So You Want To Learn About Combat Strategy?

[Drasca]

I just had a nasty naughty idea.

Build Empty ships with nothing on them. Yes you heard me correctly. Empty ships, large/huge ones. The computer was threatened by the sight of a huge ship I built early-mid game. I sent it in defense of a world. I expected it to get destroyed because it was low tech, but they ran away.

I need to look at the cost figures, but I like the idea of big empty hulls scaring off the enemy. They can only see the size class, not the tech necessarily. If MOO AI can take ship design into account, its much more advanced than I give it credit for. It shouldn't be able to. As I understand the game, only battle scanners, not planetary scanners, can see ship design. Planetary screen should only allow seeing the size class of ships... so empty hulls should do just fine. If so, they should be scared by a big empty ship. Muahahahaha.

I gotta try this.

[Zed-F]

I need to look at the cost figures, but I like the idea of big empty hulls scaring off the enemy.

I am pretty sure that the game calculates the BC value of a given attacker fleet, and compares it to the BC value of the defender fleet, when determining whether it should run away. For instance, an AI fleet of space superiority ships will flee from a high-value stack of bombers with no space-based weapons, if the bombers manage to destroy an AI colony the space superiority ships are protecting. The AI is more likely to stick around when there's a colony at stake, especially one of its own, but get enough ships together in one spot and they will run like the dickens even then.

The problem with building ships solely for "scariness value" is that they get very expensive to maintain, very quickly. I'd rather build something useful than something scary. If it's scary AND useful, so much the better.