So You Want To Learn About Combat Strategy?

[Sirian]

Several players have asked for help and advice figuring out the combat, the ship design, the military element. There's a reason I've been unable to help much with that. If you believe you need help in this area, perhaps I can finally be of some use. The best way to teach about combat in Master of Orion may be to show you some real combat and explain what is going on and why. Not a perfect solution, I admit, but even if it doesn't meet all of your inquisitive needs, you should at least have a good time reading.

Two of my previous reports have taken place on huge maps, and none on a small map. Larger maps mean more cushion between player and opponents. Contact comes later. Conflict comes later. So let me take you on a ride through a small map. Caution: not for the timid!

Bring It On!


- Sirian

[barron of ideas]

WOW

What a ride! How can you juggle all those balls and not drop even one? And then the random events hand you a nova. No wonder they call it impossible.

I'll try that medium ship with long range tanks and two lazers. There are lots of situations where I give up on planets I found first but couldn't keep from armed colony ships, or one with a one fighter escort. And I usually try to build heavy lazers even if it takes a heavy ship because the 1-4 lazer doesn't seem very strong in quantities I can afford to build. Was it the Mirshan bonus that made them effective for you? Or do you recommend lazer armed medium ships for the early turns no matter what race you play?

[Sirian]

the 1-4 lazer doesn't seem very strong in quantities I can afford to build.

You have to consider the size. The range 1 laser is weaker, but you can pack three of them on in the same space as a single heavy laser. Ships have so much size, and you want to pick equipment based on total effectiveness.

You actually get 3-12 damage out of three small lasers vs 1-7 from a heavy. But that's also only against unshielded ships. Vs a Class I shield, you get 0-9 out of the small lasers and 0-6 out of the heavy. See? Plus the heavy has longer range and higher maximum damage.

Still, lasers are not for building for the long haul. They're for sticking on a few ships early if you have neighbors close enough to be fighting with very quickly.

Was it the Mirshan bonus that made them effective for you? Or do you recommend lazer armed medium ships for the early turns no matter what race you play?

Mrrshans do more damage with them. Nearly double, on average. That's no small thing. But it only means you need more of them to do that same job with any other race. I will use them for any race, but only as stopgap. The LR Lasers won't last for long or fight off much. Only good for a very short time, to buy you time to research range techs and get something stronger into place. The 4-gun variety are more worthwhile, but as you saw, I got one fight out of em during which they were smoked.

You can slow your growth significantly if you build early warships when they aren't needed. Figuring out when you need them is the hard part, I suppose. But no reason not to experiment. Don't be afraid of failure. Try hard things, sometimes, because if you never fail to keep planets you tried to claim, then you aren't reaching far enough.


- Sirian

[Charis]

Oh man, it's not enough you rob my nights of sleep, now you're robbing my afternoons
of work as well!!

The man says "Go get a snack and a drink, and pull up a chair." I chuckled and did precisely
that. That was a great read for combat training. I wasn't expecting a recipe for military success,
for I knew enough to know one wasn't forthcoming. But to give some perspective from the utter newb viewpoint, we have *NO* idea if we need to build, zero, one, or 14 bases. We don't know what on earth a Ranger class ship is, or a whale (though the latter would scare me if I saw it coming! We wouldn't
think of overspending Ind to shift resources for building bases in a system about to come under attack. We have not the foggiest idea how many lasers we need to fight off an armed colony. We don't know that if they show up 2-3 times empty handed that you can bet your wife's watch they're coming back and soon!
We haven't the foggiest idea *when* you shift to fleet production (and more important *why*). We don't understand how a 'friend' can break a treaty and invade our colony all the while "amiable" and with an on-going trade agreement. I don't even know how to send group troops to take a planet once I beat it down. (Is it via "Trans", the same way you would shift colonists to your own world?)

That report went quite a long way toward answering these questions. Probably more important than anything else, it gives the confidence that you can fight over planets in dispute with aggressive expansionists, and not have to cave in just because you seem weak on fleet or defenses. Now if only I had read this before charging ahead with Imperium 1 so far before the deadline! :laugh:

I did figure out (in a different game) how to make a LR Colony ship combining both the colony base and reserve tanks in a special larger design, and was quite pleased with myself for the planetary coup it enabled B)

Bravo, fantasatic read! Keep up the good work, and remember to continue to throw a bone toward
the newbie once in a while.
Charis

[Isit]

I don't even know how to send group troops to take a planet once I beat it down. (Is it via "Trans", the same way you would shift colonists to your own world?)

Yup thats how you do it.

[Zed-F]

Yes, you use the Trans(port) button to send troops to capture enemy worlds.

An education on how best to use military in MOO would take quite a while in order to be comprehensive, so prospective students should likely expect such an education in dribs and drabs, rather than all at once. Here's a couple more tips, however, to help give a bit more perspective:

• Regarding quantities of bases/ships to build, I find a good general gauge is to take a look in the Planets screen at the amount of spending you have allocated to maintaining the ships and bases you already have. I generally try to avoid spending more than 10% of my income on base maintenance unless I have pressing defensive needs -- i.e. my bases are vulnerable to attack and I expect that an attack is reasonably likely in the not too distant future. Obviously in a larger map, more of those bases will be at/near borders and fewer at the core, but on a smaller map you tend not to have true rear areas that are relatively exempt from attack, so the bases tend to be spread around more evenly. Also, on a large map, enemy fleets are larger relative to the amount of bases you can reasonably build on a planet in a given time interval, so higher levels of preventative base construction may be called for.
  
• Similarly, even when I am planning an attack, I generally try to avoid spending more than 10% of my budget on ship maintenance; I want to be continuing to perform substantial amounts of research even while my fleets are out kicking butt, or else I may very well start to fall behind in the arms race. This target is easier to achieve when my shipbuilding strategy focuses on small rather than large ships, however, as the latter require substantially more maintenance expenditures for the same amount spent in ship construction.
  
• Except for the very beginning of the game, when I am concentrating on getting the first tier Planetology and Propulsion techs, I tend to spread my research budget fairly evenly across all categories, with a small amount of concentration in two or three categories (computers and planetology, and maybe a third.) This isn't the only way to do things, but it works fairly well for me. Overall, you really DO need to spend fairly evenly across all categories in order to have a viable offense, defense, and production base, unless you're the Darloks and planning to spend everything in computer tech and steal the rest. The timing on what to spend where and when can be juggled, but consistently neglecting any one tech category can leave you with a dangerous vulnerability that can be exploited; this is a trap the AI often falls into. Spending fairly evenly also has the side effect that I tend to get a bunch of advances all at about the same time. Thus, the timing on when to design a new ship is fairly self-evident for me. In the early-mid game, it will usually be when I've just got a new batch of toys in, whereas in the late game when I've already got an offensive fleet tooling about, it will be when the designs I'm using in that fleet are sufficiently obsolescent as to be worth scrapping in favour of something more modern. However, there are exceptions -- sometimes a new need will crop up, for instance to protect a planet you are planning to colonize, and you may or may not want to wait for a particular tech to come in before you address that need.
  
• One important point is that, when defending outreach colonies with early ships, it's important to have a realistic idea of what your ships will be able to successfully defend against, and what they will not. Defending an outreach colony with early ships is a bit of a gambit, depending on how big a fleet the AI has and how much it decides to bring along when it goes for that planet you've been guarding. Sometimes they will bring overwhelming force just because they have it available and don't have anything else to do with it, so be aware that like all gambits, it will sometimes fail and you'll have stunted your growth curve without having anything to show for it. Only experience can teach you when to make a token effort to hold an outreach colony, when to seriously commit to holding it, and when to fold.

[Sirian]

I disagree with Zed on a few points. Or at least, I follow different rules of thumb. We agree on a lot of core concepts, though.

I generally try to avoid spending more than 10% of my income on base maintenance unless I have pressing defensive needs

By that viewpoint, I always have pressing defensive needs.

My cutoff point for base construction is FORTY percent. If I get over forty percent, it's unsustainable. If I get over thirty percent going to base maintenance, it's painful. Typical for me is twenty percent or so, at least through the early game. I won't even bat an eyelash toward slowing base growth until maintenance exceeds twenty percent. By the time I get terraforming and robotics to high levels, that will calm back down to below ten percent or thereabouts, so in effect I am targetting the same ten percent as Zed, perhaps, but I don't tailor defenses to my production levels. I tailor them to my paranoia levels. I will build bases up to where I'm comfortable, then slow or stop, and I won't build more just because production levels have risen. So what may at one point be nearing thirty percent may at a later point have calmed down to ten or twelve percent.

I think my five reports so far show that even my paranoid levels of base construction often fail. In my first game as Klackons, the Sakkra wiped out a core colony and left me scrambling, despite about a 22% base expenditure at that point. In my fourth game, as Silicoid, I lost core worlds to massive SoDs and nearly lost a third system despite state of the art military tech.

Here's one possible way to look at base construction. If you build bases to where you're at 10% of income going to maintenance and you stop there, let's call that the baseline. You then have 90% of your income left to do other things. Say you double your base count. You now have 2x bases, double protection vs what you had before. What does it cost you? A drop in resources available for other tasks from 90% to 80%. That's about an eleven percent slowdown on other projects for a 100% increase in defenses.

Zed's right about one thing: losing the tech race can break you. No amount of bases will help if your missiles are too weak to penetrate enemy shields, or other similar mismatches. But in my experience, I've lost more games for being too stingy with base construction than I have for being a little slower on tech, so I tend to err on the side of "there ain't no such thing as too much defense".

Now I play mostly larger maps, and Zed sticks to small maps, so I'm sure he has a point. But most of my small map experiences are akin to what happened in this Mrrshan game: that is, I actually tend to need MORE bases on small maps. It's much easier to lose militarily on a small map. A SoD comes for you, and then it's over. Tech moves faster on larger maps, so the useful lifetime of fleets is a bit shorter, easier to tech your way out of a problem and less ratio of loss to your empire if a couple of systems fall.

Obviously in a larger map, more of those bases will be at/near borders and fewer at the core, but on a smaller map you tend not to have true rear areas that are relatively exempt from attack

You might think, but I disagree. The slower tech pace on small maps keeps range modest. Range grows faster on large maps relative to the ability to stand up colonies and construct bases. A range 8 or 9 tech fairly early is not uncommon, so the enemy usually has a reach of at least two layers deep beyond your border. That leaves most of your worlds exposed to potential attack. Then there's the problem of a higher likelihood of losing a planet, which may shift the front line. I end up building bases everywhere, because the AI will specifically target weaker planets sooner if they can amass a winning fleet vs your weak spot's level of strength.

I tend to build bases according to value. I overload artifact and rich planets with bases. I don't want the AI to even think about attacking my rich planets. Nebula planets need THREE TIMES the number of bases that regular planets do to mount the same level of defense. I think the most bases I ever put on a nebula planet was over 500. That was after one time when a mineral rich nebula system with 300 bases actually fell while the game was about half way up the tech tree. :P

Zed's right about the back lines to some extent, but on a huge map the AI can get Thorium Cell tech well before the outcome is decided, and then there are no more back lines. So you are playing a gambit if you stint too much on rear guard defenses, even on larger maps.

Similarly, even when I am planning an attack, I generally try to avoid spending more than 10% of my budget on ship maintenance

I don't even look at ship maintenance. I build ships according to the mission objectives. I will have no ships at all until there's a mission to carry out. Bases are a better buy. They upgrade and you continue to enjoy their benefits over time. Ships have a limited life, and more so on larger maps where tech moves faster.

One thing I do tend to do is wait for a healthy combination of techs to assemble a highly effective design, then mass-build them and press my cause, whatever it may be. Time is money when it comes to ships. I will put as many into the field as I can (balanced with additional research, depending on the size of the window of opportunity and the mission value). If I can translate a temporary advantage into actual territorial change, I may have reached a winning position and it's no holds barred unless the AI is able to counter with new tech or new ship designs. There's definitely a tipping point for most games.

Except for the very beginning of the game, when I am concentrating on getting the first tier Planetology and Propulsion techs, I tend to spread my research budget fairly evenly across all categories

I often do this, too. However, I also keep an eye on shortfalls. Any area where I'm missing a bunch of techs from one category (such as factory controls), I will press to make it up. Any time I have a vulnerability that may allow an enemy SoD to burn down one of my worlds, I will press to overcome it. Any time I reach a plateau in my economy, if the military situation is stable, I will press for economic advantage, racing ahead to the next planetology or construction tech.

As I said either in my tutorial or one of my spot reports, I tend to keep at least half of my research spread among all categories as a hard rule (except only in dire emergencies) and use half to "play with", shifting it around to priorities, sometimes spreading it out, sometimes putting as much as half my research into a single field to speed along to a key tech. Techs are worth more if you've skipped or missed out on earlier upgrades in the same line. That is, an armor jump up each improved armor is a relatively small thing. But if you missed out on the first two armors, then jumping from level one to level four may be HUGE and overcoming the shortfall may be prioritized.

Every game is different. One of my rules of thumb is not to pay much attention to rules of thumb.


I'm looking forward to seeing different styles and philosophies in action. I'm sure there are things I will be able to learn from others.


- Sirian

[Sirian]

Oh man, it's not enough you rob my nights of sleep, now you're robbing my afternoons of work as well!!

Uh... oops? Sorry about that, Chief.

The man says "Go get a snack and a drink, and pull up a chair." I chuckled and did precisely
that.

Always happy to captivate and please the audience.

we have *NO* idea if we need to build, zero, one, or 14 bases.

Yeah. I tried to impart my thinking not in terms of conclusions but of process. How to look for threats, how to evaluate risks. The analysis about techs is probably the most important. There was NO military solution for the Klackon fighter swarm, for example. No amount of any design of ships I could build at that point would have been competitive. However, there WAS an answer, and it was to increase shield tech to render that enemy design obsolete as far as attacking my planets. They're irrelevant if they can't do damage!

That's the kind of thinking new players need to try to embrace. And it will take time. An effective strategy must combine research elements, production elements, fleet elements, static defenses, and diplomacy. I hope the Klackon tech exchange was also eye-opening. This was a losing war for which I had no military answers, in the final equation. The total package was needed to win: doing enough things right in all the key areas to assemble a victory.

The game's replayability is rather high. Not limitless, but very high. The terrain combinations, variable tech trees, variable factions, variable strategies and priorities chosen by each AI civ, events... this game packs more variety than others in the genre. If there's anything I would relate it to, it would be Diablo. (Seriously! Think about the original Diablo, with the randomized maps, treasures, critters, bosses... All within a decently balanced range, but variable enough to allow for different strategies and interesting enough to be worth replaying more than most other games.

We don't understand how a 'friend' can break a treaty and invade our colony all the while "amiable" and with an on-going trade agreement.

Yeah, that's definitely different than Civ. More layered. Aggression in Civ is like a light switch. They flip it on, flip it off. When it's off, you're safe, until it goes on again. There's no such thing as "unofficial aggression". No black ops, no brush wars, no cold wars.

You can have hot war whenever you want it, in MOO. The key difference is the distinction between fleets and colonies. Destroying fleets is a lesser offense. Attacking colonies is a bigger deal. If you are on the short end of the stick, you can sometimes choose between pride and practicality.

The ability to fight over disputable territory without flipping the "war switch" from "off" to "on" over every scratch, scrape and barroom brawl is a huge asset, in my view. Imagine if the Soviets had declared war on the USA for building a spy tunnel under East Berlin back in the cold war? What if the USA had declared war immediately upon discovering the plot to assemble nukes in Cuba? There is brinkmanship involved in the rivalry between great powers. Often it is in the interests of all sides not to get huffed up and go no holds barred over incursions and threats, even attacks. Imagine if the Chinese had declared war on the United States after we bombed their embassy in Serbia.

Then consider the parts of the cold war that broke out into very hot action. Korea, for starters. Korea was a bona fide war between the USA and China on Korean soil. Imagine if the first death of an American or Chinese soldier in direct combat between the two forces had triggered total war between the two primary nations. "You killed one of our units. Now it's war." Bah. Great powers DO sometimes fight very hot action under cover of very cold wars. When a game tries to emulate a civ looking out for its own interests, why wouldn't there be situations where all parties see it in their interests to fight over an asset, but not to escalate the conflict beyond that particular objective?

The brinkmanship in MOO is not perfect, nor always sensible, but I much prefer it to the simplistic models employed by other empire games. On balance, I find it much more immersive and interesting. It is one of the things that I love so much about this game.

Now if only I had read this before charging ahead with Imperium 1 so far before the deadline!

Oops. Sorry about that. I've got a lot of irons in the fire. I -meant- to have this report done before opening the first Imperium, but I didn't make it. However, you may benefit anyway. You'll have your own pre-lesson experience on the one hand, and the chance in Imperium Two to play with a stronger perspective on the other. Perhaps you will find value in that comparison. At least I hope you do.

Bravo, fantasatic read!

Thanks. :wub:


- Sirian

[Bam-Bam]

Another exciting and fun report. I normally do not care that much for diplomatic victories in my games, but in this case, I know I would have been overjoyed!

Thanks for the testing on threats--it's nice to see some confirmation of how an AI in a commanding position will exert its will.

Nice to read how much fun you are having with this game. Reminds me of many of early Epics reports, where your enjoyment of the game clearly shined from your writing.

After playing three full games so far--I am more than hooked again. Looking forward to your next report, and my next game. Now if I can just get some sleep...

[Zed-F]

Regarding bases, I use 10% as a guideline, not a hard line. Early in the game, it's usually more, especially if I anticipate an attack. Later in the game, production increases faster than base maintenance costs, so it's usually less. Perhaps my paranoia level is less than Sirian's. It also depends on how confident I feel about my missile bases being able to stand up to punishment. If I have decent planetary shields/missiles/battle computers in my tree, I will tend to worry less about bases than I would if I were missing some of those components.

One thing I do do quite a bit is build spot defenses when I spot an incoming enemy attack. If an enemy fleet approaches my space with some new designs I have not already seen, then it's time to build lots of bases at possible target planets, boosted by the reserve. In the early game, this might not be enough, and you need more prebuilt bases. In the midgame, fleets are usually still slow enough that you can see them coming and production rates are fast enough that, if you have decent defenses, you can usually get enough bases built in time to wipe out at least the most dangerous stacks in the enemy fleet. The most dangerous thing that can happen is when you're facing off against an entirely new enemy that you've never faced before, whose tech level is equal to or superior to yours, and he brings a large fleet, like the Meklars did against Sirian. Sometimes in those cases there's multiple stacks of dangerous ships, and you can't kill them all in time. However, in those cases where you aren't getting overwhelmed with a massive fleet or you've already whittled down the enemy's best ships in previous attacks, he usually sends them at you in dribs and drabs after that, so it's easier to focus on those and ignore the ones that can't really hurt you.

Again, the key for my planetary base spending is what techs do I have, versus what techs do I think my potential enemies have.


Regarding back lines, again it adjusts with the tech situation. On small maps, I usually find that most of my planets are within range 6 or 7 of enemy worlds, and it's easy for an AI to get range 6 or 7 tech. I might have one or maybe two planets that are outside that range, but oftentimes not. On larger maps, it's not uncommon to see planets that are 10 or 12 parsecs away or more from any enemy world. Yes, they could get Thorium cells, but that is quite late in the tree, and by then, you should have the production to overcome any previous neglect as far as bases go in just a few turns.

Interestingly, regarding rich planets, I have the opposite view regarding them as Sirian does. I want the AI to target my rich planets -- I almost always have ample warning of such an attack, and rich planets can build bases sooo fast it's not funny. I sometimes have to scrap a bunch of them afterwards to avoid the maintenance costs! Still, I usually try to keep them at a similar level of bases as the rest of my worlds, so they don't usually get attacked. Nebula worlds, OTOH, are definitely vulnerable and do need more bases in place at all times.


Regarding ship maintenance, my comment was more about finding an appropriate size for an attacking fleet, than a comment on when to build such a fleet. I also will not have a fleet (or a very small one to deter unwanted colonization attempts in my backyard) until I'm ready to go on offense. Again, 10% is my guideline, but not a hard line -- if I need more to accomplish my objective for whatever reason, then fine, but too much more and it's time to consider whether I should really be trying to accomplish that objective now or whether I should be focussing on getting a better tech advantage before trying again.