ship design to attack alien outposts

[Dumhed]

So... I finally had a 6k fleet... was feeling pretty good. Survived the attack on an alien station. But with all their layered defense... i lost half the fleet. Any tips on weapon/defense setups for this type of combat? Way to stay out of range of defenses and just bombard from far away?

[ulzgoroth]

If you can build lasers or plasma weapons with 1000 km range, you can probably destroy most alien bases without them being able to shoot back so long as you're careful.

(Theory, I haven't attacked any alien habs yet.)

[Fwiffo]

Plasma. Lots of plasma. It's not the most damaging weapon ever, but it has high range and cannot be intercepted by point defense. I used titans with nose plasma, 4-slot battery and 2 PD lasers.

They'll just shoot down coilgun shots, and lasers only really work from close range, at which point your own ships start melting like butter.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Fwiffo:

Plasma. Lots of plasma. It's not the most damaging weapon ever, but it has high range and cannot be intercepted by point defense. I used titans with nose plasma, 4-slot battery and 2 PD lasers.

They'll just shoot down coilgun shots, and lasers only really work from close range, at which point your own ships start melting like butter.

Lasers only work against strong armor from close range. But defense platforms don't have strong armor. I know alien 256mm orange lasers can damage my layered defenses from their own max range. I would be unsurprised if human heavy lasers can damage alien platforms the same way.

I'd still probably pick plasma instead given the option.

[Dumhed]

Maybe my waypoint control is poor. I have ship with plasma weapons. I try to inch it into range and go to full stop.... but as soon as I'm close enough to fire, they start firing too. :(.... I'll keep trying,

[corisai]

Originally posted by Dumhed:

Maybe my waypoint control is poor. I have ship with plasma weapons. I try to inch it into range and go to full stop.... but as soon as I'm close enough to fire, they start firing too. :(.... I'll keep trying,

Yes they will fire at you too. That's why you need a really high values of frontal armor (at least 66, better up to 85-90).

[SteveRaptor]

Basically Plasma is the best choice.

[Banus]

Originally posted by Dumhed:

So... I finally had a 6k fleet... was feeling pretty good. Survived the attack on an alien station. But with all their layered defense... i lost half the fleet. Any tips on weapon/defense setups for this type of combat? Way to stay out of range of defenses and just bombard from far away?

I'm using Green Phaser arrays and they wreck a platform well enough, I usually group 10-12 titans per station, and if there are no defending ships, I don't lose any titans. Sometimes they defend with 3 motherships and a load of smaller ships and then some losses do occur.

I use 2-3x coilguns, 1 big phaser and 4 point defense....especially the coilguns wreck their ships if you can bring suffient to bear simultaneously, alien ship defense against lasers is too good.

[martyr]

Yea. Plasma with extremely heavy frontal armor, locking your nose at the target.

[BrowneHawk]

When looking at the 3 armors when building a ship, I'm assuming left and right are your sides and middle is the nose armor? Serious question.

[corisai]

Originally posted by BrowneHawk:

When looking at the 3 armors when building a ship, I'm assuming left and right are your sides and middle is the nose armor? Serious question.

Left value - engines. Middle value - side armor. Right value - frontal armor.

P.S. Don't forget about Heat Sinks they're critical too.

[Abrusio]

In my experience, 12 dreadnoughts with 50 frontal armor, armed with plasma weapons mk3 is enough to deal with a lonely alien station. You may loose one ship if unlucky, but otherwise it's quite safe.

[ulzgoroth]

If you want to really optimize for stations, mounting heavy plasma batteries and rear armor instead of (or in addition to) nose armor might work. So you can use it to stop at 1000 km without pivoting under fire: as soon as the game starts, turn around, as soon as the shooting starts burn to a dead stop.

Probably would keep you from drifting into range of mag batteries or lasers.

[Dumhed]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

If you want to really optimize for stations, mounting heavy plasma batteries and rear armor instead of (or in addition to) nose armor might work. So you can use it to stop at 1000 km without pivoting under fire: as soon as the game starts, turn around, as soon as the shooting starts burn to a dead stop.

Probably would keep you from drifting into range of mag batteries or lasers.

I might try that if my next attempt fails.