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[umiman]

(I'm playing with mods)

Isn't aluminum/Titanium Vanilla?

That's from Cataclysm.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

My B, bois.

Played so long with mods, I have forgotten the Vanilla stuff.

That said, CE is a great mod, and also both aluminum/titanium are pretty well balanced.

[ChairmanPoo]

No. You have wood wall/armor/heavy armor, metal wall/armor/heavy armor, brick, stone/massive fortification, and then spoilery things

[Dostoevsky]

Yeah, for the most part vanilla adheres pretty well to turn-of-the-20th-century / steampunk.

I've read here and there people talking about an option that lets AI use your designs... is that actually a thing? I thought the conquest AI just had set packages of ships per nation-type.

[umiman]

Yeah, for the most part vanilla adheres pretty well to turn-of-the-20th-century / steampunk.

I've read here and there people talking about an option that lets AI use your designs... is that actually a thing? I thought the conquest AI just had set packages of ships per nation-type.

Uhhh... I think you'd have to mod it in.

I'd like to know how too. I'm getting tired of the AI's designs myself.

[Shooer]

I just started playing with the Cataclystic expansions mod and it added a few new nations.  One is kind of crazy with it's main defense building that is... just a little to tall.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's main ship is rocket powered and therefore very fast.  They can cover a large map stupid fast, but they are pretty frail.  Didn't stop them from taking over half the map while I built tall.

Main reason I grabbed the mod is it listed commerce modules that reduced maintenance to negatives.  Things like trade storage for ships along with farms, mines and workshops for structures.  I turtled down into my capitol and only one of my towns, covered them in oil derricks, then built a ton of light ships to take everything around me in one go, and covered them in more oil derricks.  Now I'm sending armies of 2-3 Pelican IIs from my last game out to just march and conquer as much as they can before taking to much damage.  Not even repairing most of them since I can build 2 new ones every 3 income ticks.

Soon I'll have the heavier weapons and turrets from the mod and the Pelican III will be born.  From the ashes of the broken and forgot II's left behind, a new grand army shall arise.

[Kagus]

Yikes... Just poke that thing a bit in the upper-middle and the whole thing comes crashing down once the bricks start falling.

[Shooer]

First major battle of that game.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Vs 4 Pelican IIs and a tank I designed before I could build Spider tanks.  Lost only a Pelican II and a half.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've now fought that sized fleet twice now.  Almost done, probably won't get another good fight like that again.

[martinuzz]

This does look like a lot of fun.Gonna put it on my wishlist and PTW

[ChairmanPoo]

So, one of the AI nations decided to face me with no less than 12 dreadnoughts, full of cannons.

To which I only had one thing to say...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Drakarys!

[umiman]

Niiiiiice

------

So I was playing a casual Cataclysm mod game. Have a mod for 3x the AI income. Made it stuck in tech T2 for balloons but a little advanced stuff.

My neighbour has the tech for rockets.

First couple of battles are dicey, but I slowly grind through the war of attrition. Their ships are hyperspeed fast, but lightly armoured. They focus a lot on flamethrowers and giant rockets. So yeah, that's their game.

Anyway, I have them down to their last capital but they unveil a new ship.

A ram.

I laugh, how bad could a ram be?

Well...

Ever seen a ram powered by rockets? This thing looks like a small little tube with a small little ram on it. Must cost like... 600 tops. It literally SLICES through my fleet like butter. Carves straight holes through all my ships. Just straight up cuts them in half. This little ship solos everything I have and because it's so small, I can't hit it.

So that's how I lost everything to a single rocket powered ram.

[Farce]

OKAY

I've managed to successfully figure out how to manage myself, at least in a Normal difficulty game.  The answer to most of the vanilla stuff I've encountered so far seems to be 'fly real high and spam bombs'.

I've run into some unpleasant AIs who prescribe to the same idea.  I had a tough time with one of their shipyard cities that had like 6-7 tough defense towers with rockets and flak guns, but after massing enough bombers and bringing in some tanks that could negate those annoying flaks I managed to break them.  All the while they kept raiding the little towns nearby - even after spamming piles of 0 maintenance tinydefenses around equipped with deck guns, dorsal turrets, flaks, and beefy stone armor as I was able to research stuff up, it was still kinda a crapshoot to deal with them, as the bombs could usually disable the weapons, or they'd just eventually run out of ammo or whatever, even though the enemy ships were decently fragile and prone to chain explosions.

So far I've run into the same issue of 'The AI tends to surrender shipless provinces a lot' that I saw someone mention earlier, and it has been kinda aggravating that I haven't been able to see how effective the newer designs have been since they roll in numbers apparently too scary for the AI to deal with, but on the other hand it's probably good that I don't have to sit through 3 huge heavy tanks blowing away 1-2 rifle towers with every expansion.

I'm considering some mods, but I'm not sure I like the idea of rocket airships and the like, since those seem to be blatantly better than all the vanilla shit - those rocket engines for example look both smaller and are apparently way faster and such.

I've been having trouble figuring my designs still.  Bomb bays have been crazy effective, and a lot of the other stuff doesn't seem quite as much so.  I've tried an Imperial cannon-focused tank, but that thing seems to miss a lot, and against the 6-7 aforementioned rocket/flak towers I took 3 big rockets, but those seemed to chew through them real slow.  Bombers seemed to do the job better.  Some Heavy Cannon tanks seemed to miss quite a lot, too.

[ChairmanPoo]

Problem with bombers is that when you ramp up the difficulty the AI tends to target them real soon. Suspendium tank bombers work but are suicidal - dont expect them to outlast the battle. Suspendium chamber bombers... tend to fly lower, be more expensive, and still be shot down too often. Maybe armored with steel they'd do better but my overall impression is that bombers have little role to play in hard and further against heavily defended positions.
I've had better luck with rocket ships, with some heavily armored land cruisers drawing battery fire.
Rockets are probably a better choice for base defenses, too. Problem with deck guns is that, while effective, they dont benefit from the building's armor. I think it's hard to go wrong with rockets. Rushing rockets and then teching uo guns up to heavy cannons to help rockets deal with late game heavy armor works fairly well

[Kagus]

It's worth mentioning that the old meta was basically just high-altitude bombers and more high-altitude bombers, with the occasional dirt cheap interceptor thrown in to try and take down some of the high-altitude bombers, because flak installations couldn't compete pound-for-pound with the bombers above them. At best they'd shoot down one and then get annihilated by having the carcass slam down on top of them, if they managed to even get that far with their abysmal accuracy at longer range.

Steps have likely been taken to specifically combat that kind of weighting, and balancing is always a fickle beast.

[Dostoevsky]

Speaking of balance, the first patch is out.

Among other notable things, accuracy of bombs and rockets is nerfed, the imperial cannon is buffed, and damage that's [edit: equal to or] below the armor value has a chance of doing 0 damage. (Before, a gun would always do 1 'scratch damage' which meant gatlings and flamethrowers were quite dangerous regardless of armoring.)

Says the campaign AI is improved as well, which I'm looking forward to looking at.