Are near invulnerable shields a good tactic?

[hakkarin]

Vs just putting on more guns? If you made a large ship with so so firepower but shields that recharge so fast that they can't be brought down by the enemy isn't that more useful than merely putting more guns on the ship which will just get blown up anyway?

 

[Madman198237]

No. If you can't escape (Enemy has a jump interdictor capable of overpowering you, and you sacrificed speed for shielding) and you can't defeat your enemies' shields (Poor weaponry in response), you will eventually lose, even if they have to batphone everybody they know to come kill you.

Balanced designs are best. Specialized, however, are better in fleets.

 

[Sachys]

No.

Not entirely true - a good damage tank with some seriously annoying turrets tacked on can really take the heat of the rest of your fleet / allies ships. of course, this depends on circumstance and how well you use and build it, but stating its a useless tactic is... useless!

 

[Lecic]

If you make a ship with a big enough % of its mass dedicated to rechargers that nothing can beat its regen, you would probably have a ship that's just rechargers and the power to support them.

The thing about recharge tanking is that someone can always bring a gun with a big enough alpha to instantly kill your shields, and then you're pretty much fucked.
[doublepost=1493002636,1493002590][/doublepost]

Not entirely true - a good damage tank with some seriously annoying turrets tacked on can really take the heat of the rest of your fleet / allies ships. of course, this depends on circumstance and how well you use and build it, but stating its a useless tactic is... useless!

If you had read the rest of his post you'd see he said that specialized ships like that are alright in FLEETS, just that they're bad for solo.

 

[Sachys]

If you had read the rest of his post you'd see he said that specialized ships like that are alright in FLEETS, just that they're bad for solo.

If it wasnt 4am I may have noticed those last few words and not thought it a part of their forum sig. O____o~

 

[GRHayes]

Vs just putting on more guns? If you made a large ship with so so firepower but shields that recharge so fast that they can't be brought down by the enemy isn't that more useful than merely putting more guns on the ship which will just get blown up anyway?

If you play defense only you can't win. The most playing defense can do is either drag out a battle or create a stalemate.
If you want to win you play offense with some defense. If you want to have a more decisive win you have to over whelm an enemies defense and take them down fast. The slower you take them down the more damage you also take. Wars of attrition never produce a great out come both sides end up loosing in the long run.

In this game you are pretty much going to fight some form of war of attrition unless your ship massively overwhelms the opposing ship.
There is little room under the current game to actually employ even a fraction of real strategy in this game do to a number of aspects.
You don't have the ability to easily target crucial systems like engines, turrets, life support and so on and switch on the fly. You can use target my target however that is very limited.
You don't have weapons groups that you can assign and set to a task.
Ships don't really play the roles they should.
But it is a work in progress and hopefully some of those issues will get fixed and others added.

 

[Madman198237]

If it wasnt 4am I may have noticed those last few words and not thought it a part of their forum sig. O____o~

Given that it was late here when I wrote it, and that I've been sick for a couple days, I understand your pain. Though I'd recommend actually getting to sleep before 4 am. You're just wasting the next day by being up that late. It's a lot harder to enjoy things when you're half-conscious.

 

[Sachys]

Given that it was late here when I wrote it, and that I've been sick for a couple days, I understand your pain. Though I'd recommend actually getting to sleep before 4 am. You're just wasting the next day by being up that late. It's a lot harder to enjoy things when you're half-conscious.

Not really possible with insomnia - and its not the temporary type either. 4am is pretty early for me most nights, but last night i was like an extra in a George A. Romero film. :D

 

[hakkarin]

If you play defense only you can't win. The most playing defense can do is either drag out a battle or create a stalemate.

Depends on how large the ship is. You could just start by creating a ship that has decent firepower, and then expand it by giving it extremely powerful shields.

 

[GRHayes]

Depends on how large the ship is. You could just start by creating a ship that has decent firepower, and then expand it by giving it extremely powerful shields.

Your enemy can do the same thing! If they do anything similar you are fighting a war of attrition.
The way the game currently is weapons blocks exceed the ability for shield blocks to prevent damage and regenerate.
That means under the current game state the ship with more of its mass used as weapons will create more damage at a faster rate.
Since the only way to defeat a ship is get structural down to less than 50% the ship with the more damage output will most likely win bar bad luck or just being an idiot.

 

[kulbolen]

dmg scales ~14x shieldregen. good luck being invincible to any offensive ships anywhere near your mass.

 

[hakkarin]

good luck being invincible to any offensive ships anywhere near your mass.

But what if your ship is very large? Then your argument isn't valid unless you get attacked by some rare super ship.

 

[kulbolen]

But what if your ship is very large? Then your argument isn't valid unless you get attacked by some rare super ship.

if you can build it that large, so can anyone else. you are not an exception. not to mention anyone with an offensive ship can threaten you at 10% your size, and you arent the magical special hero who can build something over 10x larger than anyone else (and if you did, it wouldnt be playable anyway because lolservers.) the only time your scenario applies is if youre playing single player and you control the enemies you encounter, in which case none of this even matters.

 

[Lecic]

But what if your ship is very large? Then your argument isn't valid unless you get attacked by some rare super ship.

What's stopping your enemy from also building a ship that big?

Super shielded vessels are useful for two things- fleets and suppressing rowdy tax subjects.

 

[GRHayes]

But what if your ship is very large? Then your argument isn't valid unless you get attacked by some rare super ship.

I see what your problem is you want to be the biggest fish in the see. What you are missing is there are always equal or greater size fishes.
Under combat conditions shield recharge is different Defense Systems - StarMade Wiki
Even if they where able to recharge at a full rate they still would not keep up with weapons damage.
1 weapon block creates more damage than the optimal recharge rate of a shield. simply look at a cannon block 10 damage vs 5.5 recharge.
But under combat after 1 hit it becomes 10 damage vs 0.6875 recharge if near fully recharged or 1.375 when shields are fully depleted.
In short a ship 1/8th your size can take you down if they put that mass towards damage rather than shields. Not just that they get greater maneuverability and speed.

The tactics of attacking is the means to win is true in real life even more so in this game because of their attempts to try and create a bonus for small ships. It actually has the opposite effect when anyone understanding this rule comes into play.

 

[Madman198237]

Glass cannons work based on this simple (And obvious) truth:

If your enemy is dead, he isn't shooting back. Of course, if he kills you first, well, have fun...

 

[Brokengauge]

hakkarin I'm guessing you already had an opinion on it before you asked, right? lol

Anyway, there's a reason that there's a real life saying that goes "the best defense is a good offense" and not the other way around.

Game mechanics aside, you have to look at winning any fight like this: I need to kill that SOB before he kills me. Fist fights are normally over on seconds. Gun fights are normally over in seconds. Dog fights (airplanes, not dogs, you monsters!) are over in seconds, and even in the olden days only lasted a few minutes. Limited ship to ship naval engagements (6 ships or less) usually only lasted an hour or so. Every single one of these things comes down to this: when going into combat, always assume that your enemy can hit harder than you can take.

Back to starmade, everyone has already explained that PER BLOCK (not trying to shout, but the italics button is wonky for me) weapons always surpass shields. Focusing on shields is only a viable tactic against opponents who are laughably smaller than you. It is unwise to assume that this will even be a common scenario you will encounter. It's not even likely that you can balance a ship out to be shield heavy, and still a good damage dealer because of the # of blocks you have to use to boost shields vs. Using the same # of blocks to get 14x(that was the number, right?) Vs. the amount of damage you would've been able to absorb had you gone with shields.

I mean, you could still plan on simply always being "the BAMFiest BAMF who ever BAMFed" but I don't think that would turn out so well.

I know I haven't said anything new, but maybe seeing it out a different way makes it come together better for you.

If you're dead set on focusing on shields, you can always experiment and see for yourself how well it works.

 

[Madman198237]

Hahahahahaha not quite, Broken. It all depends. Fistfights? Yes, because there's only so many times your off-balance butt can get punched in the nose before you fall over after making your first mistake. Gun fights? Heck no! Unless you're thinking a nice, pretty, organized Western duel.

Most gun fights last a while (Since they're part of wars with more than a few guys involved) as people take cover. You have to specify, though. An ambush tends to last much less time (A well-planned one, anyway), whereas trench warfare never really stopped for about 3 years in some places on the Western Front.

Dogfights? The run-up lasts a long while. Modern-day dogfights don't exist. There's no real examples of them, because of modern-day missiles. You don't get in a twisting, turning, guns-blazed ol' fashioned dogfight when you can just have the EWAR aircraft radio in bogies, confirmed hostile, closing at x,y,z and 20 miles. You sync up with his radar systems and shoot it down from over the horizon.
However, even WWII dogfights lasted as long as the planes had fuel for. Sometimes, just 15 minutes (Germans over Britain), sometimes, hours-long chases (American aircraft daylight bombing raids into Germany).

And most naval engagements last hours. Surprise attacks, such as MTB (Motor Torpedo Boat) and frogmen attacks don't last long, but battleship duels? The Bismarck, a then-crippled, an only slightly-above-average battleship (Had good protection scheme, solid armament, great speed, but no really crazy advantages) that couldn't move (Stationary targets are dead targets in naval warfare) took hours to sink with gunfire. The only ships that every went down fast were, like the WWI British battlecruisers and the Hood, suffered catastrophic destruction from their own ammunitions. The Hood went down (Most likely) when the midship torpedo storage area exploded. The British battlecruisers at Jutland all took damage that set off the cordite in their shellrooms, destroying them instantly. Jutland stretched over an afternoon and through the night. Carrier battles took slightly less time, as torpedoes are extremely deadly, and dive-bombers hit hard as well, but still, we're not talking single hours for even the smallest battle (Given that the two sides meet in battle and both choose to stay engaged. Sometimes, it makes more sense to run) to be truly finished.

 

[Brokengauge]

Hahahahahaha not quite, Broken. It all depends. Fistfights? Yes, because there's only so many times your off-balance butt can get punched in the nose before you fall over after making your first mistake. Gun fights? Heck no! Unless you're thinking a nice, pretty, organized Western duel.

Most gun fights last a while (Since they're part of wars with more than a few guys involved) as people take cover. You have to specify, though. An ambush tends to last much less time (A well-planned one, anyway), whereas trench warfare never really stopped for about 3 years in some places on the Western Front.

Dogfights? The run-up lasts a long while. Modern-day dogfights don't exist. There's no real examples of them, because of modern-day missiles. You don't get in a twisting, turning, guns-blazed ol' fashioned dogfight when you can just have the EWAR aircraft radio in bogies, confirmed hostile, closing at x,y,z and 20 miles. You sync up with his radar systems and shoot it down from over the horizon.
However, even WWII dogfights lasted as long as the planes had fuel for. Sometimes, just 15 minutes (Germans over Britain), sometimes, hours-long chases (American aircraft daylight bombing raids into Germany).

And most naval engagements last hours. Surprise attacks, such as MTB (Motor Torpedo Boat) and frogmen attacks don't last long, but battleship duels? The Bismarck, a then-crippled, an only slightly-above-average battleship (Had good protection scheme, solid armament, great speed, but no really crazy advantages) that couldn't move (Stationary targets are dead targets in naval warfare) took hours to sink with gunfire. The only ships that every went down fast were, like the WWI British battlecruisers and the Hood, suffered catastrophic destruction from their own ammunitions. The Hood went down (Most likely) when the midship torpedo storage area exploded. The British battlecruisers at Jutland all took damage that set off the cordite in their shellrooms, destroying them instantly. Jutland stretched over an afternoon and through the night. Carrier battles took slightly less time, as torpedoes are extremely deadly, and dive-bombers hit hard as well, but still, we're not talking single hours for even the smallest battle (Given that the two sides meet in battle and both choose to stay engaged. Sometimes, it makes more sense to run) to be truly finished.

Sorry, wasn't referring to warfare specifically with regards to gunfights. I was speaking more about 1 on 1 shootouts between pissed off civilians.

Anything involving a group is going to last a long time, but I did over simplify.

As far as naval battles, I was thinking of the battle of the river plate at Montevideo. German pocket battleship (or armored ship) admiral Graf spee vs. 3 British cruisers which lasted almost 2 and a half hours and saw the 3 British cruisers end up in worse shape (because the Graf spee had massive 11" guns, far deadlier than the British ships could handle). Large naval engagements always take a long time though. Again, oversimplification on my part.

Also, the bismark was sink on her maiden voyage: not a good example of operational longevity despite the pounding it took to bring her down. Not to mention, it wasn't like she was involved in a single running battlrp the whole time. The initial fight with the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen vs the Hood and Prince of Wales was over very quickly: Hood being likely brought down by her own crew stacking cordite in the turret(like you mentioned about jutland in the previous war) and Prince of Wales being chased off. Did the prinz eugen even carry torpedos? I thought it was an all gun heavy cruiser.

I feel my initial point still stands, but I was a bit inaccurate. Thanks for keeping me honest lol

EDIT

looked it up, prinz eugen did have torpedos, but multiple dives and investigations have all come to the same conclusion: magazine explosion, probably from shell fire, but can't know for sure because of the massive damage.

Also: Idk why I thought you said the hood was struck by a torpedo. I reread what you said, and for some reason my brain failed me the first time I read it lol.

 

[Madman198237]

Hahaha Graf Spee????? Terrible vessel. Oversized, underarmored, and generally outmatched. It was doing a cruiser's job, it was just being a bigger target while doing it.
River Platte was an interesting battle (Really showed the weaknesses of the panzerschiff [Read: destroyed reputations]) but was more of a running action, as I remember, because the admiral about the Spee realized he was outmatched. I believe he made it to port, was told by the Argentinians that "we don't serve your kind here", and the scuttled his vessel out in the harbor. I could be wrong, though. I'm tired and really shouldn't be writing a rant. That said, I'm going to continue! YEAH FAULTY REASONING AND STUPID STATEMENTS!

Yeah, I understand all that about the Bismarck, but it was still a well-protected yet overall balanced design. Even after it was crippled, though, it took the British battleships to the limits of their fuel---they didn't even sink the Bismarck, a light cruiser had to go in a torpedo her.

The commanding officer of the group, a rear admiral aboard the Norfolk, I believe, ordered the then-badly-outmatched Prince of Wales out of the fight, as it was a new ship, with at least one gun out of commission, with a new crew, who made new-crew mistakes, and so could not finish the fight. The Hood itself, however, most likely did NOT get destroyed due to a magazine hit. British cordite in WWII was much more like WWI German cordite, in that it did NOT explode uncontrollably, usually. Also, British precautions and magazine armor had improved beyond all recognition on the battlecruisers. So, no, it was probably not the cordite. When did Prinz Eugen get mentioned? The Hood went down when its own torpedoes went off. Most people thought it was a repeat of Jutland (Three or four British battlecruisers exploded in similar fashion. Took hits to 'Q' turret, sudden, massive explosion, ship gone), but two boards of enquiry thought it was something else---Hood's magazines were too well protected, German armor-piercing shell too ineffective, to have reached the magazines. Like I said, it was probably the torpedoes stored amidships. If not, it might have been the antiaircraft gun ammunition stores, which were much less armored, closer to the outside, and may have set off the main battery magazines. But we'll probably never know for certain, as it's very hard to know what you're looking at when what you're looking at is 80 years old, rusty, and has the minor issue of having been exploded.