The Perfect fighter

[Thei R'vek]

IMHO the best fighter strategy without any of the racial technologies is to use massive amounts of SMALL fighters. My standard Small Fighter design is:

Cockpit
Life Support
8 Engines
1 Small Anti-Proton Beam III

I then set the strategy for the design to "Point Blank" You can build almost 4 times as many of these as you can of Large Fighters in a signle turn and even though you lose massive amounts of them they're a lot cheaper to build and you can get more of them in less time. I haven't actually used a Medium or Large Fighter since about 20 games back and that's after I went and modded all the AIs to be more far more aggressive.

[capnq]

I would suggest building a special ship say Cruiser size or so, doesn't matter which hull you use, but fill it up with PDC and shields or armor.

Put at least one non-PDC weapon on the ship; if it only has PDCs, it will run for the corners as if it were unarmed.

[Thei R'vek]

Originally posted by capnq:
Put at least one non-PDC weapon on the ship; if it only has PDCs, it will run for the corners as if it were unarmed.

It isn't actually neccessary to put anything besides PDC on the ship, you simply click the "stats/strategy" option in the design window(under "hide obsolete") and change the ship strategy from "Don't Get Hurt" to "Optimal Weapons Range", "Short Weapons Range", "Point BLank", etc. IMO Point Blank is the best strategy but I play with massive amounts of highly disposable cheap crappy ships and units and so I don't actually need to worry about KEEPING anything that I build, it's all supposed to go suicide anyway

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by capnq:
Put at least one non-PDC weapon on the ship; if it only has PDCs, it will run for the corners as if it were unarmed.

Yes, but that one weapon should not be the null space cannon. It has a short range and will try to get too close to the capital ships. I'm not sure, but I don't think the null space cannon can target fighters.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Thei R'vek:

quote:

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Originally posted by capnq:
Put at least one non-PDC weapon on the ship; if it only has PDCs, it will run for the corners as if it were unarmed.

It isn't actually neccessary to put anything besides PDC on the ship, you simply click the "stats/strategy" option in the design window(under "hide obsolete") and change the ship strategy from "Don't Get Hurt" to "Optimal Weapons Range", "Short Weapons Range", "Point BLank", etc. IMO Point Blank is the best strategy but I play with massive amounts of highly disposable cheap crappy ships and units and so I don't actually need to worry about KEEPING anything that I build, it's all supposed to go suicide anyway

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What Capn is talking abou there is the bug where an all PDC ship will run for th ecorners even if it has a strategy of point blank, or optimal or anything like that.

It has something to do with the fact that the game doesn't actually consider PDC as a weapon for the purposes of strategy.

If you have found a way to workaround that, by all means let us know. But it's not as simple as giving your ship a strategy other than "Don't get hurt".

Geoschmo

[Phoenix-D]

"It has something to do with the fact that the game doesn't actually consider PDC as a weapon for the purposes of strategy."

Hmm. Does an all CSM or all WMG ship run for the corners if attacked by only fighters? It might be the PD ship running away because it doesn't see anything it can hurt..

Phoenix-D

[geoschmo]

No that's not it. Cause it runs for the corners even if there are fighters available to shoot at.