Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » Just Chaff
| Just Chaff |
Fri, 23 January 2004 20:09  |
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 zoid |
 | Ensign |
Messages: 348
Registered: December 2002
Location: Murray, KY - USA | |
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I just read the "Late Game Chaff" thread and didn't find much about chaff there, so here's a new chaff thread.
In the last game I played, my SD partner's first chaff ships emerged as scouts armed with colloidal phasers and the FM engine. I thought it was rather extravagant chaff because I always designed mine as scouts with the QJ5 engine and the xray laser to minimize costs.
In my current game I am playing an SD (watching my previous partner inspired me to try it). I built my typical chaff design, but as I gathered a large BB fleet to defeat the combined fleets of the enemy partnership, I had trouble in the testbeds. From all appearances it looked like my fleet was superior, but I couldn't get my testbed to give me consistent victory for one reason or another. I finally realized two contributing problems:
1) Testbed had max tech. Miniturization made my minimized-cost chaff design unattractive enough so that it failed to perform it's function as decoys. I figured that since nobody in the real game had max tech the testbed was giving me inaccurate results, but beyond that I realized at some point my chaff would be completely ineffective as our technology levels increased.
2) The more immediate problem was that my enemy's missile BB's were equipped with shield sappers. In testbed battles where everything seemed to be going wonderfully (up to a point) it all went to hell when my range 3 beamer BB's got within firing range of the missile ships. I'm rubbing my hands with glee in anticipation of my large stack of beamer nubes finally destroying his troublesome missile BB's, but since his missile ships are armed to the teeth with battle computers, his sappers fire, stripping away the shielding from my BB's. No problem, I've got chaff, the enemy missile ships have been shooting them but there's still plenty left, and in a moment those damned missile BB's are going to be dead, right? Wrong. With no shielding my BB's were more attractive than the chaff, and his missile salvos fired before my beamers ever got to shoot, wiping out the whole stack.
I found that my previous partner was onto something. Sure, building hordes of colloidal phaser-equipped scouts was painfully expensive in theory, but in practice it didn't hurt too much. The good thing about it was that even with max tech there will never be another ship (at least I couldn't come up with one in my efforts) that were more attractive than the range 3 chaff even after miniturization. Additionally they remained more attractive even after the shielding had been stripped away from my main battleforce, which is PRECISELY when you don't want those Armaggeddon BB's shooting at them more than ever.
As an extra bonus, I've found the range 3 chaff make great minefield sweepers. I send 15-20 of them individually into an enemy minefield and the minefield disappears. My opponents have nothing smaller than a cruiser to dispatch out to kill them. That's costing them one cruiser to counter each chaff and they seem reluctant to do it. They can't just send chaff to kill my chaff - they have range 1 chaff.
I also have this fantasy about my chaff actually killing something with their range 3 weapons sometime, but so far it hasn't happened. That's okay, their only REAL duty is to die - anything else is above and beyond the call of duty. That's why I name them "Heroes of the Empire".
So far the only downside has been the cost, but it doesn't bother me anymore. I can still field thousands of them and I'm not missing the minerals or resources, but I sure am enjoying the benefits of this chaff design. I don't foresee ever building cheap chaff again.
As a curious side-note, when crash-sweeping a minefield with these I noted that the mineral salvage left from these ships varied quite a bit. They all had unique destinations in the minefield, but when each single-ship-fleet exploded the number of minerals left behind varied widely, and many times there was more mineral debris than the things had cost to build! Unfortunately, when I sent some freighters out
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I'M NOT AN EXPERT AND I'M OFTEN PROVEN WRONG. TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU READ MY POSTS.
Math?  Ummm, sure!  I do FREESTYLE math.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Just Chaff |
Fri, 23 January 2004 22:01  |
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| Sotek |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 167
Registered: November 2002 | |
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I'd never build shielded chaff.
I wouldn't build colloidal chaff, either...
In my experience, scout chaff works perfectly well.
Then again, most of my games have been relatively light on missile ships; most people field beamer BBs up until nubs are out, and then start making more variety of designs.
Mind you, while I wouldn't make shielded chaff, I do have a design that I expect I'll be deploying in most of my future games that almost fits that role.
Frigate, engine just fast enough for move 1.25, tech 6 shields, and sappers.
In any numbers at all, beamers *hate* these things.
They cost something like 1 boranium, and with shield stacking are less attractive than a dead skunk.
However, they're (usually, but not *always*) between chaff and everything else in attractiveness to missiles.
They're not disposeable if I can help it, being that they have a moderate cost in germanium and resources...
But as long as they fire once in a battle, and they almost always do, they've paid off. The init of a sapper is enough to shoot before almost any design out there except other sapper ships, and I don't worry about them being sapped; where's the loss to me? Sure, they're attractive to beams, but they'll still get their shot, and even sappers don't like them much.
But, while not being disposeable, they're a long sight more disposeable than my BBs, especially once the enemy is shieldless.
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| Re: Just Chaff |
Mon, 26 January 2004 05:42 |
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| iztok |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1206
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
| alexdstewart wrote on Mon, 26 January 2004 02:58 |
I recon IT's have lot's of advantages here...
They can field "GATABLE" chaff shredders based on BB's hull.
Take range3-disruptor BB with comps and 2.25 speed. It moves in range of "everything" on turn 1 (even bombers I think) and regardless of chaff speed it will fire at it before anyone else (if your tech is any good). With this first shot it will burn through enough chaff to pay for itself and ofcourse you would have a backup of sappers and missile platforms in your fleet also. So you opponent will find its fleets stripped of chaff, shield and massacred by missiles all on turn 1. Ain't that great?! 
Can take on any CA's with this strategy. 
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Have you ever meet a BB with move of 1+, few or no shields, no armor, with capacitors, computers and 20 Big Muthas that deal 4200-7800 damage with first shoot? That's the shredder of chaff-shredders. If I have a lot of chaff I also make sure it's not killed so easily, you know. 
BR, Iztok
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| Re: Just Chaff |
Mon, 14 July 2008 21:29 |
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| knightpraetor wrote on Tue, 15 July 2008 13:10 |
why no shields? and i'm still curious at what point of the game shielded chaff come into play? can someone suggest a design?
w10 frigate with 1 tech 10 shield? late game only? i'm in midgame and don't see any useful designs.
The main point of shielded chaff is to prevent beamers from taking them out easily? or is it to take multiple missile hits? because you will need the big shields to absorb a missile late game.
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no sheilds because <what dog said  >
Sheilded chaff is tricky stuff(not so much if you're IT)...the problem is getting them sheilded and still more attrative than the beamers they're there to protect. And yes, the point of sheilding them is to protect them from enemy beamers, because beamers don't kill any ships until the (stacked) sheilds are down). sheilding them doesn't usually make a difference for missile hits as the half missile damage that goes to armor is quite enough to destroy chaff ships.
The reason I say not so much for IT, is because damaged ships are more attractive, so IT can deliberately damage shielded chaff that would otherwise be useless by overgating without fear of losing the ships.
as for when...the same as 'normal' chaff, ie when it becomes cost effective to build hundreds of disposable ships rather than lose larger ones.
[Updated on: Mon, 14 July 2008 21:33] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Just Chaff |
Mon, 14 July 2008 21:29 |
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| knightpraetor wrote on Tue, 15 July 2008 11:10 |
why no shields? and i'm still curious at what point of the game shielded chaff come into play? can someone suggest a design?
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If you're referring to iztok's chaff-shredder-shredder, it's because the ship is going to die in almost all cicumstances (the attractiveness of that ship is ENOURMOUS, and they won't be a big stack, you'd generally only bring enough of them to mince the enemy chaff shredders.) So why waste resources and minerals on sheilds?
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The main point of shielded chaff is to prevent beamers from taking them out easily?
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Correct. Against missiles, it would only give any edge against jihad missiles (which do average 42.5 damage through sheilds, against the FF's 45 hull.)
BTW, I sometimes use (partly) gatling chaff, depending on mineral supplies. Awesome minesweepers. If I remember correctly, they cost more boranium, but less resources than colloidal chaff.
[Updated on: Mon, 14 July 2008 21:34] Report message to a moderator
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