The ships that I am using for the encounter testing are :
Antisocialmunky – CuddleFish (pending official approval)
Colonel_Sanders - Turtle Mk 2
Droid – Witch-Maw Nephilim
Tsakara - Sogeki Hei Mk2
QwiceNitely – Jormungand MK 1.3
Jafo - Citrus Peeler PB2x
Master Chief - Aphelion Mk VI
Commodore111 - Marble of DOOM
I am testing against the real Mothership from the first tourney, and the three incarnations of the test Mothership for this tourney ( Normal AI, Flanking AI, & Dieterling ).
First, a bit about how the game seems to work (based on observation) as this important in understanding how our team works together. The game seems to rate opponents as to how dangerous they initially appear to be. So if three ships are approaching in order of A, B, then C, and the danger rating is C > B > A the following occurs. Ship A enters range first and the ship focuses on A. When/if B’s range is ever closer than A’s, the ship focuses on B. Ship A will no longer become a focus for facing or pursuit while B is alive. Point Defence still works against A, and weapons that don’t have B in its arc will fire at A. When C comes into closer range it becomes the focus. The ship will never switch over to A or B while C lives. Both ships A & B can be touching the ship and it will never move away from them or turn towards them.
Our fleet attention factor according to the game.
Turtle > Jormungand > Aphelion/Sogeki Hei > CuddleFish > Witch > Citrus > Marble (don’t know which of Aphelion & Sogeki is preferred to be targeted first, so listed together)
One other point. No single ship of ours can stand up to the Mothership in a toe-to-toe bout for any length of time. It applies to the ships that use speed as a defence when they get stuck along a sandbox wall boundary or in a corner. Some just die somewhat faster than others. Also, due to game randomness and lucky shots, any ship can have a catastrophe happen at any moment and change the normal expected flow of the battle. I feel I have run enough simulated encounters that I have probably seen most variations of disasters that our fleet can encounter.
The Mothership Dieterling variation more or less follows the same pattern as the other Motherships but due to the randomness of the jumps (they are designed to not be 100% accurate jumps in the game) the outcome can be a little different at the end when it dies (exactly who is alive does vary).
A staggered starting position is critical to avoid a scenario that can (not always and not even often) lead to a loss for our team. That will be covered as a point later once the team flow against a Mothership is better understood.
The encounter begins. The flankers start to slip around the sides of the Mothership while the in-your-face ships come barreling straight in.
Turtle is deemed most dangerous and the Mothership always goes after it first. Jormungand & Turtle group together in front of the Mothership and go toe-to-toe with it. They hold it in place while CuddleFish & Citrus Peeler (the two fastest ships) slip to the back and start sniping with Lancets. If the Mothership is using Normal AI, normally a few Lancets shots are good for damage, against the Mothership using Flanking AI it is harder to get right behind due to its movement. Marble of Doom sits behind Turtle & Jormungand. Sogeki Hei, Witch-Maw Nephilim & Aphelion circle out to the sides and only Lancets and Beams are reaching the Mothership but most are hitting the shields. Projectile weapons are all being intercepted by PD. Lancets are starting to do their critical damage (we don’t win due to destroying the Mothership outright, we win due to Lancet sniping weapons/modules to the point where we can destroy the Mothership).
Turtle dies. Mothership either turns on Jormungand immediately or briefly turns on Cuddlefish for a couple of laps before turning on Jormungand. Jormungand dies. Even though Turtle & Jormungand have died fairly quickly, they have helped by holding the Mothership’s attention while the other ships have been working on de-toothing the Mothership via Lancets. At this point in time little or no hull damage has been done to the Mothership, a few weapons and modules have been Lancet’d off.
Mothership turns on CuddleFish and the endless dance begins. CuddleFish has enough speed to dodge slower weapon shots and the Aegis and PD takes care of the rest. It self heals due to Nano Matrix. Citrus Peeler is either directly behind the Mothership or constantly out to one side pursuing. The Mothership, Cuddlefish & Citrus Peeler take up fairly static positions and circle around forever. Witch-Maw Nephilim, Sogeki Hei, Aphelion & Marble of Doom stay outside the circle and fire inwards. Very few weapons are actually reaching the Mothership with the exceptions being Marble’s & Witch’s beams and everybody’s Lancets. The critical damage being done at this stage is all due to Lancets. Eventually the PD and shields are being sniped off, more shots are getting through and hitting hull rather than shields, and the final destruction begins with the last weapons/modules being removed and significant hull damage being done. Mothership dies.
Variations :
Occasionally, Sogeki Hei , Aphelion, or Witch-Maw Nephilim get too close, and the Mothership switchs attention to them from CuddleFish. Whichever ship make this mistake dies and the Mothership goes after CuddleFish again. Marble of Doom seems to be deemed to be the ship that is least dangerous by the game – not my opinion, just the game’s, but it does mean that Marble can get quite close and gets generally ignored so it almost always survives to the end.
Very occasionally, CuddleFish dies due to bad luck or boundary/wall pinned death. Mothership switches to Citrus Peeler which is faster than CuddleFish and outruns all but Demeters (PD/Nano Matrix handles those). Circle made by Mothership and Citrus Peeler is larger, so a larger chance that a different ship could attract the Mothership’s attention and die before switching back to Citrus Peeler.
Staggered start positions is critical due to this scenario. If CuddleFish and Citrus Peeler (the two bait ships) get too far ahead of the rest of the team during the initial encounter, it does happen that they can lead the Mothership towards a wall or corner with the rest of the team trying to catch up (doesn’t always happen but this is almost the only way that we fail to destroy the Mothership). The Mothership pins them against the wall or in the corner and without their speed advantage and maneuverability they die. Once they are dead the Mothership turns on the rest of the team and they all die one by one.
Here are the Encounter files, for those unfamiliar, you don't have to download the ships to watch these, just "play" these encounters. No further interaction required other than to follow the action.
Encounter files for Team Alpha vs. various Motherships
.
).
