newby's guide to ship and fleet strategy

[Phoenix-D]

"how does the exceedingly complex strategy board in the empire status window link in to all this?"

That board *makes* the strategies you assign later. When you assign a fleet strategies, you can only pick formation and strategy; the "secondary strategy" bit comes from the empire status window strategy page. EDIT: And what it does is tell the ship what to do if I can't do it's primary strategy. Say you set it to "short range, Don't Get Hurt". If your ship cannot close to short range with it's target, it will run away.

So:
-the empire status window (and anything that looks like it) *creates* strategies and edits existing ones
-The strategy box in design creation assigns strategies for individual ship class
-the pawn assigns strategies for fleets, as well as formation

For mixed-ship fleets, I find the best thing to do is set them to break formation.

Phoenix-D

[ 15 January 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[Quikngruvn]

"Break formation" is almost always better than holding formation, because of the aforemetioned problem with ships flying out of range of enemy ships to hold the formation. But, I can think of one exception, in the case of Capture Planet.

Say you have a fleet with mostly warships and a troop transport (with troops on it, naturally). The way the strategies are set up by default, the warships will pound the planet to smithereens before the troop transport will get there. So, I've changed 'Capture Planet' to (a) thwack enemies till all weapons are gone, and (b) dole out less than 100% damage on the planet. But, if the ships were set to break formation, the warships would revert back to the ship designs' default planet-pounding strategy. If the ships do not break formation from a fleet set to Capture Planet, the warships shouldn't eradicate the planet before the troop transport gets there. (At least that's been my experience.)

Tangential question: if a ship is set to break formation from a fleet, does it still get the fleet's experience bonus?

Quikngruvn

[Fyron]

quote:

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Tangential question: if a ship is set to break formation from a fleet, does it still get the fleet's experience bonus?

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Yes.

[Quikngruvn]

Thanks! (Whew, for a while there I thought I was going to have to completely redo my tactics....)

Quikngruvn

[tesco samoa]

I have lost whole fleets of 30 ships because I forgot to make sure the fleet breaks formation when it meets anything.

If the leader cannot move then the fleet does not move.

Your fleet dies.

so make sure you break formation, even if it is because the fleet needs to stop for some coffee.

[Fyron]

Yeah, in my first post I said that it would be good to set all strategies to break formation a couple of times. Formations are nice for starting positions, but thats about all.

[Growltigga]

alright, cue howls of laughter and derisive comments

where the flipping nora is the break formation button - I can't find the wretched thing anywhere