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Fielded Kelarium Sat, 17 April 2004 20:27 Go to next message
SlaveOfSeven is currently offline SlaveOfSeven

 
Petty Officer 2nd Class

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Registered: January 2004
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Is this armour worth using? Generally it seems that until Superlatanium armour isn't recommended, but with its 50 points of shield and relative light weight, is FK armour worth putting on BB's or other hulls?

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Sun, 18 April 2004 00:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
multilis is currently offline multilis

 
Lt. Commander

Messages: 789
Registered: October 2003
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A big question is... are you RS?


Quote:


relative light weight



I think 50kt is heavy.

On a starbase you often want armour to protect against missiles, weight doesn't matter.

For ships, it is often better to look at building more hulls and putting less weapons on each as a way of increasing the armour/weapon ratio.

For example:

A battleship costs 225 resources and yields 2000 armour.

Even if you havent taken RS:

10 x Fielded Kelarium costs 280 resources and yields 1750 armour + 500 shields. (Of course only 6 armours would fit on a Battleship)

So, would you rather have 2 battleships with Kelarium armour or 3 battleships with no armour and a few less weapons?

5 Fielded Kelarium on each battleship adds 250kt weight (but less fuel than 3 battleships). You have less shield slots but are more efficient in using booster elect/mech slots/engines. You have lost gatabillity and a fair bit of last move advantage due to lower weight chance.

And if you took RS which would have boosted your shields, the story is much more against Fielded Kelarium.

IMO, croby is often good, but Fielded Kelarium is usually only for Starbases and rare special situations where you want to alter the attractiveness order of your ships (which get attacked first) or want weight as part of an unusual overcloaking ship.

An example of an unusual overcloaking ship would be a battleship with 6xFielded Kelarium, 8xCroby Sharmour, 7 x Super Stealth Cloak, 20 x Epsilon Torp and ideally heavy engines, giving you 1200kt+ of 93% overcloaking mass that can hide stuff especially in orbit from penn scans and take out chaff fairly well.

A use for such a ship would be to hide some chaff from the enemy to trick him into battling your forces (that aren't over one of your gates, so he thinks he can count them all with penn scans).
...



[Updated on: Sun, 18 April 2004 00:24]

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Sun, 18 April 2004 03:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Coyote is currently offline Coyote

 
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If it was, say, fielded Crombium or something, it's actually be useful (Destroyers, whee!), but it's too high up in the tech tree to be much good.

Perhaps its purpose is to allow you to build shielded DD sweepers (able to take a mine hit) that can hold a minelayer pod in the nose?


[Updated on: Sun, 18 April 2004 03:19]

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Sun, 18 April 2004 08:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
SlaveOfSeven is currently offline SlaveOfSeven

 
Petty Officer 2nd Class

Messages: 58
Registered: January 2004
Location: England
multilis wrote on Sun, 18 April 2004 05:05


I think 50kt is heavy.


Oops! Was looking at the Technical Reference which has a typo; lists it as 28kt.

Thanks for the replies.

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Wed, 21 April 2004 12:10 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Apelord is currently offline Apelord

 
Master Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 99
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Fielded Kelarium is generally not advisable for two reasons:

1) Where it sits in the tech tree makes it fairly expensive to develop for early use. It is also not much more to make the jump to better sheilds or armor depending on the situation. By the time you build a decent group of ships w/Kelarium you could've bought a superior tech.

2) The mineral cost isn't worth it. While you do get some extra sheilding, you get more bang per mineral by using standard technologies that are the next step up.



"The object of war is not to die
for your country but to make
the other bastard die for his" -George Patton

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Wed, 21 April 2004 14:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
LEit is currently offline LEit

 
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In general I agree that Fielded Kelarium is fairly useless, I would use it before I would use Neutronium, unless the design has more shields then armor already, but that's unlikely.

Without RS, and against missiles your effective DP for Neutronium is 137.5. Fielded Kelarium is 162.5 (shield+armor(limit to shield)+remaining armor/2). Although misses will damage shields somewhat, so it's probably about even.

Against torps, Neutronium is slightly better, and againt beams, the DP is higher for Neutronium, but for Kelarium you get some shield stacking.

With RS Kelarium is better in all cases.

There are only two places I'll stick armor that heavy, on bases and on missile BBs that can't gate anyway. And even in those cases it's questionable.



- LEit

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Wed, 21 April 2004 14:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Orca

 
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LEit wrote on Wed, 21 April 2004 14:13

There are only two places I'll stick armor that heavy, on bases and on missile BBs that can't gate anyway. And even in those cases it's questionable.


It's generally worth it to armor your (bases|missile ships) - force protection. Basically the reason why arm cruisers even if they shoot first suck; any hits and they start going poof...taking those missiles with them. It's less important early on, but as the missiles get more expensive it becomes more and more worth your time to armor the ships that carry them. And you generally aren't too worried about gatability or battle speed.

On beamers armor is a much more iffy proposition due to speed, gatability, and move last concerns.



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Re: Fielded Kelarium Wed, 21 April 2004 16:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Carn is currently offline Carn

 
Officer Cadet 4th Year

Messages: 284
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I`ve not played IS sofar, so stupid question:
Isn`t Fielded Kelarium useful on first super freighters?
SF should have shields to protect against missle targeting, but increasing that base armor of 400 is also useful. Or is croby sharmor better at that task?

Carn

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Wed, 21 April 2004 17:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ForceUser is currently offline ForceUser

 
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I'm currently in that exact situation

It all comes down to a very comman logic : IS IT GATEABLE??

A SF with inerspace-10 engines and 3 Super feul tanks and 3 croby sharmours is gateable (304 Kt) and has 595 armour and 180 shields or 595 armour and 252 shields if RS (Funny, The armour doesn't go down with RS)

With Fielded Kelarium to keep it gatebale you can only put one on and then it's 324 Kt. It got a lot less armour and shields so Croby Sharmour is MUCH better. (Even more so with RS while FK Deteriorates even more since you then don't have the bonus to shields but way less armour)

ForceUser



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Re: Fielded Kelarium Thu, 22 April 2004 09:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mlaub is currently offline mlaub

 
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Orca wrote on Wed, 21 April 2004 13:52


It's generally worth it to armor your (missile ships) - force protection.


Very true for BB's and some cc designs. In the Fielded Kelarium 'age', it can be a daunting task to burn through all that armor, and shields with the beamers available. The problem is it is such a small window of opportunity in most games that many players fall into the trap of continuing to build these ships well into obsolescence. I'd say if there was a few planets you need/want, sure, build a *small* force and take them. Don't keep building them, though, stop and go for tech again.

Side note on armor in the end game. I see many people do this on Nub missile boats, and I really don't get it. It is much easier and cheaper to make you missile ships less attractive than you beamers by using jammers and shields. All you end up doing by using armor, is burning through you Iron faster than you would have, giving you fewer missiles. IMO, armor DP is always a minor, secondary concern on Nubs. Especially when you can easily design your beamer attrition nubs to take the brunt of any damage that gets past the chaff. Further, if the fighting gets to your missile ships, armor usually won't help as the other side is likely to have many more beamers than you have Nub missile ships.

-Matt



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Re: Fielded Kelarium Thu, 22 April 2004 13:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Apelord is currently offline Apelord

 
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Some other things to bear in mind when considering armoring ships is the stacking effect of sheilds (which leads to how many you will build), whether you took RS or not (I almost always do), and Iron efficiency.

Taken in reverse order:
Iron efficiency means simply how many points of offense/defense do you get for each unit of iron invested. Hulls give you the best payback (especially late game) in terms of defense per iron unit. By Hulls I also mean chaffe. 3kt worth of iron in chaffe can soak up an armageddon missile which is a very nice payback. As a rule of thumb hulls are more efficient than armor in terms of defense per unit of iron. This gets a little more complicated because you might also be constrained by other minerals/resources required to build another ship, etc.

RS is, generally speaking, required late game (especially true in the nub era). This lrt halves the efficiency of your armor investment however which makes the above even more true.

Stacking effect of sheilds is simply that a bigger stack of one design yields more sheilds to overcome before cap missiles begin doing double damage. The Stars! combat engine favors quantity over quality as a result. So before you begin building ships one needs to consider how many you will build. Early to mid techs do not have a long a life and become outdated quickly. Thus something like feilded kelarium probably won't be around long before better techs become available hence building tons of ships with this stuff on it won't be a good investment since it will be outmoded quickly and you will not be able to build up a big pile of ships to get a big stack of sheilds.

Small skirmish groups, a key frontline starbase, etc. under the right circumstances might need kelarium to get that extra edge, but any such edge will be short lived.




"The object of war is not to die
for your country but to make
the other bastard die for his" -George Patton

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Thu, 22 April 2004 18:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
multilis is currently offline multilis

 
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I think the game matters in the talk of tech verses ships.

It is much easier to 'go for nubs' in a large game compared to a small.

It is much easier to 'go for nubs' in a game where everyone has waited till battleships to even start thinking about real war (the eccons are in better shape) then a game where players have been aggressive right from the start.

...

An alternative to armour on battleships is more battleships with less missiles each. So you might end up with only 12 rather than 16 or 20 missiles per ship. Lots depends on what minerals you are short on, how many jammers are in play, etc.



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Re: Fielded Kelarium /Croby Sharmor & RS Mon, 10 May 2004 06:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ptolemy is currently offline Ptolemy

 
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With RS, the Croby Sharmor is an excellent component because it's a shield component with armor. Since it's a shield component it doesn't lose the 50% for the added armor property. And, it gets the RS shield bonus. An absolutely wonderful component for early frigates.

The Fielded Kelarium is an armor component with added shield properties. Because it's an armor component, the armor is rated at 50% strength if you have RS.

Ptolemy


[Updated on: Fri, 14 May 2004 19:46]





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Re: Fielded Kelarium /Croby Sharmor & RS Mon, 10 May 2004 10:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
LEit is currently offline LEit

 
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You do get the +40% shields with RS with Fielded Kelarium.

RS hurts armor components, and helps total shielding even from non-shield components.

I'm fairly sure RS only hits armor components so that hull armor isn't affected. AFAIK there are only 3 non armor components that have an armor effect: Croby, Multi Cargo Pod, and the Langston Shell.



- LEit

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Re: Fielded Kelarium /Croby Sharmor & RS Mon, 10 May 2004 11:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Kotk

 
Commander

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LEit wrote on Mon, 10 May 2004 16:23

You do get the +40% shields with RS with Fielded Kelarium.

RS hurts armor components, and helps total shielding even from non-shield components.

I'm fairly sure RS only hits armor components so that hull armor isn't affected. AFAIK there are only 3 non armor components that have an armor effect: Croby, Multi Cargo Pod, and the Langston Shell.


Fully agree.
However that all does not make fielded kelarium useful piece of equipment. Whatever. IS got LOADS of special eq and i think that something there is useful, something highly useful and one piece maybe even two are very highly useful. Wink


[Updated on: Mon, 10 May 2004 11:53]

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Mon, 11 December 2006 07:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Neo the White is currently offline Neo the White

 
Master Chief Petty Officer

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Ok this thread is only about Fielded Kelarium. I save my time and post all my ideas here. pardon if it bothers someone.

I used StarEd nowadays to mod all these gadgets of different races so that for example Croby Sharmor will have 420 DP while Complete Phase Shield has 500 an Shadow Shield has 705

Heh and the Kelariums become Semi-Organic Armor
fileded Kelarium is Semi-Organic Armor FFC (Force Field Covered/whatever) and have 1350 and 1300 DP
while Depleted Neutronium becomes Superlatanium SD having 2000 Dp and normal Superlatanium will have 1700 Dp.

otherwise those gadgets change really nothing in the game play.

I've modded also all the Jammers ending with Jammer 55 of IS. I had it Jammer 75 but that is a bit too super now. but why not. An advanced race with advanced tools to take care of its people - feels like a highly advanced alien race. Give them a mobile Ultra Station(if it only could make ships as well) instead of a vessel just for mating rituals, super shield sapper and that's a race really hard to knock out of the universe.


[Updated on: Mon, 11 December 2006 13:38]

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Mon, 11 December 2006 21:00 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dogthinkers is currently offline Dogthinkers

 
Commander

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Neo the White wrote on Mon, 11 December 2006 23:49

Ok this thread is only about Fielded Kelarium. I save my time and post all my ideas here. pardon if it bothers someone.

I used StarEd nowadays to mod all these gadgets of different races so that for example Croby Sharmor will have 420 DP while Complete Phase Shield has 500 an Shadow Shield has 705

Heh and the Kelariums become Semi-Organic Armor
fileded Kelarium is Semi-Organic Armor FFC (Force Field Covered/whatever) and have 1350 and 1300 DP
while Depleted Neutronium becomes Superlatanium SD having 2000 Dp and normal Superlatanium will have 1700 Dp.

otherwise those gadgets change really nothing in the game play.

I've modded also all the Jammers ending with Jammer 55 of IS. I had it Jammer 75 but that is a bit too super now. but why not. An advanced race with advanced tools to take care of its people - feels like a highly advanced alien race. Give them a mobile Ultra Station(if it only could make ships as well) instead of a vessel just for mating rituals, super shield sapper and that's a race really hard to knock out of the universe.


Hi, but you are not really talking about fielded kelarium, as you have modded it.

There is a subforum for StarsED / VML discussions here: Cool
http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/index.php?t=thread&frm _id=36&rid=326&S=628e1921f10e1c047165e9fef0d23878

I think you will get more of a response on your modification ideas if you post them there instead. Nod

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Re: Fielded Kelarium Thu, 21 December 2006 06:38 Go to previous message
Neo the White is currently offline Neo the White

 
Master Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 96
Registered: December 2006
thanx

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