Breakout of fleet design discussion

[williams482]

Oh gosh, I totally forgot about the lack of reaction fire in vanilla RotP. That's another thing that changed in Fusion Mod: reaction fire works the way it did in MOO1.

Nice writeup on missile boats. I've historically preferred the five racks because they have more staying power and I tend to use missile boats as early game "oh shit, gotta build something" defensive ships or as anti-repulsor escorts for gunships, but you make a good case for trying to leverage two rack missiles in their place. The various Xilmi-type AIs are much better at dodging missiles than the base-type AIs, better than they are in MOO1, which makes the two rack missiles feel riskier. I'm not sure that's a genuine mark against them though.

[Cyneheard]

The various Xilmi-type AIs are much better at dodging missiles than the base-type AIs, better than they are in MOO1, which makes the two rack missiles feel riskier. I'm not sure that's a genuine mark against them though.

That means you want the 2-racks even more, because they'll have better range and be harder to dodge.

[rgp151]

2 vs 5 racks tends to depend on the degree to which your missile ships will be targeted. On Defense you don't have as much control, but again, on offense if you have a highly defensive bomber along with them, then those will tend to draw the fire, leaving your missile boats to fire at will. In those cases, 5 racks can be better. But if your missile boats are targeted then 2 racks is better so you can just fire and leave.

However, I've found missiles to generally be less effective in RotP, especially when playing against Xilmi type AIs, like Hybrid. I really do recommend using the Fusion Mod. I'm not usually a big fan of mods, but in the case the Fusion Mod just overall feels like a better version of the game and it has a lot more AI options.

I ended up finding Modnar just not good enough to play against. Even on the hardest level Modnar is easier to beat than MoO1 Impossible IMO.

In Fusion, Hybrid is actually decent to play against and a solid challenge. And Rookie is a non-Xilmi based AI that also better than Modnar.

The issue with Missiles is that with ECM its possible to build ships that can take very little damage from missiles, and the AI does it. This is basically what I do with bombers, is by using Medium or Large bombers with max maneuverability and ECM they are virtually impervious to missiles, yet they draw all the fire. But the AI will do this too, especially Xilmi based ones. So, when the AI does this, your missiles are virtually useless. Unless you are building such huge stacks that even at a 5% hit rate they can still overwhelm, but good luck doing this on harder levels.

The thing about beams is that without ECM to boost defenses, you tend to have much better hit rates.

[williams482]

One factor with the 2 vs 5 racks that's especially relevant against Xilmi AIs: a stack with 2-racks can threaten at most two enemy stacks. If they bring a handful of four discrete (but usually similar) designs, a stack of 2-rack missile boats will force two of the four to retreat, then run away. The five rack stack can either chase them all off, or at least force them to eat a few hits.

[RefSteel]

One factor with the 2 vs 5 racks that's especially relevant against Xilmi AIs: a stack with 2-racks can threaten at most two enemy stacks. If they bring a handful of four discrete (but usually similar) designs, a stack of 2-rack missile boats will force two of the four to retreat, then run away. The five rack stack can either chase them all off, or at least force them to eat a few hits.

This makes sense; I think it's a corollary to the exceptions I mentioned above. When enemy ships are slow to move and/or achieve their own objectives, this resembles the case where "with good enough missiles, you can sometimes kite an enemy ship across the entire screen and get off all five volleys before they can close to beam range." Five-racks are certainly useful if you have time to get four or five volleys off before the enemy either accomplishes its primary mission (e.g. bombs out your planet or destroys your bombers) or blows up your missile ships, so long as they can't dodge the missiles themselves!

Generally, if one of my stacks can chase off two (of my choice!) of the enemy's without losses, I'd feel like it's doing well already, but if design space is at a premium (so you can't just e.g. build two separate stacks of 2-rack boats) and you can't efficiently chase off or destroy the remaining enemy stacks by other means, that sounds like a case "when you have no other choice (i.e. no good beams and you need all the firepower you can get to take down a full enemy fleet)" to me.