How do I effectively fight a high tech battle in DA?

It sounds to me like you are in a position where unconventional warfare is called for.

Knowing that your best ship would die immediately gives you an inherent tactical advantage!!

Waves of all-weapon suicide fighters against fleets deep in your territory will cause enough cumulative damage to allow some more defensively balanced large hulled fleets to take them down. Push them out of your territory, then castle up for a moment to get yourself a couple of advanced military bases covering your border to offset their advantage.

Once you can control their incoming fighters (this means using your military bases wherever the enemy bottlenecks and having enough fighters there to constantly be revolving out the damaged ones and replacing them instantly), then it is time to build task forces to take out critical mines/bases/planets.

In a war of attrition, you should be able to wear them down by always focusing your forces on the immediate target - pressure always at one point, not spread all over like the AI does.

Hi!

Kamikaze attacks could help, since he's using ultimate weapons. That means ships with attack 1000 and more. But not kamikaze fighters (tiny/small hull), they lack the space for engines to intercept koraths' fleets. With missiles he can made a very strong huge ship. If Korath are flying in fleets, that could make difference: if they're not using defenses, one of such all-missiles one-engine huge ships can alone destroy almost entire fleet of theirs. But that's stil a trade of only 4 to 1 in his favor. IMO not enough to overcome his 4 times smaller economy. He can also try to build a ship with lots of defenses (at least 60% of what koraths' usuall design has) for one-to-one fights, and clearing orbits of planets without OFM. But that defense-heavy design is useless in battles with fleets.

IMO his situation is lost economically and probably also militarily. If he can not make his remaining two opponents fight each other, and taking a lot of koraths' planets while they do so, it's game over.

BR, Iztok

You guys are way ahead of me, I haven't even played a map where I had more than 40 colonies, and I dunno if there more than 60 on the whole map.

But anyway, my 2cents worth is to research sensors and build Eyes of the Universe - because then ships and starbases have good visual coverage of your entire border, which in turn allows figuring out which are the main production planets of der enemiz. Backtracking them from choke points has worked for me once or twice.

If the game leans towards not being at war (and I can buy them off and have treaties etc long enuff), I research cultural conquest and send in a 6-constructor fleet to take down each of the main producers. If at war, I try to get a 3-5 fast transport fleet with 4,000 each onboard and sneek around the side for a suicide attack (did manage to get 11pcw transports with 4,000 on each with advanced troop modules once, i think. 20k shock troops kiks hard with mass drivers). Yes you need to send at least one escort to take out the defenders, and maybe a fleet of really good ships to run interference or take on any big ships in orbit. You don't have to hold it, just take it, then destroy the colony. If the primary target has super-defense, just take whatever planet you can and raze it to bedrock immediately (destroy it).

Usually taking out 1-3 main production planets will throw them into complete disarray and slow them waaaay down. Then continuing the same tactic will insure defeat for them. If they wanna play nice, and if you have cultural conquest, you can kick back and (tediously) do the same with 6-constructor fleets. A lot of games have depended heavily on diplomatic skills so initially they could be paid off to fight each other while I giggled over my ebil plan. But then, you guys are way ahead of me, haven't played higher than challenging yet. P.S. - that was playing humans.

I must be insanely lucky, never once has my opponent (Dread lords excluded) gotten all the way up to the maximum weapons tech. The bigger my map the slower I set the tech. I want to play a Gig Abundant game sometime, but I really dont have months to dedicate to a single instance of this game right now.

If you want to read some analysis by Iztok and myself regarding a war I fought with a maxed out tech tree I recommend looking here. And off type defense bug is now fixed, so that is not a factor.

If the Korath are using individual superpower ships you are going to have to fleet up and just eat the losses. If they are using fleets of superpower ships you are going to have to send in suicide ships to just do lots of damage. But at 60 worlds to 250 worlds you have probably lost. The Korath sound like they are just toying with you.

Hope that helps,
- Wyndstar

I am always hugely outnumbered when I play and I rarely get into any long lasting trouble. Normally though I have something leveraged in my favour, if it's not tech level, then it's a stronger economy, if not then better weaponry etc.... something you can lever to apply pressure to your enemy. In this case, you're out-tekked, out-gunned, out-numbered.... I'd say you'd need to try to distract your enemy to another frontier if possible (any diplomatic potential?), then do everything to create a defensive line to work from.

The idea behind the small hulls was to be able to produce inordinate numbers of them - every turn flinging them at the fleets deep in the player's territory. That's the first target, long before trying to do any real containing, clear out your territory of threats. Next stage is to build something that is optimised for defense against the attacker and fleet them up to deal with incoming fleets. Third is to get starbase support, a couple of them in the right place could rearrange that advantage the Korath have.

That's my take on it - it's my "Never Say Die" stance I use with this game!!

Here is the state of affairs. The Drengin got pulled into a war with the Korath by a random event and controls slightly more resources than the Korath. I think the Drengin will beat them eventually because of the trade goods I gave them, even though they were smaller to begin with. I've got about 40% of the population the major powers do, and enough influence to prevent my planets flipping (it was a major concern before). I'm going to have to absorb the Korath because everyone is moving slowly to do anything. I am using my planets to generate cash only because of the need to build small ships called "shells" at a cost of 25 BC every turn (even though many will die each turn, I ALWAYS have ships in orbit; the AI does not trigger invasion forces under these circumstances). I flipped to all stock markets after realizing that I would never have both consistent production and protection from AI transports every turn (because of how long it takes to create one competitive ship). Rather, I can buy 1 such ship every 3 turns at my income rate. I buy several of them at the location I wish to strike plus transports.

The Korath worlds are defended with a random assortment of ships:

Frigate - 350 Missile Attack + 100 Mass Driver Defense. I can kill these or smaller.
Battleship - 500-600 MA, 150 MDD. I can't kill these, but maybe with 2+ ships?
Dreadnaught - 700-750 MA, 300 MDD. I think with a fleet of 2+ ships?

My ship has 475 MA only. I could squeeze +100 MA if it had no engines (impractical). If I have 2 of these ships, will I "survive the tie" with the larger enemy ships? I can take at least 25% of their worlds with 1 ship because it outclasses all their defenders. Other planets will be more challenging.

Ah, I see - this is your main question. Sorry I missed it. I have experimented a LOT with the tie rule and am very sure I know how it produces results.

The tie rule works thusly:

1.
If all ships on both sides are destroyed simultaneously in the same round (not necessarily the first round) - then the side with the higher attack value will retain 1 ship with its highest attack value with 1 hp.

2.
If after 50 rounds of combat both sides are still alive, the side with the higher attack value automatically wins, takes no more damage, and all the ships on the side with the lower attack value are destroyed. (So, to take it to extremes, you attack a fleet of 5 enemies with values 10 attack, 300/300/300 in defense with a fleet of 5 ships 15 attack, 200/200/200 in defense. You will win. Neither side can hurt each other through 50 rounds, you have slightly higher attack. 600+hp of enemy ships just goes *poof* and you win. I have done this several times before against def heavy AIs, and it almost feels like cheating. Doesn't require you to build good ships at all.)


So, lets look at those Dreads you are fighting. with a 750 attack they will on average do 375 hp per ROUND in damage. Even your huge hulls aren't going to have 180 hp without xp, so yes, in a 2 on 1 the Korath Dread wins - it will toast both of your ships in round 1, and you might not even destroy it. (475 MA x 2 = 950 / 2 = 475 - 300 MDD = 175 avg damage... dicey, how many hp do they have??) Even if you did destroy it, you will lose on the tie rule and it will survive with 1 hp. A third huge solves your problem (kinda) because you will survive with 1 ship, trading two of your ships for one of theirs. Thats no good though, you are taking the brunt of the attrition.

What you want is a huge with 375 MDD and any attack, and then fleet them into 5. In this case, the enemy dread does on average 375 damage, and you block slightly less than all of that damage. Now you are only taking bleed through damage per round. If whatever attack you can manage x5 is not greater than 600 all is not lost, you will still do bleed through damage. But basically, to beat this ship without taking losses you want a ship with 125+MA and 375 MDD. - used in groups of 5

The other option if such is not possible for you is to go with a mixed fleet look. Build a fleet of 4 huges with 375MDD and whatever attack you can manage (all same type) and then add in one of your 450 attack ships. Your attack ship will die, but should knock out most of the defense of the enemy Dread, and hopefully your remaining firepower from your defensive capitals can clean it out in that first round. Even if not, you will have hopefully weakened it greatly so you can kill it with bleed through damage in succeeding rounds. In this way your 4 huge hull defense ships will gain xp and so hp, and you are only trading one ship for one ship. Not as good as the invincible setup above - but maybe you don't have miniturization to build a ship with the needed stats in my first scenario. A one to one trade is more palatable, but still not great. But its twice as good as trading two ships for one, no?

But, really your best option is to go with off type attack. Your base hull needs to have 375 on type defense to what the Dread is using (so MDD). Then say put as many doom rays as you can on your ship. Doom ray does 25 damage, say you can only fit 4 on your ship after defense and engines. That is only an attack of 100, so x5 is only an attack of 500, /2 = 250 facing 300 def, you lose? No. Here is why...
The sqrt of 300 is only 17, so Dreadnaught is only rolling 1-17 against each of your attacks. Doom Rays roll 1-25, so on average you will do 3+ pts of damage per doom ray (damage will increase as armor is worn away, although not by much). With your def you are taking little to no damage. But you are inflicting # of doom rays x3(+) in damage per round. With say, 4 doom rays per ship x 5 ships that is a respectable 60 damage per round, even though you never fully blast away that 300 armor. You should destroy his ship in 3-4 rounds, taking no losses. In fact, you should be able to sweep his entire force with just one fleet of five of these ships (if he isn't using fleets).

If the Dreads are fleeted, you will need to send in FLEETS of 5 all attack suicide ships to lower their numbers before attacking with your 5 fleet all def ships.


That should be what you are looking for. If you still need help, let me know.
- Wyndstar

Actually, re-reading my post I misspoke, doom rays only do 1-22 damage. Still, so you will kill in about 5 rounds.

You will still take damage with the 375 Mass Driver Defense ships as well. Going roughly from your numbers I'm going to guess those Dreadnaughts have 26 black hole guns -

1-16 x 26 = 416 x 1.75 = 728 attack (ish) I'm sure I'm off but this is close enough for example purposes. So, Here is what happens when that dread attacks:

Roll 1 (1-312) (75% attack boost)
Rolls 2-27 (1-16) (all of the black hole guns)

With a 375 def you are going to roll a 1-375 on round one, going against his 1-312. It is possible you lose your whole ship right here (if you get real unlucky and he gets real lucky). But on AVERAGE you take no damage, and still your attrition should on average be much much less than a 1 to 1 ship ratio (which was the best you could do when trading attack ships).

Black hole erupters are the best for going against off type defense, they are the ones that roll 1-25.

Anyway, maybe I'm going into too much detail. I've analyzed combat to death. Hope that helps.
- Wyndstar

If Drengnin and Korath are fighting each other, won't that take some pressure off of you?

You should make peace with Drengnin and focus on Korath. Bribe a few others races to join against Korath.

As for weaponary, you said Korath has MA and MASS Defense. Do you have Missle Defenses? Customize your ships defenses just against Korath's Missle Attacks using Wyndstar's defense and suicide ship strategy above.

What is your engine/number of moves per turn versus the Korath? And I might have missed it, but what are they guarding their planets with? Oftentimes, I will notice that the Korath will have a huge fleet I can't beat, but will leave only smaller ships or cargo hulls in orbit around the planet. Also, those fleets will move independently of their spore/transport ships (They dont seem to defend them when logistics). I can usually avoid the fleet, while picking off their spores and transports, and also usually kill their planetary defenses and counter-invade. Not only does this add planets for you while weakening them, but it also adds experience to your ships. Smalls and mediums can get some pretty awesome HP upgrades when they hit a few levels of experience. Makes wiping out the larger ships a little easier. But if they have ultimate weapons doing that much damage it might not matter even if they do get a few upgrades.

Suicide attack ships means - faster(more move pts), off-defense-type attack, no defense, smaller, cheaper, individually maneuvered, attack-first? In combo with Eyes of the Universe so you can actually position your ships just out side their sensor range, and dart in to the attack unsuspected at a time and place of your choosing, is what's known as a "combat multiplier" by tacticians.

Again, don't firget you don't havta hold the colony, just take it and destroy it ... "area denial" MuWhaHaHa!

I'm going to need that territory to fight the Drengin later.

I think my best bet is just to build attack ships in pairs to capture the "hard" colonies, and a few running around solo to capture the "easy" colonies. I am going to destroy the Korath from the inside out.

It's not coming out like I thought. After building missile 600 missile attack ship (~1080 with bonus) I figured that I could toast the Korath dreadnoughts at 586 missile attack, ~250 mass driver defense. Clearly, attack is not the only consideration in the tie rule. My next test is to build defense ships (which I assume benefit from my military bonuses in a similar way). If I can get more missile defense than the other ship, am I likely to beat it? My bonus gives me a potential of over 1000 missile defense, but I am unsure how it rolls for this. Perhaps a fleet setup will leave me nearly invincible with mostly defense? The Korath have lost a military resource to the Drengin, and I maxed out two myself, so perhaps I have a chance to change the situation; I have already doubled in size, but can't take worlds with a huge ship yet (hoping to change that).

Recently found that any ship (even noncombat) would take the fall, so I can finally penetrate their defenses. Still want to know how to do it with one ship though.

well, I may be in a somewhat similiar situation like you in my current game, but it's not looking that bad yet for me at least.
But I fear I could get into a situation like yours. especially I fear that the Drengin will outnumber me, out-tech me and also have more planets + better economy. My current hope is that I can ally them and win a alliance-victory by this, but if that doesn't work and I need to fight them while they are massively more advanced I have one idea.

It's not tried out yet nor am I sure it will really work and it for sure will be a major PITA to win a whole galaxy by this, but here it goes:

I plan upon building enormous fleets of Tiny 1/1/1-attackers maybe coupled with 1 defense against the Drengins main-attack type or every 1-vs-all
Then whereever I plan upon defending/attacking I want to build as many military starbases as possible covering that space.
A full fleet of Tiny ships in the area of effect of several military starbases should be quite deadly to whatever an AI-opponent can muster.

The downfall of this strategy is that you will need a bazillion of constructers if you really want to build up several starbases fully.
If you have a galaxy with "abundant" planets it may be worth it because you should be able to get several planets into the area of control of those starbases.

Well, that's my "last-resort" idea when everything else fails.

I don't remember if military starbase effects stack or if you get highest one (as I never use them). What's odd is the AI will not send transports on the same turn it attacks a planet; so if you build a ship each turn, they will never invade! I would almost consider this an exploit.

they sure stack. in one of my last games I had a fleet of 20 tiny 1/1/1 ships and the total fleet attack was over 1k in every category plus massive defenses as well.

took an insane amount of constructors though....

What I don't understand is how my ships can lose solo, but win when fleeted with noncombat ships. There's something wierd about the tie rule...