Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » Cheap Engines
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| Re: Cheap Engines |
Wed, 09 August 2006 00:02   |
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 JasonC |
 | Petty Officer 2nd Class
Stars! V.I.P |
Messages: 58
Registered: July 2006
Location: Arlington, MA | |
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There is a subtly here but not in the rules or mechanics, merely in ways of exploting them.
I illustrate with the rad-ram, tech 6 engine. It is a high fuel consumer at warps above its free rated speed of 6, but with sufficient fuel can go warp 9 for a single year or warp 8 for up to 3 years (e.g. privateer 3 fuel pod design).
The idea is a CE race burns all the fuel exceeding the average speed of the run, then coasts at warp 6. Coasting brings in 36 mg of fuel per engine per year. When it accumulates enough for another turn at warp 8, the speed is increased to warp 8.
A ship that goes warp 8 half the time and warp 6 the other half of the time averages 50 LY per year or warp 7 speed. But as a CE race, the engine failure is checked only half the time, compared to always going warp 7. And you get back fuel.
So a common moving strategy with CE races is to alternate high and low speeds, burning all the fuel to go fast in a few of the years, reducing the number of engine failure checks made. Combined with routine fleet splitting for movement (so most make it and only 1 freighter lags a year), this can keep the economic loss through engine failures minimal.
The warfighting drawbacks of CE are still always there. They are the main downside of CE. The benefits are clearly cheaper engines and RW points. Low engine costs make the largest difference in the earlier, "horde" era - FFs to CAs. By the time you are using BBs, the engine portion of cost is quite low - though the non-CE, NRSE races pay a lot for their best engines, particularly compared to a CE ram using race.
CE WMs with rams are a particularly cheap combo. WM means the weapons are -25% and CE means the already low price engines are -50%. The battle speed bonus means even a tech 9 ram gives entirely adequate battle speed. So you save RW points, tech expense, and ship expense - all of it early for maximum impact.
Sincerely,
Jason Cawley
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| Re: Cheap Engines |
Fri, 11 August 2006 11:59 |
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| mlaub |
 | Lieutenant |
Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003
Location: MN, USA | |
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| joseph wrote on Fri, 11 August 2006 10:17 |
This bit of my above quote still stands though
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Also chaff dont normally carry enough fuel to be split from your main fleet ships.
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Depends on a few factors like IFE and which engine. Quickjump 5 chaff can do a full 81 ly warp 9 burn, with a little gas to spare. That is with or without IFE. If you go with the FM, and CE, it is fairly cheap and you can really go far, 2 100ly jumps at warp10 (Although you probably wouldn't do that).
I often use FM chaff in the late game, without CE, just for this reason. 1000 reinforcement self fueling chaff this turn, might be of infintely higher worth than 1000 chaff next turn. Flexibility is great. 
-Matt
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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| Re: Cheap Engines |
Sat, 12 August 2006 15:13 |
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| iztok |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1206
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
| yartrebo wrote on Sat, 12 August 2006 17:36 |
Try putting that FF design against a cruiser with 2 sappers and 2 or 4 beams
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I did. I won. My design was FF with 3 bazookas, 2 wolverine shields, FM, but as a WM it had a battle speed 1.5. Opponent was an IS, his CC was 4 colloidals, 2 tech-9 sappers, AD-8 engine, 3 crobbies, man-jet. I coud buy about 4.5 FFs for one of his CCs, but I needed only 3.5 FFs to kill one CC. And my FFs were geteable through 100/250 gates... However that was the only time I've built a FF horde. In other games engines were too big an expense, or tech was advancing too fast for a horde to be so cost-effective.
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Cruiser with CE can get 2 1/2 movement even without WM for a reasonable cost using IS-10 and overthruster, if your prop tech is decent.
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IMO the IS-10 is an overkill in a mainline CC, even with CE. If you have tech for IS-10 and not the tech for BBs you're centainly doing something wrong. Also, the IS-10 is a tech from quite a different timeframe of the game, than the FF horde, for such a comparisson to be fair.
BR, Iztok
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| Re: Cheap Engines |
Sun, 13 August 2006 01:34 |
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| Quote: |
I did. I won. My design was FF with 3 bazookas, 2 wolverine shields, FM
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A destroyer minesweeper with a sapper and collodial can compete well enough till Jihad BB rolls out and stays useful as minesweeper/jihad escort.
Other uses (minesweeping), resistance to counterdesign (torps/missiles) are sometimes worth more than the added cost.
If I go FF, I tend to favour a lighter version, eg 1 shield and 1 or 2 weapons to reduce weakness to torps and make easier to spread out/risk (useful in minesweeping/sniping). CE is more useful when you like lighter ships.
[Updated on: Sun, 13 August 2006 01:36] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Cheap Engines |
Sun, 13 August 2006 09:23 |
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| iztok |
| Commander |
Messages: 1206
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
| yartrebo wrote on Sun, 13 August 2006 13:30 |
Iztok:
...
I might drop down to range 2 beams (colloidals are quite pricey for IS) or put delta torps (to take advantage of the low 45 dp of armor a frigate has).
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But he could't. It was a game with speciall settings (check RGCS for "New game: Well's Bottom" - mine eff. 5, 15 stars per players, slow tech, only one tech cheap, no trade...), and he decided to go conquering the universe with beamer CCs. He probably used all of his minerals for ~300 CCs. The main reason why I was fielding the FF horde was the fact that in early game nobody should had enough minerals for substantial number of missile ships. As it worked out lots of players didn't had minerals for ANY ship, while they were researching tech for better remotes.  I intended to (and actually did) kill one neighbour with FF horde and made a "fear sphere" for my remote-mining WM  .
The opponent with CCs was in far south and was attacking one of my allies. After I saw his CC horde I just increased the number of my FFs from 300 to 1000, and destroyed his main fleet (~200 CCs) over one of my ally's planets. Because of my combat speed bonus I used remaining FFs until the end, successfully killing lone Disruptor BBs the main opponent was fielding. However I won that game with 140 markIV Dreadnaughts and 3000 chaff.
But as I said that was the only time I used the FF horde. They are just too vulnerable to any missiles. Even beta torps can kill them in too big numbers, so in "normal" games they just arent't worth the investment.
BR, Iztok
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| Re: Cheap Engines |
Wed, 16 August 2006 22:05 |
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| JasonC |
| Petty Officer 2nd Class
Stars! V.I.P |
Messages: 58
Registered: July 2006
Location: Arlington, MA | |
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No beta torps don't kill FF hordes. Nor do delta torps. Nor do DDs with 1 sapper and 2 beams. Nor do even cruisers with 2 sappers and 4 beams, though those manage to get in the running, which none of the previous do.
It takes jihads or battleship hulls to defeat shielded beam frigate hordes, resource for resource.
The previous poster was probably thinking of stopping small numbers of commerce raider FFs or skirmishing sweepers. For those missions you can count on many more resources catching the other guy and just send enough. But for actual battle, the enemy masses his invested resources and you will generally not be able to count on having appreciably more to throw at him.
A typical early FF fleet is 60 FFs with 6-8-2-6 tech. FF users often take RS, so that makes a single token with 10000 shields, plus 1000 per turn. Since the cost can be as low as 65 resources each, that represents about 4000 resources.
Now, can you beat that with beta torps? Not realistically, no. Single computer betas hit 5/9 times and do 6 each through the shields when they do So they have about 3 fp in through-shield terms. It takes 14 fired from one slot to kill 1 FF. 30 torp DDs will KO perhaps a third of such a fleet but die themselves, and cost far more in iron and G. A stack of 10 delta torp CAs or a maxed out delta torp base will kill only 2-3 per round and die rapidly as soon as the FFs get within range. As for larger tokens of them, they are not practical in mineral terms (particularly G) so early, are a waste compared to waiting for jihads, are useless afterwards, etc.
With the typical range 3 beam cruisers with sappers, the cruisers need on the order of 3 to 2 point odds to win cleanly. At even resources invested the FFs win cleanly instead. With expensive engines or weaker shield varieties, this can rise to needing 3 to 2 to win ugly (losing half the fleet), with 2 to 1 needed to win clean. Those are decent all around warships and remain useful for skirmishing and sweeping etc later on. But they do not match the FFs in fighting power, despite significantly higher tech cost up front. (If you include that in fleet cost the power relationship is hopeless).
Jihads change this because every hit becomes a kill, pretty much. A stack of 10 jihad cruisers can kill 20 a round, which wins. BB hulls also change it - a beam BB with just weapons 10, but with 6 capacitors, can kill an even investment in shielded FFs without serious loss. But these require tech 12 in a cheap field and tech 9 in another, or 13 and 10 for the BB solution. And in each case also need round out tech like energy 6-7 and usually also reasonable engines to justify the expense. Those all take not 4000 resources but more like 20000 resources spent on just the tech. The same poured into FFs means 300 of the buggers, not 60.
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| Re: Cheap Engines |
Thu, 17 August 2006 01:39 |
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| Quote: |
No beta torps don't kill FF hordes. Nor do delta torps. Nor do DDs with 1 sapper and 2 beams. Nor do even cruisers with 2 sappers and 4 beams, though those manage to get in the running, which none of the previous do.
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Iztok argued same thing long time ago.
Torps get many shots before non WM beamer gets one. (Fair test is both sides non WM or both sides WM). Torps bypass most of FF beamer shields. Torps do damage/kills on first shot.
In my current game, hit and run torps ships (originally designed to hunt WM scouts) chased off FF hordes including some croby based... every year he took damage but couldn't dish any out before I disengaged, and he feared giving me tech.
Post your heavy shielded FF horde design in detail and I will post a more cost effective counter based on torps assuming both sides don't have CE... same deal I made in this thread http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/index.php?t=msg&th=160 6&rid=358&S=de7ce46d3a3990da56fb082bb78e80aa&pl_ view=&start=0#msg_12930
The original web site for my testbed is no longer up, but I still have a copy that can be provided if wanted. It demonstrated how lower tech beta torps can kill suggested FF horde design on resource basis.
[Updated on: Thu, 17 August 2006 02:00] Report message to a moderator
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