1:02 A little niche, but I see you were having issues with orientation of your ammo factories. You can actually mirror them by clicking the "mirror" button while holding them ready for placement. That way you can place them so that sulfur comes in from behind and the ammo can be delivered directly to the deck gun and need no stockpiling of ammo at all. But the deck guns are still rather crew-intensive weapons - might get issues if there aren't enough crew in the wings to carry all the ammo and sulphur even if the distance it needs to go is very low. For the railguns, you can bury the railgun behind a big "nose" of heavy armor, letting them fire through a very thin 2x corridor that is potentially also shielded from the sides - that way they aren't as prone to exploding at the slightest touch of enemy weapons. Of course you could also have a dedicated tanking ship that likes to fight up close while the railgun ships flank and have powerful forward-facing thrusters to help them stay at max range (faster traveling away from the enemy than towards them). You're also kind of making me rethink the viability of macro-controlling fleets of railgun ships - I usually think of them as very micro-intensive ships due to needing to target specific parts of enemy ships. 08:30 You could also use half as many ion beam crystals while barely losing any power because the beams only combine once. That would make their firing gap way less vulnerable as you could completely cover it with several heavy shields. :> Of course that would lose out on half the disco effect, which would unacceptable. An alternative might be an armored prow like the one you faced but with sideways-facing heavy shields facing the inside of the ion-beam cavity, with a few regular shields protecting the heavy shield generators.
Mass railguns is called a "rail fan", you get 8 of them or so and thenrotate from looking slight to the right of the target to the left of the target wkth "fire at selection" and it will urn a hole right through their armor to the core.
How did you have the railguns targeting set? It looks like they were on Fire at Will which is VERY bad for a weapon like a railgun. Mine are usually set to fire only at things I have selected (I usually target command spaces or reactors) then I Rotate the ship to sweep the railguns firing line across the target point. When it is in line, it fires directly at the critical location. So long as there are no shields (Large ones especially degrade railgun fire) the important part of the target is usually destroyed. Of course EMP missiles and disruptors mounted on the railgun ship (and lots of point defense) are also important!
They were indeed on Fire at Will! My thinking was that exact targeting might be hard, so with FaW at least they would be doing guaranteed damage.... but you're probably right that it's not the best setting for slow firing weapons like railguns.
Yah railgun is more like a sniper rifle :) I'm using 2 ships - one heavyly armoured to draw attention and railgun to snipe reactors from behind or sides.
The trick is to pick a target on the enemy ship, then rotate the ship to sweeop your point of aim across the target. the guns will fire when they bear directly on the target. I've never tried a railgun swarm like you did, I've always gone for a large, 2-4 gun (at least 10, preferably 20 long) railguns. Ammo requirements are insanely low, to the point where one factory per weapon is sufficient, and then I just carry a small ammount of sulphur to feed them.
the game is very, very, very, *very* far from solved. there's so many permutations of what you can do in it that it's frankly kinda ridiculous to me (no offence intended, i have like 1100 hours in the game so i'm used to how open it is in tactics) to think that there could be A Best Way (tm) to play it
Really enjoying this series, especially watching you try different designs
1:02 A little niche, but I see you were having issues with orientation of your ammo factories. You can actually mirror them by clicking the "mirror" button while holding them ready for placement. That way you can place them so that sulfur comes in from behind and the ammo can be delivered directly to the deck gun and need no stockpiling of ammo at all.
But the deck guns are still rather crew-intensive weapons - might get issues if there aren't enough crew in the wings to carry all the ammo and sulphur even if the distance it needs to go is very low.
For the railguns, you can bury the railgun behind a big "nose" of heavy armor, letting them fire through a very thin 2x corridor that is potentially also shielded from the sides - that way they aren't as prone to exploding at the slightest touch of enemy weapons. Of course you could also have a dedicated tanking ship that likes to fight up close while the railgun ships flank and have powerful forward-facing thrusters to help them stay at max range (faster traveling away from the enemy than towards them). You're also kind of making me rethink the viability of macro-controlling fleets of railgun ships - I usually think of them as very micro-intensive ships due to needing to target specific parts of enemy ships.
08:30 You could also use half as many ion beam crystals while barely losing any power because the beams only combine once. That would make their firing gap way less vulnerable as you could completely cover it with several heavy shields. :>
Of course that would lose out on half the disco effect, which would unacceptable.
An alternative might be an armored prow like the one you faced but with sideways-facing heavy shields facing the inside of the ion-beam cavity, with a few regular shields protecting the heavy shield generators.
Mass railguns is called a "rail fan", you get 8 of them or so and thenrotate from looking slight to the right of the target to the left of the target wkth "fire at selection" and it will urn a hole right through their armor to the core.
How did you have the railguns targeting set? It looks like they were on Fire at Will which is VERY bad for a weapon like a railgun. Mine are usually set to fire only at things I have selected (I usually target command spaces or reactors) then I Rotate the ship to sweep the railguns firing line across the target point. When it is in line, it fires directly at the critical location. So long as there are no shields (Large ones especially degrade railgun fire) the important part of the target is usually destroyed.
Of course EMP missiles and disruptors mounted on the railgun ship (and lots of point defense) are also important!
They were indeed on Fire at Will! My thinking was that exact targeting might be hard, so with FaW at least they would be doing guaranteed damage.... but you're probably right that it's not the best setting for slow firing weapons like railguns.
Yah railgun is more like a sniper rifle :) I'm using 2 ships - one heavyly armoured to draw attention and railgun to snipe reactors from behind or sides.
The trick is to pick a target on the enemy ship, then rotate the ship to sweeop your point of aim across the target. the guns will fire when they bear directly on the target. I've never tried a railgun swarm like you did, I've always gone for a large, 2-4 gun (at least 10, preferably 20 long) railguns. Ammo requirements are insanely low, to the point where one factory per weapon is sufficient, and then I just carry a small ammount of sulphur to feed them.
Can you play Dyson Sphere Program again?
I'm expecting that a significant update will drop soon-ish, at which point i'll definitely have to do another run!
Wasnt this game solved years ago?
Solved? Probably! But I don't play games to just look up the nearest walkthrough and follow the step-by-step instructions ;)
the game is very, very, very, *very* far from solved. there's so many permutations of what you can do in it that it's frankly kinda ridiculous to me (no offence intended, i have like 1100 hours in the game so i'm used to how open it is in tactics) to think that there could be A Best Way (tm) to play it