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Radical Uses for the Destroyer

Fri, 29 December 2006 16:35

Iconian

Officer Cadet 2nd Year

Messages: 233
Registered: January 2006
Location: Nevada, USA

I�ve been doing some reading on a few Academy threads about different ship designs, and I thought I�d try my hand at a few designs I�ve used. First I�ll just talk about the ships, and then about using them practically.

The Ships Colonizers, freighters, scouts, and boosters are most important in the early game it seems. Small mistakes, or even inefficiencies, you make early on you�ll end up paying for years down the line. So I�ve focused on trying to find the best possibilities out there. After fair testing, I�d like to call attention to the destroyer. I think it�s a ship that is greatly overlooked that�s useful for a couple different functions beyond simple fighting. There are lots of designs you can make with it, but two designs I personally want to promote: one with a cargo pod and colony pod, which is good as a colonizer between Santa Maria and privateer (and also in a few other circumstances), and a destroyer with 2 fuel tanks, which is a fantastic booster. For the following I�m using the fuel mizer.

Let�s look at some basic stats (based on 3/3/4/3/3/3 techs).

Colony Ship
9i; 0b; 13g; 18r; 20kt; 200mg; 20dp; 25kt capacity

Privateer
50i; 3b; 2g; 50r; 65kt; 650mg; 150dp; 250kt capacity

Destroyer
15i; 3b; 5g; 35r; 35kt; 280mg; 200dp; 0kt capacity

Destroyer Colonizers
Most races need a lot of germanium early on to do well. The colony ship and medium freighter both use a fair amount of g, and so a lot of people stay away from them, instead going for the privateer. Before the privateer though, how about just going for the destroyer? The destroyer with colony pod and cargo pod, which I call �Colony DD� costs more iron and resources (and boranium) than your standard Santa Maria, but the Santa Maria is 22g, Colony DD 16g, so you�ll be able to make a few more factories for every Colony DD you build instead of a Santa Maria.

Besides that though, it has more fuel, twice the cargo, and ten times the Santa Maria armor. While unloaded the mg/kt ratio on the Colony DD is 3.84, but only 3.45 on the Santa Maria; though loaded it�s 2.28 and 2.41. If you only load it with 40kt instead of 50kt, the Colony DD gets a mg/kt of 2.48.

So, the Colony DD is a better deal than the Santa Maria if you�re looking at the g, and even you�re a �f you might want to use it�but think about how much it will take an enemy to kill a Colony DD compared to the Santa Maria. They�d have to have about 20 Alpha scouts, 7 Beta scouts, 6 Alpha DD�s, or 2 Beta DD�s to take down one Colony DD. Either way, you�ll be able to grow your economy a lot while they�re trying to take just one Colony DD down. So, put 40kt of colonists in the Colony DD and it will travel farther and faster than a Santa Maria, cost you less g, protect you colonists ten time better, and when it arrives you�ll have a colony 35% bigger than the competition. Every time I tested it, the destroyers also won in two-way races to colonize planets (does anyone know what criteria that�s based on?) To me, that�s certainly quite a deal.

How does it compare to the privateer? With 1 colony pod and 2 fuel tanks the privateer takes 11g, while the Colony DD takes 16g. The privateer�s loaded mg/kt is 3.97 to 2.28, so that�s also going to make it better than the Colony DD. But on the other hand, you�re going to be using a lot more resources and iron for each one, and you�ll also need to get to construction 4 instead of 3. Consider that the more resources and minerals you use in a colonizer ship, the more you�re going to lose in the end that are completely unrecoverable (this is also a good reason to avoid putting colony pods on large freighters unless it�s absolutely necessary�most of those resources and minerals are gone).

Destroyer Transports
For a transport, with 2 cargo pods, it�s really not good at all. Two of them together have less cargo and fuel than one medium freighter and they take about twice the iron and resources, though again they have more armor and use less g. Against a 3 fuel tank privateer it�s even worse: less iron and resources, but more g, more armor but again a much worse mg/kt ratio. The transport DD is a total flop, except maybe when you already have construction 3 and are really hard pressed for g.

Destroyer Boosters
But now we come to the Fueler, my favorite of the radical destroyer designs: 2 fuel tanks and a fuel mizer. Boosters are usually scouts or privateers. Here are the stats on these three types of ships:

Privateer booster (3 fuel tanks)
72i; 3b; 2g; 72r; 80kt; 1400mg; 150dp; 250kt capacity; 17.5 mg/kt

Scout booster (1 fuel tank)
16i; 2b; 4g; 23r; 17kt; 300mg; 20dp; 0kt capacity; 17.65 mg/kt

Fueler (2 fuel tanks)
32i; 3b; 5g; 53r; 42kt; 780mg; 200dp; 0kt capacity; 18.57 mg/kt

The Fueler is better than the scout booster or the privateer booster for the fuel efficiency, so on a full load fuel, if all three ships are going the same speed, the Fueler will go the farthest. Let�s first put the Fueler against the scout booster.

Since the Fueler has more fuel, you�d need to build more scouts to push a ship the same distance. If you build 2 scouts you�d spend 1 more b, 3 more g, and 7 less res than 1 Fueler, so if you�re tight on g you�d probably want to go for the Fueler. But besides that, the scouts together would still hold 180 less fuel and have 160 less armor. If you built a third scout to make up for that fuel the prices would get even worse. The Fueler is probably going to be better in just about every case for this kind of thing. The only exception I can think of is that maybe if you had a lot of scouts merged with a bigger fleet the scouts could drop off sooner than Fuelers, lightening the load so that the fuel efficiency gets a bit better. But considering the costs, the armor, and the extra fuel, the Fueler would almost always be better.

And how about the privateer? Like the scout compared to the Fueler, the Fueler has less fuel than the privateer, so let�s say you built two Fuelers. They would cost 8 less iron, 3 more b, 8 more g, and 31 more res. They�d also have 160 more fuel and 250 more armor, but no cargo compared to the privateer booster�s 250kt, which can double as a freighter.

Except for g and res, the Fuelers make better boosters than privateers, and much better boosters than scouts in everything except res. I like to build privateers as pure freighters and Fuelers as boosters, and just accept the res and g as the cost for getting what�s otherwise a much better ship.

Practical Use
There are a few other things that make destroyers really good ships for these capacities. The first thing is simple psychological warfare. While everyone else is flying Santa Marias and scout or privateer boosters around, you can be flying destroyers, which are a lot more intimidating. Load up two or three Colony DD�s and merge them with two or three Fuelers, then fly them in the general direction of some planets you want to colonize. Along the way you can change course here and there for a year or two toward enemy ships and planets. Seeing half a dozen destroyers so early on in the game should set their hearts beating, and if you�re lucky they may even start ramping up on their own warships or research, which will waste them time and resources they could be building their economy with. You can also use deceptive flight paths so your enemies don�t realize that the destroyers are colonizers.

Of course you don�t let your ships actually come into contact with their ships or planets if you can help it�you just fly them around so everyone can see and fear them. Then the Fuelers turn around one by one as the fuel gets lower, cutting down on the weight and increasing fuel efficiency for the rest of the fleet, until they�ve all turned back toward base while the Colony DD�s go on and colonize planets. Once the Fuelers get back they can make even more runs like this, perhaps escorting some freighters as well, along with some real destroyers.

Of course you�ll be found out at some point, but what are your enemies going to do about it? It�s going to take a fair amount of firepower this early in the game to take down even one Fueler. Mines could be one option, but unless they�re an SD you probably won�t have to worry about that so early. And by the time the rest have frigates and minelayers you�ll probably be about ready to switch over to SFX�s, and will probably also have a fair fleet of armed destroyers ready to help out. It�s sometimes expensive enough for your enemies to combat the Fueler and Colony DD that they won�t even bother.

PRT�s and Races
Just on these terms Fuelers and Colony DD�s are quite good. Two other circumstances make them even more so. For any �f race the g isn�t really going to matter much, and so the Colony DD ends up being better than the privateer colonizer in every way except fuel efficiency�and with Fuelers you should be able to take care of that too. And again, against the privateer booster the Fuelers are better in every way except res and g, and since you�re �f you�ll have a fair amount of both ready to kick around. With Fuelers, Colony DD�s, and medium freighters, I can�t think of a good reason for any �f to worry about privateers at all. Don�t research them unless there�s something else you need for construction.

One PRT I can think of also benefits greatly: Jack of all Trades. Firstly, JOAT�s have level 3 in all techs, which means they have everything they need to build Fuelers and Colony DD�s right from 2400, while other races will probably have to do some research for them. You can start building a host of destroyers for boosters and colonizers, but also for explorers, and you can back them up with defenders. Destroyers get the penscanner, so just imagine. In 2401 in an ABBS game you could start sending Colony DD�s with 40kt of colonists, both exploring for planets and colonizing them as soon as they find them. Send out three that turn at about 120 degree angles from your planet to take a look around, and as soon as they or your other explorers find green worlds grab them right up. This is just one possible strategy.

JOAT�s usually have a lot of ships for scanning, but with these you�ll have even more scanning power at basically all times. Say goodbye to surprise attacks on your colonizers from planet hoppers and SS ships and really anyone else. Not that they would try to attack you anyway. There probably aren�t going to be many races that will pick a fight with your destroyers before about 2420. You�re going to go cruising along completely unchallenged. If your enemies see that you�re heading toward a planet they�re also trying to colonize, there�s a good chance they�ll even turn around so that they won�t lose their own colonizer. If someone does try to attack you you�ll be able to change course without worries. And, even if they do manage to intercept you, what are they going to do about it? With 200 armor they�ll need to bring some decent forces to bear so early in the game compared to what they�d need for a Santa Maria. And, since Fuelers have an even better range than scouts with a fuel pod, why not just use Fuelers as your scouting class? The only case they might not be as good as scouts is if you want to mass produce a ton of explorers to scan everything, the Fuelers are going to cost you about twice as much.

I think �f�s, JOAT�s, and others could certainly benefit from these destroyers.

All comments welcome.

[Updated on: Fri, 29 December 2006 16:40]