My ships keep getting wiped out :(

I'm not too sure which mission are you at for I've not touched the original dread lords campaign for ages. I'm currently on dark avatar campaign.

I understand the dread lords have some wicked ships early in the game. This is what I do...

1) Check out what type of offensive weapons they have and research on the defensives that counter their offensive.

2) Economy of your civilizations is important. When you have lots of $$, you can build lots of ships to take out the dread lords. Besides, you get to research & build structures & ships faster.

3) Allocated ur ships with 75% defense & 25% offense during early game. I realise in my games I can't take out the dread lords initialy so I took my time to research better weapons, while defending well enough not to get my planets over taken.

The above 3 pointers are just the basics which worked for me. Hope it helps.

Thanks

1/ They seem to have all 3 types of weapons. Is there a way to tell exactly what they have?

2/ Economy is not a problem..... at least until I lose so many ships that they start taking over my masively populated planets with a *tiny* handful of troops, thanks to their tech advantage of hundreds against my 2-4.

3/ I'll try that. I've got ships with 75% offense.


By the way is it better to have only 1 type of defense on my ships, or is it better to have both the types I have researched (shields and armour)?

I have noticed that in the earlier missions they seem to use Doom Rays, and huge amounts of them. Not that I managed to beat them, so I ended up taking my "Ultimate Strategy" and ran away...

In the early game though their Logistics is poor and they cannot make fleets. Presumably, with constant bombardment of large fleets consisting of small or medium hulled ships.

Use the best weapons tech you have (Mass Drivers is reasonably good early game in the campaign due to it's good balance between price/power/space). Don't even bother with defence, it'll take up space and will have little effect against their advanced weaponary, use the space for more weaponary.

If you need to invade their planets, put transports in fleets of 3 or 4, as the dread lords soldering ability is immensely high and, with the 10/20 soldiers they ahve on planets, they can take out your soldiers by the thousands.

It's likely that their planet is far away from your starting system, so you can use starbases to increase your range, but don't leave them unprotected as the Dread Lords will almost certainly destroy them.

Their main weakness (in DL at least) is that they can only hit one of your ships at a time. Of course, that hit will destroy practically any ship you can build until well into the game, no matter how many defenses you put on it.

So go for all attack ships, tiny hulls, and make sure that you're always the one to strike first. Alternatively, make fast ships armed with single weapons, and avoid the DL warships entirely, concentrating on taking out their troop transports instead. Of course, sooner or later you're going to need a way to take the DL warships out in order to capture their planets, but hopefully that should keep you alive for long enough to tech up enough to take them on on a more equal footing.

Great stuff!! Thanks for the strategies. This gives me hope. I thought it was just me being poor at the game!

Here's the "pattern" for the Dread Lords campaign. Colonize first and foremost (where applicable). Then research speed and sensors. Create "sniper" ships by using a cargo hull with 1 weapon, 1 life support, and as many sensors and engines as needed to be FASTER than the Dread Lords. Once you have more speed than the DL, you can use your sensor range to find the undefended transport ships and destroy them (they usually have no defense). Ignore building any military ships, as the DL frigates and fighters will kill them easy. Keep killing the transports as your grind your way up the tech tree. Eventually you'll be able to make huge fleets of tiny ships that will start to hurt the DL. Win the war of attrition and invade the DL when clear. (For almost EVERY scenario of the campaign - wash, rinse, repeat)

Cool thanks. That's a great strategy and I will definitely use it.

I actually managed the mission I was stuck on by building a large fleet of smaller (medium) ships with lots of mixed weapons but no defence. Defence was pointless anyway. The fleet also had one sensor ship that had lots of sensors.

The Dread Lords would typically kill 2 ships in each engagement but my fleet eventually whittled them down.

I like the single interceptor idea though

Try putting a lot of weapons on cargo hulls. The Dread Lords will kill all your ships in one hit anyway, and cargo hulls can carry more stuff.  
Also, use fleets of all tiny hulls. Tiny hulls are a lot cheaper, so you can make bigger fleets faster.

Cool ideas, thanks I'll use tiny hulls instead of medium this time. I agree about the 1 hit kills, so I might as well use a cargo hull.

Don't use defenses either. They just waste space you could use for weapons/engines.

Defenses can be useful on large and huge hulls. Huge hulls actually have a good chance of beating small Dread Lord ships if they have a few shields and a lot of weapons. With them, use enough weapons to get a 1-hit kill of a heavy fighter or an escort. Build a lot of them and group them in fleets. Also, make extremely fast transports. Use the fleets to kill defenses, then move the transports from your own planets to the enemy planets. Use Traditional Warfare to invade. You can almost always beat Dread Lords when they defend with just 1000 troops.