Matrix Games Forums

will repairs be possable on cap ships? i thought i read somewhere they wern't or something.

Components will be repairable as long as they aren't destroyed. Hull is not repairable.

And as long as you have spares you can replaced damaged or destroyed components.

so if your hull is down to 1% after a battle, you fight the next one with only 1%?[X(][:(]

Yep, though now you can change ships and leave the 1% wreck somewhere safe rather then being in command of a flying coffin

Timescale is too small for major repairs, what I would like to see is withdrawing damaged ships to simulate sending them off to shipyards.
Someone very keen could use it to handicap themselves too.

- Deathifier

Actually, flying that 1% coffin can be challenging but entirely the right thing to do.

The AI is a bit thick - this is not a criticsm of the AI in comparison to other AIs (where it's actually pretty good, all things considered), but in comparison to you...

Remember that even though the hull is at 1%, the rest of the ship is fine. By retiring it, you're effectively taking its weapons out of the fight, reducing your damage potential. By flying it, and basically doing the proper command thing of hanging back a little so the enemy AI will target the other ships, which will (hopefully) be much higher in their armour :>

How this works out in multiplayer is another question. If they blindly go for the guy with v low armour, but with good shields and always keeping them at max range, then the bait's friends will be able to manoever so they're hitting the chasers at close range, taking out their missile defense and then nailing them with torps...

Its one of the ways you deal with the blitzkrieg style attack - persuade the blitz to land on something that can take the hits for long enough for you to return the favour on one of theirs - sensible target choices are to reduce the attacker's firepower, extending the survivability of the bait, and persuading the ship commanders to break off and attack something else, breaking up the firepower.

Arn't tactics wonderful? [8D]

it would be nice if we could trade out the ships for equal ones from another region[:)]

ORIGINAL: smaff

Actually, flying that 1% coffin can be challenging but entirely the right thing to do.

I still disagree, nobody would be willing to risk something that costs a fortune to rebuild just for the sake of applying some minor damage from maximum distance.

The AI is a bit thick - this is not a criticsm of the AI in comparison to other AIs (where it's actually pretty good, all things considered), but in comparison to you...

It works reasonably well, though sometimes the autopilot drops AI frigates in the middle of the enemy destroyer group and the destroyers 60k away...

Remember that even though the hull is at 1%, the rest of the ship is fine. By retiring it, you're effectively taking its weapons out of the fight, reducing your damage potential.

Whilst Technically that is true your damage potential at maximum range is negligible and moving in to effective range puts the ship at great risk from taking incidental damage from point defence cannons.
Even 10-20% hull can be shredded, as I demonstrated once when I charged an enemy carrier (alone) and its escorts were engaged by my PDB's. At the end of the battle one destroyer had 40% damage without ever being directly targetted by me!

How this works out in multiplayer is another question. If they blindly go for the guy with v low armour, but with good shields and always keeping them at max range, then the bait's friends will be able to manoever so they're hitting the chasers at close range, taking out their missile defense and then nailing them with torps...

I think you'll find that they'll send something small after the weak ship at full speed or simply ignore it until a fighter wing can be dispatched if available. To keep a large ship just out of range would require it to be facing perpendicular or in the opposite direction to the fight (provided something is actively pursuing it), so the main laser cannons then become useless and PDB's don't have the range...

Arn't tactics wonderful? [8D]

In theory

- Deathifier

Not all ships are created equal. I just recently nursed a heavy cruiser through five days of combat with only 7% hull left. In the process I eliminated four enemy frigates and three destroyers. I never got a good shot at the enemy carrier though; he kept jumping out of the sector as soon as he saw me coming.

Side note related to this topic: I've changed the rules for quantum jumping out of danger. The jump countdown is now variable, based on the number of ships near you. A few extra seconds are added to the countdown for each ship in your vicinity - it is more difficult for your ship's nav computer to calculate the jump if it has to account for the mass and energy of other ships. I've had jumps take as long as twenty-five seconds to compute since adding this rule, but there is no theoretical upper limit.

ORIGINAL: John DiCamillo

Not all ships are created equal. I just recently nursed a heavy cruiser through five days of combat with only 7% hull left. In the process I eliminated four enemy frigates and three destroyers.

That's true, though since the demo doesn't include anything heavier than a destroyer I can't comment and destroyers are pretty ineffective unless you close the distance to torp/PDB range.
Another issue is what was fighting with you, I assume heavy ships have their own powerful tag-alongs to help out - unless you took the ships on individually, which makes them easy kills (can destroy strung-out battlegroup in destroyer and take 10% damage...).

Side note related to this topic: I've changed the rules for quantum jumping out of danger. The jump countdown is now variable, based on the number of ships near you. A few extra seconds are added to the countdown for each ship in your vicinity - it is more difficult for your ship's nav computer to calculate the jump if it has to account for the mass and energy of other ships. I've had jumps take as long as twenty-five seconds to compute since adding this rule, but there is no theoretical upper limit.

That's a good addition, should make things interesting esp. in multiplayer

- Deathifier

Milo, can you draw enemy ships in your quantum field? *ponders the Frigate Suicide Quantum Kamikaze*

Sure - but only fighters and other dropships such as LCAs.

Not to nag, i think this was lost,

it would be nice if we could trade out the ships for equal ones from another region

would this even be possable?

Not really, no.