I'm about to play my first game of TI this weekend, so I've been looking over the forums. I see many negative comments about DNs and was wondering if this is a general consensus or if it's a few folk's perspective. I know that some races have bonuses for these ships; does that make a difference in your opinion?

It's hard to say if it's a "consensus" or not, but many veteran players feel that you don't get enough punch out of your 5 resources. 5 Destroyers is statistically better than 1 Dreadnought (if you have the fleet supply to support them). They do have their uses, especially with Admirals and the L1Z1X, though.

I'm not much of one for major house rules, but one rule I have played with a lot lately that I like is this:

- Dreadnoughts roll 2 dice (in Space Combat only) when undamaged; they roll 1 die when damaged.

- When building a Dreadnought, it counts as 2 ships against your production limit.

- War Suns take 3 hits to kill; they lose 1 die for each hit they have taken. (Their dice still apply to both bombardment and Space Combat)

- When building a War Sun, it counts as 3 ships against your production limit.

With this little house rule, Dreadnoughts become much more formidable, and thus the choice of spending the 5 resources is much more meaningful. 5 Destroyers can take more hits, but 1 Dreadnought may now statistically do more damage than 5 Destroyers (I'd have to do the math to be sure, though). And they can do things that Destroyers can't do, like bombard, carry GFs (with Stasis Capsules), etc.

The War Sun bit doesn't strictly need to be there with the Dreadnought change, but it's a nice little flavor to the War Suns, also.

Dreadnoughts biggest value is giving you two casualties with one fleet supply and bombardment. Dreads also have a lot of techs that improve them so they are better for tech centered races.

I would try them unmodified first they really aren't bad, drastic house rules usually just alienate you from the player base and lead to confusion.

If anything simply make them hit on 4 instead of 5.

If a player builds DNs then I assume they are L1Z1x, new to TI3, out of other ships, or have a SO related to DNs.

Bill

Thanks all for the great responses! I ended up being LZL1X...kinda appropriate, huh...

blarknob said:

So would L1z1x Dreads hit on 3?!

blarknob said:

I see why Blarknob loves not having us old farts around.... fewer people pointing out his bad advice.

Dreads are for when you run out of plastic or are the L1z1x. And even then they are only marginally useful. Their only real ability is not having to remove a fighter from PDS shots.

For that same fleet supply and resource cost, you can have a carrier and 4 fighters, which will beat a dread 90+% of the time. Considering how little Invasion Combat their actually is, the Bombardment shot isn't really that useful.

yes l1z1x dreads would hit on three. It isn't really that powerful, and is a much less drastic change to the game balance than giving them two dice. You don't really have to bother with this unless you want to encourage people to build dreads.

Anyway I'm not telling everyone to build fleets of nothing but dreads, I'm simply trying to provide uses for them to counter the arguments presented that they are next to useless.

They have a good deal of uses and depending on the game state they can be a reasonable investment. They are very inefficient in terms of resource cost, but they are more efficient than cruisers/destroyers in terms of fleet supply and space dock production capacity. A players access to these different resources changes quite a bit during a game and at certain points it can make a great deal of sense to purchase a few dreads.

Again I agree that they are very inefficient with regards to resource cost, and should be a rare purchase, but they do have their uses.

But they ARE next to useless.

The problem I have with DN's is that they are slow, don't hit very hard compared to cost. In most cases if I had 5 resources left after a build and only one production slot left, I'd buy in order of precedence (unless plastic was a limiting factor):

1. Anything but Dreadnaught
2. Dreadnaught

Cruisers are much more useful. They are faster and hit almost as hard and you can buy 2 for the price of 1 dread and they benefit from Techs earlier in the tree than Dreads do.

XRD is a must have tech and do you really want your DN's hampering down your fleet movement?

Buying a DN without an admiral to put on it is a waste of resources and a fleet supply. More often than not, I find myself thinking:
"Dammit, I wish I had another destroyer"

I've never thought:
"Dammit I should have bought a Dreadnaught!"

The best advise I remember concerning DNs is to switch the order of the DN weapon tech with the PDS weapon tech on the tech tree. This gives DNs a nice advantage with a pre-emptive strike and makes PDS systems not as powerful.

From a logical perspective it makes sense that a long ranged in-system attack from a DN would be easier than attacking a ship an entire system away. But I know sci-fi throws logic into the wind sometimes.

I tend to find that the bombardment is really useful.

I think that one of the great things about TI3 is that there are a lot of options, and some of them are more appropriate than others. If the person next to me doesn't build many ground forces, then I will need a dreadnaught less. If they build a load, then a fleet of dreads might be an option.

There's the psychological aspect to the game as well: if you have a giant plastic miniature on the board that takes up space on that hex, it looks full, and opponents are less likely to go attack it because of the perception that it is well defended.

It could well turn out that different people have different play styles, and even different groups of people learn to play differently. Again, it will always be about choosing the appropriate response and tactical decision based on the game. I like dreadnaughts: I like cruisers: I like the option to choose between them.

Yet still, if you want to Bombard, and your opponent sees you slowly wandering over with your move 1 dreads, he can just build a pds in the needed positions, and be absolutely secure from your expansive low combat dice, bombarders.

On top of that you do bombard with 1 die per Dread.. so either you gotta draw those evil actioncards that allow you to bombard [with your meager one die ] ,or you are ****** again with worthless big plastic models that don't do anything worth the 5 ressources you paid.

I still only see two reasons for dreads:

-a very military orientated game, with you not being able to save the resources for suns, so you have to buy dreads or die on your fleet limit.

-a game where you needed the "big things" early, and can now technically advance the 4 dreads that survived the early slaughters.

But actually those two reasons tend to combien to one...

Another iplus for dreads is to finally ignore the nuesance of PDS fire, as direct hits can't be played from PDS hits, your Dreads are a relative good choice to eat that fire... but yet again, ther eis PDS there, you wanna tech again to clear the planet? Or you wanna pay for a nearly useless Bombard ability?

Things would really look less bad if they only had Mov 2.

But 5 techs to reach that speed make them a bad pick if you are "not defending your hometown while you have less that 12 resources or both suns on the field, or were unable to tech to suns"

I see war suns a hell of a lot less often than I do dreadnaughts. True, dreadnaughts move at a speed of 1, and yes, PDS can block their bombard - but if there isn't a spacedock on the planet you're trying to take, your opponent is equally restricted in movement for getting it out there.

If we're going on the cost analysis, I'd say that 4 ground forces is usually a wiser investment than a PDS, although I also agree that there are times when PDS are preferable.

I'm not saying that I always build dreadnaughts: I appreciate the massive advantages cruisers and destroyers *can* have. But I also will use them in situations where they're useful - bombarding, psychological warfare, limited build capacity, and so on.

There are a lot of negative opinions on dreadnaughts: my perspective is that they are sometimes appropriate, given certain situations, that often appear in the game.

In some regards this reflects real life. Yes naval DN have existed, may still exist in some fleets. But modern western fleets consist of carriers with destroyer / cruiser escorts.