Epic MP UDM 3 with new Destroyer Patch
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 7:51 pm
Gentle and I had yet another massive epic UDM 3 game...
We've had lots of those before, and both he and I are getting better in many strategic aspects of this game. UDM is probably my favorite mod with beautiful models.
One of the few drawbacks of this mod is a very heavy armor and weapon load of the elite cruisers in the game rendering all the illustrious models of the light ships useless - they get wiped out early.
So in many of our games with Gentle it used to be a slug fest of who can make more heavy ships... I did not build any light ships. AI would preferentially target those, and Gentle would wipe them out on first voley ....
Fixing starting fighting distance helped but it was not good enough... Heavies were too heavy and lights were too light.
so I asked TC and he kindly made a patch for me - raising the price of heavy ships, lowereding their shields, hull, and weapon output but 10-15% and lowering price of light ships while increasing their hull/shields and weapon load by 10-15%.
We tested this with Gentle in 2 games now... Third game is in progress. Our last game was t3, medium large, romulans (me) vs dominion (Gentle), impossible.
I started in right upper corner, he in left center close to top. I knew that Gentle, being a maniacal diabolical colonist as he is, would try and colonize the crap out the universe that would make him essentially untouchable by turn 200: he would have ridiculous amount of credits, enough morale to tolerate loss of up to 20 planets and enough base to recover from pretty much anything...
I've colonized some planets while investing heavily into research and building up destroyer type 2. I build 40 of those while trying to expand and look for Gentle in the close vicinity but he turned out to be farther then i anticipated.
I pushed research for Warbird 2 and destroyer 3. After i got 40 destoroyer 2, i build up 25 warbirds and upgraded them to level 2. I then started working on heavy destroyer as it would be the key to my survival. Ship for ship, he has better hull and with reduced starting distance, ram death for romulan ship from the dominion hull is almost a guarantee. SO I had to outresearch him.
By my calculations, Gentle will colonize the crap out of his corner of the univers, then upgrade his atack ships to level 3. One vs one for any ship type, he would kill me by ram death. So u had to come up with better destroyer before he did.
As soon as researched heavy destroyer, I used my upgraded industry to pump them out. By then I encountered klingons - they were due west and after taking over 4 of their colony planets i've beaten them down to stay in their little corner.
When I finally saw dominion I knew i was in trouble. He had 2 starbases in the south west, between klings and feds. Gentle was immediately due south AND west.... I did not quite know where his mother planets were and with me being heavily invested on the western klingon (and soon federation front), that left my bottom uncovered from the hordes from south...
He was allied with Feds and he was getting crazy cash. His curve was out of this world. His planet count was pushing 70 and I knew that I had find his mother world soon. I counted that he probably delayed his shipbuilding in favor of expansion..
I kicked up research for wb3 into high gear and started funneling all my newly build heavy destoryers and recently researched battlebird to my south colonies, parked them over zakdorn and waited for Gentle to show up. I had about 35 HD available and a couple of warbirds.
Soon enough I saw Tlani on the far south light up yellow and he moved with bunch of TTs and all the alied heavy ships (ferengi, tlani, tholians, xindi – quite an amazing collection of minor ships etc) - 30 in total plus light ships going for one of my colonies that is on the highway to my homestead.... I did not see any proper dominion heavy cruisers and I understood that this is a diversion tactic. His main force was elsewhere...
He did this trick before and it cost me 2 games in the past just when I thought i had the victory by the throat.
New heavy destoryers proved awesome, he lost all his expiditionary force but i knew this was just a teaser, not a dicisive battle...
Immediately after this I moved all of my HD to the western front - it took me 9 turns. I left skeleton crew to guard the southern colonies and watch over mirardon that just turned to dominion - right in my backyard... I did not have enough heavies to take down the planet so I had just leave with this threat for now.
I upgraded my warbirds to 3 while taking down 2 minors that belonged to dominion in the area of the starbases in the southwest. Then I took down one starbase with 20 heavies and 65 dest 2... lost 8 destoyers type 3...
TTs are SLOW - 1 turn speed which I found fun (Gentle hated it). Also, with reduced weapon output of warbirds I had very hard time trying to take over planets, kept loosing TTs. I took over his Ferenginar, Flaxian world... However, his Curve did not even budge... I took over one more fed colony and this gave me range to the west. I sent my upgraded scouts and soon saw the predictable patter of 9 planets with trade-routes coming to them... He was about 10 squares west from my flaxian acquisition....
I was moving my heavy destroyer group west while pushing TTS to his realm, built a starbase and started taking his colonies that lines up the highway to his motherworld... I soon learned that he had only 9 heavy cruisers over his homeworld and they were type 2... He was probably stalling his research to get more cruisers and I knew he had more of them elsewhere... The graph looked bad for cardies so he must be waging cardassian extermination somewhere. While he was away, I took 4 of dominion colonies in quick order. This stalled his graph finally but I was still way way below. However, BBC anounced fall of cardassian to dominion and then his graph shot up again... His morale was amazing.
I sent my TTs to the north to take down some unprotected colonies but that's when things got bad for me...
He moved out his 65 fast attack type 3 plus some heavies and confronted my 25 warbirds and 60 destoyers... I did not target his attack vessels on cloaked run...
He rammed my destoyers then retreated. He lost 3 heavy cruisers... I lost 55 destroyers... This was a pure pyrrhic victory and it hurt. My HD were 5 squares away and the line of supply was getting very very long...
Fortunately feds and klings offered peace. Then klings offered affiliation, that gave me cash and then 20 grand per turn over next several turns from feds and klings for about 10 turns... that helped quite a bit.
I built up as many HD as I could while pushing for HD2... I stalled while loosing my TTs to his coordinated attacks on my supply lines... He also upgraded to cruiser 3 and was healing his hull on his starbases. He managed to stop my advance to his homeworld but i slipped 4 tts north and they took 2 more colonies...
Meanwhile in the south, he bought 6 heavy cruisers, got some tts and advanced to take over my outpost colony in the south, giving him range to a cluster of very valuable colonies with a lot of research and intel...I kept him at bay at first but did not have enough heavy ships to inflict any loses other then TT burn out...
My HD finally arrived to the west... AND they got upgraded. AS I was nursing their hull back to health, I finally felt that with them around I can probably survive. Fortunately Gentle did not build up any HD... but he had 70 or so fast attack, elite, type 3 plus 20 strikers and 35 heavies...
He moved onto his lost colony planet with plans to take it back... I was 2 turns away from upgrade to type 4 WB... with 8-10 turns of no hull after this... So I decided to take a chance and I moved in with my 60 heavy destoryer 2, 30 WB, 6 battlebirds, and 3 strikers vs his 70 dest 3, 20 strike, and 30 heavies...
Battle was glorious and HD performed admirably… IN fact they were the once that ensured a victorious outcome of this battle.
So I think tweaking the destroyers a bit made a big difference in this game and made them actually usable… Without a patch, all the light ships would have been wiped out on turn 1... And we've had had a crap load of heavy cruisers... Gentle can share his side of the story. I can give u the patch to try, it is self-install.
We've had lots of those before, and both he and I are getting better in many strategic aspects of this game. UDM is probably my favorite mod with beautiful models.
One of the few drawbacks of this mod is a very heavy armor and weapon load of the elite cruisers in the game rendering all the illustrious models of the light ships useless - they get wiped out early.
So in many of our games with Gentle it used to be a slug fest of who can make more heavy ships... I did not build any light ships. AI would preferentially target those, and Gentle would wipe them out on first voley ....
Fixing starting fighting distance helped but it was not good enough... Heavies were too heavy and lights were too light.
so I asked TC and he kindly made a patch for me - raising the price of heavy ships, lowereding their shields, hull, and weapon output but 10-15% and lowering price of light ships while increasing their hull/shields and weapon load by 10-15%.
We tested this with Gentle in 2 games now... Third game is in progress. Our last game was t3, medium large, romulans (me) vs dominion (Gentle), impossible.
I started in right upper corner, he in left center close to top. I knew that Gentle, being a maniacal diabolical colonist as he is, would try and colonize the crap out the universe that would make him essentially untouchable by turn 200: he would have ridiculous amount of credits, enough morale to tolerate loss of up to 20 planets and enough base to recover from pretty much anything...
I've colonized some planets while investing heavily into research and building up destroyer type 2. I build 40 of those while trying to expand and look for Gentle in the close vicinity but he turned out to be farther then i anticipated.
I pushed research for Warbird 2 and destroyer 3. After i got 40 destoroyer 2, i build up 25 warbirds and upgraded them to level 2. I then started working on heavy destroyer as it would be the key to my survival. Ship for ship, he has better hull and with reduced starting distance, ram death for romulan ship from the dominion hull is almost a guarantee. SO I had to outresearch him.
By my calculations, Gentle will colonize the crap out of his corner of the univers, then upgrade his atack ships to level 3. One vs one for any ship type, he would kill me by ram death. So u had to come up with better destroyer before he did.
As soon as researched heavy destroyer, I used my upgraded industry to pump them out. By then I encountered klingons - they were due west and after taking over 4 of their colony planets i've beaten them down to stay in their little corner.
When I finally saw dominion I knew i was in trouble. He had 2 starbases in the south west, between klings and feds. Gentle was immediately due south AND west.... I did not quite know where his mother planets were and with me being heavily invested on the western klingon (and soon federation front), that left my bottom uncovered from the hordes from south...
He was allied with Feds and he was getting crazy cash. His curve was out of this world. His planet count was pushing 70 and I knew that I had find his mother world soon. I counted that he probably delayed his shipbuilding in favor of expansion..
I kicked up research for wb3 into high gear and started funneling all my newly build heavy destoryers and recently researched battlebird to my south colonies, parked them over zakdorn and waited for Gentle to show up. I had about 35 HD available and a couple of warbirds.
Soon enough I saw Tlani on the far south light up yellow and he moved with bunch of TTs and all the alied heavy ships (ferengi, tlani, tholians, xindi – quite an amazing collection of minor ships etc) - 30 in total plus light ships going for one of my colonies that is on the highway to my homestead.... I did not see any proper dominion heavy cruisers and I understood that this is a diversion tactic. His main force was elsewhere...
He did this trick before and it cost me 2 games in the past just when I thought i had the victory by the throat.
New heavy destoryers proved awesome, he lost all his expiditionary force but i knew this was just a teaser, not a dicisive battle...
Immediately after this I moved all of my HD to the western front - it took me 9 turns. I left skeleton crew to guard the southern colonies and watch over mirardon that just turned to dominion - right in my backyard... I did not have enough heavies to take down the planet so I had just leave with this threat for now.
I upgraded my warbirds to 3 while taking down 2 minors that belonged to dominion in the area of the starbases in the southwest. Then I took down one starbase with 20 heavies and 65 dest 2... lost 8 destoyers type 3...
TTs are SLOW - 1 turn speed which I found fun (Gentle hated it). Also, with reduced weapon output of warbirds I had very hard time trying to take over planets, kept loosing TTs. I took over his Ferenginar, Flaxian world... However, his Curve did not even budge... I took over one more fed colony and this gave me range to the west. I sent my upgraded scouts and soon saw the predictable patter of 9 planets with trade-routes coming to them... He was about 10 squares west from my flaxian acquisition....
I was moving my heavy destroyer group west while pushing TTS to his realm, built a starbase and started taking his colonies that lines up the highway to his motherworld... I soon learned that he had only 9 heavy cruisers over his homeworld and they were type 2... He was probably stalling his research to get more cruisers and I knew he had more of them elsewhere... The graph looked bad for cardies so he must be waging cardassian extermination somewhere. While he was away, I took 4 of dominion colonies in quick order. This stalled his graph finally but I was still way way below. However, BBC anounced fall of cardassian to dominion and then his graph shot up again... His morale was amazing.
I sent my TTs to the north to take down some unprotected colonies but that's when things got bad for me...
He moved out his 65 fast attack type 3 plus some heavies and confronted my 25 warbirds and 60 destoyers... I did not target his attack vessels on cloaked run...
He rammed my destoyers then retreated. He lost 3 heavy cruisers... I lost 55 destroyers... This was a pure pyrrhic victory and it hurt. My HD were 5 squares away and the line of supply was getting very very long...
Fortunately feds and klings offered peace. Then klings offered affiliation, that gave me cash and then 20 grand per turn over next several turns from feds and klings for about 10 turns... that helped quite a bit.
I built up as many HD as I could while pushing for HD2... I stalled while loosing my TTs to his coordinated attacks on my supply lines... He also upgraded to cruiser 3 and was healing his hull on his starbases. He managed to stop my advance to his homeworld but i slipped 4 tts north and they took 2 more colonies...
Meanwhile in the south, he bought 6 heavy cruisers, got some tts and advanced to take over my outpost colony in the south, giving him range to a cluster of very valuable colonies with a lot of research and intel...I kept him at bay at first but did not have enough heavy ships to inflict any loses other then TT burn out...
My HD finally arrived to the west... AND they got upgraded. AS I was nursing their hull back to health, I finally felt that with them around I can probably survive. Fortunately Gentle did not build up any HD... but he had 70 or so fast attack, elite, type 3 plus 20 strikers and 35 heavies...
He moved onto his lost colony planet with plans to take it back... I was 2 turns away from upgrade to type 4 WB... with 8-10 turns of no hull after this... So I decided to take a chance and I moved in with my 60 heavy destoryer 2, 30 WB, 6 battlebirds, and 3 strikers vs his 70 dest 3, 20 strike, and 30 heavies...
Battle was glorious and HD performed admirably… IN fact they were the once that ensured a victorious outcome of this battle.
So I think tweaking the destroyers a bit made a big difference in this game and made them actually usable… Without a patch, all the light ships would have been wiped out on turn 1... And we've had had a crap load of heavy cruisers... Gentle can share his side of the story. I can give u the patch to try, it is self-install.