Tips on ship design (functionality)

I like to go with just 1 of my best engines, 1-2 life support, 1-2 defense modules (to counter enemy loadout), load the rest up with weapons your target doesn't have the armor for. Seems to work great. Enhanced Miniturization lets you pack all that and respectable weapons. My very first military units are usually a small ship with an impulse drive and a stinger missile, provides enough deterrant until you can see what weapon/defense techs the ai's are going for then counter. I also like to build a range of size ships from small to large and have mixed fleets. I play with 9 AI all set to intelligent (difficulty says "tough") on large or huge maps.

I have gone for the defense approach. I find that the ai usually picks one type of weapon attack, beam or mass so I get the armor and stack the heck out of it. The sub zero armor for example is only 4 or 5 space and gives 10 d. They cannot hit my huge ships which each have over 100 defence and then the 30 offense will make them quite deadly. My huge destroyers in my last game had 140 defence each. I would use 1 to take out huge stacks of the enemy. Big defence ships is my style but I know most people like the powerful little to mid size ones. The main advantage is after I fight all my ships are still there. When I used the smaller ones I would lose some ships and have to replace them.

Richrf - you've got the right approach with two engines whenever possible, near the latter stages of the game when miniturisation is almost at max 3 hyperwarp engines can speed up the mopping up for a conquest victory.
the AI transports might be heading to a rally point, that might explain the unescorted status, maybe. u playing 1.1 yet??

hockeyrama - its "zero point armour" , sub zero was a character out of mortal combat... - but i gotta agree with you defence is big on my agenda too.

crippling - large galaxy (as my computer cannot handle anything bigger without massive slowdown) - abundant everything.

I routinly play challenging and above in large galaxies. What I do is put on at least 4 engines, usually 4 on most of my ships, unless its a fighter. then i load the rest with weapons until its max, and if at all posible, i put on armor/life support, depending on how spread out i am and need range. Thus, this allows me to be NASTY with the enemy, using guerilla tactics almost all the time, ie, hit and run, hit and run, hit and run, until he has no more ships, then go on a rampage destroying the ships on planets and attacking as i progress. i find this works VERY effectivly, and it does not matter wether your using high, low, or so-so techs, the enemy loses almost every single battle.

Armor is NOT needed in most cases, as if your being attacked, the AI is stupid enough to send fighters vs 3-4 battleships, or 3-4 battleships vs 20 highly advanced fighters. (In the few cases where I'm attacked, anyways, as most of the time, I run from a planetary fleet, using my extreme engines to hit the enemy, and run away again before it even gets the idea to attack the fleet.)

I also refuse to fight without a fleet. IMO, most of you people that are using armor are wasting time. Try using weapons as armor sometime, you'll find you win a lot of battles. As long as you keep in mind to keep the speed at an extreme, keep the firepower at an extreme, and attack first.

ps: for defending planets, I usually alter from that tactic slightly, puting on a little armor so the ships can survive being attacked so that the higher damage ships can rush in from a nearby standby position and terminate the enemy.

With the current AI being so dumb, guerilla tactics work. To a massive extent. Even if I'm overwhelmed, for every ship I lose, the enemy loses at LEAST 5, even if same tech. If I have a tech advantage, for every ship I lose, they lose 20. Dare all you people who scream armor is necessary to play a game without armor, at all. You'd be amazed

I usually play on whatever is the first difficulty the AI starts getting benifits (The one above intelligent). I typically have speed 7 ships (2 or 3 engines) until I research hyperwarp, then go to 13. I generally do put defense on ships for the simple reason that if you build a massive dreadnaught with 200 attack and fight ships with no defense and 20 HP that means that ~180 of your attack is wasted (This reflects my play style. I don't like to manage large numbers of smaller craft so my battles usually end up being 1:5 or 2:5 odds in their favor) With my play style I need to be able to withstand several rounds with the enemy. If they have 5 fighters with an attack of 10 and my dreadnaught has no defense there is a good chance it will be destroyed (or at least crippled). Besides, I enjoy watching the slow onslaught as my single ship takes on an entire fleet of enemy vessels and wins, barely taking any HP in damage. Just something about watching relentless but utterly futile attempts to damage my ships that appeals to my ego

Going without armor is, imo, a waste of an excellent line of tech. Even the tiniest bit of armor, I've found, can go a looooong way. There's no need to get 100 armor or whatever on a ship- just 2 or 3 grants you a huge advantage without much cost in space.

Thats your playstyle, and that kind of design would suit you well. If I put one of my battleships alone versus endless fleets, it'd die pretty fast. With My playstyle, I cycle out the ships that may die in the next battle, replace them with a new ship, send the damaged ship to go defend a world, thus making their high hp bonus an armor unto itself. As thus, I often end up with level 50+ fighters, level 30+ battleships, etc, with insane amounts of hp.

Who needs armor when your ships have insane hp anyways? even then, if I've researched the highest tl armors by then, I put one of each on my ships, doesnt take that much room to put zero point and the missile defense (aeron?) with no shield. (10 + 10 defense = 20, divided by 3 = around 7 defense vs lasers, so why bother with shield anyways? takes te most room of all, which would be better used in life support or one more engine or one more weapon)

EDIT: why bother researching armor when you can trade for it in the tons? I'd rather research ultimate logistics, then trade for 5-6 good armor techs, than research 5-6 good armor techs and have to trade for money, then trade for ultimate logistics. (The AI doesnt like to trade pre-techs, but I like to have em all )

The best ship I ever built (and only ever built one of it) was called the Behemoth

Huge hull
2 hyperwarp mark 3
2 sensors mark 4
2 advanced life support
1 Black Hole Eruptor
a LOT of ultimate invulnerability

Not just any old ship, this thing was my last ship on the map after an extremely bloody war. It removed the entire Torian army from this plane of existence. Cost a lot, but it couldn't be killed at level 0. By level 28 (pre the 1.1 level nerf bonus, which was a good idea in retrospect) it could stand any ship I've ever seen/made in a one on one battle

Richrf - you've got the right approach with two engines whenever possible, near the latter stages of the game when miniturisation is almost at max 3 hyperwarp engines can speed up the mopping up for a conquest victory. the AI transports might be heading to a rally point, that might explain the unescorted status, maybe. u playing 1.1 yet??

Sure 1.1 . Later in the game they started escorting some of the transports. But the Arcean and Iconian continued to send transports alone. I suspect it has something to do with speed. The early transports were speed 2, while their heavy fighters were speed 4, so they didn't combine it into a fleet.

This crazy massed attack of bare transports, plus some fighters nearby within movement range was not totally stupid,
there were so many of them, from so many directions, that inevitably some slipped through.

At that point in time I was public enemy No 1, I (Dergin) was being attacked by the Acrean, the Iconian refuge, the Altarian and Korx ! Me versus 4 powers, with the altarian ahead of me in economy and influence (by a bit) and the iconian 3rd.

Later, they came up with speed 6 ships , much more scary.... particularly with transports and I came as close to losing as I ever came, even lost one fringe colony.

But eventually one by one the Acrean, the iconian sued for peace, when i started pulling ahead and my military hardware came online...... Stupid AI, if they continued to mass attack me, I might have problem, but alone each race was no match for me...

I don't use life support except at the beginning for some colony ships. But I play on medium maps, which strangely doesn't seem popular??

I also don't research defensive techs. Superior speed, sensor and overwhelming first strike is my basic strategy.

I also value logistic techs a lot, so I can bunch up enough ships for sufficient attack in the first shot.

During the campaign especially, I found that cargo ships are incredibly useful as front-line warships in the early-mid game. The hulls are huge compared to the small, tiny and medium ships, so it's very possible to cram enough into a cargo vessel to get first-strike kills against tasty transports, colony ships and light warships.

The huge capacity also lets you cram in enough engines to beat feet if a real fleet shows up. One honkin' huge cargo ship acting as your AWACS will warn you ahead of the slow AI approach.

Damnifiknow what difficulty I'm pulling the stunt on. Whatever's two steps above the 'normal' AI, but it works on any size of map. Bigger is better since you can get some nice speed out of those cargo ships to zip all over the place.

On huge and gigantic maps, defence is vital.

And as for cargo ships: no way do I want to waste that much money on kamikazi frigates, if in the same time for cheaper I can get out ships that do less damage but survive the counter attack

Counter attack? What is this "counter attack" you speak of?

The biggest use for them is against the Dread Lords. There's no way I can survive a 158 missile attack. On the other hand, it's pretty darn easy to one-shot a rinky-dink 13 HP small hull.

I don't normally use life support, even on gigantic maps. I was going to post about that, but then decided it was my play style. I prefer a forward base of operations for a war, so I generally send a task force ahead of the main fleet to establish a star base or take a small fringe colony so that my range is extended. That also gives me somewhere close by to hide while I repair any ships that might need it, and a good rally point position for incomming reinforcements.

I agree with the idea of 2 engines. Works great for me. I occantionally will build a few with 4 or 5 engines and a pea shooter to take out transports quickly should the need arise.

I don't normally use life support, even on gigantic maps. I was going to post about that, but then decided it was my play style. I prefer a forward base of operations for a war, so I generally send a task force ahead of the main fleet to establish a star base or take a small fringe colony so that my range is extended. That also gives me somewhere close by to hide while I repair any ships that might need it, and a good rally point position for incomming reinforcements.

Me too. Even though i play medium maps

When I use small hulls, I also like to pack them with lasers...

I'm pretty new at this, but when you research a new tech (ion drive f.i) do you design a new ship and obsolete the old one or do you build the outdated hyperdrive and upgrade the ship when it's done?

I don't know what to do and if I upgrade the design all the time I will end up with a hundred ships! And that's just for the humans!!

I'm pretty new at this, but when you research a new tech (ion drive f.i) do you design a new ship and obsolete the old one or do you build the outdated hyperdrive and upgrade the ship when it's done?

Not sure what you mean, but remember ships are built based on ship design. There is no autoupgrade where old parts are replaced with new ones. You need to design a new ship based on the new tech.


For existing ships, you can 'upgrade' them to any other ship design, by paying a fee. So you could have an existing ship based around the 'Hyperdrive constructor' design, and upgrade it by paying a fee and waiting a few turns into a completely different design. Say the newly designed 'Ion drive constructor' design. How much you pay depends on how different the old ship design is from the new.

You can also delete the old ship design, so no more will be produced, but the existing ships of that design remain. Or you could obselte it, so the existing ships of that design are discommissioned. Or you could just leave it.

Sometimes, older tech designs might be worth keeping around because they are cheaper to build and you don't need the full capabilities . E.g if you colony is right smack next to a starbase you intend to built up, there is no need to use expensive superduper fast constructors that cost a bomb.

At almost every new research level I redesign my ships with the new tech. I then obsolete the older design but leave the existing fleet alone (maybe to get upgraded later). After a few games of doing this with a civ, you have all the ship designs you can use and you can keep the buildable list small by continuing to obsolete anything that you will no longer build.

At almost every new research level I redesign my ships with the new tech.

This becomes tedious on the games I used to play (fastest research), where I would only upgrade roughly once a year. Just after the AI has finished his new top-of-the-line ships, I'll counter it with something superior.

However, since I've now taken to epic battles (slow tech and huge/gigantic maps) I do find myself constantly looking for the technological edge.