How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

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942 days, 23 hours, 12 minutes ago

How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter his course slightly every turn so I can't catch him while cloaked. I can't leave a wolf pack at a planet, that's useless. I can't lay mines to force his moves, because they're immune to mine fields. I can't cover 1 of his ships with 9 of my ships just to cover every alternate waypoint in a 3x3 square. Any advice or help is appreciated. They are absolutely running away with this thing and everything I've tried to stop him has failed.

942 days, 22 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

Pods don't change direction so you can sit ships in set points and kill pods with ease.

Have a cloaked ship in front of your planets. Say 36LY and spot them as they come in.

942 days, 22 hours, 42 minutes ago

vindicator

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

As a horwasp player who knows from bitter experience- if you ride the storm with a good picket line to pick off incoming pods as described by Martinr to the point you get the big ships, you can make my life hell n the end game...

942 days, 22 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

Are Stingers considered pods? I think they are. Pods can make "course adjustments". So yes, they can move. I'm looking at 3 Stingers at 3 different waypoints, all of which moved their course by 1 last turn.

"They carry a minimum amount of fuel (1 KT, 2 KT if accelerated) for course adjustments, terminal maneuvers and reentry braking." - http://help.planets.nu/horwasp-ships

942 days, 22 hours, 33 minutes ago

vindicator

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

Are you sure the stingers are changing course - fire and forget weapons unless you grab them in a tow and guide them in....

If there are I would be VERY interested...

942 days, 22 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

No they don't.

You get one course adjustment at Accelerators.

Its all straight line flight from the planet to the target planet. Or the planet to the accelerator then straight to the planet.

Every planet can launch if it has fuel, clans and minerals.

So what you are seeing is you being targeted by multiple planets.

942 days, 22 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

Maybe I'm not validating my data correctly? I used the Time Machine to go back 1 turn to verify that my course was set to exact square that the red line ended in. In 3 separate cases I missed by exactly 1 square. So,

A) Did I set my waypoint incorrectly last turn? Maybe?

B) Did something cause my ships to move by 1 square that I don't know about? eg. do protofields move ships? 1 of those 3 ships is infected by a field that I missed. The other 2 are not.

C) Did something cause his Stingers to move by 1 last turn?

942 days, 22 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I am playing the Horwasp. You target the planet and Stingers are launched in a straight line. The next turn if its a multiple turn flight you can do nothing with the flight path. No option to tweak the flight by 1 LY. No option to change to a different planet if that planet is taken already etc.

So once you work out the flight path from a planet and figure if its travelling at warp 6 or 7 or if its flight path is not coming from a planet it must be an accelerator in mid space you then should be able to sit a ship om that point and kill Stingers.

942 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

Possibly not the end of the line. I do not know exactly. But they should be a straight line and the same distance so the same point every turn. Unless an accelerator has speeded it up by 1.5 times speed.

942 days, 22 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I double checked and all of my ships ended their movement on the waypoint that I set, so they didn't move. Something must have happened to the other ships. If it was an accelerator that speed them up by 1.5 times, that would be a much greater difference in destination than 1.

942 days, 21 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I just did come calculus (so guess who's getting drunk tonight!? woo!) and I have a theory. If the path of a Horwasp ship isn't recalculated every turn (like usual), but rather pre-calculated at launch, then there could potentially be a mathematical inconsistency between what the interface shows (the red line) and what the math actually does in the host event. Making this outcome actually very common. I happen to be at a 45 degree offset from where the Horwasp are departing exaggerating the math. So now I wonder if math could have made their ships move?

942 days, 21 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

Minefields is the most powerfull way to defend yourself from horwasp. Where do you get that they are inmune to minefields? they are not. If you are crystal,, done.. Horwasp have not chance against you. Do not lose time in building to much ship. Make a deal with a neighborg and invest in a combination of small and big minefields.
Any other race the only problem is the stinger, they come with 3 HP,. So they can put down 1200 mines per turn. But all the other pods have not chance in the minefield. Brods..poor ships,, they are a joke,, they can do nothing against minefields. Just build the minefield in front of the brod, which is easy becuase normally you can see it coming... put a minefield in the way that the edge will be 7 yl in front of the coming waipoint. Next turn the brod is going to go 30 yl in your minefield, you can lay two overlaping minefields and most sure the brod will hit. One it hit the technology of the rays is lowered, so next turn just enlarge the minefield and the brod will probably hit again, after two hits an small ship can take care of that brod.

942 days, 21 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I did some reading a while ago that lead me to believe they were immune to mines. I must have misunderstood. That's good to know. Thank you!

942 days, 21 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

This was what I read and misunderstood, "The extremely low power usage of the rocks keeps mines from being able to acquire them as targets, rendering rocks immune to mines. Due to their more complex sensors, this immunity doesn't extend to web mines." Rocks are immune, not all Horwasp ships.

942 days, 21 hours, 20 minutes ago

vindicator

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

A good horwasp player will give you lots to "deal" with at once... a ship forced to intercept is a ship that cannot lay mines...

942 days, 21 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I can now accurately predict where the Horwasp ships will go and I can confirm that it's not where the interface suggests they will go. The red line remains accurate for other races because the host will calculate the way point based on the a ships current position, heading and speed. Horwasp movement does not. I believe it is actually based on heading and speed from their origin and does not update each turn like all the other races. That means that the math will round differently and "move" ships each turn leaving Horwasp ships in unexpected places when travelling in any direction that is not vertical or horizontal. The effect is magnified by the sin() of the angle and the total distance travelled. That means ships with total travel distances over ~100ly at angles off of 90/180 are completely capable of "moving via math" 1ly compared to other races. I think this is probably a bug.

942 days, 21 hours, 5 minutes ago

vindicator

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

@strixy have you played AS horwasp yet? May help you see things from the other side and join the fun at the same time?

942 days, 21 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I am working on that. I've only played 4 or 5 turns against them so far. Not to mention I was on vacation for the holidays which sounds like I should have had more time to look into all this, but no. Family came for a visit, which was nice, but busy.

942 days, 21 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

@Strixy: Only Hive and Soldier are not pods. Accelerator pod has one difference in that it cannot be Towed.
_ _

Only the pods with Low Energy Profile are immune Webs/Minefields as you have learned... which includes the Rocks as you noted... as well as Nests/Armoured-Nests, Farms and Protofield pods. So just the Armoured Nests have weapons of all of them (3 beams).

Just a heads up, you have to Intercept and have Primary Enemy to attack these pods AND you have to do it BEFORE they reach your planet. Since you can only see them within 25 ly it is often too late to stop them... basically if they arrive next Turn, it's too late to stop them.
_ _

All their ships/pods are immune to the per-Turn Web-drain however... but not Webmine hits. Webs are extremely powerful against Horwasp since pods only have 1-2kt of fuel, and all their ships/pods blow up when they have no fuel.
_ _

Since you can predict where their pods end up in between planets each Turn, you can place a ship there and Tow the pods... and then they are frozen in place and would have to be towed by a Soldier/Hive or possibly have an Accelerator placed over it (never tested this).

Since you don't earn PBP by destroying Horwasp ships, but steal them instead after they earn them by destorying a non-Horwasp ship... it's a good idea to have a few Horwasp pods you've frozen in place for when they have PBPs for you to steal.
___

Here is some advice for Horwasp players... if you want to Minesweep, set your pod to a lower Warp setting!

942 days, 20 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I am playing the Privateers so I would prefer to rob ship. I can't use intercept to catch a Stinger because that would mean combat. I can't do a cloaked intercept if I can't calculate where the Stinger is going to end it's turn. I can't rely on the red lines in the interface to help me with that, see above. (Also I've reported that as a bug.) So I must resort to doing manual calculus every turn for every ship I wish intercept. I must also know the origin and destination of every Horwasp ship I wish to intercept. Well, until the bug is confirmed and fixed anyway. It's like I'm playing Planets 3.1 by snail mail again. I'll just reminisce for a while and bask in the glory of the good old days.

942 days, 20 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

@Strixy: Don't worry, I was getting to your 'course adjustments bug'.

This is way I want you to do... take a ship, match it to the Warp speed of the pods you want to predict their destinations from one planet to another... then click on the origin planet and then click on the destination planet.

Do the little yellow circles now match where the pods ended up?

942 days, 20 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

@Strixy: SHIFT-click on the destination planet I should say!

The per-Turn directional arrow destination shown for enemy ships are still incorrect sometimes I believe and not just for Horwasp. I think I submitted it as a bug... done so many they kinda all blur together and I don't always make threads for them. For example the foreign cargo transfer warning dialog box is currently missing and I just used the CONTACT form.

I found a few others this month already which were fixed really quick! But the ones I don't think are a priority I don't bother with a thread.

942 days, 20 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I used the map movement tool "M" to draw a line between the origin and destination planets, so similar approach to what you're suggesting.

I was able to accurately plot the pods actual waypoints using that line and the speed of the pods. The interface is incorrectly showing the waypoint of a pod when they travel at angles. If they were travelling perfectly horizontal or vertically, there would be no need to round the numbers in the equation.

Example:
In turn 1 the Horwasp launch a ship towards a planet 500ly away.

In turn 2, the final waypoint of the ship is 1900,1900. Exactly like you would expect. No problem. The problem with the Horwasp comes in on the next turn.

In turn 3 I think the Host calculates the new waypoint based on the original origin of the ship NOT the ships current position at turn 2 (1900,1900). The interface and the Host, however, use the ships current position. SO as the turns progress, the Horwasp ships "float" (math joke) around the blue line and not the red line like the other races do.

942 days, 20 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

Is it possible for me to share screen captures of what I'm talking about?

942 days, 19 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

@Strixy: You cannot use the measure tool to predict where things will end up... in fact you couldn't even use the ships waypoint system until Big Beefer improved it adding a little yellow circle to show your true destinations (they aren't visible for Warp1 since not really needed).

You may not have activated this feature; Goto "Settings >>", find "Ship Screen Settings:", and activate the checkBox for "Show Next Turn Location"

942 days, 19 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I have done as you suggested, but there appears to be no change in my interface at all.

942 days, 19 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

@Strixy: It's a bit annoying, but after you change something in "Settings >>" you have to scroll down to the bottom and press the black 'Save' button in "Special Commands".

Then you probably still have to exit, close your browser tab... and re-enter the Sector for changes to have taken effect.

If that was the issue... sorry, my bad, I know it needs to be said because sometimes I change "Settings >>" and forget the Save button myself!

942 days, 19 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I did catch the save button, barely. I've logged out completely and I've done a hard refresh on the browser. Nadda changes.

942 days, 19 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

FYI: I haven't experienced this problem previously and I've been playing here for a couple of years now.

942 days, 19 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

@Strixy: Oh. Well here is a picture of what you are missing out on; http://imgur.com/a/UEZyX

Possibly a script is messing it up for you is only thing I can think of besides rebooting your computer and doing a little gig to appease the computer gods.
___

Off-topic; The reason the waypoint line looks fat at the ship and narrows at the end destination is because I'm using McNimbles scripts; http://chmeee.org/project/planets.nu

942 days, 19 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I'm not running any scripts.

942 days, 19 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

Okay, I got it working. The jig must been what did it. Or time. Unfortunately, your method shows that the Horwasp ship should end in the same spot as the red line. See attached. http://imgur.com/a/SywXk

942 days, 18 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: How do you defend against the Horwasp? He knows to alter...

I checked the other two ships using your method and they give the correct results. It is still incorrect for this 1 ship however.