Admiral Darkk and I just finished testing a few different strats. We found a few surprises in Gaitori - namely, that full gunships isn't as hot as it seems - but found far less welcome information for Ishiman and Human.

As Ishiman, we found that no other strategy could beat a well-executed double carrier strat. Not all gunships, not all cruisers, not half of each, not two gunships per cruiser, and not one carrier and two cruisers per gunship. Double carriers beat them all, and not by a thin margin, either.

For Human, we found out what everyone who plays humans prettymuch already knows - the gunship is the only ship worth building, EVER. That includes carriers, which gunships eat for breakfast, and fighters, which gunships eat for between-meal snacks.

Now to the point - is there a chance that this will be addressed in the next update of Ares?

I think that making the Ishiman carrier turret more accurate - yes, more accurate, not less - would make it easier to dodge, and thus easier to kill carriers. Making human cruisers have something at least approaching actual maneuverability and firepower would help, and making cruisers useful would make carriers useful as counters for them.

Any thoughts?

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Replicant
www.axis.n3.net

How? The problem with human carriers is about the same as for Gatori carriers. The big bad weapons are forward firing. And carrier have the manuverablity of a floating ice sheet the size of Rhode Island (they are real). The turreted laser suxx. Give them 3x firing rate on the laser or turreted magnetos or something. But who needs an update? We have (b)Hera(/), the mighty editor!

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Commander-in-Chief of the Nijayias Interstellar Navy.

At least we will have Hera , once it comes out, or once the beta testers recive it.

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I come, I go; You'll never know...

-Admiral Dennis
(url="http://"mailto:admiraldennis@mac.com")mailto:admiraldennis@mac.com(/url)admiraldennis@mac.com

Human carriers have a relatively high turn rate. They have a turret - just like most other carriers - and a relatively underpowered secondary weapon. In this case, the secondary weapon is the magneto pulse rather than a missile. Missiles suck at close range, magneto sucks at long range. Sounds even to me.

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Replicant
www.axis.n3.net

Maybe, but its still not fast enough to make use of the pulse. The carrier should have marginaly better or atleast different weapons than the gunship.

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Commander-in-Chief of the Nijayias Interstellar Navy.

The Ishiman Double Carrier plus Cruisers strat works relatively well for multiple reasons. For one, it employs the most powerful ship of each catagory. Having a Heavy Destroyer as a starting ship, two relatively good Carriers, and having Cruisers and Fighters as garnish makes this strat strong against any specific attack (i.e. only Gunships, only Cruisers). Even though the HVD is only a single ship, being in the hands of an extrodinary pilot (such as Darkk) it can unleash huge amounts of damage to any fleet. The Carriers do well to act as barriers and Cruisers and Fighters give a good "fog" in which the Heavy Destroyer can perform at its peak. In other words, any large, protruding ship such as a Carrier is toast. The twin Carriers, however, spell the doom of any fool trying to cruiser rush your fleet. Lastly, the Cruisers and Fighters will distract any Gunships that may attempt to destroy your Carriers. In other words, you leave Capitols vulnerable, Squadrons devastated, and Destroyers confused in the heat of battle.

My perscription, based on the types and numbers of ships, would be a Carrier and 4 Gunships, and any additional ships be Cruisers. The attack plan would be simple; First, have your carrier break through the initial wave of Fighters and Cruisers (Squadron vessels). Second, hunt and eliminate your opponent's HVD as quickly as possible. Third, clear the area of Squadron vessels. This should give your Gunships a nice clean shot and you should be able to finish off the remaining Capitols, if you still have your HVD this should be easy.

That plan might be simple, but execution is what counts. If you find that technique too difficult to pull off, try fighting fire with fire. Even though using the same strategy is risky, you're atleast garanteed a level playing field. From there rely on your piloting skills and fleet setup to win.

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-Vegeta

Tournement Manager
Species and Ships Profiler
Beloved Overlord
(url="http://"http://www.axis.n3.net")www.axis.n3.net(/url)
(url="http://"mailto:blosse9@idt.net")mailto:blosse9@idt.net(/url)blosse9@idt.net

Gunships was one of the things we tried... and found that although they definitely did best against the carriers, they still couldn't match up. A carrier really isn't speedy enough to 'punch through squadron vessels', although it's worth a try, but even with just gunships attacking the fighters were instantly toast. The test was just double carriers, no cruisers, versus full 100% pure gunships; we both wiped each other's HVD's out early on; and the gunships were utterly toasted -- by the carriers.

The carrier turret fire is just inaccurate enough to have a good chance of hitting anything within range, no matter how that target is dodging. Cantharan carriers are likewise, although with a smaller range of fire.

I really think that in this case, changing the balance of ships is a better solution than changing the balance of strategy. Unarguably so with humans, where nobody can mention building cruisers without laughing.

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Replicant
www.axis.n3.net

Vegeta - the other guys HVD will see the carrier trying to break through and fry it. The carriers will smash it a lot too. Besides, Replicant is right. Carriers are too clumsy and slow to be good blockade runners. Oh, one other thing - I noticed having all your fighters out at the beginning might not be so good as the HVD will maul them en masse. I would suggest launching half the fighters from half your carriers. If you know they are coming.
Also, I think (but am not sure) a similar problem exists in Cantharan. Wanna help check it out Replicant?

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Commander-in-Chief of the Nijayias Interstellar Navy.

I should rephrase what I meant by the carrier "breaking through" the initial wave of fighters. What I really meant was to hang around your carrier, and allow the core pulse and missiles to clear out the Fighters (gunships have a real hard time hunting down pesky fighters at times). However, this does not necessarily mean that the Carrier is in front of your fleet. All that I really meant to say was to use the Carrier's arsenal to eliminate the mass of Fighters coming (which Carrier weaponry was designed to take out).

As far as the Fighters go, see my recent post in the Briefing Room to see what I have to say about that.

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-Vegeta
Alter Ego: Erich Blossey
Website: (url="http://"http://www.axis.n3.net")http://www.axis.n3.net(/url)
Email: (url="http://"mailto:AresAxis@aol.com")mailto:AresAxis@aol.com(/url)AresAxis@aol.com

I see you got an upgrade on your position. You used to be overlord, and now you are "moderator" hehe. Congradulations.

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HotSpice(better known as Avenger on GR)

Uhh, the gunships would then get mauled chasing fighters while getting pounded by carriers while the equivelent of 2 of them struggles to catch up. Besides, we tried a carrier-gunship mix and it got wasted.

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Commander-in-Chief of the Nijayias Interstellar Navy.

Vegeta, let me put it this way - we tested every possible unit mix, and double carriers always won. Darkk and I are about equal piloting-wise - we both used our HVD's in the exact same way, strafing the field with fullerene, and we each homed in on each other's fullerene, and we were each shortly wasted and moved to another ship. He was the one who used the double carrier strat, while I was the opposition - and I would almost always survive with my HVD several moments longer than he did.

Not once in all of the testing was a single one of his carriers destroyed.

Yes, you could defeat this with fleet movements, formations, and mad piloting skillz - but the point is, you would need those to win. There is no other unit mix that even comes close to beating double carriers.

In other words, double carriers may not be an instant win, but there are no counter strategies.

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Replicant
www.axis.n3.net

Just as a note - I don't honestly expect that Ares will be changed, but I do want this to be discussed seriously.

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Replicant
www.axis.n3.net

I think you're right about Ishiman Carriers. They are unbalanced, actually I should say that they lack an appropriate counter. I would say that the best counter to an Ishiman Carrier is a HVD, but a HVD costs more than a Carrier, so it's an unreasonable counter in my opinion. Thing about it is, the Carrier comes out to be more of a medium degree Capitol ship, and the Destroyer ships only have low and high degree ships (i.e. Gunships, HVD). So you end up with a ship class too weak to fight a Carrier or a ship thats too expensive to build.

I think the solution to this (and the other unbalanced ships) is to broaden the spectrum of ship classes. I hope to achieve this in my upcoming plugin. For example- the Corvette class will be made as an appropriate counter to the Carrier, costing relatively the same price as the Carrier. I also noticed how the Squadron vessels got the short end of the stick in Ares, and I hope to bring them to more of a balance in relation to the other ships as well. Of course, this is not the only solution to the unbalanced ships in Ares, but I'm willing to say that a wider variety of ships would be more interesting. I only hope that the problem of unbalanced ships will be resolved in the future.

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-Vegeta
Alter Ego: Erich Blossey
Website: (url="http://"http://www.axis.n3.net")http://www.axis.n3.net(/url)
Email: (url="http://"mailto:AresAxis@aol.com")mailto:AresAxis@aol.com(/url)AresAxis@aol.com