Worst place to start a combat...
 

So here I am, rampaging through the ST universe with a small fleet of 16 assimilator-class Tactical cubes & normal cubes, accompanied by 5 battle cubes, when i see a fleet of 25 ships that would make for some nice decoys during the forthcoming invasion. This fleet is orbiting an ally's homeworld (i'm playing in team mode - 5 AIs on hard with medium bonuses vs. me) and i know for a fact that they have rather... dated.. weaponry. My first choice is to attack. Knowing the annoying BS that has happened before, I save the game *just in case* it happens again. Well, it does.

I sent my fleet over, and they start RIGHT ON TOP of the planet. It's so bad that even then very first weapons platform that the enemy built - equipped with the shortest range and weakest gun available - is able to hit the ship that is the farthest away. Of course, they also have over a hundred more modern platforms.

As if starting at point blank range of everything the enemy with the planet isn't bad enough, the fleet is split into two sub-fleets... one on each side of me. Let me draw a picture here:
-------Planet
---------*

()-------*--------()
enemy me enemy


____________________ <-- map border


Normally I wouldn't care too much about something like this - I'd just replace the fleet with bigger & better ships. But this is happening very often, even when there's only one empire that I'm battling with. Is this normal? You'd think that even the worst of commanders would know not to warp out right on top of an enemy when they have the first shot....
good thing i saved.

Edit: i can't do ASCII art here... :\

[ March 02, 2004, 04:36: Message edited by: oogs ]

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

Use the [code ] tags to do your ASCII art.

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

That's unusual. It seems that when I attack a planet, my fleet usually starts off near the edge of the combat area and it takes me a few combat turns just to get to the planet in the middle?

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

Which patches has this happened with? I've never seen that problem with planet attacks unless you have hundreds of ships so there is no room for them.

PvK

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

Was there a warp point over the planet?

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

Wow, i seem to always forget to mention patch/Mod. STM 1.5.1.1. with 1.9.1 installed.

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

I have had several bad fights because combat started to close to a plannet...
I had a wall formation and there was plenty of room...

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

i know what you mean. it just happened again... me vs a planet. i had 50 ships in a compact formation, they didn't have anything except 80 weapons platforms... and i started 9 spaces away from the planet.

in the amount of time i typed this message (2 mins) they've wiped out my entire fleet.

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

Were there more than 2 races participating in the combat? Weird things do happen when there are more.

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

nope, just me vs the ferengi.. they didn't even have a fleet present.

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

well, the following happened in a PBW game to me. I warped with an attack fleet of mine through a warpgate which's other side was guarded by three different allied races trying to defend the gate against me (se5a was one of these opponents, I bet he remembers the battle)
now I expected all of their fleets to be located right around the warpgate to get a free first hit at my ships, well, wrong.
what happened was: all my ships started in the middle right next to the warpgate while their three fleets were parted and were sitting in three corners of the map. (the fourth corner was were my minesweepers were heading too)
well, guess what happened, my fleet killed there three small fleets with ease, while I would have lost if I 'd have had to fight them together at once.

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yep yep, and your opponents learned a hard and valuable lesson that day. Don't try to guard a warp point with ships from an ally. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

In fact if it's an important warp point, I'll insist my allies not even travel through it if they can avoid it because of the off chance an enemy fleet could come popping through at the same time as them, totally screwing up my defensive advantage.

Re: Worst place to start a combat...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Erk!! I'll have to remember that, glad I found it before it was too late! Does it also apply to units? ie, two allied empires both dropping sats on a warp point?