Remnants of the Precursors Succession Game?

[Brian Shanahan]

Turns look overall quite good! Though, if I might do some minor ship design critique (again):

You forgot to do the mentioned thing of splitting the weapons over multiple slots to allow them to be fired separately, and the odd-numbered manoeuvre is again something I wouldn't do (it gets more and more expensive to increase manoeuvre the larger the ship is, then again the difference is only 2 gravitons or 1 hard beam so it's not as big a deal as I thought). I'd also have put bombs on to allow it to be a truly general-purpose design, though I'd actually have put on antimatter bombs over omega-Vs because the miniaturisation on the new stuff isn't up to par with the efficiency of the old (vs mentaran shields it's 16 damage/antimatter compared to 26 damage/omega-V, but omega Vs are 87 space compared to 35 so they'd need to be dealing over twice the damage to be worthwhile), though that might reduce the shelf life a tad. Not enormously, antimatter to omega Vs isn't as big a jump as most of the other increases in bomb tech, but still somewhat (e.g. if we used these against current leading shields elsewhere of a total of 15, antimatters deal 10.5 average damage compared to 20, but even then rn antimatter is still better). There's also a feature where on the military screen, it'll tell you the relative counts of ships of different sizes, which shows that no race actually uses the smalls that would make graviton beams good (strange, I figured at least the birds might be) so there's no need for them instead of more hard beams. I hadn't realised just how damn heavy hard beams are though, over twice that of gravitons! They're at the same tech level! But looking at the expected damage it does make sense. Into current shields, we're looking at 8 damage on the hard beams, compared to 4.4 on the gravitons, so while hard beams are actually less efficient rn than gravitons, that won't stay the same for very long at all (class V shields shifts it to 7.5 vs 3.66) so it's probably the better armament, given how minimal the difference currently is. So I guess in the end, what I'd have made would have looked quite similar, with the only difference having the weapons loadout be 14/14/13 hard beams and 27 antimatter bombs. I don't really like medium bombers, so I'd also go with small designs with BCV/titanium/manoeuvre 4/antimatter/stabiliser, the current zortrium/manoeuvre 5 is 5 space short of fitting an antimatter bomb on a small (though Zortrium would be getting dropped no matter what). Can also drop to BCIV while keeping manoeuvre 5 to halve the chances of enemy missiles hitting, which would make our chances of bombs hitting into current ECM go from 60% to 50%... decisions!

Honestly a lot of this is getting to more doctrine-type stuff rather than actual problems with ship design, but I figured I'd lay out my thought processes. Probably will still swap to the designs I prefer, since there's time, but I also hate this constant feeling of uh, every turnset feels like me kicking over the sandcastles of prior players. I really hope my critique of the designs isn't coming off as too meanspirited or anything, I worry that I'm too consistently negative about the decisions of others such that the actual benefits of said critique stop being as impactful as the effect on player morale. I'll probably play tomorrow, was exhausted yesterday and am still a tad wiped out.

I would very much agree with this. When I go huge my design is 3 beam weapon groups (two in original MOO) and a large number of whatever bomb will get the job done, auto repair if I have it good defences and enough tactical speed to get to the planet in reasonable time. While I haven't yet had the chance to try it out in RotP, I can see no reason why it would be any worse than in MOO.

Of course to go with this strategy, you need good production and be reasonably close in tech.

[RefSteel]

Dp101, if you want to grab the next turn set feel free. We can swap places this time through the turn order. Or if later is easier for you, I can go ahead and play. Just let me know which you would prefer. You seem to have a lot of good throughts on the ship design, so this might be a good set for you to handle.

Oh - my read of Dp101's message about what she would build was a combination of advice for the team and "if I were up now," and her follow-up message seemed to imply it was just a case of noticing she'd misremembered the roster order (which I've certainly done myself in the past!) and therefore intending to wait for your turns, haphazard. In other words, I suspect you're both waiting for each other! Please correct me if I'm wrong on that - but as I don't see a "got it" from anyone since Fenn's set was posted, I think the best way to clarify it would be to post one and start playing, unless you don't have time right now! Or in other words:

Roster:

- Fenn (just played)
- haphazard1 (UP!)
- Dp101 (on deck)
- RefSteel
- Brian Shannahan (good luck with those promotion opportunities!)

[Dp101]

Yeah I wasn't meaning to jump in line, sorry. Haphazard should play next.

And regarding this:

I'd also have put bombs on to allow it to be a truly general-purpose design, though I'd actually have put on antimatter bombs over omega-Vs because the miniaturisation on the new stuff isn't up to par with the efficiency of the old (vs mentaran shields it's 16 damage/antimatter compared to 26 damage/omega-V, but omega Vs are 87 space compared to 35 so they'd need to be dealing over twice the damage to be worthwhile), though that might reduce the shelf life a tad.

I'd advise against putting bombs on anything but dedicated bombers. The reason is that having bombs on a ship will cause that ship to be prioritized for targeting. This means that by adding bombs that ship will more likely take damage. If instead you go with a fleet composition of like 1 or 2 air superiority ships and 1 or 2 bomber designs, then those bombers will draw all the fire, leaving your air superiority ships to attack with relative impunity. 

So what you can do is load up your bombers with maximum defenses, like max ECM, max maneuverability, max shields, and they will draw all the fire while taking little or no damage. Then for air superiority I typically do 1 heavy beam ship that is also defensive, which can be used for both offense and planetary defense, and one "light cavalry" ship that is mostly for offense. I typically use huge for the "heavy fighter" and Large for the "light fighter". The Huge will have max shields, but not max maneuverability or any ECM. It will hopefully also have Auto Repair and Repulsor Beams The Large may not even have any shields or ECM, but will have max maneuverability. Both are loaded out with beam weapons. 

You'll find that the fighters are hardly ever targeted as long as you are on offense with bombers present. But if you put bombs on your fighter, then they will be targeted and will require more defenses, which then reduces the offensive power. Also, bombs are of no use defensively. When you take a planet, you can move the bombers and some of the fleet on to take other planets, while leaving one or 2 of the heavy fighters on defense to guard the newly acquired planet while it builds up.

This strategy might work well, but it also feels cheesy. And besides, these are huge autorepair designs, I *want* them shooting everything possible at them, so if putting bombs on them makes them a higher priority than small fighters that would die in droves, I'd much rather the heat go to the huges who can repair it off and take less damage in the first place (since our bombers currently can't mount particularly great shields iirc).

[rgp151]

By cheesy do you mean effective? Yeah, you can just experiment. What I've found is that bombers with maximum defense take effectively no damage, especially once you get Cloaking Devices, and have plenty of space to carry enough bombs to get the job done. I'll typically be able to bomb out the missile bases in 1 or 2 hits and then keep the bombers around drawing fire while the other ships engage in ship to ship combat. Especially in cases where the opponent has Auto Repair, but even without it, I've found that you often really need maximum fire power to take on enemy ships. The AI ships designs are a lot better in RotP than MoO. So having ships with maximum fire power and being able to draw fire away from them is often essential. Of course some of this depends on what AI you are playing against and what difficulty level. But certainly I've gone against opposing AI forces that can one-shot Huge ships even with max shields. In those situations trying to duke it out with under-powered Huge ships doesn't really work well, especially when like they have much larger stacks than you. Generally, a bomber stack with Internal Stabilizers will always be able to bomb out the missile bases, you don't need "generalized" ships. Putting Internal Stabilizers on Huge designs is poor use of space, the faster bombers can usually get there in 2 turns prior to teleporters. Without Stabilizers it will take 3 turns. If you load a Huge up with ECM and Internal Stabilizers it will still take damage and have little room left for firepower, whereas Large and Medium designs can often just entirely evade. I have seen the AI use lots of high powered missile boat designs, that can often take out Huge ships with max shields, but will be entirely ineffective against Large and Medium ships with max maneuverability and ECM.

Anyway, that's what I've found to be effective.

[haphazard1]

OK, sorry for the confusion about turn order. I will see what I can do about starting our conquest of the brains. Hopefully after all this discussion I don't screw up the ship design too badly.....

Got it!

[haphazard1]

A couple thoughts after looking at the inherited turn:

- The brains have repulsor beam tech, which could make a hard beam offense ineffective. Our best range 2 beam is the heavy ion cannon, which is getting out-dated (although this also means miniaturized). I am considering a huge design with one fewer hard beams as the Mothership design, but split in two slots. Then add half a dozen heavy ion cannon for 2 space range, and a dozen or so anti-matter bombs in the fourth slot. To manage this we drop the graviton beams and go with combat speed 3 rather than 4. We can also fit on a repulsor beam in the specials.

It would be slower, needing an extra turn to reach a planet. But for a primarily ship-to-ship design that is not really a major loss. It would not be helpless against repulsor ships, could contribute to ground attack, and has a repulsor. Overall ship-to-ship combat power is pretty much the same, but lacks the streaming effects of the graviton beams.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Hate it?

- I also played around with an AM bomber design as an alternative to the Omega bomber. If we drop Manouver to 4 rather than 5 (still combat speed 4), armor to duralloy rather than zortrium, and the battle computer to Mark 4 rather than Mark 5 we can fit it on a small hull rather than a medium. Single AM bomb with Mark 4 computer compared to two Omega-V bombs with Mark 5 computer, 18 BC each vs 93 BC each. Not sure if that is worth doing overall. The Omega bomber design is obviously a lot more future proof. (The brains currently have 9 points of total shielding for their bases.)

Note that Armored Exoskeleton is at 23%, and the construction tech boost would likely let us fit the better computer on the small. Possibly both the computer and the better armor, as it is only a difference of 1-2 spaces for both.

- For the Beamer design, just replacing it with a new design with the beams split into multiple slots seems useful. Only one has actually been built so far, so it would be minimal cost to shift the design.

Design suggestions and thoughts are appreciated.

[RefSteel]

My thoughts on haphazard's proposed designs:

- Armor does practically nothing for small ships unless they're facing streaming weapons, stream projectors, or regular-or-gatling lasers, and is rarely worthwhile even in those cases. Much better to leave it off even if you're only saving 1BC per ship. (And even if you're not saving even a whole BC yet if you're likely to be building them after new tech comes in and changes that again!)

- I like the idea of using small Antimatter bombers instead of (or rather in addition to our existing) medium Omega bombers, yes! I've used both in MoO, and the former are much more effective. The option to later build Omega bombs future-proofs our fleet, but no individual ship design is ever future-proof; if the game goes long enough that we need Omegas, warp 4 will hopefully be too slow to keep up with the rest of our fleet, and we'll be able to build small Omega bombers. Design the ships for the battles they'll be fighting immediately. (That's how we conquered the Meklar after all, with bombs that were more than a century and a half old!)

- When you say the huge ship would be combat speed 3 rather than 4, do you mean the original had a Stabilizer you'd be removing (or that you're dropping maneuverability by two point by other means) or did you mean dropping to Maneuver 3 from Maneuver 4, thereby dropping combat speed to 2 from 3? Either way, whether this is a good plan depends on the ship's mission; if it's supposed to draw fire, drop bombs when needed, never die, and last forever, I'd want to go with more maneuverability even at the expense of firepower, to make it easier to dodge missiles and harder for enemies to hit it. If it's meant to clear the path for bombers, the same probably still applies: It may need to be able to keep pace with the ships it's protecting. If it's meant to be able to absolutely splatter enemy fleets while sticking in a long fight, it doesn't need much maneuverability, and the design you're talking about is likely the way to go ... but in any of these cases, I'd be disinclined to build a dreadnought yet with new Construction tech about to come in and allow more miniaturization!

- I would strongly recommend keeping the existing Beamer design, even if we never build another one, until we actually need the design slot. It's true that splitting the guns into different slots is a little better than leaving them all in one place, but not enough to justify sending a modern cruiser to the scrap heap! I'd even build more Beamers rather than scrap the one we have if designs were at a premium and the ship would be otherwise unchanged!

(And as for cheesiness/effectiveness, rgp151 ... there are definitely holes in the modnar AI around its obsession with killing bombers, and this site has old habits of not exploiting obvious holes in AI design. I don't know if the other AIs have the same problem, but I actually saw Mek ships with heavy lasers so bent on pursuing my bombers that they would stop right next to a stack of Monitors without even bothering to fire on them, with the bombers still out of range! I like designing specialized ships because I like using "the right tools for the job" on each given mission, but explicitly designing a fleet to fly through a silly weakness even of RotP's otherwise very strong AI wouldn't be my cup of tea....)

[rgp151]

(And as for cheesiness/effectiveness, rgp151 ... there are definitely holes in the modnar AI around its obsession with killing bombers, and this site has old habits of not exploiting obvious holes in AI design.  I don't know if the other AIs have the same problem, but I actually saw Mek ships with heavy lasers so bent on pursuing my bombers that they would stop right next to a stack of Monitors without even bothering to fire on them, with the bombers still out of range!  I like designing specialized ships because I like using "the right tools for the job" on each given mission, but explicitly designing a fleet to fly through a silly weakness even of RotP's otherwise very strong AI wouldn't be my cup of tea....)

That's understandable. Certainly at higher levels I think any advantage you can get is warranted. Given that my win rate against Xilmi is about 1 in 10, I'll go for whatever can work  And even Modnar Hardest is pretty difficult, though perhaps MoO Impossible is still harder, but its hard to say exactly. 

Also, at least I know for sure with Xilmi the AI does the same thing, they will send in maybe not totally dedicated bombers, but some ships with a lot of bombs and others with few or none. When on defense you pretty much have to go after the bombers as a first priority because if you can't stop them then they are just going to destroy the planet, esp. Death Spores, so they put you in the same position.

But if you are saying that you add bombs to your air superiority fighters to intentionally reduce your fleet effectiveness because you feel that is more fair, then by all means

[Dp101]

A couple thoughts after looking at the inherited turn:

- The brains have repulsor beam tech, which could make a hard beam offense ineffective. Our best range 2 beam is the heavy ion cannon, which is getting out-dated (although this also means miniaturized). I am considering a huge design with one fewer hard beams as the Mothership design, but split in two slots. Then add half a dozen heavy ion cannon for 2 space range, and a dozen or so anti-matter bombs in the fourth slot. To manage this we drop the graviton beams and go with combat speed 3 rather than 4. We can also fit on a repulsor beam in the specials.

It would be slower, needing an extra turn to reach a planet. But for a primarily ship-to-ship design that is not really a major loss. It would not be helpless against repulsor ships, could contribute to ground attack, and has a repulsor. Overall ship-to-ship combat power is pretty much the same, but lacks the streaming effects of the graviton beams.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Hate it?

- I also played around with an AM bomber design as an alternative to the Omega bomber. If we drop Manouver to 4 rather than 5 (still combat speed 4), armor to duralloy rather than zortrium, and the battle computer to Mark 4 rather than Mark 5 we can fit it on a small hull rather than a medium. Single AM bomb with Mark 4 computer compared to two Omega-V bombs with Mark 5 computer, 18 BC each vs 93 BC each. Not sure if that is worth doing overall. The Omega bomber design is obviously a lot more future proof. (The brains currently have 9 points of total shielding for their bases.)

Note that Armored Exoskeleton is at 23%, and the construction tech boost would likely let us fit the better computer on the small. Possibly both the computer and the better armor, as it is only a difference of 1-2 spaces for both.

- For the Beamer design, just replacing it with a new design with the beams split into multiple slots seems useful. Only one has actually been built so far, so it would be minimal cost to shift the design.

Design suggestions and thoughts are appreciated.

I did suggest the AM bomber design in my post on ship design, basically identical to what you mentioned except swapping armour for the extra point of manoeuvrability. RefSteel mentioned the general principle, but to put numbers to it, a titanium small is 3hp, duralloy 5hp, and zortrium 6hp. Our bombers will be shot at with bases firing hyper-Vs, which all deal 6 damage every time, so the bombers get oneshot by any hit no matter what armour we give them. Also agree with RefSteel that there's no reason to outright scrap the beamer design when we have the slots to spare to just make an improved version.

Anyways, as should be well-documented at this point my reaction to the proposed heavy ion design definitely is "hate it", but that doesn't make it the wrong choice :P Though as mentioned, the miniaturisation effect on heavy weapons is minimal due to so much of their space requirements being a result of their heavy power requirements, so the ions being old doesn't actually help much. How soon can you get a battle scanner ship to intercept one of their fleets? Just tagging it and retreating would let us see whether they're actually on repulsor weapons. I do think that if you do add on the repulsor on our own design, then the hard beams should be entirely dropped in favour of the range 2 weapons, since that's what it would be designed to fight at. I'd definitely not drop manoeuvrability below 4 though, in-combat speed is very useful for managing engagements and getting hit less. I don't actually know specifically how impactful construction tech miniaturisation is on larger ships (is the idea that it reduces armour space specifically and that that's a lot of the required space?) so can't speak as to the idea of delaying until that, and I don't really want to run the save for a couple of turns just to see how things change when it pops since spoilers.

Basically, I'd still like the initial hard beam design for our huge that I mentioned, but if we have to use heavy ions, we have to use heavy ions. Do note that we aren't actually behind the bugs much in tech (outside of weapons, this is also based on an older spy report so could be incorrect) so spying would be effective, and we could nab some kind of better beam... except everything they have is range 1 only, so nevermind ;-; (and no one else has any guns to steal, we seem to be caught up with everyone).

[williams482]

What's the best missile you guys have to work with?