OSG 26 - The Bearperor Returns

[Ianus]

Very nice Ref! Thanks for playing us out! I definitely gave the birds too much credit on their shielding. I should have known that it was simply a numbers problem and not a tech problem.
I echo Psilly's applause of your ship designs. I love the default armor and lack of shields. Makes total sense on smalls. One thing I'm not clear about: we're you using cloaking to absorb missile volleys at greater evade or were you outrunning the missiles completely and not taking them at all? Either way very clever and well executed (hotshot pilots notwithstanding).
For our next game

[RefSteel]

Thanks guys! On the bombers: They were outrunning the missiles altogether, flying in circles to throw the missiles off. If they'd been firing Stingers, the cloaking (with direct diagonal fleeing) might have allowed us to "dodge" about 95%, but with dozens of Alkari bases, and multiple bombiing runs usually required, we'd definitely have lost more ships. Since they were firing slow-moving Scatters though, as long as I was careful (sigh - like everywhere except Guradas) there was no need to take any hits at all.

Knowing what I know now, I'd have gone with a different bomber design for exactly that reason: The cloak was cheap, but I'd have preferred to make it a couple BC cheaper (with maybe an extra point of maneuver) to get more of them into space. Repulsors weren't an issue since the AI goaltends poorly and the real threat was Warp Dissipators killing defenses and freezing ships.

[RefSteel]

("Killing defenses" as in reducing defense ratings.) Also note repulsors are usually more of a big deal, since they can force your bombers to take unusal routes to a planet, or even delay a roundl in this case, when we had to dance around missiles anyway, one extra round of delay isn't that big a deal.