Your Favorite Strategy/Formations

[mac5732]

I've read in a number of threads discussions what some members use as far as their favorite strategies/formations. Therefore, I thought It might be interesting to have a thread where the members can list their favorite Ship Strategies and formations that they use in both Strategic and Tactical combat. Also which formations they have found that the AI is less then capable of using.

Strategic and Tactical Ship and Fleet formations

Just some ideas Mac

[Will]

Well, in classic vanilla SEIV, I usually use the Bull formation, and the strategy depends on ships. If most of the ships have missiles, it's Max Weapons Range; if most of the ships have weapons with non-depreciating damage, it's Optimal Weapons range; if most of the ships have depreciating damage weapons, it's short weapons range. The strategies are tweaked a bit from the default, especially for planetary capture fleets (success rate of over 95%, with the remainer being I got beat, or the planet was very tiny with defenses and got glassed).

[Fyron]

I usually use a big formation that places the ships in closely and then set them to Optimal Range and give orders to break formation. When ships stick in formation, they tend to be moved out of range frequently, and you lose overall firepower.

[Taera]

I dont use default strategies - i design several of my own. My usual strategies are Smart Max Range, which makes the ship stay away (max range, then optimal range) from the target and NOT to go after seekers or fighters. There is Bull strategy which is ram, then shoot (works perfectly when done right). Then there is Brawl which is a modified Version of optimal range and Hunt which is optimal range with emphasize on attacking "other" targets such as transports, carriers and smaller ships.

Formations, for warfleets i use the Turbine formation - as i stated elsewhere i find is quite efficient. For massive fleets i favor wall formations. For smaller/lighter fleets i use the Spider formation. Generally i now also try to avoid formation fighting. But sometimes its useful.

[mac5732]

I like to use the double wall formation in tactical... I've used it in some stratigic ones but didn't seem to have much problem, whats the difference in using some formations vs break formation, wouldn't that scatter your ships more if you scatter and weaken you fire power?

just some ideas mac

[Taera]

there is a drawback and a benefit to that.
The drawbacks of formations, there are two major ones - for one unless your using moderately tight formation AND/OR long-range weapons (APB, WMG...) your damage would be spread and if youre facing tight formation some of the weapons might not get to shoot at all. Second drawback is when the formation turns around - chances are its going to get messy.

Now the only benefit i know of, which for me often offsets the drawbacks, is that the enemy has to spread fire aswell. Formations such as Turbine get your ships spinning around and if they all are well armored and shielded chances are they will not die fast and might come out of battle hardly damaged. This depends on the firepower of the enemy however. Fyron here had been telling me its useless because for ships its all-or-nothing because they die when shot at. Its all debatable, and for organic or crystallurgy races the damage spreading / ship rotation might be quite useful.