3rd Custom Ships Tournament: Fleets [Submission Closed]

antisocialmunky · Post by **antisocialmunky** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 10:47 pm

Well, he got my fleet placement wrong. As long as Nimbus doesn't start in lancet range and is placed infront of the two Maelstrom ships like I requested, I don't care too much.

Mjolnir · Post by **Mjolnir** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 3:01 am

The reason why I don't have deflectors, is that i find it boring. Every ship relies on its deflectors, and I was hoping that i would be facing less beam weapons. So basically, my fleet was an experiment to see how well a ship with no deflectors could do, cause real men fight without shields.

antisocialmunky · Post by **antisocialmunky** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 3:27 am

Yeah, you do that.

CmdPrompt · Post by **CmdPrompt** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 4:23 am

antisocialmunky wrote:Well, he got my fleet placement wrong. As long as Nimbus doesn't start in lancet range and is placed infront of the two Maelstrom ships like I requested, I don't care too much.

I totally missed the assuming a left-side deployment bit. Sorry about that.

antisocialmunky · Post by **antisocialmunky** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 5:42 am

That's fine, they start so close that it matters not that much. But I rather have everything arrive more together.

Namigob · Post by **Namigob** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 7:08 am

Mjolnir wrote:cause real men fight without shields.

I agree with this. I would like to see a contest that bans all shields.
Having said that, if the contest allows them then I think you almost
have to use them if you want to have any chance of winning.

TheBlueEcho · Post by **TheBlueEcho** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 7:11 am

But this doesn't help with the Beamer spaming. And In a way it promotes railgun Spaming.

Mr_Wizard · Post by **Mr_Wizard** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 7:59 am

I say the best way to help projectiles is to make the PD more expensive. As to how much, that should take some testing, but Ideally you want a point that will allow them to be useful, but at the same time not overwhelmingly hard to overcome.

Banning all shields will still make beam weapons the best, as there will then be almost zero defences against them.

My pricing for the point defence, based on all the experience I have had with them:

Flak: 3 or 4 points.(I prefer 4 points)
Laser PD: 3 points
Particle Guns: 2 points

My reasons: Particles are cheap because you need a lot of them to get the shot stopping power of a Laser, and you also need a lot of them to get the spread that is like the flak. Lasers are at their price because they can destroy anything with one hit and don't waste anyshot. Flak, though it is true you need more of them to be effective, to many and masses of shots are completely shut down. Making them more expensive than the other 2 options makes it more attractive to have a mix, rather than spamming 1 type, especially if that one type is capable of completely stopping the only weapon you were worried about anyway.

What I am trying to say, and probably failing, is that you need a lot of particle guns to make them effective, therefore making them cheaper to the people who use them is ideal. Where as you would want a lot of flak guns, because each added flak drastically increases the overall stopping power of your fleet. A Pricing scheme that favors mixing over spamming will help the projectile ships, since they will be able to get more shots through thinner fields of PD fire. I'll try to back up what I am saying by fguring out exactly how much damage each PD type is capable of stopping.

CmdPrompt · Post by **CmdPrompt** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:58 am

Yeah, I agree Mr. Wizard. I apologize for making Flak pretty unbalanced, but I still think we got a nice range of ships.

antisocialmunky · Post by **antisocialmunky** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 11:27 am

Well... I would just spam particle guns on fast ships. I don't have to worry about most unguided projectiles as long as I'm not trapped in a corner. I only have to worry about blaster shotguns and seeking weapons and perhaps gosling hording. Otherwise, particle guns work pretty good.

I actually did mix my PD, the Maelstrom should have 2 guns and 2 flak, but I submitted the wrong version by mistake so meh. Pretty much no one's using missiles anyways so the flak setup is optimal in this environment.

I agree with this. I would like to see a contest that bans all shields.
Having said that, if the contest allows them then I think you almost
have to use them if you want to have any chance of winning.

If you have no shields, then you pump up your speed and armor. Speed reduces beamer damage and projectile damage unless you unluckily smack into a wall. Flak with two autoguns can be used for defense. Also, you end up using less sections with the frigate design. I wouldn't mind, it would be great fun. It would be a balls to the wall WWII style sub-hunt type of game.

Master Chief · Post by **Master Chief** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 12:05 pm

Mr_Wizard wrote:Flak: 3 or 4 points.(I prefer 4 points)
Laser PD: 3 points
Particle Guns: 2 points

Flak: IMO, it's damn effective in hordes, as spamming the screen with shrapnel can actually stop just about every projectile. Although I can't say it's really effective against Demeters...which can screw up the PD to such an extent that it gets distracted and the rest of the fire from the other ship just plunge into the shields (and sections). Of course, beam weaponry just bypasses this. So it's gonna be the PD of choice in a tournament where beam weapons are made drastically expensive, or when everyone suddenly decides to use projectile weaponry and thinks that everyone else is following suit. Whatever it is, it's not my preferred PD. Fails against those first few pesky railgun strikes which can get through before the shrapnel pops into existence, and of course, beamers.

Point Beams: Well, it's just another beamer rip-off which vaporises projectiles with an intense laser pulse. Sadly, reload time is screwed and thus gatling pulse/blaster spam can defeat these. Personally, I love using this in conjunction with my beamer ships, as spamming on the PBs can really defend the ship well against railguns. Bye-bye Fleet Affront. These screw up against beamer weaponry (ASM, Namigob, Daxx, Danou, CmdPrompt, Mr. Wizard and DarkenShroud - holy crap!) and of course, the occasional bump-off-the-wall-which-takes-you-into-a-sea-of-crap-projectile-spam. Hmmph. Well, this is still my preferred PD.

Particle Guns: Ha! This has practically no use for me in a tournament. Clumping them together results in them focusing on the same projectile, and placing them apart would reduce their effectiveness against spam. Well, what could I expect from puny purple-auto-guns? Erm...maybe a discount against the other types of PD? But still, it's rather effective against a stray shot or two (or three or four or five or six or seven), and it's reload time is quite decent, so maybe it isn't too crappy after all. Not my best PD, but it strikes a balance between the flaks and PBs (accurate but yet slightly useful against hordes), and it sure comes cheap.

So, this means that I support Wizard's new point scheme for PD. And yes, it also means that projectile ships are beginning to strike back at beamers. Dammit.

EndlessInfinity · Post by **EndlessInfinity** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 1:03 pm

Eh, I just kinda worked around it by having one ship be blaster heavy, while another is railgun heavy - that way if one ship is busy focusing all it's flak on the blaster ship, the railgun ship guts it, and vice versa. The other thing is that with my one ship I opted for quad and regular blasters rather than gatling because I noticed flak defeats large bursts of fire (same with pulsars)

Master Chief · Post by **Master Chief** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 1:06 pm

EndlessInfinity wrote:Eh, I just kinda worked around it by having one ship be blaster heavy, while another is railgun heavy - that way if one ship is busy focusing all it's flak on the blaster ship, the railgun ship guts it, and vice versa. The other thing is that with my one ship I opted for quad and regular blasters rather than gatling because I noticed flak defeats large bursts of fire (same with pulsars)

Or, you could still stick with the tried-and-tested fast-beamer-ship strategy. Like what I've been doing again and again. But still, your idea is quite interesting and it's likely that it's gonna work.

EndlessInfinity · Post by **EndlessInfinity** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 2:14 pm

Master Chief wrote:
EndlessInfinity wrote:Eh, I just kinda worked around it by having one ship be blaster heavy, while another is railgun heavy - that way if one ship is busy focusing all it's flak on the blaster ship, the railgun ship guts it, and vice versa. The other thing is that with my one ship I opted for quad and regular blasters rather than gatling because I noticed flak defeats large bursts of fire (same with pulsars)
Or, you could still stick with the tried-and-tested fast-beamer-ship strategy. Like what I've been doing again and again. But still, your idea is quite interesting and it's likely that it's gonna work.

If not, maybe my horrible grammar will confuse them into making a mistake! AHAH!

(and, believe it or not, I haven't been drinking tonight... scary thought...)

My concern with the fast beamers is that with the way their ships have been designed, they could essentially block an entire side with aegis and deflectors, which really hurts m-beams... unless you can do more damage than deflectors can absorb...

Master Chief · Post by **Master Chief** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 2:16 pm

EndlessInfinity wrote:unless you can do more damage than deflectors can absorb...

Which, incidentally, is what ASM is claiming to be able to, in the Juggernaut tournament, of course.