Newbie combat system questions

[necro55]

Hello, I am a long time MOO2 vet (tried MOO3 and it was bad), in first new MOO game, still trying to get the hang of it all here.
i know part of this is I am not used to the combat system.

Please feel free to correct anything that is wrong here, but please explain WHY it is incorrect, so I can learn from the community.

I have read from multiple googoe searches that most of the modifications on missiles do not work as intended or at all, is this still the case?

Also, comparitively, Beams seem to be VERY underpowered compared to missiles. Is this accurate or am I missing something? I also have to use a LOT of PD weps to not get crushed by missiles.

So far, one thing that seems to help is to keep moving perpendicular to the enemy, and they miss pretty bad.

In the past I was usually VERY beam heavy (MOO2), is this still viable here? Also, are there basic tactics to do, and ideas to avoid both in ship building as well as in combat, ie the common newbie mistakes? Early game combat I did really well, then around the end of the Cruiser and early battleship era I was suddenly having issues with ships that according to the attack and defense stats I am superior than, so I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

Would configuring ships for primarily broadside attacks, so I can keep moving through the entire engagement be wise?

[Davor]

For MOO CtS, missle weapons are strong in the begining of the game, and beam weapons are weaker. Mid game it's a mix depending on your play style. End game beam weapons are very powerful and missles are weaker.

The upgrades to missles and beam weapons seem to work. The pace is so fast that I really can't tell so I don't worry about it.

An early tech weapon I like using is the Gauss cannon. Now I can have that name wrong but it's not a missle weapon, and is a cannon but treated like a beam weapon for computer uses and what not. What I like about it is it ignores shields in early game. So it's a good to GO with missles and not just strictly missles in early game.

Once you start getting anit missle tech like jammers and better Point Defence weapons, missles become "weaker" since they don''t "hit" so often and that is why they seem weaker by end game.

Hope this helps a bit. If I didn't explain very well let me know, will try better next time. :)

[frdnwsm]

Let's talk about ship design.

Protectively, you want the best shield and armor you can get. You also want to research either heavy armor or reinforced hull; whichever one you pick, be sure to trade for the other. They do take up special equipment slots, but almost zero extra hull space, and are well worth incorporating into your ship designs.

Very variable weapon choices in mid game. Early on, missiles rule. Equip your ships with MIRVed versions ASAP. Missile accuracy is dependent on missile type (each later missile is more accurate), and NOT your ship targeting computer.

Davor means Mass Driver, not Gauss cannon. Both are particle beam weapons, and are naturally shield piercing, but the Gauss is a much later tech, and hits much harder.

Particle beam weapons also don't suffer damage reduction with range, the way energy weapons do. Mass drivers with Heavy Mount and auto fire modifications would be good early game non-missile weapons, but suffer from poorer accuracy due to the really crappy early targetting computers. You are much better off using MIRVed missiles until late in the middle game.

Torpedos are a specialty item, very inaccurate against smaller, more maneuverable tagets. Best used against slow or immobie targets. I rarely even put them on ships until I get the tech to miniaturize them and give them semi-guided ability.

Do not take fighter bays as a tech choice; get battle pods instead. Fighters and bombers give poor damage return for the space that they take up. Heavy fighters are a possible substitute for energy weapons in mid game, but only for a while. Once you get the High Energy Focus and Hyper-X Capaciter techs, it's time to switch over to all or mostly all energy/particle weapons, since these tehcs make them a lot more destructive.

Note that unmodified beam weapons have pretty much the same range as missiles. I always prefer Heavy Mount and auto-fire modifications of such weapons, since both damage and range are increased.

Actually conducting tactical combat on the combat map is a whole 'nother story.

[Kotli]

TBH you want the longest ranged weapons possible with the best firing angles possible. This in early game is missile weapons 365 degrees of fire (you can run away and still hit them) and long range. Then in combat just fly your ships around the map keeping just in your weapon range. This means you are firing on them and the AI should rarely fire at you since you are out of range of most of their guns.

[Davor]

Yes thank you Frdswn, Mass Drive I ment. I memory is failing me big time lately. :(

Speaking of 360 of fire (not sure what 365 is. :P) I use just foward firing weapons only since the time I am finshed the recharge, I can get the ship back in forward firing again, so no need to add the extra space for 360 of firing beam weapons. With the space I save having forward firing only, means I can add extra few beam weapons.

[necro55]

Thanks for the quick reply, and that does help.
I know a Dauntless Guidance will allow missiles to reaim, but for the sake of beam weapons,m I just had a battle and a baattleship had Graviton beams, I blew up a enemy ship, then shot 6 or 8 more rounds into the smouldering debris, is there a way to fix this, or do I just need to have 5 beams per weapon slot and more weapon slots so it will spread out better?

By the perspective of many in MOO forums, or other 4x games, I can let a game "Drag On", but it is my style, I love end game, giant universes, big fleets etc. So I do not expand overly fast, so what some will call late game for me is mid.

With your different ships (based on chassis size) what are your basic loadouts, and why? Any weapons systems you specifically recommed using aside from the shield bypassing gauss, also anything you specifically avoid, and why? I am not wanting to copy others, but I always look at others and try and learn. Also, savescumming for me is part of the learning process, where I save before a battle, and reload it a few times to try different tactics and see how they worked. I did that with XCom as well, throw a grenade 12 times to see how it effects terrain, damage loss over distance etc, just how I learn best, once I am familiar with a game I dont do it anymore, it is just for learning mechanics.

For your weapon designs, do you run weapons forward facing only, or do you use 360 or broadside? I do miss Front-Extended from MOO2.

Also the AI keeps trying to upgrade my PD weapons from Mass Drivers to phasors, so far Mass Drivers seem to do very well, stop most of the incoming missiles very well. My issue is I just didnt have enough, which is on me for learning curve problems. Do you see any benefit in upgrading the PD weapons before the AI has shielded warheads?

Thanks again for the help.

[necro55]

Sorry, I was replying to Davor, I had this reply open and didnt see the next replies, but I need to leave right now, but I will read the rest and follow up, ithe help is MUCH APPRECAITED!

[frdnwsm]

Phasers as PD weapons do more damage, but take up more space. The only reason to use them as PD weapons would be against an enemy that used heavy armor option on it's missiles, but I'm not aware of any AI race that does so. (Anyone have an idea if they do this at all?)

That being the case, it would seem that Mass Drivers are the preferred PD weapon, since they shoot down missiles equally well, and you can stick more of them into the same hull space.

[necro55]

Originally posted by frdnwsm:

Phasers as PD weapons do more damage, but take up more space. The only reason to use them as PD weapons would be against an enemy that used heavy armor option on it's missiles, but I'm not aware of any AI race that does so. (Anyone have an idea if they do this at all?)

That being the case, it would seem that Mass Drivers are the preferred PD weapon, since they shoot down missiles equally well, and you can stick more of them into the same hull space.

Thankyou for both of your posts.

I do currently use the best shield and armor available, heavy armor and reinforced hull.

OK, for missiles early on, would you say I am better off going to the newest missile type and leaving it as the regular, or staying with last gen tech and MIRV?

Also, about what point in the tech tree do you consider mid game, as I am on my first game and really feeling the differences between this and MOO2 currently. Do you base it off of hull size availability, or a weapon tech, or some other point? I guess a simpler way would be what weapons do you usually replace missiles with? Gravitons? Guass? Something else?

Also do you use enveloping or continuous fire mods? Why or Why not?
I used to use Plasma Cannons heavily in MOO2 because they were enveloping, and went heavy mount, AF, Continuous, and that REALLY burned ships down quickly.

I never considered HFB's, they seemed OK, but in general all MOO games before they never were worth the space.

KOTI/Davor, thanks for the input and suggestions too.

Anything in specific you recommend or recommend against for tactical combat? The 360 degree weps and circling seems like a good idea, and I can see how that might mess with the AI some, or mess with nose mounted weapons in general. Anything else? By default the AI seems to want to rush right at me.

Sorry for so many questions, but this feels liek MOO2+GC2+ a little combat from Sins, and it is taking a while to get used to lol; so much learning going on here, I will likely also be starting a new game soon as I think I have painted myself into a corner, some mistakes with borders and those little military installations at jump points have me bottled in with people I am not prepared for a war with yet, and fighting one war already, with NO expansion room.... fun stuff. I may have lost this fight already, not sure yet, will know tomorrow.

[Davor]

It all depends on when to go to the stronger missle or keep the older one and MIRV them. I had done the newer missle but since they don't have much modifications they either miss alot of get shot down.

With modifications on "weaker" missles, you can hit more so do more damage than stronger missles that misses, but still need more missles to hit. It really depends on what the AI you are attacking what they are using. For example alot of times I see Psilons use good ECM against missles so I go to beams then.

Something like Sakkra or Bulrthri, I would go back to missles then. Another good thing to remember if going with "stronger" missles but works with wekaer ones as well is if the missles will hit, then all you have to worry about is ECM, put the ECCM and make your missles stronger with more armour on them. Yes a few missles will get destroyed but if you shoot in numbers the PDs can only shoot so many and the rest go through because the PDs have to recharge. This I learned the hard way agaisnt the AI.

There is no good one build because there are a few circumstances that can change from game to game that make your builds different each time.

Sorry this might not seem much help but shows there is alot of variance in MOO. Time for bed so hopefully more awake I can answer better. :)

[Exoclyps]

From my experience Beams hit the same target. Even if you spread things out it seems to hit the same target a lot of times. However I heard that it is possible to uncheck the auto-shoot and separate it manually. I've yet to try that though and it sounds quite tedious.

An idea I had for the future was to create a lot of small ships with beams and a few bigger ships with missiles and see how that works out.

[frdnwsm]

Mass drivers are the first shield piercing weapon you can get. Gauss cannons come along quite late in the game. MDs are fine against most opponents, but do not work well vs Meklar ships, since Meklars are coded to use hard shields on their vessels.

Switching to energy weapons from missiles depends on what tech you have available. Early on, your targeting computers are poor, so accuracy suffers. I generally stick with MIRVed missiles until I get positronic computers and battle scanners at the very least.

I favor heavy mounts for energy weapons, since that increases the range beyond that of missiles, giving me an advantage over missile armed foes. Auto fire and continuous mods are also useful.

Whether to go for 360 degree coverage with energy weapons is open to debate. It's a choice between easier firing ability vs more weapons per hull. One compromise is the broadside mount. You can just move your ships back and forth across the bottom of the screen and not worry about keeping your bows pointed at the enemy.

Enemy ships armed with beam weapons will indeed tend to rush toward you, because shorter range means less beam dissipation. Beams lose damage capability as the firing range increases.

AI races in early game want to expand and drop colonies everywhere. Including systems that you own. They will always ignore any requests you make that they not colonize near you. You can stop this nonsense by sticking a frigate at a warp point and putting it on guard. This prevents any ship from moving past, unless they attack you, and is a useful tactic for trying to claim a section of space as your territory.

For this reason, NEVER sign an open borders treaty with an AI race, unless you have colonized every planet around.

[necro55]

Guys, thanks for all the help, it is really appreciated! I will likely have a few more questions, but so far this was VERY helpfull!

[necro55]

Ship building follow up question.

Do PD weapons work only for the ship being targetted? I was thinking have a couple ships that are walls of PD weapons so they can sit close to the bigger ships and stop the walls of missiles shot at everything in proxomity. Will this work?

[Davor]

PD from other ships will shoot at missles not aimed at them. They just have to be in range and not firing at anyting else like missles or fighters.

I am making ships just with PD weapons. Didn't work out as great but by having PD weapoins in different slots helps. This way you don't have 50PDs in one weapon slot all fired and recharging, I have say 10 PDs in each slot so it can shoot 5 different times 10 times each instead of 50 times, once.

Too bad I can't figure out how to keep these ships out in front all the time when I have large fleets.

[Rawrshuga]

Originally posted by necro55:

I just had a battle and a baattleship had Graviton beams, I blew up a enemy ship, then shot 6 or 8 more rounds into the smouldering debris, is there a way to fix this, or do I just need to have 5 beams per weapon slot and more weapon slots so it will spread out better?

Sounds like you were on the v54.6/7/8 damage model. It was quite badly broken until this recent patch - v54.11. If that was the case then you should notice a better balance between beams and missiles now.

As to reducing shot wastage, use more hardpoints. Each hardpoint can only target one ship. If you want to reduce shot wastage there's 2 steps to this:

1) Put guns on multiple hardpoints
2) Stagger your guns by either a) using guns with different recharge rates (e.g. combo of heavy, normal, and auto-fire modded guns and/or different weapons like Phasors and Graviton Cannons) or b) Disabling Autocast on all guns and then manual enabling them one after another once in range of the enemy.