Strategic versus Tactical combat

[Texfire]

I am in the process of weaning myself off of tactical combat in preparation of getting my hat handed to me in PBW. So I thought I would try and get some pointers on how to succeed in strategic combat.

In tactical combat I found that a sucessful strategy against AI was to research CSM and try to stay at least one tech level ahead of the AI. This allowed me to use launch and retreat techniques which required micromanagement but would allow my fleets to glass planets and destroy oppoents unscathed. Even opponents with PDW would be vulnerable to massed missileboats until I could arm some direct fire ships. My question is how well does this work in strategic combat? I have figured out that breaking formations and assigning tactics per variant is the way to go, but how effective is it?

So what mixture of fire support, assault capture and point defense do you use in strategic combat?

Texfire

[PvK]

Break Formation / Max Range works well for missile retrograde in strategic combat. If your ships also have shorter-ranged direct-fire weapons, though, they will try to use those while the missiles are re-loading.

The main disadvantage is human opponents will tend to deploy PDC more vigorously than the AI after they notice you have a lot of missile ships (or even before).

Tailor your tactics to your opponents.

PvK