Strategies
 

OK I've tried to work out what the strategies do, rather than what they SAY they do and come to the conclusion that there are actually only two strategies that the computer uses with your ships,
1. stay out of range, but only of the weapons you are using, which seems to happen when I fit short range weapons and my opponent is using long range weapons
2. Charge! Which strangely, only happens when I fit long range weapons!!
Life was so much simpler when I moved the ships (sniff!)
Oh, and giving fleets orders seems to be a complete waste of time because they completely ignore them so what am I doing wrong and how do I get an armed freighter to fire missiles at weapon platforms on a planet and then land troops once the defences are dead?

Re: Strategies
 

Well first off the fleet orders have to match the specific ships orders. Say, for example, you want a freighter to drop troops the ship itself must have "capture planet" as well as the fleet. I think capture planet doesn't work until all the planets wp have been destroyed so probably your armed freighter would bombard the planet until all the wp are detroyed and then drop troops, however I don't believe I've ever heard of an armed freighter supposed to do what you have in mind. You can give a ship type primary orders and then secondary orders. The ship will not carry out it's secondary orders until it can no longer do the primary ones. As an example, a strategy I use for kamikaze races is to choose optimal range for the first orders and ram as secondary. Once it has taken enough damage that it cannot possible carry out such an order, usually having no weapons, it will ram the enemy ship.

Re: Strategies
 

If the fleet's strategy is set to break formation (which it almost always should be), then the fleet's strategy doesn't actually matter. To capture planets, the ship carrying the troops must have Drop Troops as its primary movement strategy (which is how the Capture Planet strategy is set up by default). If any friendly ship with troops on board and a Drop Troops strategy is present, all friendly ships will automatically only attack planets that have armed weapon platforms and will stop once the last armed platform is destroyed, at which point the troop ship will stop following its secondary strategy (usually Don't Get Hurt) and approach. If the troop ship is the only ship present, then it will charge the planet in an attempt to drop troops before the weapon platforms can destroy it.

Re: Strategies
 

Which would explain the ships completely ignoring a battle station which proceded to savage my attacking ships whilst they ignored it and continued to fire missiles at the planet, which naturally, were all destroyed by the %^&*^% battle station. This also implies that multi-role ships are a bad idea since you would only be able to give each class of ship one order per turn (e.g. equipping troop transports with boarding parties) yes?

Re: Strategies
 

Adjust your targetting priorities, then.
Check the box, and move "bases" up above "planets".

That way your ships will clear the bases out before bombarding the planet.

Re: Strategies
 

I found getting troops to land on and capture a planet very hard to master after doing it manually. Now though I use it almost be second nature. Practice on the AI. Nothing worse than losing a game except losing because of a stupid or incorrect firing setting.

This is an easy way, there are more complex ways.

Set the freighter to type "troop ship". There are harder ways to do this like setting it to another strategy then setting that ship strategy to include "drop troops". Ignore that for now.

Don't put weapons on the transport. Bring other ships in a fleet to kill them. Something inside the settings sets a troop ship to hide in the corner and not fire until the WPs are dead. Let the other ships kill them. Weapons on the freighter will fire on your run in to land and you may just kill everyone on the ground before you can get there. This last may have been changed in a patch.

Set your fleet to "Capture Planet". It must have a "troop transport" ship with troops in it. Don't try any fancy stuff like setting strategies to "Do not fire on planets" until you have more experience. "Break formation" is a good thing.

The ships with weapons will try to destroy the WPs. Once the WPs (or all other ships) are gone, the transport will start the run in to the planet. If you have a slow ship and/or the battle takes a while, it may not make it in time to the surface.

Once this is perfected, advanced orders like "Attack Planet", "Load troop", "attack next planet" can be done. this can capture more than one planet a turn.

For my long range missle ships I use a "Long Range" primary strategy, and a "Don't get hurt" secondary strategy. It helps keep me out of range of their weapons. But put one little ripper beam in a normal mount on the shieldless missle baseship and it will happly dive into combat at range one against 20 other ships. Standard practice is to design the ships to fight the stratigies and fit the strategies for the design.

(Note: I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a missile baseship. I can neither confirm nor deny that a missile baseship is even a good design.)

Re: Strategies
 

Beware of using missile weapons while trying to capture a planet. The ships will often launch more missiles than are needed to destroy the weapons platforms, and the overkill may end up glassing the planet.

Re: Strategies
 

Amen. (oops...)
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Turin

Re: Strategies
 

Thanks to all for the advice so far, the AI is starting to look concerned (It even offered me a trade treaty!) next question is there any way to set the range at which weapons will fire? My ionic dispersers insist on opening fire well outside any reasonable chance to hit!

Re: Strategies
 

You can chose general Strategies either "Optimal Range" or "Point Blank" as a template, and then edit them from there.