not impressed by shadows

[Icemania]

Okay let's explore CyclopsSlayer. I play extreme difficulty, expensive research, strong many nearby pirates, large maps ... and obviously some of this would vary depending on settings.

What is your approach to Pirate Extermination Fleets? This needs to be aggressive as soon as you have the capacity so you can catch the Pirates before they grow too much. The trigger for me to start building those Fleets is Shockwave Torpedoes (with at least Size 300 available), each fleet typically about 14 ships, so they can take out bases with no damage and stay on the road for extended periods (again some extra fuel cells). Weapons Research is completely focused on Torpedoes (except maybe Armoured Ground Assault depending on how much of a megalomaniac I'm planning to be) until I have Plasma Thunderbolts, since you are better off getting the top tier weapons ASAP rather than spreading it around.

What is the your approach to ships defending colonies? After I have Shockwave, each colony will have a couple of ships assigned to defend, more ships for hot spots. There is some micro that the developer could resolve, as some of those ships will wander away from your planets regardless of what you do, and you have to keep them close and ensure they react as soon as there is an attack. The smaller Pirate attacks will never succeed at this point. You won't be able to defend the larger Pirate attacks yet, so the odd protection agreement, promptly cancelled, remains prudent.

By the time I have Plasma Torpedoes, I would typically have 5-7 fleets on Extermination duty, but all of them would be distant as there are no Pirate Space bases anywhere near my territory. There are just a handful of Pirate ships flying in my territory and no major attacks anymore. Base and Ship Defence is more than adequate for all colonies, although when expanding, I'll assign more ships to defend until the port/bases are up.

Please tell us more CyclopsSlayer, my best guess is not being aggressive enough with those Pirate Extermination Fleets? As they say the best defence is a strong offence.

[CyclopsSlayer]

Colony Defense - typically 3-4 sz300'ish ships. I assign 1 fleet like that to any new or raid targeted colony. Once/If Pirate assaults stop I leave a SSP behind and move the Fleet to the next defense Target.

Defense Fleets are set to Defend and Target. I have found that if I set them to System they wander off and only react after the raid is pretty much done.
Colonies I build 1x PDU, 2x Standard Battalions for ground units.
Bases are set to All Weapons/All Weapons. (the default Point Blank is useless as they only fire after the Assault Pods are on the ground.)

The problems I seem to have with Defense Fleets is the Attack AI seems vastly smarter than the Defense AI routines. I have several times observed a Pirate ship come in, drive on the planet then turn off, NOT Warp away and lead the defense fleet away. Shortly more ships arrive, land pods unopposed, shoot up the base under construction and escape before the erstwhile Defenders get their butts back Home.
As well fleets commonly execute their orders once and then forget... Assigned a Fleet to an actively attacked world, given Patrol orders and assigned the target as home port. Only to later find the fleet parked in space half an orbit away on 'no orders', or halfway across the galaxy limping to refuel/refit on dry tanks. Once done they will have nearly completely forgotten the Patrol mission.

As for extermination fleets, typically 4 fleets, usually consisting of 8-10 Destroyers early, later 8-10 Cruiser/Capital/Carriers.
Troop Transports I tend to run in separate fleets 2-3 Transports and a 'big' attached escort, often a Carrier.
I think where I fail here is not forcing the Intelligence missions to locate the Pirate bases aggressively enough. I too often run out of convenient targets.

Typical armament;
Escorts 2 Torps, 1 Tractor (>200sz)
Frigate 4 Torps, 1 Tractor (>300sz)
Destroyer 6-8 Torps, 2 Tractor (>400sz)
Cruisers 10-12 Torps, 4 Tractor + Hyper Deny (~500 max)
Capital grows to size limit 14+ Torps, 4+ Tractors, 2+ Fighter Bays, HDeny
Carrier grows to size limit 8+ Fighter Bays, HDeny, Tractors, no guns

[dostillevi]

@cyclopsSlayer Are you updated to the most recent patch? I also used to have your problems with fleets not attending to their duties, but this was completely fixed in a recent patch.

Perhaps try using longer range weapons? Missiles are excellent at taking down shields at range and forcing invaders to turn away before reaching the planet.

Try putting long range scanners on your scouts as soon as you can (when they're done exploring the galaxy) and station them near your endangered colonies. You'll be much more efficient at locating and clearing nearby pirate facilities, and you'll be able to hit their mining stations too.

[CyclopsSlayer]

Hmm, it says it's v1.9.0.11. Going to try a clean install, might have a lingering issue as I have tried most of the Mods. But yeah, I end up fighting my own fleets more than I do the enemy... [&:]

As to range, Torps and Missiles are equivalents, but I prefer the Torps for several reasons. Damage per Second per Size gives the Torp a small benefit over Missiles at Range 990, while they are much more effective at point blank ranges. AND missiles are penalized versus heavily armored targets.

edit:(from DW Wiki Tech lists)
edit2: Shadows changed numbers in RED below
Tier 7
Massive Missile Assaults

Project size 7680k
Improvements to Assault Missile
Size 14 Static Energy Used: 0
Damage 28
Range 990
Energy Used 18
Speed 150
Damage Loss 0 per 100 distance
Fire Rate 4.20 secs
Bombard Damage 0M
Missiles are 50% less effective against armor.
Opens up: -

Tier 7
Plasma Hardening

Project size 7680k
Improvements to Plasma Thunderbolt
Size 10 12 Static Energy Used: 0
Damage 50
Range 990
Energy Used 64
Speed 180
Damage Loss 4 per 100 distance
Fire Rate 2.00 secs
Bombard Damage 0M
Opens up: -

Using the above I work it out as Damage / Second / Size to calc the efficiency. While Adding Energy used into the calculation would shift things more into the Missiles favor, it is trivial to have surplus energy on later designs with advance reactors.

So efficiency at max, 500 range and minimum are as follows.

Missiles @990 - 0.476
Torp @990 - 0.57 0.433

Missiles @500 - 0.476
Torp @500 - 1.50 1.25

Missiles @0 - 0.476
Torp @0 - 2.50 2.08

As well Torps are faster in getting to the target so less likely to be out run.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer
The problems I seem to have with Defense Fleets is the Attack AI seems vastly smarter than the Defense AI routines. I have several times observed a Pirate ship come in, drive on the planet then turn off, NOT Warp away and lead the defense fleet away. Shortly more ships arrive, land pods unopposed, shoot up the base under construction and escape before the erstwhile Defenders get their butts back Home.
As well fleets commonly execute their orders once and then forget... Assigned a Fleet to an actively attacked world, given Patrol orders and assigned the target as home port. Only to later find the fleet parked in space half an orbit away on 'no orders', or halfway across the galaxy limping to refuel/refit on dry tanks. Once done they will have nearly completely forgotten the Patrol mission.

All of my military ships are on Manual. Obviously this greatly increases their effectiveness against attacks. I don't find the micro of this tedious because I enjoy blowing things up and in parallel I'm very aggressive with Extermination fleets ... so I know it's all just a passing phase.

ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer
As for extermination fleets, typically 4 fleets, usually consisting of 8-10 Destroyers early, later 8-10 Cruiser/Capital/Carriers.

I might be incorrect but this hints that those fleets could be active earlier. The reason my early fleets are more like 14 in numbers is that each ship isn't that strong, but I want them to be able to take out almost any Pirate target without taking damage. I also design with extra fuel cells so they can stay on the road for extended periods, which means a few less weapons/shields.

ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer
I think where I fail here is not forcing the Intelligence missions to locate the Pirate bases aggressively enough. I too often run out of convenient targets.

If I'm lucky enough to get a good Intelligence Agent I always use them to Steal Research so it's not the lack of Intelligence missions. Early game I always build a large fleet of explorers that provide the first round of targets. Long Rang Scanners follow quickly so that the second wave can find more targets. You should never run out of targets with this approach.

ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer
Typical armament;
Escorts 2 Torps, 1 Tractor (>200sz)
Frigate 4 Torps, 1 Tractor (>300sz)
Destroyer 6-8 Torps, 2 Tractor (>400sz)
Cruisers 10-12 Torps, 4 Tractor + Hyper Deny (~500 max)
Capital grows to size limit 14+ Torps, 4+ Tractors, 2+ Fighter Bays, HDeny
Carrier grows to size limit 8+ Fighter Bays, HDeny, Tractors, no guns

There are some other threads on this but I only have one military ship type (and one troop transport). It's always at the maximum possible size. Strategically I consider this the most effective path. From a micro perspective it keeps manual ship design upgrades simple and since less ships get damaged / destroyed there is less effort required to keep ships in active condition.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer
As to range, Torps and Missiles are equivalents, but I prefer the Torps for several reasons.

Completely agree.

[CyclopsSlayer]

Hmm, I see I have been misusing the Long Range Scanners. To date I had used them primarily defensively mounted only on Bases. It honestly never occured to me to mount them on my Explorers.

BTW, with the ranges on the scanners, are those numbers feet, meters, furlongs, parsecs? As well how does that translate to system diameters, or sector size?
It would be nice to see the coverage on the map so I could park LRS Scouts/bases for maximum effectiveness.


RE: Torp vs. Missile: I just noticed the difference in current in game numbers to those listed on the Wiki. Time to do some updates, if I ever stop playing games and start writing about them again. [:'(]

[Icemania]

Yep I think we've found the big hitter to eliminate those Pirate frustrations! I have no idea what the units are but there is "Show Long Range Scanners" toggle. As an example of what this shows: AAR

[CyclopsSlayer]

BTW, see my post above, I added the new Shadows numbers. All they really did was up the Torp launcher from 10 to 12sz, however that is enough to give Missiles the edge at LONG ranges.

[Darkspire]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

Yep I think we've found the big hitter to eliminate those Pirate frustrations! I have no idea what the units are but there is "Show Long Range Scanners" toggle. As an example of what this shows: AAR

You only just found it?? [:D]

It also gives a better view if you take off the empire influence, also remember that even without toggling it on any of the pirate bases that are detected are shown on the Galaxy Map, the colonies that are owned by pirates do not show up on there though, you have to have a hunt for those, usually spotted by just a colored circle on the main map, they do not seem to have any influence.

Darkspire

[Icemania]

Darkspire, no, the intent of the comment was to highlight the big hitter to diagnose CyclopsSlayer's concerns with excessive Pirate land bases.

[dostillevi]

ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer

BTW, with the ranges on the scanners, are those numbers feet, meters, furlongs, parsecs? As well how does that translate to system diameters, or sector size?
It would be nice to see the coverage on the map so I could park LRS Scouts/bases for maximum effectiveness.

"Range:
The effective range of a ship depends on several things.
- reactor efficiency Reff
- energy consumption of the hyperdrive P_HD
- maximum velocity of the hyper drive v_HD
- fuel capacity FC
- the total static energy usage P_stat

the maximum range is

range = v_HD * (FC * 1000)/((P_HD + P_stat)* Reff )

example: Gerax HD: v_HD=12500, P_HD=78
2 standard fission reactors Reff=3.81
1 standard fuel cell: FC=60
static energy use P_stat=77

range = 12500 * (60*1000)/(3.81*(78+7)) = roughly 2.3 million space units

This number doesnt make much sense without some further knowledge:
A sector is 2 million space units wide. So the ship above has a range of 1.15 sectors.

range in sectors = v_HD * (FC * 1000)/((P_HD + P_stat)* Reff * 2000000 )


the range of a ship designed like the example
"

From this thread. Definitely helped me square away some of the more obscure numbers with regard to energy, distances, etc.

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