My first online challenge really… I finally beat it. Shows how much I really have to learn. Anyway, I’m curious how the rest of you beat it. I found that it was his fighters that were doing most of the damage to me. I had the toughest time even shooting those down. I had rocket fighters set to attack the fighters, I had a line of anti-fighter frigates, I had quite a few tractor beams. The end of the game was usually a couple of his cruisers, his rear guard frigates, and MOST of his fighters taking down several cruisers and their escort frigates. I finally (BARELY) won by making fighters that were so damn fast they held off his fighters long enough for the rest of my ships to come through and wipe out enough of his fleet to cause a win. It was a hollow win, because after the victory popup, I watched his fighters clean up the rest of my fleet… Which was 2 ships.) I’m sure there was a better way. My winning fleet is posted as “Dogthinker is dead! Long live Dogthinker!” =) Constructive criticism welcome.
Ugh… Meant to post this in challenges forum. Sorry. Can I get a mod to move this?
Congrats. I’m glad you enjoyed beating it 
A tip - it sounds from your post like you were trying to counter my laser fighters with rocket fighters… Fighter rockets aren’t much use against fighters, the only good thing about them against that particular fleet, is that they are faster than laser fighters, so might distract the rebel fighters for longer.
Now for the bad news… Do you have Tribes? If so… Then now you have to beat the Tribes version of the fleet - It just knocked down your response challenge at 74% remaining 
I think it’s a bit easier to beat though, I tried to make it able to counter too many types of fleet - so it’s a bit of a Jack of All Trades, Master of None… So you should be able to beat this one a lot more easily
That would explain why the damn things wouldn’t DIE. I figured if I was faster, I could at least hold out long enough to win…it worked…Barely…I’ll try switching things around to better take out your fighters. DOn’t have the expansion yet…waiting for it to arrive on steam. =) Not sure why my victory isn’t showing up in the challenges list yet, though… BUt really, I did win. =)
I find it’s somewhat vulnerable to frigate-heavy fleets. His fighters are mostly there for superiority - but don’t hesitate to shoot them down or they’ll eventually eat you.
I recently saw an excellent variation of that same type of fleet, but I can’t seem to find it again. The guy had his cruisers set up in a phalanx so beams were never deadzoned, and the ships were sporting target scramblers. I think it had rocket fighters too… real pain.
Well… Since more then 20% of the challenges out there seem to be “Cruiser lasers are Awesome” type challenges…
As is I’ve posted a challenge with the fleet type I tend to use against close range aggressive fleets.
Slamming the Wall. A response to all things fast and close ranged.
posted: 12/11/09
Meanwhile, Its the swarm of fighters that make your challenges so deadly Dogthinker. I literally can not match them using Alliance, no fighter hulls that can pull it off. What keeps happening is your cruisers drop my shields and then use a beam laser to drop my armor resistance so the fighter swarm is able to chew up my ships nearly instantly. Victory for me is usually a result of killing your cruisers before they can inflict critcal damage on mine. The posted slow fleet can hack both of your aggressive challenges. An unposted “Fast” (.16 speed.) fleet was able to take on the rebel fleet technically but would be chewed up by the fighters in overtime. There was a trick to it however. Had to set the fleet into formation so the wall wouldn’t break up. If some ships started getting in front of the others the ensuing dog fight would result in a loss (Those damn fighters again.) I suspect that this is why the slow fleet is successful, its not the extra firepower and armor, Its the fact the ships don’t have time to get out of position before a fast fleet hits it allowing better concentration of fire. Against the Tribe challenge the “Fast” fleet just couldn’t pump out the firepower needed to take down tribe ships. Gonna have to keep working on the concept.
One of the things I noticed and appreciate about your challenge nuke was the use of “Trigger” units. For example when one of your center frigates gets killed and releases your back row ion frigates to move forward. I did notice however that your rocket fighters seem to have the wrong range settings in that challenge. Have to watch rockets, the standard 200 distance for fighters to attack a target is below a rockets minimum range.
What fleet did you use Yurch?
certainly, those laser fighters are awful. So many times it looked like I was going to finally beat the challenge, just to be raped by them.
Finally I had beaten this challenge with an “aggressive rebel fleet” (0.37) with just superior amount of repairable fighters using “divide and conquer”, all of that just to win by a small margin… =(
… at least it shaped my aggressive rebel fleet that beats most challenges in the first pass
I think you need to look at the date of that challenge 
Back then it was almost entirely plasma or missile fleets, and lots of forum posts about how engines were useless and plasma was overpowered. This fleet was a response to that trend, using five engines and no plasma or missiles. It’s a bit older than it’s date even - I had to repost it after the Achillies design I was using became invalid.
Well, it does the job. But as I already said, slow and short range is a hollow victory, no versatility - it can only beat short ranged fleets. As my challenge text requests - try to beat it with something equally versatile. I beat it first time with 97% (lost a few fighters) because I knew it would have neither range, nor speed.
Use more antifighter. Also, the Rebel fleet challenge we discussing can be easily beaten with ‘distraction’ ships, since the fighters target fighters first, a major flaw in the fleet. I’ve made much much better versions of this fleet (fixing it’s vulnerability to fighters, to frigates, making the fighters more aggressive, more intelligent battle orders, more varied ship designs,) but I’ve not updated the challenge, since I’m kinda proud so many people have had fun with it 
The Tribe fleet was my excuse to post an ‘update’ to the fleet, although I went a bit overboard on antifighter, so it’s very vulnerable to cruiser-only fleets.
That’s a slow fleet. Hence the quotes, I guess
No, it’s the extra firepower. Use formation orders if you want to verify this. Use a fragile trigger unit if you want to let your formation loosen up as my ships engage.
Aha! That’s more like it. Didn’t expect to hear about a faster fleet beating it (this fleet moves at 0.34 or 0.35, I’m not sure which as I’ve modded the designs since.) Yeah, repairing fighters can be quite nice, carriers didn’t exist when I made this fleet D:
It was one of the first fleets I downloaded, so I think I probably beat it the first time with a hollow victory .2 speed set of cruisers.
As a fellow Alliance, you can beat the entire rebel fleet (50-60%) with one (and a half) frigate design:
Alliance swordfish frigate
2 ion cannons, frigate pulse laser, .35 speed (two engine 2), 20 armor, no shield. Costs about 924, which isn’t unreasonable. You can get it faster, but these are cheaper and I’m not about to try to get my armored assault cruisers to match pace with .4+ speed frigates.
Set them on keep moving with 1% attack fighters and the pulse laser becomes a makeshift AA coverage weapon when not tearing through the hulls of rebel scum. All that remains is for you to swap in a few tractor beams amongst them to make sure they down the quick fighters faster - it will otherwise take forever to completely down massed rebel fighters. Unfortunately you can’t use cooperative type orders or they’ll mill about like bloody idiots when one picks up on a fighter, but you can’t have everything I guess.
The armor seems a bit gimmicky at first, but that design has grown on me as a supporting craft - I’ve got at least 20 variants of it and employ it in every assault fleet I make. Anything that could move the current assault paradigm away from overmassed cruiser lasers is a good thing if you ask me.
No offense to Dogthinker of course. The original fleet remains an excellent benchmark.
Through the simple expedient of looking at the challenge’s file I’m reasonably sure that’s the cruiser that is being used. Plus or minus a few things in different spots, and I changed the name. It has .3 speed using lightweight cruiser engines, The kicker with it is the cost of only 2261, Or about 2/3rds what my ships tend to cost.
In a very foot in mouth kinda way, if you take a pure group of those cruisers vs my wall, they shatter it. Quantity has a quality all it’s own.
.4 speed frigates? Hell mine are up to .73 Similar weapons and cost. Uses shields instead of armor.
Scratch that. .83 speed 807 cost. It seems the extra .1 speed doubled the survivability. (Though there was that one that somehow managed to take 200% hits taken, and was only damaged at the end…)
Yeah, I’m constantly fighting with my tendency to overbloat my cruisers with cost-per-gun rationalizations. Two cruisers get two separate shields and two annoyingly large hitpools to burn through without any diminishing returns or escalating crew/power requirements to get in the way. I should try a series of extreme budget cruisers.
As for the frigates - I mount important crap on my frigates sometimes, so I’m afraid to use frigates of that speed without a minimum range order or the ability to combine escort and keep moving.
The possibilities of having both of those orders are a bit mind blowing considering that even ion cannons outrange cruiser lasers.
You missed one engine, it’s actually five lightweight engines (for speed .34 or .35, I don’t recall exactly), not four. And for the curious, the name was a ‘CCS Speed Demon 3 (Rebel)’… From before I started trying to give my ships more searchable names. Nowadays that ship would be probably be called something exciting like “R 034 4xCL CBL EMP”
It’s not that nice a ship design, I don’t use it any more. Main changes in my recent incarnations of this fleet are things like softening the shield (it’s really only there to keep the fighters at bay) and specialising more (dedicated armour breakers behind the first line, instead of mounting a beam on every ship, for example.) I keep changing my mind about the value of the ECM shock… I guess I just need to put it on every second ship, rather than every ship.
Yeah. The use of fighters in that old challenge is really clumsy. It seems to give some people trouble, but really they’re only there to distract the enemy fighters (but I’ve since learnt that’s a very unreliable way to do it… And having your fighters rush forwards is not usually a great move when posting a challenge.)