Interesting air unit stats

[Guest jubjubjub]

Is there some way to change to fixed spacing or otherwise align the tables?

 

After reviewing FJ's excellent piece on unit bonuses, I decided to compile a few stats on the rebel air speeder vs the advanced fighter. I wanted to know if the air speeder was a good substitute for the advanced fighter. I set up 2 PC's on a LAN with deathmatch tech lvl 3 and the forcebuild cheat so I wouldn't have to wait forever for research and unit builds. Rebels were the attacking party and Naboo the victims. The following shows the reduction in hitpoints from one attack. I repeated 3-4 times for a good number.

 

Tech Level 3----------Speeder-----Fighter

------------------------(2 attack)---(4 attack)

Mech Destroyer---------25-----------2.5

(6 duraarmor)

Strike Mech------------25-----------2.5

(6 duraarmor)

Pummel------------------7-----------2.5

(180 duraarmor)

AA Mobile---------------5---------- 2.5

(10 duraarmor)

Fighter-----------------10----------19

 

The speeder gets a nice bonus against mech units, but only a small one vs heavy weapons. The speeder should definitely not be used to attack other air units, as it only does half the damage, yet takes the full damage of a fighter.

 

Tech Level 4----------Armored-----Advanced

----------------------Speeder------Fighter

-------------------- (4 attack)----(5 attack)

Assault Mech------------46------------7.5

(11 duraarmor)

Mech Destroyer---------37.5---------7.5

(6 duraarmor)

Strike Mech--------------37.5---------7.5

(6 duraarmor)

Hvy. AA Mobile------------5------------7.5

(15 duraarmor)

Adv. Fighter--------------8-----------27

(4 duraarmor)

 

Note that a fully upgraded speeder only does 8 damage to a no-shield advanced fighter, but takes damage of 27 (out of 30 total HP). It's not a good idea to send speeders against fighters.

 

Now, with shields, it gets interesting. What follows is the remaining hitpoints following the sequential shot, e.g. 29 HP remaining after the first shot, 9 after the second shot, etc...:

 

Adv. Fighter vs Adv Fighter

29 9 dead

 

Armored Speeder vs Adv Fighter

29-28-27-26-25-24-22-18-14-10-6-2-dead (hit points left)

24-20-16-12--8--4--2--2--2--2-2-2----- (level of shields)

 

One damage always goes through, even with full shields. When the shields were depleted (and recharged back to 2), damage went through somewhat relative to the regular attack less shield level.

 

So, since it only takes 3 shots for an advanced fighter to kill a speeder and the speeder would take 13 shots to kill a shielded advanced fighter, it is kind of pointless to send speeders anywhere near advanced fighters.

 

Now, an important point on micromanagement of air battles. Since an advanced fighter only takes 3 shots to take out another fighter/bomber/speeder, it makes no sense to micromanage your air to have more than 3 fighters target one enemy. All the shots over the first 3 are wasted. In this case it is better to let the AI pick the targets. I ran a 10 on 10 to prove this. I changed stance for both groups from no attack to aggressive simultaneously and had one group all attack one opposing fighter at a time while the AI controlled the other group. The AI won with 4 fighters left, with 2 of them with no damage and 2 with 1 point of damage.

 

Hope you found this interesting. Good luck.

[Guest Nerf Herder]

Great information. Thanks for the research. The info about not micro managing will be really helpful.