Captain V. J. Dax commander of the destroyer the "Lucky Lucy" is hereby awarded the Medal of Honour for his heroic actions against the Kaek collective home fleet... Twice!. Citation first battle of Jers: Citation second battle of Jers: "To know the bug is to defeat the bug" New Achievement: destroy the Kaek home Fleet with a single destroyer...
You did well kid, I'm not going tp deny you that. I don't know how those Kaek ships were configured, but they were obviously unable to handle Lucy. That said, there are designs that would have easily resulted in Lucy scattered into the ether. P.S. Happy new year.
Thanks! I dont doubt it, I think it was the poor Kaek design they seem to be prone too, even though this well into the game around turn 400 and they were the last survivers on the map, didnt mention it but was playing on 25% research 75% production... I followed it up by doing the same with a frigate after I'd posted ... I tried it twice more with the same result as the "shooting star" +10 assault ships took the kaek home world and ended the game... The Kaek home fleet is random but can include many heavy weapons as well as many missiles, the jump capability combined with the plasma beam is game winning...the tactic is to avoid the firing arcs of the Titan and shoot the enemy in the rear where they have no shields. I think this is the most you can do with a Frigate, max miniaturisation with weapons and systems. Happy New Year
A Frigate hey? There are two things here that would have made a difference. FX firing arcs would have helped the bugs, but they would have needed some good targeting algos to counter the evasion of your ships, that's not how I would have dealt with them though. Photon torpedoes. They hit instantly, and if fired in a swarm, no single FF or DD would last long. While I don't use combat jump, it's not because I don't find value in it, I just like a more "heavy" contest with the AIs. That said, they, (the AIs), do occasionally show up with ships that feature that system. It makes things fun, but I have no issue countering it, actually, it's a bad idea on their part because getting close to my ships is not the healthiest idea.
Suprisingly after 400+ turns the bugs had nothing heavier then tek level 3 weapons... so neutron, fusion and nuclear missiles plus advanced evasion and level VII shields... But this should still have been enough, however they consistantly produced slow ships with poor firing arcs, short range and slow weak missiles... but lots of them, the kaek home fleet designs are randomly generated as well so you dont know what your up against. Last survivor was the Titan but it couldnt manouver fast enough to bring my FF into its firing arc even though by that time I used up the combat jumps and its speed was only slightly better then the TT... The Kaek seem to be very weak on ship design its not the same for every faction... During my current game I was surprised a couple of times though it wan't game changing, the first was during the Second Palacean war... two Nova gifted TTs attack Triobah (recently captured), the defence is one BS and one cruiser: The defenders: both standard fleet ships, the Fenrir class is an assault BS specialising in capturing large enemy ships, so built to be as tough as possible, the Ragnarok is what you might think off as an assault gun with a heavy disrupter and bombs to give long range support, but has no combat jump so cant escape missile attacks, I chose to sacrifice it rather then retreat. The TTs can't use the illusion materialiser as they dont possess the necesary resource, I missed them coming in as my attention was on other more major fleet actions elsewhere, so it was a surprise combat... The Fenrir jumped in behind the two TTs and badly shot one up, but not enough! though it was disabled, so went to a boarding action and luckily captured it with one marine left, but not before both TTs launched their plasma torps at the Ragnarok which next turn would be destroyed by the combined damage from multiple missiles... The surviving TT then inexplicably launches missiles at the disabled captured TT, luckily not doing enough damage to destroy it...Just. I was expecting the barrage to hit my BS but they went straight past... Fenrir then jumps in behind the surviving TT and not having any marines left disables and then destroy it, neither TT had rear shields, a huge error... The second occasion is when one of my destroyers encountered a Cerixx Sentinal fleet of six ships 3 BSs and 3 DSs which then attacked, although able to combat jump and armed with an autofire plasma beam (similar to lucky Lucy) it was not able to inflict enough damage to stop the BSs despite no rear shields, so after a couple of attempts chose to retreat rather then be hit by multiple missiles, next turn a Thor BS intercepted them causing significant damage destoying 1 BS and 2 DSs, the CS retreated and where finally intercpted by the Thor and a couple of destroyers which finished them off... The Thor a regular fleet BS no jump capability: The lesson for the AI for all of these should be build ships with better firing arcs, smaller battary's with HV weapons and Rear Shields! I think with the Kaek TT it would be possible to afford 9HV Neatron beams 270-360arc 3x3, 6 Laser PD CO ND 270-360 2x3, 6 Nuclear missiles Armour Fast Mirv 2x3, Shields III-V all round. level VII is too expensive... at least that would be my choice. The smaller Kaek ships should rely on Fast Mirv Nuclear missiles this would still give them an effective attack and since the Fed destroyer and frigate can only make one attack a turn, so 5+ turns to destroy all ships, they would be targeted by an increasing number of missiles each turn which have the best hit chance for the Kaek... As it is the Kaek TT has 36 fusion guns with low damage hit chance and limited fire arc... the others no better. I think whats needed is a combat sandbox...
It is very difficult in such a complex game, (with so many variables), for the AI to produce good ship designs consistently. The player will always hold an advantage as he/she can specifically look to produce ships that will exploit any weakness of the AI ships. That said, and after reading your own post, I would suggest that you are on the right track. My own designs for example rely on missiles, but there are some qualifiers. First I like fast, eccm, mirv mods, this gives even a nuke some firepower. More importantly though is to have lots of them. By that I don’t mean per ship, but rather that every ship has missiles. That way when a group of my ships is in combat, it is their cumulative missile firepower that is potent. Everything can be concentrated if need be. The AI doesn’t use the fast missile variant enough, and that puts it at a disadvantage against my own designs as my missiles will hit while the AI missiles are still traveling. I understand the lack of a rear shield, though my own designs have 360 degree coverage, it is rare that my rear shield comes into play. As near as I can tell by the way, part of what you are experiencing is on account of the reduced research rates. With those settings the AI is prioritizing defense (why you see class VII shields) and sacrificing offense ( 3rd tier weapons).
Well let me say first that whilst I agree its a complex game research was not really the issue, for a very long time in my current game(and previous one)my own faction was bottom in fact so far down that it was practically non existant and took some 280+ turns for that to change to any degree, mostly because I traded tek with the other factions, in particular the Nova, and took much in battle and chance, but mostly trading. In my current game, the Kaek did somewhat better, and did at the end (before they were annihilated for declaring war) produce some ships with Matter streamers and Gause guns, in cruisers and destroys would you believe... It didn't help them though for the same reasons as before. Defence is only important up to a point, and there needs to be some way to limit the number of essentially low Range often low damage weapons, before their forced to upgrade to better versions at least, which I know they could. eg a BS has the following: The Palaceans have a lot of these and worse, by that I mean nasty if you get closeup face to face... turn 400, roughly equialent to the earlier Thor BS see above. I dont consider it to be a bad ship but it has no arc of fire to speak off and no range, structure armour and speed are good and better then my ships overall (but max structure makes them time expensive to produce), shields all round (it has almost certainly no rear shield for a minor saving) could be say tek 5 taking advantage of miniaturisation saves 35 space twice the saving for no rear shield, reduce the disrupters to 4 HV 270 arc (or even 3) for appox 544 space, loose the PA add 2 more FB PD, this should work... any excess increase the combat speed. For me defensive ships are ones that stand off at range and that means long range weapons... The only way I'd go for this ship at this point in the game is if I had combat jump to get into and out off range quickly or alternatively much faster combat speed, two disrupters would pay for that (leaving 6 2x3 groups) giving it a CBS of 20 or CJ ability. Its obviously a complicated issue but its really to easy to deal with these kind of designs. The question is how do you get them to do it? What I would say is that earlier on in the game the playing field was more level, in fact I was using many of their ships... and they did use multi fast, mirv missiles as well as plasma torps. Just to note this is version 1.5.2
The Battle of Valhalla... The Palacean War. Current Game version 1.5.2 25% Research 75% Production, summary in AARs. "The Good the Bad and the Ugly" Situation: The Entire Nordeim Fleet vs one Palacean Orca. The Nordheim fleet consists of 4 Valkyrei CR and the Demolisher recently aquired, 1 DS and 5 FRs. The primary weapon of the fleet is the Nuclear Missile Fast Mirv. Secondary Neutron Beam HV. All ships have at least one PD Laser Tek level III for shields and weapons. All the the ships have leaders, the cruiser captains have significant bonuses. The Valkyrei Cruiser The Palacean Battleship was unknown at the time But was armed mostly with Polaris missiles fast Mirv. Tek level is known to be level VII for shields, possibly as high as IX for weapons though definatly level VIII, they also most likely had Hyperdrive and Enhanced Targeting. The Orca after the battle, most likely a minimum attack of +187% and +105 defence during the battle. The Orca can destroy any of the Norheim ships with one attack from its Polaris missiles at range, the PD lasers were ineffective at stopping these even when massed. The Orca PD was ineffective as too weak against a mass missile attack. The nuclear missile was obsolete when the ship was built or last refitted. Improvements to the Orca design: As it is it purely defensive at it has no need to close the range for max effect. Its likely Tek level V shields were available so better to use these for 100 point shields, and use the extra space saved for an additional polaris, the 1 nuclear missile is also replace by a polaris. Main weapons is now 3x3 Fast Mirv Polaris, these would easily destroy a single Nordheim cruiser or multiple smaller ships. PD defence needs to be able to stop multiple nuclear missiles so any spare space is spent on boosting this, its likely that speed will need to be reduced in order to accommodate this, but its possible and should result in a pretty good PD missile defence. Reducing speed to 14 will add 5 FB 270 arc CO PDs, to 12 speed adds 10 , as their 9 points each at tek level VIII. Say 5x2 Fusion beam 270 arc CO PDs, I think is possible at combat speed 12. The Battle of Valhalla. Turn 1 Nordheim attacked cautiously first moving to neutron beam range, firing these which proved ineffective and launching all missiles The Orca stood off and lanched its missiles at range targeting Pikes cruiser first. Turn 2 The Nordheim turn 1 missiles hit the Orca causing some damage to the ship and reducing the shields considerably Pikes ship is seriously damaged by the polaris missiles the rest of the fleet closes range and opens fire again. The Orca switches its attack to the Demolisher which in order to survive fires and then retreats. At this point the Orca should have retreated while it was still mobile... Turn 3 Nordheims turn 2 missiles hit the Orca knocking down the forward shield, and do enough damage for the Neutron beams to finally disable the Orca at close range, the remaining three cruisers move in to board and capture the ship. Turn 4 The Orca is captured in a stiff fight using the marines from 2 cruisers. Subsequent refights: At the time Pike barely made it, this turned out to be a lucky circumstance as every other refight I tried while writing the AAR resulted in the destruction of one or more cruisers and the death of at least one main Captain... Also tried the auto combat to see what the results would be and it did very well, making an emmediate agressive attack and destroying the Orca on turn 3... without any loss!. If there had been any support for the Orca I'm pretty certain it would have resulted in significant loss for Nordheim. The Aftermath The survival of the fleet without loss and capture of the Orca likely had a signicant effect on the the following battles, particularly at Riatune where the enemy was attempting to mass and where the Orca (Renamed Palceans Curse) acted a Flagship, allowing the Nordheim to prepare and execute a succesfull capture of Ezron. As a result the Palaceans would no longer be able to threaten Valhalla system, the sourch of ship construction, production and wealth of Nordheim.
