Does anyone build battle hammers anymore?

Aye, I use them for transport escorts. My usual mix is 5-10 transports with two battleaxes for defense/garrison duty on the conquered world(s), several offense ships ranging from battlecruisers, frigates, or battleships depending on the exact point of the game I am in, and one BH to be the anchorman and the last ditch hitter if I need to call out another attacker and the other offense ships are out of position from their sorties. A BH will also guard Sol and any other high PQ regional capital.

The ships do have a high maintanence, but that is expected when it can basically do it all. Granted, one is better off using BA for defense for the 3 BC maintanence for the same defense, but a good BH does have its uses still. And one is better to use a frigate or BB/dread for the raw attack power. But, consider this: a BH can take out a battleship with a half decent chance for a lot less cost both in build and maintanence than building the big ship yourself. This makes them decent for fighting a defensive war where your purpose is not to invade, but to simply protect the space lanes to hold your own until the invasion war can crank up to speed.

I've never built a battle hammer.

I usually build frigates at that stage, since they have similar stats but move a lot quicker. And frigates cost exactly the same amount as constructors, so its easy to switch between them on the fly without squandering money.

I used to build them a lot, based on the fact that they were, in some cases, better than battleships.

Now, they are a scaled-down verstion of a battleship, laying right between "Frigate" and "Battleship" on the scale. They are faster to produce, but don't have the firepower a full scale battleship has.

In general, battleships are good for attacking. However, Battle Hammers still more suited for defence...

They are cheaper than Battleships and *can* take out Axes, so they are still useful.

I've never built a battlehammer, battlecruiser, or starhawk. I usually skip over rangers to avatars also.

For all these ships, I just don't see how their stats justify their cost.

Ditto on #5.

Since Battle Hammers have been rebalanced, I never build them. Now, they are a trash ship to me. They just aren't worth bothering with anymore.

depending on other races. either straight to dreadnaught or avatar. trade bunches till then so nobody wars with me.

Is anyone that is using 1.04 building them? 1.04 has a different military strength evaluation algorithm, possibly building true defensive ships pays off with it. In 1.03 there's no sense building anything for defense except starfighters, then later anti-matter missiles.

#2

Agree with BuzuBuzu. I have never built a BH under 1.03.057A. I now build either Corvettes (armed scouts/commerce-raiders), FF's or wait for DN's.

Phoenixes are useful as front-line defenders for the "Stalingrad"-type planet. The AI usually targets one planet at a time, sending most (if not all) of its fleet against it. Eventually, attrition will reduce available forces on hand to whatever the planet can produce. Also, mid-game, AF's begin to overwhelm DF's and HP's to the point where all ships are effectively "one-shot deals". In this case, Phoenixes are cheaper AMM's, with the added advantage that:

(a)they can be produced in greater overall numbers, quicker; and

(b) they can survive to take a second shot and finish off cripples.

~SDC~

In my last 3 or 4 games I've never even researched Corvettes or Battlehammers or Starhawks, or even defenders or battleaxes. If I happen to trade for the technology I might produce Corvettes near the begginning of the game. Otherwise I just produce StarFighters in the beginning, get up to battleships and produce a few of those, then research again to dreads and AMM's, and then just produce a million AMM's and a few dreads and then go on a rampage through the galaxy.

I can't wait for the 1.04 patch, when the AI will interpret military strength better, it sounds like then I might actually produce battleaxes or battlehammers.

But for now, it's better to produce starfighters and just not even get into a war with the AI until later on in the game once you have AMM's, and use those for defense.

I've never tried the all Starfighter route but it does sound like it would be fairly effective, sad to say. I'm not as clever about avoiding wars as some folks are here. If I find myself at war or under threat of war and Battlehammers are available to me (or can be researched quickly) then I build them. They're still more powerful overall than anything that comes before them. If my opponent has Battleships I find that I can still hold them off with Battlehammers (so long as there aren't *too* many of them). In other words, they're a decent stopgap measure.

Battlehammers can defend just fine, but your military graph won't grow and you'll be in the war forever until the computer thinks you have the military advantage, and only then they will agree to stop the war.

If you get into a war, still just build a ton of starfighters, then move them to where the computer can't destroy them (don't use them for defense in orbit of planets). Even if the AI could totally wipe you out, it will see your military power get larger then his, and will sue for peace.

Now, I'm not saying this is right, it's really a cheese factor, but I think it's less cheese than the alternative of actually building up defefences and have the computer wipe itself out by trying to defeat you when it can't but it thinks it can because it's military might is more powerful.

It sounds like this will be fixed in 1.04, so that will be really nice, for the AI's sake. Hopefully it will make better decisions about war then. . .

Of course if the AI declares war and starts slamming into the Battlehammers, they're going to start losing ships much faster than you will. Battlehammers may stink on attack and move as slow as slugs, but they can definitely be a life saver sometimes.

SeanB

On the whole though, if you're using a ship for defense, you might as well stick with Battle axes. You can field more than twice as many for the same maintenance and they build sooner and quicker. The Battle hammer is a little bit better as a defender because of its higher attack, but not so much as to make it worth building as far as I can tell.

I prefer the Battleaxe as a defender. But on small maps, I don´t always want to wait for the Battleship to go over to the offense, and I do build Battlehammers in that case.

The Battlehammer may well be useless on gigantic maps, but it´s useful on small ones.

I find the Battlecruisers, Starhawks and Phoenixes really useless, though. Simply bad-value-for-money. :notsure:

Phoenixes will become useful if they ever get around to actually implementing cloaking, but for now, CRAP

You guys need to raise the difficulty on your games, or quit doing Ctrl-N so much. Battlehammers are good come-from-behind weapons because the cost to research them is lower, maintenance and survivability are also good. This becomes important when your starting location is in a corner and you get pinned down to only a few planets, you'll find the AI able to invest a lot more into research and they'll get Battleships & Dreadnoughts way before you.

In this hopeless situation the battlehammer saves the day. Build them. This forces the AI to invest in expensive Battleship production to beat you, because battlehammers can easily beat the hordes of battle cruisers and frigates the AI loves to throw at you in the first wave. This enables your Battlehammers to gain experience while you build your shipyard-type projects. Then when the first wave of battleships arrive, your BHs have gained immense power and can challenge them. Meanwhile you are building transports to capture the nearest AI planets, thus yielding free techs.

Interstellar, it has nothing to do with ctrl-N, it has to do with the (pre-1.04) broken military evaluation algorithm. No ship is more effective at boosting your military strength for less cost and less maintanence then starfighters (until AMM show up). They are hands-down more effective than any other defensive ship for stopping wars before they ever start. They are why I stopped playing until 1.04 comes out, because I refuse to get involved in wars that never should happen in the first place because the AI can't figure out that I'm well defended, and I just plain don't like building an effective defense that shouldn't -be- an effective defense.

StarHawks do have a use. In large galaxies there are a LOT of anomalies out there. Build 2-4 StarHawks and turn them loose to wander the galaxy. The will accumulate so many points they will become your strongest ships. In a war you can then park them in orbit of the most at-risk worlds, and the AI can attack all it wants, but it won't breach those defenses. (Well, a half-dozen Avatars maybe, but I'd say that's fair value.)

I've always liked Battle Hammers, but didn't they have more attack and less defense?
:notsure:

~SDC~

modemboy --

Hmm. How do you convince an AI to trade Corvettes, or for that matter any of the ship-granting tech?

U need quite a bit of trade credits to get corvette - trade good or a big bunch of early-mid techs. Diplo bonuses help of course.

I don't build star fighters because I really don't care if the AI wants to fight me. If they declare war on me, I just kill them all. War is part of the game, and it's way more fun than just clicking the 'next turn' button over and over waiting for tech or culture victory.

Now if I were playing just so I could make a bunch of high scores on the Metaverse well then I probably would build a whole bunch of star fighters, make friends & trade with all the AI and just keep on mindlessly clicking the old 'turn over' button until I win. Would be much quicker than all that fighting, and I'd get a better score, but infinitely more boring.