How to win a space battle

I would add one tip for the stock demo: use missiles. The computer players don't seem to mount point defense and my tests indicate that PD is woefully inadequate, at least in the demo. In the simulator I had one FG with 3 lvl 5 CSMs decimate 5 DUC armed DDs.

A combat ship also need sensors (basic and combat and even tachyon) to move and fight effectively.

Thats the last thing we need, a fleet of 20 starships running into an asteroid and dying because we forgot to give them sensors. DOH!
______________________________________________________________
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

personally id say forget all energy weapons, for me they are combat ineffective when compared with the results(not the listed stats) of projectile weapons of same or lesser level

Sensors are a must, i noticed the AI was hitting with his entire volley while part of my shots were fired in all directions hitting nothing. granted i actually had combat sensors, better than the AI no less, but still accuracy does improve with combat sensors, and every shot that misses is alot of damage that you aren't doing, that the AI probably is.

if the game really is applying damage to your ship from armor to outter to inner hull spots, don't just place your components willie nillie, or your ships willie might get nillied despite the bulk of your ship still being intact.

I think this has been mentioned before but it appears that moving laterally to a projectile firing enemy decreases the number of hits that you take while heading directly at the enemy icreases hits. I have not tested and measured it in the simulator yet but that is what it looks like as I watch combat.

I see it is an old thread, but I thought I'd add a few things:

1. Depleted Uranium Cannons (DUCs/pea-shooters) are great.

2. Meson Blasters have a slightly longer range and don't require ordinance (Energy Pulse Weapons), and weigh only 2/3rds of a DUC. That means you can place 3 MBs for 2 DUCs, or 3/2 as much damage (space-wise... if you have even levels).

3. Point Defense has been working fine defense for me in small fights against torpedoers (all I've had so far). Having Energy Pulse Weapons also gives the emminent PD Blaster which takes half the size of the regular PD Cannon, +5 damage, and a list rate of fire of 2 shots per second! (4x faster than any others)

4. There is a BIG difference in ship layouts - I chose a custom race first game and the big round blue ships hold barely any armor (usually only 6 spaces each ship!). But their colony ships hold a TON. I never got to shields in that game, but I feel safer having even 12 or 9 slots for armor than 6...

5. Use ECM too - it is the defense version of Combat Sensors.

And thanks, I'll have to try out the missile hint!

Early game... armor armor armor... mid-late game throw out all armor/shields they suck poor on defenses, speed, and range. When you get to level 60+ on weapons they are doing so much damage that shields and armor might as well not exist most ships will destroy another similar sized ship in a single volley even when half the guns miss. drones and fighters are the ultimate weapons IMO... they are extremely hard to hit, dirt cheap to replace, and you can put a LOT of them into a fight...

One of my "goofy" battleship designs is 6 CSM's and 6 drone launchers with 22 large drone capacity... this thing without my controlling it has easily defeated 6 enemy battleships at a time losing at most 4-5 drones) it rarely gets in CSM range though hehe. probably replace them with 6 more drone launchers or something. BTW enemy BS's had overall far higher tech level than me too... sad really.

ATM one thing I think is vital to realize... USE PDA because it really does work. BOMBLET PDA SUCKS flak isn't much better. but meson and cannons work fine. the beam one also works fine... meson is the best overall of course hehe. enemies do use missiles and PDA will help a lot.

ALSO do NOT use guns at low tech level get missile tech ASAP and use CSM's lol... CSMS at the low-mid tech levels are far more potent than guns due to the very long range and lack of PDA use by AI. BTW CSM=Capital Ship Missile for those not in the vernacular lol...

at really high tech levels my favorite ship design is an organic frigate with electrical discharge guns and a religious stealth talisman lol... I fly this tiny ship up to a huge dreadnaught that's blasting away with it's many massive guns and they just can't hit then when my little ship gets in close KABLAMMO!!! those super charged guns rip the guts right out of the enemy add a vengeance talisman and it can often take only 2 volleys lol...

There are so many effective ways to do things though and that is what makes the game fun every game I try to do make at least one new "crazy" design or strange/funny one etc... or just some thematic design maybe from a novel or something just to see what happens and it's amazing just how many of these work

A note on warp point defense... ALWAYS try to put your defense on the ENEMIES side of the warp point then use fighters or drones mostly (missile and PD sats work nice too) but a large drone/fighter base with a spaceyard to self-rebuild forces can hold off the AI for a very very long time

Organic tech tree is VERY VERY valuable because it has the ordnance vat that grows ordnance every turn and that can be a life saver when far from home. (or just for static defenses such as a warp point defense base) the high powered guns/seekers it has are really just a sideline to that one item hehe.

When using seeker weapons always choose the maximum weapon range strategy and use only seekers that do not lose damage over range this gives you a huge advantage over any guns that DO lose damage over range. Outranging your enemy is vital... often the first shots fired will determine the winner in high tech fights. A very high level CSM volley can cripple even the most heavily armored/shielded ships.

anyway hope this helps somone or just amuses a few hehe.

Just hit the "long range" strategy on your ships that need to keep range, and they do.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

do you mean maximum weapon range strategy?

There is only one problem with that strategy IMO... your ships will head full speed til they get in range then stop dead and try to turn which takes half an eternity and by then they are at point blank range anyway :/ if your ships are a lot faster they might get back out of enemy range before being annihilated but not likely

It isn't that hard to estimate when to stop and start turning BEFORE you get in range so that the enemy is just coming into range as you are starting to move away again... I do that manually all the time and I am sure many others do as well. I wish the game AI control was able to do such calculations and maneuvers but oh well

I don’t trust the AI to control my ships unless I have total force superiority and know it or have a lot of fighters in the fleet as I like to concentrate fire according to threat level and occasionally that requires ignoring the nearest target and on occasion splitting fire to avoid over kill after all an enemy ship which is disarmed an immobile is enough why fire so much into it that it blows totally.

I also would rather not waste ordinance especially when I know that the fleet is not going to get resuplyed before the next engagement, pumping missiles into support ships is usually a waste.

Sadly AI battle control is pretty weak... I always have total force superiority even when I have one frigate against 10 dreads though because the AI is so bad about designing ships lol...

then again there are certain ludicrously exploitive combinations of components I think you can get around 250 defense bonus for a frigate max tech master computer + stealth totem + scattering armor + another armor + cloak + ECM + base frigate bonus. that's actually over 350 lol...

This would not be so bad if there were equivalent nullifiers (say if tachyon nulled cloak and scattering bonuses etc)

at max tech those each give like 50-75 defense and there are only a couple of +hit components (master computer and combat sensors)

Well, computers counter computers, Combat Sensors counter ECM. The stealth talisman has a counterpart, the religious talisman, but the religious talisman is MUCH more powerful, at +105 atk vs. the Stealth's +25 def. Stealth Armor is +54 def, but does not stack with scattering. So you get about +225 def or so.

It doesn't work as well as you think, though. If your ship stops moving, it seems your def rating may go down the terlet. I had a frigate facing off against the AI fleet that was basically untouchable as long as it stayed moving, but if I were to stop moving or order a turn too tight, it would instantly die, despite the fact that the AI had maybe +10% to-hit total, meaning it should have been impossible to hit 225 def, and indeed, it was, as long as I didn't stop moving!

what is the counterpart to the stealth? my version seems to be missing the religious tohit talisman for some reason and my stealth is at +75 def but that was in 1.08 might have been rebalanced. haven't hit maxtech in 1.13 or played at all in 1.17 just kinda burned out on the playing 10+ hours to get maybe 50-60 moves into the game was more than even I could stand

I guess they are just rebalanced but I won't know til I try a new game... just remember having in excess of 300 defense on a frigate in 1.08 lol... I had it fight 10 enemy dreads and win because none of them could hit it (I let it run under AI control and just watched so it never stopped moving so I dunno about that possibility)

DimmurWyrd wrote:

what is the counterpart to the stealth? my version seems to be missing the religious tohit talisman for some reason and my stealth is at +75 def but that was in 1.08 might have been rebalanced. haven't hit maxtech in 1.13 or played at all in 1.17 just kinda burned out on the playing 10+ hours to get maybe 50-60 moves into the game was more than even I could stand :P

Still, all that aside, anytime you have a situation where you have both superior range and equal or superior speed, this is basically an auto-win.

Or, you could just type ALLTECH, and NOMAINT. Ding. One of your frigates can kill an enemy dreadnought, no trouble. And you don't even have to pay for it.

I just got to high tech again in a 1.17 game and noticed that the religious +atk talisman started at like L10... I was going from memory and wasn't sure I saw one before hehe.

and it looks like there have been some strong changes... stealth talisman USED to give +69% defense at maxtech but now gives +25 and the religious talisman used to give 53% attack now gives 105% so I think the game was rebalanced during one of the patches

also cloaks lost their defense bonus and stealth and scattering armor no longer stack so oh well guess they heard me and fixed all the things I used hehe.

BTW CSM armed frgate can easily take down any dreadnaught because they are faster... even if the dreads use CSM's themselves because they are firing at a target moving away and the CSM's will reach their max range before hitting while the dreads are flying INTO the frigates CSM's :/

Dreads will have room for a decent number of PDBs, though, and this will counter your CSM spam in less tonnage, which is pretty much the only thing that stops CSM-type weapons from being the end-all-be-all uber-weapon, as CSMs would otherwise have no other weaknesses, since they ignore evasion and always hit, plus outrange other weapons.

except AI's don't use PDB's or any PD at all :/ not in any of a dozen games I've played so far at least... Also PD's expend themselves too easily on the first seeker to come in range so a swarm of them will easily swamp most PD... now if you put too much PD then you become vulnerable to other styles... probably why I also like to throw APB armed drones out there too.

Yes that would be true if the PD's on the dreadnought worked properly but at the moment they tend to all lock onto and engage one class of target or some times one target and the best way of getting through a heavy PD screen is to present it with a dilemma like missile firing drones or fighters or worse seekers and beam armed fighters. It will shoot down one and the other will kill it

You know you've heard it before... It's easy to install, it's well thought out, and its designer hasn't been totally engrossed catching bugs in the engine.

A/I in Kwokstock definitely uses PD....

In fact, if you're not playing balance mod, you should be playing PBW....

I know about the balance mod and like it but I think I like the idea of getting the stock version to be more rewarding as there are things in it which I like better than the way the Balance Mod does them

hehe I prefer stock even with the poor balance (although a lot of it IS getting addressed in the patches just not mentioned.) If I wanted to chop off the tech tree's like that and stuff I might as well have stayed with SE:IV hehe... The RT battle system is not enough to buy the game for in and of itself.

ATM the only real problems for stock are the very underdeveloped AI's and that not all techs have been balanced for 100 levels... for example small guns now are just as powerful as full sized ones at tech 100 (sans mount) and you can easily stuff 12 guns on a large fighter with max engines hehe. This gives fighters more punch than a cruiser and in fact more than some battleships. 2 fighters can take down a dreadnaught easily unless it has PD... since the stock AI still doesn't use PD fighters are god weapons against it. but I suspect that this will eventually get fixed (the nasty megadamage of some weapons was fixed so eventually I expect more such)

I think a lot of people don't see the maxtech game or probably much higher than 20 or so in most techs because everyone seems to talk about how the game is at that stage... I tend to get 4+ mil research fairly quick so I see maxtech every game lol (well ok so I also turtle up as large an area as I can snatch early on and wait til I max all tech before roaming hehe) but the comments I see don't fit the game I've been playing... for example more often than not shields are worthless as is armor they can't take enough damage so I throw on extra weapons and try to out-range the enemy in order to get first shot that seems to work better in the long run. HOWEVER this is at 1.08 version 1.13 was unplayable and I am still on my first 1.17 game just about to explode into the galaxy (not really a challenge since even with high/high AI's I still have 11x the resource of the #1 AI and 5x the intel lol... I can essentially pump out more ships than I care to deal with and more often than not my battleships are worth 10 of their dreadnaughts (even if I don't do manual control) but oh well

I guess I argue for using the BM lol... but the BM is just way too oversimplified and nullifies what attracted me to SE:V over SE:IV... kinda silly I guess.

I wouldn't characterize the mod as "oversimplified", because that implies choices are reduced and that is not the case. There are fewer tech levels but not fewer options.

-----

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

DimmurWyrd,

In essence, it sounds like you're playing a galactic version of SimCity or Railroad Tycoon. Fair enough; actually a kind of cool concept, and not a bad direction to take a mod.

And I agree, Kwok's mod is less amenable to this direction than stock, particularly because of the forshortened tech trees.

It'd be cool to think about how to build a mod that would emphasize the governance aspect to the game -- building trade networks, preventing rebellion and plague, optimizing income.... In some ways the engine fits that model pretty well, and one could set up a pretty nice Freedom in the Galaxy/Star Wars Rebellion mod that would make for an interesting competitive puzzle -- Pirates and Rebels and Plagues, Oh My!

To some degree you are probably right about my style... I do like sim/builder games a great deal and getting to the max tech is often my first goal rather than winning... Probably because winning is almost guarantee'd against AI in SE:V hehe.

Anymore I think I'll stick with just starting with ALL tech because the AI is better able to handle that it seems. The only real "challenge" is more a matter of just overwhelming yourself early on by giving maximum advantage to the AI and purposefully restricting yourself. and adding a lot of AI's with AI vs Human is just another way of adding advantage to the AI without making it any better. It STILL ends up just a matter of can you fort up fast enough to give yourself time to outstrip the AI because even 16 vs 1 you CAN outproduce the AI given time.