Newbie Q: ship placement in combat?

[Vezzra]

When attacking a planet with 4 moons with 110 ships split into 7 fleets (see "Mine Sweeping Bug" thread), I encountered another strange thing:

My ships were placed at the center of the combat map, together with the planets and the enemy ships - one huge bulk.

Never seen that before. Usually the contrahents start at opposite edges of the map, at least in all the non-simultaneous games I played before.

Are simultaneous games different? Has it something to do with having five planets in the sector?

This behaviour somewhat defeats my strategy, as it's almost like warp point combat, putting me as the attacker at disadvantage.

Anyone willing to enlighten me?

[oleg]

How many battles did you have that turn ? Is it possible you look up the Last one ? How the first one looks like ? Sometimes, when several fleets arrived to the battle, erllier arrivals can be regarded as "aborigenes" and placed near the center and only newest "guests" attack from the edge.

[Vezzra]

Well, two, both in this sector.

But the battle in question is the first one, it took place before further ships arrived.

The whole alignment of the ships is strange: As I said, 110 ships in 7 fleets, or, to be more precise, 94 ships in 6 fleets, as one fleet of 16 ships was destroyed by the minefield (see the other thread), and all of them more or less aligned in one horizontal line, reaching from the left edge to the center and beyond, with the main bulk crunched between the planets.

The fleets have entered the sector from the sector located southwest.

So normally I would have expected the fleets in the lower left corner.

[ January 20, 2004, 16:33: Message edited by: Vezzra ]

[oleg]

Originally posted by Vezzra:
Well, two, both in this sector.

But the battle in question is the first one, it took place before further ships arrived.

The whole alignment of the ships is strange: As I said, 110 ships in 7 fleets, or, to be more precise, 94 ships in 6 fleets, as one fleet of 16 ships was destroyed by the minefield (see the other thread), and all of them more or less aligned in one horizontal line, reaching from the left edge to the center and beyond, with the main bulk crunched between the planets.

The fleets have entered the sector from the sector located southwest.

So normally I would have expected the fleets in the lower left corner.

Ahh, I see You used "wall" formation but since you come from the side, your waal is turned by 90 degrees. It did happened to me few times next time change formation to "column" when attack from the side. It will be turned 90 degrees too and become "wall". Better yet, use "compact" as a default.

[JLS]

Dome Formation also is very effective, if not missile latent

[Vezzra]

Originally posted by oleg:
Ahh, I see You used "wall" formation but since you come from the side, your waal is turned by 90 degrees.

Strange... when I played non-simultaneous games, this always worked properly. When I attacked from the side, the wall went top-bottom, with the ships facing left or right. When I attacked diagonal, the formation was crunched into the respective corner, IIRC.

One thing I didn't pay attention to, but came to my mind today: Obviously my ships moved and fired first, seems as if the game treated them as defenders. No idea why. My ships moved into the sector, so they should have been the attackers. No enemy ship entered before battle occcured, only afterwards a single ship entered, and was destroyed in the second battle.