Hundreds of alien ships in a fleet

[Pepzi]

Hello, I am at year 2041 and just managed to destroy an alien warship for the objective. Aliens promptly started attacking me which was to be expected but a month or 2 in they sent a fleet with 172 ships and 23.2k power, how am I supposed to defend against that? Even if I had maxed out my mission control with ships I'd have at most 30-50 ships.
I guess my question is
is this normal? Was I just way too slow on building a fleet?

[Vigor]

Corisai
And particle Mk1 battery is horrible pick for a PD weapon. Even 60cm Arc lasers are questionable compated with dedicated PD Arc lasers - they still lack range so require you to pack your fleet into more tight group ... that you're unable to do with Grid engines :)

I haven't had a problem when my ships alternate in roles (archer/pd/archer/pd/archer/pd). Each pd ship can protect the 2 ships closest to it from jewels. Unfortunately I have no control over where my ships begin combat so PDs don't always alternate with dedicated missile ships. Also, the bigger the fleet the less likely they are to be set up well. I am afraid that means I will need to make every ship a PD ship because the interface doesn't allow me to organize my fleet.

I don't even have arc lasers. Particle battery mk1 is by far the best I have. Particle mk2 research should have shown up by now but it hasn't. I have all other particle research. I believe I had 4 particle pd battery+rattler ships and a station with one layered defense array do very well vs the mothership and 3 other ships. I killed 2 of the other ships while 1 of my pd ships survived until the 2nd biggest alien ship could recharge its weapons. It was out of missile ammo or it probably would have killed that ship too.

Corisai
Hehe, that's why you're bleeding your resources :) You're making your suicidal boats - fancy.

Doesn't going to work. Especially - why you need engine armor? You're already dead when aliens come close. And using so many side armor is ... Well, not optimal to do with early techs.

You call MY ships suicide? My ships survive long enough that I can see their engines got knocked out, usually even when the aliens get close (though the aliens usually die when they get close) In previous game updates when alien ships still used laser weapons they would almost always aim for the engine FIRST. I would have otherwise healthy ships survive the battle but have no way of going home. I'm guessing that first shot just killed your ships.

FYI in the demo I was assaulting the aliens at Jupiter with ion drive ships with thicker and heavier armor and winning.

Then why using them? Vipers are more then enough to kill anything.

Because that's not how missiles are used :) You need to rush to enemy, release them all to make as much packed as you could - then turn around and try to escape. Or endure through it if escape is impossible. Or running away at start if enemy have way more missiles then you (but much less ships).

Rattlers are much faster and have more ammo so they do a much better job of overwhelming the enemy pd. At least, up until this update they did. Perhaps they haven't changed. I am now using lancehead or keelback as my secondary missles where I was using cobras before. If those are actually slower than cobra it might explain the problems I am seeing. I have used viper/cobra on some ships before but vipers didn't seem any better than cobras. It has been a while but I don't remember them being any faster. I really think the problem here is a lack of interface/control not my choice of ordinance. I can't control the arrangement of my ships and I can't control when individual weapon systems fire unless I restrict ships to only one type of weapons system. Restricting ships to one weapons system would make the reliability of the system more complex. In other words, I would have a harder time getting just the right fleet composition and I would need to maintain more ship classes. I might try using all rattlers but I am afraid they might not have enough punch for the bigger ships.

I think you only come to this forum to talk trash to people.

Corisai
Forget about it. Without proper engines (at least Advanced Pulsars or god-save-us Nova liquid rockets) beam weapons are not even in grade "suicidal" but they will be "a sacrificial lambs".

Do you realise that particle beams have even LESS efficient range then lasers?

Your problems and strategies are not like my problems because our strategies are so different.

My reasons for building one laser frigate would be 1. so that I have 1. ship that won't run out of ammo just in case I survive the enemy assault but can't kill them and 2. so that it might kill the enemy ship that rushes forward to take one for the team. VS my fleets what I expect aliens to do is have 1 ship rush in trying for a quick kill. It promptly dies. One ship will stay back and stay healthy while any others try to clear as many missiles as possible. Then the healthy ship engages once I am running low or am out of ammo. I have seen the aliens keep the biggest ship far behind the others where I couldn't possibly target it.

I think the ship that rushes forward is trying to get a better angle on my armor. I suspect if I armored my sides and engine better they might all try to keep their distance.

particle has sufficient range and fires faster than lasers IIRC. I thought they had the same range, I will check later. I think particle has a 4 second cooldown and lasers have a 5 second cooldown. IIRC pd use less energy so can maintain fire longer as well. I'll look when I go into the game and correct this if I'm wrong. As I said earlier I think pd can stop mag shots too and I don't think lasers can but it is something worth testing.

Corisai
This is a warning from the game - you're overstressing your engines A LOT. With your techs - you're not going to have both a lot of armor and anything but point-blank 5...10k dV range.

If you don't have armor the aliens can beat you with lasers and they can do it no matter how fast you are. If you have armor like my ships, they might survive a volley from the mag cannon once in a while. I am normally not watching since I can't move my ships anyways. I focus on delivering my blows at the right time to the right target. But, sometimes I will look down and see I have a very beat up ship but it is still alive. I watch what the enemies are doing just enough to switch a ship being targeted to defensive posture and tell it to lock on its primary target. Then I set the primary target to whatever just fired the mag cannon volley. Unfortunately, if the enemy ship is moving fast, locking on it won't make the mag cannon volley hit it in the front because the front will follow the ship not the volley. What I really need it to do is have it lock on(aim its front at) the mag cannon volley. I think next time I will try using the ship controls to aim the front in the right direction.

Burner can achieve 30DV with the lighter armor configuration i mentioned earlier for about 3x the cost in fuel as grid. As I said before all of my burner drive ships sit in place permanently. I did a few tests with the trip planner so I know it is capable of getting around it is just expensive. In combat though I'm gonna assume I need to dodge the mag cannon blasts because the lighter config doesn't stand a good chance of survival.

Mag cannon ships run out of ammo pretty easily and then take a long time to recharge so I'm thinking MORE armor might be the solution. I need each ship to take a minimum of 2 volleys to drastically reduce my losses. Maybe I will start putting only 20DV on my ships rather than 30-60 so I can carry the extra armor. I suspect 20 DV would still safely get grid around within a planetary system.

[corisai]

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

I haven't had a problem when my ships alternate in roles

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

while 1 of my pd ships survived

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

You call MY ships suicide?

How you can have all this in same time in your head? o_O

Yes, your ships are suicidal because they lack damage output to be able to take enemy ships. Yes, you're making your ships crazily expensive for their role and loosing your war because of that.

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

In previous game updates when alien ships still used laser weapons they would almost always aim for the engine FIRST.

That's untrue. Aliens are unable to "aim for". They're trying to flank your ships - yes, and they could do it because your ships are lacking damage output (and mobility but that's expected in early game) to stop aliens from doing that.

There is no reason to put more then 1...5 points in side&tail armor. Better to have more ships and finally kill aliens. Losses are expected even in late-game.

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

FYI in the demo I was assaulting the aliens at Jupiter with ion drive ships with thicker and heavier armor and winning.

FYI - devs patched AI a lot. You're no longer fighting naked or lone enemy ships. Old exloits are fixed now. Use new one

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

Rattlers are much faster and have more ammo so they do a much better job of overwhelming the enemy pd

They're trash. To really overwhelm PD - you want your missiles to move as fast as you could. That mean:
a) Missiles with low dV are bad.
b) Grid engine for combat are bad.

That's why you're unable to hunt ayys and instead rely on making them tired from punching you :)

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

I think you only come to this forum to talk trash to people.

YOU are have issues with winning in fights. I'm trying to open your eyes why. Okay =/

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

Your problems and strategies are not like my problems because our strategies are so different.

In my first run I tried to use missiles like you and they sucked a lot. Recently another Steam user show me how missiles should be used properly - and they're almost broken OP.
Sorry, but again - if your strategy was good then you will shared a story of success here.

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

particle has sufficient range and fires faster than lasers IIRC. I thought they had the same range, I will check later.

In reality particle have much less range because of hidden range penalty.

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

I think particle has a 4 second cooldown and lasers have a 5 second cooldown.

Mk1 particle cannon have 60 sec cooldown.... Wait a second - by "Mk I" you mean "PD Particle Beam"? O_O If yes then:
a) It doesn't have next tiers :)
b) PD Particle Beam >>> basic PD laser and ~ on same tier with PD Arc Laser. It's good weapon, yes. Sorry but you'd caused this confusion - only anti-ship Particle cannons have tiers.

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

Burner can achieve 30DV with the lighter armor configuration i mentioned earlier for about 3x the cost in fuel as grid.

Yes, you're overstressing your engine. Why you want a local defense boat with so much dV?

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

In combat though I'm gonna assume I need to dodge the mag cannon blasts because the lighter config doesn't stand a good chance of surviv

Dodge? With weak acceleration of Burner? o_O

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

Mag cannon ships run out of ammo pretty easily and then take a long time to recharge so I'm thinking MORE armor might be the solution.

And what you're plans when aliens will recharge their ships and merge them into doomstack?

No, killing alien ships is a solution. For that you need fast enough ships with good weapons (coils, lasers or packaged missiles).

[gimmethegepgun]

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

the upkeep for stations is so tremendous I have to devote most of my mission control to the production of resources.

So use Farms?

It seems to me that in combat I should be able to turn off a weapons system.

You can.

For armor, my newest ships have 43 diamondoid frontal armor with 19 lateral armor and 23 engine armor.

Lateral armor is extremely massive. You should avoid using more than needed to simply stave off long-range laser hits.

I'm using grid my ships are not always maneuverable enough to try to face the enemy which is firing at them.

Turn rate isn't determined by drive. It's entirely determined by mass and the ship length (which is determined by the ship class).

I use all prime numbers in hope that they will frustrate enemy decision making.

wut

I was intending to improve my fleet with new particle PD mk2 ships but I haven't gotten the research yet.

That's because there is no mk2 particle PD.

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

I don't even have arc lasers.

Why?

Rattlers are much faster

No, Rattlers are much slower than Vipers. Rattlers only have 3.4 kps whereas Vipers have 6. Rattlers have higher acceleration but that is not speed.

particle has sufficient range and fires faster than lasers IIRC.

Particle Cannons have a MUCH longer refire time than lasers do. mk1's are 60/72/90s, mk2's are 50/60/75s, mk3's are 40/48/60s, whereas regular lasers are all 30s, arc lasers are 20s, and phasers are 10s.
For point defense, Particle Cannon is 4s, regular laser is 5s (I'm pretty sure this was nerfed, I think it used to be the same as Arc), Arc is 4s, Phaser is 3s.

I thought they had the same range, I will check later.

Particle PD is 200 km, Laser PDs are 250/300/350. However, at least according to what corisai said, Particle PD will destroy kinetic projectiles at any range, whereas laser PD won't.
The cannons, however, are much shorter range than lasers.

IIRC pd use less energy so can maintain fire longer as well.

It does not. Not that that's a remotely worthwhile thing to look at since any half-decent reactor can power weapons without using the battery at all, as long as it isn't thrusting.

As I said earlier I think pd can stop mag shots too and I don't think lasers can but it is something worth testing.

Lasers stop projectiles as well as missiles, they just aren't as good at it.

Mag cannon ships run out of ammo pretty easily

What? No they don't. They have hundreds of shots to fire.

[mrolli]

@Vigor: Let my try the sum up the strategic situation.
1. You only have early game tech.
2. You don't have a well running space economy.
3. You're trying to Built Full Spectrum Interstellar Warships and Go to Pitched Battle while 1 is true. (It's like El Kaida going on a frontal assult on open terrain against the US army).

Right Know to only way to actually hurt them: Use Light Fast Missile Boats (4G combat) with just enough DV to get a intercept and run back home to base (at least 15). Don't even Bother with Armor beyond something like 1/1/4. Use Viper instead of Rattler, Rattler is Fragmented Warhead: Damage is Spread all over the Enemy. (Could be Useful in combination with lasers, which then can exploit the tiny holes in the Armor.)

Give you a example (Rather high tech for a missile boat, entered service at the start of the war, i keeped quit for 6 years using the almost the full MC for boosting economy and tech):
Monitor Rhone: 2493t Dry Mass, 6493 Wet, 95.7 kps,235 milligees, 4G, 3Deg /s^2
Firestar*3, Terawatt Gas Core Fission III, Superconducting Coil Battery, Tin Droplet,
Armor: Adamantane Front 1, Side 1, Rear 5
Weapons: 4*30 Lancehead Missiles
Utility Modules: 2 Mags, 1 Hydron
Combat Tactics: Approach to Missile Launch Distance at best Speed, Turn and Outrun the Counterfire
Limits: Should not engage enemy craft with more than 3G Combat Acceleration. They can outmaneuver the missiles. Those Units are best killed by Gunboats with Phasers.
Combat History:
Supporting Fire in the Battle for Earth Orbit, helping Overwhelm the 12 particle PD + 4 lasers present on the mothership, dreadnaught and 2 destroyers sieging Earth.
3 Later Intercept of Enemy Light Units in Earth Orbit.
Supporting Fire in Battle of Ganymede I and Io, helping the Main Fleet clear the enemy out.
28 Kills in the Ganymede Defense Campaign.

Alien AI goes nuts, if you settle beside them and leave their station / base intact. They sent almost everything Piecemeal over 20k in 40 Attacks (except for 1 MS, 2 Assault Carriers, 2 Dreads, 3 Light Ones at their Homebase.)

Upgrades: Hydron, for Better Range.

Pricetag: 408W,114V,119M,41.3N, 6R,0.1E
Think i actually got more from the salvage it created, then i paid for it. That's a ship that makes economic sense. Ships win Battles, But good resource management wins Wars.

Fission Lantern / Firestar are the Drives which give you real Interplanetary Warfare Capability. For Interplanetary Intercept you should have Fusion/Antimatter late Game Drives. Anything early can make good local defense forces or specialized interplanetary ships.
Phasers are the Key Tech if you want to get into Pitched Battle. Enough PD power and they Front Phasers can kill any Light Flanking Forces, before they can do any Real damage.
My Main Battle Ships still have only 1 Side Armor. All damage ever was a Unlucky hit from the Front. Enough Firepower is the best Armor (abbreviation of Offense is the best Defense). It's Far more important to get Phasers than the get UV Lasers. Those are mainly needed if you combine with Plasma or want to use them as Main Damage Dealers.
More Armor (especially anywhere but the Front) only makes you lose Slower. More Firepower saves Armor and makes you win.


Remark as for the economic trouble: In my Game there is a bug:
Sometimes i pay more for the Upgrade than for a new structure.
The Radiation Shielding is nuts: Mercury i pay 10 times instead of 3.5 times. On Io i would pay 30 times instead of 8 times. This mainly concern Metall.


Mag cannon ships run out of ammo pretty easily
What? No they don't. They have hundreds of shots to fire. <= actually did put Mags and one design. The Runaway fast and use the Speed of the Pursuers to kill them Coiler.
Could Kill any Enemy Fleet up to about 30 Vessels in Skirmish, as long as no dreads or Motherships (Plasmas always gets you).

[corisai]

mrolli eredeti hozzászólása:

Monitor Rhone: 2493t Dry Mass, 6493 Wet, 95.7 kps,235 milligees, 4G, 3Deg /s^2

Will be MUCH better (and cheaper) in form of 2 Escorts. And even could get notable armor :)

Rails/Coils are working solution too - will be a bit more expensive (really need armor) but overall same design idea. Rush to enemy & use nose guns to kill them with combined velocity.

mrolli eredeti hozzászólása:

Could Kill any Enemy Fleet up to about 30 Vessels in Skirmish, as long as no dreads or Motherships (Plasmas always gets you).

Easily fixed with more frontal armor as plasma is stuggling against it.

Actually heavy coils are easiest way to kill Skirmish dreads&motherships as kinetics have highest dps output (their damage value is basic damage against static target) & hitting is not an issue against dreads&motherships.

P.S. On beta aliens are loving plasma past early game so ignoring armor could end bad.

[mrolli]

@corsai:
The escort Variant is also still in service. Had about 20-25 Built. Only 3 Monitors. The Monitors can have 2 Mags + Hydron so a overall higher load of missiles. That is sometimes useful. (e.g. can engage in more battles before he needs to refill the mags).
More Armor = more costs.

More Armor wouldn't work for a lone Ship against 30. You need to be able to run fast enough. Plasma only needs to chip the Armor a bit, then you're easy prey for the Lasers.

Missiles and Nukes have a much Higher damage output than Coils. But yeah, Full Run, i used Coils as Main Weapons. This time: Only Lasers + Missiles.

P.S. Monitor / Escort are 2034 designs.
The Battleships have 40 front armor.
Current ones (2037) do 3.8G 2.1k DV, 2 Front Phasers (Green), Phaser PD, 5*40 Lanceheads, About 40 in service and could produce 30 more per year. (kind of Pointless, i have 48K vs. 23k Alien Fleet Power)
Also i now often use heavily armored gunship squadrons for intercept of light craft. Unlike Missile Boats, they don't struggle with enemies with 4G combat acceleration.
It's just far simpler to use the old monitors / escorts, if i have to fight a mini-battle against some cheap alien ship every other day. With the alien attacking in jupiter like crazy, it has become tiresome to sort things out. so i sent the monitor first, as i can split the 4 escorts up. the gunships are reserve for fast enemies. the battleships (12) deal with the bigger fleets.
would be nice to be able to sort alien fleets in order of date of arrival, then logistics could be easier managed.

[corisai]

mrolli eredeti hozzászólása:

More Armor wouldn't work for a lone Ship against 30. You need to be able to run fast enough. Plasma only needs to chip the Armor a bit, then you're easy prey for the Lasers.

Well... I'm a coilgun-guy :) So enemy lasers are never a threat - they're a bit busy with my projectiles

BTW. 40 armor is still not enough - you will be get internal damage from even first hit of alien heaviest plasma.

mrolli eredeti hozzászólása:

Missiles and Nukes have a much Higher damage output than Coils.

Yes but:
0) Nukes are out of question. Because of "nuke goes rogue" event.

1) Devs nerfed kinetics a lot. Our railgun T1 is just a modern tank gun (their AP-shots are around 2.5 km/s already). I'm really tempted to fix it for myself and probably will do it once I will reach "bombard ayys mines" stage of the game. Because I get that devs are laser fans but I'm not :)

Kinetics current RoF also hilarious compared with missiles. And where our recoil from powered launch of missiles? ^_~

2) Missiles ammo issues IMHO making them too tedious for a long-term weapon.

And of couse a main reason why I tend to ignore them - after spending years playing in The Missile Game (Aurora4X) I'm a bit tired from them

[gimmethegepgun]

corisai eredeti hozzászólása:

Our railgun T1 is just a modern tank gun (their AP-shots are around 2.5 km/s already).

Yes, but the railgun accomplishes that without needing combustible propellant, which makes things an awful lot safer. And, that's about on par with contemporary railgun prototypes, which is a logical starting point for the early railguns.

[corisai]

gimmethegepgun eredeti hozzászólása:

Yes, but the railgun accomplishes that without needing combustible propellant, which makes things an awful lot safer.

Actually - no, explosives are more safe in use then high-voltage systems with A LOT of capacitors. Stress for barrel/rails is ~same.

gimmethegepgun eredeti hozzászólása:

And, that's about on par with contemporary railgun prototypes

No, even hybrid ones (something that at least worked IRL) promised a bit better then same results as existing guns :)

But c'mon. Once I saw in game that beam weapons are never miss - it was very obvious that devs have own biases for them :)

[gimmethegepgun]

corisai eredeti hozzászólása:

But c'mon. Once I saw in game that beam weapons are never miss - it was very obvious that devs have own biases for them :)

When you say beam weapons do you mean particle beam or laser?

[corisai]

gimmethegepgun eredeti hozzászólása:

When you say beam weapons do you mean particle beam or laser?

In TI they are both in same class of "beam weapon" so don't have a real projectile and never miss.
But yean, particle beams are lacking some love too.

[gimmethegepgun]

corisai eredeti hozzászólása:

gimmethegepgun eredeti hozzászólása:

When you say beam weapons do you mean particle beam or laser?

In TI they are both in same class of "beam weapon" so don't have a real projectile and never miss.

Why would a computer-controlled laser outside of an atmosphere miss?

[corisai]

Vigor eredeti hozzászólása:

I don't even have arc lasers. Particle battery mk1 is by far the best I have.

Finally get techs. So look on something like that:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2941310608

As said - cheap, fast and murderous. @mrolli running away tactics isn't going to work well with a mere Advanced Pulsar still they're both durable & expendable and can punch a lot.

[corisai]

gimmethegepgun eredeti hozzászólása:

Why would a computer-controlled laser outside of an atmosphere miss?

Grab a laser pointer and try to target a flying bird or running cat from at least 50 meters distance :) It's hard in reality.

Sensors aren't 100% precise and same for gears&hydraulics. Focus lenses are not magical and enemy ECM trying to fool us with a real distance to enemy (if we do a serious mistake here - our "hit" will turn into "miss" as laser will fail to deal notable damage). Ship are doing random evasive maneuvers. So there will be misses.

[gimmethegepgun]

corisai eredeti hozzászólása:

gimmethegepgun eredeti hozzászólása:

Why would a computer-controlled laser outside of an atmosphere miss?

Grab a laser pointer and try to target a flying bird or running cat from at least 50 meters distance :) It's hard in reality.

A laser pointer doesn't have proper sights, isn't controlled by a computer that can choose not to shoot when it's not aimed correctly, a cat at 50m has much more angular velocity than a ship at hundreds of kilometers, and the laser spreads out much less than when firing at hundreds of kilometers.

Sensors aren't 100% precise

They don't need to be. The beam is much larger than the target at the distances involved.

and same for gears&hydraulics.

Irrelevant. If it is determined that the laser isn't aimed in the correct direction to hit the enemy due to mechanical error then it simply won't be fired.

Focus lenses are not magical and enemy ECM trying to fool us with a real distance to enemy

afaik the lasers in the game don't alter their focus distance, so it doesn't matter if you don't know the precise distance to the enemy in regards to a laser hitting. All you need to know is the correct heading and whether or not it's within the effective range.

(if we do a serious mistake here - our "hit" will turn into "miss" as laser will fail to deal notable damage)

That's what happens when the laser hits the ship and the damage is absorbed by the armor.

Ship are doing random evasive maneuvers.

So? Their evasive maneuvering is effectively nothing compared to the speed of light.