So what is the counter to carriers and/or metric tonnes of missiles?

[evil713]

I'm either fighting the imperials/colonials or the tinkers, and in the first case you know its fighters/bombers/strike fighters and in the second case its the eternal arsenal of the tinkers.

I can invest in a lot of point defence, and I have, but then I'm lacking on the offence to actually break something. And there is not a clear counter as near as I can figure when it comes to research.

Is it Arda techs? should I be going that way? Or is there a blatantly obvious way of countering this?

[nathanebht]

Your fighters can target missiles in flight or fighters. Your medium weapons can also target both. But of course this is using up your offensive output.

Arda techs aren't going to help. Good shields and high output weapons of all sizes are the most helpful. Move your ships close together to overlap point defense. Have enough ships to handle the incoming enemy fleet without taking major losses.

You can look at the loadouts of enemy ships before battle to see what weapons they are bringing. You can also look at it in battle to see what ships to target first.

What difficulty level are you playing and how many turns are you into your game?

[Dragar]

The really important thing to understand is that your point-defense is local, while the missiles/fighters offense is global. That means no matter how good your point defense is, if battles get big enough, all their weapons can be brought to bear on you, while you can only defend with a few.

You can extend your local defenses with reasonably fast ships (cruisers have a pretty decent weapon/speed balance for this job)and using fighters (the latter are very good against missiles).

However, in larger battles this will not be enough, and the balance will tip toward the missiles/strikecraft again.

The best thing to do is encourage battles to be fought in conditions less favourable to that tactic: smaller battles are much more in your favour. Splitting up your forces and making lots of attacks, rather than one doom fleet, is the best way to stop missiles swarms becoming uncounterable.

[nathanebht]

You can also send scouts bouncing to and from any enemy planets that are in range. This cuts off food transfer which can cause population loss.

Tinkers don't eat food but it will still usually cause them to send ships to defend. One cheap scout can often distract 1 or 2 more expensive enemy ships. Sometime more.

[username]

Shittons of PD. The thing with missile/fighters vs. PD is that, unlike other weapons, sufficient PD will completely shut them down leaving them totally unable to do anything to you. Missiles and fighters are devastating if the enemy doesn't have enough PD, and completely worthless if they do.

The really important thing to understand is that your point-defense is local, while the missiles/fighters offense is global. That means no matter how good your point defense is, if battles get big enough, all their weapons can be brought to bear on you, while you can only defend with a few.

The locality of point defense is pretty large, though. In a one-on-one, all-missiles always gets stopped by all-PD. This means that in order for missiles to do anything to your target, there will be multiple enemies firing on one target, which means some targets are NOT fired upon. You'll quickly notice this when you advance that unit forwards a tile and no missiles move.

Move THESE units forward while the units that are targeted hide behind them and kite the missiles towards more of them. This will allow you to tow every missile on the map through your entire PD net until they're all dead.

[evil713]

Yes this is all good, but none of this solves the other problem, killing the thing that does the thing.

Kite PD I already grasped, given the near singleminded ness of the ai. This leads into the unfortunate territory of trying to fight an enemy that is better equipped than I due to design or faction perks. I cant match them in fighters or missiles, they will match me in PD, I cant swap out point defense for more damage, because I need the point defence, and I cant use the point defense offensively, because I need it on defense.

now some factions I might be able to eek out a counter, like orthin artillery and spam gunships into fleets. What I need is an offensive stratagem that can be used by any race.

Now the small strike attacks on multple systems I had not tried yet. will give it a shot

[Alimaeus]

I believe the generic answer you're looking for are as many rapid-fire PD turbo-lasers as you can fit on a ship, ideally a light cruiser or escort cruiser. An escort cruiser fitted this way can give you for example 32 PD turbo-lasers, or a light cruiser gets you 24 PD turbo-lasers.

Missiles BEGONE

Strike-craft BEGONE

Then you just need to bring some heavy hitters of your own to do damage or hybridise with 4 medium slot 16 PD turbo-laser Escort Cruisers

[PrivateHudson]

What determines missile/torpedo/fighter survivability under PD fire? Are torps more durable than missiles? Are more advanced missiles/fighters tougher? Does current armor tech influence? Are there any racial or situational boni for missile/torps/fighters nimblety? If you know some more or less detailed guide to combat mechanics, please share.
PS: Do spectacular ship blow-ups have a chance to destroy nearby missiles/torps/fighters? Still can't determine it myself despite several playthroughs.

[Arioch]

The "escort cruiser" hulls that most factions have are designed to be specialized for point defense.

What determines missile/torpedo/fighter survivability under PD fire? Are torps more durable than missiles? Are more advanced missiles/fighters tougher? Does current armor tech influence? Are there any racial or situational boni for missile/torps/fighters nimblety? If you know some more or less detailed guide to combat mechanics, please share.
PS: Do spectacular ship blow-ups have a chance to destroy nearby missiles/torps/fighters? Still can't determine it myself despite several playthroughs.

Missiles, torpedoes and fighters have a chance to be hit, and each has a set number of hit points which is not increased by armor tech. Hit points for each type are:

All Missiles: 6
Nuclear Torpedoes: 16
All other Torpedoes: 20
Interceptors: 10
Bombers: 20
Tinkers Vindicators: 25
Strike Fighters: 30
Assault Shuttles: 30

[above edited with follow-up information]

Missiles, torpedoes, and each type of fighter each have a particular number of hit points (6 for all missiles, 16 for nuclear torpedoes, 20 for other torpedoes), which is not increased by armor tech (missiles are not armored).

Reactor explosions do have a chance to damage missiles, torpedoes and fighters.

[matt3916]

Arioch -- Nice detail on the hit points for missile/torp. How about fighters/bombers/strike fighters?

[Arioch]

Arioch -- Nice detail on the hit points for missile/torp. How about fighters/bombers/strike fighters?

Interceptors are health 10, Bombers are 20, Strike Fighters are 30.

[matt3916]

Love, absolutely love, the numbers, thanks. Do any of ftr/bmb/stk have armour?

[matt3916]

Oh, and how about assault shuttles?

[Arioch]

Shuttles have 30 health, and the Tinkers Vindicators have 25. These are all flat values, not affected by armor tech.

[matt3916]

Right then. Time to stop putting AP on PDs.

I love this game.