How to play EoTH?

[briG]

I figured out NR and IR pretty easily, but I can't seem to make it work with EoTH. I can get quite the economy going but the ships just feel so weak and flimsy. By the time a blob of 40+ frigates/cruisers roll around my 6 or so Phalanxes/Syndics/Ascendancies + some chafs and Karieks for anti-fighter duty while hiding behind 3 defense platforms can't get the job done. The frigates and cruisers seem really light on firepower, and it doesn't help the biggest component of the chaf's damage doesn't damage hull.

[briG]

I'm actually just getting steamrolled so hard by this Pentastar AI who allied himself with everyone except for me and another AI and just throws his entire fleet at me over and over and my ships are too weak to deal with 40 venators and 40 munificents.

[Revanchist]

Pentastar is nasty when they get built up. The EotH has some really good ships on their side, and they have excellent speed. Therefore if you are in an engagement that is unwinnable, retreat is a viable option. Just taking a look at their roster though, they have one of the better starting frigates (because they can carry bombers), an excellent carrier that is never bad to spam, the Bu'direch (which is a better Dreadnaught), the Nuruodo (a Strike Cruiser equivalent), and the Chaf (which I find to be as good, if not better than Vic-2s and comparable to BACs). It sounds like the fleet composition you're using might be a little off.

[briG]

I mean this was still when I was expanding, and when I had AI planets on either side of my Empire I started buiding up defenses. Within 20 minutes gigantic blob of Venators, Lucrehulks, and Munificents descended upon my heavily fortified acquisitions and took minimal losses just because of how many there were.

I haven't found the EoTH's speed to be all that useful. Sure if you are attacking a planet and another big fleet shows up you can phase jump out right quick and you can chase runners easily but the speed difference isn't a gamechanger. If you have the enemy on your doorstep and need to defend you don't need speed, you need to be able to stand and fight... EoTH can't do that from my 6 hours experience.

I was unable to use the carriers because there were so many Venators and other starfighter carrying units being used against me the fighters would just get destroyed without doing anything.

I'm not sure that the Bu'direch is actually a better dreadnaught. In my game they show up as having less damage than a normal Dreadnaught by a long shot.  Karieks were a large part of my fleets for expansion but they really can't compete with anything a real faction can field. The Chaf's main armament of ion cannons, huge pop cost and no fighter compliment really limit it's usability.

In EaW Chafs were great because you could just micro them a little and have them focus down capital ship shields and move to another one when it's shields were down. That isn't really an option in Sins since everything is more macro than micro.

Since other factions can achieve much higher pop cap(I'm not sure if EoTH can go over 800) I was kind of reduced to building multiple frigate shipyards on a planet close-ish to the front line on an Industrial planet and throwing ships at them until there were none left. I'm kind of lucky the AI on the other side of me wasn't doing so good either so he couldn't attack me that often, but when he did it was a massive headache since I needed almost the full 800 pop cap to deal with fleets on the main front.

I can't find a use for the capital ships either. Glass cannons don't work that well when you can't prevent them from being shattered. NR capital ships are great because AI focuses them and they can weather the fire with their shield boost. The IR SD's aren't exactly frail and they put out good damage. The only ones I could sort of get to work were the final tech level one and the Syndic, because it could actually survive getting focused by turning invisible.

[briG]

I kind of get the idea of playing EoTH now. If you use their actually fast ships you can just run around in enemy territory and cause economic damage, avoiding their actual fleets and when they get fed up with you and decide to attack you, you can hyper back to your planet and assist your defensive platforms.

This still presents a problem:
EoTH still can't fight man to man. With Hand population cap being almost half that of IR you cannot win a fight against IR in their territory. Ever. You are outgunned and outmanned every time by stronger ships and a larger fleet.

I mean and this is after I had destroyed a Soveriegn class, 5 ISDIIs and a few torpedo spheres.

[briG]

After about 2-3 hours of constantly screwing with one of the AI using a small 150-pop ish fleet of Chafs, Karieks and Budirechs with their entire fleet chasing me they eventually were so starved economically that they couldn't build back the Transmitters that I destroyed. On one side of their planets my ally's culture started taking over and mine on the other. Then he randomly was defeated and that was that.

If you were to be a bit more micro intensive you could use Phalanx/Syndics micro jumps to add more firepower to your harassing fleets while still being able to keep up with the faster ships. Unfortunately for me I was wedged between an enemy IR, enemy pentastar, and a random SSD popping up in one of my planets that was far away from both my fleets so I was kind of busy. Now I still am, but giving my ally Pentastar missions to constantly attack the IR is giving me some breathing room.

[Papa Palps]

What level of difficulty did you set the A.I. to?

[briG]

Normal. I guess my Pentastar ally who was allied with the other Pentastar turned on him for whatever reason and he didn't last long.

IR just got rolled over by our collective fleets after that. I did have some fun with a bunch of Syndic destroyers turning invisible and bombing undefended planets before the deciding push to the finish was made.

[Revanchist]

What fleet size are you using?

[briG]

Normal fleet sizes. Basically normal everything. I might try small fleet sizes next game I play.

[briG]

This is kind of turning into my blog thread at this point so I'm just gonna post about factions and stuff in general.

Tried small vs 2 hard AI in FFA as Pentastar and really liked it.

For some reason the target priority for Skiprays seems to be vastly better than the TIE Bombers. I can occassionally look around for what my massive 120 squadron swarm of bombers is doing and see they're off chasing A-Wings or something and the Skiprays are actually bombing structures.

Additionally it seems that Venators aren't all that amazing until they begin to reach critical mass of 40+. When they get there though they're unstoppable. Praetors are also a must have due to their durability. Lucrehulks have nice utility and they carry Skiprays.

[briG]

I decided to play another 6 man map with small fleet sizes and hard AI. Having a tough time. Does the AI cheat at higher difficulties or something? Stronger ships/more income etc. Enemy ships seem to take so much longer to kill when I'm playing against them, when I use the same unit they drop like flies.

I'm getting wave after wave of ships flung at me by this Pentastar AI who has seemingly endless resources without even investing into trade ports 1hr into the game. How do I know? Because I lost a planet with maxed out social specialization, all 30 logistics slots being used by broadcast centers, and all relevant upgrades to them applied. As New Republic. That is incredibly fishy.

Edit: I restarted and played extremely aggressively. I think my problem was just trying to build up trade routes too early when I still could be expanding. I just built military research facilities, upraded my fleet pop cap and spammed Nebulons and MC80s. Managed to even kill off a IR AI and wait for culture to take over his planets and took what he would have expanded into for myself. My culture started getting pushed back in a few places and I set up a Essex starbase. That must've been what was causing my 6x Broadcast + social planet to fail.

[Papa Palps]

You are correct.  There are all sorts of hidden benefits the A.I. receive at higher levels.  After all it would be strange for the developers to intentionally give the A.I. bad strategies at lower levels.