ship to retreat into a sector where another capture Frigate is waiting - that way they both start right at the centre and the Tractor beam means they'll never get away.

Call me silly if you wish but why use non-ramming, non-warhead drones and not fighters? I always regarded drones as bigger version of missles / torpedos that where meant to ram ship and blow them up.

In SEIV I would sometimes make colonizing light cruisers. You can pack enough cargo onto them to bring people, fighters, mines and weapon platforms. An instant colony with a hefty population that can defend itself imediatly.

-Kerry

"...I say we must move forward, not backward, upward, but forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!"
-Kodos for President

I also have bad experience with fighters and the supply problem, which I've reported by email complete with a savegame. Unit supplies in general have problems that need addressing.

"Call me silly if you wish but why use non-ramming, non-warhead drones and not fighters?"

And it's similar to the tactics used by the Andromeda Ascendant.

You what?

I almost never manually control my fleets... kinda lazy that way I guess.. (but mostly it's because the AI is too weak to handle manually controlled enemies hehe)

I have used the sat droppers and such before... they are effective.

non-ramming drones... Gee... they can mounts as much weaponry as a small frigate and have full sized defenses and so on... no contest... they are also FAR too expensive to throw away ramming.(and you expect a ship packed to the walls with explosives to survive ramming something? I guess you could pack your car with dynamite light the fuse and watch it blow up the tricycle across the way and come out shiny with a few scratches?) now a drone that's packed with armor and engines is another story but the engine physics are non-existant so that's not likely to work either :/

hehe lots of things I could say on that... and lots of ways it could be different but that's how Aaron envisioned drones I guess... as giant missiles of some sort.

How I keep my drones from ramming is simple... I put big guns on em and launch em in clouds so that they destroy the target before they get in ramming range lol.

DUC's and APB's are great for that.

BTW I really like the way Psieye thinks... matches my general desires exactly I have done all that but for the most part the AI is too ineffective to make the hassle worth going through... sadly it would be VERY nice if in MP both players could control their forces because that would make tactics like that VERY VERY useful hehe It's so easy to make large ships carry hundreds of fighters/sats and even drones... If you could control them with precision they would be absolutely devestating. (ok fighters and drones already are but that's mostly a bug IMO)

In the beggining of the game i usually research scans until i can see around 5 sectors or so. After that i'll swith to engines and a bit of weapons, until i get jacketed.
nowadays i almost always start building an space yard base which takes 0,2yrs, and next i design a colony ship that only takes one year to build, but has all engines and a basic sensor. armor is irrelevant since if it faces opposition it will die anyways. I send those to far away places, i usualy skip one or two sistems to get a forward position. I also design short ranged colony ships with fewer costs to be built on those slow space yard bases or planets with few pop, so as to colonize the planets in the same system.
As far as attacking ship goes, i usualy make a frigate with a capital ship torpedo and as soon as i get hull increase, i put another torpedo, squeese a PD gun to face other missiles and pt some ordnance and supply cargos.

I posted in another thread, but my point defense ships dont actualy carry a lot of point defense guns, they usually pack some unmounted anti-proton beans and just a few PD to take care of other missiles. PD is just awful to shoot down fighters. Same for bomblets and flaks IMO.

From the TV show Andromeda. Big battleship that releases drones as support fighters...

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I have an infatuation with big bases. I like to sneak some construction ships into enemy territory and hide them inside of a storm or nebulae. They build a couple of base space yards and then begin on the other bases. A small 'outpost' consists of four base space yards, two fighter bases, one drone base, a resupply base, (with several quantum reactors, solar collectors, and supply storage) six to eight defense bases and plenty of satellites deployed around them in a cloud to slow down any attackers long enough for my defense bases, which strategically placed just behind the cloud of satellites, to rain down their heavy artillery while they are boged down in satellites. They can construct their own ships, resupply and repair any damaged ships, and are tough as a nail to destroy. I also use them to construct drones and fighters which I launch at any nearby enemy systems to weaken, and/or destroy vulnerable targets such as freighters and resupply ships.

Some of my larger 'outposts' typically are constructed on huge asteroid fields and once completed, stellar manipulate the asteroids into an extremely valuable planet which I then colonize and mine to help ease the maintenance costs for running the bases and construction.

If I can get some construction ships past you unnoticed, you're going to start having a BIG problem in about 10-15 turns. That's the only weakness to my strategy, my outposts are extremely vulnerable while they are under construction, but become rock solid once finnished.

i made a carrier with 54 medium fighters equipped and it kills most ships early to mid-game in a second. Late game you need more but for an early point carriers rape.

Not against dedicated PD ships, or my interceptor PD drones (they work amazingly well, a single one can kill almost twice its weight in fighters).

But against the standard AI, you can win an entire game using only fighters.

I think that I used a cruiser (maybe it was something larger) as a universal colonizer. It included all three modules and was pretty well stripped down. I stopped using it because I kept forgetting to load the colonists.

I tend to just load up a cruiser with all the religious tech items I research, and then fill it up with around 6 PD guns, 4-5 main guns (meson blasters or the one temporal gun. . . can't remember the name) and make the rest of the weapons seekers. Works like a charm for me.

My most effective strategy is to take about 6 space yard ships, and have them build spacestations at all the warp points and major planets in your core. It may take a while, but it is worth it in the long run.

Hope that helps. Can't wait to see and try .7 of your AI, Maran!

In "VehicleUnitTypes" delete the lines
Unit Capability 11 Type := Cannot Be Controlled By Player Once Launched
Unit Capability 12 Type := Seeks Towards Target And Rams
And change
Number Of Unit Capabilities := 12
to
Number Of Unit Capabilities := 10
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If your ever playing a multiplayer game, create a ship named "Star Exploder" or something like that. Put vehicle control, engines, a minelayer, cargo bays, a cloaking device, and a scanner jammer on it. Load it up with mines, cloak it, move it to an enemy human players system, decloak, and launch the mines. They won't want to lose a system of colonies, so they'll send ships to attack it. Then they'll encounter your mine field and lose their ships.

P.S. I'd appreciate it if someone tells me how to quote propperly
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I couldn't think of a better signature.

Aside from all the special equip i can get on their, scanners, ecm, and the like. I use crystal technology so i use all of those weapons. I have one ship class that is all torpedos, and most are mixed. The smallest ships i give PD and shard cannons. Those things are very effect, especially in large numbers.

I use that balance mod though so my ship designs are probably different, since crystal armor is actually very good and useful I load up on that. On larger ships I always use that beam weapon, forget what its called.

I also always have carriers and drone ships. You need one of the two to catch ships that flee battles. I havn't used drones as much as fighters though.

What you do there is just change the strategy in drone's design page..