[Saxon]

Nice thread idea!

Targeting is very important when you are trying to do something fancy. A good example is if you want to invade a planet instead of just glassing it while you take out the enemy defenders. Don’t forget to turn the planet targeting off. Since ships seem to count so heavily in scoring, I have also chosen to run down transports and colony ships before damaging the planet. This drives the enemies score down and increases the chance of a surrender. With big empires, it doesn’t make much difference, but early on against the single system races, it can help a lot.

If you are fighting the AI, it seems to me that they usually go after your biggest ships first. I would suggest that Humans who don’t pay much attention to their fleet orders would use this default AI. If you are facing such a person, building a larger than average ship with lots of shields and armor may draw the early enemy fire while your offensive forces are unhindered. I usually throw in some supply or repair components, so the ship does serve some other purpose than just soaking up fire. You should also throw in one small direct fire weapon, so the ship does get involved in the fighting and will get targeted by those targeting weapons.

Further opinions of mine include that missile fleets become less useful later in the game and much less useful if in a long war with a human. As people start to use larger ship designs, throwing in one or two PDC on a ship is a common insurance against missiles and fighters. I sometimes even throw one in as I don’t see anything else useful to add to the ship. If you are facing a race that uses lots of missiles or fighters, building small, PDC only ships (one DUC to keep them in the front lines) is cheap, fast and highly effective. Most humans figure this out and will soon make it impossible for you to hit them with missiles. Those who don’t figure it out are probably going to get beaten anyway…

Actually, has anyone faced a heavy missile fleet with carrier and fighter support? All that together might swamp most PDC combinations. I am guessing not, as I never see any postings about fighters.