Fight Dirty?

[wanker]

Originally posted by Loser:
Don't fight off his ships, just write off yours.[/QB]

If you have the space mount a colbalt warhead or two on the mine sweepers. Set their orders to "Ram". They will still die, but make it a gloryious death.

It may freak him out enough to set his fleet orders to maximum range (assuming that he is using optimal).

[Loser]

Originally posted by wanker:
If you have the space mount a colbalt warhead or two on the mine sweepers. Set their orders to "Ram".

Oooo....

Yeah, that's nice.

It's always a good idea to have warhead researched to max.

[Hotfoot]

Originally posted by Pooka:
Hmmm.....
How many mines does an escort suck up when running through? How many does a fighter suck up?

*ponders evil, evil designs*

Not enough to really be useful, I think. You're better off using dedicated minesweeper ships.

Will mines force cloaked ships to decloak? The big problem with sending minesweepers through is that it'd require me to fight off his fleet of 40+ ships which is /also/ parked there.

Cloaked ships will take full damage from mines, and cloaked minesweepers do not sweep mines. Mines ignore shields and do damage directly to the ship, starting with any armor they might have and then continuing until the ship is dead. Your best bet would probably be to make suicidal minesweepers (with tactics of "ram" and cobalt warheads as mentioned below) go through the WP uncloaked, but seperate from your main warfleet, at least if you want to avoid a straight-out fight. The minesweepers will die, which is regrettable, but if you're lucky, you'll have swept the mines away and cleared a path for your primary cloaked harassment fleet, as well as hopefully doing some damage to his fleet with your ramming minesweepers (don't count on that being very significant though, it would just be a nice bonus, if anything). Once your fleet has slipped through, you can start doing some serious damage. With any luck, you can get him to split his forces, maybe even making him think that you came around another way to attack. The more you make him spread out, the better it will be for you when you finally do invade in force.

Also, since your group seems to be heavy into the RP aspect, try to gain more allies, and maybe even slowly work at disrupting his alliances with others.

[Pooka]

Originally posted by Hotfoot:

Also, since your group seems to be heavy into the RP aspect, try to gain more allies, and maybe even slowly work at disrupting his alliances with others.

I've been shaking hands and kissing babies from the get-go. The problem is there's 4 of us in this game, who know the game very well, and one other that knows politics very well. The 4 people who don't know the game so well (and one who does but has low self-esteem) have allied behind the politically savvy fellow to 'stop the veterans from killing us all.'

This union of underdogs occupies most of the board at this point and is making life very difficult. I have, (though simulator room screenings and other such techniques.) eroded a lot of the support from this one guy by pointing out certain facts about how the battles will be going when I finally get in his face.

I've tried everything I can think of, including offering to just fork over minerals, etc to recoup their losses from his trade agreement. They won't budge. They keep giving him weapons tech (which I then steal) and in general are making nuisances of themselves.

I may kill one or two of them as an example if they continue like this.

[Pooka]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

quote:

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I'm assuming that's because we're not using Gold so the attacker was going first. (Otherwise I would have gotten a shot off with its single MesonII.

A single meson bLaster, eh?
Even if you did fire first, you probably didn't get through his shields, (or missed) and the damage percentage only shows hull damage (shields completely regenerate after battle anyways)

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Shields? You presume much, good sir. My poorly educated foe doesn't make use of shields.

[Aloofi]

I don't know, but I never got myself to order warships into ramming. I guess I'm a benevolent ruler that doesn't have the heart to sacrifice navy personel for the greater good.
For the "Kamikaze Minesweeper" I always use expensive Master Computers, thus crippling my economy.
At least in Proportions we get the cheaper Computer Pilot......

[atari_eric]

Originally posted by Pooka:
I may kill one or two of them as an example if they continue like this.

NOW you're thinking like a Warlord!

Mind you, you will pretty much have to throw any political edge or maneuvres out the window if you go this route, but it looks as if politics is not being helpful enough anyhow...

Besides, if they're helping your enemy, they're hurting you...