Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Local response fleets combined with decent orbital defenses for key locations and patroling local defense ships for more distant stations/bases is pretty much the defense I use and it seems to work well.

ORIGINAL: Son_of_Montfort

Escorts.... escorts... escorts...

Like Erik, you want to have some local defense fleets set with key planets are their "home." The helper AI does a fantastic job of sending ships that are unassigned, or assigned to escort duty, to respond in case of pirate attack on mining stations or mining ships. Squelching an empire's economy is serious, and can really hamper production and colony growth - so having a "home defense fleet" is going to be something many players will actively work toward.

SoM

ORIGINAL: martok
So can you, in fact, set it up so that the helper AI will automatically dispatch local defense fleets (or nodal fleets) to trouble spots for you? More specifically, will it do this for you in the event of a serious attack (i.e. invasion by another empire), or does the helper AI do this mostly just with (relatively) less severe attacks like you've outlined?

What kind of defense/fleet organization & setup do you guys tend to have once you've reached the stage where you have a large (or at least large-ish) empire?

Do you tend to have several major fleet formations? A lot of smaller battle groups with a large central/home fleet? A combination thereof? Something else entirely?

Do capital ships mostly belong only in the larger fleets, or do they have a role in smaller formations as well?

Also: About how close/far away should nodal fleets be to the colonies/stations they're supposed to protect? In other words, how long does it take for them to be mobilized and actually reach the trouble spot they've been dispatched to? (I'm just trying to get an idea of how close/far apart I should station nodal/local defense fleets once I'm in a position where I should start doing so.)

ORIGINAL: Sarissofoi
1)Does weapon have accuracy? And is it affected by ships computer(or other component) or target manevr(by ships engine or size)?

2)Is shoots can be miss or be deflected, absorbed, incoming missles can be jammed or shoot down?

3)If there will be diffrent family weapons? Like ballisctic(autocanons, railgans), beam(laser), missle or something?

4) If hits have chance give critical damage? Or is they can pierce thourg armor/shields if they lucky?

There are beam weapons (shorter-range laser blasts), torpedo weapons (long-range, homing, missile-like energy bolts) and area weapons (omni-directional blast waves)

ORIGINAL: Son_of_Montfort

I'm not sure Carriers and Fighters would fit in with the overall scale of the universe, but that is my personal view. I never really cared for that sort of thing anyway, from a realism standpoint I was always skeptical that a spacefaring civilization would use this sort of tactic, and I always wondered just what sort of technology acted as an inertial stabilizer for fast ships to prevent them from skittering all over the place or shooting off into space.

Again, I don't want to keep hammering "scope" (sounds like a cheap way to get drunk) - but the limited types of weapons should be seen to represent more of a guns, long-range projectiles, AoE group than a smorgasbord of missiles, drones, guns, lasers, beamers, etc. It isn't like Sword of the Stars, where warships and intimate tactical battles are the main focus. You get huge numbers of ships in multiple fleets that simultaneously deploy across a large universe. Few people would want to be controlling fighters in the midst of all this (and while keeping an eye on you galaxy spanning economy).

That being said, you do get a pretty good amount of detail for each weapon component. Your next researched beam, for example, might be heavier and use more energy, but do more damage and have a greater range. The resources needed to build it might be different. So you might not always automatically upgrade as new weapons are researched. While the sheer number of weapon type options may be lower - the level of detail in the ship design doesn't necessarily suffer. Does that make sense?

SoM