Formations for HUGE battles ?

[primitive]

Formations for HUGE battles ?

Anybody got any experience on formations that works with flees of 300 + ships ?
Everything I have tried so far sucks, with ships blocking each others path and only a few able to fire the first turn

[Q]

In my experience this is indeed a problem. As far as I know the maximum ship number in a formation is now 99. But even with smaller numbers these large formations frequently are in touch or even overlap with the enemy formation at the beginning of the combat. This gives the first shot of the defender a huge advantage and is IMHO a little unbalancing. And the problem of the path blocking occurs even more if you use lot of fighters.

[LGM]

Your opponent should have the same problems. If your opponents fleets are no where near that size, you are over concentrated and should attack more directions simultaneously.

With Large formations, you want to break formation to let ships move to their own desired ranges. Largest I have deployed has been around 150. Only with a Missle fleets would I recommend going above that number. Missles are not hindered by ship/unit congestion.

A formation like Decoy Arrow will leave some diagonal gaps for movement. I am not sure what it will do when it runs out of places. In the past (pre gold), everything was lumped behind the formation that did not fit.

[Slynky]

For the most part, I don't use fleets much bigger than 50 or 60 ships. Because of the "idle" ships near the back. And even if they ARE in firing range, they're likely to miss from extreme range against a similar opponent.

Of course, if one MUST guard a hole with that many ships, you're really just "clogging" up the hole with ships who are "waiting in the queue" to fire.

As a side note, it would have been a nice touch if the tactical display was generated in ratio to the fleets/ships that needed to resolve combat. Bigger shipcount would equal bigger tactical map.

[Fyron]

There are some formations that have 101 slots now, so you can get 101 ships to start together and not be clumped in the back, not 50 or 60.

[primitive]

Size matters

If the enemy bring 200 ships, 50 (or even 150) ship fleets will loose big time. Bring 300 ships and you win every time even with a bad formation.

Anybody got experience in splitting up into several smaller fleets ?