Fleet Strategy For Dummies?

[Pooka]

Is there a FAQ-like thing that explains what all the various options do/control in fleet strategy? It seems self explanatory, but a lot in SEIV seems that way, and then winds up not being so.

Since I only play PBW games, this is arguably the second most important thing about a group of ships, and so I'd like to study how it actually works instead of trying to develop strategies based upon observations.

[Roanon]

I'll try to give a few hints. The 3 most basic things are:

1) Formations are useless. As you cannot determine which ship is on which position, it doesn't make sense to select any formation, and as pathing is one of the worst things in this game keeping a formation just makes the fleet act silly. So you usually choose "Wall" or, if defending a warppoint and you want a more spread-out fleet "Spider" or "Turbine" to have a good start. Then all ships should break this formation, see 2).

2) Strategies are useless for fleets. You do not want all your ships do the same, but every ship do the best for their intended role. Therefore, and due to 1) above, you should create a strategey "Break Formation" where each ship is marked that it should break formation, and apply it to every fleet.

3) Strategies are the most heavily bugged part of this game. Do not expect any fancy strategies to work. About half of the time, after some battle turns every ship assumes "Optimal Firing Range" regardless of what you want them to do. "Point Blank" can mean that a ship starts his turn next to an enemy, then flies as far away as possible, then fires. "Maximum Range" can mean that a ship well in range of an enemy flies next to it and then fires. Non-"optimum range" strategies often work as intended, but do never rely on it especially in a critical situation, or design the majority of your fleet so that it requires a special strategy to actually work.

For more detailled hints, like when to use "Capture Planet", or that colony ships should be given "Ram" as an option, check the FAQ.

[Fyron]

Roanon said:
I'll try to give a few hints. The 3 most basic things are:

1) Formations are useless.

Formations are not useless. Staying in formation is indeed useless, but the formations are useful for determining starting locations for your ships. When you have lots of ships (eg: 80), you generally want a formation that keeps them bunched together, rather than spread out. Phalanx comes to mind.

Check out Ultimate Strategies Mod, which has a lot of custom strategies and formations. You can use the strategies in stock games by copying DefaultStrategies.txt from the USM\Data folder into the stock Data folder. This will not affect multiplayer savegames in any way. Make sure to create a backup copy of the stock DefaultStrategies.txt file in case you want to save it. Changing the extension from "txt" to "bak" is a good method.

[Roanon]

Imperator Fyron said:
When you have lots of ships (eg: 80), you generally want a formation that keeps them bunched together, rather than spread out. Phalanx comes to mind.

Well I use wall .
But saying that this is useful is like saying AOL CDs are useful because you can use them as coasters...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Frizbee's, target practice and there's a site somewhere with funny stuff...

[Kamog]

You can also make them into Christmas tree ornaments.

[tesco samoa]

dummies should try... retreat and do not target anything...