iRedEarth

Join Date 01/2013

Does armor seem like it's not worth using to anyone else?

Or is it just me?

Beam and missiles will fire first so blocking the first shot of those is more important to early survivability. Point defense especially, with the high of 36 damage from a single shot, benefit far more from defenses absorbing the full damage of an attack with no overflow even when there's only a single point of defense.
Also, with the square rooting of damage, lower damage and faster firing weapons work best against defenses, which is exactly what kinetic weapons do. It seems like when facing kinetics, the best defense would be more offense. Use the space and manufacturing time for you would have used to put up a meager defense with armor and instead put more guns in space and kill them faster.
So while I will use point defense and shields, I'm not seeing much reason to add armor. How about you?

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It is not just armor.... You can probably get away with ditching defenses entirely. Battles in this game are all about whose fleet has the most ships and highest fire power. Defenses, no matter how high, will be whittled down in seconds before a giant swarm of high capacity offensive drones. Defenses are only worthwhile early on where the numbers are not yet insane, but once you reach endgame, it is all about how many high capacity carrier modules you can pack on (up to 21) because those little drones will tear through anything.

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Taslios

Join Date 11/2002

+74

Generally the capitol ships kill the enemy before my defensive ships run out of defense. as defenses regen fully between battles, I replace far fewer ships with this strat.

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admiralWillyWilber

Join Date 05/2009

+99

Quoting Taslios,

reply 2

Defenses are very very good.. on Assault ships and Escorts. I tend to have one or two "soak" ships with nothing but defense and one single weapon....

Then a unholy ton of capitol ships with nothing but weapons.

Generally the capitol ships kill the enemy before my defensive ships run out of defense. as defenses regen fully between battles, I replace far fewer ships with this strat.

are you saying that having 2 defense escorts with the rest beong carriers are probably the bezt.

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Quoting Taslios,

reply 2

Or...you could have even MOAR capital ships with an unholy ton of weapons.

Seriously, though, if you have a bunch of carriers, you should never have to worry about them getting hit because everything will be dead before your first wave of drones even passes by the enemies.

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unless the defense has guardian drones, supposedly.

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Taslios

Join Date 11/2002

+74

I really wish the AI would build more carriers.... it's kinda fun when I "gift" someone a ton of excess carriers and then declare war on them.

If you are building carriers and have decent logistics there is very very little reason to build anything with defenses as Nilfiry is correct the fighters will kill everything.

Full disclosure, I find Carriers OP for this reason and thus rarely build them. I find the game more fun when the battles are not quite so lopsided.

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Quoting Taslios,

reply 6

Full disclosure, I find Carriers OP for this reason and thus rarely build them. I find the game more fun when the battles are not quite so lopsided.

You and me both. lol Not to mention they are so cheap that you can easily build more even if some get destroyed.

Although, in my experience, the AI does build lots of carriers, but it does not know how to optimize the carriers, so they rarely have more than one high capacity module, which defeats the purpose of building carriers at all.

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Taslios

Join Date 11/2002

+74

Yeah... they either build basic carriers, or don't have enough logistics, or don't put them in large enough fleets, or only put one in a fleet...

I think the AI would improve significantly if they just weighted the research a bit better. Like... hey AI. you chose the + to Logistics path... so you get the most out of it if you STAY WITH IT.... don't go willy nilly all over the place on subsequent specializations...

The game is supposed to use the ships we've designed against us... but I've only ever seen a few of my more basic designs because the AI NEVER chooses the "minimization" path and I almost always do.

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Quoting Taslios,

reply 8

The game is supposed to use the ships we've designed against us... but I've only ever seen a few of my more basic designs because the AI NEVER chooses the "minimization" path and I almost always do.

They do sometimes for me (rarely), but even if they did, cost is another factor that will make it almost impossible to effectively copy your ships, at least relevant ones. Fully loaded ships with reduced mass components are usually too expensive for a shipyard sponsored by only one poorly laid out planet. It would take several dozen weeks to make just one given AI capabilities, which is going to hurt them more than help.

Not that the AI can ever copy my endgame ships powered by level 20+ Hyperion Shrinkers. lol They would be lucky to have any improvements break level 5.

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