Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » sappers and BB slot firing order
| sappers and BB slot firing order |
Mon, 19 July 2004 11:17  |
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 Hooga |
 | Crewman 1st Class |
Messages: 31
Registered: July 2004 | |
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I'm designing a beamer BB (weapons 16) that I want to last me through some of the rest of the game (as in combatting multiple enemy races in multiple sucessive wars). I think I have everything down except I'm not sure if I should use sappers or not. And that is because of the slot firing order (from starsfaq):
top 6
bottom 6
top 2
bottom 2
4
Now the 12 heavy blasters will shoot first, and they hit enemy shields, in a 1 on 1 situation will almost take out energy 10 shields, making sappers nearly useless in the 2 slots. Or if I go with sappers in the top 6 slot, there will be too many.
Disadvantages to not using sappers: less initiative, costs more
I'm thinking to go pure heavy blasters.
And then there's jammers vs energy capacitators. 66% jamming or more firepower.
Current design:
W9 ramscoop
20 heavy blasters
3 ultra stealth cloaks
3 jammer 30s
1 overthruster
full organic armour, full bear neutrino barriers
movement: 2
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| Re: sappers and BB slot firing order |
Mon, 19 July 2004 12:46  |
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Yep.. 4 zappers is usually what I use... or leave em empty.. or fill em with the same weapon the 6 6 4 has...
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OLD POST (May, 2003) by LEit... Thanks LEit 
Re: Order of firing and empty slots Thu, 15 May 2003 16:02
The reason order matters for BBs (battleships) is because of the different choices in BB design. These are driven by the fact that weapon damage is calculated per slot, then tries to kill whole ships, any left over damage from the slot spreads over the whole stack.
There are 3 basic schools of BB design:
1) Pack em full - put 20 of whatever weapon you choose in all slots, try to do the most damage possible.
2) 16 weapons - put 16 weapons in the 6, 6, and 4 slots. Realizeing that ship kills matter so much, and spreading damage over a stack is not very effective, this design attempts to get the most kills by having big slots full.
and,
3) 12 weapons - taking the 16 BB one step further and just using the 6 and 6 slots for maximum weapon size.
Fewer weapons gives more protection per weapon (more ships with more armor and shields, each loss destroys fewer weapons).
The order matters when arguing between 12 and 16. Since the order is 6 6 2 2 4, the two 6 slots will fire before the 4. The 6 will (hopefully) kill some enemy ships and do some damage to the rest of the stack. The second 6 will kill some more ships (might even be more then the first 6 due to the damage from the first shot), and damage the survivors. The 4 then fires and by this time it should be big enough to get a few more kills.
The loss in damage potential from 20 to 16 is 5.6% (based on the iron cost of Jihad BBs) - less weapons per ship, but more ships. You lose some due to the overhead of the hulls and other stuff. I didn't put anything in the other slots, but in a game I often put sappers in there, cheap, and if something closes, they're very effective.
The lost in damage potential from 16 to 12 is another 8.5% (14% from 20 to 12). Given that the 4 should be enough to get ship kills, especially as it fires after the 6s, I prefer the 16 designs.
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Ash
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| Re: sappers and BB slot firing order |
Mon, 19 July 2004 14:28 |
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| LEit |
 | Lt. Commander |
Messages: 879
Registered: April 2003
Location: CT | |
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| Hooga wrote on Mon, 19 July 2004 11:17 |
Current design:
W9 ramscoop
20 heavy blasters
3 ultra stealth cloaks
3 jammer 30s
1 overthruster
full organic armour, full bear neutrino barriers
movement: 2
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For a beamer, I would always use sappers in the 2s, maybe even in the 4 if the enemy is a heavy shield user (good en tech, RS, unarmored BBs)
Don't cloak your combat ships, you will be better off with an overcloaker design that you can merge with, even as an SS. Cloaks are also more massive then other elec parts.
(hint: SS can make an overcloaker with a BB)
If you are RS, strongly consider dropping all the armor (and use jammers if you have FF chaff).
If you are not RS, full armor may make sense, however with full armor, it's fairly easy for some one to make a lighter ship as a counter design. Gating one that is 349kT without armor you will lose 3% with 8% damage, at 439kT with armor, you will lose 7%, and damage will be at 22%
If you have the tech for the OT, you should use the p12 ram scoop - just checked it, you are using the p12 ram scoop.
W12 ramscoop
16 heavy blasters
4 sappers
3 caps
3 jammer 30s
1 overthruster
full bear neutrino barriers
no armor
movement: 2
mass: 349
- LEitReport message to a moderator
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| Re: sappers and BB slot firing order |
Mon, 19 July 2004 14:58 |
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Without a doubt, chaff is the way to go against missiles, cloaks are useless in the BB elec slot and, overcloakers get built for invisibility. That being said, BB's are foolish to build as overcloakers due to the base cost of the hull (at con 13, the battleship hull is 225 resources and the galleon 97), versus the potential over-cloaking ability.
With the galleon able to use 10 slots of cloaks in conjunction with tritanium armor for the mass versus 7 potential cloak slots for the BB you can't create as much overcloaking potential on the BB hull - the 2 additional tritanium armor components do not make up for the loss of the 3 cloak components and, mathematically, you get more cloak units on the galleon hull.
Ptolemy
[Updated on: Mon, 19 July 2004 15:10]
Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: sappers and BB slot firing order |
Mon, 19 July 2004 15:42 |
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| Hooga |
| Crewman 1st Class |
Messages: 31
Registered: July 2004 | |
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| LEit wrote on Mon, 19 July 2004 12:28 |
If you have the tech for the OT, you should use the p12 ram scoop - just checked it, you are using the p12 ram scoop.
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I should go over the abbreviations list again - what I meant was the p12 scoops, which are rated at an optimal speed of warp 9.
a few things:
these beamer BBs are designed to be part of a stealth attack. I am using stealth bombers for some overcloaking, since it is relatively easy to attach cloaks to them with little loss to their practical capability. approx 500kt weight per bomber, 4 ultra stealths
I considered designing a torpedo or even missle BB for the rest of the overcloaking. The weap 18 torpedos are two turns of dedicated research away and might work. That is a still a possibility. Torpedoes don't have the same initiative problems as missles as the Weap 18s are init 2 and juggs are init 1, so computers aren't as necessary for fire first. (you guys all knew that.. I dunno why I'm typing so much please bear with me)
I'll have to check design slots to see if I can do a dedicated overcloaker design.
Ok so I guess what I'm asking now is where to put the extra overcloaking that is necessary: in ungateable torpedo BBs, or in beamers meaning sacrificing capacitors, or even in extra bombers?
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| Re: sappers and BB slot firing order |
Mon, 19 July 2004 16:30 |
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| Quote: |
I'm designing a beamer BB (weapons 16)
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Some of the answers given such as using 12/16 slots for max kills apply to missiles rather than beamers.
Mixing sappers and lower range beam weapons may not be best due to the way Stars handles sappers in combat, not closing in if shields are left even if you have max damage battle orders. You may be better with dedicated sappers which takes an extra slot.
Range 2 weapons are less expensive in resources and bor and have higher initiative so sometimes are an option.
Battle computer(s) rather than capacitors in electrical slots can be useful to secure first strike. Combined with 2.25 speed range 3, this may allow effective first strike chaff killing. Backed up with Sappers and Jug battleships you may have an effective combo in some situations. Can be very germ intensive (best for -f).
Another option is a gattling battleship which can be useful against an opponent with many different beamer ships/fleets, especially if you have lots of bor.
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| Re: sappers and BB slot firing order |
Mon, 19 July 2004 20:07 |
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Since the questions include the cloaking ability and the race is SS, Ultra Stealth cloaks are available, then the Stealth bombers are the obvious choice to provide the overcloaking - bombs are heavy. As a first design option (if the bio tech is avialable) I'd use for maximum over cloak potential;
8 Enriched Neutron bombs, (I hate wasting all those factories for my invaders to use and neutron bombs are heavier)
4 Ultra Stealth cloaks
Trans galactic drives engines
Ship mass = 652kt (Not gateable - but neither are missile BB's..)
This ship provides 1,408,320 cloak units
(changing to the engines to TGSS reduces the cloak units to 1,378,080)
The best galleon overcloaker would provide around 2,889,000 cloak units. So, 2 bombers provides the same overcloaking as 1 galleon - but, the galleon gets used for troops, carries a robber baron so provides penn scaning of the target AND, can pull minerals from the planet making new base construction next to impossible to accomplish. (take all the iron - no missiles get built on a new base - poor iron planet - no base gets built) Take ALL of any one mienral and it will be some time before any new base pops up.
As a comparison to all this, a jug missile BB with 3 ultra stealth cloaks and all slots full of missiles with 4 BSC's will provide 2,084,940 cloak units - it will have an init of 18 so it is easy to counter design against for first shot advantage, but, the jugs will have 81% accuracy against non-jammed targets so those wing slots may as well fire the extra 2 missiles each. (provided the enemy can find it)
In a case of too few slots though - I'd go with the stealth bomber. Keep in mind that as SS your overcloaking needs are moderate. Mostly, you are concerned with cloaking the main force of your battlefleet - i.e. the beamers. I wouldn't worry too much about my missile boats - I wouldn't have too many of them anyway since they are so iron hungry. I'd have a few to be sure when attacking a planet - just love those 'kill starbase' orders for a missile boat. One shot - no starbase. Sometimes it's even good to leave a few ships visible to the enemy - lets him think you are attacking with less than you have.
Ptolemy
[Updated on: Mon, 19 July 2004 20:08]
Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: sappers and BB slot firing order |
Mon, 19 July 2004 23:32 |
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| mlaub |
 | Lieutenant |
Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003
Location: MN, USA | |
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[quote title=vonKreedon wrote on Mon, 19 July 2004 17:18]| overworked wrote on Mon, 19 July 2004 14:37 |
And make very sure that you use scout-hull based chaff. Otherwise if you do this you might get a VERY nasty surprise around Construction tech 21 or so. 
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Would you expand on this? I assume you are referring to relative attractiveness of scout based vs. FF based chaff.
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That is exactly what he meant, and yes it will happen. Especially if you follow the majority here. BB's without jamming are very prone to this type of problem.
Several other notes of interest here...
1. 4 sappers on the wing mounts with heavy blasters, yes. Don't mix range weapons, though. Meaning, if you go with range 2, don't put sappers on it, you would not like a possible result. You can see for yourself if you have the time, or read my post on it here:
http://tinyurl.com/3vfrk
2. Only use 2 sappers on Mega D/Snycro BB's, if you feel Nubs are a long way away, and these BB's will be dust by then. Test it, or trust me, more is probably a waste of firepower.
3. For the sake of paranoia, assume that your chaff will only protect you for 1 round of combat (no rounds if you are a WM, or you up against an expert). Obviously, if the other guy isn't fielding beamers, this is wrong, but what you don't plan for *will* kill your fleet.
4. Check your designs and see if your beamers out pace your chaff in 0-1 rounds, if your enemy decides to use retreat orders. End result is the enemy missile ships will fire on your ships for a nice sucker punch. What? you listened to the other guys and didn't put jammers on your BB's? LOL...Time for a new fleet!
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I've yet to run into a battle where my FF chaff was ignored in favor of my Nubians, but I would love to learn about this here rather than from the Battle VCR, if you will enlighten me. 
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My best suggestion would be to design you missle ships to be less attractive than your Beamers. Design your Beamers to be less attractive than your chaff. Then, test it in a test bed.
-Matt
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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| Re: sappers and BB slot firing order |
Tue, 20 July 2004 12:04 |
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| Hooga |
| Crewman 1st Class |
Messages: 31
Registered: July 2004 | |
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My BBs always have jammers. Its a precaution and a fault from a disposition to use torpedoes instead of missles. I just can't help it. They're so... accurate! I honestly believe a properly designed torpedo BB can clean up vs a similar tech level missle BB. No matter what the design of the missle BB is. But I know I'm wrong there.
Well, the beamers are built now, and they have *CENSORED* (I'm still in game, can't give this one away). I'm thankful I posted here. I've got a slot free now for an overcloaker.
EDIT: OH! overcloaker design: pack it as full of ultra stealth as possible, then as much of that crap for crap heavy armour as possible? Double or single robber barron?
I've played games where I did attacks completely cloaking my bombers and beamers, and showing my missle ships and some chaff. Which makes for awesomely funny battles to watch. Nevermind that my fleet was sweeping twice the mines it should have been.
Pop drops are something that always slip my mind in wars... is it worth shipping serious ammounts of pop to wars that are out of the way? Usually, as SS, I just robber-barron rape the planets and ship it home or to nearby allies. Wish I was IT.
[Updated on: Tue, 20 July 2004 12:05] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: sappers and BB slot firing order |
Wed, 21 July 2004 11:20 |
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My BBs always have jammers. Its a precaution and a fault from a disposition to use torpedoes instead of missles. I just can't help it. They're so... accurate! I honestly believe a properly designed torpedo BB can clean up vs a similar tech level missle BB. No matter what the design of the missle BB is. But I know I'm wrong there.
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w20 missiles can have longer range. Missiles do double damage when shields are down so fast sapper+missile combo, especially against beamer part of enemy can be more effective (and often there are more beamers to eat through first as cost less minerals). Battle computers tend to be earlier techs than stopping jammers.
A big enemy of your torp design is an opponent who then goes to fast hard hitting beamers (such as range 3, 2.25 speed). On turn 1 you strike first. On turn 2 the higher init of his beamers can mean he strikes first and he may already have closed into range.
You can't both jam your defending beamers and compete against caps easily.
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jammers! 
. And those will become obsolete with weap-26 
. But then the next one of counter-design starts. 
