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The necessity for missiles Thu, 23 October 2003 12:16 Go to next message
vonKreedon is currently offline vonKreedon

 
Lieutenant

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This is true for anyone depending on MFs to slow down an opponent on the offensive, so it is particularly true for SD.

You must maintain a credible missile boat threat. If you go for an all beam fleet all of your opponent's chaff suddenly becomes crash sweepers and your MFs don't buy you anything.

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Re: The necessity for missiles Thu, 23 October 2003 13:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
LEit is currently offline LEit

 
Lt. Commander

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Registered: April 2003
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While your conclusion is correct, the logic leading up to it is not.

You should always have a credible missile arm to your fleet, however, some one who is going to chaff sweep your mine fields will do so even if you have missiles.

The reason you need missiles, is that there are several counters to a fleet with minimal (or no) missiles. For example, skip jammers, bring less chaff, or retreat fire them.



- LEit

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Re: The necessity for missiles Thu, 23 October 2003 13:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
vonKreedon is currently offline vonKreedon

 
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Well, if your opponent has totally overbuilt their chaff needs, then yes they will simply chaff sweep whatever they want. However, if your opponent is showing any cost containment discipline on his chaff he will not have the hundreds or thousands of chaff available to sweep an SDs deep multiple overlapping MFs AND absorb enough of the enemies missiles if the enemy maintains a credible missile fleet.

I quite agree that you should at all times have missiles, beams and chaff in any manuever fleet. However, I have played against several players who build essentially nothing but AMP Nubians in the late game. This enables me to re-allocate my chaff from anti-missile to anti-MF duty without having to replace the hundreds of chaff thus expended, I only need enough with my fleet to absorb a round from a SB. This really crippled an SD I was playing as his MFs were no longer a factor.


[Updated on: Thu, 23 October 2003 13:33]

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Re: The necessity for missiles Thu, 23 October 2003 13:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
LEit is currently offline LEit

 
Lt. Commander

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You can only have 512 fleets at any one time, so chaff sweeping is normally limited to 200.

I've never known anyone who even tried to calculate their chaff needs closely enough so that they couldn't spare 100-200 chaff. Besides, chaff is cheap.

A competent SD player should have a missile arm to their fleet, the energy dampener favors missiles by keeping the beamers off for an extra turn or two.

Also a competent SD player shouldn't have his mine fields considered 'no longer a factor' just by chaff sweeping. Chaff sweeping does make them easier to deal with. Stack types, overlap fields, toss mine fields all over the place. And here's a trick some one recently explained to me: if some one is going to chaff sweep your field, set it to detonate and then set them to friend, they won't hit it at all (friend setting) so they cannot chaff sweep it, but the det will hit after they move in.



- LEit

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Re: The necessity for missiles Thu, 23 October 2003 17:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
vonKreedon is currently offline vonKreedon

 
Lieutenant

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I think that much of our differences on this issue because I am thinking in a campaign time frame and LEit seems to be thinking of one turn. Yes I am unlikely to expend more than ~200 chaff in one turn, but over the course of a campaign that can end up being ~1,000 chaff. I can build more chaff back at my production centers, but getting it to the maneuver fleet can be problematic given the terrible fuel milage on chaff and the inability to get gates up within Warp13 packet range of the enemy I'm attacking. Further, the enemy being an SD means that I can expect detonating minefields in my reinforcement lanes.

So if my maneuver fleet starts off with 1,500 chaff and expends 200 a turn over a five year campaign the fleet will only have 500 chaff left for the penultimate battle. This is not enough if the SD has a credible missile force, but totally fine if they have tons of beam Nubs.

Now you may say that the answer is to bring more chaff, but this is where the cost management comes in. Instead of budgeting for more chaff at the beginning of the operation I would simply take the extra year to conventionally sweep MFs, and suffer some skirmishing loses as my some of my detached Nubians are caught by my enemies forces.

At any rate, I can only say that this is a lesson that I learned recently, take what you will from it.

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Re: The necessity for missiles Thu, 23 October 2003 18:22 Go to previous message
Orca

 
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vonKreedon wrote on Thu, 23 October 2003 17:07

I think that much of our differences on this issue because I am thinking in a campaign time frame and LEit seems to be thinking of one turn. (...) So if my maneuver fleet starts off with 1,500 chaff and expends 200 a turn over a five year campaign the fleet will only have 500 chaff left for the penultimate battle. (....) Instead of budgeting for more chaff at the beginning of the operation I would simply take the extra year to conventionally sweep MFs, and suffer some skirmishing loses as my some of my detached Nubians are caught by my enemies forces.



a) If your invasion is relying on chaff sweeping and you haven't built enough...you deserve what you get (which is the only time I'd imagine chaff sweeping for five continous turns).

b) If you cannot keep your supply lines open while attacking an SD, your path of retreat has been cut off and most likely, that fleet will die.

c) When you have battleships flying around in quantites of more than a few dozen, you can bet there'll be at *least* several thousand chaff with the fleet. By the time nubians are out in force, I expect chaff reserves to be at least 5000+, not taking into account losses directly following a battle.

Chaff is an expendible resource that does not survive a battle. You NEED a steady supply moving up to support your main battlefleet, much like suicide shield sappers, anti-chaff beamers, and similar one-battle-only ships. If you can't get a steady supply to your fleet, your offensive will stall, ceding the initiative to your opponent.

Further you make a note of a "penultimate battle" - if your opponent is cagey, they won't offer battle until they can win anyway (at which point you'll probably see the fleet and back off, perhaps to start an offensive elsewhere)...or inflict attritional losses heavy enough to abort your offensive. So you can't really rely on a penultimate battle. Those sorts of battles require that both sides to agree to fight.

EDIT:
Getting back to the
...



[Updated on: Thu, 23 October 2003 18:27]




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