TC & AP OOS

[johneh77]

What is the best OOS defense for both games? I understand it has changed.

And don't just tell me tyrs. Something realistic.

What should I avoid?

[Alan Phipps]

Short answers on X3 OOS combat (not player remotely micro-managed) which others will expand upon no doubt:

Use ships with big shielding and fit the biggest weapons you can (there are no weapon range or weapon energy calculations OOS).

Do not intend to use missiles or ammo-based weapons unless you set them up not to run out and the missiles have big single-warhead impact.

Use faster ships of the class chosen if you can so as to get the advantage of shooting first in encounter battles.

Have the defences in an aggressive stance in the right place, such near gates or on main travel routes; do not rely on sector patrolling except as a back-up. Note that 'defend position' forces move out of place after an encounter and may need regular checking and repositioning.

Use Laser Towers as attack early warning devices but do not rely on them for enemy attrition OOS unless used in vast quantities.

SEWN (satellites and scouts) from the AP Bonus Pack will allow you to respond in person much more quickly to enemy incursions. You will get a lot of message spam about small enemy ships though.

Carriers filled with fighter groups/wings can be deadly OOS, even to enemy capital patrols, if set up specifically with OOS combat in mind. There will be some fighter losses to replace every so often.

[Hemmingfish]

Generally the rule is to mount the biggest weapons you can when OOS.

Also worth mentioning is that in TC, three Osakas can permanently (at least until you move them) shut down enemies coming through gates. Xenon Qs will sometimes destroy any other ship, but against the 12 GJ shields they don't do enough damage to really do anything to an Osaka OOS, even if they get the first round.

[Triaxx2]

In TC at least, there are two types of OOS. Player Watching and Auto-resolved. Player Watching uses a 5-second time frame, and Auto-resolved uses a 30-second time frame. Determined by speed, the faster ship will fire every single weapon it mounts, regardless of position or facing without regard to energy usage or range. It will continue to target one ship until that one is destroyed.

This is problematic because if it expends it's entire 30-second barrage on an N, the Q that follows it gets a 30-second barrage.

The reason not to use ammo-based weapons, is because if one of them runs out, the ship will not fire energy weapons. And if it has missiles, then it will only fire one missile and not do anything else.

On the other hand, you only need large ships if you expect large ships. I had one game with an Agamemnon equipped with Energy Bolt Chainguns which was automatically supplied with ammo. It ran down any pirates in the sector and did so without issue.

[Geek]

In TC, ammo based weapons prevent all other weapon to fire, regardless of ammo.

OOS damage varies a lot. A fully armed Q can kill a terran M2 in 30s - 12 GJ shields improve the odds but are not 100% safe.

[Triaxx2]

Yes and no. One on one, 12GJ is safe. However, if the Q has brought allies, those can knock down the shields enough to see the M2 destroyed. The Q only does 11GJ and change in a single 30s salvo. I can't find the precise numbers off hand.

[hisazul]

As stated above, without going into crazy details.

1. OOS everything is turn based. 5 seconds if you are watching and 30 if you aren't.

2. Combat is point blank. There is no range and range is irrelevant. Same goes for collisions, there aren't any so giant complexes and such don't change movement.

3. Faster ship attacks first.

4. Each round a ship fires every single weapon once. Meaning weapons that do the most >>> DAMAGE PER SHOT<<< are your best friends. PBG/PSG do obscene damage IS but their each individual shot is pitiful. Rate of fire also useless since weapons are shot only once. This is why terran weaponry is king... it is vastly more powerful when it comes to each individual hit.

5. Ship uses 1 box of ammo per shot. So no... do not use GC. Also GC individual shots are weak and it should be used as rapid fire IS weapon.

6. Don't rely on patrol commands. In most cases place satellite withing 10km of a gate and give your ships defend position on satellite.

7. Triple ship combo is optimal because it allows them to down the enemy instantly. Use ships that don't get 1 shot by Q's.


In short... ships with higher shields/hull and weapon count are better and it's not preferences or opinions. Osaka is your best bet in TC or Boreas if you are on CW side of things. In AP any M2+ ship will work(aside from Pteranodon... that's an excellent ship but it's purely IS ship) and Osaka with Boreas are still very much viable if you are on budget. Tyr is buyable in AP and fairly common if you prefer capturing and aside from Valhalla it's the best OOS defense ship.

[DrBullwinkle]

What is the best OOS defense for both games?
And don't just tell me tyrs. Something realistic.

Many good suggestions above. For clarity, the two most important factors, by far, are what Alan said at the top:

1) Strong Shields
(Because the last remaining ship "wins", which is almost always the ship with the strongest shields).

2) Strong Guns
(Because range and energy usage are not used OOS).

• (The above two reasons are why you commonly see recommendations for Tyrs or other M2/M0 ships. If it is still early in your game, then the same logic applies to whatever ships you can afford. Even a TL can be a good defender early in the game, because TLs have stronger shields and guns than a fighter -- and their small laser generators do not matter when OOS.)

TIP: "Defend Sector" is often a better command than the other Defend scripts. It will keep your defenders near the center of the sector until the sector is invaded, and the command covers the *entire* sector (which Defend Position and Defend Object do not).

What should I avoid?

Avoid many small ships as defenders. Instead, favor the strongest ships that you can steal (or buy). You will have fewer losses that way.

• (The ammo bug that Triaxx2 mentions is fixed in AP, so that is no longer a problem. However, the strongest weapons are usually energy weapons anyway.)

I understand it has changed.

The rules have not changed (OOS is turn-based, ignores weapon range and energy, fastest ship fires first, turns are on 5-second timer when watching on the sector map; 30 second timer when not watching.)

However, the balance has changed substantially. The goal was to make AP's OOS combat more similar to IS combat, and it works as well as it can within the limits of the game engine:

AP has lower OOS damage for weapons than IS damage. Also, AP ships have stronger hulls. The result is that OOS combat takes more turns in AP, which gives you more time to react to it when Betty tells you that "one of your ships is under attack".

Also, AP can target more than one ship in a single turn. If, for example, an M2 can completely kill an M5 and still have the ability to inflict more damage, then it will select the next target and damage that. This makes the large-ship strategy even more important in AP, because you can lose a carrier full of fighters very quickly when attacking a strong ship while OOS.

As a corollary, fighter drones are less effective at killing strong ships in AP than they were in TC.

[mc74]

Guys, thanks for explanations and great tips.

[Triaxx2]

One annotation further: DrBullwinkle pointed out that AP can now change targets. This was not the case in TC, and thus surrounding those huge ships with clouds of M5's could drastically increase capital survivability, by giving the incoming ships something else to shoot at and decreasing the chance they'd shoot the capital first.

Naturally that doesn't work as well in AP.