Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » Sapping Cruisers
| Sapping Cruisers |
Fri, 05 October 2007 22:46  |
|
 mbuglio |
 | Crewman 3rd Class |
Messages: 6
Registered: July 2007 | |
|
Hello all
Done a lot of reading and a little testing. Any tried supporting their Jihad/Jugg era BBs with sapping cruisers?
I did a little testing, and it seems that cruisers with warp 10 engine and OT actually get a shot off. Just for utilties sake, I did 4 phased sappers and 2 heavy blasters, OT, 3 Gorillas. Set for Max Damage battle plan. Not sure if it matters, but I set the chaff for Min Damage so they see to either not move, or go backward which compels the enemy BBs to come forward a square.
Thoughts? other results? better designs?
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
| Re: Sapping Cruisers |
Sat, 06 October 2007 00:09  |
|
|
|
Min damage orders on the chaff is a very dangerous experiment...
If your opponent suspects you might do this, then all he needs to do is set max net damage or min damage to self, and you'll find yourself fighting a battle where his chaff is a factor, but not yours....
Dedicated sapper ships are definately a viable tool. Sometimes you'll find the enemy beamers are more attractive than their chaff, even, once their shields are stripped, with devestating results. Also... Consider using sapper battleships instead. All those capacitors makes for a more efficient design, and it's usually possible for the ship to come out close to 300kt, give or take 10kt, so it's gateable. It's nice to try to make your sappers fire before your missiles too, whether you need to add computers to do this depends on which computers you are using on the missile ships
[Updated on: Sat, 06 October 2007 00:17] Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
| Re: Sapping Cruisers |
Sat, 06 October 2007 13:35 |
|
| mbuglio |
| Crewman 3rd Class |
Messages: 6
Registered: July 2007 | |
|
Hmmm, good point on the battle plans. will have to test that out.
A couple more questions then...
First of all, I need 1 chaff per missile, I think to give him 1 wasted volley... meaning if he has 10 BBs with 20 Jihads, that's 200 missiles, so, if I have 180 chaff, 20 missiles will be fired on whatever the next most attractive target...
What's the prevailing wisdom on mixed weapons, beams & sappers? In one test with 16 beams 4 sappers, the sappers actually never fired... which I think has to do with Initiative. Need more testing on that.
I'm also a little confused on attractiveness of mixed ships. Are they set by beamer, sapper, or whichever weapon is the majority of slots?
Thanks
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
| Re: Sapping Cruisers |
Sat, 06 October 2007 14:47 |
|
| yartrebo |
 | Petty Officer 3rd Class |
Messages: 43
Registered: July 2006
Location: North America | |
|
| Quote: |
I'm also a little confused on attractiveness of mixed ships. Are they set by beamer, sapper, or whichever weapon is the majority of slots?
|
Attractiveness is based on ship cost in (resources + boranium) divided by how tough the target is.
A BB costing 200 bora and 600 res and with 4000 armor has a cost of 800 and a defense of 4000, for a ratio of .2
A frigate costing 6 bora and 10 res and with 45 armor has a cost of 16 and a defense of 45, for a ratio of .36
The ratio is higher for the frigate, so enemy weapons will preferentially target the frigate, totally ignoring that it is way overkill to hit one with an armageddon missile.
Targets with shields, jammers, or beam deflectors complicate the equation a little, but the key thing to remember is that the higher the bora+res cost and the lower the armor, the more likely the ship will be targeted. If your chaff are not being targetted, steps to correct that are to remove shields from chaff, add jamming to BBs, add shields to BBs (should be there anyway, shields are cheap), and add armor to BBs.
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| | |
| Re: Sapping Cruisers |
Sun, 07 October 2007 20:27 |
|
|
|
I'm not sure, but the calculator above is just an Excel spreadsheet, so it's easy to pull the algorithm from there.
by the way, IIRC there is also a small randomisation, so if ships have very similar attractiveness, don't be surprised if they sometimes get fired on in an unexpected order.
Also bear in mind that a ship's attractiveness will change as it becomes damaged, or it's sheilds go down. A good example is a series of battles I had once where a race was bombing my HW, and had plenty of chaff, but after about 3 or 4 years their missile battleships had become damaged enough that they became more attractive than his chaff, resulting in a swift and unexpected victory when the latest missile orbital tore them up instead of eating a handfull of chaff.
[Updated on: Sun, 07 October 2007 20:31] Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| |
| Re: Sapping Cruisers |
Sun, 07 October 2007 20:59 |
|
|
|
| Soobie wrote on Mon, 08 October 2007 10:34 |
Does this apply if we use a freighter and add a bit of Bor?
|
I *think* the bor loaded is taken into account... But TEST this, don't assume I'm right, I'm practically guessing on that count.
| Quote: |
Also, is there anything out there that can calculate attractiveness including damage?
|
Uhh... Try the spreadsheet above... Nothing is forcing you to type in the undamaged and unsapped values, now, is it? 
Relevant asides: don't forget that as you miniturise stuff their attractiveness will change. (i.e. rather than remembering the cost of a ship when you built it, attractiveness is based on the cost to replace it.) This is often noticable in frigate chaff. You don't want to lose a battle just because you earned another level of miniturisation and the cost of your frigates went down by 1r 1b 
Corrolary: Also bear in mind that your opponent's costs (and thus attractiveness) may be different to what you think they are.
Corrolary: The max-tech battlesim testbed universe is exactly that - max-tech. Which means max miniuturisation... Which means attractiveness is well different to what it is likely to be in a real game. This is why sometimes you might battlesim a battle 10 times, then get a wildly different result in the real game - attractiveness differences due to wildy different costs/attractiveness. Much better to make a testbed with roughly the correct tech levels, for complex / important battles.
Aside: One of my favourate tricks, but rarely pulled off as it requires a certain combination of techs to be feasible and certain circumstances to justify it, is to build beamers that are less attractive than my chaff to missiles, even when their shields are down, but more attractive than my chaff to beams.
[Updated on: Sun, 07 October 2007 21:03] Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| | | | | |
| Re: Sapping Cruisers |
Mon, 08 October 2007 14:21 |
|
| m.a@stars |
 | Commander |
Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left | |
|
| mbuglio wrote on Mon, 08 October 2007 18:34 |
Yes, Stars works nicely under Vista too (thankfully since when my computer died over the weekend a few weeks ago I bought this PC, got my data over and ran stars and got my turn submitted with 10 minutes to spare!)
|
"Thou shalt always keep at least one old PC with Win95 still running in case need ariseth" 
| Quote: |
My only point was that there's certain Help functionality which isnt backward compatible which seems silly.
|
IIRC, the issue of old helpfiles not working under newer Windows already happened before Vista & Stars. I never had this trouble, but I think I once read there's an ancient DLL somewhere in the Windows folder that can be rescued from an "obsolete" version and made to run in the newer ones.  
| Quote: |
At any rate, the battle board is great and i have used it, but as Dogthinkers pointed out, due to max tech and miniaturization, sometimes the values are screwy.
|
Of course, your battlesims are only as good as you make them. A careful Admiral will try to mimic every race's tech level and their miniaturization too. 
| Quote: |
Not to mention, if hours of my testing can be reduced by someone here saying "that never/rarely/always/sometimes/could work" then thats nice too. there's an enormous amount of knowledge here. Also, I had weird interactions with the mixed sapper/beamers
|
Amazingly, Stars! continues to produce interesting scenarios outside the vast amount of accrued knowledge... 
It's good to ask around. But often you'll need to do your own weapons practice. Think of the interstellar empires at stake! 
So many Stars, so few Missiles!
In space no one can hear you scheme!  Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
| | |
| Re: Sapping Cruisers |
Fri, 12 October 2007 11:10 |
|
|
|
| Soobie wrote on Sun, 07 October 2007 20:34 |
Also, is there anything out there that can calculate attractiveness including damage?
|
Sure. I've modified Art Lathrop's spreadsheet showing "at a glance":
Undamaged & Shielded
Undamaged & Sapped
Damaged (specify %) & Shielded
Damaged (specify %) & Sapped
Anybody who wants it can email me to mcdonaldjk at optusnet dot com dot au
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
Goto Forum:
Current Time: Sun Apr 28 01:45:49 EDT 2024
|
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
