Ship weapons/defence
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- Jul 6, 2012 9:25 am GMTSo basicaly we got 3 types of weapons and defences: Beam/projectile/missiles. seems to me there's no point trying to achieve some kind of balance between type of weapons/armor. Most effective strategy most of the time is to spam destroyers loaded with only missiles. On the first shot, they are capable even to take down the biggest ships and they are cheap to replace. Tactical combat is quite broken in this game.
- Jul 6, 2012 1:46 pm GMTThis is correct.
Big ships with missiles and (maybe) healing gear, but no/little armor, seem to be the most efficient killing machines.
I like having a little to catch some of the missiles and/or lasers in the first wave. - Jul 6, 2012 2:32 pm GMTi don't know... i'm getting a LOT of mileage out of my defensive gear. i like to have 2 or 3 REALLY well equipped navies rather than 15+ cannon fodders. that means that each navy will often have to fight 5-10 battles IN A ROW. that being the case, defensive gear has been extremely important. i still have the firepower to take down almost anything in one battle; normally within the first 2 phases.
so would power loading more missiles give me more damage output? yes.
but i don't NEED that much damage, especially when i would have to sacrifice survivability.
also, i'm playing on easy right now... so maybe things change on harder difficulties.
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without God, death is the only absolute - Jul 6, 2012 7:41 pm GMTWell here's what's happening to me. My first round missiles destroy the enemy fleet. Usually, they have so few missiles that if we're at similar strength, they take maybe 1/4 to 1/2 of my life (if they're big...) I choose healing as my last two choices, and I'm almost completely healed by the end (if not 100%)
- Jul 7, 2012 6:01 am GMTI was using this strategy until my enemy got lasers. If I happen to not get all the ships destroyed in the first round, when lasers become more effective in the second, a few can take down the largest ships.
- Jul 7, 2012 6:15 am GMTFire ze lazers! No seriously tactical combat makes no sense in this game and the whole warfare tech tree is flawed.
- Jul 7, 2012 10:49 am GMTI personally just use beams and shields, i personally advised the developers to make it so that all weapon types require to go through shields, armor to get to the hull....obviously, i was ignored.
- Jul 9, 2012 5:28 pm GMTis armor worth loading on? they just boost hp?
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Why play harder, when you can play smarter. - Jul 9, 2012 8:19 pm GMTCombat is more complicated than what you guys are making it out to be. Just to test the theory I made a fleet of no defense having laser platforms and lo and behold the enemy had ablative armor and killed the crap out of me with far smaller and weaker ships. The whole thing is the age-old rock paper scissors and the only way to tell what kinds of weapons your enemy has is after they kick your butt with them. Then you can attempt to beat them by countering it. The best bet would be to design 3 ships with no defense, missiles, lasers, and guns and fleet them together. You might win, you might lose but you'll definitely get a whole readout as to what worked and what didn't and then you can build the ship that works the best against them. This of course isn't going to allow for them to suddenly field the counter to this new ship so the other two designs may come in handy later. Even if you have inferior ships if you take and flank the enemy in their own territory you can start to cut them off and although they may come around and kick your butt you may find yourself with way more territory, getting stronger, while they get weaker - even though they have the better navy.
- Jul 11, 2012 1:19 pm GMTShogaNinja posted...
Combat is more complicated than what you guys are making it out to be. Just to test the theory I made a fleet of no defense having laser platforms and lo and behold the enemy had ablative armor and killed the crap out of me with far smaller and weaker ships. The whole thing is the age-old rock paper scissors and the only way to tell what kinds of weapons your enemy has is after they kick your butt with them. Then you can attempt to beat them by countering it. The best bet would be to design 3 ships with no defense, missiles, lasers, and guns and fleet them together. You might win, you might lose but you'll definitely get a whole readout as to what worked and what didn't and then you can build the ship that works the best against them. This of course isn't going to allow for them to suddenly field the counter to this new ship so the other two designs may come in handy later. Even if you have inferior ships if you take and flank the enemy in their own territory you can start to cut them off and although they may come around and kick your butt you may find yourself with way more territory, getting stronger, while they get weaker - even though they have the better navy.
This.
It's all rock paper scissors like he says. The real trick is expanding at the right points and controlling resources then funneling enemies into one point, beat them back, take their cities then watch as you expand, they deplete and can't spend the money to upkeep their giant ass armies.
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My You Tube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/Darquan223?feature=mhum - Jul 12, 2012 4:28 am GMTIt all depends on your opponents: Lasers trump ballistics, ballistics trump missiles, and missiles "trump" lasers. The problem, as I see it? Even though the laser tech-tree doesn't have any defense against missiles, the missile/ballistic tree doesn't have any protection against lasers. This means that while missiles should beat out lasers in the classic rock-paper-scissors match, they end up slugging it out on equal footing offensively. Oh, and even the dinky 1st-tier chaff defense has a chance to completely negate all damage done by a missile.
I'm fond of turning colonizers into 3 sets of defensive gun-boats, ditching the colony-starter upgrade and going 3-2 defense-to-offense. It doesn't matter how dinky your guns are if the enemy can't get through your thick hide. It's all for the goal of teching up and hopefully out-producing your opponent.
My usual plan? Send in a cheap scout loaded up on 1st tier ballistics, and engage an enemy fleet in manual combat. *boom* Now you know what they use, and you can mass-produce a fleet of gunboats that take advantage of their chosen weapon-type for defense. - Jul 12, 2012 5:23 pm GMTShogaNinja posted...
Combat is more complicated than what you guys are making it out to be. Just to test the theory I made a fleet of no defense having laser platforms and lo and behold the enemy had ablative armor and killed the crap out of me with far smaller and weaker ships. The whole thing is the age-old rock paper scissors and the only way to tell what kinds of weapons your enemy has is after they kick your butt with them. Then you can attempt to beat them by countering it. The best bet would be to design 3 ships with no defense, missiles, lasers, and guns and fleet them together. You might win, you might lose but you'll definitely get a whole readout as to what worked and what didn't and then you can build the ship that works the best against them. This of course isn't going to allow for them to suddenly field the counter to this new ship so the other two designs may come in handy later. Even if you have inferior ships if you take and flank the enemy in their own territory you can start to cut them off and although they may come around and kick your butt you may find yourself with way more territory, getting stronger, while they get weaker - even though they have the better navy.
That only applies tactically and not strategically. Because of the flawed tech tree, and the way the AI works the paper rock scissors means very little.
Sure you may loose one or two battles if you focus on only missiles, and happen to come up against a fleet that will counter it, but.....
For every battle I loose, I win three, four, five, etc.
You have 33.3% chance of loosing a battle with this tactic..... however it is even less than that because of the AI. Early in the game the AI will 100% (at least in all my games) have ships with only ballistic weapons, a bit later they will change to beam weapons and may have fleets with defenses (this depends on the difficulty level your playing at I think). It is rare for AI (at least in early and mid game) to mix weapons, defenses. They seem to focus on one, or the other.
It is even less than that because of the research. You can get photon torpedoes (level 3 missile weapons) much quicker than all the other weapon and armor techs.
You can easily overwhelm the AI with this tactic early in game, and limit their expansion to the point where they become insignificant technologically, and economically. To the point where paper-rock-scissors becomes insignificant because you are too far ahead of the the AI technologically. - Jul 12, 2012 5:35 pm GMTIt is pretty much as you say, especially early in the game.
A bit later when fleets get bigger, and the AI starts using lasers, investing in minimal defense becomes a bit more meaningful. - Jul 27, 2012 7:32 pm GMTI love the power of missiles, but they seem so useless seeing as they don't hit until after my whole fleet has been gunned down.
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Endless Space
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- Publisher(s): Amplitude Studios
- Genre: Strategy
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- Classification Board: PG
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- PG Rating Description
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