Tactics Question for You guys

[Starhawk]

Hi all it's your favorite little starhawk here (heh) with yet another question for all you tactical wizzes.

I've heard many people saying they still use Cruisers and Battlecruisers even once they get dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts. Well my question for you guys is What do you use these smaller ships for?

I mean on average a superdreadnought could take out at least 4 cruisers by herself unless some remarkably unlucky crap happened to her. And battlecruisers don't stand much better a chance.

So how do you use BCs and Cruisers in your late game?

(p.s. the reason I'm asking is because as it stands I'm playing devnull and my largest ship is a heavy cruiser and I was wondering if making my light and cruiser designs obsolete was a good idea or not and when I get Dreads and bigger I was wondering of those cruisers would still be of any use.)
I never build battleships personally (unless it's as a cheaper carrier) so I never mention them in my naval equation.

[Suicide Junkie]

Generally, battlecruisers have a speed advantage over the other ships.
Speed advantage means you get to choose where and when to fight, and if you get past the defending fleets, you can run off, glassing planets while the big enemy ships try in vain to catch you.

[Colonel]

For the superly small ships I use them for recon(Light Crusiers and Destroyers) As for the Battle Cruisers those are my advance forces.

[Starhawk]

What size formations do you generally form your battlecruisers into? I've found that when I form them into pairs or trios they have an unfortunate habit of running into a big nasty and getting beaten bloody. But most of my ship production goes into "ships of the line" so making large fleets of battlecruisers becomes hard to do.

And do you put screening forces with your BCs (I.E point defense ships, destroyers etc) or do you just send them out on their own?

[Emperor Fritsch the Dense]

Damn good question ive always wondered how you guys pull it off. do you use tactical combat for your fights or allows the AI to fight it and just have your ship design strats set up? i usually make big bad bruisers and not worry bout strat cus i normally fight tactically. every time ive tried it your way i get mashed baddly in sims. share your wisdome oh wise and conquerious ones!
Emperor Fritsch of the Big Ungainly Ships

[Suicide Junkie]

Emperor Fritsch the Dense said:
Damn good question ive always wondered how you guys pull it off. do you use tactical combat for your fights or allows the AI to fight it and just have your ship design strats set up? i usually make big bad bruisers and not worry bout strat cus i normally fight tactically. every time ive tried it your way i get mashed baddly in sims. share your wisdome oh wise and conquerious ones!
Emperor Fritsch of the Big Ungainly Ships

Unless you're playing hotseat against a neighbour or friend, you have to play strategic.

Personally I love to play tactical, just for the detail.
I usually use as few ships as possible to keep things challenging... I once had a two-system empire with about 6 active ships against the rest of the galaxy. (2 Dreads holding the warppoints, and 4 support BCs where needed.)

[Caduceus]

I've switched over to computer-controlled, because in any on-line game, that's how it has to be played.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know how to blockade a planet in computer controlled attacks? Should I set the ships for "don't get hurt" or what? They seem to charge in there and get walloped when what I really want to do is soften up the enemy for a few turns without resources from a few worlds.

[Grandpa Kim]

I use the smaller hull sizes for boarding ships, troop transports, point defense ships and minesweepers. Non-combat ships use the size best suited to their role. For instance a ship used to drop spy satellites rarely needs to be larger than an escort.

Regarding the front line ships:

• Boarding ships: I find a light cruiser to be just the right size. Allows a couple shield depleters, a shield and a couple boarding parties. No need for more.
• Troop transports: Again the light cruiser. In some mods (ie: Proportions) you do need the huge transport but in most mods 1200 kt cargo space is plenty.
• Point defense: I usually use one or two sizes smaller than my largest ship. Rather than have the PD concentrated in one spot, I like to spread the guns around.
• Minesweepers: A single base ship minesweeper is all you need, but lose that and you have none at all! I prefer several smaller ships and even then carry 50% extra in a fleet. The loss of one or two is not critical, just annoying.

To blockade a planet I find it safest to use unarmed ships.

[TurinTurambar]

Well golly-gee-whiz y'all... what am I doing then?

I can honestly say I've used retrofitted LC's and Cruisers all the way to the end of most games. Since I rely on numbers, formations, high-tech and strategies, the bigger ships tend to have no real advantage over mine.
Personally, I find that the BC's and DN's take just too darn long to build, even with an enhanced constuction trait and SY III.
Strategies are very important in simul-games. I always save a few Simul AI games on my machine where they're building DN's with advanced weaponry. I play with different strategies in those games to develop stuff for PBW. I have a "Preemptive Bombardment" strategy to prepare the way for troop transports. I have a customized "Max Weapons Range" strategy for glassing the planets not worth the trouble. I have a "Carrier Group" strategy for defending warp points and ridding planets of pesky satellites. The list goes on.

If you combine tested, successful, broader strategies like these with carefully constructed individual strategies for ship-types (which they will follow after breaking formation), and high-tech weapons; large ships are not necessary, IMHO.

Turin

[Fyron]

Large ships have a huge advantage over small ships in that they can do quite a bit more damage from mounts... Using smaller warships (such as cruisers) when you have Battleships available is not a good idea. Sure, you might build individual ships more quickly, but they will be signifcantly weaker, so there is no real gain there... Mounts are very overly powerful. The only mount that is questionable is when you compare baseships with battleships. Baseships can do a bit more damage from the mounts (much less of an advantage comparing Massive and Heavy mounts than there is when comparing Heavy and Large mounts), but they have a significant speed disadvantage, which may or may not negate the damage advantage, depending on the situation. Baseships also have a huge defense penalty, which is always a bad thing...

Many mods make efforts to nullify the huge advantages that larger ships get from mounts specifically so that smaller attack ships can actually be of use when you have larger ships around...