Playing on Strategic?

Discussion on how to play against other humans.
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Dukinson
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Re: Blitzing in Strategic

Postby Dukinson » Tue Aug 18, 2015 6:27 pm

Strategic puts some interesting challenge for a Blitz, mainly the absence of retreat option.
In tactical if you arrive with some minimum nuke-boats, if defender suddenly has ECM or some other new tech, you can just retreat and come back with an extra CA. In Strategic, if an opponent completes a tech upon your arrival or his crew level goes up by one, suddenly you can lose much more ships, or worse even the whole fleet can be lost.

Also, as a zero-loss combat does not happen often at all, throughout the entire game you must keep spending resources on building ships to keep the minimum fleet in tact.
Tricky isn't it? You have to be sure when you attack. Communications can be important for turning your fleet around should a defense fleet be discovered or you find they have developed a new armor or weapons tech while enroute.

In vanilla I used to overwhelm starbases with quickly constructed space academy trained destroyer fleets with Warlord in the beginning of the game.
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Darza
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Re: Blitzing in Strategic

Postby Darza » Tue Aug 18, 2015 9:28 pm

In vanilla I used to overwhelm starbases with quickly constructed space academy trained destroyer fleets with Warlord in the beginning of the game.
Good point about warlord actually. While its pretty sub-par in Tactical, it could have completely different effect in Strategic (same as with other combat traits, they could have a better or worse value). In case its effect on combat there is game-changing from mere start - it could be very optimal to use indeed.

Upd - nah, its useless there too, most likely even much more than in Tactical.

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Rocco
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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby Rocco » Sun Aug 23, 2015 4:10 am

Image

Update: Strategic Ships do not have armor and structure as in tactical.
They only have 'hit points' and the structure number is used to represent this.

Thus ships base hit points are: 4,15,25,40,80,300 and modified by your best armor tech.
The armor points that you see in the ship info can be discarded.

Unfortunately there are (more) ship info screen bugs:
  • 1. In the ship info the armor number is updated with armor techs instead of the structure number.
    2. After combat however the damage done is shown in the structure number. This can result in ships showing full armor and a negative structure number.
In above screen you see a frigate that has -8 structure after combat and a full armor number of 16.
The actual situation is that the frigate has 4/16 hit points remaining.

edit: Star Base 100, Battlestation 200, Fortress 500 hit points.

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Dukinson
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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby Dukinson » Sun Aug 23, 2015 1:46 pm

Haha, I noticed this too. Strange no? It's all the same even though it's displayed oddly. The negatives will only go to what you have in armor then, poof, ship gone. I thought about mentioning it a couple weeks ago when we talked about the oddities of ship structure in strategic. I still think modules, combat speed, shields (weakly factored it seems), crew, ship combat bonuses and weapons are properly displayed. I even think it's possible the ship defense pick isn't as strong in strategic and the missile defense may be properly displayed.
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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby Rocco » Mon Aug 24, 2015 4:24 am

It's all the same even though it's displayed oddly. The negatives will only go to what you have in armor then, poof, ship gone.
I am not sure what this means?
I still think modules, combat speed, shields (weakly factored it seems), crew, ship combat bonuses and weapons are properly displayed. I even think it's possible the ship defense pick isn't as strong in strategic and the missile defense may be properly displayed.
- About these ship modules of which there can be so many that they scroll of the screen: Have you done some isolated tests to verify if the older ships with many modules in the ship info will perform beter than the new ships that have much less special systems? Isolated meaning in a hot seat set-up. Also if you see an ECM Jammer, Multi-Wave Jammer and a WAJ all on the same ship, do you think that it is correct and that all these jamming boni are cumulative?
- How do you envision combat speed works in the strategic combat resolve?
- If you say, weapons are properly displayed, do you also include the Doom Star?
- If you say 'missile defense may be properly displayed', do you mean that if you have the racial trait 'Ships Defense +50' and the Ship Info shows +25 Missile Evasion that +25 is the correct value? And how have you established this?

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Dukinson
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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby Dukinson » Mon Aug 24, 2015 12:44 pm

It's all the same even though it's displayed oddly. The negatives will only go to what you have in armor then, poof, ship gone.
I am not sure what this means?
I still think modules, combat speed, shields (weakly factored it seems), crew, ship combat bonuses and weapons are properly displayed. I even think it's possible the ship defense pick isn't as strong in strategic and the missile defense may be properly displayed.
- About these ship modules of which there can be so many that they scroll of the screen: Have you done some isolated tests to verify if the older ships with many modules in the ship info will perform beter than the new ships that have much less special systems? Isolated meaning in a hot seat set-up. Also if you see an ECM Jammer, Multi-Wave Jammer and a WAJ all on the same ship, do you think that it is correct and that all these jamming boni are cumulative?
- How do you envision combat speed works in the strategic combat resolve?
- If you say, weapons are properly displayed, do you also include the Doom Star?
- If you say 'missile defense may be properly displayed', do you mean that if you have the racial trait 'Ships Defense +50' and the Ship Info shows +25 Missile Evasion that +25 is the correct value? And how have you established this?
About armor: Structure means nothing, or you could say armor means nothing. Only one value appears to matter. So if you have 400 armor, but 40 structure, ships is destroyed at -360 structure. It really just means it only has 400 armor. Even though it's displayed strangely. Likely a slapdash modification when they realized too much armor and structure some how messed with strategic as they rushed to complete the game.

About modules, I'm not 100% sure. All I can say for now is that I've had old and new ships mixed into a main battle fleet. When I dispatched the new ships, they did worse than when I loaded back and sent the old timers to intercept the assault fleet. It would appear some or all of the modules are used, even stacking redundant inertials or jammers. I'll try to run some tests.

Combat speed, I mean to say the ship defense they get from the combat speed benefits the ships. Other than that, it does nothing else.

Doom stars... haha yes. In strategic they are war machines for sure and the ultimate vessel.

Missile defense and Ship combat bonuses: I think it's entirely possible the ship defense pick is displayed properly in strategic. It may only give the +50 missile defense in tactical. It's so little missile defense it is hard to test, but other than that, the ship combat modifiers seem to be accurate. When I get ships with +200 or more attack and defense, they are quite deadly. This is often done through redundant modules. I'm used to losing ships. Once I get ships that buff, I would wipe out entire fleets without a single loss. I'll try to test more when the opportunity arises when I get redundant modules.
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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby Rocco » Sat Sep 05, 2015 6:25 pm

Got my hands on a copy of the MOO2 strategy guide last week, an old book from 1996 that was published even before version 1.1 was released. (Absence of Poor Home World in the book)

The book has some clear errors in descriptions in various sections, so cannot readily accept everything to be true.
It does however confirms a couple of my findings about strategic games and give some new clues too:
During first two combat rounds, all ships and bases with missile weapons do damage. There is no time of flight; every attack is resolved immediately. Every missile fires at a randomly chosen ship or base. The chance of each hitting is "100% + Systems Bonus - Jammer Effect. Ship system available to the attacker that add to the accuracy of missiles provide the Systems Bonus. Jamming technology available to the defender determines the Jammer Effect. If a missile hits, the damage it does is substracted from the target's Hits. Any destroyed target is removed from combat immediately and does not attack again. Bases continue to fires missiles every round until the end of combat, with the same chance to hit. Every round after the first, ships use each special weapon system available to them. Ground Batteries fire beginning in round two. Their targeting, chance to hit, and damage work just like beam weapons. After the second round, all beam weapons on both sides fire every round. Targeting is random, just like missiles and specials. The chance of hitting is 60% + Computer Bonus - Target Defense. The best type of computer determines the Computer Bonus. The Defense of the target appears in Table 4-1 [stated in book is 30,20,15,10,5,0, and -10 for bases. I believe my numbers that I posted in strategic thread are the actual correct ones: 50, 40, 30, 25. 20, 15 and -10 for bases] Beginning in the fourth round, any ships with Bombing ability do damage to the military installations on the planet below - if there is an enemy colony there. These ships drop all their bombs each turn, and these bombs do damage as usual. [Bomb damage is defined elsewhere in this book - see below] At any time during this process when a fleet's strength hits zero (or below), the combat is over and the surviving fleet is declared the winner. There are no chances to retreat or surrender and no survivors on the losing side.
About bombing (applies to strategic & tactical):
... The installations that provide the planetary defenses are always the first targets ... When 100 points of damage have accumulated, they destroy one randomly chosen defensive installation. After all planetary defenses (including shield generators) have been destroyed, bombs begin to target everything else. Each time enough damage accrues to destroy a civilian target (100 points), the game generates a random number between 1-30. This die roll determines the target of that damage: 1-20 Ground Forces; 21-25 Building; 26-30 Population Unit. This target is immediately considered destroyed.

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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby Rocco » Sat Sep 05, 2015 6:39 pm

Also the book gives some new info on weaponry of orbital platforms.
(the book's info on ships weapons is consistent with my findings - repeating them below.)

Ship Design - Weapons
Every Ship class has a set design:
(FF) Frigate: 1 beam weapon of your best type
(DD) Destroyer: 2 beam weapons of your best type
(CA) Cruiser: 2 beams, 1 missile/torpedo, 2 bombs
(BB) Battleship: 4 beams, 2 missiles/torpedoes, 5 bombs and 1 special weapon
(TT) Titan: 6 beams, 4 missiles/torps, 10 bombs, 3 special weapons
(DS) Doom Star*: 10 beams, 10 missiles/torps, 25 bombs, 5 special weapons
* Doom Star ship info sometimes can show more weapons to be onboard, this is just another screen info bug.

Star Base: 3 beams, 3 missiles.
Battlestation: 6 beams, 3 missiles.
Star Fortress: 10 beams, 10 missiles.

The cool thing: all this info just sits there in the OCL file in the SHIPS section!
weaponry colums 9-12: beams, missiles, special weapon, bombs
defense points in column 13. FF - Fortress: 50,40,30,25,20,15,-10,-10,-10
hit points* in column 14. FF - Fortress: 4,15,25,40,80,300,100,200,500
* Strategic ships have no armor and structure. They have only 'hit points'.

Same goes for the special systems (as posted before), they are defined in the last two columns of the SPECIALS section.
There are max. 7 specials on board of each ship class.
Last edited by Rocco on Sun Sep 06, 2015 4:14 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Dukinson
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Doom stars and Artemis Net Repulsion

Postby Dukinson » Sat Sep 05, 2015 7:53 pm

Interesting stuff. Looks like there is more depth to strategic combat than I realized. I tend to disbelieve anything the strategy guide says but it's not always wrong. I wonder if doomstars are really off as your findings have shown, they seem to have more than 5 specials but I will try to test two doomstars with differing number of specials displayed to see if I can verify this.

I would report an oddity with Artemis Net that I've used many times. If a giant fleet attacks with a net up WITH defensive structures, the more defensive structures you have the greater change the ENTIRE fleet is repelled even though they've lost little to no ships. They are forced to turn around for some reason and you keep the colony. I've used this trick to buy time to quickly rebuild missile bases, ground batteries star fortress, etc. Ofcourse even with all the defensive structures up, they sometimes break through around half the time. I've always wondered why the strange result of a forced retreat can happen. If I know the assault fleet will defeat my defensive fleet, I just move away and let the Net do its thing and I may lose the colony but I won't lose my fleet and I may lose nothing but defenses and buy time to build a larger defense fleet. Let me know if you can shed some light on the "Artemis Net Repulsion".
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Rocco
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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby Rocco » Mon Sep 07, 2015 4:32 am

I wonder if doomstars are really off as your findings have shown
why the doubt? based on what exactly?
I would report an oddity with Artemis Net that I've used many times.
this is about tactical? 'retreat' suggests it is , but it is not clear + you post in the strategic thread.

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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby Dukinson » Mon Sep 07, 2015 12:17 pm

Retreat does suggest it... but it is indeed stategic! The only retreat scenarios I've ever seen. I don't believe they are retreating though as there is not supposed to be any such thing. It's why I called it "repulsion". I believe they may be running out the max number of turns allowed in battle somehow. Just a theory though.

About Doom stars and specials. The reason I have a feeling (it's all I can go on right now) that they may break the 7 module limits you suggest, in that I've seen ships packed with modules perform far better like the 4 module vs 9 module titan I talked about earlier. Where I could be wrong is that the titan with 9 modules only really had 7. What I need to do is test one that has 7 modules vs one that has more and see if battle results differ. The titan that had 4 specials certainly appeared to be weaker than the one with 9 so it should indeed only have 4. I'm fairly certain there.
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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby Rocco » Fri Sep 25, 2015 3:09 am

The only retreat scenarios I've ever seen. I don't believe they are retreating though as there is not supposed to be any such thing. It's why I called it "repulsion".
Next time you see this, I would appreciate if you can share a savegame.
What I need to do is test one that has 7 modules vs one that has more and see if battle results differ.
Have you done a test in the mean time? Such test should indeed be a comparison of a ship with 7 modules vs a ship with more modules instead of 4 versus 9 as the latter case will not provide proof.

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Rocco
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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby Rocco » Sun Oct 04, 2015 6:41 am

Some hotseat games revealed that indeed there is a problem with Artemis Net in strategic mode.
Attacker can take down fortress and all planetary defenses but is unable to take down the Net in combat, causing the Orbital Assault phase not to be initiated. This forces an attackers fleet to retreat, making the defending world in essence 'invincible'.

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Re: Playing on Strategic?

Postby xThomas » Wed Apr 06, 2016 11:51 pm

Hey, this is all pretty interesting! Thanks for taking interest in this :)

A question, I have a hard time understanding how 3 Frigs killed my entire fleet and colony a year ago. Really scary buggers, aren't they?
moooooooooo!!!!!


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