Space Empires IV Gold Game

[brianeyci]

I think those are supposed to be very young star systems, before the planets fully form.

I was wondering if the Ferengi might outdo me at resources, it only seems right. But I get that same +15% to research instead of resources. Also, I'm currently upgrading all my research labs to level 3.

I still don't have my Commerce Authority III built yet. When it is I'll get another system-wide 5% boost to resource production. Your research bonus is intimidating, but I'm on top with research because I've expanded far and wide and am building a lot of research facilities on whatever breathable planet with low bonuses I can find. I finally surpassed Kirk, who has an innate 20% bonus to research anyway. I have 0 percent bonus I think. I don't have Research Lab III yet.

I even have a -5% bonus on combat too, which may be a lot if we get into very large fleets.

Brian

[Dalton]

2402.0, all maps due!

[Nephtys]

Interesting. Entry level dominion guns bite for damage, but have 8 range? Time to break out the invincishields and armor. Your puny class 1 shields will not save you, Guppyshark!

[GuppyShark]

Yeah. I finally teched up to shields in time to stop you F*#@ing boarding me. Hahaha. Not so fond of a fair shooting match, are you, you scrap heaps?

Hrmm. I just censored my own profanity.

Shit, this is fucking SD.NET!

Invincishields and armour? I sense the lame approaching.

[brianeyci]

Man if you're worried about 8 range guns, you'll cum your pants with 17 range torpedoes lol. I was wondering who was winning, I saw Nephtys' ship count go down to 8 all of a sudden.

Invinci-shields and invinci-armor... looks like you need some phased polaron beams hehe.

<edit>First shot is always important, that's why warp point defense is so good, that's why engines are important, and that's why boarding ships don't really work against ships with long range guns -- they die before they can get in range.</edit>

Brian

[Alan Bolte]

Man, I am so far behind in weapons tech now. It's only in this last turn that the large mount of my longer range, slower weapon has been able to penetrate the shields of one of my LC designs, and even that could be completely overcome by sacrificing a little firepower for a second shield generator. Maybe a year from now I'll be able to hit something other than a neutral.

[brianeyci]

Man, I am so far behind in weapons tech now. It's only in this last turn that the large mount of my longer range, slower weapon has been able to penetrate the shields of one of my LC designs, and even that could be completely overcome by sacrificing a little firepower for a second shield generator. Maybe a year from now I'll be able to hit something other than a neutral.

How are you using large mount on anything other than a starbase?

Shields are really weak in this mod compared to stock, rather than 375 shields or so you get only 70 or so and a little regeneration... any powerful weapon should be able to take it down in two hits, phased energy cannons can take it down in 2 hits...

Brian

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I'm not even trying to keep up on weapons and shields right now, nor am I building a war fleet. Fighters are so uber in this mod that nobody's going to be able to wage an effective offensive war yet. It would just be a waste of resources and research that could be spent on colonizing and research gas and ice colonization.

Run some simulations against fighters and see what I mean. Heavy point-defense doesn't save you against them at this point in the game, either. It takes multiple PD shots to take down 1 fighter, but only one shot from a 15-20 fighter group to take down a ship.

[Dalton]

I've discovered the same thing. Fighters are brutally effective if you don't have a lot of point-defense, and I noticed that the neutral empires had built fuckloads of carriers and fighters.

As for a war fleet...nowhere near close. I have a lot of work to do if I want to get out of the hole.

[Trogdor]

Suddenly I'm feeling quite lucky that the Romulans have racial point defense tech...

[brianeyci]

One heavy carrier equipped with purely hangar bay III, and 72 Kingpins.



Total cost around 60k minerals.

Five ships with my current technology level, total cost around 60k minerals.






The fighters lose, every single time despite having more advanced technology, in every combination (5 point defense ships, 2 point defense 3 normal, 5 normal). In larger numbers it would be an even greater slaughter. I lose not a single ship... yes I just did a 25 ships versus 360 Kingpins and they lose.

That's not including the cost of the carrier, which is a little more. Although, you can save a lot of maintainence with units. Force projection will be a problem -- if the carrier is wasted, the fighters are stranded.

I'm trying to capture a neutral's ship to get gas colonization . Plus you need a small war fleet to conquer neutrals.

<edit>I didn't even bother to put in ECM, Combat Sensors, Sensor Arrays. Plus the combat simulator doesn't take into account one important fact -- ship training and fleet training. I'll get another full 40% bonus to offense and defense with fully trained ships. The ships will be able to fire from even further away accurately, while the fighters are stuck with 3 or 2 range, or even 1 range for the rocket pods.</edit>

<edit 2>If they get the first shot though fighters are devestating. Perfect for warp point defense.</edit>

<edit 3>I tried a few more simulations with better fighter designs, smaller fighters, six torpedoes. They managed to eke out my pulse beam ships but the point-defense ships still managed to defeat them at equal cost. Equal cost though won't fly, but I'm confident if I have the right weapons equipped I can defeat large swarms of fighters. That's a big if.</edit>

Brian

[Nephtys]

Yeah. I finally teched up to shields in time to stop you F*#@ing boarding me. Hahaha. Not so fond of a fair shooting match, are you, you scrap heaps?

Hrmm. I just censored my own profanity.

Shit, this is fucking SD.NET!

Invincishields and armour? I sense the lame approaching.

Scuse me? I sent two last-generation ships against your nine and a planet. Taking out five of them was hardly a challenge...

And well. Oh, later on borg shields can basically completely regenerate every turn. Thus, invincible. What do Dominion guns do anyway?

[Nephtys]

Man, I am so far behind in weapons tech now. It's only in this last turn that the large mount of my longer range, slower weapon has been able to penetrate the shields of one of my LC designs, and even that could be completely overcome by sacrificing a little firepower for a second shield generator. Maybe a year from now I'll be able to hit something other than a neutral.

How are you using large mount on anything other than a starbase?

Shields are really weak in this mod compared to stock, rather than 375 shields or so you get only 70 or so and a little regeneration... any powerful weapon should be able to take it down in two hits, phased energy cannons can take it down in 2 hits...

Brian

Well. TWO Races here have literally unsinkable shields when combined with another component available to them... Regeneration is just a bonus.

[brianeyci]

Dominion guns bypass shields at high levels.

You can't be talking about Borg armor are you? If it's not Borg regenerative shields or Borg armor, I don't see how effective they can be. Borg regenerative shields are 50 kT for a measly 10 points regen per turn, Borg armor is just 10 regen a turn.

We'll see I guess .

Brian

[Alan Bolte]

You underestimate the concept of shield regen per hit. With ten armor, which I use on most combat designs, each and every attack has to do thirty damage just to batter down the shields. An additional 14 damage to the armor is negated. The armor components themselves are 60 hp each, which isn't bad. So that's 44 damage subtracted from each and every hit. But, wait, shields also give you shield regen per hit. My current shields give me 5 damage channeled to shields per hit, so that's 44+5*[number of shield generators] damage subtracted from every hit. Of course, once we start fielding weapons that do double damage to shields, or skip shields or armor, this is useless, but that much is obvious.

And the large mount was on weapons platforms in the simulator, IIRC.

[Nephtys]

Dominion guns bypass shields at high levels.

You can't be talking about Borg armor are you? If it's not Borg regenerative shields or Borg armor, I don't see how effective they can be. Borg regenerative shields are 50 kT for a measly 10 points regen per turn, Borg armor is just 10 regen a turn.

We'll see I guess .

Brian

Actually, I'm speaking of Federation ablative armor. In my experience, that stuff stops equivilent level beams cold when combined with shields.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The key to the fighters is shields and armor. My 16 kT fighters can take more abuse than those 40 kT ones. With ~3 times that amount of protection (sacrificing the small warp core and the afterburners), I think you'd see very different results.

In any case, you all might want to take a closer look at the ship and fleet training facilities. They give a small fraction of the bonuses that they do in SE4 stock. Max out at 6% each, rather than 20, I believe.

[GuppyShark]

Scuse me? I sent two last-generation ships against your nine and a planet. Taking out five of them was hardly a challenge...

You sent three and a squad of fighters. And the planet didn't fire.

If it was such a foregone conclusion, maybe you shouldn't have wasted your strength.

Oh, I get it. Your ships were better one-for-one, so you 'won'. Those were my first wave of defence ships. Hence lack of shields, reliance on missile weapons, etc etc.

Now they'll be getting upgrades.

And well. Oh, later on borg shields can basically completely regenerate every turn. Thus, invincible. What do Dominion guns do anyway?

I don't know. This is my first time playing the mod. I'm learning as I go and fully expect to be bent over by something obvious you can't pick up the first time through.

[brianeyci]

Hmmm... looks like you're right, fleet and ship training reeks.

No warp core and no afterburners, and the fighters rock. I have to use maximum range to pick them off, and the problem is the fighters have the speed advantage.

We'll see. I'll have to work on... a new strategy. Heh heh.

Brian

[Nephtys]

Scuse me? I sent two last-generation ships against your nine and a planet. Taking out five of them was hardly a challenge...

You sent three and a squad of fighters. And the planet didn't fire.

If it was such a foregone conclusion, maybe you shouldn't have wasted your strength.

Oh, I get it. Your ships were better one-for-one, so you 'won'. Those were my first wave of defence ships. Hence lack of shields, reliance on missile weapons, etc etc.

Now they'll be getting upgrades.

And well. Oh, later on borg shields can basically completely regenerate every turn. Thus, invincible. What do Dominion guns do anyway?

I don't know. This is my first time playing the mod. I'm learning as I go and fully expect to be bent over by something obvious you can't pick up the first time through.

Read around. Posturing is fun, Gups. And who's to say my fleet strength is 'wasted'? Continue delaying the inevitable!

[Alan Bolte]

Some kind of DNS trouble with PBW. Site's fine though. Use 69.81.92.216 instead.

[brianeyci]

Thanks Bolte was wondering what was wrong.

Anyway, after a lot of thought I can't think of a way to beat fighters, short of using drones or maximum range. Most fighter weapons can't shoot drones. I'll probably end up using a combination of fighters and drones and ships. I might even combine it with missiles.

Any other counter-strategy just doesn't work, point defense is just too weak and every shipboard weapon that shoots at a fighter is one less shipboard weapon that can shoot at a real ship.

Brian

[Nephtys]

Thanks Bolte was wondering what was wrong.

Anyway, after a lot of thought I can't think of a way to beat fighters, short of using drones or maximum range. Most fighter weapons can't shoot drones. I'll probably end up using a combination of fighters and drones and ships. I might even combine it with missiles.

Any other counter-strategy just doesn't work, point defense is just too weak and every shipboard weapon that shoots at a fighter is one less shipboard weapon that can shoot at a real ship.

Brian

One reason I liked this mod. I only played it a little, but stuff was more balanced. Hull research takes forever of course, but there's no one dominating system/tech (Ex. Ship training, PPBs), or too many totally useless ones (fighters, missiles, sats)

[brianeyci]

One reason I liked this mod. I only played it a little, but stuff was more balanced. Hull research takes forever of course, but there's no one dominating system/tech (Ex. Ship training, PPBs), or too many totally useless ones (fighters, missiles, sats)

Yeah, I came into this mod with all the wrong assumptions. I researched shield depleters and found out they're weaker than normal weapons -- they're only useful as prep for boarding. I avoided fighters and missiles, and it seems I'll have to catch up here. I was going to build up a small fleet of 20 or 30 highly trained ships, but since point defense sucks so much I'll have a much more balanced combination. My fighters will be anti-fighter roles, I'll have a few missile boats just to catch the unprepared. I'm probably going to use mines as offensive weapons too -- the Ferengi have special mine warheads that disable shields. I'll have drones too. Most of the high-end weapons can't shoot drones. And, most of the high-end weapons can't shoot planets. I'll need dedicated bombing ships.

<edit>42 move points and 65 armor (lasts three point defense shots per fighter). And you can build 20 of these babies for an equivalent 12k capital ship.



</edit>

Brian

[Dalton]

Jeez, I see all this shit and think, "Man, can't I just blow something up?"