New use for Tiny ships (TA)

So, for the first time ever, I am building tiny ships in significant numbers.

The Arceans have a new tech that produces a warp bubble that improves the speed of an entire fleet. You can have only one per ship and they do not stack with each other in fleets. They do, however, fit perfectly onto a tiny ship. So, take those early defender class/style ships with no engines and fleet them with one tiny ship (logistics 2) carrying a warp bubble and you now have an early decent fleet that can move OK (currently speed six in my game). Since the tiny has no weapons or defenses, it is the last ship targeted, meaning that, so long as the fleet survives, you will not loose your speed bonus...Which was a problem when I put them on actual warships. In addition, the attack component of your fleets have nothing but weapons on them, making them a more efficient build...

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This does work well

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Yeah I made a post about this yesterday about terrans.

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It's good to see that even past the opening stages, small hulls may now have their use.

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Weidbrewer

Join Date 03/2006

+19

Since the tiny has no weapons or defenses, it is the last ship targeted

I've always kinda wished that there was a random targeting scheme. As it stands now (at least before TA - not sure with this version) there's one ship that's always taking the beating until it is destroyed. The only way not to have it attacked is to take it out of the fleet.

But, with your find above, it now makes for a neat loop-hole.

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I'd take it a step further, personally. A random targeting scheme coupled with an upper bound on the number of rounds in a fight could make battles extremely interesting, and provide more room for tactics and logistics in warfare. Having random targeting wouldn't even necessarily mean that escorting transports/scouts would be useless: take, for example, this setup:

Instead of randomly selecting a ship, randomly select a point of the fleet's maximum HP and target whichever ship that belongs to (obviously, destroyed ships are not targetable). If you had a cargo hulled transport/carrier/recon ship in a fleet with a total of 150 HP, the chances of it getting hit by any individual ship in a round is 1/150, so long as it's escorts remain. It'd also allow "damage sponge" capital ships with little armament but a lot of HP to absorb much of the firepower that would otherwise hit your more expensive ships... it'd be a nice new strategy to add to the playbook!

I have rationale for round limited battles in this thread.

I love the tiny support ships, though, and I'll give that a shot once I get TA activated.

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concerning warp bubbles i think its a "bug" that every race gets them. tey are supposed to be a unique terran tech i believe (anyway there's a terran tech called warp bubles that doen't give anything in the terran tech tree). They where probably introduced for us to test fleet modules.

but anyway concerning arcean and warp bubles its true this tech is going to be a must trade for the arceans as it clearly compensates there lack of engines put one ultimate warp bubble plus a fleet comand center (25% bonus attack and +3 speed not bad with arcean first strike^^) on a cargo hull for 5 logistic

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there's one ship that's always taking the beating until it is destroyed. The only way not to have it attacked is to take it out of the fleet.

I use this to develop high ranking units. If the ships are identical except for hitpoints, the AI targets the lower HP ships first. So I bring along some spare ships for each fleet, and swap out the damaged lowest-HP ship for a fresh one after each encounter (assuming it survives). Meanwhile the higher level ships are never targeted and survive to accumulate many more levels and HP. I keep upgrading these ships throughout the game and they become capable of taking on enemies far beyond their own size and tech level because of the tremendous beating they can take.

Many times I've been attacked when ill prepared and survived because my medium hulled ships have more HP than the enemy's battleships.

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