Satellies: Major suckage? Need help.

[Iron Giant]

I like to play a somewhat defensive game. I tend to give my race 2000 points and the other races 5000, with lots of AI bonuses. This means they are fielding fleets of ships while I am still building up.

So, I'm constantly looking for ways to defend my warp points.

Mines rock. I can quickly get most contested warp points up to 100 mines each, even early on. But as time goes on, they start to wear that down and I want to have something else there to defend the warp point.

So, I've been trying to use Satellites. Last night, a BB came through, wiped out the Last of my mines and I fired my 100 satellites (med sat weapon mount, with 2 heavy DUAC in each satellite!! so 200 heavy DUAC!) and all they did was plink his shields a little because they were all stacked on one side of the warp point and then the BB ran away. Ugh. For all the effort it took to get 100 satellites at a warp point, that was a pretty miserable showing.

I did notice he had ecm and my satellites did not have the bonus to hit computer (forgot name). But man, having to replace 100 satellites is a lot of work.....

I tried using missles on satellites, but you HAVE to fire all 100 missles at only one target. What a waste! By the time you can fire again, they enemy always moves away.

Am I missing something? Does anyone have a killer satellite design? tactic? idea?

I was thinking, what if I put a starbase with the satellites? Would the AI attempt to fight the starbase or run away from that as well?

[Captain Kwok]

First of all, you need to add at least combat sensors to satellites if you want to hit anything and ECM to decrease the chances your satellites are going to be hit. Maybe a bit of armor/shields might help make them Last longer as well.

It also seems your opponent used hit and run tactics - quite effective against a static defense like satellites.

However, I'm sure if you had some sensors on board - they would have taken out the ship fairly easily.

[Siegebreaker]

One single sat with the sensers its enough for the whole wolf-pack, right?

I modified my Version of the Proportions mod to hold 1000 mines/sats per sector, so I only use mines.

In heavely contested areas I send a shipyard ship to build an starbase fighter-carrier, because since the AI doesn't use the fighters strategically I consider cheating to just place a fighter group hovering over the warp point.

Just make sure your base can launch all fighters on the first turn, just in case it gets blown out with the first enemy broadside.

I also build an starbase full of guns with the "Massive Base Mount", which packs quite a punch. (don't forget the multiple tracking component)

Satellites I use only as a Last fill in, because they pay no maintenance, while in Proportions an starbase full of Massive Mounts can bankrupt an small empire.

Finally, there is always the evil human trick of closing the warp point, but I think that would be an exploit when playing against the AI.

I have a question though, would a sat packing only armor protect the whole sat group? What about packing only shields?

[oleg]

Originally posted by SB:
... I modified my Version of the Proportions mod to hold 1000 mines/sats per sector, so I only use mines.

...

This is a blatant cheating All proportions AI were coded with the assumptions of 100 mines per sector and physically can not build minesweepers for your settings.

new patch improves missiles destribution and 100 missile satellites can now kill a lot of ships now !!

[Alneyan]

There is another problem with satellites: even if you put Combat Sensors (and you have to), they will become less and less able to hit the enemy ships as technology is more and more available. In fact, a ship with ECM III, Stealth Armor III and Scattering Armor III has a -90% chance to be hit, and -130% if you take into account ship and fleet training up to 20%.

On the other hand, Satellites cannot be trained unless you are lucky enough to have a planet sitting on the wormhole or unless you have system wide fleet training facilities. So it means they only have Combat Sensors III to increase their chances to hit, so in the end they have a mere 35% chance to hit at point blank. Once the enemy ship is at range 4 or farther, this chance is only of 1%, unless you happen to have the Talisman. The enemy ship will still have a good chance of hitting you though, as if your ships only have ECM III, the enemy ship will have a 99% chance to hit you at range 4. (Satellites do not have any in-built bonus to defence, unlike drones or fighters)

[Atrocities]

Just mod a component to give a combat bonus for satellites. Or in the vehicle size file give them a 80% defense bonus or something.

[ March 01, 2004, 15:14: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

[Iron Giant]

Originally posted by oleg:
new patch improves missiles destribution and 100 missile satellites can now kill a lot of ships now !!

???? Does this work in strategic mode battles or am I better off with Missle satellites letting them handle combat automatically?

[Siegebreaker]

Originally posted by oleg:

This is a blatant cheating All proportions AI were coded with the assumptions of 100 mines per sector and physically can not build minesweepers for your settings.

Yeah, but then deplying mines would be pointless since it would be easily counteracted by minesweepers.

The point of 1000 mines its that you don't know how many the AI have deployed when you are on the attack. (Assuming the AI will deploy more than 100 )

Its way too easy to build 3 medium transport with 15 level-5 minesweeper components a piece.

I'll check if the AI its building more than 100 per sector.
It will be a lot of fun when your safely constructed fleet prepared to sweep 100 mines warps into a minfield with 180 mines.

I don't like predictability, that's why I eliminated the 100 limit, but you have a point about the AI files, so I'll play with the in-house rule of deploying only 100 mines per sector, but I think I'll leave the AI with the 1000 limit, unless you convince me otherwise.

The question now though, its how will the AI behave when facing other AIs.

[ March 01, 2004, 15:42: Message edited by: SB ]

[Siegebreaker]

Originally posted by oleg:

new patch improves missiles destribution and 100 missile satellites can now kill a lot of ships now !!

How exactly does it works now?
What's missile distribution?

[Wardad]

Check out this old thread:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=23;t=005111

The Talisman really helps SATs.
Engine damage weapons were very effective until a patch removed the shield piercing ability.