Battling Gratuitously in Space

[warty goblin]

So Gratiutious Space Battles (http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/index.html)just entered pre-orders only beta. For $20 you get early access and the ability to offer insightful commentary to the developer.

The best way I can think of to describe the game is a sort of cross between Galactic Civilizations II's hands-off battles with custom ship designs and the deployment screen of a Total War game. When you start a mission, there's a screen giving a very high level overview of the enemy force (basically where they are and how big they are), and how much money you have.

You spend that money to purchase ships and outfitt them with weapons, armor, engines, etc. There's a bunch of different hulls, each with hardpoints you can install modules into. The hardpoints are either circular or hexagonal. Weapons and some active defenses can only go in hexagonal slots, but engines, shields and so on can go anywhere, so there's some nice decision making about how to cram everything you want onto a hull. Inevitably this is impossible, so you have to use multiple hulls to support each other.

When placing ships on the battlefield, you can give them a variety of orders, such as engagement ranges, overall behavior, targetting priorities between fighters, frigates and cruisers-the game's three classes of ship, and formation orders.

Once you hit the fight button however, your chances to influence the battle are over. This is good as it gives you more time to admire the view, which is fairly spectacular. Laser beams crisscross space, shields collapse, missiles are shot down, enormous explosions rip across capital ships, fighters die in puffs of smoke. Easily the most awesome looking space battles I've seen in a game in a long time. And yes, they are totally gratiutous, particularly if you turn all the effects on.

[Comet]

Man, I've been looking forward to this game for ages. A definite must-get, for me.

[warty goblin]

Man, I've been looking forward to this game for ages. A definite must-get, for me.

I don't really see any reason to wait. The beta is pretty stable in my experience. There were some quirks in the v1.00, like the game crashing if the time was after 7:00PM on August 31st, or the sound was turned on. Apparently these have been fixed now, although I haven't had time/patience to redownload and transfer the files to my internet deprived gaming PC to check.

[Smight]

There is no learning curve here, it's learning wall of doom, how do you deal with fighters nothing seems to work does PD even work on them?

[warty goblin]

There is no learning curve here, it's learning wall of doom, how do you deal with fighters nothing seems to work does PD even work on them?

My understanding (which is quite limited) is that PD only works on missiles/rockets/torpedos. For an anti-fighter ship you want some of the fast firing, fast rotating beam weapons. Defense lasers work well for this. If fighters are bothering you, just load up a frigate with some of these, then mix them in with the rest of your fleet, probably with orders to protect your heavy hitters and targeting priority skewed towards fighters.

The other thing I find counters fighters is armor. Fighters can fly through shields, but some of the heavier armor takes them forever to destroy.

[SmartAlec]

Just downloaded this, and am having good fun with it. It took a few attempts with the regular ships until I hit upon a design philosophy - build battlegroups that function like World of Warcraft raids. There's the tank (big cruiser, heavily defended), the close damage dealers (cruisers with powerful beams, fighters), the long range damage dealers (cruisers and frigates with plasma), the offtanks and crowd controllers (frigates with anti-fighter capability)...

Seems to work so far. We'll see how this philosophy holds up at higher difficulty settings.

[Smight]

Torpedoes are way overpowered, you can finish any mission on any difficulty with torpedo spam.

[warty goblin]

Just downloaded this, and am having good fun with it. It took a few attempts with the regular ships until I hit upon a design philosophy - build battlegroups that function like World of Warcraft raids. There's the tank (big cruiser, heavily defended), the close damage dealers (cruisers with powerful beams, fighters), the long range damage dealers (cruisers and frigates with plasma), the offtanks and crowd controllers (frigates with anti-fighter capability)...

Seems to work so far. We'll see how this philosophy holds up at higher difficulty settings.

I rolled that way for a while, but it turns out to not work longterm. At some point you start to need to be able to drop a ship's shielding very quickly, which boils down to missiles of some variety. The other thing is, once you start using missiles it pays to use more missiles since it means a higher fraction of your shots slip past point defense. You still need beam ships to melt armor, but the missile throwers are quite important.

On the upside this makes for some really awesome looking missile exchanges. I had one last night that went on for about 10 minutes between three of my heavy missile cruisers + backup, and a whole mess of enemy missile ships of various sizes. Most awesome space battle ever, even though I lost- by the skin of my teeth. At the end I had 5% of my fleet left, my enemy had 12%.

[Flickerdart]

The learning curve is very hard, yes, but it seems to boil down to two things:
a) Frigates are worthless and die immediately to both fighters and cruiser fire. Your own fighters are also useless since they waste their time shooting down enemy fighters and die when you can have a cruiser instead doing something useful.
b) Cruisers are awesome and you probably don't want anything else. With 7 weapon hardpoints, you can have awesome long- and short-range firepower, and 10 module slots means sweet shields. Engines, who needs engines? You can have one if you really want, but if you don't, no biggie. You'll dominate small maps anyway, and with crazy range on the cruiser missiles you can handle yourself at long range as well.

[Smight]

The learning curve is very hard, yes, but it seems to boil down to two things:
a) Frigates are worthless and die immediately to both fighters and cruiser fire. Your own fighters are also useless since they waste their time shooting down enemy fighters and die when you can have a cruiser instead doing something useful.
b) Cruisers are awesome and you probably don't want anything else. With 7 weapon hardpoints, you can have awesome long- and short-range firepower, and 10 module slots means sweet shields. Engines, who needs engines? You can have one if you really want, but if you don't, no biggie. You'll dominate small maps anyway, and with crazy range on the cruiser missiles you can handle yourself at long range as well.


True, hopefully they will add more balance, LOT more balance.

[SmartAlec]

I've had a little success in using frigates with torpedoes in formation some distance behind cruisers, and set to target enemy cruisers - almost as if the cruiser is 'towing' the frigates behind it. If the enemy want to attack them, they have to come into close range with the cruiser first.

[warty goblin]

Yeah, the engineless ship thing is a problem. As is the bit where plasma apparently is an all conquering world destroyer. As is the fact that you can deploy all your ships in a single stack for maximal firepower.

Reading the official forums seems to indicate that the developer is aware of these things, and he's taking steps to address them. Exploding power plants have been mentioned...

I don't see why anybody would do these things though. They're simply not as much awesome as a massive battle that leaves half of space filled with burning debris.

[Flickerdart]

Missile cruisers are evidently the full spellcaster of GSB, and fighters are, well, Fighters.

[Oslecamo]

D&D 3.X still inspirates the market, even in futuristic no-control space battle games!:smallbiggrin:

Anyway, I'm too cheap to buy this, but I must say it sounds awesome.:smallsmile:

[warty goblin]

D&D 3.X still inspirates the market, even in futuristic no-control space battle games!:smallbiggrin:

Anyway, I'm too cheap to buy this, but I must say it sounds awesome.:smallsmile:

Buy it. I played a game last night that generated the most intense space battle I do believe I've ever seen, culminating in a fifteen minute missile duel and the eventual destruction of my forces. Still, totally awesome and the most fun I've had losing in quite some time.

[Flickerdart]

Bwahaha, this was hilarious.

I was hopelessly outnumbered by the Rebel forces. On purpose, because winning every battle with 80% fleet remaining (my Cruisers don't usually die, and tactical Frigates that have good shields sometimes survive as well) is boring. They had two cruisers for every one of mine, a sea of frigates and something like 6 platoons of fighter craft.

Result? 40%:21%, my victory. 36,000 Honour gained. I bought every single remaining Fleet HQ upgrade in one fell swoop and still had some left over.

[Tavar]

Frigates are way to vulnerable, but I'm not sure I agree with you about the usefullness of fighters/bombers. So far, I've completed the second mission on all three difficulties using a only fighters and bombers, and I've done several missions where Fighters/bombers have racked up the majority of my kills.

Oh, and can you explain why Plasma weapons are so good? They seem rather weak to me, but maybe I'm just using them wrong.

[warty goblin]

I get a very WWI dreadnaught battle feel to the whole thing, with cruisers standing in for the dreadnaughts. The frigates are essentially screening and supporting elements, and correct use of them is important*, but at the end of the day it's the big boys who do the heavy lifting. I find fighters irrelevant, which I absolutely love. Watching little things flutter about like gnats simply lacks the majesty of a long missile duel between cruisers, with space full of contrials and point defense lasers tracking their targets.


*Another similarity: Putting torpedoes on frigates is quite useful and allows for them to do meaningful, albeit not huge, damage. Disruptor bombs are another nasty surprise.

[Starbuck_II]

Frigates are way to vulnerable, but I'm not sure I agree with you about the usefullness of fighters/bombers. So far, I've completed the second mission on all three difficulties using a only fighters and bombers, and I've done several missions where Fighters/bombers have racked up the majority of my kills.

Oh, and can you explain why Plasma weapons are so good? They seem rather weak to me, but maybe I'm just using them wrong.

Some said: Plasma is good at doing damage to shields and regenerating hull. Doesn't tend to be very accurate so this can take a while.

[Tavar]

You obviously haven't had the joy of watching ~11 missile armed bombers swoop in on a lumbering Cruiser and ripple their shots, taking down the cruiser in one hit. And then moving on to the next one.

I use Frigates in pretty much the same way, though. Right now, for instance, I have a mixed point-defense/anti-fighter frigate(with the anti fighter missiles), with some fast firing missile launchers for their offensive punch. Which reminds me, is their any real difference between the anti-fighter rockets and the fast-firing pulse lazers? Or between torpedoes and missiles?

[warty goblin]

You obviously haven't had the joy of watching ~11 missile armed bombers swoop in on a lumbering Cruiser and ripple their shots, taking down the cruiser in one hit. And then moving on to the next one.

Glad somebody enjoys fighters. I personally wish people would stop insisting on putting the stupid little bastards in my space games and instead would just give me various sorts of excessively large ships to blow stuff up with.

Although I will admit to having paroxisms of joy when I observed a fighter get hit with a target painter, then blown out of the sky by a volley of fast missiles.



I use Frigates in pretty much the same way, though. Right now, for instance, I have a mixed point-defense/anti-fighter frigate(with the anti fighter missiles), with some fast firing missile launchers for their offensive punch. Which reminds me, is their any real difference between the anti-fighter rockets and the fast-firing pulse lazers? Or between torpedoes and missiles?

I don't have the numbers in my head, but it's likely that there are some range differences between the lasers and missiles. I've never really seen it happen, but I assume that fighters can shoot down missiles as well. As for missiles, torpedos and rockets, my understanding is that torpedos are long range, slow moving high damage, missiles are medium range slow to fastish speed and medium to high damage (depending on type- megatons do gobs more damage than fast, but are, well, less fast), and rockets are very fast and high damage, but have crappy range.

I've had some luck experimenting with a sort of knife fight cruiser kitted out with rockets. The one problem I had was that rockets don't deploy decoys, and thus a few defensive frigates could really stonewall my offensive.

[Tavar]

How did you make sure that they got within range? All my attempts at close range frigates get blown up long before they can get more than maybe one volly off.

Edit: And how do you have rockets on a Frigate? From what I can see those are only Fighter weapons.

Also, I will admit it's annoying when my Cruisers seem to ignore the massive battle line of the enemy in favor of going after some fighters is really annoying. I think the targeting priorities need a bit of work.

[warty goblin]

How did you make sure that they got within range? All my attempts at close range frigates get blown up long before they can get more than maybe one volly off.

That's why I put rockets on cruisers. Torpedos work well for frigates because they've got disturbingly long range. Grouping them with a cruiser armed with fast missiles isn't a bad move either, as the insane number of munitions a fast missile cruiser can put out means the higher damage torps have a better chance of breaking through point defense.

One deployment I'm still experimenting with in my 'spare time' (note: this doesn't exist) is an all frigate formation. So far I've had limited success on some of the earlier missions.


Edit: And how do you have rockets on a Frigate? From what I can see those are only Fighter weapons. I'm pretty sure there's a frigate rocket launcher. I know there's a cruiser rocket launcher.



Also, I will admit it's annoying when my Cruisers seem to ignore the massive battle line of the enemy in favor of going after some fighters is really annoying. I think the targeting priorities need a bit of work.

Indeed. Apparently this has been fixed after v1.4

[AgentPaper]

Anyone have a video of one of these epic battles you're going on about? It'd probably go a long ways towards getting people to buy the game. :smallwink:

[warty goblin]

Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IReSRWCiEn0&feature=related) is your friend.

Note that some of that footage is apparently from much earlier in the game's development. Ships no longer flash red when taking damage, and the interface has changed quite a bit. Also I think the explosions have gotten better, but that might be because I tend to watch them all from the maximum zoom level, which makes them appear as gratuitous as possible.

[AgentPaper]

Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IReSRWCiEn0&feature=related) is your friend.

Note that some of that footage is apparently from much earlier in the game's development. Ships no longer flash red when taking damage, and the interface has changed quite a bit. Also I think the explosions have gotten better, but that might be because I tend to watch them all from the maximum zoom level, which makes them appear as gratuitous as possible.

I've seen those, but they're all always up close, and keep skipping to different battles so you can't really get a feel for how the game really looks. What I want to see is a "normal" battle playing out, from start to end if possible, showing as much of the action as possible.

[warty goblin]

I've seen those, but they're all always up close, and keep skipping to different battles so you can't really get a feel for how the game really looks. What I want to see is a "normal" battle playing out, from start to end if possible, showing as much of the action as possible.

I'll see what I can do about rectifying that situation tonight. This is dependant on me actually having time to
a) play a game.

b) figure out how Fraps works in order to record said game

c) figure out how to upload something to YouTube.

[AgentPaper]

I'll see what I can do about rectifying that situation tonight. This is dependant on me actually having time to
a) play a game.

b) figure out how Fraps works in order to record said game

c) figure out how to upload something to YouTube.

That would be awesome indeed.

Hmm, can you play this game against other people? I wonder if you could use it as part of some sort of space-empires system, to resolve battles? Hmm...

[warty goblin]

That would be awesome indeed.

Hmm, can you play this game against other people? I wonder if you could use it as part of some sort of space-empires system, to resolve battles? Hmm...

My understanding is that you can create a fleet and deployment, then upload it for other people to try to defeat. I believe this to be called the 'challenge' system. It's been described as PBEM without the email part. I'm not sure of the details however, because as previously noted, my gaming PC lacks internet.

[Lycan 01]

So when this game comes out, will it be available in stores, or will buying online be your only option? :smallconfused:

This game reminds me a lot of Homeworld 2 and Sword of the Stars. They took the epic space combat from Homeworld 2 and mixed in the customization of SotS. Awesome... :smallamused:

Mental note: dig Sword of the Stars out of my game pile when I go home tommorrow. I seriously want to play that now...



(Off topic, but would anybody happen to know how to get Homeworld 2 to work on Windows Vista? I tried a bunch of ideas most websites offered, but nothing worked... :smallannoyed:)

[warty goblin]

So when this game comes out, will it be available in stores, or will buying online be your only option? :smallconfused:

I'm guessing online only, given that it is literally developed by one guy.


This game reminds me a lot of Homeworld 2 and Sword of the Stars. They took the epic space combat from Homeworld 2 and mixed in the customization of SotS. Awesome... :smallamused:
The important exception is that your role is entirely high level strategy (what ships to build, where they go) and tactics (what their standing orders are). Once you hit the 'fight' button, you are no longer have any input on the outcome. All the more time to sit back and watch the fireworks:smallbiggrin:

If you get the game, don't go in expecting a clickifest RTS ala Star Wars: Empire at War, despite some overall similarities in appearance. There's also no strategic layer, which is, in some way, unfortunate. A strategic layer could add a lot to the game. On the other hand, with a one man team, I can't fault him for sticking with what he wanted to make, a game of gratiutious lasers.

[AgentPaper]

I'm guessing online only, given that it is literally developed by one guy.


The important exception is that your role is entirely high level strategy (what ships to build, where they go) and tactics (what their standing orders are). Once you hit the 'fight' button, you are no longer have any input on the outcome. All the more time to sit back and watch the fireworks:smallbiggrin:

If you get the game, don't go in expecting a clickifest RTS ala Star Wars: Empire at War, despite some overall similarities in appearance. There's also no strategic layer, which is, in some way, unfortunate. A strategic layer could add a lot to the game. On the other hand, with a one man team, I can't fault him for sticking with what he wanted to make, a game of gratiutious lasers.

As for the strategy component, I wonder if anyone would be interested in some sort of homebrewed strategy game that mostly just uses this game as a way to handle space battles? For example, we figure out resource costs for various ships/armors/weapons, figure out a way to represent colonization and create some sort of star map, and then play a sort of simplified Space Empires type game, sending our fleet compositions to a game master, who plays the battle out and records the whole thing, figures out the outcome, etc.

[Copper8642]

That is such a good idea.

[Tavar]

Sounds cool to me.

Hey, is the Free version of FRAPS any good? And how long does it record for?

[AgentPaper]

Awesome, I'm glad people like the idea. Unfortunately, though I'd love to start figuring it out right away, I can't buy the game for a little bit, so it'll be a while before I can start putting numbers to the system. Ah well.

[Tavar]

Well, to make your job easier, all components already have price tags attached to them, as thats part of how the game regulates the number of ships you can have(the other way is by limiting the number of pilots, with Frigates and Crusiers taking one each and Fighters/bombers taking 16 per squadron).

[AgentPaper]

One pilot to crew a huge-arse cruiser? :smallconfused: :smallyuk: There should be at least something like one person per gun. There's no way one person could pilot that whole thing.

[Tavar]

One pilot to crew a huge-arse cruiser? :smallconfused: :smallyuk: There should be at least something like one person per gun. There's no way one person could pilot that whole thing.

You misunderstood. There is one pilot per ship, but the pilot isn't the entire crew. It's more of a way to limit the number of ships you can take into battle than anything else. It's important to know both Frigate and Crusier components often require a number of crewman to operate, so only fighters are one man craft.

[AgentPaper]

That makes a bit more sense. Are the crewmen tracked also? And is each pilot an actual person, that can improve in skill and experience and maybe even have a name? Or is it just "You are using 12/25 pilots in this mission" like food in most RTSs?

[Starbuck_II]

I'll see what I can do about rectifying that situation tonight. This is dependant on me actually having time to
a) play a game.

b) figure out how Fraps works in order to record said game

c) figure out how to upload something to YouTube.

Yes, please. I'd love to see a full actual battle.

[warty goblin]

That makes a bit more sense. Are the crewmen tracked also? And is each pilot an actual person, that can improve in skill and experience and maybe even have a name? Or is it just "You are using 12/25 pilots in this mission" like food in most RTSs?

Crewmen are tracked by certain modules requiring so many crew to operate. You then need to slot crew quarters onto the ship in order to provide for them. Frigates might have forty or fifty crew, I think I've gotten cruisers with crews of four hundred or more.

Think of the pilots as being more along the lines of Captains and then it makes sense. They aren't tracked individually, or even mission to mission. Given the rather obscene casualty lists one takes, this is probably a good thing. Plus it really wouldn't make sense from the scale of the game, I mean even the first mission I'm throwing easily 20-30 hulls down not counting fighters, and it just goes from there. Assigning pilots would be a horrible, demeaning experience not befitting a space admiral at all.


The one thing that is tracked from mission to mission is honor. You get a set amount of cash at the beginning of a mission to buy ships with. How much a ship costs is determined by the hull and what stuff you put on it. You earn Honor based, IIRC on the difference between how much you could spend and how much you spent. So win with a cheap fleet, get lots of honor. You can then spend honor to unlock better stuff. You can replay missions, but only get additional honor for them if you new score is better than your old, and then only by that amount.

Also, I highly encourage anybody considering getting the game to read the manual (http://www.cliffski.com/). Besides listing most of the game's features more effectively than I can, it's also flipping hilarious.

Another thing, in this game ships will automatically name themselves. My favorite: Behold My Tentacles. First time I saw that it was on an enemy fighter squadron, and I only got a brief look at it, causing me to mistake the n for an s. I fell out of my chair laughing. Then I realized my mistake, and fell out of my chair all over again.

Edit: Can't link directly to the manual. There's a link in the post at the bottom of the page as I'm writing this. That'll likely move though as the blog updates.

[Starbuck_II]

Why can't you link here: http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/media/GSB%20Manual.pdf

[warty goblin]

Why can't you link here: http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/media/GSB%20Manual.pdf

Because for some reason, I couldn't find it. Thank you for locating the exact link.

[AgentPaper]

Hmm, so the resources in the game seems to be made up of Ships, Money, Pilots, and maybe Crew. With that in mind, I think I'll start on the actual system for playing a game.

The basic idea is that each planet has some amount of "points", which can be allocated towards different areas to produce different things. So far I have:

Growth: Points in here increase the rate at which the planet produces more points to put into other things. Some things will modify this, for example if the planet is too cold for your people, you'll get some sort of penalty, and if the planet is just gorgeous to look at, that'll give you a bonus.

Industry: Points in here affect how long it takes the planet to produce ships, and larger ships require a certain amount of industry to produce.

Production: Points in here increase the rate at which you get money to spend on ships.

Military Academies: Points in this increase the amount of pilots trained.

Reasearch: Points here increase the rate at which gain new modules to use.


Each planet you own would have it's own maxiumum point allocation, mostly based on size, but maybe other things as well. Different sized colony ships each take a certain amount of "points" from the planet they launch from, and then place them on the planet they go to. For example, you might take 10 points from your starting planet and start a colony on a different planet, which has a maximum value of 200 or whatever.

[Tavar]

Looks good, but I would hesitate about using crew as a resource, as that's really not how it functions in game.

Hey, has anyone else tried just relegating their missile ships to Frigates? I just started to do it, and it seems to be a better use of your money. Anyone found any real flaws with this strategy?

Oh, and my username is Tavar for the purposes of challenges.

[AgentPaper]

Heh, I forgot to ask if Crew were limited in a similar way to Pilots, but it seems not, so they're not going to be a resource. So, pilots, money, and the ships themselves are the primary resources, with research and planet points as a sort of secondary resource that isn't directly influenced in the game.

[Tavar]

Sounds about right.

[AgentPaper]

Hmm, what about turn rates? I'm thinking a month per turn. Other than that, what should the the method of FTL travel? It should end up with large fleets battling in the depths of space, but there's still a lot of options available. Warp points ala Space Empires would work, perhaps with the caveat that the distortions of the warp point itself make it impossible to block one off like you can in SE.

Then we just have to figure out how long things should take. Cruisers should only be able to be produced by the largest and most industry-focused planets, and should take multiple months even then, while fighters can be produced almost anywhere, as long as you have enough pilots. Frigates can probably be produced on any planet that's reasonably developed, but not new colonies and such.

As well, I'm thinking of incorporating supply lines and trade into this, but I'm not sure how. I'll wait on figuring out more details and perhaps actually getting the game before that.

[Flickerdart]

"First Time I Ever Saw Your Race" is my personal favourite ship name.

Am I the only one that thinks this should be ported to PSP/DS/iPhone? Setting up fleets is tedious. Do it on the go, plug the file into the PC game when you get home and watch the fireworks.

[Tavar]

Have you ever played Sins of a Solar empire? It has warp points, but it's pretty much impossible to block them off because ships can enter the system at any point on a rather large arc(within 30 degrees of the actual warp point). I think that should suffice for what we want.

Do you mean that 1 month in game= 1 turn? Or that we should take a month to do each turn? I agree that the former sounds good, but the latter seems a bit long to me. Assuming you meant the former, I agree about your build times.

Any ideas on how to make a star chart besides something like paint? Maybe google doc could work...

[AgentPaper]

Yes, 1 month in-game = 1 turn, which seems both standard and reasonable. How often those turns go just depends on how quickly they can be resolved.

As for star charts and such, I don't know if we need a really detailed one, but I'll probably just make a simple drawing of each system using gimp or somesuch. I think I'll make it so that traveling any distance in a system is free, but always takes one turn. Other than that, actual ship speed only affects how fast you move in combat, and perhaps how fast you can move system to system, but more likely that's just going to be a set amount for each fleet, most likely just a flat one move. So you can move to guard a warp point, or you can move through a warp point and then be on the other side of that warp point when the next turn starts. Then, on the next turn, you can move to attack one of the planets, and so on. Each system will be made up of however many planets, asteroid belts, a star (at least usually) and of course one or more warp points.

As well as a maximum population total, I think I'll be making a maxiumum resource total, which is just how many of your points you can put into Production. A planet for example might have a maxiumum of 500 points, of which 100 can be put into resource production, while an asteroid belt might have a maximum of 100 points, of which 50 can be put into resource production. These numbers are just wild estimates, but you get the idea. I'm also thinking of having modifiers, which make various point expenditures give more or less depending on the planet. For example that asteroid belt might have a +100% modifier to resource production, and a 50% reduction on growth, making it an important source of resources but harder to maintain.

Different government types or racial traits, if I decide to include them, might also provide such modifiers, and perhaps influence what technology you start with, but that's not something I want to figure out quite yet. :smallwink:


Edit: Oh, and I would imagine actual turn taking would be simultaneous. Everyone sends in their orders to some central GM figure, who figures out what happens and informs everyone of the battles that take place. You can, for example, have a fleet of ships stationed near a warp point, with orders to attack anything that comes through, or to stay on the other side and retreat if someone comes towards them, or you could say that your fleet is going to try to intercept another fleet if it moves from the warp point, but otherwise stay where it is, etc etc.

While this makes turns a little bit more confusing to figure out, and more work for the GM, it should help a ton to make any game go much faster, as you don't have to wait a week for everyone else to do their turn, send it to the next guy, upload, send it on, figure out who has it now and why they haven't sent it on, wonder why you haven't seen the game in a month, and other such problems that will just kill interest in a game.

[Somebloke]

Succumbing...to...viral...marketing...

Must...download....immediately!

[Lycan 01]

AgentPaper, I think you're creating my dream RPG. Would this game be done on this forum via pbp? If so, sign me up. :smallbiggrin:

Fighters should be developed at about X per month, with X determined by how well developed the production facilities on said planet are. Frigates should take about a month or so, as long as the facilities are reasonably developed. And yes, Cruisers should take several months, and only at high advanced facilities.

So... fresh colonies could start producing fighters quickly, and after they're been developed further by a few months they could start making frigates. Eventually, they could move on to cruisers...


I do like the idea of a GM of sorts keeping tabs on everything. He could also help to fairly judge and decide the outcome of massive space battles. Speaking of which, how will those be determined? Opposing dice rolls? Point total comparison? (Ex: Fighters are .25 points, frigates 1 point, Cruisers 10 points. Team A has 20 fighters, 5 frigates, and 1 cruiser. Team B has 30 fighters and 10 frigates. Team A has 20 Points, and Team B has 17.5 points. Team A manages to win, but not easily...) Or GM's whim? :smallconfused:

[Tavar]

I do like the idea of a GM of sorts keeping tabs on everything. He could also help to fairly judge and decide the outcome of massive space battles. Speaking of which, how will those be determined? Opposing dice rolls? Point total comparison? (Ex: Fighters are .25 points, frigates 1 point, Cruisers 10 points. Team A has 20 fighters, 5 frigates, and 1 cruiser. Team B has 30 fighters and 10 frigates. Team A has 20 Points, and Team B has 17.5 points. Team A manages to win, but not easily...) Or GM's whim? :smallconfused:

The Diplomacy style GM is a good idea. As to how the battles should play out, at this point the Attacker should Challenge the Defender, and then we let the game engine decide the winner.

[AgentPaper]

The Diplomacy style GM is a good idea. As to how the battles should play out, at this point the Attacker should Challenge the Defender, and then we let the game engine decide the winner.

Exactly. The cornerstone of this whole idea is that all of the space battles are resolved by the game itself. :smallwink: Hopefully you can save and send replays and such. At the least, it seems the game already has a way of seeing how many attempts a player has made against your challenge, so it'll be easy to know if someone's trying to beat their opponent unfairly by just playing it again and again until they win.

[Tavar]

Currently there isn't a way to either save or send replays, unfortunately. Granted, this is the Beta, so that could conceivably change, but at the moment I doubt it. If we had access to decent game recording software, this might not be a problem.

A bigger problem is that you can't really see what compositions beat your challenge, so we might end up having to rely on the honor system.

[Flickerdart]

You have to remember, though, that the carnage of a Gratuitous Space Battle is enormous: even the winning side will practically have crippled itself.

[warty goblin]

You have to remember, though, that the carnage of a Gratuitous Space Battle is enormous: even the winning side will practically have crippled itself.

That depends. The battle I just fought I lost literally two frigates to my enemy's entire armada. Empire ships it turns out pop like grapes under sufficient missiles. Once you get through the shields, they just don't have the armor to stand up to the finishing hammer of multiple Cruiser Beam Lasers.

To people who say frigates are useless, I'm becoming increasingly enamored of taking a frigate hull and pasting three torpedo launchers on it. If you use a hull with a fourth weapon slot, stick something defensive in there. If not' that's OK too. Slap on some shields, some armor and some sort of engine, then put a line of them behind your cruiser meatshields with cooperative orders. They simply murder shields.

[Copper8642]

I do like the campaign idea, but I think that should be after the beta is over and the game is out. So I'll just talk about the awesome game we currently have! :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, and I've even got use out of fighters. Get a frigate with Point Defense and Anti-Fighter Missiles, give it an escort of Fighters with high engines, armor, power, and Pulse Lasers, and have them hunt enemy fighters. They win. Then, if the swarm of fighters survived, they tend to jump into the ongoing battle at just the right moment, turning it to my favor.

Likewise, the Empire is both weak to missiles, and seems to be pretty slow (only fought them once so far). The mission I faced them on they are split into two distinct groups as opposed to the usual two. Added with their slow speed, deploy your entire fleet on the top or bottom, and you can wreck them one at a time.

My basic units are the fighter/frigate teams I mentioned, a Cruiser with a mixed bag of weaponry, each with a frigate escort with pulse weapons and Point Defense. Then I have missile frigates in the back with a mixture of missiles and ECM missiles, though I may switch the fast missiles to torpedoes at the suggestion I saw earlier.

[Tavar]

Same here, as I mentioned previously, I've yet to find any real problem with the strategy. Plus, it's cheaper than missile cruisers.

[AgentPaper]

My current plan is to mull over the general points of the system until I get my hands on a pre-order, then I'll hash out some numbers and start testing it, and hopefully it'll be ready for an actual game to start some time around when the game is released.

[Copper8642]

Has anybody noticed any major differences in the races once unlocked? I've noticed they're different to play against, but I've just unlocked the first other race and don't notice much.

[Tavar]

Each gives different bonuses on hulls, plus their hardpoint/standard slot distribution is different.

[warty goblin]

I am absolutely dominating with line of battle consisting of some very durable missile heavy cruisers, each supported by two frigates with lots of fast tracking beam weapons for defense. Behind them I usually put some slightly less well protected cruisers armed with the hull fusingest beams I can lay my hands on, usually set to vulture. Finally comes the lines of torpedo frigates in a long line set to cooperative. This last battle I splashed in a new cruiser armed entirely with cruiser missiles. No beam weapons or anything, just missiles. I sprinkled them throughout the line here and there as long range fire support with their max range set out to a thousand.

I beat an empire fleet into the ground, something like 89% to 6%, followed by a Rebellion armada 80 to 30. Interestingly my losses are fairly evenly divided between cruisers and frigates. Maybe a bit towards the later, but not heavily skewed at all.

[Tavar]

Any particular reason you're putting the missile units out in front? Considering that their range is usually better, I would think that you've put them in back, with less defense and use the beam-equipped ships as your heavy front line.

[warty goblin]

Any particular reason you're putting the missile units out in front? Considering that their range is usually better, I would think that you've put them in back, with less defense and use the beam-equipped ships as your heavy front line.

Missiles have better shield penetration than beams, and beams have better armor penetration than missiles. There's no need to expose the beam vessals to damage until the enemy's shields are down. They also provide an additional layer of (innaccurate) fighter defenses behind my screening line of frigates.

Besides I find it easier to make a really tough missile ship than an equally tough beam ship without comprimising the later's offensive powers. Beams are such power hogs I end up turning all of the space I'd use for armor/shields into power generators.

[Tavar]

Good point. So far, it seems to work pretty well.

Also, has anyone else tries this strategy: to make it so the enemy won't just concentrate on one part of your force, have create a purely defensive ship, full of PD, Defense lasers, shields and armor, plus and engine(otherwise, it feels like your cheating). Put 2 or 3 at one end of the map and the enemy ships will go attack them instead of concentrating thier power on your offensive ships.

Oh, also, best ship name ever is currently Fruit Fly of my Loins.:smallbiggrin:

[Tavar]

Right now I seem to be having a lot of luck with Heavy Rocket Cruisers as my front-line unit with some anti-fighter and pd to draw the fire, an unshielded, relatively lightly armored Beam cruiser to hit them when their shields are down, and lightly shielded and armored missile cruiser to help pound their shields down. They're supported by a torpedoe frigate(light armor, no shields) and a anti-fighter frigate(no shields, heavy armor, anti-fighter missiles, some pd). I also usually have 2 squadrons of fighters in escort mode. So far, seems pretty solid.

[Flickerdart]

It's a shame pilots are so limited in most missions. I've always wanted to see what 6-7 fighter squadrons could do to an enemy cruiser.

[warty goblin]

Good point. So far, it seems to work pretty well.

That's what I found. I'm still trying to figure the optimum loadout for my beam cruisers. I think I'll have to bumb their 'attack cruiser' order, and probably lower their max engagement range. As it is, they have a disturbing tendance to sit far back and plonk away with only their forward battery.


Also, has anyone else tries this strategy: to make it so the enemy won't just concentrate on one part of your force, have create a purely defensive ship, full of PD, Defense lasers, shields and armor, plus and engine(otherwise, it feels like your cheating). Put 2 or 3 at one end of the map and the enemy ships will go attack them instead of concentrating thier power on your offensive ships.
I honestly haven't. I tend to match my enemy's task forces one for one e.g. if they have their fleet divided into two portions, I do likewise. I did win one massive victory arraying my entire fleet into a line, although I lost a cruiser formation on the end when the ships next farthest down attacked the center formation instead of the top formation. Ah well.



Oh, also, best ship name ever is currently Fruit Fly of my Loins.:smallbiggrin:
Totally, completely, awesome.

[Tavar]

It's a shame pilots are so limited in most missions. I've always wanted to see what 6-7 fighter squadrons could do to an enemy cruiser.

Try the moded map found here (http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2758)
It has a pilot limit of 1500 and a credit limit of 400,000. Really makes you realize just how great this game is when you can run that map with no lag, even at 4x speeds.


That's what I found. I'm still trying to figure the optimum loadout for my beam cruisers. I think I'll have to bumb their 'attack cruiser' order, and probably lower their max engagement range. As it is, they have a disturbing tendance to sit far back and plonk away with only their forward battery.
I've found that varying the weapons one uses can be helpful. Put the short ranged beams up at the front of the ship, and the longer ones at the back. Also, since I usually like to have at least one Pd on a cruiser, put that one at either the very top or the very bottom so that the range difference between your weapons isn't too bad.

I honestly haven't. I tend to match my enemy's task forces one for one e.g. if they have their fleet divided into two portions, I do likewise. I did win one massive victory arraying my entire fleet into a line, although I lost a cruiser formation on the end when the ships next farthest down attacked the center formation instead of the top formation. Ah well.
Yeah, pretty soon after posting that I horribly lost a battle because my main force turned and went to the aid of the blocker force, allowing the enemy to bypass my front line units and hit the weak units to the rear. Doh!

[Tavar]

New mission!
How do like the Suvival mission? What's your best score?

I like it so far, it seems to favor more balanced designs, in terms of both weapons and modules. So far, my top score is in the low 50000.

[warty goblin]

New mission!
How do like the Suvival mission? What's your best score?

I like it so far, it seems to favor more balanced designs, in terms of both weapons and modules. So far, my top score is in the low 50000.

Arg!!! From hell's heart the death of my gaming PC continues to smite me! Not that I've had much time that I COULD have gamed in, but I've had some...

[Smight]

Kobayashi maru,
I can only get to 30 000.:smallannoyed:

[chiasaur11]

Kobayashi maru,
I can only get to 30 000.:smallannoyed:

Did you try calling yourself James T. Kirk?

[Smight]

Did you try calling yourself James T. Kirk?

That would be cheating.

[Tavar]

What's your fleet made up of?

I've had trouble breaking 40000 as well: 2 out of 7 attempts or so. What's really maddening is that someone actually made it to 100000!

[Tavar]

Okay, huge update! Space anaolilies now actually change things. For instance, one makes sheild useless, and others prevent you from using certain classes of ships. It's actually really fun to build the fleets for these.

Also, some one's added a dreadnought hull to the game. You can find it here (http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3123), and it's pretty fun to use.

Discussing the game itself, anyone else using EMC beams? I just tried them out recently, and frankly, their ridiculous. With only one per ship I don't really have to worry about missiles anymore.

[AgentPaper]

I'm having a lot of success with fighters, namely ones equipped with a single rocket pod and a single level 1 engine. They're cheap, fast, and will absolutely slaughter anything but shielded cruisers. Frigates still do a better job of killing fighters (with anti-fighter rockets) but if there aren't many enemy fighters, your rocket fighters should be able to take care of them once they've finished completely wiping out the enemy frigates.

I've also had a lot of success with frigates, armed with torpedoes, and then lined up en masse behind a couple defensive beam frigates. The beam frigates have powerful shields, and are covered by anti-fighter and/or point defense frigates as the enemy layout dictates. The enemy will often be completely blocked by the beam ship, and the ship itself does a good job of wiping out frigates and shield-deprived cruisers, while the massive amounts of torpedoes make enemy shields break like eggshells.

Really, the cruisers are only really useful as support and defensive ships, because you can get more regenerating shields on them than frigates, which will buckle under sustained fire no matter how tough you try to make them. There's also a few components that don't have a frigate version for whatever reason, namely marker beams. A missile cruiser, with multi-warhead launchers and markers, makes a great second line support ship to help the torpedoes, which are your real killers, get through.

Back on fighters for a bit, one thing I've found out is that the best thing you can keep in mind while building them is to always try to look for what you can remove, and not what you can add. The same is also true for frigates, and somewhat for cruisers, but it's really critical on fighters, because even a little bit of weight will just kill their speed, and make them sitting ducks. Larger engines will often actually slow your ship down because of their weight, despite their higher thrust. (unless you have a lot of other weight, for example a torpedo launcher)

As well, the beam and pulse weapons are practically useless, because they take up a lot of power and usually require you to put in a power plant to make them work, which is ridiculously heavy and will kill your speed. This is why the rocket launcher is so good, because it's very light and takes little power, which means you don't need a heavy power generator, and your speed stays high.

A hawk fighter with a single rocket launcher and a level 1 engine only costs 56 resources and has a speed of 3.5, which makes it almost untouchable to enemy forces. The only problem with the rocket launcher is that it doesn't have the penetration or damage to get through the heavy shields of a cruiser, which is why the torpedo launcher is useful despite it's massive weight. A Phoenix fighter (from the Rebel race, the only one I've unlocked so far) outfitted the same way is also pretty good, with a speed of 3.85, but costing 60 credits.

The only time you can really use the fighter beam weapons effectively is when the fighter itself generates at least 5 energy, so you can put in a basic engine and the beam itself, and still have enough power. The only fighter I know of that can do this is the Achilles, another rebel ship. A pulse laser would require 5.8 energy at the least, which no fighter I know of has, making it generally useless. (at least in the current state of the game)

[Tavar]

Yeah, if you go on the official forums, there's alot of talk about fighters, especially the Achilles. In fact, it used to be alot worse, with much higher speeds available, but the patch nerfed them(rightly so).

And Cruisers are only useful for support? Really? I've found that they're key to victory, and frigates are relegated to a support role. This isn't helped by the fact that Missiles aren't as good as any other weapon due to firing restrictions, though again, it was worse before the most recent patch.

Of course, that could be the Survival talking. Frigates are completely useless there, and since I've found it the only really challenging mode, I'm mainly working on ways to optimize my fleet for it. Could you either send me a personal challange with your fleet, or just post a normal challenge? I use Tavar on the game.

[AgentPaper]

I'll have it up later tonight, since I'm at work at the moment. The reason I typically relegate crusiers to a support role is that for one cruiser packed with missiles, you can typically field half a dozen or so frigates instead, which have about half the killing power of a cruiser each. You just get far, far more bang for your buck with frigates compared to a cruiser. The main reason to go for a cruiser would be for a cruiser-only component, or to make a defensive beast.

I could definitely see how frigates would be less useful in the survival map, though, where it's much harder to keep them out of the line of fire. In that case I might use beam frigates, which can be pretty fast and stay away from cruisers pretty well, while still having the range to fight back. A pulse laser and PD system on each would help them deal with fighters and missiles too, which are their main two weaknesses, and even a single level 2 shield system is usually enough to let them survive as long as they aren't under sustained or focused fire.


Edit: Oh, and for those of you who were anticipating the RPG system I was working on, I'm still kicking the idea around, but I'm having trouble making a system for how the planets work that's simple enough to compute for a large number of planets, in-depth enough to allow meaningful decisions, relatively easy to understand, and as realistic as possible without compromising the first three too much. If you have any ideas, feel free to share them, because I'm currently a bit stuck. :smallredface:



Edit: Edit: As for missiles not being so useful as other systems, I have to disagree again, because I find them to be the only thing that can collapse a shield in a reasonable amount of time, (I don't care how much shielding your cruiser has, a storm of 30-40 torpedoes is going to make it look like wet tissue paper) after which the ship is easy pickings for my rocket fighters, or my beam cruisers, or another salvo of torpedoes. (Though, I wish I could tell my frigates to only shoot at things with their shields up :smallamused:) Maybe I'm just using the wrong beam weapons, but it seems like they just don't have the punching power to burn through a shield like torpedoes can.

[Tavar]

Generally, Plasma and Pulse weapons are good at taking down shields. Plasma even has a better firing rate than missiles, and while it misses more often, I find that it's not really enough lessen it's effectiveness. Beams are the best at taking down armor, but are bad versus shields.

For the planets, not too sure right now. I'll think about it, though. One real problem I can see will be Fighters, specifically, how to deal with them. Right now it's disturbingly easy to make fighter squadrons that will shred any Frigate without taking too much damage. This isn't too bad in the game itself, but in the Strategy game, if Cruisers are Rare, then it might be more of a problem.

[AgentPaper]

The balancing factor for fighters will be the pilots you need for them. You actually need to set aside some of your planetary resources to produce pilots, so if you want a large fighter fleet, you'll have less resources to spend on frigates and cruisers. As well, fighters tend to need to be replaced more often, compared to frigates and cruisers. If a frigate has it's shields knocked out and it's armor down to 10%, you just have to spend a few resources repairing the armor, and you're fine. If a fighter squadron runs into a tough enemy and loses half it's force, you now have to pay half the resource cost of the fighter squadron and a dozen new pilots. Effective and easy to produce, but actually fighting a war with them will become costly quickly.

A fleet of cruisers, on the other hand, may well take no losses or even armor damage, though they would also probably have a higher upkeep cost that has to be paid even when you're not using them, so there's tradeoffs for each type. The frigate will probably be the mainstay of most fleets, because it uses relatively few pilots, doesn't have huge overhead and supply cost, and can be manufactured on most planets.

As for crew, I think I've decided that, while you won't have to actually build them up as a resource, they will add to the upkeep of a ship dramatically. The upkeep of each ship will probably be something like 1% of the base cost of the ship per turn, plus 2 resources for each crew member. (or something, these are just random numbers)

Edit: I might also make droids not count towards upkeep in this manner, which could actually make those things useful, but perhaps too useful? Hmm. Perhaps offset with some kind of chance for AI mutiny? :smalltongue:

[Tavar]

Good point. I think that would work, especially the droid idea.

[AgentPaper]

Good point. I think that would work, especially the droid idea.

Heh, do you mean the part where they're cheaper, or the part where they can rebel? :smallamused:

Anyway, if I did that I would most definitely have the droid crews as a rather expensive research item.

[Tavar]

Heh, do you mean the part where they're cheaper, or the part where they can rebel? :smallamused:

Anyway, if I did that I would most definitely have the droid crews as a rather expensive research item.

Cheaper. The Rebel thing would probably make them impractical for use, which would make the upgrade worthless, like it is right now.

[AgentPaper]

Cheaper. The Rebel thing would probably make them impractical for use, which would make the upgrade worthless, like it is right now.

Heh, figured as much. It'd have to be a rather low chance of it happening anyways, to the point where it's not even worth having, really.

[Brother Oni]

Yes, please. I'd love to see a full actual battle.

Fully fledged battle I found on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44vWgyoMF64&feature=related).

[Flickerdart]

Ack! I finished the missions on Normal, but I didn't get a new race unlocked. Perhaps it's because I had the additional mission that Tavar linked installed. I removed it but still nothing.

[Tavar]

Ack! I finished the missions on Normal, but I didn't get a new race unlocked. Perhaps it's because I had the additional mission that Tavar linked installed. I removed it but still nothing.

If you beat that, it should work...It does on mine, at least. There should be a way to manually unlock the other races. Let me check the official forums.

Have you tried Survival yet? That could be it.

Edit: This (http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2983) thread might offer a solution.

[Flickerdart]

Ah, looks like Bloodbath recorded itself into there even though I removed it. I'll try it now.

Ahh, now none of my GSBs work. Instead I get this error:http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a335/PresidentPSkillz/error.jpg

[Tavar]

Try this forum (http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=21&sid=39afbd030ab8a65d8e088f174507db77). Cliffski is often on, and if you start a topic asking about your problem he'll probably help you. Also, the community as a whole is pretty helpful, and will likely offer suggestions.

Agent Paper, just tried your challenge, and while it is good, I beat it on my first time, using my standard fleet. Been trying other combinations. Though there's a bug, I beat it once with a Fighter/Frigate fleet, but it didn't record the victory. Plus, since it was a real close victory, it flips between winning and lossing. Oh well.

Edit: Dammit! It did it again.

Edit: and now I deleted it. I Fail. Can you resend it? Thanks. Also, if you give me your name, I'll send you the fleets I've been using.

[AgentPaper]

Sent it again, and did a bit of refining, so hopefully it'll be a bit more of a challenge this time around. :smalltongue: And I'm AgentPaper on there too if you want to send me a challenge.

[Tavar]

Ah, I added a space in your name, that's why it wasn't working. Sent my Frigate Challenge(that still doesn't seem to be recording wins...).

Edit: Ah, I think it's that it only records one win per person playing the challenge. Interesting.

[Flickerdart]

I reinstalled it, and now it works. Unlocked me some Rebels: is it just me or do they really really suck?

[Tavar]

I reinstalled it, and now it works. Unlocked me some Rebels: is it just me or do they really really suck?

I'm not sure right now(I had to reinstall and lost my specs), but before the 1.13 patch they were pretty good. In fact, for awhile they had a monopoly on the top of the survival charts.

[Flickerdart]

I'm playing the second mission on Hard, and the enemy eats my Cruisers for breakfast. Trying the classic "Cruisers with lasers in front, line of torpedo frigates in the back", and they hold their own until all of the sudden one of my cruisers goes up in flames, and everything else soon follows.

[Tavar]

I'm playing the second mission on Hard, and the enemy eats my Cruisers for breakfast. Trying the classic "Cruisers with lasers in front, line of torpedo frigates in the back", and they hold their own until all of the sudden one of my cruisers goes up in flames, and everything else soon follows.

Can you send me a challenge with your fleet? I might be able to suggest something. Not having seen what your fleet is made out of it's hard to know what to suggest, but you might look into having multiple shields on your Cruisers. Two to three fast recharge seem to work well for me.

[AgentPaper]

Well, I've made myself a beam frigate that, massed just on it's own, will beat any of the missions on any difficulty. :smalltongue: Now that I have all the races, I've turned to the survival mission, where indeed frigates are nigh on useless. You really can't let any of your ships die if you want to get any kind of high score. However, after twiddling around with the Imperial cruisers, I've managed to make a good tough Battlecruiser as I call it, with fast missiles, beams, and defense lasers. Six of them managed to survive long enough to score me 98,098 points and 74th place overall. :smallbiggrin:

Rebels are indeed pretty good, with a good line of fighters (especially the Achilles and Icarus, for beam and rocket fighters, respectively) frigates, and cruisers. The Imperials don't have quite as good of a lineup, but I haven't really been able to try them out as much, so I'm probably missing some things. They do have some rather large frigates though, which are practically the size of cruisers, but they're not very useful because, without cruiser components, they're basically just a big target. :smallamused:

Haven't tried out the Alliance at all, yet, so I'm going to see what they're like. They must have something going for them, though, since the highest-scoring survival record is held by a fleet of Alliance ships. (700,000 or so, which is frankly ridiculous)

[Ka-ther Fangfoot]

I'm playing the second mission on Hard, and the enemy eats my Cruisers for breakfast. Trying the classic "Cruisers with lasers in front, line of torpedo frigates in the back", and they hold their own until all of the sudden one of my cruisers goes up in flames, and everything else soon follows.

I just tried that missions with the new anomalies. On hard my pure proton-beam cruisers just crushed the challenge, backed up by some ecm frigates. I did not lose a single ship on that, which may be a first for me.

On expert, it was a bit more challenging; the same fleet that trounced it on hard lost a pair of cruisers and most of its frigates, but I still won handily.

All this was with the rebels, so yeah, they are good. My current standard fleet for hitting challenges is the ecm frigates backing up some of the star-destroyer looking cruisers with cruiser lasers. All this supported by some of the rebel fighter that can pack an engine and laser without extra power. Though nowdays I have given them ablative armor, so they are not quite so munchkiny.

My name in GSB is Yaktan. I have some good challenges up, but I need to put up my latest setup methinks.

[Tavar]

I think I might have to start re-adding torpedo frigates to my line of battle. They're much better in the more recent patches.

[Flickerdart]

I tried again with a different set of craft and made it through. I replaced, for one, the torpedo Frigates with Disruptor Torpedo frigates. A line of four of these shreds shields like there's no tomorrow.

A focused strike with three or four fighter squadrons is also pretty awesome against cruisers, so long as you have other ships to distract their weapons. Positioning the fighters at the very back and making some well-protected frigates usually does the trick. Not sure how cost-effective this is, but it's fun to watch.

[Ka-ther Fangfoot]

Yeah, I like to use as many fighters as I can, normally.

I put them in back so that they intercept the enemy fighters around my bigger ships. (I like to put my cruisers in front since I use short-range cruiser lasers) This way the few fighters my bigger ships get turn the fighter battle my way. If I am worried about enemy fighters I throw in a couple cruisers with tractor beams.

This is especially effective on larger maps where I can take out the enemy fighters before engaging the rest of their fleet, and my large groups of fighters chew through cruisers.

I have never used disruptor torpedeos, maybe I should at some point. Hmmm.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

I got this game. My normal set up is Feds with a cruiser loaded with anti-fighter and anti-missile defense packed with all the armor and shields I can give it. He sits up front takes the hits. Behind him are a few cruisers with lasers and then behind them are frigates with nothing but torpedoes and minimal defense. It worked well for me unless the enemy fielded too many fighters. Then I just throw in some frigates with anti-fighter rockets.

Is it just me or are fighters a waste of money? For the cost of one decent fighter pack, I could instead field 4 cheap frigates. Not exactly what I call a trade off since those frigates can pack as much of a punch and aren't at a risk when the cruisers are screening for them.

Also plasma? Misses way too much to be worth it. Missiles to knock out shields and lasers to finish them off seems like the way to go.

[Tavar]

Fighters are one of the more contentious aspects of the game. Not entirely sure what people's opinion of them is at the moment, but at least 1 patch ago they were still very good. Rocket/laser fast fighters pretty much kill frigates, and even cruisers will go down after some time. It was worse before the antifighter weaponry got boosted, but they're still OP'ed. I mean, for the first survival game, the main limiter on how high you could go was how long you could keep your fighters alive: after they died you were pretty much toast.

[Flickerdart]

Ahaha, man, Rebel fighters are great. A lot of the missions on Hard, I only field fighters armed with two missile launchers and armour, and they eat through enemy fleets. Ones with dual lasers work too, but they need a power plant instead of the armour, so their survivability is lessened somewhat.

[Tavar]

I don't think any of my fighters currently use armor: speed really is their best defense, and since stacking engines doesn't work anymore, you really can't afford too much weight.

Also, how are people liking the new survival map? I think it's alot more fun than the first one, plus the deployment style is nice.

[Flickerdart]

And the game is officially released! Those of you not yet gratuitous enough can grab a demo here (http://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/demo.html).

[Tavar]

Just to let people know, I've started a thread for the purposed TBS game that would use GSB here.

[Thrawn183]

Well, I got the game, and after a few hours of playing I feel like I really understand it now. The key for me is having 2 of the high speed anti missile batteries and 3 shields on my cruisers up front. It's really funny when you run up against a huge group of enemy cruisers with mostly beam weaponry and realize they aren't even damaging any of your ships.

Though as I've been playing I've noticed that in later missions I have been losing some cruisers that still have their shields. Is this the result of the disruptor torpedoes I've been hearing about?

[Tavar]

I don't think so. I believe that those have a noticeable graphic. Perhaps it's due to fighters? How much armor do you have on your ships?

Also, do you want to be involved in the strategy game?

[Flickerdart]

Yep. Fighters that can get in your shields can attack your life points armour directly. It's what makes lasers absolutely devastating on them. You can sometimes field nothing but fighters on even Expert and win handily; it takes me about 10 squadrons to decimate the enemy fleet on the second last map.

Disruptor torpedoes attack shield integrity, which is the 4th bar (white, I think). Select your ships to see if that's what happened.

[Tavar]

Okay, I've started a recruitment thread in the gaming section for Gratuitous Space Strategy, here. If you want to try out the system, come on down!

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Though as I've been playing I've noticed that in later missions I have been losing some cruisers that still have their shields. Is this the result of the disruptor torpedoes I've been hearing about?

If you have 4 shields on a ship and your shields are knocked down to 3/4, then only 3 of your shield generators are working. This means 1/4 hits will ignore your shields and hit your armor. If your shields are knocked down to 1/2 then half of all hits will ignore your shields and so on.

Also as noted above, fighters armed with lasers (and to some extent torpedoes) can fly under your shields and hit your armor directly. Even if your armor strength is high enough to completely reflect the attacks, a small amount can still get through. Over time this will mean even doubled up heavy cruiser armor can be taken down by the weak fighter lasers.

[Tavar]

That's not entirely true, or at least, that's not how I understood the explanation. If you have multiple shields, damage is split between them unevenly. If any one of them takes enough damage to drop it, it's then gone, but it's not linked to overall shields strength.

[Thrawn183]

Well it happened again, and it clearly was a result of missile fire (one of the missiles that splits, I don't know which kind exactly). Fortunately this only happens late in a map, generally when I've had three really heavily shielded cruisers up front to soak up damage and they've been shot at by literally every enemy ship on the map. I can definitely say it wasn't the result of fighters.

Regardless, I've started trying out rebels and I have to say, having a frigate with 7 hardpoints is a lot of fun.

What beam weapon do you find works the best against unshielded enemies? Same for missiles vs shields.

[Tavar]

That it is, but it's also something of a trap: if you fill all those hardpoints it's disturbingly fragile. Still makes a decent torp boat, though.


And if it's late in the game, it's probably due to some of you're shields failing, and then having the damage leak through.

[Thrawn183]

Yeah, I just saw it happen to an enemy frigate on the survival map, died with its shields up.

I had been using the frigates as my long range damage dealers until I realized that the missiles they were using weren't damaging one of the cruisers they were firing on, looks like you have to use cruisers for at least some of your firepower.

[Tavar]

Yeah, there's definitely a balance. Torpedoes can be useful, as can quick firing lasers, though.

[warty goblin]

My understanding was that missiles worked pretty well against shields, but didn't penetrate armor all that well. The joy of torpedo frigates is that they are a cheap way to savage an enemy's shields at such long ranges it doesn't matter that they're made of Gratuitously Fragile Space Tinfoil. As I posted earlier, I find they benefit from pairing with a few cruisers armed with more rapidly firing missiles to eat up point defense fire and make sure the slower, more damaging torps make it through.

But leave actually blowing stuff up to cruisers festooned with lasers.

[Tavar]

Actually, barring what are essentially bricks, Missiles do okay against armor. The main problem is that their slow rate of fire limits their effectiveness in terms of damage.

[Thrawn183]

I'm having trouble handling all of the fighters on survival, outside of just ignoring them and attempting to kill off all the other ships and just end the round is there a good way of dealing with them?

[Tavar]

How do you generally build fighters? Cause some of the tricks are rather counter intuitive. I believe that the best dog-fighter at the moment is a regular fighter laser with a single level 1 engine. Have about 1 fighter squadron per cruiser. Delete the orders to attack frigates and cruisers from their order list. They'll still attack those if there's nothing else, but now their focus on their true purpose: other fighters.

For the cruisers, remember to have armor, and because of how armor works you probably want it in the 20's at the very least.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

I'm having trouble handling all of the fighters on survival, outside of just ignoring them and attempting to kill off all the other ships and just end the round is there a good way of dealing with them?

A cruiser with defense lasers and a tractor beam works well. It'll have the hit points to go the distnace whereas a frigate will get slowly worn down, or just plain raped if it goes against rockets.

[Flickerdart]

The thing with fighters is there's little point making them cheap, since you can't make very many anyway due to pilot shortages. Laser, laser, power plant, power plant, engine makes for a pretty deadly package. Rocket, rocket, armour, armour, engine isn't bad either, but pricier and they're slower, meaning they tend to die more against cruiser or frigate weapons.
Fighters are the best against fighters, yes; Cruiser weapons tend to be too slow and Frigates just get raped. I don't like using Frigates in general.

[Tavar]

Actually, on most maps frigates can be useful, especially since the anti fighter missile was boosted. The problem is that on survival they just can't last that long.


And the problem with you're fighter isn't that it's expensive, but that it's slow. Fighter's really need speed to stay alive, and that's what my build gives them.

[AgentPaper]

Less really is more on fighters. Giving them a power plant is generally a BAD idea, and same with armor, which except for the very lightest, will just slow the fighter down and make it a sitting duck. Speed is life for a fighter, and giving it more than the absolute minimum will generally just get them killed. Make sure, when choosing fighter hull, you pick one that can support a t1 engine and a laser without using a power unit. Those things are just way too heavy.

[Folytopo]

Anybody found any good frigate builds? I think there could be some value packing lots of ion cannons onto a frigate. High rate of fire, damage and 55 shield penetration, yes please! The problem is that they need to balance speed and survivability because they need to close to 550 to be able to use them. Any thoughts?

[Tavar]

Numbers?

In all seriousness, frigates can rarely give as much as cruisers, the exceptions being torpedo frigates(which never get into range) and anti fighter frigates (by the time the enemy closes distance, their purpose is pretty moot).

Granted, this is from the guy who literally went through the game beating each mission with pewpewlazors, effectively as many ion frigates as I could muster. It worked surprisingly well, though it has many glaring weaknesses.

[Ka-ther Fangfoot]

Ion cannons are fun, but I myself prefer Cruiser Lasers. Load them up on fast rebel crusers, back it up with ecm frigates, and most anything goes down except cheesy platforms.

On fighters, I have used designs both with and without armor, and I find that throwing on some ablative armor on a engine and laser fighter does great things for its endurance.

[Flickerdart]

Less really is more on fighters. Giving them a power plant is generally a BAD idea, and same with armor, which except for the very lightest, will just slow the fighter down and make it a sitting duck. Speed is life for a fighter, and giving it more than the absolute minimum will generally just get them killed. Make sure, when choosing fighter hull, you pick one that can support a t1 engine and a laser without using a power unit. Those things are just way too heavy.
Considering that you're still faster than cruiser turret tracking if you have the best engine and two powerplants, it doesn't really impact your survivability at all. And you're packing more than twice the pew-pew of regular fighters: how many of them can handle the one laser that doesn't suck without a single power plant?
I'm aware that the armoured ones aren't a good idea in general, but they devastate other fighters, as I said. It's just that after that, they get cut down by the enemy.

[Tavar]

How are you still faster? Looking at the stats, you'll have a speed of 1.41. There are beam weapons that have a higher tracking speed. And that's not even getting into what you'll face with other fighters or frigates.

[Flickerdart]

How are you still faster? Looking at the stats, you'll have a speed of 1.41. There are beam weapons that have a higher tracking speed. And that's not even getting into what you'll face with other fighters or frigates.
On the 3rd engine? I swear it was something like 2.31. I'll have to go check.

[Tavar]

If you're using 2 lasers and a level 1 engine, you'll end up with a power consumption of 9. If you use a 4-energy hull, you still need a level 3 power plant to break even.

[Thrawn183]

I have found the beauty that is Alliance armor. Talk about tough as nails.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Ion cannons are fun, but I myself prefer Cruiser Lasers. Load them up on fast rebel crusers, back it up with ecm frigates, and most anything goes down except cheesy platforms.

On fighters, I have used designs both with and without armor, and I find that throwing on some ablative armor on a engine and laser fighter does great things for its endurance.

Cruiser Lasers don't have high enough shield penetration to take down cruiser shields. You need something with a bit more punch like ion cannons.

[Tavar]

Are you thinking of Cruiser Pulse Lasers, perhaps? Because Cruiser Lasers have a shield penetration of 55, more than enough for any shield in the game. Or perhaps you meant armor penetration?

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Are you thinking of Cruiser Pulse Lasers, perhaps? Because Cruiser Lasers have a shield penetration of 55, more than enough for any shield in the game. Or perhaps you meant armor penetration?

Nope I'm thinking Cruiser Beam Lasers which have one of the highest damage outputs of any weapon. It is a common weapon in any beam cruiser fleet since it completely dominates any target that has lost it's shields and can still put a hurting on frigate shields.

[Tavar]

Ah, considering that he was talking about ion cannons, he probably mean just regular Cruiser Lasers, which do great against shields, but have trouble on armor.

[warty goblin]

Also, the expansion is out. It features aggressive-aggressive space hippies chillaxing in space.

[Ka-ther Fangfoot]

Yeah, I meant just regular Cruiser lasers, which I like for their massive DPS. I like to throw one or two Cruiser Beam Lasers on my ships for armor-penetrating fun. One hit or so from those babies, and all but the very best armor is ripe for DPS fun from my Cruiser Laser batteries.

[Tavar]

Really? I find there's generally more armor than that on a ship. Perhaps I've spent too much time playing the survival missions.

[Stormthorn]

Buy it. I played a game last night that generated the most intense space battle I do believe I've ever seen, culminating in a fifteen minute missile duel and the eventual destruction of my forces. Still, totally awesome and the most fun I've had losing in quite some time.

How epic?

Because the most fun losing i have had was playing Sins of a Solar Empire.

I was zoomed in following the bombing runs of a single fighter ship as it flew bakc and forth across a planets gravity well. Every time my chosen ship pulls near to its target the game lags gloriously form the strain of rendering the hulls, rockets, lasers, autocannon rounds, and debris of 300 spaceships locked in a planet wide life or death struggle. A ship near my fighter explodes and with the zoom this close the blast fills a good portion of my screen. I zoom out and a half-second later the same expanding blast is a little blip and my fighter is too small for the hull to be rendered, instead replaced by a glowing symbol indicating its possition. All around it are the burning halls of my glorious fleet, hours in the making, burning in an inescable dance of death over a hostile world. That world, in testament to my stubborness, is covered with slowly blooming mushroom clouds visible from orbit. My fleet will lose here, but the planet that my foe is fighting so hard to defend will be blasted back into the stone age before my last ship falls.

Hundreds of ships. Such glorious destruction. I lost, as you can see, but i made him pay dearly for my loss.
I made a "Victory Fleet" that was even bigger than my old one and i destroyed every hostile position in the entire map.

[warty goblin]

Take Sins of a Solar Empire, but make it so you design all of the ships. Then picture a more simulationist approach to combat (although GSB is far from a sim in general) where you can watch individual turrets track targets, point defense lasers shoot at specific enemy missiles, all while burning space hulks float in the background, and life pods wiggle their way towards the edge of the map.

Then you zoom in close. Real close, to watch a pair of massive cruisers slug it out. A bunch of enemy fighters swoops in, through your cruiser's shields and fires their puny lasers into its hull. Just then an enemy missile gets lucky and smashes into a turret- the shockwave of the blast knocks the fighters off course!

Yes, that can actually happen.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some SOSE space battles, but GSB's are much more fun to watch. For one thing, they tend to feel a bit faster paced. Slugging matches between cruisers can take a while, but cruiser on frigate tends to be a fairly short, dramatic sort of fight, and unlike SOSE there's no weird pauses in between weapon volleys. Even with only a few ships, things are always shooting and flying around like crazy. For another since there's no tactical management there's absolutely nothing to distract you from sitting back and watching alien life forms lase each other for your amusement.

[Stormthorn]

So how much space does it take up on your PC and what settings do you need to run it?

[Tavar]

Helpful Stuff (http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=339)

[Stormthorn]

I was all looking all over here: http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/demo.html

And readin the FAQ and looking at the Demo and the Buy page and i couldnt find that anywhere.

And then yur like "Boom! Its here."

Not that its much. And i dont know about computers very much.

The properties option on the My Computer tab tells me this:
4 CPU 2.8GHz
2.79 GHz, 1.00 GB RAM

The other computer tells me

AMD Athlon somehtingorother x2 Dual
Core Processor 5600+
2.90 GHz, 1.75 GB RAM

Im assuming i want the one with more Gigahertz and Random Acess Memory or whatever.
But will it be enough?

[Flickerdart]

You might possibly lag a little bit if you play the custom super-map and field all Fighters at 4x speed. But probably not otherwise.

[Tavar]

There are also a couple things you can do to reduce lag. I believe pitch sounds and....dynamic textures? Well, they're rather intensive, so turning one or both off can help.

[Thrawn183]

Considering that I can run this game pretty well with a 5-year-old laptop, I'm pretty sure yours can handle it.

[warty goblin]

I can run the game fine on my PC, which has a less powerful CPU than Stormthorn's, but a bit more RAM (2 gigs instead of 1) with the resolution as high as my monitor will support and all the bells and whistles turned up. I believe the game is built with a DirectX 8 framework, so even an older graphics card should work well.


There's also a demo, so download that, and see if it works.

[Tavar]

And if you like it, come on down to the Gratuitous Space Strategy-Alpha. The more the merrier. Plus it would allow someone to dm.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Okay I'm a little cheesed off. The game has been in offical release for just over a month and already they want more money for an expansion pack. I am really starting to hate this premium DLC pricing bullsh!t.

[Tavar]

Dude, it's one guy making them as his job. He has to price it like that. Plus, it's not like you need to get it. Sure, it adds some content, but not to much.

[Flickerdart]

If you're using 2 lasers and a level 1 engine, you'll end up with a power consumption of 9. If you use a 4-energy hull, you still need a level 3 power plant to break even.
2 lasers, 2 power plants, level 3 engine. This only fits on Rebel craft though. Sure, if you use only one power plant then you can't afford a better engine.

[Tavar]

Still only gets a 1.53, not enough to dodge the faster weaponry(much less anti fighter), and from what I've seen other fighters would tear them up.

[Artanis]

This is hilarious. I just beat Lucifer's Nebula on Expert with nothing but five cruisers and a couple squadrons of fighters :smalltongue:

[Flickerdart]

Still only gets a 1.53, not enough to dodge the faster weaponry(much less anti fighter), and from what I've seen other fighters would tear them up.
Huh, you're right. What was I thinking of, then? Weird...the missile/missile/arour/armour/Engine 2 gets 2.20, maybe that's what I meant, but those ones never really did well. Those laser ones serve me very faithfully though, but I'll try the speed approach. Then again, double the guns helps a lot.

[Artanis]

OK, now I'm trying out the Achilles, and you can beat Battle above Edyai IX on all three difficulties with nothing but five squadrons of the things :smallbiggrin:


And yes, I just purchased the full game a couple days ago after trying the demo, so I can't really help but prattle on about this sort of thing :smallwink:



Comment in the vein of Tavar's and Flickerdart's discussion: an Achilles can get speed 2.34 with a pulse laser, Generator II, and 2x Engine II. You can get up to 3.14 with an Engine III and two rocket pods

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Rebel fighters with rockets and a level 1 engine can just tear frigates apart. They don't even stand a chance.

[Ka-ther Fangfoot]

Of course, pretty much anything can tear frigates apart, which is why I like to put mine in back.

[Thrawn183]

I also purchased the game after trying out the demo. I noticed that it imported my data from the demo so... is it safe to uninstall the demo without wrecking the full version?

[Tavar]

I'd assume so, but you might try asking on the official forums.

[Artanis]

I uninstalled the demo and it doesn't seem to have done any real harm.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

My challenge "Better Frigates and Fighers" is currently sitting out there at 9:123 and is one of the hardest rated challenges. Have any of you guys tried it? Any constructive criticism on it? My screenname there is ObadiahtheSlim

[Artanis]

*checks it out*

Damn, that is a pretty good one. I managed to get it on my second try...mostly because I'm a cheap bastard, especially on that map, but still :smalltongue:


Edit: I can counter-challenge you to show you the setup I used, if you want. I went off and forgot to save it though, so it might take a try or two to get it precisely back.

Edit 2: Ah, figured the setup back out, and saved it this time.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

*checks it out*

Damn, that is a pretty good one. I managed to get it on my second try...mostly because I'm a cheap bastard, especially on that map, but still :smalltongue:


Edit: I can counter-challenge you to show you the setup I used, if you want. I went off and forgot to save it though, so it might take a try or two to get it precisely back.

Edit 2: Ah, figured the setup back out, and saved it this time.

Did you post the challenge? What is the name of it and what is your screen name?

[Artanis]

I sent you the challenge, with the name "Setup that beat 'better frigates and fighters'." My screenname is Artanis.




And just to reiterate, yours really was a tough one, and kicked my ass big-time on my first try. I gave it a 5/5 on both ratings :smallsmile:

[ObadiahtheSlim]

I think you either didn't post it right or if you did a personal challenge you misspelled my name. I don't see any challenges posted by you.

[Artanis]

*checks*

Crap, it looks like I forgot to capitalize the 'S' in your name. I've tried sending it a second time :smallredface:

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Nice setup there. With a some better AA frigates I was able to get it the first try. That really was a good and solid fleet you had there.

Edit: Sent you the fleet that won against yours. Didn't win by much.

[Tavar]

i beat it as well. In fact, I kinda beat it twice. The first time I ended up killing more of your fleet, but then the fighters just aimlessly circled each other. The next time I legitimately won.

[Artanis]

Nice setup there. With a some better AA frigates I was able to get it the first try. That really was a good and solid fleet you had there.

Edit: Sent you the fleet that won against yours. Didn't win by much.

I'm not seeing it. Did you spell my name right? It tends to get misspelled a lot :smallwink:

[Tavar]

I'm not seeing it. Did you spell my name right? It tends to get misspelled a lot :smallwink:

Can you send me the fleet you beat his with? I'm wondering how mine would do... Same name on GSB.

[Folytopo]

Do you guys think that one person can create a legitimately more powerful fleet or can one merely optimize along one path. I that nobody can create a unbeatable fleet. In this game once you know what you are facing there are enough counter measures to win. But do you think there are some races/ship setups that are much harder to counter than others.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

I'm not seeing it. Did you spell my name right? It tends to get misspelled a lot :smallwink:

Yeah I posted it with the exact same name I got the challenge from. Either way I also posted it for everyone. Just look for the Battle above Edyai IX called "Even Better Frigates and Fighters" (P.S. Vote 5)

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Do you guys think that one person can create a legitimately more powerful fleet or can one merely optimize along one path. I that nobody can create a unbeatable fleet. In this game once you know what you are facing there are enough counter measures to win. But do you think there are some races/ship setups that are much harder to counter than others.

Well with Frigates and Fighters only it makes it a bit easier to make 1 optimazed fleet that will win against nearly anything. Throw cruisers into the mix and nothing is really certain. Sure your fleet may win against 90% of everything else, but will loose to a fleet dedicated to wiping yours out.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Can you send me the fleet you beat his with? I'm wondering how mine would do... Same name on GSB.

Wow Tavar. Your fleet was raped 79% to 8%. Nothing but unshielded anti-fighter rockets on your frigates meant that only your fighters could touch me.

[Tavar]

Really? I just ran it on the new one, and while it was lopsidded, it wasn't that bad. But that's a very effective antifighter deployment, and I used primarily fighters, so it's not surprising. Did alot better on the first map.

[Artanis]

I just tried your new one, Obadiah, and I managed to beat it when I swapped in a few more torpedo boats first. You sure did a number on my rocket bombers though, and I did get really lucky with targetting :smallwink:



And Tavar, I'll send you the fleet that I used the first time.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Yeah, I found a pretty effective setup to take out rocket fighters. Rocket fighters can really put a hurting on frigates since they don't have a whole lot of shield resistance.

Also I figured torpedoes would rule the day against my setup. My primary attack frigate there doubled up shields, but skimped on armor. If those torpedoes could take out frigates before they get in laser range I'll be SOL. I suppose I could include point defense but that is such a specialized defense measure that eats into my overall damage output.

[Tavar]

Also I figured torpedoes would rule the day against my setup. My primary attack frigate there doubled up shields, but skimped on armor. If those torpedoes could take out frigates before they get in laser range I'll be SOL. I suppose I could include point defense but that is such a specialized defense measure that eats into my overall damage output.

Not really. Torp fighters are so slow that you're regular weapons could take them out, and torp frigates...well, I tried that. They miss too much and you're ships can close before they're too worn down.


And Tavar, I'll send you the fleet that I used the first time.

Have you done it yet? I don't see it. Granted, my internet's been a bit wonky, so it could be that.

[Artanis]

I've never seen PD have any real effect. It's too easy just to overwhelm it with sheer volume of fire.

As for torpedoes, their biggest strength is also their biggest weakness. On the plus side, torpedoes pack so much punch into one shot that spamming them makes an absolute mockery of shields and armor, even on cruisers. On the down side, torpedoes pack so much punch into one shot that spamming them is going to result in wasting massive amounts of that firepower due to overkill.


When I did that challenge, both of us lost our fighters before doing decisive amounts of damage. When our front lines met, yours pretty much massacred my anti-fighter frigates. At that point your frigates were basically in a race against the clock as they were picked off one at a time.




I've also had an idea that involves the Empire, and I'm going to go test whether it's brilliant or idiotic :smalltongue:

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Yeah I think we both have pretty solid anti-fighter defense. I wonder if a less well rounded fleet could exploit that. Simply drop the fighters and use the extra money to buy some extra frigate killing firepower.

[Tavar]

Yeah I think we both have pretty solid anti-fighter defense. I wonder if a less well rounded fleet could exploit that. Simply drop the fighters and use the extra money to buy some extra frigate killing firepower.

Worked for me, vs his fleet at least. Took 3 tries to get it right. First one just involved rocket fighters to see what his force was like. The second and third uses essentially the same fleet, just with the anti-fighter frigates better designed to operate without cruisers. Sending it to Artanis now, and I'll test if vs you.

Edit: Won there as well. But it was much, much closer. Something like 20 vs 6. Very challenging. Thank you.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

I think we now have exceptional fleets that are just tweaked to beat the balance of the other fleet.

[Ichneumon]

I'm going to download the demo later today, what's the difference between the demo and the real game?

[Artanis]

The demo only gets the first two levels (three if you count the tutorial), you can't unlock stuff, and you can't do challenges. It also appears to be a patch or three behind.

[Tavar]

I think we now have exceptional fleets that are just tweaked to beat the balance of the other fleet.

Pretty much. Note that One constraint I kept myself to was to not make duplicates of any of your ships. Still, that was a fun little exercise.

[Artanis]

I think we now have exceptional fleets that are just tweaked to beat the balance of the other fleet.

I know one way to find out :smallwink:

I took my second fleet (the one with the extra torpedo boats) against a bunch of other peoples' challenges, straight-up and with no modifications. Just Load Deployment -> Fight.

It absolutely massacred each and every one. Unlike yours and Tavar's, none of them even put up a fight, much less won :smalleek:


Watching the battles, it looks like the real problem with fighting my fleet is that the Achilles fighter hull is just plain not fair against frigates. You're the only guys who've managed to so much as slow down my rocket bomber spam, much less stop it.


Tavar, you should post the one you beat my first fleet with, and see how it does. It whipped me right proper, so you should see how it does against others :smallwink:



Edit: Addendum

One advantage we have is that we seem to be the only ones who even consider taking the Attack Fighters orders off anything not designed specifically to kill fighters. I can't count the number of times I've seen fleets (on any map) spraying plasma at dogfighters.

[Tavar]

I think I have sent you my version. If not, I can always resend it.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Rocket fighters are pretty brutal. They got pretty decent damage, but not very high penetration. So the low resistance of frigates makes them very vulnerable to them. Whereas lasers are so low damage (and slower fighters) they will die very easy to even a token AA defense.

[Artanis]

I think I have sent you my version. If not, I can always resend it.

You did. I meant post it as a general challenge and see what kind of rating and success rate it gets.



Rocket fighters are pretty brutal. They got pretty decent damage, but not very high penetration. So the low resistance of frigates makes them very vulnerable to them. Whereas lasers are so low damage (and slower fighters) they will die very easy to even a token AA defense.

Yeah. The single biggest counter to rocket fighters is the fact that they are completely incapable of hurting a cruiser whose shields are still up. Edyai IX throws that completely out the window, opening the door for rocket fighters to go on a rampage.

[Tavar]

Ah, I did so. Under the name: Fighters? We don't need no stinking Fighters.

Also, man, I regret wiping my save file. Now I'm having trouble beating the Chaos Nebula on Meduim and Hard. Those Missles are just killer. Any suggestions?

[Artanis]

Also, man, I regret wiping my save file. Now I'm having trouble beating the Chaos Nebula on Meduim and Hard. Those Missles are just killer. Any suggestions?

Hrm...

Those missiles can be a real pain (no pun intended), but I've found that if you put enough shields on enough cruisers, a line of them can soak up a LOT of missiles for a good long while. Put some torpedo boats behind them and mix in some anti-fighter ships, and you're in good shape.

I also find it's usually worthwhile to have some squadrons of rocket bombers go in and clear out the enemy frigates.

[Tavar]

Thanks, that seemed to do the trick. PD really is pointless, isn't it? I dropped the 2 pd stations off the cruiser, added a 2 more shields, and they lasted much longer.

So far, on the public version I think I have 1 victory, 2 defeats. People don't seem to like it, though. 3 on difficulty, 1 on fun.

[warty goblin]

Thanks, that seemed to do the trick. PD really is pointless, isn't it? I dropped the 2 pd stations off the cruiser, added a 2 more shields, and they lasted much longer.


I've been experimenting with PD on cruisers, and you are correct it just doesn't seem to work very well. Tonight's test: A cruiser with nothing but PD and fast rotating beam weapons armament, a PD scanner, and as much shields and armor as can be made to fit.

Yeah, I don't think it'll work either.

I do seem to be having some luck with the anti-fighter missiles though. Took a Rebel frigate hull, and loaded it to bursting with the things. The frigate doesn't live very long, and may as well be flinging gravel as missiles at a cruiser, but it sure does make a mess of a fighter win on its first approach.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

I find the best fighter defense is either a couple cruisers with a single tractor beam and lots of pulse lasers or a few frigates with tractor beams and everyone has orders to shoot fighters.

[Tavar]

I find Anti fighter missiles work well.

You might also try the scrambler beam. I remember it actually working well, but that might have been changed.

[Artanis]

PD really is pointless, isn't it?

Pretty much, yeah.

Sometimes, the PD shoots the decoys.
Even when it doesn't shoot the decoys, sometimes the missile would've missed anyways, or had already missed.
Even when the missile would've hit, sometimes the PD's shot doesn't kill it.
Even when the PD's shot would kill the missile, sometimes the PD doesn't kill it fast enough to keep it from hitting the ship.
Even when the PD keeps the missile from hitting the ship, there's thirty more inbound anyways.

[Tavar]

New version, with a new limit: certain maps now limit the types and number of modules available.

[Artanis]

It's probably just be my imagination, but there also seems to be some changes to how damage works.

Before, if fighters shot a ship for long enough, they would eventually wear through the armor and start doing damage. I haven't seen that since the patch.

I've also seen a LOT of damage slipping through the shields and to the armor/hull. I know that overflow damage goes through when a shield generator goes down, but I'm talking a dozen times per ship where I'll see a shot hit its shields and then something on the ship explode from it. A couple times, I've seen ships reduced to burning hulks while their shields are still up due to his.



Edit: WHAT THE ****? Emerald Nebula now allows shields! I KNOW I'm not imagining that THAT was changed.

Edit 2: Nevermind on the fighters, I just saw some of my ships taking damage from fighters. I guess I just ran into a string of challenges with heavily-armored, fast-repairing enemy ships.

[Tavar]

Nope, Emerald nebula still doesn't allow shields, at least not for me.

Oh, and, in the Gratuitous Space Strategy Alpha we could really use some more players, or a dm(for maps) if anyone's interested, though Agent Paper has offered to DM if no one else does.

[warty goblin]

I certainly played some map last night that didn't require shields. Was actually kinda fun, I had a couple of cruisers running around with average armor values north of thirty. At one point one of them was being swarmed by laser fighters. Made the thing look like a rose garden, all those little pink flashes of beams failing to penetrate. I was amused.

[Artanis]

Nope, Emerald nebula still doesn't allow shields, at least not for me.

It doesn't allow shields when I try to make a challenge or play singleplayer, but I d/led a challenge that allowed shields on Emerald Nebula :smallconfused:


I'm still debating whether or not to go to the official forums about the shield thing I mentioned. On the one hand, I want to find out what's going on and, if applicable, report it as a bug. On the other hand, I really don't want to bother signing up for a forum for the sole purpose of making one post.

[Thrawn183]

Ah, I did so. Under the name: Fighters? We don't need no stinking Fighters.

Also, man, I regret wiping my save file. Now I'm having trouble beating the Chaos Nebula on Meduim and Hard. Those Missles are just killer. Any suggestions?

I found that having at least 2 cruiser with shields and 2 PD in front can hold off the missiles for quite some time. These cruisers have to be really close together so that they cover for each other. Then you just break out the plasma. The cruisers with all the missiles also happen to have PD and stack up pretty close, so missiles aren't the best way to fight them. I also always stick a PD on my backup cruisers that are loaded with weapons. So what generally happens is I'll have 2 cruisers in front and 3 cruisers behind that put up a very solid wall of missile defense. As long as the shields are still up, lasers are no problem. Really the only thing you have to worry about is enemy plasma.

[Artanis]

What I do for Chaos Nebula is divide and conquer. It might be considered "cheap", so I'll spoiler it:

I put one plasma-armed cruiser at the extreme north or south end of the map with a few squadrons of rocket fighters, setting the rocket fighters to only Attack Frigates orders. At the extreme other end, I put my main fleet: a front line of tanks backed up by either plasma cruisers or torpedo frigates, plus maybe a couple anti-fighter frigates.

The fighters will sweep up the line and destroy the enemy frigates before (hopefully) winding up where they can support the main fleet. The lone plasma cruiser, meanwhile, will draw a large fraction of the enemy cruisers towards it, thereby splitting the enemy fleet in half before dying. The main fleet then destroys the two halves one at a time.

[Adeptus]

I generally like a more hands on approach to space combat (see my other thread about Allegiance R5) but this is quite interesting.

From the lively thread it looks like you guys are liking this quite a lot?

[warty goblin]

I generally like a more hands on approach to space combat (see my other thread about Allegiance R5) but this is quite interesting.

From the lively thread it looks like you guys are liking this quite a lot?

Indeed we are. I don't play it in a particularly hardcore manner, but it's nice to kick back, relax and blow the everloving crap out of stuff with humongous space lasers. Hell, I bought the first beta, which would crash if I had the sound turned on, and refused to run unless I set the time to be between 2:00 and 7:00 PM on the 31st of August*, and I loved it back then. Having the sound work, and a much better interface just makes it that much awesomer.

*I am not making either of these up. This was apparently the gratuitous space bugs phase of the gratuitous beta.

[Artanis]

How are you guys doing on challenges?

I posted one of my own, but nobody's really played it and it got ****ty ratings. I'm not terribly surprised by this, but still :smallfrown:



Also, I'm still wondering if anybody else is having the same shield problem I am. I got a good screenshot of what I've been talking about:


http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll41/LegacyCWAL/dmgthrushield.png

In the picture, I'm rebels, and my cruiser there has five plasma batteries. I have no damn clue what (if any) weaponry the Federation ship has because it wound up sitting there doing nothing for some reason while it got shot.

My cruiser had been pounding that thing for a good long while, and I'd been seeing damage slipping through from the very first shot. While there's no way to be sure whether that particular shot was a shield-skip (as opposed to just overflow from a failing shield module), it hopefully illustrates what it looked like for the entire fight.

And we're talking dozens of times damage skipped the shield during the fight.

So...has anybody else seen this, or am I the only one? :smalleek:

[Ka-ther Fangfoot]

Well, if it did not have any armor, than it would look like that after just one hit, so......

[Artanis]

That screenshot is mostly supposed to be an illustration to accompany the question of whether or not it's happening to anybody else. "Worth a thousand words" and all that.

The commentary doesn't take into account the fight leading up to the screenshot. My cruiser had been pounding that thing for a good while, and I was seeing armor hits starting from the very first shot. There's been other times when I saw a ship blasted so badly that it was all of two or three hits away from death before its shields finally failed altogether.



Edit: Come to think of it, I think I'll go back and change the commentary just to avoid confusion

[Tavar]

Nothing like that comes to mind, no.

[Ka-ther Fangfoot]

Thinking about it, I do seem to remember missiles and plasma doing hits on the ship before the shields are gone, with low shields allowing a lot more through, but I don't know what exactly is going on.

[Thrawn183]

That screenshot is mostly supposed to be an illustration to accompany the question of whether or not it's happening to anybody else. "Worth a thousand words" and all that.

The commentary doesn't take into account the fight leading up to the screenshot. My cruiser had been pounding that thing for a good while, and I was seeing armor hits starting from the very first shot. There's been other times when I saw a ship blasted so badly that it was all of two or three hits away from death before its shields finally failed altogether.



Edit: Come to think of it, I think I'll go back and change the commentary just to avoid confusion

I've seen exactly that happen a bunch of times. Fortunately it's only happened to my "tank" cruisers near the end of the map, but I've seen loads of enemy cruisers go down only one or two shots after their shields let go.

Edit: I managed to get a screen shot of it happening to one of my "tank" cruisers just as the map was ending. You can see that I have even selected the cruiser this is happening to, showing that its armor is lower than its shields.

http://i967.photobucket.com/albums/ae156/Thrawn318/Gratuitous%20Space%20Battles/Shields.jpg

[Artanis]

That's a great pic, Thrawn. The ship's status box is how my ships' tend to look after being fired at for long enough.


Also, with photobucket, if you hover over the picture in your album, a menu will appear below it. Just copy+paste the "img code" line into the forum's posting box :smallsmile:

[Thrawn183]

Heh, that picture really gives away my style of building ships: 2 high speed PD, 2 shields, 2 cruiser armor III's and as many lasers as you can stick on. Stick some barely shielded and armored missile boats behind them and watch 'em carve a path of destruction through absolutely everything in their path.

[Tavar]

Care to put that against one of my fleets? Just send a challenge to Tavar, and I'll see what happens.

[Artanis]

*looks at the ship's loadout*

Ouch, THREE generators? :smalleek:

That's definitely a very different building style than mine. I tend to put a LOT heavier armor and shielding than that while not bothering with PD at all. I'm also not fond of beam lasers, since they bounce right off cruiser shields :smallfrown:



Also, if you like glass cannon missile boats, check out the Imperials with their Weapon Platform frigate hulls. Those things have eight hardpoints. EIGHT. :smallbiggrin:

[warty goblin]

*looks at the ship's loadout*

Ouch, THREE generators? :smalleek:

That's definitely a very different building style than mine. I tend to put a LOT heavier armor and shielding than that while not bothering with PD at all. I'm also not fond of beam lasers, since they bounce right off cruiser shields :smallfrown:

I've found beam lasers proper to be a bit meh, but the proton and fusion beams are positively murderous once you beat down shields. They just rip through armor like it ain't even there.

Missiles though, missiles are good for shields.

[Tavar]

Personally, my main cruiser right now uses the following loadout:
Federation Eagle Cruiser hull
4 reflective shields
3 supercharged engines
2 tier 3 generators
1 tier 3 crew module
2 rocket launchers
3 fusion beams


It has 2 hardpoints and 1 standard module left.

[Thrawn183]

Does anybody use the lightning weapons? It seems like they are pretty awesome if you can actually get close enough to anything to use them.

[Artanis]

I don't think anybody anywhere uses the Alliance's lightning weapons. Its damage output is mediocre at best, and that range band is almost unusably small.



My front-line heavy "tank" cruiser:
Rebel Valhalla-Class Hull
2x Cruiser Laser
3x Proton Beam
4x Shield (one reflective, rest metaphasic)
3x Armor (one powered, rest ultraheavy)
1x Lightweight engine
Plus a repair module, generators, and a crew module

The end result is slow (0.06 speed) but seriously durable: 799 shield power and 20.82 average armor.

[Tavar]

See, I find slow ships to be somewhat unreliable, especially if they rely on close range weapons.

[Adeptus]

Indeed we are. I don't play it in a particularly hardcore manner, but it's nice to kick back, relax and blow the everloving crap out of stuff with humongous space lasers.

Sounds amusing. I'll give it a go when my free time opens up a bit. I'm a sucker for space games.

[Artanis]

See, I find slow ships to be somewhat unreliable, especially if they rely on close range weapons.

This is true for a primary combatant. However, the ship I described is my fleet's tank, not its main combatant. This ship has one job: protect the artillery behind it, namely by soaking up fire and ripping apart anything that closes the gap. Neither category is helped by speed or range :smallwink:

Even still, I've been experimenting with a faster models of my tank and plasma cruiser. They're slightly less durable, but the tank is 0.12 speed. So far it's been going reasonably well.


Of course, you're also talking to the guy who goes into Emerald Nebula deploying cruisers with 77 average armor, so I may not be the best source :smalltongue:

[Tavar]

Of course, you're also talking to the guy who goes into Emerald Nebula deploying cruisers with 77 average armor, so I may not be the best source :smalltongue:
So that challenges fleet is representative of what you use in that mission? It was interesting, but it took forever. Plus, since your ships were so slow, had smaller range, and no point defense, I was able to bombard them from long range.

You know, I think I'll send you a challenge of one of my standard fleets. See how you do.

[Artanis]

I got your challenge and did it three* times, twice with the same layout following my general rules of engagement, but different versions of the cruisers (slow + heavy first time, less slow + still fairly heavy the second time). The third time I spammed my speedy cruisers for ****s and giggles(and is not even remotely close to my "usual" :smalltongue: ).

My general setup is to have my front line made of tanks, slightly fewer in number than the enemy front line. Directly behind them, rows of plasma cruisers, each with roughly the same number of ships as are in my front line. Each line arrayed shoulder to shoulder. Add lots of fighters (rocket fighters if tons of frigates, dogfighters otherwise or if issuing a challenge).

I used pretty much what I would've used had I sent a challenge, with the exception that I put my fleet in the middle instead of the corner where I usually would. This also means that I refrained from my usual tactic of sacrificing one cruiser to split your fleet in half :smallwink:


First time:
4x Heavy Cruisers (described above) on the front line
10x Plasma Cruisers in two lines of five
112x Rocket fighters

Result: Victory, 71-10


Second* time:
4x Medium Cruisers (0.12-speed version of the heavy cruisers)
10x Medium Plasma Cruisers (slightly faster version of the normal plasma cruisers)
96x Rocket fighters

Result: Victory, 31-10


Third time:
18x Fast Cruisers (0.28 speed :smalltongue:)
15x Dogfighters

Result: Victory 60-10



Comments:
--Good work on the frigates. My fighters killed all of three or four frigates between the three battles combined :smallwink:
--The difference between the first two fights was about as I expected: in both, the front line soaked up fire while the plasma cruisers blasted the hell out of your ships. In the second battle, however, my front line died a lot more quickly, letting your ships get to my plasma cruisers.
--The third battle looked like a fighter battle, only bigger :smalltongue:






*Technically, there were four attempts because the plasma cruisers on the second fleet weren't doing what they were supposed to, so I had to quit and go check their orders. The orders were correct, they were just buggy or something.

[Tavar]

Interesting thing: If I leave out the cruisers, my forces have a much better time. In fact, If I switch them for missile cruisers, I end up winning. It's something of a bug, I guess.

[Thrawn183]

Well, I sent you a challenge Tavar. It isn't particularly fine tuned or anything, just something I tossed together.

On better news however, I think I just set a record for cruiser with lowest health remaining to survive a battle:

http://i967.photobucket.com/albums/ae156/Thrawn318/Gratuitous%20Space%20Battles/CloseCall.jpg

[Artanis]

I just went up against somebody using scrambler beams for the first time. I was impressed by how close to non-crappy they got. They might be worth trying out.

Regular PD still blows though.

[Tavar]

Oh, they're definitely worth it if you're fighting alot of missile ships.

As for your challenge, Thrawn183, beat it on my first try. Challenged you back.

[Thrawn183]

Tavar, beat yours on my first try and re-re-challenged you back.... hmmmm, I'm starting to see a pattern here.

Frankly, that was a pretty tough one. I only just barely eeked out the win and might not have if you didn't win automatcially when the other side falls below 10%.

[Tavar]

I saw your challenge, and beat it twice: first with a slightly reorganized fleet, and then with a substantially different fleet: that one actually won with no losses. I sent the second one in a challenge.

[Flickerdart]

Bah, forgot to transfer my saves when I installed Windows 7. Now I have to blast through the "campaign" again. Should be fun, and by fun I mean cruiser spam.

[Tavar]

Just updated my game, and we can now do Custom Challenges! You can pretty much add whatever you want.

[Artanis]

Does anybody have any idea why people keep using beam lasers? Sure, they're good when the shields go down, but until then...well...

I just beat a Lagoon Nebula challenge literally without a single scratch because none of the enemy's weapons could hurt Regenerating shields :smallannoyed:

[shadow_archmagi]

Hey guys. I just got GBS, but it won't start. I bought it via Steam and I double-click it and it says "PREPARIN TO LAUNCH" and then it goes "SORRY HAVE HIT ERROR NEED CLOSE NOW SEND ERROR REPORT?"

[Flickerdart]

I've been experimenting with the hangar bay attachments, and, well, they're pretty underwhelming so far. I could see them working on a battle Cruiser that had an escort of a squadron or two, but since the way that the Escort algorithm works makes that function useless too, there's just little purpose to them.

[Artanis]

Personally, I've found carrier modules to be detrimental. A ship that goes for repair is just as much out of the battle as one that had been destroyed until it gets back, but it takes less hits to make them that way. This means that the domino effect of casualties accelerates when you use them, in exchange for a trickle of fresh fighters. And then, in the big, bloody battles where you need fresh fighters the most, the carriers just wind up overwhelmed as fighters come in faster than they can be repaired...meaning more fighters sitting out, meaning etc. etc.

And then, when the modules run out of repair supplies? All those fighters are on orders to run the **** away, so you aren't even getting that out of them.

I can see how they would be useful in Survival missions, but personally, if I'm going to dedicate cruiser modules to helping a fighter battle, I'm going to use modules that help kill the enemy fighters.

[Tavar]

Hey guys. I just got GBS, but it won't start. I bought it via Steam and I double-click it and it says "PREPARIN TO LAUNCH" and then it goes "SORRY HAVE HIT ERROR NEED CLOSE NOW SEND ERROR REPORT?"

Well, you should be able to go to Documents/mygames/Gratuitous Space Battles, and find an error log there. You can either post it on the official forums, or post it here and I will do so. Note that the above path is for Vista.


Does anybody have any idea why people keep using beam lasers? Sure, they're good when the shields go down, but until then...well...

I just beat a Lagoon Nebula challenge literally without a single scratch because none of the enemy's weapons could hurt Regenerating shields :smallannoyed:
Well, in shieldless missions, that's not a problem. I'd assume, however, that it's just people being stupid about their deployments. You generally need Weapon Mixs.

[shadow_archmagi]

Well, you should be able to go to Documents/mygames/Gratuitous Space Battles, and find an error log there. You can either post it on the official forums, or post it here and I will do so. Note that the above path is for Vista.


Still no reply from the official forums. And only 17 views. I bought it via steam, so I'm assuming the route for me is

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\gratuitous space battles\debugdata and the relevant error log is the text document called "error" which is at this time completely empty.

I guess it can't log the errors because it can't even launch.

[Artanis]

Well, in shieldless missions, that's not a problem. I'd assume, however, that it's just people being stupid about their deployments. You generally need Weapon Mixs.

Well obviously it isn't a problem in shieldless missions (or cruiser-less missions, for that matter). But it still makes me wonder :smallconfused:


Of course, it isn't as bad as a challenge I ran into last night where the guy had forgotten to put any guns on his ships. And it was one of those ******* no-engine fleets, too.

I gave it a 1/1 and sent him a message (which I may or may not have managed to keep from being too snarky).

[shadow_archmagi]

Of course, it isn't as bad as a challenge I ran into last night where the guy had forgotten to put any guns on his ships. And it was one of those ******* no-engine fleets, too...

So you encountered an enemy fleet that had no guns or engines?

[Flickerdart]

I guess it was made entirely of shields and armour? And of course repair bots and crew and power.

On the topic of repair...is it just me, or is the Nanobot Repair both cheaper (Honour-wise) and better than the alternatives?

[Tavar]

I asked this as well on the official forums. The basic answer is yes, though sometimes the armor ones are better because they focus their efforts more.

[Artanis]

So you encountered an enemy fleet that had no guns or engines?


I guess it was made entirely of shields and armour? And of course repair bots and crew and power.

Pretty much, yeah. They spent the entire battle sitting there getting shot.

[EleventhHour]

*am having great fun with this game, now*

>.> I'm the one who keeps putting those silly giant fleets of Frigates under Elly. Glad to hear some feed back. (Fed MK II is the best out of the three serious ones (and the other two nonfrigates are for laughs), and is going to be updated to MK III soon. :smallwink: )

[Artanis]

I just did mk. III.

Question: is it supposed to be (more or less) "frigates-only"? Because I included a half-dozen squadrons of fighters in my deployment, and it was an absolute massacre :smalleek:

[Tavar]

Hmmm...just went through your challenges. Fun, but relatively easy to beat. I used a pretty simple design, that I call Wolf class frigates, consisting of a Puma hull, 2 rank 2 shields, 2 ion cannons, 3 rank 2 frigate engines, a rank 3 power plant, and a rank 2 crew module. Won with 77%, and if I juggle the modules a bit I think I can do better.

Plus, you do realize that you can limit certain ship types in your challenges? For instance, I know you can limit Cruisers or Fighters.