Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JOKER_G]

Their third fleet came, 10 days after I drove off the second one.

Gave them a gigaton surprise at the jumpgate, nuked them with about 100 fighters and bombers, then ordered an all-out attack.

But they have too many ships, too much firepower.

It ends.

NPR AMMs have over 16m 40m range, work extremly well against my fighters. None of the first attack wave and only 1/3 of the second returned, they launched over 2000 AMMs against them. However, it seems that NPR ship used reduced size launchers for AMM, the first and second waves of missile are intercepted, all missiles in third and fourth wave hit, and the fifth wave are intercepted. 75 seconds between each wave.

[Flying Dice]

If you're willing to somewhat borderline-abuse mechanics, figure out their maximum range, dip inside long enough for them to lock and fire, then run your ships away so that their missiles are wasted. Obviously your ships need to be faster than theirs for that to work, or they'll eventually get close enough to nail you.

[JOKER_G]

Anyone else have ever fight against 1000% difficulty NPR? It's almost impossible to win, they have far too many ships.

[Flying Dice]

Usually when I do that sort of campaign, I keep spawn chance to 0% for the first two jumps from each point in Sol, or something roughly like that, and then turtle hard for a while. That way you're only dealing with precursors and swarm (unless you had an NPR at start, get really unlucky, and your starting NPR is right next door). If you want to be absolutely sure, don't start with an NPR, spend a long time in a relatively small number of systems teching up, and don't turn the spawn chance up until you've got sufficient tech/numbers to hold them off for a while.

You're basically never going to win against a 1000% difficulty NPR from a standard start unless you get supremely lucky in how much buildup time you get -- against a freshly spawned one, you'll probably want at least TL5-6 and dozens of capital ships, and against a spawn-at-start one at least an effective 1-3TLs above them and scores of capital ships built specifically to thin large numbers from range, as well as a long chain of systems you can fortify with PDC missile bases, minefields, monitor-type JP campers, &c.

That, or a ship with excellent cloaking device, thermal sensor, thermal output reduction on the drive, and a planetkiller bomb. Alternatively a bunch of fighters with the last. Pull an Ender's Game if you find their homeworld and plaster it with meganukes instead of trying to kill their fleet, then whittle it down while they slowly repair their industrial base.

[Bremen]

I might try it. A desperate fight to defend the empire is always fun.

In my previous game once I got a good sized empire going I turned on the invaders and had a lot of fun with that.

[Sirus]

How do you make a planet-killer bomb? Lots of radiation?

[Flying Dice]

Increased radiation warheads are for killing population and decreasing productivity. If your aim is flat-out destroying industry (as it is in a case where you can't reasonably expect to capture the planet), just build the biggest warheads you can feasibly cram into a fighter-sized box launcher. That's far and away the fastest way to wreck large quantities of installations and ground forces. Of course, adding a couple dirty bombs to the mix only helps things, but you want at least some directly destructive warheads as well for the double blow -- wreck a lot of their production capacity and make what remains less efficient.

By way of example, at my current TL in my ongoing campaign, the ideal fighter-launched gravity bomb would probably be something like WH size 10 for a strength-120 blast, 0 fuel, no drive, 0 agility, no sensor, and 2 points in armor. If they've got no point defense near the planet, I'd toss the extra 2 MSP into WH for strength-144; the box launcher for one of those would be 90 tons, which is about right for a stripped-down 250 ton fighter that doesn't necessarily need to survive the attack.

[Witty]

Are the various rate/production modifiers worth the research cost? Or should I focus on more tangible tech initially?

[Karlito]

Construction/Production are the most important techs, if that's what you're asking.

[Flying Dice]

C/P techs are, as Karlito said, the most important, especially early on. Pretty much every tech in that tree is a massive aid in ramping up your production and R&D capabilities.

[JOKER_G]

Still, I can't imagine how can laser ships survive NPR AMM spam. They launch thousands of AMMs at my fleet as soon as I get into their range.

[MarcAFK]

One minor but however, make sure you expand your income in line with your increased rates of production, or else you'll find your shiny new 25% better factories only having the population to work at 80% capacity anyway.
So, get those colonies going ASAP.
NPR AMM spam: yes, very scary, I have never managed to outgun AMM any large NPR AMM spam. An assortment of kiting, beams, generous application of my own AMM's, massive armour damage, and luck ends up being my strategy.
Keep in mind that the enemy tends to launch godawfully large salvos at just about anything that comes near, so I tend to get massive overkill against my picket ships, leaving mostly empty magazines used against the main body of my fleet.

[NullForceOmega]

nineteen 67 million ton dreadnaughts, with over five thousand PD turrets, I should fear your missile spam why?

[MarcAFK]

Any reason why you picked 67 million tons?

[Witty]

Thanks guys, you've all been a great help in learning this game.

But my geosurvey ship has just encountered an alien population! I really don't know how to approach this one, since I have zero military capabilities currently.

Should I quickly set up a xeno relations team and ship them over to initiate contact, or can my geosurvey crew do the same without a whole lotta problems?

It says they're neutral, but that could simply be because they don't have any missiles on hand to shoo me away.