Quick Introduction

posted on January 3rd, 2012, 7:19 pm

Good afternoon all!

I've been a long-term follower of this mod (I first registered this forum account back in 2005) and have consistently been impressed with the quality of work put into it.

I recently got back into Star-Trek gaming (reinstalling A2, this mod and Starfleet Command II) and I've been playing this mod against Merciless AI a fair bit, trying to train my micro skills. Playing Feds vs Romulans on Duel II is rough due to slow Fed start, but I'm down to only giving it a 1.2 handicap on build costs and times and hope to get that lower.

Not sure how readily I'll be able to do multiplayer; I might try installing Tunngle and seeing if anyone else is active at the times of day I'll likely be able to play.

posted on January 3rd, 2012, 7:28 pm

Welcome . You'll generally find a good number of players at most times of the day - hope to see you online! 

posted on January 3rd, 2012, 7:55 pm

Glad to see a new name around. If it helps to know I would be able to play some in the early morning around 5 or 6 am(EST). I am not usually on Tungle - I would need a day or 2 of notice to bring my laptop to where I can get high speed.

[godsvoice]

posted on January 3rd, 2012, 9:55 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on January 3rd, 2012, 9:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In my view, Romulans are probably the hardest AI to face. They build warbirds quickly, and not at the cost of lower end ships. They build everything. Even Tavara comes out soon enough. They cloak quick, and it can be hard to get kills sometimes. On such a small map too where you can't really expand to out grow them economically, would be tough. Serkas are annoying for drawing out your ships. They build enough to attack many locations as well.

I find Romulans easier to deal with on large maps where you can economically out grow them quickly, and then start to spam. I.e. blue amber, battle bit defence, large maps etc. Small maps like duel II, I would be interested to know if you can beat them without adjusting build time and build costs. And it is true with feds, they have a hard time getting ships out quickly, so slow start is not good for Romulan ai opponent.

posted on January 3rd, 2012, 11:37 pm

Thanks for the welcome!

I tried Mayson Monsoon/Intrepid --> E2 and Mayson Sabre --> Monsoon/Intrepid --> E2 but I couldn't win on anything below a 1.4/1.4 handicap to the Merciless Romulan AI on Duel II. The biggest problem I had is that groups of the light units didn't have the density to stand against the Romulan fleets, and even mining harassment was problematic as the light ships take long enough to get kills for the AI to get together a significant response.

Switching to Risner 2x Monsoon --> Akira and producing them from (eventually) three yards has yielded better results; I've been able to adjust the handicaps against the Romulan AI down to 1.2/1.2. I generally grab both expansions as early as I can and do my damnedest to hold them, or at least try to make the AI pay for pushing me off one. The first two Monsoons I produce while getting Chassis 2 and I usually use them to try for an early miner kill. I also preserve my Akiras as best I can to rank them--including spending all Veteran points on Akiras--as the shield bypassing passive ability murders their ships. Of course, my better results may be a factor of getting better at playing the AI rather than it being a better strategy.

Tavaras are horrors incarnate, especially as the AI pops them out the yard at rank 5. I usually try to micro the fight to strip them of their escorts and consort vessels, while hitting special + retreat on any Akiras under duress. When I get an Eraudi up, adding an Avalon or two really helps as the fighters can distract the AI enough to cut down the DPS hitting the cruisers.

I know there are some things I'm not doing too well though; scouting is something I'm still weak at, although using uncloaked scouts in the face of an omniscient AI is a recipe for drained resources. I'm also horrible at using support vessel specials effectively. I'll try getting some Remores out in the next game and see if I can get better at that, but usually I tend to go with the opinion that "the best way to debilitate the enemy is to destroy it". That and the fact that the strategies I've used are geared towards fighting the AI means that I know I'll likely be weak in multiplayer at least until I get better handles for counters in small-scale situations, but at least my micro seems to be better than it was.

As a note, I'm not using Warp In, or even building the station, except when putting together the end-game victory fleet to enforce a victory I've already got. Partially because I've lurked enough to see that some regard it as a bit of an "easy mode" strategy, partially because E1s and SF Nebs seem to die really easily compared to the Akiras and I usually have enough supply problems in the early to mid-game phases without compounding it with a heavy investment in the station and losses from fragile ships (the supply investment in the station and a lost E1 will pay for 6 Akiras).

[godsvoice]

posted on January 4th, 2012, 5:18 am

Last edited by godsvoice on January 4th, 2012, 6:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

I mostly play AI as well, I'm not on the multiplayer games.

Yes, Risner vs Ai is much better. Especially when going to Eraudi Yard, specifically for Avalan and phalanx if you can manage it for area damage and just sheer power. (as you already noticed, avalon fighters are good distraction) On the other hand, Mayson really doesn't have much for ship trade off. Aside from novas which once ranked can get you extra warpins, but as you say you don't go for that. Also, Mayson might have some better turret options. However, for Warpins, I would make your first two warpins Descents. They are pretty powerful, and give shield reset. You can guarantee a good ship this way, and you don't have to worry about losing it like e1s or nebs. If you would want to, but yes, it is not helpful to lose those supply.

I'm much more of a Klingon player though, they have a really strong faction, avatar Martok is pretty tough.

I still enjoy AI games though. I'll try this set up see what I can do on normal settings. But I don't think I'll be able to win. Warbirds are just to much with Romulans. And considering their smaller ships like serkas and all can be a real pain, there is just no advantage. Oh, and they can cloak. Oh, and they build defence turrets that cloak. Oh, and they build so many yards that you hopelessly outnumbered, and outgunned.

Although, I've managed to capture my fair share of Tavaras. When it attacks a moon pair where I have double refineries, and double yards, I do huge transport from all stations and my fleet. It takes a few seconds with crew of like 800 upwards or something. But from time to time I can win her. (I know, instant Vet. annoying)

Is there a particular reason you are wanting to play on Duel II though? It isn't a fair match up regardless of who you are against Romulans I find. There are other maps that would be easier. Any map where you can expand 5-7 times is good. The AI only expands 3-4 times anyways. But in any case, its not really important. If you are enjoying the game, thats good. I just like em a bit bigger for when I face Rom, they are not easy.

I assume the main thing for when you go to multiplayer though, you will be on a far more even keel for ship numbers. So thats a plus.

eDIT: Yeah, Akira spam certainly works. The torpedo barrage and shield recharge ability are very powerful together. If you can get a triple yard spam going of them, no need for eraudi if you can manage it.

I couldn't beat it on normal settings, but I found 1.4 to be a very easy game. You are probably right about 1.2 being the mid way point and all.

[godsvoice]

posted on January 4th, 2012, 8:21 pm

Last edited by godsvoice on January 4th, 2012, 9:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So I played some follow up games, at 1.20, 1.15, and 1.10 with pretty good results.

I won with the first two games, 1.2 and 1.15, but lost with 1.1 settings.

I only built Akiras in all the games. I went immediately from chassis 1 to chassis 2.

I expanded first to the centre right after I had both mining, research and yard up. Built mining station and platform - phaser there. Then moved to the expansion and built tri moon another platform. Then Di moon. Also, I built star bases at both my expansions, and was spamming from three yards for Akira. Once they rank they are beasts. Rip through a handful of serkas in no time.

At three Akiras, I started building my star base. During its construction I built a second yard, and the when star base was finished, shortly after, a science station. Then when you have a fleet of six or so Akiras, try to draw some ships into a fight while retreating back to your star base to pick them off. Eventually, you go back to the centre di moon, and build a star base and an additional yard.

I like playing on the bottom of the map, and I did for this game as well. It might seem like it doesn't matter which end you have, as they are symmetrical, but it does... Depending on what race you are, you enter into your yard from different ends. For Federation, by building your yards on the bottom of the map, when you go to retreat (from the top half) you cycle nicely right into your yard. However, for Romulans, I believe there yards you enter from the bottom and go up, so they would benefit from playing on the top half of all maps. If you play with feds on top, your ships always circle around to the other end to get repaired. It may be a small matter, but any advantage helps, and this does add up in time.

Even on 1.1, I wasn't immediately lost. I got upwards of twenty akiras built at one time. I believe it to be a matter of raiding. I may have decided on bad targets. I still think this is possible with practise, but on my first try I lost. I got all my star bases up, and so it was a solid defence I could retreat to. I was spamming from four yards too. But in the end, warbirds killed me.

I will try again.

But just at first glance my suggestions would be: play on bottom half of map, consider building defensive star bases at your expansions, (I don't know what your expansions are, but I chose the middle, and the right hand side expansion from the bottom starting position), only build akiras - chassis one to chassis 2, monsoons and other ships just might not cut it here plus the benefits of an all akira ranked fleet is considerable in this small map game considering the damage you can unleash on swarms of rommy ships. i did eventually expand to my other left side expansion later on though, just not to start with, can't defend all that. And yeah, but for sure with a little bonus on build time and cost, certainly a better game against romulans.

I'll have to give 1.1 a better look some other time. I'm sure its possible. It's all in how you attack, because I got all my stuff set up almost perfectly. I was attacked just before going back to the centre but things worked out. lol well, i still lost... but as far as right up to the mid game it was good.

Edit:Had some more free time. I beat 1.1 with Akira spam, and much more focussed and purposeful attacks. Mainly, secure your own expansions, play defensively at first. Get star bases up. I also capture a couple of their ships, this gives you convenient scouts to cloak and put wherever you'd like. I suggest wherever you plan to attack next to get some heads up intel. A pretty good game actually. The weird thing is, playing on the bottom, the AI expanded right to the left expansion. So that was what I attacked first, and there's no way the AI can defend it. So yeah. I guess 1.1 is possible.

posted on January 4th, 2012, 10:40 pm

The main reason I've been trying it on Duel II is because I wanted to see if the slow Fed start can be survivable against that kind of onslaught. It's rough when the AI starts harassing your mining and your first ship isn't even started yet. Plus it's good training for getting me to think about options under fire.

I usually try to expand left and right, saving the middle for later. I'm also generally only putting one dock per expansion moon pair with four total miners (two per moon). It's probably not ideal, but it is cheap and the early resources need to be husbanded carefully I find. I also certainly overspend on turrets; I know it'll be cheaper in the long run to build the base and upgrade its defence at least but it's easier to take a smaller hit from building a platform and upgrading it to a phaser turret when needed than saving up the 2k/1k.

Thanks for your insights!

posted on January 5th, 2012, 12:33 am

Sure thing, no problem.

New suggestions: Don't expand left and right! and Build three miners! (I build two refineries, I find it's better... you get two free miners but I've read in the guide that one is good, so I won't argue over that)

K, as for expanding left and right, it is too much to guard and defend. Horizontally, you can't defend both sending fleets both ways. Also, you can do the job much more effectively with centre and right, and do it quickly.

I'll throw up some numbers just to try and illustrate.

If you expand left and right, with two miners at each expansion moon, in total you have 4 di miners, and 4 tri miners, and hopefully at your home base you have 3 and 3. So that's 7 each in total. Alternatively, if you expand centre and right, (or left) with three miners each, you will have 9 di miners, and 6 tri miners.

So: in one full cycle of all your mining, 7 di gets you 1050 after one shipment from each, and 7 tri gets you 700 tri. For 9 di miners, you get 1350 di, and with two full tri moons at 6 you get 600 tri.

Rough numbers di/tri = 1050/700 or 1350/600.

Looking at the cost of Akira (as we both like this ship for this map and game setup) Akira costs:557/168/16.

If we assume your building out of two yards, that's 1114/336/32. Ok, so both ways, we are way over our requirements for tri. But for di, 1050 doesn't cover the 1114. (1350 does)

If we go to build out of 3 yards, 1671/504/48. So we are both still well within our means for tri. But now for di, 1050 is really short, whereas 1350 is only slightly short. I need about two more miners to go through to top up.

So just looking this over, expanding to three tri moons is completely unnecessary. 2 full tri moons can cover akira spam from three yards. But having 3 full di moons really helps pay for those akiras. So you really need one full expansion of two moons with three miners each. Also, if you start by going to the centre first, it really pays of because you really start raking in di (6 miners = 900 di, with three tri = 300 tri). Then the next thing you build is the tri moon to even it out.

So, I wonder if you find yourself having a tri surplus. We only need to pay for one special, the akira defence patterns, which is really nice to activate before a large fleet engagement. Invest in the di. Also, just think about it, it's really nice to have the centre expansion for several reasons. 1 it prevents ai from getting to it. 2 it gives you equal access to all points of the map. Good striking distance, and good repairing distance. 3. when defended it blocks traffic and makes that the place of battles. you don't have to worry about left and right expansions being attacked. this one central expansions is right on the ai's doorstep, so thats where a lot of fighting will take place. so defend it. and you won't lose miners.

Anyways, yeah. The only other thing, is that in the beginning is when to get all those miners out. Build 10 miners right out of your star base as quickly as possible. It will pay off getting them to your expansions right away. Then you will have income to pay for fleets. If you find yourself low on ships, i.e. 2-3 akiras, try capturing an enemy ship with your star base/refiner/yard/research station and even miners can help! Remember, crew is free to reload at your stations. So if you can capture a ship with that... huge bonus.

If you want practise with micro, early game is where to do it. Use those first few akiras well. But get mining going.

posted on January 5th, 2012, 5:09 am

For hyper-expansion feds, you can often get away with 3 Di 2 Tri miners and one refinery.

Now why don't you guys get on and play with real people!?  Sure it might be a shock at first, but your efforts against the AI will at least give you good knowledge of how your race works.    Play some training 1v1's, get in on some 3v3 games...

Actually, I find that when there are a large number of ships on the field I get confused easily and slip up.  You'll have a bit of an advantage in that respect if you're used to it.

In any case, you guys should try 3v3 AI matches on Plasma Conduit.  You can download it from the video database. 

posted on January 5th, 2012, 5:18 am

I haven't had much success with tunngle, I logged on once, and just all this german speaking starts shouting and I have no idea what its saying. And my computer is saying it is not safe to use on the computer for whatever reason. I know because you all use it it can't be that bad. But I dunno.

I'm up to five or six separate maps now where I can beat 3 ai fed merciless as Klingons. But, alas, it got somewhat boring. It's the same set up every time.

I've actually just recently started playing Dominion really heavily. I don't understand the ketracel synthesizer. I just build supply from my base. Well I sort of understand, because each ship costs like 50 supply. But I'd just mine resources heavily, and buy supplies.

I've found an immediate B8? is it? The war frigate one, I can't remember the name. But those, followed by either S2 or bug spam. And then going right into Imperial Yard with B5's is incredibly strong. You have build limits I think, so once you get like 5 of the on, and then 6 of the other You're done for those. But then just fill the rest up with bugs and S2s. Then some good perimeter defence. Although I'm a little ticked, because doesn't perimeter upgrade do my ships damage? In one of my games, I think an entire fleet of bugs got nearly wiped out cause they were to close to two perimeters I had guarding the wormhole.

Tips on dominion economy would be nice.

posted on January 5th, 2012, 4:02 pm

Well, it's very different vs computers than vs humans.  As I've said before, Romulans and Borg have INSANE counters to the bug, which means you should probably use B8 against these races.  Against the other 3 opponents a little bug spam in the beginning is very useful, as most of your other ships are pretty hard-countery.

Against the computer, which spams an unrealistic amount of ships, bugs aren't really an option so I expect you'll always need B8 start.  Ironically, B8 -> B5 is the only Dominion strategy that includes no passives or support ships.  Like I said in a recent commentary, the Dominion have a bunch of hard counters but they don't have to USE them.

Use the IS bomb.  Not only is it really good, it's amazingly fun.

As for the Ketracel synthesizer, you absolutely want to get it.  Consider it a down-payment in return for unlimited, free supply.  Supply miners mine very fast from the moon, but drop off very slowly at the synthesizer, meaning you can put 2 supply miners and 1 synthesizer on the same moon as 3 regular miners and you'll see only a small drop in income.  The main economic draw is the expensive synthesizers.

This also means that you can have 4 synthesizers with 8 miners on 1 moon (I'm pretty sure) and I know you can have 4 supply miners and 2 regular miners on a moon with hardly any loss.

Meanwhile, the Dominion get their first supply buy for a good price, but each one after that is insanely expensive.  The Synthesizer is a much better way to go: the second supply buy costs as much as 2 synthesizers, and 2 is often all you'll ever need.

posted on January 5th, 2012, 8:19 pm

Now why don't you guys get on and play with real people!?  Sure it might be a shock at first, but your efforts against the AI will at least give you good knowledge of how your race works.

That's mostly what I'm trying to get a reasonable handle on; durability of various ships, how well they stack, good ways to utilise them and specials, which are actually worth using (Teutoborg, how I'd like you to be useful), and game-engine behavioural quirks (how grouped ships move (weirdly on occasion), what causes a ship to forget it's been SHIFT+R'd and decide to start moving with the group again (a current cause of frustration)).

I know playing against humans is very different; Fleet Ops looks similar to other RTS games I've played online where early aggression with the aim of throttling resources can create a decisive advantage in the first 10 minutes or so, large fleets are unusual, and top-tier tech is rarely used.

Actually, I find that when there are a large number of ships on the field I get confused easily and slip up.  You'll have a bit of an advantage in that respect if you're used to it.

Large groups are hard to manage; in the games I've done vs the AI, I've had frustrations with things like moving (six Akiras in a group; yard in the group builds one and suddenly the group doubles back to form up with the new one rather than continue on to the objective) and repairing (as mentioned above, I've seen weird issues with Akiras set to priority repair forget their orders before they reach the yard, but I have a suspected reason for that which I'll post on elsewhere).

In any case, you guys should try 3v3 AI matches on Plasma Conduit.  You can download it from the video database. 

I might try that!

In any event, I've installed Tunngle and registered an account with them, and I was able to log into the Fleet Ops lobby last night (it was late so I didn't stay beyond testing the connection). Hopefully sometime soon I'll get into a game!

posted on January 5th, 2012, 8:46 pm

I think I spam to many ships for the synthesizer to help me. I did try building two, and giving them two miners each on a tritanium moon. But I was still having to buy from star bases. I generally work out of three small yards, and two large yards. Once I get a full fleet of B8s and B5s I got to bugs or S2s, and the T15, or default ship in the first slot of large yard. I don't know, I haven't found the synthesizer to really pay off so far.

I know bugs die quickly, but that's not so bad. If I go in with all my B8 and B5 and a good handful of bugs, while building bugs continuously, between the B5 fighters and bugs, my big ships don't get targeted all that much.

Besides, something is going to blow up in fleet engagements. Might as well be the bugs.

posted on January 5th, 2012, 9:54 pm

So I've had a flash of realisation regarding why my Akiras are forgetting their priority repair orders, which has led to more than one ship dying prematurely.

My usual method of retreating an Akira under duress is to select the ship from the group, hit Defence Patterns and then Shift+R. Now I've read elsewhere that special abilities making use of the replaceweapon function can cause ships to forget their orders when they activate and when they run out.

So what I believe is happening is that Defence Patterns is expiring at some point before the ship enters the yard, which causes the replaceweapon event/function to fire and causes the ship to forget the order, at which point it does the next thing I order the group to do.

It's frustrating that those ships aren't likely to remember their orders, but at least if that is what is happening then I can at least try and find ways around it. It does make Akiras more micro-intensive as I'd need to check on the retreating ships and make sure they continue to the yard before they start moving back into the hot zone.