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Fishman -> RE: my custom ships wipe the AI's plate clean - everytime (5/1/2010 7:14:26 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: taltamir
there are a few critical issues here though:
1. the AI favors lasers, lasers suck. It is all about range which means torpedoes are king. Well, it's about range and SPEED. As long as you have superior speed AND superior range, you will win. Period. However, if you can CATCH your opponent, the fact that torpedoes exhibit rather anemic refire rates can quickly be compensated for: Lazors have refire rates almost twice as fast, and are less prone to "wasteage" when many torpedoes are fired at a single target that is instantly destroyed, wasting all of the torpedoes.
quote:
ORIGINAL: taltamir
2. the AI favors the highest damage torpedoes (shaktur firestorm, a racial tech everyone manages to get), those suck, you need more range. The racial advantage isn't that the Shaktur is unique, the racial advantage is that they get it NOW. The Shaktur IS the most damaging weapon torp in the game and simultaneously doubles as a bombardment weapon, but, as you said, the range is wretched.
quote:
ORIGINAL: taltamir
3. the AI favors the highest ranked shields, the megatron Z4 racial shield tech (which everyone manages to get), they suck... they reduce the shields from 480 a pop to 140 a pop, but increase recharge from 1.3 to 1.5 each. Also they require gold which is rare. Gold is not all that common of a resource, but as far as I can tell, it's not all that DEMANDED either, as most of the stuff I mine just piles up and is shiny. But yeah, the problem is that the megatron is positioned on the end of the tech tree. If it were positioned more reasonably on the tech tree, so that it was not the final item on the tech tree, this would not be a problem.
On the other hand, sometimes the regeneration is all that really matters. If you're fighting in a situation where you can't even overcome the regeneration on the shield, it doesn't matter how many points the shield is rated for because you are screwed. When you stick a thousand shields on something, having 1500 regen is a significant difference over 1300 regen, and the absolute number of shields ceases to matter.
quote:
ORIGINAL: taltamir
4. the AI doesn't use ENOUGH weapons and shields. it will designs a massive expensive 20,000$ ship with only a tiny fraction of that amount being shields, armor, and weapons. It does? I have never even *SEEN* a $20000 ship. I do not believe it to be physically possible to MAKE such a thing, given that a 1500-size Behemoth Capital Battleship only costs $18K, and the AI never makes anything that large! Given that Behemoths are constructed as masturbatory exercises and not as serious, economical warships, I find it hard to imagine what the AI could build that is that expensive...and only a tiny fraction of that amount is shields, armor, and weapons...WHAT IS THE REST OF IT? Are you saying that the AI has built a ship that is primarily engines? If anything, engines are the thing the AI does not build enough of, which is why he is eaten alive by torpedoes. In most AI designs, I find that there is often a superabundance of weapons, and never enough engines. His shield ratios are tolerable, if not generous, but there are always WAY too many weapons, not enough reactors, and nowhere NEAR enough engines. All the weapons in the world don't do you any good at all if you cannot even manage to fire them, and cannot get in range TO fire them.
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