Using multiple weapon types?

The idea behind having only one type of weapon is the way defenses are degraded by your attacks.  If you have nothing but beam weapons, for instance, you'll wear down the shields until they're gone and the rest of your weapons start shooting a now-defenseless ship.  If, however, you're using both beams and missiles, the targets will get the full effect of both their shields AND their PD, cutting down on the amount of damage you wind up doing.

There are a few situations where having mixed weapons throughout your navy can be advantageous, namely when you're fighting multiple enemies who concentrate on different defenses than each other.  However, there is rarely, if ever, an advantage to using mixed weapons in any given battle.

Thanks for that.

But i notice the AI will mainly focus on 1 defence type only and have a little bit of the other. So does that mean the dissadvantage of two weapon types would be very small?

In my current game the weapons technology in play has reached maximum levels and the Drengin have been hitting me with some very powerful fleets. However i have about 8 military starbases set up in a forward position with maximum ship assist upgrades (maximum ship assist tech). I confronted a Drengin fleet of significantly less firepower at this location with my best fleet. I was using the correct defences against their weapons while they had little defence set against my main weapon types. Even tho it lost the battle, This drengin fleet managed to attain significantly more hipoints worth of damage, i was gobsmacked to see that!!

Yeah, if they have little in the way of defenses, the disadvantage would be small.  It'd technically still be there, but if you're hitting with a zillion points worth of attack against one or two points of defense, it won't matter too terribly much.

Attack and defense numbers and types aren't the only things that affect the outcome of a battle.  Number and size of ships matter as well.  Off the top of my head, little ships can pack a lot of firepower per logistics point, but are liable to get half a fleet blown away in the opening volley.  All the firepower in the world doesn't do much if you lose half of it right away.  

Yea, i have learnt my lesson with tiny hulls. They used to have a significant advantage in earlier versions of the game before individual weapon fire was introduced, but now, their only advantage lies with military starbases.

I have discovered cargo hulls make the best 'cannon fodder'. A couple of those fleeted together loaded with weapons will devistate a powerful enemy fleet, so your own powerful ships can easily mop up whatever is left. Cargo hulls not much good tho if your weapons tech is matched by their defences!,,, not much good at all!! lol

Hi!

OFC you can use them, but the main problem I see with that is not the damage, but availability. In my games I was rarely able to research two weapons branches simultaneously. Usually it was better to invest resources into one branch, obtaining one strong weapon instead of two mediocre ones.

OTOH mixing non-maxed-out weapon types in one ship is IMO not a good idea. Since GalCiv-2 does not limit you with a fixed number of ship design slots, you better "customize" ship designs  to your particular opponent: use only the weapon type your opponet doesn't have proper defenses for, and design another ship for another opponent. 

BR,  Iztok

The Q most often arises in full tech games.  That is, how should one arm ships if one has all the weapons' tech?

A similar Q arises in what defenses, if any, should one put on ships in full tech games.

For example, in one recent game, I was at war with two strong AIs at the same time.  Their worlds (and hence, fleets) were intermixed.  Both used beams, but one had armor and the other had shields.  My expeditionary force would almost certainly have to fight both and, so, obviously should use missiles.  However, should I avoid defenses, since they would face two different weapon types, perhaps even on the same or consecutive turns?  One thing seems clear, and that is that it is better in full tech battles to have no defense than the wrong defense.  That is, the space and cost used for wrong defense would be better spent on weapons.

One thing I did was to actively placate the third strong AI, mainly because it used missiles and missile defense!

A few posters have lamented that late game wars, when multiple parties have essentially all the tech, are boring because design details no longer matter.  That is, they have felt that it came down not to design but economics, in that it mattered not how the ships were designed, just how many one had gotten to the battlespace.  There's certainly an element of truth there, but that complaint does not really match my experience.  Adding some high defense ships to fleets (the "right" defense) seems to consistently let me win those fleet battles and preserve some ships.

Yet, even the economics approach is not without interest. That is, if one presumes one has a certain # of BCs to make a fleet, what should the fleet makeup be?  In SEIV, that was a favorite theme for set piece battles.  Another theme included also a set number of research points used to get the hardware, but this would not be relevant for a full tech premise.  In the research points one, for example, do you allocate points to get the largest hull?  Reinforced?  What about that research trade good improvement?  Invest in defenses?  In a research points battle, the psyonic beams would always seem to win, but one would get a different result if one used only BCs, because the psyonic beams are more expensive than the beam weapons much later the research tree.

So, with strict economics, and assuming no red bases or racial points, would a (say) 50 logistics  point fleet be better with all small hulls?  What about some small hulls, a few cargo shooters, and a couple high defense huge hulled dreanoughts?  Or, maybe just five 10 logistic points dreadnoughts?

The economics Q becomes relevant if one is resource limited.  A similar Q becomes relevant if one has, say, 20 planets local to the battlespace.  The more expensive ships take longer to build, and there are some limits to what one can just purchase.  What mix does one build?  The smaller/cheaper ships can join the fleet one per turn or every other turn.  The big ones might take 10 turns or more.

...assuming no red bases...

And that, really, is the heart of the matter. At max tech, there is no excuse to attack an enemy that still possesses a military resource. Your first move should always be hitting their base(s) and rebuilding it/them yourself. If necessary, have a class of fast constructors explicitly for this purpose. Doing so will drop their ship bonus 40% or more and increase yours by the same amount per resource.

Also, by the time you reach max tech, economics shouldn't enter the equasion. It is nearly impossible to have that much tech output and not have a huge budget surplus, especially once you cut off the spending that was going to tech. Rush buying a fully pimped out huge hull (or three or four) a turn shouldn't be much of a stretch. Dropping 40k or more on a ship that can blast anything else in space should be commonplace.

The smaller/cheaper ships can join the fleet one per turn or every other turn.  The big ones might take 10 turns or more.

I'm not sure what you're building those ships on, but that mush be one hell of a manufacturing planet. Even at 100% military most planets can't put out 200+ MP a turn to crank out a maxed tiny hull every turn.

The real answer is in two parts. Find the highest ethics event ship bonus planet you have. Use that planet to build your main combatants, as they can be as much as 60% stronger than ships built elsewhere. Put any ship bonus building you have here (hyperion shipyard, stellar forge, etc.) to further increase individual ship power.

Once you have a proper ship building planet, don't waste time on anything other than huge hulls. At least 200 points of attack, as much defense as possible (what type doesn't matter as much as you'd think) and one of the firepower modules (killzone is best, but use what you have). Engines are a must for big maps, range might be as well.

Build an escort class as well. The same engines (and range), no weapons or defenses, with a fleet defense module on it. Add a speed module if available. Make sure to build them on the same planet as the main combatants, because these will be upgraded to main combatants when the armed ships get damaged (the damaged ship gets "upgraded" to escort for an instant full repair.) The funny thing is, of a fleet consisting of 4 warships and an escort, only the escort will level during combat - and it will go FAST. Depending on how many enemy fleets you can hit, the escort might gain 10 or more levels in one week.

A bit of that is unfamiliar to me, so they must be TA references.  Sadly, any ship bonus planets I get seem always to be either low quality or in a distant corner, and often both.

I seem to be able to crank those tinies out as I described.  I use all-factories (and focus) and get the ASC, so maybe that helps.

Some other interesting tactics which may be of interest...

In my games, i typically try and spread mass driver technology as much as possible. Starting early enough, the AI's will often pick up and run with this technology. Those that do not, i will trade for their weapons anyway.

The truth is, i rarely research my own weapons technology at all! Because the difficulty level i play, i have no hope in hell of keeping up, so there's no point! So i usually have several powerful weapon types at my disposal rite through the game because i have traded for them. I then focus my research on things like logistics and hulls and other things which the AI hates trading allot more than weapons, although i don't understand why?? You would think weapons should be the most difficult of all? I have never seen the 'i'm too powerful to trade weapons' objection in DA either?

Having multiple powerful weapons types means i can fool the AI into using the wrong defences as well! I will build many ships with one type and a few of my most powerful offensive ships with the other type. The AI defends against my primarily used weapon type but i make sure my 'special' ships will be the ones to face him in combat, mwwwaaaahhhhh

I have had mixed luck with mixed weapons/dfenses. I once had researched far enough up both weapons and defenses that I built (on a large hull) a ship that could utilize all three defenses and all three weapon types. Haven't been able to do it again, since, though. A fleet of those babies could clean up, though!

I almost always put everything into missles.  In in DL and DA, I'd somethimes research two lines of weapons tech and switch between them doing upgrades fleet wide.  With max AI, they look at the player with the highest military rating and research defenses based on that.  It confounds their defense research when you switch.  In Twilight, I don't do that because of the tougher economy.  In that game, my goal is always to suprass the AI with missiles, defenses, and hulls to the point it really doesn't matter what they're doing to counter it.

This has probably something to do with the <AiValue> string in the Techtree.xml file, which is usually much lower for many weapon techs, as for e.g. basic logistics.

It also has something to do with your own Military Might ranking, and further with the fact, if you previously attacked this particaluar AI or not.

Multiple Weapons is the way to go yes overall you do less total damage, 30/30/30 as opposed to 120/0/0 or similar, but you are almost certain to do a a large amount of damage in two of the types because they don't add proper defenses in more than one category. I seldom have issues with enemy defenses and tend to kill the enemy forces faster using all three weapon types in equal amounts . but it really is up to what you feel comfortable with.