Author Topic: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?  (Read 3869 times)

Offline Harry

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Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« on: January 07, 2010, 07:43:32 pm »
Is it possible to conquer a planet 4 hops away?  I don't really want any of the systems in between, which are in turn bordered by other systems -- I just want the Advanced Lab on the distant system, and would be happy to abandon the system once I have the lab.  Right now the target system is unaware of me, and it has a pretty small Mk 1 garrison.  And I do have transports, plus a relatively safe beachhead on the first bypassed system.  (In fact, I just launched a successful raid on a Data Center 3 hops away, so I know I can get transports through to the target.)  So I suppose I could load up 500 ships or more and hope I capture it in one go.  But my guess is that the enemy will quickly get reinforcements, and I won't have a space dock nearby because those require supply.  Even a mobile builder requires supply, so I wouldn't even be able to build turrets or support units.  Should I just suck it up and conquer the intervening systems, taking the AI progress hit?  Or try to neuter them?

Offline x4000

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2010, 07:48:25 pm »
This is definitely possible, and is a cornerstone of advanced play for sure.  I'd suggest bringing a couple of transports just because one or two might get destroyed along the way.  And be sure to bring a colony ship in one of them.  If you  are confident in your defenses elsewhere, you can always just quickly kill the command station and special forces guard post on this planet, and then it won't be getting any more reinforcements, period -- then even if you do get bumped off, you can come back with an identical force and clean up easily (of course, by that time most of the guards are likely to have attacked your border planets, anyway).  The AI doesn't have a magical ability to instantly reinforce whenever it wants, so if you catch it at the right time it might not reinforce at all -- there's no way to predict that, but when you've done enough such raids you'll notice that some are easier than others.  Even if the AI does notice and reinforces, it's likely to be something you can still handle if you're strategic with your forces, especially if it is a really low-level planet.  The benefits of deep striking, or deep raiding, are many and plentiful!
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Offline Fleet

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2010, 09:03:00 pm »
I'm unable to get colony ships into Transports. Should this be possible? I also can't get in Sci Vessels, or the Mobile Builder. Using the latest stable (not pre-release anything).

Offline x4000

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2010, 09:04:25 pm »
In the last official version, that was not possible -- that ability was added in the prereleases.
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Offline Harry

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2010, 10:06:00 pm »
Yes, I had no trouble putting science vessels in a colony ship, and I'm using the pre-release.  My starships, however, refused to go inside.  :)

I had the brilliant idea of doing a little science-raiding while I was doing my deep data-center raid.  Er, I re-learned the hard way that knowledge raids require supply. :P

Anyway, it sounds like a deep-conquest raid is worth a try.  I think I might bring more than a couple transports, though -- on my data-center raid, they did make it to a target 3-hops distant, but only with 15% health left or so.

Offline x4000

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #5 on: January 07, 2010, 10:12:25 pm »
My starships, however, refused to go inside.  :)

Yeah, that's still by design. :)

I had the brilliant idea of doing a little science-raiding while I was doing my deep data-center raid.  Er, I re-learned the hard way that knowledge raids require supply. :P

But, the cool thing: if you take that planet out in the middle of nowhere, then you can take it's K, and take the K from all the adjacent planets to it.  Then abandon the planet to seed, and you've just got your ARS, a bunch of extra K, and no new territory to have to try to defend.

Anyway, it sounds like a deep-conquest raid is worth a try.  I think I might bring more than a couple transports, though -- on my data-center raid, they did make it to a target 3-hops distant, but only with 15% health left or so.

Oh yeah, then bringing more is definitely worth it!  An escort of starships can be a good idea, too. :)
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Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #6 on: January 07, 2010, 10:35:56 pm »
Typically if I go somewhere, its in full force  ;)
Full starship escort, fleet starships pulling point defense duty, dreadnaughts knocking the engines and hostile starships out from 22,000 range units away (omfg long range ftw), with raid starships pulling interception duty (unless I have a good multi-role fast unit like space planes or raiders)... but raid starships are usually good enough.



Unfortunately, I havent played in like days >.> (hard drive failure, waiting for new one. Working off a ubuntu live cd...)
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Offline x4000

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #7 on: January 07, 2010, 10:39:05 pm »
You know what's a bit odd?  I almost never use starships.  I'm more of a churn-and-burn guy with the base ships, and that tends to suck down all my resources and knowledge right there. But, a couple of my alpha testers play like you, LanceFighter, with tons of starships.  In our games, neither approach has tended to work particularly better than the other, which is cool -- definitely more than one way to skin the proverbial cat.  Usually when I send transports, I have one with guys in it, and then something like 15 that are empty decoys.  That was before I upped the energy use of transports...
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Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #8 on: January 07, 2010, 11:41:53 pm »
honestly, if I'm gonna bring 15 transports, each one is gonna have a mobile builder and colonyship...

Although i suppose you could just move the ships from whatever ship they are in into whatever one has the most HP..

Anyway, problem I've found with smallships is that they are fragile. I can bring 200 smallships in and lost half of them... or I can bring in 1 bigship, with 200x the cost of the smallship (so 200 small = 1 big..) lose half health.. You said yourself it was more efficient to repair ships than to replace them; I've 'saved' resources right there.


Also, it kinda goes with my feeling that each ship /matters/. Losing a bigship means something to me - its not something I would do on a whim. However, smallships arent the same. I once suicided a group of 300 mk2 space planes just to take out some important objective (a troop accelerator i think)...

Basically, I dont like taking losses of ships that matter. And its a TON easier to save a starship than it is to save a fleet of smallships - A starship has a lot more staying power at 10% health than any other ship

I just have one itty bitty problem - the bomber starships you get with the starship constructor thingie are mk1.. I've seen mk4 ones on mk4 mad bomber worlds, and my mk1's felt inadequate :(
imo they also lack health for their short range - 2-3 dreads can take down a mk4 bomber starship before it gets to firing range...
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Offline Harry

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #9 on: January 08, 2010, 12:46:21 am »
Well, I'm happy to report that my long-distance conquest went off without a hitch.  I filled four transports with about 400 ships, chose the least-dangerous route, and arrived right on top of the command station.  As the AI was "unaware of my presence", there were only a couple hundred enemy ships/turrets in system.  So instead of depleting my force on guard stations, I just went right for the orbital command center.  Then I unloaded the colony ship, built my own command center, a forcefield, many engineers, counter-snipers, a space dock, and this was enough to hold off the onslaught -- barely!  My command ship got down to about 20% health.  It didn't help that I got a warp raid at the same time.

One thing I wasn't sure about was whether to destroy the in-system warp gate.  Is it responsible for warp-raids into its own system, or only into adjacent systems?  Maybe I shoulda left it up.  And yeah, I may well end up abandoning this system in due course, but as you said, for now I want to use it as a base for science-raiding the two adjoining systems.  So maybe eventually I'll regret destroying that one warp gate?  My AI Progress is only 105 -- I've destroyed several data centers -- so maybe it's not the end of the world.

As for starships, I'm dabbling in them just to learn how they work, and because I did spot an enemy dreadnought and had no idea how I'd kill it without a dread of my own.  I have to admit, my dreadnaught and supporting ships did a spectacular job holding a bridgehead for hours, finally retreating only in the face of a cross-planet attack.  But I guess the downside of the big ship is that if you do lose it, it's a much bigger loss than losing 100 small ships, since you can start replacing small ships immediately.  Also, starships seem to require a bit more micromanagement, and I play slow enough as it is!  But I can see why people like them.  Also, the word "starship" is just cool.

Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #10 on: January 08, 2010, 01:04:24 am »
as per starships and micromanagement, i think that is only because of certain.. inadequacy issues. For instance; a starship will /never/ fire more than one shot at any given target, unless either a) you tell it to or b) there arent enough targets to deplete its full set of shots

Given that stipulation, starships are great at fire support. they will randomly choose a ton of hostile ships, and kill them fairly effectively.
Unfortunately, this isnt that great when it comes to dreadnaughts. Dreads have 5 shots, each doing a good deal of engine damage. Usually, youll find a dread shooting the same 5 units forever. This is kinda an issue, as the starship wouldnt kill those particular ships for a while.

Also, when a higher value target comes into range (dread vs dread), it doesnt really care. Hostile dreads will NOT priority engage a single one of your starships, preferring to spray them all rather ineffectually...
Neither will your own starships, for that matter. Usually, its not an issue... but when your 10x mk1/2 dreads come into range with a hostile starship (or,  say... 3-6 bomber starships), id MUCH rather see my dreads coordinate and bombard the bombers no matter what else is in the area.

In this case, I believe a minor target priority change is in order. I note it is possible to mark a target of interest by ordering your units to attack, but this seems slightly useless. Something about certain targets taking priority, where you would rather they didn't (counterspies come to mind. Usually one per planet.. id rather my units keep the default attack in that case)
However, even with such a priority target in range, starships wont really pick one and blow it up.

I realise, however, that this is probably done for a good reason - specifically, the point of starships being large multiple attack vessels. I think its time for this to change somewhat.

Fleet starships (inc light/fleet/alien) these seem to be the best example of how a fleet starship would work. Large number of fleet suppressing fire, like flak guns. In general, I like these.
Dreadnaughts; These seem to be out of line. Multiple attacks are great, except for that they split their fire. This is not so great. However, there are a large number on the field - 5 being the ship cap for all sizes. Not only do I think this is a bit much, but I also feel that they are strong vs starships. 5 mk1 dreads will kill most any starship in 2 volleys. Sure, great anti-starship capabilities.. awesome range. Sounds great. until you add in the engine damage and multiple shots. I feel this part is out of line. Their ability should lie somewhere in the 'killing starships' category, which they do. However, the large number of dreads on the field means that they can suppress a good deal of other targets too.
Instead: Make them into long range BEAM LAZORS PLATFORM.. ok really, just decrease the number of shots, increase their shots power, and make the shots come from farther apart (like their wingie bits, for instance), Also, decrease the number on the field to 3 per mk level. Given like 2 shots per dread, at about 3x the power of the old shots, you are losing a little bit of damage, but I dont think thats so bad given the sheer number you ca have on the field. Also, make their bullets travel a wee bit faster? They are incredibly slow - a dread can shoot off some 6-8 volleys before they hit the target..
Raid/leech - cant comment on with the new changes. Damn you hard drive!
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Offline Harry

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #11 on: January 08, 2010, 01:21:25 am »
Lance, I suppose you heal starships with engineers tagging along?

Also: was I dumb to kill the warpgate in a system that I may eventually abandon?  Kinda kicking myself; I like to keep that AI Progress Meter nice and low.  :)

Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #12 on: January 08, 2010, 03:01:19 am »
well yeah, mk2 engineers are the backbone of any fleet :)
keep 5 of them FRD'ering out thataway... basically, zoom out and click somewhere

Also, looks like i accidentally highjacked your thread. Oops >.>

Back to long range conquests!

Actually.
i cant say I have ever gone 4 jumps. I like supply too much... I seem to take a planet, then skip a planet, then take the next one. I also make a point to have supply on any mk4 or core planet I attack.. Sometimes, it seems that the battle is won or lost by if I can maintain supply during the entire siege..

As per the warpgate - it reinforces by itself,(i think) so if you can deal with the ships that spawn now and again... Then again, if your just doing it for the adv research, youll probably be ok.

I seem to do raids on warp gates /everywhere/, leaving only the warp gate to my next target system open (where my fleet can handily mop up any spawns). Id rather be able to funnel the AI through my meat-grinder than worry about the progress...
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Offline HellishFiend

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #13 on: January 08, 2010, 03:40:36 am »
Lancefighter... I'm going to hate you if you get my dreadnoughts nerfed.....  >:(  :(
Time to roll out another ball of death.

Offline Lancefighter

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Re: Conquer a planet 4 hops away?
« Reply #14 on: January 08, 2010, 03:49:43 am »
nerf... its more a boost, really.
A boost vs starships at least. More bullet speed and less overall bullet spam is good for what it does.
besides, having 15 of them on the field just gets silly..
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