Jump to content


Photo

Hints


8 replies to this topic

#1 MilkaCow

MilkaCow
  • Members
  • 9 posts

Posted 24 March 2013 - 02:52 AM

First of all - this is a work in progress. I guess i'll update this whenever i play a notice something.

 

I've now played a total of 4 galactic conquest (easy on both sides, medium imperial, hard rebel) and just wanted to write down some experiences.

 

Non side-specifics:

Though it may seems that you start of with plenty of credits, be aware - those are used up quicker than you think. You need to quickly increase your income, since taxation and mining income won't finance your needs alone. You have two choices - either you quickly amass a strong force in one corner and try to conquer several planets to increase your income, or you stay defensive and build a transport fleet. Which way is better is usually decided by the map you play. Some maps, like Galaxy Far, Far Away as Imperium give you a great position in the top left to quickly gain two Planets with Mining 5. Both combined with Mines bring over 20k Credit income. If you do not have such a worthy prey, you should consider going the defensive way and first incresing your transport fleet, then using this income to upgrade/build an army.

Usually it's always best to focus your attention on one corner of the galaxy. Find a corner where you have a high tech planet (high shipyard, a lot of ground space) and build a fleet and army. All other planets should receive less attention, only increasing their defensive fleets. If you do not focus your attention, you will end up with a lot of frontline to cover with little troops. This way you usually only have to defend 2 or 3 planets, while several others behind are save from enemy attacks and do not require standing fleets.

 

Imperium:

Your primary goal should be to research the CTF Container Transport (Shipyard 2, Research Station) and it's upgrades and build a fleet to increase your economy. This unit will greatly increase income. Mining worlds should only have one production building and the rest mines. Since the Imperium lacks strong ships in the beginning you should start researching new classes. Usually a good combination is upgrading the Acclamator for shipyard 3 and the Imperial Class Star Destroyer for Shipyards 4. While the Imperial is your true frontline warship, in greater numbers (and tech) the Acclamator's high torpedo yield allow it to fend off even far superior opponents, helping your non-connected low-tech planets stay save. Since it takes a long time to research and build those ships it is advised to upgrade your heroes (Thrawn for example). This may have a high cost, but their ships are worth a small fleet. In the Galaxy Far, Far Away setting an upgraded Thrawn combined with his starting fleet can destroy all ships in the top left corner, leaving you with several easy to conquer planets with a high mining level.
The Imperium focusses heavily on walkers, so your main ground production building should be Walker. The AT-AT is an incredibly durable unit with an acceptable damage output and can serve as your frontline unit. You still need to support it with fast attack units, else he can easily destroyed by faster units, since his turn speed is slow. Upgrading gives you a very durable and long ranged unit that has a low cost in space and tactical population, therefor maximizing the population usage.
To keep planets with low Tech (less than 4) save from attacks by capital ships, it is incredibly useful to built a Hypervelocity Gun. On worlds with higher shipyards, building a bigger defensive fleet is usually more effective.
 
Rebel:
The Rebels do not have such a great Transport (MCF Modular Conveyor is good, but not as good), so it may be even better to simply go for a more aggressive strategy. Unlike the Imperium, with the Recusant they have a formidable ship straight in the beginning. This ship can deal with all kinds of enemies and has a good range on it's main weapons. If upgraded it gains an experimental Turbolaser - the longest ranged weapon in the game. Simply massing a fleet out of those - though costly - allows you to deal with all kinds of enemies. Combined with the Armored Freerunner as ground unit you have starting units that can easily conquer planets. The Armored Freerunner greatly scales with upgrades, packs a strong punch and since is a landspeeder is great for hit and run tactics, repairing the damaged units.
Counterintuitively the strongest spaceships for the Rebels are no huge capital ships, but Frigates, or more precisely the Assault Frigate and the CC-9600. The Assault Frigate is similar to the Recusant - a jack of all trades - it costs vastly less tactical population and credits, while being almost as effective in combat. The CC-9600 on the other hand is virtually defenseless against Fighters, but if upgraded it becomes a platform raining death down on any capital ship. The low tactical costs combined with their armament essentially allow yourself to field vastly superior forces than your enemy, but on the other hand mean you have to use more micromanagement to keep your fleet alive. Quick strikes by the Assault Frigates under Cover-Fire from CC-9600s, then fall back and replenish shields. Each of those attacks should easily destroy one or more enemy ships without resulting in casualties. Combined with a high salvage percentage, simply "roaming" the galaxy with such a fleet can provide a nice income while greatly weakening your opponents offensive capacity.


#2 johnchm.10

johnchm.10

    ALL HUMANS ARE VERMIN IN THE EYES OF MORBO!

  • Members
  • 738 posts
  • Location:OMICRON PERSEI 8!

Posted 24 March 2013 - 06:43 PM

first off, excellent set of hints.

one thing id like to add. this, in my opinion, spices the game up somewhat: ive gone into the xml files of every Cap-ship that can support fighters for both the Empire and the Rebellion/New Republic and upgraded the compliments. for example, the MC80 Liberty, non-upgraded, carries T65C's, S3 Y-wings, and Mark 1 A-wings. by comparison, the ISD-1 has standard production TIE Fighters, Interceptors, and Bombers, and every upgrade, each carried unit also gets an upgrade. however, in some cases, for smaller ships, I've simply increased the numbers of fighters before upgrading them again.

my reasoning and justification is this:

 

1, fighters are easier to upgrade than capital ships, as you are dealing with a smaller and simpler platform.

 

2. investments: capital ships, especially the larger ones like the ISD, are expensive assets, and in my case, since i loathe the class 5 yards and its products, with the exception of heroes and to replace starting large units with their upgraded models, albeit in perhaps a smaller number (either the same number of ships if only 1 or 2 ships, as any less would be a loss in capability of my total navy, or if 3 or greater, then ill typically have 1 fewer ship then originally starting), ships like the ISD are the core of my fleet. as such, i would like to protect them with better forces, should they have to operate with little or no support. this also makes capital ships a more worthwhile investment, as the upgraded compliments add value to the ships

 

3: in the case of smaller ships, i was in a quandary. i didnt want them to have such powerful fighters that an Acclamator 6 could take on an MC80 and win based on its fighter compliment, yet somehow, i wanted personal incentive to upgrade the fighters. i came up with adding another squadron of fighters. my thoughts behind this were that at a certain point, tech might be able to be miniaturized to achieve the same results, but with smaller tools, i.e. sensor arrays. (we have immensely greater detection range with the AEGIS system then back in, say, Vietnam. figure around 200 miles compared to maybe 75-100ish.) this combined with increased automation, would allow you to modify the internal structure to allow that extra space to be used for something useful, say, replacing a couple of now unused quarters with a ammo magazine for projectile ordnance.



#3 abesinay

abesinay
  • Members
  • 54 posts

Posted 24 March 2013 - 07:22 PM

For the Empire something I've developed is massing Tector Star Destroyers and backing them up with carriers for great results. Few ships can stand against a fully upgraded Tector.



#4 MilkaCow

MilkaCow
  • Members
  • 9 posts

Posted 24 March 2013 - 08:11 PM

Tectors are nice, but in my current Hard Imperial campaign the Rebels seem to mostly build two ships - Valiant Class and bombers. Against those they are pretty useless. The Valiants dont deal any damage, but take a lot to be destroyed - and sadly they add quite some more fighters/bombers to their already huge amounts. This currently forces me to use Dreadnaughts and Carracks until i finally get the Lancer. They shred my ISDs :(

Dunno what triggered their Zerg-like building of bombers, but it's ugly as hell. Sadly all Elite-Capitals from heroes fare rather bad against bombers, most are dedicated capital killers. The hole (Dreanought / Carrack in the beginning, Lancer only rather late) in anti-bomber units for the Imps really hurts currently. Tried using some fighters myself, but they simply can't deal with the bombers fast enough to save my bigger ships and afterwards are not enough to destroy the stations.

A well micro'ed fleet of high-tech bombers seems to be the strongest overall fleet in the game. High tech bombers can deal with all kinds of enemies, have a huge amount of damage, yet are hard to kill. There are so few ships that have flechette/boron missiles to deal with them. Even those with such missiles - it seems only if the missile hits it deals damage, else it disappears. Hits rarely occur with the agile high tech bombers. Yet if they do, it's a bloodbath ^^



#5 evilbobthebob

evilbobthebob

    evilbobthemapper

  • Project Team
  • 2,304 posts
  • Location:USA
  • Projects:Phoenix Rising Maps
  •  Phoenix Rising Mapping Lead

Posted 24 March 2013 - 09:47 PM

The best way to deal with bombers is probably transports. Skiprays will shred the bombers to pieces very quickly and have jamming to keep missiles at bay. Elite heavy fighters with missiles of some kind also do a pretty good job against bombers but of course the Empire tends to lack those.

I expect the AI is building lots of bombers because they are some of the best units price/performance wise, which is in line with your observations. Similarly the Valiant-class is a great ship because it's available straight away, has both ion and turbo armament, and takes up little population for its survivability.


Phoenix Rising, head of mapping. Thanks to everyone who got us to the position below!
Posted Image


#6 MilkaCow

MilkaCow
  • Members
  • 9 posts

Posted 24 March 2013 - 11:56 PM

Well.. i found another tactic. One, that is really efficient, yet a bit costly (the enemy still looses far, far more).

Stage a two Wave attack. The first wave consists of only fighters (i found a huge amount of Ties to be most effective, especially considering building time and cost). Use this to destroy as many bombers as possible. Once there are almost no bombers/fighters on the map anymore retreat, or simply fight until all ships are destroyed. With so little cost for Ties, it barely makes a difference. Once this threat is eliminated, or at least greatly reduced attack again with your Capital Ships. Why a two wave attack and not simply reinforce the first wave? Well, you can only use a low amount of capital ships this way and the enemy should field a rather large force of ship-compliment fighters/bombers by then. If you attack in two waves you can use as many capitals as possible and the enemy has no headstart in compliment ships.

 

This tactic is extremely canonical, for the Empire was well known for focusing on light fighters to raid the Rebels superior space-forces! Or am i mixing something up here?!? ;)



#7 skie9173

skie9173

    Rebel (not so) High Command

  • Members
  • 257 posts

Posted 26 March 2013 - 06:46 PM

In my opinion there is almost no reason not to use the Pathfinder slot, the one that brings only a single unit into battle ahead of the others. The exception is a fleet with multiple heroes since heroes have problems being brought in from reinforcements.

 

One of my typical strategies is similar to Milkacow's above but utilizes Thawn pincer style tactics. Send in a single fighter squadron via pathfinder, maybe reinforce it with a few other fighters right away. Next fly your scouts around either behind your enemies station defences or till you find a few ships that are open to attack. Jump in a few capitals right on top of the enemy ships, watch the fireworks, then hype out.

 

Also works well against fighter swarms if you are careful. Let the enemy fighters spot your scout units, then pull the scouts back some. Once the enemy fighter swarms are racing toward you they tend to bunch up. Drop a Dreadnaught, or preferably an Assault Frigate, into the heart of them and watch the enemy fighters pop. Assault Frigates are my favorite for these tactics since they have great capabilities against most opponents, especially at high levels. Dropped in on top of an enemy capital a pair can do nasty damage fast.

 

One caveat to the above strategy, make sure you don't try this against illegals. It doesn't end well lol.

 

Marauders  and Bayonets are great investments for their size in my opinion


There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no death, there is the Force.

#8 abesinay

abesinay
  • Members
  • 54 posts

Posted 28 March 2013 - 02:12 AM

The pathfinder is the best, otherwise you end up with a conglomeration that doesnt always fit the situation. I usually drop a tector and an acclamator justoutside the reach of a defense platforms, then when those are out of the way mop up whatevers left. Usually Rebellion fleets are too slow to respond to the quick jumps. As for fighters ill back them up with venators or adnvanced ties as necessary.



#9 Hanti

Hanti
  • Members
  • 83 posts

Posted 04 November 2013 - 09:47 PM

Still sadly the best tactics (rebel or imp) is to upgrade some fighters/bombers, spam-produce them and use all 80 slots for them. No fleet can ignore 80 battle squadrons. If their pop cost is only 1 in battle, starfighter rules.

I would like to see all those little ships upped to pop 2 to be less effective tool. If bringing solo starfighters squadrons into battle is more profitable than on-ships squadron, then, who would produce ships?

 

PS: I know there is at least one exception: Correlian Corvettes in maxed version bring X-Wing with them. So it's better to produce
CR90 corvettes than X-wings ;)





Reply to this topic



  


0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users