Fight Dirty?
 

Okay, so I'm in a PBW game with some local friends. Sure enough, the two people in the game who get along the least well got shoved right next to each other in a corner. That being me and this other guy. (We'll call him Hippo to protect identities here and 'cause I'll need a name for him.)

So, Hippo's got like a dozen systems and 30+ planets. I've got 3 systems (boxed between a black hole with the #1 player's home system on the other side of it and Hippo's empire.) with perhaps 18 planets. Most of those are brand new gas giants I'm working towards colonizing since getting the tech to do so about a game year ago.

Naturally he's able to utterly out-produce me, he's got the support of two other complete newbies who've fed him a lot of tech before I informed them how bad an idea that was.

So he's got Dreads, I've got... (don't laugh) cruisers but really I use Frigates and light carriers.

Looks like I'm hosed right? Well, there's more. Hippo, you see, is a complete newb. He's done such classic things as build space stations on battleship frames. Not a big deal, right? Well, except he didn't give them engines or supply storage so they're just dead weight.

Other ships have DU1s and DU5s on the same frame... it's a mess.

What's more, he doesn't group his ships into fleets, he just leaves them in a big stack. He's camping the warp point, as am I, but I'm doing so with intent to build Psychic academies and such and build up a fleet of small, high-potency ships to work him over with.

Meanwhile I find his newest, biggest ships and hit them with intel projects. (I'm pretty sure he has intel tech, but can't find the intel button, etc.) So every 3 turns or so I get a new battleship or dreadnaught or space station. I then run his ships in suicide attacks at his colonies 'cause he has no mid-system defense. I've taken to grabbing the occasional mine layer to boot so I can lay mines in his back quarters and make life hell on him.

The problem is, I see dreads and I'm getting nervous. I know he's got minefields to boot. It'll be very hard for me to extract him from his position.

If you guys would be so kind as to help me put a newbie in his proper place and teach me not just to fight off this obviously superior foe, but to fight DIRTY so I can possibly win enough to build an industrial base, I would really appreciate it.

The Last thing I need is this guy gloating for eons and eons.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Well, although he's got issues with the finer details and micromanagement, it sounds like he understands the fundamentals of play very well. He got lotsa colonies, and exploited other players effectively. Are you sure he hasn't practiced on the side, say vs the AI? I didn't play SE3 Online until I could beat 9 hard AIs on computer vs. humans team play, and I never lost a game (although I was accused on one occasion of being a second ID for a known player, which seems less of a possiblity if you know this guy).

If he gloats, set him up in a game with an expert. That'll "put him in his place." If he doesn't bite, then he's got less justification to gloat. Newbies that think too highly of themselves tend to get smacked.

If he has no system defense, can you get to him with stellar manip?

Not many people are going to give you their dirty fighting tricks, cause those are majorly important strategy secrets, brought out only when necessary.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Work up to communications mimic, then screw over all of his alliances. If he is an uber-newb, he's going to be ultra-reliant on trade with his allies. You would seriously hamper his economy, and thus buy yourself some vital breathing room.

Also, once you can get into his space, consider sending some plague bomb ships (with as much ECM/stealth&scattering armor/ship&fleet experience as you can muster) in to his colony worlds. Go for the ones least likely to be defended and pick them off one at a time. After that, try to plague his major colonies. Then follow up with your primary invasion force.

That should be enough to get you started.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The problem here is that he's not reliant on trade, and someone allready botched a comm mimic on him so he'll be wary of that. On the other hand, I'm trying to covert-recon his spaceports and set them up as targets so I can move in and cripple his economy without having to extract him from every single planet in the system.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is good stuff, but the entire player group 'cept for 3 of the 8 (myself included) have almost no experience with SEIV personally. I also know the people on the other side of him will rally to his cause if I use plague bombs. (They're hardcore RPers) I've been racing up Intel and ECM as fast as I can, in an attempt to make my frigates more competitive with his dreads. I've also started leaning on fighters and sats and mines since they don't require maintenance costs. I'm close to taxing my available resources (including my current trade income) just keeping a comparable fleet to his going. I'm probably just screwed but I'm hoping to at the very least make the war something worth remembering. Next game I won't be so foolish as to mess with tech I've never used before. I hadn't played with Psychic until this game and expected it to have intelligence bonuses. Boy was I dissapointed.

Thanks for the advice though. I do appreciate it.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Here is a tip I don't know if you thought of it yet.
When you capture his high tech ships with your intel projects, take those ships back home and analyze them. You will gain a level in ship construction for free basically this way. If you do this 2 or 3 times, you will have Dreads as well floating around.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Sounds like the only WPS in and out are guarded pretty heavily, so that probably won't work too well. Unless he can get one of the blockading ships, and newly acquired ships don't engage on the first turn.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

If he is inexperienced, he might neglete using point defence. If so, then your cruisers with missiles will shatter his ships out of existence before he has a chance to shoot.

Oh, I forgot to mention that with cloacking you can get past his ships in the warp point if he uses no scanners.

[ May 05, 2003, 07:27: Message edited by: Karibu ]

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

ooh, cloaking, good point. But if he has a lot of tech, he prob. has sensors

[ May 05, 2003, 07:39: Message edited by: Gwaihir ]

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Im not an expert and have little experience in PBW but...

scanners are annoying and if he is the way you describe him he prolly has none.
Remember that Stealth armor gives you cloaking.
Dont send in a fleet - send in hunter ships that would pick on colonies and lone ships. Find his central production sites and plague them (not useful this time tho as it seems). Also find his mining colonies and rad-bomb them. If you need to take on a planet remember to bring in some planetary napalms, they're quite useful.

Vary your tactic - once try on with a lot of fighters and missile cruisers, then when he gets PDC go in with some direct-fire weapons.

For warp-point combat consider the Graviton Hellbore weapon. though many might jump on me here nothing compares with it in a single-shot.
Either that, or ripper beams.
SHield depleters, dont forget these.
And hopefully you do have ID's.

Part of fighting dirty is exploting those special weapons. Some are economically taxing though.

You're psychic? Why arent you using your psychic weapons then? they're some of the best in the game. having cruisers armed with psychic weapons can bring you a couple of victories.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Psychic, hmmmm...well, unless he's gone to using exclusively Master Comps, the Alleigence Subvertor would probably do wonders against his ships. And most probably if he's as new to this as you say, he probably hasn't....but then again, I don't know him so I could be wrong. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Does he have ships or bases with space yard components on them? If so, steal one of those. Then use the space yard to deconstruct and analyze on the spot! This works, but I don't know if this happens at the beginning of the turn before any combats or at the end so best move it to a vacant sector first.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, that was the original plan, but I can't get through the warp-point. He's camping it with 40+ ships. (Mostly destroyers and BCs) I've been hitting his newest, biggest ships with intel and all that does is get them very dead, very quickly. I know he's starting to get frustrated by this and simulator gives me about 70% chance to win if he throws everything at me. (I have a truly insane number of sats on the warp point, plus my own fleet.)

I tried grabbing his shipyard ship to do deconstruct/analysis in the field but I can even run away he just hoses me before the ships get one square of moment.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm grabbing his blockading ships, he's killing them before they can get movement.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Okay, one of my friends is helping him build ships so he is using PDCs, but not enough of them. I throw fighters, CapMissles and about 30+ swift little DU5 frigates at him in the simulator and they do very well. Haven't tested the new dread designs in the field though. Now that he just blew up the BC I captured I have their designs too. (That's always a nice side effect, steal a ship, kill it, and get his latest in ship designs.)

Sensors he doesn't use, that much I'm certain of. Certainly not scanners. How exactly does cloaking/stealth armor work? This is a very confusing point to me. It's not very well explained. All it seems to do is make me 5% harder to hit. Who cares?

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Really? I've been reading these forums for a while and Alleigance converters seem to take a lot of flak for being useless guns. I suppose I could start trying them out and see how it goes. I've been racing up the intel path though and that takes a lot of RP. I've got stealth armor next on the queue and am looking for project ideas for next. Ripper beams sound easy to get. He does not use Master comps. Atleast not enough to worry me.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is very unlikely. More likely he is using fleets, you just don't know it. You cannot see if another person is using fleets or not. From your perspective the other persons fleet just looks like a stack of ships. Even with allies you cannot see another players fleets, only the individual ships in the fleet.

Geoschmo</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmmm. Point. Is there any way to discern if they're in a fleet? Intel project of some kind? I doubt he's using fleets, I don't think he knows how to. If he /is/ it's because the guy helping him pointed it out. But the guy helping him doesn't know what he's doing with fleets either. (He always uses Optimal Range/Arrowhead)

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've tried moving a sector away, doesn't work. Before the ship can move it just gets gunned down.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Useless AS ???? For God sake, refit your small ships with AS and get all his Dreads for free http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Once he swith to MC, give virus to every your ship and replace AS with TK !!! If he is really newb, he is a toast.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yeah, that isn't even dirty, that's just the way it is.

Allegiance Converters could turn this tide for you if he doesn't have Master Controls on all his ships. You have their designs, you're sure to know, now.

AS Frigates are mean. What a mess that will make.

And if he is all about the MC, then throw the virus at him.... crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.

BTW, a MC ship with busted MC is just a floating hulk, right? It cannot be captured or anything else cool that you can do to a floating hulk either... can it?

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

I LOVE the AS.
If you have drones, make AS drones en masse!
Now you can move them back through a wormhole after theyve been used and pick them up again with a drone launch ship and reuse them.
Bus ususally I make ordinary ships with ordinary weapons and one AS. When you're up against some other psychic race and get lucky you can convert his entire fleet in an convert cascade!
(Capture a ship with a converter - that ship captures a ship with a converter....and so on, if you have better offensive/defensive values than the enemy!)

A MC hulk can be capturd with troops, repaired with a shipyard ship and put to use.

[ May 05, 2003, 19:16: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

First off, thanks again, all, for your advice and assistance. I'm just glad that he doesn't do his own research! =^.^=

As for AS... is the AS/Talisman combo as disgusting as it sounds?

And hmmm. ECM+Stealth+AS on a Frigate sounds properly evil and currently undefended against. Okay, after I get Intel 3 I'm racing up the psychic weapons tree. =)

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Drones can't be recovered once they are launched.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If you are a close to the wire as you seem, you might want to use that handy Reorder Projects and put Int3 on the back burner. You won't lose any progress, and can go right into Psychic Weapons, which will prove immediately useful.

Or not...

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've tried moving a sector away, doesn't work. Before the ship can move it just gets gunned down.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Okay, try this. Don't bother trying to move, just give it the deconstruct and analyze order. If it works, you get all the tech on the ship, if not, you are no worse off but he's still down one ship.

In addition, no one has mentioned Combat sensors and ECM. Get them! Use them! If he doesn't have them, you can take out his dreads with a pea shooter. You will rarely miss, he will rarely hit.

Stealth (and scattering) armor give a defense bonus of 5, 10 or 15% depending on the level you have. Believe me, this adds up. To get the cloaking effect just click on the appropriate icon (a ship with a green ring around it). If he doesn't have sensors to see through this, you can waltz in as you please. Warning: all your ships in a sector must be cloaked to avoid combat. If even one is decloaked, all ships will be discovered for the purposes of combat. If he is just viewing from a distance (one sector or more away) he will only see the uncloaked ship.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmmm. A button. that's why I've been having problems with stealth armor. Indeed, I will start using stealth armor a lot more now. Thank you. I think I'll go mine all his back-end warp points and send stealth troop ships to seize his undefended planets. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Is there any reason I could not do this? (Assuming he doesn't have weap-plats on 'em, of course.)

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">WHAT ?? You have RT as well !? And AS http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Just build ships with longest range direct fire weapon you have, put RT, set up strategies to max. range and send them for a joly ride ! You should not have a problem against a person who let you live so long as to use the full benefits of Psychic+Religious.

Just kill him wholesome for Aaron sake !

[ May 05, 2003, 20:57: Message edited by: oleg ]

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">WHAT ?? You have RT as well !? And AS http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Just build ships with longest range direct fire weapon you have, put RT, set up strategies to max. range and send them for a joly ride ! You should not have a problem against a person who let you live so long as to use the full benefits of Psychic+Religious.

Just kill him wholesome for Aaron sake !</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">*snerks* Yeah, Religious + Psychic (then gaining bonuses by sucking hits to radioactive/organics mining, etc.) is my trademark. I don't have RTs yet. In fact I don't even have ShrineIIs. But I can, and I was just considering that the AS seems to have a percentage-to-covert based on certain things. I just wondered if maybe the RT made it basically an auto-convert.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Remember you must decloak to attack. You could plant them on top of the planet one turn, then decloak and attack the next. But why not use a reasonable sized fleet? Then if any defences are present, you can take them out. Also, fleet strategy "capture planet" and troop ship strategy "capture planet"!

I'm thinking... you should check out the the Newbie FAQ stickied to the top of the forum.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No. RT does not give 100% chance to convert. It gives 100% to hit. Then the "damage" value of AS comes to an effect. Consider building ships with large/massive mounts. THAT will gurantee your supremacy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

BTW. use optimal firing range for AS+RT and max. range for "anyother weapon" +RT ships !!

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">First thing I did, actually. The sections on cloaking and stealth armor didn't make sense after reading the confusing text of components under SEIV. I am grateful to have the means by which I can use stealth armor to cloak cleared up now.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Oh! In case this gets out or someone else gives him stealth tech in some sort of 'balance of power' play... which sensors defeat cloaking/stealth armor? Is it combat sensors? Or something else?

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You are psychic, AFAIK (but if you ARE psychic, I am not sure of anything .). Anyway. You have Psychic receptors. Use them and no stealth can protect infidels !

[ May 05, 2003, 21:37: Message edited by: oleg ]

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You are psychic, AFAIK (but if you ARE psychic, I am not sure of anything .). Anyway. You have Psychic receptors. Use them and no stealth can protect infidels !</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Okay. And what should I look for on his ship designs to know that stealth alone will not protect my fleets?

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

If you are playing unmodded use fighters. I've never played PBW, but unmodded fighters are really, really mean.
Six carriers with a full complement of fighters should send his fleet to the bottom of the galactic sea.
Don't forget to include in your fleet enough minesweepers to clear the way ahead of you.

Also, don't waste more money in satellites, fighters are more cost efficient for warp point defense. Research fighters all the way up and cloaking, so you get some stealth carriers into his territory.

Still, sooner or later he is going to get his main fleet together and drop it on you. When that happens make sure you don't let your ships be taken one by one. Park your fleet on the most valuable planet on the system the battle happens so you can bring your weapons platform to bear, add some mines on top of your fleet if possible, transport all weapons platform, troops and fighters avaliable on the system to this planet, and don't lose your patience when he glass the other colonies. If he is a newbie he will fall for it. He will not dare to leave your fleet behind unblooded.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">His fleet is allready rallied. It's parked on the other side of the warp point. My fleet, similarly, is rallied on the other side. It's a WWI standoff. We stare at each other across the trenches. I've found, however, that sats make /WONDERFUL/ WP defense with twinlink Heavy DU5s and decent planet defense with CSMs.

I agree though, fighters scare me. A mix of small rocket-equipped fighters sent to hunt bigger ships and a pack or two of SDU3s sent to hunt enemy fighters and smaller ships. Damn does that make a lot of dead metal in the simulator.

Sats don't need supply though, which is a very nice bonus in my book. Mines too. I find that combined arms is the way to go.

After I get stealth and AS I'll go for bigger fighters.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Build only "DUC 3" fighters. Those rockets can only fire once per battle.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It's true, but when 15 fighters can walk up to a Battleship and say, "You, with the big guns and stupid amount of armor. Yeah, you. You're dead."

It really demoralizes the other guy. That's why I mix it up.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

If you can pull it off and take out his WP fleet, it would be nice to have troops and transports ready to capture some choice worlds from his empire. Of course, if your economy is already strained, you might have to settle for glassing and recolonizing the worlds.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Sounds like you've got some good suggestions already, but I wanted to point out one thing.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is very unlikely. More likely he is using fleets, you just don't know it. You cannot see if another person is using fleets or not. From your perspective the other persons fleet just looks like a stack of ships. Even with allies you cannot see another players fleets, only the individual ships in the fleet.

Geoschmo

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

"Build only "DUC 3" fighters. Those rockets can only fire once per battle."

The greater damage over time of the DUC3s is canceled out by the way fighters die- in droves. Especially if the enemy is using PD, you may only GET one shot.

EDIT
Rocket pods III: 100 damage, 6 kT
DUC 3: 15 damage, 3 kt

30 damage vs 100 per shot..the DUC fighters have to fire for four rounds before they overcome the instant kill advantage of the fighters.

100 fighters, the enemy can kill..lets say 10 per turn, constant.
rocket pods:
turn 1, 10000 damage
turn 2-30: run away

DUCs:
turn 1, 3000 damage
turn 2, 2700 damage
turn 3, 2400 damage
turn 4, 2100 damage
turn 5, 1800 damage
turn 6, 1500 damage
turn 7, 1200 damage
turn 8, 900 damage
turn 9, 600 damage
turn 10,300 damage
turn 11, 0

total:
10000 rocket pod
16500 DUC3

so you gain 6500 damage..and loose all your fighters. The rocket pods would probably loose only a few fighters, since they run away.

[ May 06, 2003, 00:14: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, there are 5 kinds of stealth-penetrating sensors: Hyper Optics (Advanced Military Science 4-6), Tachyon Sensors (Sensors 4-6), Gravitic Sensors (Gravitational Technology 1-3), Psychic Receptors (Psychic Technology 1-3) and Temporal Sensors (Temporal Technology 1-3). The Last two are available only to those with the appropriate racial trait. In the unmodded game they all work the same, you just have to keep track of the levels - if you have Cloaking Device II, you can be seen by a Hyper-Optics II or III, Tachyon Sensors II or III, etc.

Hey, you know, I just had this thought, wouldn't it be funny if just at this moment we were also helping Pooka's opponent in some other thread? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, there are 5 kinds of stealth-penetrating sensors: Hyper Optics (Advanced Military Science 4-6), Tachyon Sensors (Sensors 4-6), Gravitic Sensors (Gravitational Technology 1-3), Psychic Receptors (Psychic Technology 1-3) and Temporal Sensors (Temporal Technology 1-3). The Last two are available only to those with the appropriate racial trait. In the unmodded game they all work the same, you just have to keep track of the levels - if you have Cloaking Device II, you can be seen by a Hyper-Optics II or III, Tachyon Sensors II or III, etc.

Hey, you know, I just had this thought, wouldn't it be funny if just at this moment we were also helping Pooka's opponent in some other thread? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">What level stops Stealth Armor's cloak ability? (I'm assuming one.)

Oh, and I doubt he's in another thread. I doubt he even knows this forum exists, and if it did, I doubt he'd know how to post. =^.^=

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

This discussion about cloaking interest me enormously http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Som can we assume that stealth armor is level 1 cloaking, whereas the 3 cloaking devices range from 1 to 3 ?

And the 5 kinds of sensor, does they have an uncloaking value of 1 to 3 ?

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The sensors have an "uncloaking" value of 2 to 4, or by the text of the comps:

"Allows [Cloak/Scanning type] scanning at level 2 (or 3 or 4)." for the three levels of sensors. IIRC, you need a higher level of scanning than the level of cloaking.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Drones can't be recovered once they are launched.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanx, thought that it could but have never needed to, guess I'd better read the FAQ!

Any sensor or stealth penetrating shyper optics/receptors penetrates the cloak of stealth armor.
To hide from the lower levels of sensors you need cloak technology.
But as long as he has no kind of sensors/receptros you're safe from discovery.

[ May 06, 2003, 08:39: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

as mines are cloaked at level 5, does someone tried to modify the sensors values to check if they could be detected theorically? I'm unsure though that a MOD enabling that would be a good thing.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">What I did is to reduce the gravitic cloak level of small (=3) and medium (=4) mines. That gives you a reason to use large mines, which is pretty much useless in the unmodded game. And it gives you a reson to research gravitic sensors too and not only the hyperoptics.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

nice idea about the large mines. You maintain which mod Q ?

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

Something no-one has mentioned in this thread so far...

while sending in cloaked ships are a great idea, you'll have to watch out for mines. Even cloaked you will still be vulnerable. I'd recommend capturing a few enemy ships using intel and using them as minesweepers before sneding any cloaked ships into his territory.

Then slip a few planetary assault ships (plague/ troops/ napalm/ your choice) past his frontline to wreak havoc in his core systems. Being a newb he'll probably panic and divert ships from his WP defence to to counter the threat, then you can hit the warp point with a stack of AS frigates. Have a defence fleet and/or unit launchers waiting to secure the newly-exposed system(s).

Also, when the AS fleet captures loads of big ships, you'll have to be careful that their maintenence doesn't cripple you. Have a spaceyard ship handy to scrap any that you can't afford to keep. Make use of the resource theft intel project if you have it, too, that will help.

Re: Fight Dirty?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The mines worry me. This brings me to my next question. I just captured a battlecruise I expected to be armed. It was a mine layer. How do I stop mines? Will simply building mine sweeping ships suffice? Or will I have to move to the sector, then activate the mine sweepers? Should they be in a seperate fleet? Can mine sweepers be used while under cloak? (I.E. Can I quietly defuse his minefield right under his fleet's nose?)

he's camping the minefield, which is what worries me. Is it the minefields that destroy the captured ships before I can run with them?