My first victory!

[laughingman]

I've been playing for over two years, and today I had my first victory! I can't believe how good it feels to be able to say that, finally.

I played a fairly simple game, 80 planets realistic, 7/7 vanilla AI, with only Zenith Traders and Human Colony Rebellions enabled. I usually play with Golems on medium but I wanted to see how I did without them. Because I like starships a lot, I decided to play a game where I didn't spend any knowledge on fleet ships. I let the RNG pick my bonus ship and ended up with laser gatlings. They became the primary escort for my starship fleet for most of the game.

I spent the first couple of hours scouting and building up my starship fleet. There were two ARS three hops away from my homeworld, which I quickly took. I received vorticular cutlasses and Stealth Battleships from them. I had never used cutlasses before today, but I may choose them again in another game. I used caps of them, along with the Laser Gatlings, to clear out border worlds and cheaply defend against waves. They were useful right until the endgame.

I found and captured a few Fabricators: Gravity Rippers V, Electric Shuttles V, Heavy Bomber Starship V, and my personal favorite, the Spire Starship V. The Mk V Spire Starship: for when you want it dead, real dead. The Gravity Rippers were underwhelming, combining slow movement with short range. They were moderately useful on defense, not so much on offense. I enjoyed using the electric shuttles a lot. They were particularly useful at clearing out threatballs and trapped waves.

The planet with the Mk V spire starship fabricator also had an experimental engineers fabricators. They were amazing. That is all.

I got Blade Spawners, autobombs, and Neinzul nanoswarms to round out my fleet. By the time I was ready to assault the AI Homeworlds, I had unlocked Mk III of every starship and captured a Starship IV factory. I had also built up a substantial mercenary fleet. One of the side benefits of using primarily starships for offense is a lot of extra resources that build up quickly. I felt confident but had a few problems.

The first AI Homeworld had a core raid engine, while the second had a core CPA post. I decided to go for the one with the raid engine first, since I thought it might be easier to deal with. It was, to a certain point. There was an Ion Eye on the Homeworld. I couldn't get close to the Raid Engine it with Raid Starships the first two times I tried, so in the end I took the entire starship fleet in and destroyed it. In the process, I destroyed most of the other guard posts and about 300 Mk V ships while losing about a fourth of the fleet. After spending some time rebuilding, I went back and finished destroying all the guard posts, before moving my fleet into position to assault the other homeworld. This one didn't have an Eye so I just brought in the entire fleet.

I destroyed the first AI command station with about 6 minutes left on the CPA timer and packed what remained of the fleet into transports. I had to get to the other homeworld quickly, to finish the job. As you can see from the screenshot, I made it just in time.

Whew. I think I need something strong to celebrate.

[Hearteater]

Congratz!!! Nicely done.  So, how did the Starships feel compared to each other?  Were any straight-up in a different league (aside from you having a higher Mark for some)?

[TIE Viper]

I'm gonna toast a beer to you, laughingman.  Congrats! 

[laughingman]

The Mark V are in their own league, of course. I did get to play with Mk I-IV of each ship and can give you my impressions of each one.

The Spire and Zenith definitely feel tougher than the others, but mostly because their hull types aren't as vulnerable to guard posts as the others. You have to pay a little knowledge to unlock them, so I don't think they're overpowered. I think the Mk I would be a bargain at 1000k each.

The Zenith is just a beast of a Starship, hard to kill and lethal against anything not immune to missiles. When the AI has them at higher marks, you should target them first.

The Spire Starship is a different beast. It's tough and its weapon puts out a lot of damage in a short time. I used these a lot against missile posts and other things I wanted dead quickly.

Heavy Bomber Starships don't get a lot of love from some, but I like them a lot. Giving them the ability to hit fleet ships is nice, and they survive well against anything that doesn't have a bonus against their armor. Missile Guard posts counter them pretty directly, as I learned the hard way. They're pretty quick, and in this game I used them to chase down bombards and Blade Spawners, or anything else that was quick and deadly. They were also my number one guard post killer, with the obvious exception.

I'm not completely sold on Plasma Siege Starships. Their area damage under forcefields is nice, but they're so slow that they take a lot of damage from long-range guard posts and AI defenders. Their rate of fire is pretty low, too. Riot Starships do better at damaging engines, and at a longer range. This is the one starship I would say needs some sort of boost, but I don't know what exactly.

Raid Starships are, well, Raids. Lethal, quick, and fragile.

The Flagship line is pretty solid. They aren't as rugged as the others, but they have respectable damage. Their utility is in how they make your fleet better, though.

Leech starships are one of my favorites, especially at higher marks. They are extremely fragile, but worth sending into battle to get what you want from the AI.

[keith.lamothe]

Congratulations   I bet the AI wants starship nerfs now.

I got Blade Spawners, autobombs, and Neinzul nanoswarms to round out my fleet.

Goodness.  You could saturate enemy defenses with stuff like that.  Just build some space docks on the other side (or nearest place you have supply) and FRD-build the autobombs and nanonswarms to target.  Bring along the blade spawners for fun and damage.  Never mind the ion eye on that homeworld, the kamikaze units can be produced faster than it can fire.  And with so many other things to shoot at (and the nanoswarms applying every debuff type known to man) your starship core could roam around while taking a lot less fire than usual.

[Diazo]

Congrats on the win, that first one is always big. 

I'm not completely sold on Plasma Siege Starships. Their area damage under forcefields is nice, but they're so slow that they take a lot of damage from long-range guard posts and AI defenders. Their rate of fire is pretty low, too. Riot Starships do better at damaging engines, and at a longer range. This is the one starship I would say needs some sort of boost, but I don't know what exactly.

Actually, I see plasma siege as a support ship designed to work with your fleet the same way a flagship.

They both make the fleet balls stronger, the flagship with it's attack boost ability, the plasma siege by covering the major weakness of the fleet ball, that of cracking a force field defense.

Because of the splash damage, almost everything under the FF dies well before the FF shrinks long enough to stop defending them when the FF is being pounded by a plasma siege. This reduces the firepower coming back at your units while they engage the FF defense significantly and so keeps more of your ships alive.

This matters a lot less to a starship fleet because they (in general) have the health to take the pounding until they can knock the FF down, where-as this can save many fleet ships from dying when they support a fleet ball.

If I'm running a starship fleet, the plasma siege is quite weak and usually stays home, if I'm running a fleet ship ball, the plasma sieges are key to cracking open anything that's defended by an FF.

On high mark worlds with the higher mark AI FFs, the plasma siege splash damage will kill defending units underneath the FF many seconds, if not a full minute, before my fleet ball can pound the FF down enough to unprotect them. That is a long time for fleet ships in combat.

D.

[Winge]

I like Plasma Siege Starships as well, especially now that they move as fast as Missile Frigates.  I can finally bring them in with my "slow" fleetball now (good range, generally slower ships...Missile Frigates are the fleet ship that ball is based around).  Enemies under forcefields, beware  >D

Edit:  congratulations on the win!  Those are always nice, and sometimes hard-earned 

[laughingman]

Keith, I must admit I never thought about using my high-cap disposables to assault a homeworld, but I like the idea. The chaos it would have caused would have been delightful. I have a save a few minutes before I started the first assault, so I suppose I could go back and see how it works. With the way that the strategic reserve works, I'm not sure I even need to worry about an Eye on a homeworld. 500+ reinforcements allow me to bring in a pretty big hammer without worrying about activating the Eye.

Diazo, thanks for the thoughts about Plasma Sieges. I think you are correct: it's better to think of them as fleet support rather than pure DPS. Their utility against force fields alone makes them worth taking along with a fleet ball. I admit that there were plenty of times I used them for that purpose and was glad to have them.