-Monster- -killing- -strategies-

[ALEX|D]

I would like to know how u kill monsters!
How much Fleet and what technologies u need.

I figured out the following monster skills.

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Hydra: Combatspeed=8 | initiative=13 | HealthPoints=500

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Dragon: Combatspeed=20 | initiative=32,5 | HealthPoints=500

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Amoeba: Combatspeed=8 | initiative=13 | HealthPoints=400

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Crystal: Combatspeed=12 | initiative=24,5 | HealthPoints=500

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Eel: Combatspeed=24 | initiative=34 | HealthPoints=300

I found out that u can kill a amoeba right after autofacs/bios.

U need 2 DD´s with each 1 missiles á 20 shots. And further u need 3 FF equiped with 1 missile á 5 shots.
Ur ships have now 12combatspeed + e-comps (+25) makes an initiative about 14,5!
14,5 is above the amoeba´s 13ini. So ur ships move first.
In battle u just need run away and fire ur missiles.
All ur missiles make 440 damage.

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1DD = 1missile * 20shots * 8damage = 160damage 1FF = 1 missile * 5shots * 8damage = 40damage

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2DDs = 320 damage + 3FFs = 120damage = 440 damage

440 damage should be enuff to kill it, sometimes more than 40 points of damage go to amoebas drive, weapons etc. so u need maybe to selfdestruct 1 or 2 FFs near that amoeba.

[HooverDamned]

Just the base health for monsters is misleading. Some have more defense:

Dragon: BeamAttack +125, BeamDefense +100, MissleEvade 0%, but he's packing 8pd phasors so you need that many more nukes, giving him effectively more health.

Hydra: BA +50, BD +40, Evade 0% but equiped with an energy absorber. Effectively 625 health points. Six bpod frigates with fighters can toast him.

Amoeba: BA + 50, BD +40, Evade 0%. I like your method.

Crystal: BA +125, BD +60, Evade 0%. You can take this guy with 7 DDs equipped with starting tech nukes, if you finish him off by kamakazing.

Eel: BA +100, BD +120, Evade 0% and comes with a lightinig field. This implies health ~600.

Again, I like your idea of using 5 and 20-shot nukes. It would work on the eel, I think, as his attack is short range. If you scattered your fleet, most could empty their salvos.

[siron]

It would work on the eel, I think, as his attack is short range.

The eel is too fast. For the same reason fighters work just against amoeba (4ff), hydra (6ff) and crystal (8ff). But you should use fighter bays only with a few races. F.e. Uni tol can compensate the missing rhull by producing a huge fleet early on. This fighter strat is also useful for demo lith arthw. It can keep its cship and settle a hydra by ~ turn 25. (In this case demo lith needs gaias for teching and demo lith can compensate the missing rhull with early c3 shields.)

See also this monster overview:

http://www.moo3.at/moo2/monsters.php

[ALEX|D]

he eel is too fast. For the same reason fighters work just against amoeba (4ff), hydra (6ff) and crystal (8ff).

U mean FF equiped with bpod and a fighter bay ?
But without fusion beams, or with ?

[siron]

Without fusion beams.

I try to scout the 4parsec systems in the first turns...when I find a good amoeba, hydra or crystal I tech fighters, afacts battlepods directly. When I find dragon or eel the probability of further monster is low and I chose rhull (and then afacts, rlabs). (But often you have fighter bays in turn2 when you have 6 scientists with this race...so I save a bit prod in the first turns when the neighborhood looks good.)

Another race where fighter bays are good....is the WL 20 attack race. You can often tech for early c3 (instead of pollproc)....massdriver af ap is the early uberweapon for this race anyway. Rhull not needed in most cases...u can steal this tech in most cases later on.

[ALEX|D]

amoeba (4ff), hydra (6ff) and crystal (8ff).

Does it always work with 8ff on a crystal !? I test it a bit. Once I had 9 or 10 FFs and that bitch doesn´t get slower, and his beams stayd, too.

The Fighters made only some damage about 8-20dmg / 4_fighters.

[siron]

Hmmm.

Almost always. I had one exception....and in that game i had cyr!

I have this number from sky....and yes...sometimes u cant hit drive or crystal's ray in the first rounds.

But when I fly straightly up/down with half of me fleet enough ships survive for a second round since the crystal hits poorly too. (Mebbe this depends a bit on the -shipdefense (-sd) racepick...and mebbe this was the reason I failed and not this talented fighter leader cyr. )

WL also improves sd and u can take early md there....so u should have no problem with -sd for a WL. -sd for uni tol can cause problems....prolly.

(I play demo lith arthw rep -growth and never observed a problem with 8 ffs there.)

[Gusset]

Egad, I hate to do this, but Alex posted a great method for killing an amoeba early, so I guess I need to come clean with my "kill a hydra with 6 MIRV nuke frigates with starting engine tech" strategy. I've shown this to Zirkahn and Cybersaber, but I don't know if they shared it with anyone or if any of you had figured it out.

All you need is MIRV nukes. No auggies or fusion/ion drives needed. Just design your frigates with nothing but battle pods and 2 racks of 2-shot MIRV nuclear missiles (don't make them FST or ARM, that slows the ship down). You'll know it's the right design because the ship will have a combat speed of 15. This will give your ships initiative. But you still have to use the right tactics if you want to use just 6 ships:

ROUND 1: At the start, move each of your ships as far to the left as you can get, and then WAIT.

When the hydra moves, he will be unable to get close enough to your ships to fire, and since you haven't fired any of your missiles yet he can't shoot them down, either.

Now, after the hydra has moved, fire each ships' missiles at it to end the round.

ROUND 2: for each ship, FIRST fire missiles, they will be grouped with the ones from the previous round (exploiting a known game bug). Then, for at least 4 of your ships, MOVE toward the hydra. This is VERY important, because the hydra will take the opportunity to kill these ships. You need this to happen, because every ship the hydra kills is one more missile that it didn't, and 6 of these ships can only put a total of 24 missiles in the air.

ROUND 3: Keep some of your ships in range, again to soak up some of the hydra's fire. At the end of round 3, your entire missile cloud should impact the hydra and kill it.

If you use 7 frigates, you should be able to kill it without sacrificing any of your ships. That's probably a better idea in a game, but it's cool knowing you can do it with only 6 if you need.

VARIATION (that sometimes doesn't work...): I have done this with 5 frigates a few times, but you have to self destruct a ship next to the hydra usually, which is not always possible because they may all get shot down. I've failed with 5 more often than I've succeeded.

Note that this may not work if you are playing a -20 ship offense race. Have fun!

-Gusset

[Cabman]

But you need to tech till polproc/merc missles Guss ...taking hydra with 6 or 8 ff doesn't matter much then at that stage of the game (unless you tech stright to it- which is risky)...Pk told me that you can kill amoeba with 10(bpoded 3 nukes) ff {10*2*3*8=480}...So you can kill it about t 5x and have rhull and no need to tech polproc/merc level ...
Speaking of monster killing...i remember once i was attacking Dragon. It shot at my ff and blow him up which caused a chain reaction...only two of my 8 ff left on the field of the battle ..

[siron]

Pk told me that you can kill amoeba with 10(bpoded 3 nukes) ff {10*2*3*8=480}...So you can kill it about t 5x and have rhull and no need to tech polproc/merc level Smile...

But ALEX|D's method works even without battlepods....and his fleet costs less PPs: 2*125+3*45=385 compared to 10*70=700.

Speaking of monster killing...i remember once i was attacking Dragon. It shot at my ff and blow him up which caused a chain reaction...only two of my 8 ff left on the field of the battle ..Very Happy

There seems to be a very low probability that this happens in the first round. It is very common to attack a dragon with a trit bb. Seppel, RedDog and SkyBandit told me that they lost even a trit BB this way. (Sky uses just zort BBs against dragons now.)

[Gusset]

But you need to tech till polproc/merc missles Guss ...taking hydra with 6 or 8 ff doesn't matter much then at that stage of the game (unless you tech stright to it- which is risky)...

Risky? I ain't afraid of a little risk!

Perhaps I should have posted a little more context.

I used to build at least 9 ffs to kill a hydra (at polproc/merc level), because most times the first thing that would happen is the hydra would kill 3 of them. Sometimes one of those would core breach and I'd lose another one, before I'd even fired one shot. Using that many ships means more $$$ from negative command points, often forcing me to raise tax rates, build trade goods, watch the bank account go down, etc. I spent a lot of playing years thinking of hydras as the toughest monster to take down (besides the Guardian, of course). Now my personal opinion is that the eel is (I can't predict how that pesky lightning field is going to perform).

I'm not citing this as a huge secret to MOO success. We all know that the usefulness of any small tactic like this is situational; fighter bays could allow you to kill a hydra earlier, I suppose. I'm just saying that you don't need to build as big a missile fleet as most players think for a hydra. Nothing more. A lot of times in games I see players taking 10 ships or more into combat against a hydra (like I used to 2 years ago), and it's wasted resources.

Success in this game is often a matter of the little things. If you can save a turn or two and several 10x BC (and keep the tax rate lower) by only building 6 ships instead of 9 or 10 when it's still fairly early in the game, it's worth it IMHO. Spending more resources than is necessary to accomplish ANYTHING in this game can hurt. Details, baby.

Thanks again for the amoeba tip.

-Gusset

[StepNRazor]

I tend to kill monster with a nuke BB. Because After the kill I have a BB I can r-ft for def or attack, an MK (Monster Kill) fleet of ff's are pretty worthless, DD's are ok CA are fairly quick but have poor size per cost.
With a BB you can swap r-hull fro extra tank and get monsters 5+ psec away without going duet.
Only monster to worry about is a dragon, core breach!, so I pack along some bait 2-3 ff's full load 2 mrv 1 non mrv. I think the dragon preceives the ff's as more dangerious as it has more size devoted to weapons then the BB does however this does not allways work. Sometimes the dragon will bypass the ff's and go for the BB. If the BB is Tit armor it is dead, f the BB is Trit armor no R-hull it is dead, if the BB is Trit+Rhul seems like 50% chance of core breach, if zort+rhul 5%-10% chanmce.

Hydra wont run past a missle pack, fire missle tun and run.

Crystal run up and fire, do not leave a leader on this ship mind controll kills them, crstal might mind control but your volley you ran up and fired hits it this t and kills it so your mind controlled ship reverts back miuns a leeader if you left one onboard.

Meeb if no other worthy monsters arround use Back arc no ap beams 2-3 hvy, the rest normal turn and fire wait meeb runs up then you fire norm range beams it's dead in a couple t's like this.

Eel unload missles point blank, beams work but 1st 2-3 shots dont do much and the flux begings to hrt at thaqt point on trit bb.

There are trade off to late monster killing:
You can fill the colony very quickly you have robo's and pol proc so the world builds fast! so you have a world that is at full potentail very quick.
No diversion of economy, science or epansion for early kill.

[ALEX|D]

I´m very interested in taking out monsters asap.

With mirv´s u can take out every monster.

I wanted to take out an eel.

Fighters r complete ineffective.

I used missiles

I took out an eel with 12 bpoded FFs equiped with 3x 2shot missiles.

12 FFs * 70pp = 840PP.

Damage if all missiles would hit => 12*3*8*2=576damage (but u´ll lose 1 FF in beginning of 2nd round anyway).

Eel´s r always risky, I think if u were super lucky u can use 10FFs and if u be unlucky u need more than 12.

I think this is only a method for an unitol or aqua lrhw prod+2 race.

On deuts/tri level u r able to build a FF with 4x 2shot missiles for 68pp.
So can get it work with 10 FFs.

Further u could use 5shot missles or so, but I didnt tested so far, cos this method seems to ~uneffective, better u tech to poll/mercs and go with mirved nukes.

[ALEX|D]

I tend to kill monster with a nuke BB. Because After the kill I have a BB I can r-ft for def or attack, an MK (Monster Kill) fleet of ff's are pretty

It just depends on timedifference between building a BB and building needed FFs.

Lets say u wanna conquer a gaia large urich ng, proteced by a crystal. If u need 10turns more to build a BB than 8FFs than u miss 10 * 300pp = 3000pp or somthin like that, 3000pp - ~400pp (wasted for FFs) = +2600pp. 2600pp r more than 2 BBs.

The smaller the timedifference between building a BB and building 8 FFs the more better to build a BB to conquer a monster.

With a BB you can swap r-hull fro extra tank and get monsters 5+ psec away without going duet.

I guess u ment 6parsec.

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I killd a Dragon with 13 bpoded FFs equiped with 3x 2shot missiles. But its better to go with 14FFs, then u dont need to selfdestruct FFs. But if ur first FFs engine explode and u´ll lose some FFs to chainreacions, u cant get the dragon ... !

[TerminatorII]

I kill any monster with Troop pods/Battle pods (Troop pods only useful against crystal, if not creative best to go Battle pods) Mirv Nukes in a 2 rack on a BB. Pack those puppies on and send a couple of FF to act as fodder (one wep small) and send them down the monsters throught. 1 BB and 3-4 FF can take out anything! (I once made a BB that had 60+ Mirv launchers. I use this design to take out antarans, and enemy fleets. It can take out a Antaran BB! (without Engine Guidance))