by Quirky1
Please, please, please... do not derail this thread into yet another discussion about PM being overpowered, broken or perfectly balanced.
This is a thread about how to use them to their best advantage. If you think they are OP, think how you could make them more so with a good strategy. If you think they are balanced how can we use them instead of focusing how to counter them.
I would also prefer to keep the discussion to a pre meditated PM strategy and not something you jump to when all else failed or you have already won the game and want to rub it in.
What is the over all cost compared to other similar attack or turtle defense fleets - compare attack fleets to other attack fleets and defense builds to other defense builds? Are they better for early bullying, ancient fighting or late game to grab that extra system or bust or help defend a starbase hardpoint?
So a few assumptions before we begin:
- Plasma Missiles can be used as written.
- Plasma Missiles are not considered OP by the other players, so they won't go above and beyond to stop you or gang up on you preemptively.
- The other players do know how to use available means to counter a PM threat.
- The main comparison should be with other strategies that uses military force in one way or another, and if PM do a better or worse job at it.
So how should one use Plasma Missiles in a military strategy or as part of a turtling strategy? When should one grab the tech, are other tech a higher priority? Which races are an extra good fit for PM ship parts, etc?
I know this will be hard, but try to leave the PM are balanced/overpowered discussion out of this.
I want to learn the full potential of PM. When and how should they be used. Common pitfalls with using them, like building too many ships and forget about VP, building an attack fleet and never really use it, getting overrun by interceptors in the end game, sending too strong a signal that you are going to attack, spreading out too fast, people not wanting to trade and help you get an access point to them, too slow to take GCDS compared to other ship designs, Upgrade gap when you turn a working ship into a hybrid before it is fully a PM ship compared to other ship designs that can be partially upgraded and fight well during that time, etc.
Most questions are generic for other military strategies as well, so try to differentiate what makes PM better or worse compared to other weapon designs.
So if you had to (or wanted to) focus on a strategy with PM as a central component, how would you go about it? What would you do, when would you do it and what would you look out for?