Remnants of the Precursors Succession Game?

[Cyneheard]

Ugh, scratch everything about base immortality in that last post, I forgot that meklonar ships can have fusion bombs.

Bases are basically never immortal in ROTP, the AI is very consistent about having anti-ground weapons in its ships. And the few times bases are immune, they don't really matter because you've won anyway.

[Fenn]

Can't wait to see what you're cooking here RefSteel.

[RefSteel]

I'm looking forward to seeing how it works out too! I'm still early in the set and still (as yet) flying blind - and I have no idea yet how the Modnar AI will react to what I'm doing! I'm not sure whether I'm hoping to get away with this crazy plan or for the AI to do something impressive that forces me to retrench and makes me look utterly foolish. Looking forward to finding out which way it swings! (I admit I devised the plan in such a way as to weight things in our favor!)

[williams482]

On the general topic of missiles, five rack and otherwise: Although I haven't played against the Modnar AI for a while, my recollection is that it handled combat maneuvering and ship design very similarly to the Base (or in Fusion Mod, "Rookie") AI. Base AI loves missiles, especially scatter packs, and tends to use them as their primary anti-ship weapon unless their beam weapons are much more advanced. They also love to pair them with repulsor beams.

At the tactical level, the base AI will happily tank missile hits on it's way to a target; it won't try to dodge them the way the MOO1 AI (or the various Xilmi family AIs) do.

The revamped retreat mechanics are also relevant here: hit-and-run tactics can't be repeated ad infinitum, any retreating ship will be forced to withdraw to a nearby friendly planet before it can do anything else. Note that this is even true for members of a victorious fleet which retreated to avoid incoming missiles! That ship will retreat back to some other safe haven while the rest of the fleet hangs around in orbit celebrating their victory.

All of which is to say, five-rack missiles are actually pretty good against these AIs. They can pack enough of a combined punch to seriously threaten a repulsor beam large, and in a battle between identical missile boats, the human player will generally win by evading more effectively. I definitely agree that mixing missiles and beams on the same design is generally a bad choice and I tend to prefer beam designs over missile designs, but I've had a lot of luck using five rack missile boats as the core of a fleet in the warp 2 "I don't want to fight but I clearly have no choice" era, and later using them as anti-repulsor escorts for 3x beam, 1x bomb autorepair huge designs.

I was also surprised by the choice of ions over NPGs a while back. I'm curious what the logic behind that was; NPGs are cheap, space efficient, and have a very long operational lifespan. Was the idea to secure something with two space range?

[rgp151]

I'd say I generally find missiles to be less useful in RotP. Seems like the AI uses ECM pretty heavily and they just don't seem to be that effective. The AI can use them ok sometimes, but usually use can just evade them. You can use the spoiler below if you want to see how I design ships in RotP. 

I pretty much stick to a fleet design of one fully powered and shielded huge ship with all the best beam weapons and specials, no ECM, but max combat speed. One bomber, with maxed ECM, speed and shields carrying 2 sets of bombs, so I can go light if needed to avoid bombing out the planet. One Large fighter, with some stuff like Internal Stabilizer maybe with a Battle Scanner if my Huge doesn't have one. Little or no shields. 

For the most part it seems that when you send in a bomber, the AI will focus on trying to kill the bomber, which its fairly easy to make unkillable, and then the rest of your ships are free from attack. I like to have the Huges with Repulsor Beams so they are good on defense. On offense the Large fighters can work well, just allowing the fire to be focused on the bombers and evading any missiles that come their way. 

So its basically 3 designs. You can get by with just 2. I generally stick to 2 range weapons on Huge designs. The Large fighters are situational. The Bombers are just bombs only, or sometimes I'll throw in missiles or a beam if I'm not using Cloaking Devices. 

Always max combat speed for all ships all the time. Seems to work pretty well.

[haphazard1]

I was also surprised by the choice of ions over NPGs a while back. I'm curious what the logic behind that was; NPGs are cheap, space efficient, and have a very long operational lifespan. Was the idea to secure something with two space range?

Heavy ions have 2 space range, and do enough damage to remain relevant for a long time.

[Dp101]

I mean personally I avoid heavy weapons whenever possible, they're just so incredibly space-inefficient, specifically because of power consumption (35 power for base ion cannon, 105 for heavy, heavy ion cannons take up 128 space with current tech including power requirements while regular ions are 43, so you get basically 3x as many). 2 tile range can let you get the first shot off under certain circumstances, but usually if you've got any amount of speed and don't have to close with the enemy ASAP (i.e. missiles aren't the biggest concern) you can get the first hit no matter what, and a single first strike from all non-heavy weapons will usually be more damage than getting 2 unopposed ones from heavier options. Additionally, when it comes to their long-term utility, because power per space somehow gets *worse* with more advanced engines (I have no idea why the formulas happen to work out this way, it feels backwards, you get more power per engine with better engines but the size of them increases faster than the power production does, maybe because miniaturisation) heavy weapons actually become less space-efficient over time.

For a damage comparison, into class 3 deflectors we'll deal an average of 2.4 damage/shot with regular ions, heavy ions are an average of 6.03 (weird numbers are because rolling a 3 deals 0 damage, only counting successful hits it's 3 vs 6.5) so 3 ion cannons will always deal more damage vs current shielding. 4 results in 1.66 vs 5.14, so heavy ions pull ahead there, but comparing to NPGs... well, to quickly put together a test I stole NPGs in the current run (which illustrated the miniaturisation thing well since graviton beam popped in that time and regular vs heavy ion is now 37 space compared to 109) and they'd be 27 space to put on something, halved shield strength, so 1.5 average damage per shot, but you can fit 4 of these per heavy ion, so they actually come out significantly ahead even so, and can be put on much smaller ships as well. And with class V deflectors, because of integer maths rounding down NPGs will be unaffected, whereas heavy ions go down to 4.32 expected damage, a pretty decisive difference. However, class VI deflectors have them at 3.57 vs NPGs at .75 damage/shot, so they do finally pull ahead, only for VII to make NPGs take the lead again as they're the same while heavy ions are down to 2.89. Basically, Heavy Ions can indeed keep dealing damage for a while longer, but NPGs are better basically up until the point where no matter your choice you're probably pretty screwed with no weapons upgrade.

Anyways, I personally haven't observed the repulsor beam AI designs popping up, but if they do then heavy beams would be a valid solution. I just prefer something like fusion beams instead where the smaller versions are better than NPGs into a lot of targets while also having the upper-end punch.

[rgp151]

I mean personally I avoid heavy weapons whenever possible, they're just so incredibly space-inefficient, specifically because of power consumption (35 power for base ion cannon, 105 for heavy, heavy ion cannons take up 128 space with current tech including power requirements while regular ions are 43, so you get basically 3x as many). 2 tile range can let you get the first shot off under certain circumstances, but usually if you've got any amount of speed and don't have to close with the enemy ASAP (i.e. missiles aren't the biggest concern) you can get the first hit no matter what, and a single first strike from all non-heavy weapons will usually be more damage than getting 2 unopposed ones from heavier options. Additionally, when it comes to their long-term utility, because power per space somehow gets *worse* with more advanced engines (I have no idea why the formulas happen to work out this way, it feels backwards, you get more power per engine with better engines but the size of them increases faster than the power production does, maybe because miniaturisation) heavy weapons actually become less space-efficient over time.

For a damage comparison, into class 3 deflectors we'll deal an average of 2.4 damage/shot with regular ions, heavy ions are an average of 6.03 (weird numbers are because rolling a 3 deals 0 damage, only counting successful hits it's 3 vs 6.5) so 3 ion cannons will always deal more damage vs current shielding. 4 results in 1.66 vs 5.14, so heavy ions pull ahead there, but comparing to NPGs... well, to quickly put together a test I stole NPGs in the current run (which illustrated the miniaturisation thing well since graviton beam popped in that time and regular vs heavy ion is now 37 space compared to 109) and they'd be 27 space to put on something, halved shield strength, so 1.5 average damage per shot, but you can fit 4 of these per heavy ion, so they actually come out significantly ahead even so, and can be put on much smaller ships as well. And with class V deflectors, because of integer maths rounding down NPGs will be unaffected, whereas heavy ions go down to 4.32 expected damage, a pretty decisive difference. However, class VI deflectors have them at 3.57 vs NPGs at .75 damage/shot, so they do finally pull ahead, only for VII to make NPGs take the lead again as they're the same while heavy ions are down to 2.89. Basically, Heavy Ions can indeed keep dealing damage for a while longer, but NPGs are better basically up until the point where no matter your choice you're probably pretty screwed with no weapons upgrade.

Anyways, I personally haven't observed the repulsor beam AI designs popping up, but if they do then heavy beams would be a valid solution. I just prefer something like fusion beams instead where the smaller versions are better than NPGs into a lot of targets while also having the upper-end punch.

Yeah but... #1 the AI does use Repulsor Beams and #2 when they don't, and use you Repulsor Beams, then you can say away and hit from range while they can't harm you. Yeah 2 space weapons are inefficient, but a heck of a lot safer. That's not to say that 1 spacers don't have their place, but on Heavy designs I pretty much always go for 2 space weapons, and then use 1 space weapons on Large and below with Internal Stabilizers.

[williams482]

Regarding combat speed, this has been discussed in the Discord but it sure seems that the way power/space calculations are implemented in RotP makes odd-number maneuverability upgrades much more worthwhile than they were in MOO1. An extra level of maneuverability is usually quite a bit cheaper than an extra level of ECM, for instance, and increases defense against beams as well as missiles. I find that to be well worth it most of the time.

As for shield/weapon damage math, RotP isn't actually limited to integers under the hood. It only rounds the displayed numbers. So for example, class III shields will reduce a shield-halving hit by 1.5. None of which really affects your conclusions above: NPGs average 3.5 against no shields, 2.0 against class III shields, 1.1 vs class V shields, and 0.75 vs class VI shields. Not meaningfully different.

Heavy beam weapons are less vulnerable to repulsers, but other than that they are just worse than the standard beams. That space comparison does a pretty good job explaining why. Basically, with all else roughly equal, repulsor heavy designs beat standard gun designs, but lose to non-repulsor heavies (cuz more guns), which in turn lose to standard gun designs (cuz even more guns).

The Base AI usually has nothing that can stand up to a 3-4 move, 3x gun autorepair huge of similar tech level to their own stuff, which makes discussion of weapon efficiency pretty academic. The exception, which on further thought I only ran into in ~30% of games, is a huge design with repulsors, a battle scanner, and 2x or 3x missiles along with a heavy beam weapon. Base AI isn't all that bright, though, which means that two range one ships deployed on top of each other at the edge of the combat screen can usually trick the AI into moving in range of one in order to shoot the other even if you don't have an initiative advantage.

(Xilmi AIs don't fall for these tricks, and seem to prioritize designs to match up with what their rivals already have. Which makes space efficiency and combined arms much more important. They also know how to use a repulsor beam ship to completely block a planet from being bombed, which leaves them vulnerable in turn to missiles they would otherwise stand a good chance of dodging.)

Having said all that, though... I'm not actually certain the Modnar AI falls into these same patterns as the Base AIs I'm used to. It's been a while since I played against an AI that wasn't either Base-plus-bugfixes Rookie or Xilmi's Hybrid.

I suppose we'll find out.

[Dp101]

I mean personally I avoid heavy weapons whenever possible, they're just so incredibly space-inefficient, specifically because of power consumption (35 power for base ion cannon, 105 for heavy, heavy ion cannons take up 128 space with current tech including power requirements while regular ions are 43, so you get basically 3x as many). 2 tile range can let you get the first shot off under certain circumstances, but usually if you've got any amount of speed and don't have to close with the enemy ASAP (i.e. missiles aren't the biggest concern) you can get the first hit no matter what, and a single first strike from all non-heavy weapons will usually be more damage than getting 2 unopposed ones from heavier options. Additionally, when it comes to their long-term utility, because power per space somehow gets *worse* with more advanced engines (I have no idea why the formulas happen to work out this way, it feels backwards, you get more power per engine with better engines but the size of them increases faster than the power production does, maybe because miniaturisation) heavy weapons actually become less space-efficient over time.

For a damage comparison, into class 3 deflectors we'll deal an average of 2.4 damage/shot with regular ions, heavy ions are an average of 6.03 (weird numbers are because rolling a 3 deals 0 damage, only counting successful hits it's 3 vs 6.5) so 3 ion cannons will always deal more damage vs current shielding. 4 results in 1.66 vs 5.14, so heavy ions pull ahead there, but comparing to NPGs... well, to quickly put together a test I stole NPGs in the current run (which illustrated the miniaturisation thing well since graviton beam popped in that time and regular vs heavy ion is now 37 space compared to 109) and they'd be 27 space to put on something, halved shield strength, so 1.5 average damage per shot, but you can fit 4 of these per heavy ion, so they actually come out significantly ahead even so, and can be put on much smaller ships as well. And with class V deflectors, because of integer maths rounding down NPGs will be unaffected, whereas heavy ions go down to 4.32 expected damage, a pretty decisive difference. However, class VI deflectors have them at 3.57 vs NPGs at .75 damage/shot, so they do finally pull ahead, only for VII to make NPGs take the lead again as they're the same while heavy ions are down to 2.89. Basically, Heavy Ions can indeed keep dealing damage for a while longer, but NPGs are better basically up until the point where no matter your choice you're probably pretty screwed with no weapons upgrade.

Anyways, I personally haven't observed the repulsor beam AI designs popping up, but if they do then heavy beams would be a valid solution. I just prefer something like fusion beams instead where the smaller versions are better than NPGs into a lot of targets while also having the upper-end punch.

Yeah but... #1 the AI does use Repulsor Beams and #2 when they don't, and use you Repulsor Beams, then you can say away and hit from range while they can't harm you. Yeah 2 space weapons are inefficient, but a heck of a lot safer. That's not to say that 1 spacers don't have their place, but on Heavy designs I pretty much always go for 2 space weapons, and then use 1 space weapons on Large and below with Internal Stabilizers.

The thing is, because I've seen the AI favour missile boats so heavily, repulsor beam designs have always seemed thoroughly unsuitable for most engagements, since it's not actually keeping you safer. Sure, you could load up on ECM as well, but if you're running heavy beams + ECM + repulsor beam the overall damage to cost efficiency of your force starts to suffer tremendously, so a more conventional force becomes better. My opinion on all this might shift if I had encountered repulsor designs myself, but even so, I'd still rather use missiles even into ECM than have to deal with the awful efficiency of heavy weapons.


Anyways,

Regarding combat speed, this has been discussed in the Discord but it sure seems that the way power/space calculations are implemented in RotP makes odd-number maneuverability upgrades much more worthwhile than they were in MOO1. An extra level of maneuverability is usually quite a bit cheaper than an extra level of ECM, for instance, and increases defense against beams as well as missiles. I find that to be well worth it most of the time.

As for shield/weapon damage math, RotP isn't actually limited to integers under the hood. It only rounds the displayed numbers. So for example, class III shields will reduce a shield-halving hit by 1.5. None of which really affects your conclusions above: NPGs average 3.5 against no shields, 2.0 against class III shields, 1.1 vs class V shields, and 0.75 vs class VI shields. Not meaningfully different.

Heavy beam weapons are less vulnerable to repulsers, but other than that they are just worse than the standard beams. That space comparison does a pretty good job explaining why. Basically, with all else roughly equal, repulsor heavy designs beat standard gun designs, but lose to non-repulsor heavies (cuz more guns), which in turn lose to standard gun designs (cuz even more guns).

The Base AI usually has nothing that can stand up to a 3-4 move, 3x gun autorepair huge of similar tech level to their own stuff, which makes discussion of weapon efficiency pretty academic. The exception, which on further thought I only ran into in ~30% of games, is a huge design with repulsors, a battle scanner, and 2x or 3x missiles along with a heavy beam weapon. Base AI isn't all that bright, though, which means that two range one ships deployed on top of each other at the edge of the combat screen can usually trick the AI into moving in range of one in order to shoot the other even if you don't have an initiative advantage.

(Xilmi AIs don't fall for these tricks, and seem to prioritize designs to match up with what their rivals already have. Which makes space efficiency and combined arms much more important. They also know how to use a repulsor beam ship to completely block a planet from being bombed, which leaves them vulnerable in turn to missiles they would otherwise stand a good chance of dodging.)

Having said all that, though... I'm not actually certain the Modnar AI falls into these same patterns as the Base AIs I'm used to. It's been a while since I played against an AI that wasn't either Base-plus-bugfixes Rookie or Xilmi's Hybrid.

I suppose we'll find out.

Interesting to learn that integer maths isn't used in RotP, that certainly hurts NPGs and friends quite a bit worse. I've definitely observed that the classic autorepair design is good enough for 90% of engagements, learning that you can stack 2 different designs in a battle though is surprising. If that indeed works to deal with repulsor designs, heavy weapons might be even worse than I assumed.