I'm playing in a game with a 5 death limit. Ferrengal has 10 million figs in the sector, and is shielded, plus there are no photons. What would be my best course of action to attempt to take it.

That's not enough information to give advice on how to take Ferrengal. Are there edited or stock ships? Are the 10 million sector figs offensive or defensive? Also, you need to find out what the quasar setting is. If you have plenty of fighters and a ship with good defense odds, you might be able to go in, take the quasar hit, kill as many figs as possible, then retreat. Do that enough and by the time you take out the sector figs, the planet should be mostly out of ore.

Well there are edited ships...my ship can hold 200k figs, odds are 2.2:1, and the sector figs are offensive...so I believe it's gonna cost too much to simply clear out the sector figs with no photon

Your ship can hold 200k figs...hmm...im just gonna make a wild bet that your gonna need more than one of those. Expecially if your not real good at invading strategies.

I believe the general setting for that is "Make Ferrengal Invincible?" = YES.

Between the Offensive sector fighters PLUS the Quasar cannon PLUS the billion or so fighters on the planet, your game's Ferrengal is next to impossible to take.

Paladyne

Invincible Ferrengal only means that it cannot be destroyed with an atomic detonator.

First thing i found about the setting is the photons were disabled... They are part of the game some people think it's a harder game to play without them... it is and it teach's you nothing.
Photons weren't designed in the game to play without them..And for the sysop to make a alien planet impossible to take was real nice of him and should tell you something about him...

If the game has been running for a long time, a year or more, Ferrengal could be the richest prize in the game, and worth trying to capture at almost any cost. It depends on how the Ferrengi are configured, if there are a large number of them, and if the game settings allow them to Rob/Steal or not. In Game "B" on the Doctor On Board BBS, my Corp captured Ferrengal with 5 TRILLION credits on it, at a point in time where the game had been running about 18 months. We now have almost 400 trillion credits, from interest earned in the last year. The point being that whoever can grab that cash has in effect won the game, as it will buy unlimited fighters, ships, and shields. With several trillion banked, even the most shopping-crazed trader can't spend it at Stardock as fast as it earns interest, so you are set for the rest of the game. If you don't capture Ferrengal, someone else will, and then they will probably clean out the game, or spread so many figs and limpets around that it becomes impossible for anyone else to move around.

Unless the planet has been TEDITED, it's an Earth planet. That means that it has storage capacities of 100,000 ore, 1,000,000 fighters, and 50,000 shields. When you holoscan Ferrengal, you can see which kind of planet it is, and you can check a similar planet for storage capabilities.

If there are 10,000,000 fighters in the sector, you can be sure that the planet has the maximum of whatever it can hold. The settings on the planet are Military=40%, Sector Cannon=10%, Atmospheric Cannon=30%.

We'll assume that the planet is at the default settings.

Now you enter the sector. Even if there's an Interdictor on the planet, it won't hold you as long as you don't defeat all the fighters in the sector. You aren't officially in the sector until you defeat all the fighters. You will retreat. Since the cannon is only firing 10,000 ore at you, it will only do 3,333 damage to your ship. The sector fighters will send 1.25 x the maximum number of fighters and shields that your ship holds That's 1.25 times the CAPACITY of fighters and shields it will hold, and NOT 1.25 times the number that it currently has on it (every site that I've been to has this wrong, including CABAL's, all of them say it's 1.25-1 x the number of fighters and shields your ship has on it, but I've tested it many different ways, and it's the capacity, not the actual number---if you test it and find that wrong, please correct me). This means that you need to have a ship with better than 1.25-1 defensive odds (that's 1.3-1 or more) to not get podded by the sector fighters alone. If your ship has 200,000 fighters and, say, 10,000 shields, the sector fighters will send 210,000 x 1.25, or 262,500 fighters. Those fighters attack at odds of 1-1. They hit your ship, which has 2.2-1 odds. They do 119,318 damage to your ship, then the rest sit defensive. You'll have a total of 122,651 worth of damage from the cannon and fighters and can retreat and reload your ship with fighters. As long as you have a full load of fighters on your ship, you'll be able to withstand the cannon and offensive fighter attack. It's going to cost you 33,333 in fighters to wear down the cannon, plus another 4,545,455 fighters to destroy the sector fighters. So it costs about 4,578,788 fighters to take out the sector defenses.

Next we have to consider the planet. Each planetary shield takes 20 raw fighters to destroy. Since your ship is getting 2.2-1 odds, it will cost you about 9 fighters to take out one planetary shield. So you'll need another 450,000 fighters to take out the shields.

Lastly, we have the planetary fighters. There will be 1,000,000 of these. With offensive set at 40%, it can send up to 400,000 at you. However, it does so the same way that sector fighters do. It will send 1.25-1 x your ship's max fighter-shield load. That means it will send the same 262,500 fighters at you.

But there's a problem here. Offensive planetary fighters attack at 2-1 odds. This translates to a raw 525,000 combat damage. Divide that by your ship's 2.2-1 odds, and it does 238,636 worth of damage. Your ship only has 210,000 worth of fighters and shields. You'll get podded. When attacking a planet with military reaction, you need a ship with better than 2.5-1 (at least 2.6-1) defensive odds to survive the fighter attack, assuming that the planet has a high enough military reaction and enough fighters to send them at you. After it does this once, it will use up 231,000 fighters (210,000 x 2.2 odds of your ship divided by the 2-1 the fighters have). That will leave the planet 769,000 fighters. At 40% military, it will send 0.40 x 769,000, or 307,600 fighters at you. It uses up another 231,000 and pods you again. That leaves it with 538,000 fighters. It will now send 0.4 x 538,000, or 215,200 fighters. That isn't enough to blow your ship up, so you can survive after two pods. If there's any ship in the game with 2.6-1 defensive odds---even a small one---use that to invade the planet, because you can't be podded as long as you max out the fighters and shields each time you invade. It will cost another 1,100,000 fighters to take out the planetary fighters.

That's a total of about 6,128,000 fighters you'll need.

With that in mind, here's how you go about invading. Load up your 2.2-1 ship with fighters and go in. Let the cannon and offensive fighters hit you, then retreat. Reload max fighters. You don't need shields, because it won't do enough damage. Do this until the planet runs out of ore. Then go in, attack the fighters, retreat, reload, and repeat until they're all gone.

Now it's time to invade the planet. Bring your fighters into the sector so that the nasty Ferrengi can't come in and surprise you (although it's possible that any who were killed recently might respawn from the sector). Land on the planet and attack the shields. Do so until about 100 are left. Then carefully pick the rest off until there are only 2 or 3 left. Use 10 fighters at a time if need be. There's a reason you don't just hack away at the last ones. Once you remove the last shield, the offensive fighters are going to attack you. You want to have a full load so that as many of them get used up as possible. They won't attack until the shields are gone, so leave 2 or 3 planetary shields.

If you have a ship with 2.6-1 defensive odds or higher, switch to it now. In a gold edit game, a planet defender ship might have that. It doesn't matter what its offensive odds are or if it can land on the planet. If it's defensive odds are 2.6-1 or higher, it will work. Load it with fighters and shields and land. The planetary fighters will attack it, but they won't destroy it as long as its loaded. Depending on how high of defensive odds your ship has, you may or may not have to reload shields. If you've killed off 10 million Ferrengi fighters, you're probably at +4,500,000 blue alignment, so you can tow it to and from SD and reshield it. Keep trying to land until you've run the planet out of fighters. If your ship can't land, you can then switch to one that can and claim the planet.

If you don't have a ship with 2.6-1 or higher defensive odds, then you'll have to get podded twice. If you have corpmates, let them share in that. Finally, you'll be able to invade the planet, and if the sector had 10,000,000 fighters and wasn't TEDITED that way by the sysop, it may have several billion credits on it, depending on how old the game is. Since it will cost you about 6.5 million fighters to take it out, that's about 1.5 billion in cost.

I just realized that this thread was started over a month ago. Oh well.

Heh.. doesn't really matter if it was an old thread. I learned alot. Thanks midnight.

likwid

Midnight,
I fixed my site to reflect the new behavior of offensive figs. Used to be the other way, but JP changed it a few revs ago. Thanks for mentioning it. I can't keep track of everything on it, and while I test everything I can, sometimes I take stuff for granted. [:D]

quote:Originally posted by midnight
Now you enter the sector. Even if there's an Interdictor on the planet, it won't hold you as long as you don't defeat all the fighters in the sector. You aren't officially in the sector until you defeat all the fighters. You will retreat.

This is incorrect. A ship interdicter will not hold you if you retreat from fighters, but a planet interdicter will. What's more, after it holds you from trying to retreat, it will fire on you again.

Check out http://www.tradewars2002.net/html.php?link=10 for a description on how to do this with photons and not getting podded. Also, depending on offensive vs defensive odds of ships, it might be best to kill the planet fighters as offensive rather than defensive. Whenever you fire a photon at the unshielded (less than 200 actually) planet, the fighters revert to defensive for the duration of the photon. This will allow you to land and not get attacked by them, saving yourself some poddings. Something to keep in mind, planet figs attacking you get 2:1, planet figs defending get 3:1.

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't a tholian sentinel get 4.0:1 odds on defense? w00t!

Hmm, I'm not sure what I was thinking of. The planet IG does hold the ship. Careless of me not to check that out.

According to tests, the planet's IG uses 500 ore per ship attempt to flee.

A Tholian only gets 4-1 odds when in defense of a planet. The 'guardian bonus' which is 4-1 x the normal defensive odds of the ship (which in the case of a Tholian is normally 1-1), only applies to attacks by enemy ships while in defense of a planet. You can't just put down a planet and get 4-1 odds when attacking another planet. I know this because I tested it on my server: I tried attacking an enemy planet with a Tholian after putting down a corporate planet in the sector. It got 1-1 odds against the planetary fighters (which got 2-1 odds offensive and 3-1 defensive).

ok, when I first used sentinels, I didn't think you had to be in them, lol! I'm sure it's a common mistake. But I would get like 4 decked-out sentinels and just let them sit on top of my planet

That's another question...later on in the game, do sentinels really make THAT much of a difference?