The Perfect fighter

[rdouglass]

Originally posted by Wardad:
Add in a combat sensors. It can help tip the balance.

Is that correct? ISTR that PDC was not affected by combat bonuses....I'm probably wrong, but just checking...

[Wanderer]

Originally posted by rdouglass:

quote:

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Originally posted by Wardad:
Add in a combat sensors. It can help tip the balance.

Is that correct? ISTR that PDC was not affected by combat bonuses....I'm probably wrong, but just checking...

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Just tested this with v1.49 (with TDM-ModPack).

At maximum range against a Sat stack with ECM-III, the ship with no sensors has a 71% chance to hit with PDC, the one with sensors III has 100% (they fixed the bug of adding weapon bonuses Last in gold didn't they?) So the sensors are useful. I used sats as the PDCs don't automatically fire at them - I guess it could be different for missiles and fighters but you can't see the numbers.

PDC has a 70% bonus to hit according to the Components file.

Hmmm. Will order gold after christmas I think. I'm fed up of being behind the times regarding bug fixes.

[cshank2]

OT: but I always put at least one launch bay and a few cargo containers on my bigger ship designs, fighters are the perfect point defense I think

heres my regular fighter design for a large
Cockpit
Life
6 engines
Afterburner
one shield
and the rest is all small meso...
Thats what I suually use =/

[tesco samoa]

another good fighter stag is the WP SB - F or the Warp Point Star Base Fighter ... 2500 kt of 1 space yard , CC , The exact number of fighter bays to launch 50 fighters a turn lots of cargo and have the puppy building fighters on repeat... Don't forget some PD on it... And let it does its job.. and forget about it.... ALso 2 or 3 500 kt bases building these babies on repeat... Add Sat's with only Shield depleters and Engine Killers and you are going to cause some major damage to fleets... As when the ships run out of supplies there sitting ducks for your fighters...

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by cshank2:
OT: but I always put at least one launch bay and a few cargo containers on my bigger ship designs, fighters are the perfect point defense I think

heres my regular fighter design for a large
Cockpit
Life
6 engines
Afterburner
one shield
and the rest is all small meso...
Thats what I suually use =/

I do the same, but I try to contol their speed to be one step faster than the mother ship, so they don't crowd it -- but slow enough so they're still around. The fighters milling around keep enemy ships from closing to point blank range.

[ December 18, 2002, 22:53: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Thei R'vek]

IMHO the best fighter strategy without any of the racial technologies is to use massive amounts of SMALL fighters. My standard Small Fighter design is:

Cockpit
Life Support
8 Engines
1 Small Anti-Proton Beam III

I then set the strategy for the design to "Point Blank" You can build almost 4 times as many of these as you can of Large Fighters in a signle turn and even though you lose massive amounts of them they're a lot cheaper to build and you can get more of them in less time. I haven't actually used a Medium or Large Fighter since about 20 games back and that's after I went and modded all the AIs to be more far more aggressive.

[capnq]

I would suggest building a special ship say Cruiser size or so, doesn't matter which hull you use, but fill it up with PDC and shields or armor.

Put at least one non-PDC weapon on the ship; if it only has PDCs, it will run for the corners as if it were unarmed.

[Thei R'vek]

Originally posted by capnq:
Put at least one non-PDC weapon on the ship; if it only has PDCs, it will run for the corners as if it were unarmed.

It isn't actually neccessary to put anything besides PDC on the ship, you simply click the "stats/strategy" option in the design window(under "hide obsolete") and change the ship strategy from "Don't Get Hurt" to "Optimal Weapons Range", "Short Weapons Range", "Point BLank", etc. IMO Point Blank is the best strategy but I play with massive amounts of highly disposable cheap crappy ships and units and so I don't actually need to worry about KEEPING anything that I build, it's all supposed to go suicide anyway

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by capnq:
Put at least one non-PDC weapon on the ship; if it only has PDCs, it will run for the corners as if it were unarmed.

Yes, but that one weapon should not be the null space cannon. It has a short range and will try to get too close to the capital ships. I'm not sure, but I don't think the null space cannon can target fighters.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Thei R'vek:

quote:

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Originally posted by capnq:
Put at least one non-PDC weapon on the ship; if it only has PDCs, it will run for the corners as if it were unarmed.

It isn't actually neccessary to put anything besides PDC on the ship, you simply click the "stats/strategy" option in the design window(under "hide obsolete") and change the ship strategy from "Don't Get Hurt" to "Optimal Weapons Range", "Short Weapons Range", "Point BLank", etc. IMO Point Blank is the best strategy but I play with massive amounts of highly disposable cheap crappy ships and units and so I don't actually need to worry about KEEPING anything that I build, it's all supposed to go suicide anyway

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What Capn is talking abou there is the bug where an all PDC ship will run for th ecorners even if it has a strategy of point blank, or optimal or anything like that.

It has something to do with the fact that the game doesn't actually consider PDC as a weapon for the purposes of strategy.

If you have found a way to workaround that, by all means let us know. But it's not as simple as giving your ship a strategy other than "Don't get hurt".

Geoschmo