Assault the Mothership 2 - Team Alpha

Tsakara · Post by **Tsakara** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 3:50 pm

so the Mothership has enough defense to take out all my pulsars? intereresting, I'm thinking I could drop the nano and add lancets but I'm not sure if the lancets have enough range to get to the ship without my ship having to get in too close. gluons could also be considered, maybe even a beamer variant, gotta go test that though.

Jafo · Post by **Jafo** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:54 pm

Tsakara wrote:so the Mothership has enough defense to take out all my pulsars? intereresting, I'm thinking I could drop the nano and add lancets but I'm not sure if the lancets have enough range to get to the ship without my ship having to get in too close. gluons could also be considered, maybe even a beamer variant, gotta go test that though.

Don't forget this is just a test Mothership, but it probably is reasonably accurate. It only stops all projectile weapons during the initial start of the battle and it doesn't take long for them to start leaking through. If everybody were to drop their projectile weapons we would have a harder time stopping the Mothership, the amount we have now is good, more would actually be better. Lancets have range of 1000, so if you have any weapon that can reach the Mothership, Lancets also can reach. Your ship with our fleet only gets targeted occasionally, and like all the rest of the ships (exceptions are the bait ships), it does not survive the full attention of the Mothership. Dropping the Nano and replacing with Lancets and increasing the number of your existing weapons would probably work out well.

Actually, since you normally stay on the outside circle, reducing your ship's footprint will make a big difference in your surviving. The white circle that is around your ship in ShipMaker - make it as small as possible and your ship will become invisible as far as the Mothership's main tracking and targeting are concerned (you are still targeted by weapons whose arc do not have a target and PD still works). Currently, the only time you get targeted is when you get a little too close as either CuddleFish or Citrus are leading the Mothership around in circles - reducing your circle will stop that behaviour from happening.

antisocialmunky · Post by **antisocialmunky** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 9:36 pm

Tsakara wrote:so the Mothership has enough defense to take out all my pulsars? intereresting, I'm thinking I could drop the nano and add lancets but I'm not sure if the lancets have enough range to get to the ship without my ship having to get in too close. gluons could also be considered, maybe even a beamer variant, gotta go test that though.

Rail guns wouldn't be bad either.

Droid · Post by **Droid** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:06 am

lolz...gonna try to shrink my ship...please stand by.

Here it is. Looks too much like the marble of DOOM...lol...which I guess is a good thing, seeing as it never gets targeted...

We might not need two MoD's though... Oh and, fyi, it is the tilted aegis'ed sections that expanded the circle. The rear "fins" don't increase the circle size.

Jafo · Post by **Jafo** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 3:46 am

Droid wrote:Hmmm, seeing how taking off weapons/shields is the way we win...I have a few revised designs:

1 and 2 are tachyon boats (with or without lancets). Not using Megatachs due to the difficulty of fitting such weapons on the ship. lol.
3 is simply a revised With-Maw Nephilim with Lancets.

The Tachyon boats are very good against a Mothership that uses Normal AI, and if we could be certain that this was the case it would get my vote. Against a Flanking AI it does not do nearly as well, spending a large amount of time not firing or having its shots fall short.

The Witch-Maw Nephilim with Lancets gets my vote for being more consistent and therefore doing more damage over the course of most battles.

Tsakara wrote:so the Mothership has enough defense to take out all my pulsars? intereresting, I'm thinking I could drop the nano and add lancets but I'm not sure if the lancets have enough range to get to the ship without my ship having to get in too close. gluons could also be considered, maybe even a beamer variant, gotta go test that though.

I would drop the current Gluon - the shots are so slow that the Mothership either moves too far and they expire upon reaching their range limit, or it moves out of the way. In most cases the Gluon shots just don't hit.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Another thing I tried to do, was to make the threat circle of Citrus the same as CuddleFish so that the Mothership would bounce its attention back and forth between us (this is very effective and you see the results any time you run 8 identical ships against a Mothership). Disappointed ShipMaker here.

I had the tail boom at almost the same size as CuddleFish and Citrus was the target of choice. I moved the tail boom inwards 1 pixel (the smallest amount possible) and CuddleFish became the target of choice. :evil: No match possible with the tail boom straight out. I tried angling it so that it looked like a broken gavel but could not find an angle for the tail boom that would make them have identical threat circles.

antisocialmunky · Post by **antisocialmunky** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 5:32 am

Well, I the AI might just lock onto one period. If they are the same size, it might just target the one that gets there first or the one that was placed first / last.

On the other hand, the flanking AI might switch around atleast. I've always known it to be the more ADHD prone ship.

Tsakara · Post by **Tsakara** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:36 am

new modifications. the Sogeki Hei Mk4:

dl only includes the SB3, just open and save it to get a shp file:
http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... _Mk4-b.sb3

Droid · Post by **Droid** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:16 am

No deflectors is...how do I put this...not too wise of a choice. Don't want an errant spray of fire to clip off the front of the ship. (unless, of course, the front is hardened enough to prevent that, but usually, its more economical to spend those points on 'flectors)

and oops, looks like I forgot to upload a sample for the small ship.

CLIK ME

EDIT: My take on a distraction cruiser:

Feel free to adjust the tail piece so that the circle is about the same size-ish.
Not that we need 3 distraction ships.

CLIK ME TOO

---
EDIT 2:
Watched some encounters and noticed some things:
- The core on the turtle is too far forward. it usually dies with a good 60-70 percent of its sections remaining, which could all be used as armoring.
- The MoD should have flanking AI. The mothership rarely notices it, yes, but it usually gets caught in a stray volley of rails/tachyons/megabeams after Turtle and Jormungand splinter to pieces. (not to mention getting showered by their debris, something which none of the otehr ships suffer from due to flanking AI.
- Sogeki Hei is actually the largest selection circle, but it is usually back far enough to not get noticed. One time when it WAS noticed in the beginning and was hunted down quickly (even though Turtle and Jormungand are alive and kicking). The new design is smaller and should avoid detection better.
- It takes forever, but it gets done. The distraction ships are ace at what they do. Draw the mothership's attention. However, at that point, we usually only have 2-3 other ships left to attack it. (Aphelion, Witch, occasionally Sogeki Hei and Marble), so it takes absolutely forever to wear down the sections, even when the MS is effectively neutered. I'm amazed that the MS never tried to kamikaze, really.

antisocialmunky · Post by **antisocialmunky** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:48 am

It would be cool if our team had the balls to not use lancets, but oh well, it'll be fun all the same.

ChaosTheory · Post by **ChaosTheory** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 9:39 am

@Droid: I suspect you should try putting the core at the very back, which will double the selection circle size without losing anything . . . leave the front area and beam the way thay are, but put the core at the rear and add soem more armor/deflectors/aegis.

Droid · Post by **Droid** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:23 am

Uh... CT, woudn't that mean that everything would have to be parented to the girder, making it exceptionally vulnerable to having everything shopped off?

ChaosTheory · Post by **ChaosTheory** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:30 am

Droid wrote:Uh... CT, woudn't that mean that everything would have to be parented to the girder, making it exceptionally vulnerable to having everything shopped off?

That would be why you add more armor/deflectors.

antisocialmunky · Post by **antisocialmunky** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:46 am

Bait ships should be minimalistic. The less deflectors and crap, the less likely something incredably stupid will happen.

Master Chief · Post by **Master Chief** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 9:38 pm

Tsakara wrote:

WHAT? 14 pulsars?

Good, it's gonna kick some a**.

Jafo · Post by **Jafo** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 11:33 pm

Tsakara wrote:new modifications. the Sogeki Hei Mk4:
dl only includes the SB3, just open and save it to get a shp file:

Do you have the latest version of BsF (I have the latest version [88])? I am getting a corruption when I open your ship in ShipMaker. The Ship Info panel is blank, and when clicked on fills in the following garbage information. While I could override the visible corruption of data, who knows what else is wrong. I don't want to test a ship with hidden problems or illegal enhancements

Whatever you do, take a backup of the current BsF folder before trying to update to the latest version. If you don't, you will lose editing access to your current set of ships!

TH15 has also stated if you are having troubles upgrading, rename the BattleshipForever.exe & ShipMaker.exe and then reinstall BsF. If you don't want to reinstall and possibly have problems with any ship that is a WIP, just supply the .SHP file(s).