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Gratuitous Space Battles


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Usually, when playing GSB, my ship designs fail miserably and die in the first 1-2 minutes of battle. However, I have had some success.

 

View the glory that is the Alliance Alligator point defence cruiser!

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/GSB/alligatorpdv1.jpg

Boasting no less than five point defence turrets, this little baby forms up ahead of my main ships and absorbs lots of incoming fire. Shooting down rockets, missiles and torpedoes, it takes a lot of the sting from facing off against enemy cruisers. It has shields and autorepair, so it can cope with a little lasering and whatnot.

 

My Federation anti-fighter frigate, on the other hand, is a total failure.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/GSB/AFFv1.jpg

I don't know why. It is actually quite good at killing fighters, armed with two rapid-fire lasers and an anti-fighter missile launcher, it just doesn't live long enough. God knows why, it's got two shield generators and armour. It zooms out there and just dies.

 

Another success (if I may modestly say so myself), is the Alliance Swordfish fast attack frigate.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/GSB/swordfishfastattackfrigate.jpg

This little darling swims through the oceans of space, bobbing at the periphery of the fight, and launches rockets at targets that are looking weak. No armour, just three engines and some shields. Ba-bang! Stays alive through mobility.

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You seem to have a good hand with fighters: your equipment tips for the Heavy Tribe Fighter helped me a lot to make them usable. Maybe i can return this favour by giving you a good avice about cruisers and shields: Never use the same shield twice, instead vary between the three biggest ones, the ships are much more durable that way. I do not know the exact mechanisms behind this, but I tested it and it works.

 

Here one of my latest and surprisingly strong ships: The Harmony Cruiser equipped as a "BeamBoat" (in contrast to "GunBoat"). It lacks long range weapons, but as soon as the enemy comes into medium range the 5 large beam-weapons start to fire at almost the same time. This concept worked so good that I am completely overhauling my other creations to give their weapons similar ranges, too.

 

https://i50.tinypic.com/ouqg6e.jpg

 

As the ship usually has too take some hits before it is in range it is equipped with 3 (!) Tribe repair modules AND a shield. However, once it is in range the battle is over rather quickly, luckily so far always for the enemy.

 

As a general tactic I use 4 kinds of cruisers, one focused on missiles and rockets, one on Plasma (Guns), one equipped with Beam-weapons and one Multi-Purpose Cruiser. Usually I deploy them in mixed groups so that they can assist each other with their strengths. The shorter ranged ships in the front, the long-ranged weapons at the back, that way I can even save some module places on the later for more weapons. Frigates are support ships in my fleets, one Anti-Air (anti-missile) ship, one Support frigate with unusal modules and weapons, one multi-purpose frigate and a smal Gunboat frigate, that can operate from behind the cruisers with frigate plasmas.

 

Fighers are my weakness so far, I can only think of two usages, interceptors to escort cruisers and heavy fighters to attack frigates, all medium and other fighters are redundant imo...

 

General tips: Use a Target painter on your missile ships! You will lose maybe 10% of the fired missiles, but for that you will have 35% more hits. And always use different weapons (of similar type) on the same ship and match their ranges as much as possible!

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Never use the same shield twice, instead vary between the three biggest ones, the ships are much more durable that way. I do not know the exact mechanisms behind this, but I tested it and it works.

 

Ahhh, that's where I'm going wrong...

 

And always use different weapons (of similar type) on the same ship and match their ranges as much as possible!

 

Definitely. For some of the bigger Federation cruiser designs, I've kept the overall design, but switched the weapons, so one is armed with missiles, one with plasma, etc. Decoy launchers are very useful against an enemy with serious point defence.

 

New Federation Leopard fighter design.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/GSB/leopardrlf.jpg

Two rocket launchers, and it's still nippy at 2.46. I could have it with just one RL, and it'd be even faster (3.31), but as it doubles the firepower, I want to see if it's any good. It should be better than my standard cruiser killer design (speed 2.29, one rocket launcher). If I need to save a bit of money, instead of having Engine II, I'll use Engine I, which only drops the speed to 2.16. which is still respectable. I've seen some faster designs top 3.00, but have yet to see any practical ones go over 4.00.

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I have a Federation Buffalo Cruiser design that's just plain wierd.

 

2x Armour
2x Power Cores
1x Crew Module
1x Target Booster
1x Engine
1x Repair System
1x Tractor Beam
1x Fusion Beam
1x EMP
3x Cruiser Laser
2x Light Plasma Launchers
2x Mixed Shields

 

Speed is nearly non-existant due to the heavy weight of the equipment and only 1 engine, but it'll move :D

What's really wierd about this is, if paired with another cruiser or 2 frigates, it is deadly and will take down at least another cruiser or two on its own before going down.

 

If going solo, expect it to die a rather painful death.

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My first serious cruiser design, on a Rabbit hull, performs like that. 2 missile launchers, 1 Megaton ML, 1 rocket launcher, 1 point defence, PD scanner, shield II & reflective shield, armour II, autorepair, generator, engine.

https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h109/FullAuto_2006/GSB/rabbitbattleshipv1.jpg

Slow as anything, but hard-hitting. If they don't stick together they get slaughtered.

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I don't use the decoy launchers either as I prefer the Target painter. Btw, the speed of a cruiser is the very last of my concern, they aren't meant to be quick and if additional equipment can be added instead the choice becomes easy for me. The bare minimum is enough. If I can add a better engine without making the crew/energy requirements too big, ok, but the engines are really low on my equipment list :D

 

Here a Federation Cruiser design I tested, notice the three different shields, the really heavy armor , the improved repair drones and even the reinforced power plants? It sure is hard to destroy, that makes up for the rather low armament. I put that guy in the front, it will act as a bodyguard for the weapon-carrying but more fragile ships in the back. IMO it is important to specialize but not overdo the specialization idea, though, because a little error can then result in the loss of all ships.

 

https://i45.tinypic.com/2uy6gzp.jpg

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It's great for survivability, but the armour and shields lose their effectiveness per piece the more you add.

 

I always have problems when going up against fighters, but I find adding a tractor beam to all the ships mitigates this. Nothing like bringing a cruiser's main guns to bear on a tiny fighter to take care of that little problem.

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It's great for survivability, but the armour and shields lose their effectiveness per piece the more you add.

 

I always have problems when going up against fighters, but I find adding a tractor beam to all the ships mitigates this. Nothing like bringing a cruiser's main guns to bear on a tiny fighter to take care of that little problem.

 

That's why I use three different shields. This probably also explain why the shield-mix is stronger than 3 shields of the same type. The loss of armor efficiency by stacking is rather low. However more than three Heavy Armors would be too much imo. I mean I want an Armored Cruiser with weapons and not a defenseless rock. :D

 

About the tractor beam: I only put them on Frigates, Cruisers simply shouldn't waste their time with fighters ;)

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Nah, tractor beams are good even on cruisers. I mean, you DO want FullAuto's Alliance Swordfish frigate to sit still long enough for your cruiser's Heavy Plasmas to hit it, right? :D

 

And just for fun, but have you seen the Bellator Battlecruiser minimod? THAT is a monster of a cruiser! ;)

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Yes, I took a look at the available mods, they look great but are totally off the scale regarding game-balance. :D

 

I thought about adding an Xcom-Alien race, GIMP can edit those DDS-graphics and the text-files should be no problem neither... ;)

 

But where to get good 2D-pictures of the Xcom-Ships? 3D is not a problem, there are plenty pictures available, but those are useless for GSB.

 

FullAuto, what the hell is going on in that screenshot!!!!! :):)

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