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http://wiki.gible.net/index.php/Living_with_Chaff_by_Art_Lat hrop_-_Revised:_3th_December_2000

You should find many good articles in the wiki. "Living with Chaff" would be one of them. Although, that article doesn't tell the whole story, explanations beyond that article tend to get into personal views matching play style. Hence, my views on chaff may not make sense, unless you played my races designs, created my ship designs, and adopted my stars philosophies on acceptable losses. etc...

"Skip Jammers--just get more chaff" sounds to me like a personal philosophy, without context for that statement. There might be a good reason for that statement, that may not apply in all situations.

I find that I use chaff about 50% of the time, and usually only against really good players (other times I can just be lazy and use a superior design or exploit another weakness). Truly it depends on the situation. It would be safer for you to understand why and when you want to use chaff, and make a judgment call during each game situation, rather than simply making a blanket decision for all new ship builds in every game...

Also, be aware that over confidence in chaff has killed many fleets.

-Matt

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Hi!

Mark Hewitt wrote on Sat, 19 September 2009 05:10

I found in one of the other threads on the boards the idea that ships should skip jammers--just get more chaff.

I usually use a combo, because in BB era with BB's low defense but high attack that makes sense. Chaff dies rather quickly to beamers, and doesn't move so fast on battle board as ships it should protect.

OTOH in Nub era things get messy. If opponent uses cap-ship missiles, it usually makes sense to also use jammers on Nubs. All else depends on the situation.

BR, Iztok

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[Updated on: Mon, 21 September 2009 10:22]

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Hi!

Eagle of Fire wrote on Mon, 21 September 2009 21:16

I have found this occurance to be remote at best.

Famous last words...

Belive me on this: if there's a chance chaff-shredders will turn the tide of the battle, most competenet Stars!'s players will have them.

BR, Iztok

[Updated on: Mon, 21 September 2009 15:43]

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[Updated on: Mon, 21 September 2009 17:54]

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Eagle of Fire wrote on Mon, 21 September 2009 21:16

your opponent would build a dedicated ship only to fight your own chaff.

It's called counterdesign, just like with any other ship design. It wins wars. It's often done because of that.

Quote:

Considering the rarity of design slots all game long and the fact that the dedicated ship would become useless later on, I have found this occurance to be remote at best.

Considering how chaff (or lack of it) can turn a battle, and how few chaff-killers are needed to turn a battle, and that those are almost always suicidal one-shot ships, whose slot becomes empty easily, yeah, you've been very lucky to never find your theory disproved...

Quote:

It is probably more of a problem in the end game... But like you said yourself, chaff is so cheap then it hardly matter.

If by "end game" you mean "mid-BB era", then yeah. Also, chaff-killers may easily need less tech/mins/res than the fleets they help kill. So, indeed, hardly...

BTW, I actually use Jammers whenever I can, which usually means not on every design. Helps keep counterdesigns at bay, but lets me design "jammer-less" things whenever I need them.

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Quote:

Considering how chaff (or lack of it) can turn a battle, and how few chaff-killers are needed to turn a battle, and that those are almost always suicidal one-shot ships, whose slot becomes empty easily, yeah, you've been very lucky to never find your theory disproved...

My theory is that if you don't have enough missile boats and/or beamers of your own to destroy the few ships dedicated to chaff-killing, then you probably don't have enough firepower to even consider taking on this battle. So you should not even fight.

After this, there is always the fact that you can recognize those dedicated ships and then switch your tactics to fit this new ennemy. It's all the matter of knowing your ennemy.

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Eagle of Fire wrote on Thu, 24 September 2009 14:57

My theory is that if you don't have enough missile boats and/or beamers of your own to destroy the few ships dedicated to chaff-killing, then you probably don't have enough firepower to even consider taking on this battle. So you should not even fight. After this, there is always the fact that you can recognize those dedicated ships and then switch your tactics to fit this new ennemy. It's all the matter of knowing your ennemy.

Your theory is invalid. You need to read some articles on chaff killing, before someone teaches you in game.

A quick summary:
Chaff killers are fast, high init beamers (usually battleships for the high base init) designed to fire *before* mainline missile ships and beamers do. If you don't have an anti-chaff-killer ship design with higher init, then you *will* lose your chaff (and then the bulk of your fleet immediately afterwards, unless you have jammers.) As they will fire before any normal ships do, you cannot avoid this problem by sheer weight of numbers alone. So you should only ignore this possibility if you believe your fleet is capable of winning the battle without it's chaff.

You then get a counterdesign war going on with chaff-killer-killers. IIRC the chaff killers need range three beams to hit normal chaff in the first round. The counter is a similar high speed, high init, ship, but with gatlings instead of range 3 beams. This way they fire first, and are assured of hitting the chaff killers.

This'll cost you one or two design slots, but if you plan to play with chaff, it's absolutely essential when playing against an experienced player wielding a missile fleet.

Another defense against chaff-killers is to give your chaff retreat orders, thus keeping them out of range of the chaff killers. However an enemy anticipating this can arrange their battle orders to keep their captital ships on the back line, out of range of the chaff but not of the rest of your beams...

[Updated on: Thu, 24 September 2009 03:57]

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[Updated on: Thu, 24 September 2009 11:33]

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[Updated on: Fri, 25 September 2009 02:15]

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Hi!

Dogthinkers wrote on Fri, 25 September 2009 08:09

Quote: Yet another so-so alternative is to give your own standard beamers high initiative - if the chaff is in beamer range so are the chaff-killers. But if you're not putting capacitors on your beamers, then why not use jammers in the first place? Well, in late BB era, with powerful beams, it does make sense to go for 'shoot first' rather than 'shoot hardest', since at this point of the game beamers slaughter each other in just one or two salvos (unlike in nubian era, when deflectors slow the combat back down again.)

The main problem with using comp-boosted mainline BBs is you create lack of germanium for nubians 10-20 turns lately. When you get nubs, you quickly realize than the "standard" 2-AMP 3-caps 4-deflectors design usually costs more germ than any other metal . Using more than the "nose" slot in a BB for comps is IMO only a last ditch, do-or-die effort.

BR, Iztok

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iztok wrote on Fri, 25 September 2009 06:45

The main problem with using comp-boosted mainline BBs is you create lack of germanium for nubians 10-20 turns lately. When you get nubs, you quickly realize than the "standard" 2-AMP 3-caps 4-deflectors design usually costs more germ than any other metal . Using more than the "nose" slot in a BB for comps is IMO only a last ditch, do-or-die effort. BR, Iztok

I assume you are talking just about your beam battleships? In that case, I 100% agree.

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Coyote wrote on Sat, 26 September 2009 18:10

Dogthinkers wrote on Thu, 24 September 2009 23:09 Off topic... The game would probably be better if deflectors went on elec ship slots. Battleships would still be less effective than nubians, by a long way, but the late BB era would be more interesting. How about armor slots? It makes logical sense for a reflective coating to be considered armor, and besides normal armor's not that useful with cap missiles around anyway.

Well... Logical sense. But there's no decision there - armour being a generally poor choice already, having an alternative to put in the slot would really be the nail in the coffin. You'd put deflectors on nearly every BB if that was the choice.

I'd like it if it were a design decision 'caps or jammers or deflectors or comps' - two variations of each of attack or defence (and then there's cloaking to consider.) BBs would still be much less flexible than nubians... But just a teeny bit more, and beamer combat in that final BB period wouldn't be quite so absurdly open to chance (although still pretty bad - even with 6 deflectors, heavily armed disruptor BBs could still kill each other in 2 salvos.)

Anyways, we're far off topic now

[Updated on: Sat, 26 September 2009 05:14]

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