Projectile Weapons are Useless

[The Mandarin Skyrush]

currently, there is absolutely no point going for projectiles weapons. last night, i continued my playthrough with the Cravers on impossible difficulty, on large map. On turn 100, I met the Lumeris, and as the Cravers, i naturally declare war on them. by then i my score was ahead of the second most powerful AI, and the Lumeris was third on score board, which meant i have bigger fleets, and more systems.

during my first battle with the Lumeris, my attack power over match her fleet. i have 1 carrier, two cruiers, and two battle ships and bunch of destroyers. my carrier was equip with the best projectile weapon in the game, the purple missiles (which is the Orichalcix missile, a freaking era 5 military tech), and my cruisers were equip with 1 Orichalcix missiles, and the rest of the attack modules were equip with red missiles (Adamantian missiles), and both fleets had 26 cp.

the result was terrible, i lost my carrier, both cruisers, 1 of my battleships, and three destroyers, and i didn't even managed to kill half of the Lumeris fleet, despite the fact that i have the biggest ships, and the best projectile weapon in game. i couldn't believe the result, so i went back and watch the battle, and what happened was the Lumeris were equip with two types of weapons, slugs and lasers. those damn tier 3 slugs shot down all my missiles before they could hit the enemy. despite having Orichalcix missile, the best missiles in game, the slugs had no problem shooting down all of them. while my missiles couldn't hit crap, the Lumeris ships continue to do dmg to my fleet with slugs and lasers, and that was why i lost so many, while the Lumeris lost so little.

It was terrible that I had to accept a truce from the Lumeris by giving them a crap ton of techs that they did not have. and after that, i use 10 turns to refit all my ships, excluding the battleships (because they are meat shields in the Cravers army) with energy weapons, specificly beams, beams, beams, beams, everything beams. and when i declare war on the Lumeris again, my carriers and cruisers wiped the floor clean, since slugs can't intercept beams, my ships kill all of the enemies.

so, there you have it, at the current stage, projectile weapons are absolutely useless, there is no point having them. but you could put slugs on some of your ships to intercept missiles from the enemy, but there is no reason to use missiles as an attack module.

[mtilsted]

Which tactical plan did you use. It sounds like you used the default "Turtle" plan which might be the reason you lost.

[The Mandarin Skyrush]

Originally posted by mtilsted:

Which tactical plan did you use. It sounds like you used the default "Turtle" plan which might be the reason you lost.

no barrage, there is no way i use turtle knowing that my fleets are missile heavy. also, i'm playing on impossible difficulty, so i'm already pretty familiar with the basic mechanics of this game. also, slugs intercepting missiles has nothing to do with your formation.

[Mulzaro]

Strange because I often manage to bruteforce enemy slug heavy fleets down with missiles on endless difficulty. The tactic cards can have a tremendous impact on the battle. Not only your own but the enemy card too.

Also AI often tries to troll with the flotilla positioning which is probably the number one thing in a succesful battle.

[The Mandarin Skyrush]

Originally posted by Mulzaro:

Strange because I often manage to bruteforce enemy slug heavy fleets down with missiles on endless difficulty. The tactic cards can have a tremendous impact on the battle. Not only your own but the enemy card too.

Also AI often tries to troll with the flotilla positioning which is probably the number one thing in a succesful battle.

i could do that too, i was at war on three fronts, with the Vodyani, the Unfallen, and the Lumeris. because the Unfallen and the Vodyani are my neighbors, so i declared war on them much earlier than the Lumeris, back then i didn't even have carriers hull, and these older fleets are fitted exclusively with missiles and slugs, not only that, because they were constantly on conquest missions, invading planets, and killing arks, i didn't have the chance to upgrade them to the latest missile tech (which is the purple missiles), but i have no problem decimating the Unfallen fleet and the Vodyani fleet.

the Unfallen fleet uses exclusively missiles (titanium missiles and the red missiles), and the Vodyani uses exclusively beams without slugs, so they cannot intercept my missiles. that's why i had no problem killing them. but the Lumeris are smart, they use slugs and lasers, and with a 26 cp fleet, that's a lot of slugs we are talking about, and based on the dmg output on the Lumeris ships, they most definitely have tier 3 slugs which has the best intercepting ability in game.

[fakemon64]

you should not go full missle. Missles are basically all or nothing. when they hit they do major damage, but once you get late game and other players get stronger slugs, the chance of you hitting drops. Missles are GREAT to have but you cant put 100% faith in them.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=940579911

[The Guy with Lag]

Sometimes you get unlucky and AI is completely fit for the sole purpose of countering your builds.
I dont know if this happens on luck or that AI makes this intenttionaly, it happened to me twice and its pretty damn impressive if AI did that.
This one time lumeris declared war on me while i was at war with cravers, they took a forward coloony of me they claimed theirs 20 turns ago.
İ manged to rektake the colony and my industry was superb, i was making full size fleets (mid game) every2-3 turns. (riftborn) But i couldnt push any further because the only connection ihad to their space was a wormhole and they lucked it down with a fleet countrering mine.
i coudnt go arround it becaue all other ways were covered by neutral empires.

[I Am Atomic!]

i find that if you want to use missiles they tend to work better on mass smaller ships than they do on larger ships.

eg 15+ 1cp ships packing 2-4 missiles each depending on what race is like 5x superior to size 10 fleet of 2cp size 4-5 4cp fleets just because of the massive differance in sheer number of shots per round the 15+ 1cp fleets can dish out.

same is true for using slugs for point defence, far more effective at stopping enemy missiles the higher number of small ships you have packing slugs.

[Frogsquadron]

The new swarm missiles module might come in handy (once they're released with the rest of the Free Week-End Challenge content) if you're struggling to go through your enemy's point-blank defense...

[DrakenKin]

But nothing is wrong with that, slugs counter missiles, just like any paper rock scisors battle system.

Long range lasers counter slugs. And tiny missile boats counter heavy shields armies / big ships since they have few guns to deal with the sheer number of missiles and they penetrate shields more.

That being said I always use mega tanking ships with shields and massive laser armadas, it just works better for me and how I build the modules on the ships. Lasers and plasma counters everything if you build the fleet right, you don't have to switch depending on enemies. (I am about to win my first Endless difficulty game with this type of fleet so it's not just easy difficulty jibberish.)

One little trick, the tanking ships use shields, while the attacking ships use armor... this confuses the AI a bit so it hasn't a clear thing to counter. Why armor? My attack ships very rarely get hit or even touched in battle. I'd build them naked and it would still work, but production is not hard to find so getting that extra number on defense calms down the AI a bit since your army seems more powerful and they won't delcare war if they see you as more powerful.

Anyway to get back to subject, it's not because you have the most expensive weapons of a certein type that it should be an auto win. If the type of weapons is losing to its exact counter, then i find that to be good game balance.

[KatArus]

There are a lot of skills that increase damage or allow you to go through shields and armor but none of them affect missile speed or health so missiles are always at disadvantage regardless of anything.

[The Guy with Lag]

Originally posted by Frogsquadron:

The new swarm missiles module might come in handy (once they're released with the rest of the Free Week-End Challenge content) if you're struggling to go through your enemy's point-blank defense...

This is why i love you guys. You dont take away things from the game and sell it as DLC. More free updates!
I love the company policy, if there is a paid expansion coming out i would love to get it.

[SenecaAthena]

Originally posted by The Guy with Lag:

This is why i love you guys. You dont take away things from the game and sell it as DLC. More free updates!

Completely agree

Originally posted by The Guy with Lag:

I love the company policy, if there is a paid expansion coming out i would love to get it.

Huh? There's a lag in your consistency

[Rented Tritium]

Nah that's consistent. They're saying that it's great that this stuff that's fundamental to the game working well is in free updates, but if a pack is big enough and contains enough new content, they're happy to support the studio with some cash.

I feel the same way. Quality of life enhancements and basic rock paper scissors functions should be free. But a bighugeexpansion for money later is also ok.

[The Guy with Lag]

Originally posted by OnyxCarp:

Originally posted by The Guy with Lag:

This is why i love you guys. You dont take away things from the game and sell it as DLC. More free updates!

Completely agree

Originally posted by The Guy with Lag:

I love the company policy, if there is a paid expansion coming out i would love to get it.

Huh? There's a lag in your consistency

Well i would declare that you are stupid but someone else did it for me.
There is a difference between loving more free updates, and buying paid updates from people you like. You like them because they also give free updates.

[Frogsquadron]

Let's not call other people names, pretty please.