100 anything versus 100 Crystalline Ships

[Asmala]

brianeyci said:
Yes. It looks like Asmala knew exactly what he was doing picking Crystalline =D.

What, you're planning to attack me!?

[Karibu]

brianeyci, be grateful that your opponent doesn't use more than 10 crystalline armor. According to my calculations, best effect is got with 11 crystalline armor and those over that are reserve when one gets broken. Best result I have gotten is with 11 crystal armor and 1 phased shield max level.

My weapon placement against such ships.

1 or 2 shield depleters + engine destroying weapon + 1 depleter (this one optional) +1 APB (or any other high damage ratio gun) + 1 depleter +1 APB... You see the pattern.

Idea: 2 Depleters at first consume shields of crystal ship before engine destroying weapon fires. Then every other weapon is depeter and every other normal damage gun. Notice that any normal damage gun must make more that 150 damage, othervise it is useless. There are plenty of those. Strategy: Point Blank or Short Weapons Range (depending on your hit ratio)

Idea2: Make a bigger ship model than your enemy (ie. baseship if he uses dreadnoughts). Equip it with Tractor beam(s) first, then 1 or 2 shield depleter(s), engine destroying weapon and fourth weapon is a weapon which make high damage on close range (ie. Graviton hellbore, though it is risky because it is useless on any other distance than point blank). Strategy: Point Blank, of course.

Idea3: Fight in a storm which makes shields useless (haven't tried that).

Feel free to shoot me down with these ideas.

[Alneyan]

I would definitively advise against using Baseships, since you would be just begging your opponent to switch to Maximum weapon range, and the range would likely still matter with only two hundred ships in the battle (how many ships are needed to come down to a contest of numbers is a matter of debate).

Interesting idea about fighting in a storm, or much better, in a nebulae (they eat 5,000 shield points if memory serves). I must admit I do not know if these will stop the actual regeneration of shield points however; I have a hunch it only removes the shield points at the start of the battle, and creating shield points should still work. *Hurries to the laboratory*

*Rushes back to this thread, and takes off his lab coat* I was quite wrong. A nebulae stops both shield generation and regeneration of shields in the course of a battle. Interesting to say the least. Now you merely need to lure the Fiend into one such system, and voilà!

[brianeyci]

Karibu said:1 or 2 shield depleters + engine destroying weapon + 1 depleter (this one optional) +1 APB (or any other high damage ratio gun) + 1 depleter +1 APB... You see the pattern.

Best idea so far. 2 to one death ratio when combined with a wormhole beam at the end to scatter the crystal ships. If there's no wormhole beam, death. 100 ships versus 100, with crystal ships having 13 crystal. Try urself.

<edit> That's two of my deaths for one crystal death. And in larger numbers, this design doesn't work as well and the crystals stomp them </edit>

Brian

[Karibu]

Alneyan, you have a good point. Baseships are not known of their agility. But they have 2 advantages over dreadnoughts which may weight more. First, Bigger mount. You need high one shot damage to break Crystal armor defence. Wave motion gun makes a good damage on smaller mounts either, yes, but its reload time is 3. APB makes a good deal of damage and fires every turn, though it needs a bigger mount (ie. baseship). Second point is, that Crystal player is propably using dreadnoughts, so using same size class ships you can't use tractor beam any useful way.

I was thinking of putting wormhole beam at the end of all weapons. It is useful, but the weapon placement I suggested requires a lot of space itself too (many more shield depleters than in normal ship design, therefore less space for normal weapons). So if you can fit wormhole beam Last, good for you.

Also drones with shield depleters might surprise your enemy. They soak enemy fire and with any luck they deplete eney shields too.

[Arkcon]

Karibu said:
Also drones with shield depleters might surprise your enemy. They soak enemy fire and with any luck they deplete eney shields too.

I haven't see weapon bearing drones to be very effective, they don't get much chance to do damage before they're destroyed or rammed.

But, if the simulator says your design will survive opponent point defense long enough, and you're inclined to build enough, their high yield warheads will take down lots of shield points.

[Kamog]

Karibu said:
brianeyci, be grateful that your opponent doesn't use more than 10 crystalline armor. According to my calculations, best effect is got with 11 crystalline armor and those over that are reserve when one gets broken. Best result I have gotten is with 11 crystal armor and 1 phased shield max level.

I've tried putting lots of crystalline armor on my ships, and indeed it makes them a lot tougher. This ship design works well! It seems that crystalline armor is much better than organic armor, is that right?

Why is 11 crystalline armors better than 10?

[Suicide Junkie]

Kamog said:

I've tried putting lots of crystalline armor on my ships, and indeed it makes them a lot tougher. This ship design works well! It seems that crystalline armor is much better than organic armor, is that right?

Why is 11 crystalline armors better than 10?

Crystalline Vs Organic:
Crystalline dosen't care how fast the damage comes in. You get the same effect from 100 torpedo hits in one round as 4 torpedo hits per round for 25 rounds.

Organic Armor needs to survive to work, and the slower you take damage, the faster you regen.

One on One, the Organic armor will beat the Crystalline.
100 on 100, Organic provides no benefit at all.

[Alneyan]

That, and an Organic ship needs to survive one turn to see the regeneration kick in, while the Crystalline effect will work after each and every hit (well, barring weapons bypassing armour or shields). So the Crystalline armour is much better if your ships aren't expected to survive one turn, where their regeneration ability might improve the odds of the rest of your fleet.

Putting more than 10 Crystalline Armours increase the number of hits you can take while keeping your maximum regeneration ability (you cannot shrug off more than 149 points of damage, regardless of how many Crystalline Armours you have on board the ship). So, having 20 Crystalline Armours would require the attacker to destroy at least ten pieces of armour before breaking the "improved Emissive Armour" effect of the Crystalline Armour.

[Slick]

Alneyan said:
... you cannot shrug off more than 149 points of damage, regardless of how many Crystalline Armours you have on board the ship...

Wow! I didn't know that. How/where did you find that out?

Slick.