Home » Primary Racial Traits » HE » Meta-morph
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Thu, 25 December 2003 03:15   |
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| Sotek wrote on Wed, 24 December 2003 22:12 |
Except and either you sacrifice init, in which case the cruisers which shoot first blow giant holes in your fleet before you can respond, or you sacrifice defenses, in which case if they've got enough chaff to get beamers into range, you're very very dead.
And there's no reason to place beams in it, because beams don't get a special effect from being stacked, as far as I know.
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If you don't win the init war you can use chaff to compensate.
If you do win the init war you can also fight beamers with beamers. Lots of slots and later flux capacitors means you can make dangerous first-strike beamers.
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Thu, 25 December 2003 03:53 |
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 Sotek |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 167
Registered: November 2002 | |
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Chaff? Not much of a help. Both sides can gain from it, it's not really cost-effective until past jihads (and past jihads you usually see BBs...), and metamorphs are more expensive, so you have less chaff.
Plus, you can't gate metamorphs reliably. After all, you can't have *gates*.
And again ... no.
Flux capacitators are energy 14, and you won't have that before BBs, and BBs *will* destroy metamorphs.
You can put nine regular caps on and have 2x4 GP slots.
Being incredibly generous and saying you have elect 11 and are using metamorphs, we put two BSCs on to beat a cruiser's init.
Now, you *still* need to beat it for weapon init... and you probably still want shields.
The simple fact is, a metamorph as a mainline ship is not cost-effective.
As a special-purpose auxiliary, sure, it has uses.
Likewise, as a counterdesign, it has uses.
But as a primary ship, it will hurt if you rely on it.
It will hurt far more if you try to use it in the BB era in significant numbers, and you'll likely wind up outnumbered by cruisers coming through gates (the other HE disadvantage...)
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Thu, 25 December 2003 21:03 |
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I am in a game. I have access to gates. And will be able to use metamorphs effectively.
If you can't that is perhaps a matter of how you design your race and play your game.
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Fri, 26 December 2003 20:46 |
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"Then you got lucky.
Most HEs don't manage to make allies, becuase they make better targets to most people's way of thinking."
I can understand that in the old days when HE had gates, but now?
An HE with immunities is easy to cohab with. They can't backstab you by gating in forces to a colony near your homeworld.
HE's can often trade minerals and/or tech and/or special ships. IMO if CA is banned, HE can be the strongest diplomatically if the race is setup right.
The game is only at 2445 and I can't go into details because others may be reading this.
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Sun, 28 December 2003 18:00 |
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| alexdstewart |
| Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 164
Registered: July 2003
Location: Brisbane, QLD. | |
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Meta's vs Cruisers?
Meta's all the Way!
Get to con10 elect10 and place 4 jammers on 'em and maybe, MAYBE a battle comp or two if in conjuction with 8 jihads- and voila, yea have something with firepower of a battleship in the cruiser era... regardless wether they have blasters, phasers, blackjacks, jihads or juggs (even torp to some extent), until they get 'em battleships, YOU RULE THE BATTLESPACE!  
The catch? You need elec10, i. e. elec cheap or normal- which is a good idea but is rarely affordable... 
In the Future there is only WAR...
Therefore our extinction is assured, it is just a matter of where and when.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Sat, 03 January 2004 05:36 |
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| Sotek |
| Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 167
Registered: November 2002 | |
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The problem with your cloaked metamorph fleet is illustrated in the following scenario:
You have a cloaked metamorph fleet. I don't know about it. You also have enough bombers to take out my worlds in one year.
I'm foolish and have no cruisers.
First year... you hit a world of mine. Suddenly, I know about your fleet and where it is.
I lose a world, but you lose surprise. I design and build a cruiser fleet that will *crush* your metamorphs; not difficult if I have a reasonable-sized empire right now, given the limited number of slots you have left after your cloaks.
Second year: My cruisers finish. You kill another world. I still know where you are.
Third year: My cruisers gate together and kill your metamorphs. I now have a warfleet that can react to things much quicker than yours, and can go on the offensive.
Total cost: Two worlds.
Gain: The initiative.
Now, yes, you can bring more fleets in, but at this point I'm ready, and can either use agressive scanning combined with minefields, or abandon defense somewhat and take the offensive to you.
And then you'd be stuck doing what HE does very poorly; defending.
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Sat, 03 January 2004 14:03 |
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Keep in mind cloaked Metamorphs are also good minelayers and minesweepers, and Mr. Cloaked attacker would likely bring some and may also use them to overcloak a few other light support ships.
I see Metamorphs as part of a team of several different ships, the whole is greater than the parts. You have to think like Nubs compared to Dreadnaught, use the flexibillity to compensate for the weaknesses.
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Sat, 03 January 2004 18:45 |
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| Sotek |
| Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 167
Registered: November 2002 | |
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Good question.
If your metas are on the offensive, then my beam cruisers with a bit of chaff are what win, because after the first round, you have almost no ships at all, because I wasn't foolish enough to build jihad cruisers; they're really far too weak.
... and your metas are HORRIBLY vulnerable to beams, becasue you either have a single slot of armor, or a single slot of shields, either way it's not very good on the defense, relying entirely on shoot first.
If yours is a counterdesign, then yes, it will kill the cruisers. But I've never denied metas beat cruisers when they're counterdesigns.
... and I just did a bit of checking. Actually, your metas won't do very well at all against cruisers.
Assuming equal investment of everything but bora (which is reasonable, I'd say...), then I have approximately twice as many cruisers as you have metas.
Your metas will kill slightly less than half their number in cruisers in the first volley, where they do 340 damage per meta.
It takes 700 to kill a cruiser.
Therefore, I still have about three quarters of my cruisers left.
I return fire, and my ships are highly accurate as well, without jamming in play.
And you have minimal shielding. My round is two-part.
First: One of my two slots fires. 85 damage per ship to shields, taking them all down, and 85 damage per ship to your metas; you have 2/3rds the number of ships I do, therefore that's ~127 damage to each of your ships. That is, in case you're keeping track, about 25% damage to all your ships.
Second: My other slot fires. You have no shields. I do double damage, dealing 340 damage per ship of mine to your ships. Still having 2/3rds the number of ships I have, that's 510 damage per ship of yours.
Your entire fleet is annihilated, at the cost of a quarter of mine.
Pretty good trade, I'd say.
And that's with a *bad* design against yours.
And if you use one slot of armor instead of a slot of shields, the situation's far, far worse for you.
...
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Sun, 04 January 2004 00:24 |
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| Sotek wrote on Sat, 03 January 2004 12:43 |
The minelaying and minesweeping is irrelevant.
My cruisers are collecting through gates. Mines can't stop that. The minesweeping is part of how you're hitting worlds in one year, possibly, yes.
But you simply cannot handle cruisers on an even basis with metamorphs. You can counterdesign reasonably well, and you can use metas for very good support, but a meta mainfleet will be crushed unless you have a major advantage over your opponent in economy.
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What??? You talked about how your minefields would slow down the cloakers so you could catch them. Yet you don't think that suprise minefields and minesweeping of your minefields might make it just a little harder to catch and destroy those cloakers?
It is not so easy to catch what you will soon have trouble seeing with minefields popping up in other unexpected places.
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Sun, 04 January 2004 02:38 |
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| Orca |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 1 |
Messages: 148
Registered: June 2003
Location: Orbiting tower at the L5 ... | |
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| multilis wrote on Sun, 04 January 2004 00:32 |
Gotta love this 'never' word! Never by you? That does not mean we are all that limited in our choices for the main fleet.
There were also people who insisted that Dreadnaughts were better than Nubs. It is all a matter of how you use the slots and what support ships you throw in the mix to maximize the strengths and limit the weaknesses.
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In general, metamorphs are not cost effective as the primary component for your main fleet design in the cruiser era. As with any generality, there are exceptions - but they are just that. In general cruisers are superior to destroyers. But I've used destroyers to wipe out cruiser fleets. Something to keep in mind.
Metamorphs may serve in a limited role once battleships are deployed. Note however that particularly fast starting races will have battleships deployed before 2440 in numbers sufficient to extinguish just about any reasonable cruiser/metamorph fleet.
Those arguing that dreadnaughts are better than nubians are only thinking in terms of "bigger means better" - though certainly the large 6 and 8 stacks plus high base init and plentiful electrical slots make for a formidable opponent when paired with missiles or torpedoes. Their Achilles heal however is their total lack of gatability. They dominate while battleships are out and can provide a useful, if none too mobile, adjunct once nubians have arrived on the scene. Dismissing them as useless when nubians are around isn't *quite* as stupid as considering them the end all and be all of warships. But it's still stupid.
[Updated on: Sun, 04 January 2004 02:40]
Jesus saves.
Allah forgives.
Cthulhu thinks you'd make a nice sandwich.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Sun, 04 January 2004 15:22 |
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One day we may play a game and you may have to put your foot in your mouth on that never business.
And I am still using destroyer beamers in the cruiser era. Range 2 destroyers are hard to counter with range 3 cruisers. Range 3 destroyers can easily counter range 2 cruisers. Both are easy to gate through the wimpiest gates that my friends quickly set up.
You can get a fleet together where the enemies missile fleets target your flak and enemies beamers target your beamers while your missle metamorphs all survive to the end. Slots are useful for getting the attractiveness in the desired order. Metamorphs can fire first verse missile cruisers.
Other ways to use the slots as well, I won't go into them all.
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| Re: Meta-morph |
Mon, 05 January 2004 21:35 |
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| Sotek |
| Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 167
Registered: November 2002 | |
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Plus there's the fact that those frigates are practically a missile magnet...
They're astoundingly non-attractive to beams with even half-assed shielding, but if there's any missiles out there, you may as well forget them unless you've got chaff to cover them as well... and all this assumes your opponent isn't using orders that will do odd things to range and not let you close enough to have your well-timed strikes work.
Also, there's a magnificent beam counterdesign with cruisers to the option of covering that frigate with chaff.
High speed, two battle computers, and gatlings. You'll shoot with your gatlings before they get a chance to sap.
[Updated on: Mon, 05 January 2004 21:41] Report message to a moderator
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Ummm, sure! 
I do FREESTYLE math.
Well if you haven't I'll explain how they work:
