Saved Designs(?) [request] (Full Version)

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tbrass -> Saved Designs(?) [request] (5/18/2014 7:29:05 AM)

I would love to crowdsource some help on optimizing designs, and I think that what would be most helpful to me would be other people's saved designs. Will anyone share some interesting design sets for various points in the game?

The micromanaging associated with optimizing ship design has never really appealed to me. A quick perusal of the war room demonstrates that the default design patterns are far from optimized. A more in depth look produces multiple threads on any given topic, many of which contain contradictory information or at least differing strategies. Moreover, the official documentation on some components is sorely lacking, confusing the issue further. I have tried to experiment with the advice here, but it has been mostly an exercise in frustration. I end up with ships that are even worse than the default designs--things like troop carriers that won't invade. (all because I forgot to look up at the posture drop downs.)

I would like to see some of the diversity of design that people actually play with. I think that it'd be interesting, helpful, and it would also encourage people like me (and woo-boy, I am sure there are a lot of people on Steam who may be interested when Universe ships) dip our toes into the ship design arena.



KroganElite -> RE: Saved Designs(?) [request] (5/19/2014 2:03:01 AM)

TL;DR There is no optimized design for everything, but there are optimized designs for each situation. Don't take ship design too seriously and have fun with it. You can still win the game without min-maxing.

It really does depend on your play-style and current situation in game. For example: I like to play in a large elliptical galaxy with lots of stars, and play as a random race.

First off, do I have a special tech that let's me build much better modules? If yes, I try to build my designs around that. Let's say I random Kiadan. I would base my designs around their Shadowghost ECMs, which give 40% evasion. The weapon of choice would be missiles because if the enemy doesn't go missiles/phasers they will have already reduced chance to hit me and reduced damage. Basically, I don't expect to get hit a lot. Next, I will want to be able to dictate range so thrusters will be the next priority. Missiles have low dps so you will want to rely on your alpha/volley damage. I try to fit as much missiles and keep it as cheap as possible, I fit minimal shields/armor. To sum it up, my Kiadan fleet will be very hard to hit, very fast, good alpha/volley dmg, fragile, but cheap to mass produce. I will hit and run as many enemy facilities as I can and avoid big brawls against big fleets or large starbases until everything else is taken care of.

Let's see another example: Zenox. They have amazing shield tech. With very good buffer/passive regen shield tanking I try to make them as big as possible with as much dps. Rushing larger ship construction is a must to make the fattest biggest Zenox ship you can. Next you want to add the remaining space(taking into account necessary components:hab/life/power/warp/etc) 49% shield, 50% lasers. That last 1% will be tractor beams. You will need them to counter ships that try to standoff. To sum up my Zenox fleets have strong sustainability/field presence, very high dps, slow, but have tractor beams to help. With Zenox fleets you want to take pitched battles at key locations and set up camp at your enemy's biggest station or home planet.

There are many other variables that can also affect the way you design ships. Map size. I play mostly on large maps so bigger fuel cells, faster warp speed,monitoring stations, and starbases that can defend against fleets are a must. Small maps may put less value on those particular modules because everything is much closer to your fleets.

It can also depend on what your opponents use for their designs. Are they using a lot of ECM? then you also need to get eccm. DO they favor armor over shields? get higher damage weapons like torpedos.

In my current Ikkuro game i'm playing around their special repair-bots and rushing armor techs and adding some shields on the side.

There is no "best" or "optimized" ship design, but there are for certain situations.

Here's my thought process:
1. Always use special racial module if you have one and base designs around it
2. Shields most of the time will perform better than armor unless no one uses torps/phasers/your armor tech is way ahead of their laser tech
4. Try to use a bit of both but focus on one)
3. Choose a fleet doctrine: long-range-hit&run-zergy , tanky/dps-brawl-expensive , etc
4. Use appropriate hulls for doctrine ie escort/frigs for hit&run and the largest ships you can for brawlers
5. Add required modules(command/warp/etc)
6. Check how much space you have. 80% for weapons+required power for hit&run 20% tank. 50/50 for brawlers

Other tips:
-Don't put troop modules in anything other than troops ships. It weakens your fighting ships and they can't hold as much as transports. Specialize. Kill everything with your battle fleet, bring in transport fleets when it's clear.
-Obsolete med/large freighters at the start of the game as they don't have the space to be any better than smalls and are just a waste/inefficient.
-Check the speed curve. Sometimes adding more thrusters actually slows down the ship because of added weight vs added proportional thrust.
-always add enough reactors to go full warp speed
-Always add 1 shield and 10 armor to absolutely everything(maybe not so early on when space is tight). It can mean that 1 extra second or 1 extra hit from a destroyed warp drive.
-Add extra docking bays to gas mining stations with caslon/hydrogen. They serve as good refueling stations in deep space.


My own preference:
-my first pre-warp starbase is medium with extra docking bays. Add 6/9/9 wpn/energy/hitech labs with the 3 +50% tech wonders this is more than enough for the whole game. Add medical/entertainment/long range scan when tech is available. 15-20 missiles 2000 shields, 250 armor.
-All captured enemy homeworlds or planets with more than 6m get a small generic starbases+ent+med+long range. 15-20missiles or the equivalent for other techs and at least 1500 shields, 250 armor. Add energy collectors when available.
-All other planets get 1 defensive base. Nothing too fancy to start off: 10 missiles,1000 shields, 200 armor. Long range scan when available.
^everything above is upgraded with more weapons/defense and of course keep up with techs. This stops most pirate raiding attempts.
-resort/gas/mining stations get half strength of defensive base just to stop punitive pirate attacks.
-Only add energy collectors to stationary bases built in a system with a sun. Monitoring stations in deep space won't get benefits and neither will ships that constantly move. I micromanage constructors so I usually have some lying around, I add energy collectors for them.
-There are many threads about this but I go with 1 of each manufactory per 3 construction yards. It's the basic ratio in the default small spaceports and utilizes all yards at once. I've read that 1 of each manufactory does not support 30 yards. Also why build 1:1:1:1 3manufactory:1yard when 3:3 works.

Lastly have fun with it. Don't take optimization/efficiency too seriously. You can win the game with bad designs but with good overall grand strategy. One of my favourite quotations: "Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." Designing the ships is half the fun for me and I love to roleplay as the races trying to design something they would use that fits their bio. I know it doesn't appeal to you but hopefully you can see how fun it can be. [:)]




FireLion1983 -> RE: Saved Designs(?) [request] (5/19/2014 3:00:45 AM)

Great first post there, KE. I do the same and roleplay each race I'm playing. If you look at the empire settings, you can see what the developers have set for the research focus areas. This gives you a decent idea of how to build as that race. Adds flavor, fun, and keeps every game from being the same old 1, 2, 3 research order as the last game.



tbrass -> RE: Saved Designs(?) [request] (5/19/2014 9:17:41 AM)

KE - thanks for the words of encouragement. A lot of my trepidation re: ship design comes from reading lengthy threads arguing over optimal/meaningful ratios of plants:yards and not seeing a definition of a plant in any of the documentation to get a hint of which thread argument might be most reasonable.

That and the fact that there are so many damn ships and bases in this game.

It just seems daunting to think about manually upgrading more than my military focus. And yet it seems like bases & construction & even the low base speed and fuel of the civilian fleet really changes the game.

I've won games on smaller maps, but noticed logistics slowdowns mid-late game and I expect that these would get worse in larger maps. Just trying to find strategies for nipping that in the bud and to get the amount of setup to a reasonable level. I am certainly not trying to minmax the game :-)

The bigger question for me is around the civilian fleet, construction yards, not the military side of things. And that is where I keep running into walls.



FireLion1983 -> RE: Saved Designs(?) [request] (5/19/2014 4:53:13 PM)

Read Jeeves' ship design section; it's got a lot of great tips on the civilian sector and goes heavily into the idea behind proper ship design and what you should be thinking about when you do delve into it.

Distant Worlds game - LCC's strategy guide



tbrass -> RE: Saved Designs(?) [request] (5/21/2014 4:37:46 AM)

Hey FireLion,

Thanks for reminding me of that thread, I haven't seen it since my early days with DW.
Alas, I guess that no one shares saved ship designs. I was just hoping to... jumpstart design without having to wade once again through walls of text or tweak the AI defaults.

(this is not to diminish what Jeeves and others have written. I mean, wow. But... we get the intimidation factor I mentioned above.)



FireLion1983 -> RE: Saved Designs(?) [request] (5/21/2014 5:43:01 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: tbrass

Hey FireLion,

Thanks for reminding me of that thread, I haven't seen it since my early days with DW.
Alas, I guess that no one shares saved ship designs. I was just hoping to... jumpstart design without having to wade once again through walls of text or tweak the AI defaults.

(this is not to diminish what Jeeves and others have written. I mean, wow. But... we get the intimidation factor I mentioned above.)


My favorite part is ship design so I never save them. Every game is different and subject to different designs! :D



Spidey -> RE: Saved Designs(?) [request] (5/21/2014 2:56:46 PM)

The problem with sharing good ship designs is that there's no uniform measurement of what "good" means in terms of a ship design aside from the ship doing what the designer wanted it to do. And since different designers might want differents, we get into a situation where my ships don't do what Jeeves want and Jeeves' ships don't do what I want.

And just to be very clear, I think my design strategy is radically different from that of Jeeves, which isn't to say that my ships are "better" than his or vice versa. He's rather into specialization and super-massive micro whereas I micro out of necessity but try my hardest to limit complexity by not having more designs than I absolutely need.

I outsource just about everything I can to the private sector, meaning exactly zero of my state bases have long range scanners and aside from the three research bases I build, none of my bases have labs either. Civilian mining bases, on the other hand... I also build as few space ports as possible because I frankly don't need one in every system and I like to have at least one source of every strategic resource in the vicinity of each port. I don't really bulk up my freighters much because I don't mind losing one every now and again and they don't use the extra cargo space anyway. I make them relatively light and as fast and nimble as circumstances permit.

In terms of state ships, I don't put weapons on colonizers either. I don't want them fighting and most of them never have to anyway. Exploration ships are a two-stage thing. The initial explorer is just engines, a warp drive, and a big fuel capacity. Shields and armor (or rather 1 shield and 10 armor) is added once I research it. The second stage explorer has a long range scanner, some energy collectors for a fuel efficient standby mode, better armor, more shield, and maybe even a weapon. Once these are available, these are all the explorers I ever build and older explorers are retrofitted.

Finally, in terms of combat, I tend to use destroyers exclusively. Size 300 is workable, size 400 is good, and size 500 is plenty to design pocket battleships. I usually go exclusively for torpedo weapons at first, since they have good range and aren't troubled much by armor. I don't put fleet ECM / targeting on them (energy drain), I don't put short range scanners on them (energy drain), and I minimize the number of hab / life support units needed because, yes, energy drain. They won't be lightning fast early on but they'll push pirates away. Repair bots come when they come, warp drive is Equinox since I always play large galaxies, and I really do enjoy putting an assault pod on as well. One pod per ship in a fleet with 6-12 ships adds up to a good bit of capture capacity.

I keep meaning to make some use of hyper-deny but I just never get around to it. If I were, I'd build flagship cruisers made for brawling with phasers, ion weapons, tractor beams, fleet ECM / targeting, and 2500+ shield. But they'd get expensive fairly quickly and my normal destroyers do the job well enough so I just never bother with anything "bigger".

One more significant thing, I always manually redesign my homeworld space port as pretty much the first thing in the game. The regular design comes with a lot of useless junk I won't need (like Toys'R'Us space lasers that can barely fry an ant on a good day and water balloon missiles), and having that stuff around costs money that could be better spent on exploration ships, once I've got access to Gerox warp drives. Fuel cells? What's the point without weapons and shields? Cargo bays? Don't need them. All I really need is 6-10 construction yards 12-20 docking bays, 1 plant of each kind, the labs needed to get research done early on, hab / life support, command center, enough reactors to cover the static energy drain, and a fuel cell.



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