3 Questions

[Bosk]

Two quick questions.

1. What am I to do with asteroid fields in my solar system? Can I build in them? Are they only scenary? This field seems to have a 'hidden rock' in it.

2. There is a planet in my solar system and it indicates 'scenery +59% from Great Canyon' I am a little unclear on what this really means and what I am to do with it?

3. I am still in the early parts of the game, just got the ability to leave the solar system. However my question is about missiles. I got concussion missiles thinking that it would hold off the enemy, but seems the missiles missed more than hit...do they get better?

Lets make it one more...item 4. I am trying gravitc weapons for first time. Researching it. Do we like them? Are they effective? What thoughts do we have regarding them?

Thanks

[FerretStyle]

1. Asteroids can be mined, though it's inefficient to do so. Only use them if you are in dire need of resources. "Hidden rock" is a scenic location you can build a resort at to get bonus income (maybe, resort income might not do anything right now)

2. See above

3. Missiles are incredibly good. You could research targeting systems to improve accuracy. They should still be effective if you load ships with them either way

4. Gravity weapons are powerful but use up a lot of space and energy. Could be useful for starbases, but otherwise good on huge ships

[Bosk]

Thank you very helpful information.

[Starke]

Asteroids can be found in virtually every system, and larger systems can contain asteroid belts. 95% of the time, asteroids are irrelevant. Because each asteroid contains only a single resource, mining them is less efficient than mining a planet with several. However, because asteroid belts contain a LOT of asteroids, several of them are bound to be very rich (having a high resource percentage value, which controls resources mined per tick). If your empire has a shortage of steel, lead, etc. in you home system, you can find a rich asteroid - by going to the Expansion Planner and checking the "show asteroids" option - to supplement your supplies.

The Hidden Rock is a special asteroid that will increase the revenue of a resort base built at it. (as opposed to building a resort base at any random location) The same is also true of the scenic bonus you mentioned. To easily see all good candidates for resort bases and how much of a bonus each provides, hit the "potential resort locations" button on the left side of your screen, one of the transparent buttons just above the bottom left info box.

I don't have much experience with missiles; I tried them once in the early game, intending to use my weak ships to kite the pirates. I found that I had a lot of trouble making a ship that could outrun the pirates with my inferior tech, and that they didn't afford my spaceport the firepower to deter much. I just use beam weapons, as their general battle strategy is simple and effective: get on top of bad guys -> melt their hulls into globs of floating metal.[:D]

I also don't have much experience with gravitic weapons. Early on, I find their short range and low fire rate, combined with the fact I can only fit a few of them, to be very underwhelming. Later on, though, I can see a fleet with ships large enough to hold a decent number of longer-ranged gravitic weapons being a scary force indeed. Trying to fight a powerful pirate faction armed with them is certainly proving challenging. =P

[Tehlongone]

I use missiles on ships with fighters to make them maintain maximum range and stay out of danger, and for bases and other things that can't chase the enemy.

The best weapons are rail guns though, in early game they are devastating (armor sucks in early game and it bypasses shields) AND you can use them to bombard, which I like to do on inconveniently placed foreign colonies or to soften up larger colonies.

Anyway the regular beam weapons are horrible, phasers are better.

[elanaagain]

^ agree with above. All very good suggestions and observations. Two additions. First, when designing bases, be sure to change the engagement range (upper left had corner of screen) from 'point blank' to 'all weapons.' If you leave it in default stance, your base will hold back firing longer range weapons when an enemy is closing in to attack. Since the base can't move - firing all weapons possible, as soon as possible, inflicts max damage on approaching ship. Second - if you don't mind micro management: when mining asteroid belts (and elsewhere) design some mining bases with no lux extractor. This cuts down on build cost, maintenance cost, and use of transport sapce for resources to build the lux extractor component. Short version: is less expensive.

[Bosk]

Wow this has been very enlightening and super helpful thank you all.

[turtlefang]

Just my two cents. I like missiles. You can start researching them early, they have great range, and continue to be useful through the whole game. Further, they actually require less space on a ship as they require less energy to charge/fire versus other weapons while letting the ship move at full speed.

They make great base/space port/orbital platform weapons if you change the engagement stance from "point blank" to "all weapons" due to the long range.

And for attacking a base, they simply can't be beat. Missile armed destroyers or cruisers can stand off and destroy a space port with very few losses - especially if the base is armed with torpedoes and beams.

Gravity weapons. Not a big fan of them but will also admit I haven't used them to a great degree. Generally, you have to pick two weapon research lines and stick with those.

Missiles or torpedoes is nearly always one of mine; beams are usually the other.

Asteroids. As mentioned, you can click on the "show asteroids" box in the resource planner. Usually, I will only mine asteroids during the prewarp phase. In that phase, you need to get many steel mines, a few lead, and some iridium mines up as possible as your going to need the resources. And unlike a lot of mines, these are actually fairly productive due to the transit time - its is very short to your home port - even though those aren't the greatest in terms of multiple resources.

Build and keep three to six warships, and get them armed with at least one decent weapons quickly. You can pay off pirates, but a space slug or giant kator showing up will ruin your economy - and warning bells don't go off. So keep your eyes open. These critters can eat a lot of mining stations before you know it.

[Tehlongone]

I just don't understand the appeal with standard beams, they lose far too much power over range, it seems like they are occupying the exact same niche as torpedoes, they are just worse. They are especially useless at range against armor.

For killing space creatures nothing beats fighters, with higher speed than the creature one ship with those can clear your system of those.

[Bosk]

Great information. This has totally helped me fine tune my game. Thanks. And the tips on the asteroid field paid off. It did seem mostly not worth my time but then I found that one rock with 94% steel. Gotta like that!

[Canute0]

Fighters are good against Silvermist too. Silvermist chase the Fighter and ignore the Ship so long it is on distance. Fighters arn't that fast like Ion weapons to kill them, but the ship is safe and useful against other targets too.

About Gravity Beams and Rails, together with Tractor beams they are very good for Mining stations defending. They damage the attacker pretty fast, and then the attacker mosttimes flee for repair.

[turtlefang]

Outfitting a ship with weapons always represents trade offs. If you going with missiles as a primary weapon, then you need a small space weapon for your secondary. And that means beams. Torpedoes are very space intensive weapons - they are large AND require good reactors to allow a ship to use and move rapidly.

You simply can't afford both missiles and torpedoes. And beams can be used for anti-fighter work if needed.

If I go with torpedoes as my primary, then beams again become by secondary. Same reason. Space requirements. Especially on 800 pt ships or less.

And if someone gets in close, then beams have a huge advantage over both torpedoes and missiles. They fire faster and cause more damage. This helps keeps the opponent at range - or in a knife fight if they close.

Rail guns and gravity weapons have way too short a range, and just don't fit in as well with missiles. Or maybe I just don't like them as well. Plus you can't use them for anti-fighter work.

[Tehlongone]

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

Outfitting a ship with weapons always represents trade offs. If you going with missiles as a primary weapon, then you need a small space weapon for your secondary. And that means beams. Torpedoes are very space intensive weapons - they are large AND require good reactors to allow a ship to use and move rapidly.

You simply can't afford both missiles and torpedoes. And beams can be used for anti-fighter work if needed.

If I go with torpedoes as my primary, then beams again become by secondary. Same reason. Space requirements. Especially on 800 pt ships or less.

And if someone gets in close, then beams have a huge advantage over both torpedoes and missiles. They fire faster and cause more damage. This helps keeps the opponent at range - or in a knife fight if they close.

Rail guns and gravity weapons have way too short a range, and just don't fit in as well with missiles. Or maybe I just don't like them as well. Plus you can't use them for anti-fighter work.

Rail guns lose no damage over range, and the long-ranged branch has as much range as the high-damage blasters, but better damage at the long ranges. The bypassing shields things is extremely good in early-mid game though, you often do crippling damage within the first few shots.

For early game designs nothing beats rail guns as they are cheap energy-wise which allows a high amount of damage on a ship with few reactors, on top of their superior performance. Blasters are compact size-wise but in the early game they use too much power to be properly efficient and they have significantly shorter range than torpedoes in late game. The max ranged performance of blasters is an illusion, they do crappy damage at that range, torpedoes have the same issue but less. Not to mention having to wear down the shields first.

Phasers are pretty nice though, and gravity weapons are powerful, just not in the early-mid game.

The way I see it there's usually no need to mix weapons, I just add as many of the best type as possible. Then perhaps mix ship types for fleet action. Having the ability to bombard planets down with any of your fleets without wasting space on bombard weapons is just yet another advantage.

Short range is irrelevant as long as it's combined with high speed; for early min-maxed designs I like to add enough engines that the ship can't both sprint and shoot (which is usually important), that way they can sprint very fast and still deliver painful damage once they reach range.

[Vedric]

ORIGINAL: Bosk

3. I am still in the early parts of the game, just got the ability to leave the solar system. However my question is about missiles. I got concussion missiles thinking that it would hold off the enemy, but seems the missiles missed more than hit...do they get better?

Lets make it one more...item 4. I am trying gravitc weapons for first time. Researching it. Do we like them? Are they effective? What thoughts do we have regarding them?

Thanks

I have used missiles extensively. Don't neglect target tracking techs. The problem I have with them is with their fire rate and slow animation (which increases their time to target). Your initial alpha strike with missiles takes so long to get to the target that the enemy has often closed in dangerously close to whatever you're protecting. Later, when ships are more heavily armored missiles take longer to kill off an enemy. You must at some point integrate other ship types into your fleets to compensate for the weaknesses of early pure missile designs. Along with my fleets, I usually have a size 250-295 escort design loaded with missiles and just 2 shields and armor. This design uses good speed to kite enemies and I just automate them.

I have found torpedoes to be almost overpowered. They have excellent close in damage with adequate max range damage. Because of this you can focus almost exclusively on torpedoes, a huge advantage. Mix in some point defense with all the designs and you're golden. Early on get velocity shards asap. They are significantly better than the first torpedo design.

I have found gravitic weapons to be excellent on port defense. I am starting to integrate them in to my mid-late heavy cruiser "brawler" type designs. I love the way they stop the movement of enemy ships. Helps disrupt invasions and generally causes chaos when the enemy gets close. I am playing a tech heavy race currently and my brawler designs have tractor beams along with gravitic and beam weapons. They are devastating close in but I don't like using "all weapons" against stronger ships in the design screen because I don't want them closing in on large ports. Because of this they are weak at range with just a few missiles on them to allow for the "stand off" setting.

[Jeeves]

In late game that gravitic area weapon on defense bases can be pure murder, as I learned at Utopia. But nobody ever attacked me with enough big ships to stand a chance. I suppose if the Shakturi ever show up in one of my games, having them on homeworld bases could be handy.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[turtlefang]

Rail guns are ok but will get you killed in few cases(and these have been common in my games):

1) You run into a heavy fighter force. This will simply chew up a rail gun armed fleet. The rail guns can't hit the fighters, and the mothership/carrier stays away. And multiple carriers will literally tear though you.

2) Anybody with reactive armor, which makes rail guns worthless. And there are at least two pirate factions that will have reactive armor by very early mid game in virtually every game. Which means your literally taking a gamble on not running into them.

3) The third case, which is more luck dependent, is running into a pirate or other faction that has found a "lost ship" with reactive armor. If that happens, you rail guns are again useless.

Finally, rail guns work well on the attack, but if you defending, you are usually caught not moving as the attacker comes in and your at short range. And if the attacker has decent armor, rail guns aren't going to deal out as much damage during the initial alpha strike, putting you at a disadvantage.

So at the end of the day, after playing around with them for awhile, I just decided they weren't what I was looking for in a primary weapon.

And, as I noted earlier, I use beams as a secondary weapon, not a primary.

[Starke]

I'm biased because I've never even reached the second tier of weapons with anything over than beams, but I've never found any reason to play with anything else. =P I just set all my ships to Point Blank with a decent ship speed (35-40 usually). Once I get to Impact Assault Blasters, or god forbid, Titan Beams, normal ships die in 2-6 volleys (beams fire fast too), and starports I hit with 8-16 ships at once and they don't last more than 5-20 seconds - obviously there's some variance depending on their size and defenses.

This is becoming another weapon type debate thread. =P Well, I say it's a good sign that each type has their proponents.

[turtlefang]

That is exactly the strategy that I used for a long time - heavy on beams, get to impact blasters ASAP, and then to titan beams. It's viable and works, but I honestly got bored with it and have started trying some other combinations.

Against the computer, I most weapon strategies will work. Against a human player, I suspect that a lot of ship design and weapon strategies would change but we don't get that chance - at least not yet.