So how DO you 'Blockade' in AI controlled battles?

[PvK]

In Proportions, blockading can be useful against major planets (especially homeworlds, of course). Capturing planets can be much more valuable in terms of the amount of time saved, too, so blockading rather than glassing is also attractive.

It's not all that hard to do, either. Include planets in the "don't fire on" list, and either don't break formation, or include that prohibition in the design tactics.

If you want to blockade with a huge fleet, and need to avoid long-ranged weapon platforms, it may be helpful to break your blockade into a number of smaller fleets, so none of them start out in range. IMO this isn't too unrealistic either, as a planet with serious long-range weapons would realistically be harder and more dangerous to completely blockade.

PvK

[tesco samoa]

you can set any ship strag to do not get hurt in the design ship window... THis will make sure that the ship does not attack the planet

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by PvK:
It's not all that hard to do, either. Include planets in the "don't fire on" list, and either don't break formation, or include that prohibition in the design tactics.

If you want to blockade with a huge fleet, and need to avoid long-ranged weapon platforms, it may be helpful to break your blockade into a number of smaller fleets, so none of them start out in range. IMO this isn't too unrealistic either, as a planet with serious long-range weapons would realistically be harder and more dangerous to completely blockade.

PvK

This sounds nice, but unfortunatly it doesn't work all that well. Setting your strats to not fire on planets does seem to work ok for keeping your ships from glassing the planet, but your ships have a nasty habit of wandering aimlessly and getting pasted when they wander into range even if you are lucky enough notto start the combat raound in range.

Splitting fleets has no effect at all. It's not the fleet being too big that cause you to start in range of the planets weapons. This will happen regardless of fleet size.

The only way to get them to stay out of range for sure(assuming they don't start in range, there is nothing you can do to prevent that) is to set the fleet orders to don't get hurt and not break formation, or set your ships to don't get hurt. And as I said this makes them a little susceptible to enemy ships or fighters that come by. They will fire on enemy ships if they come in range, but they won't approach the enemy. They'll wait in the corner and if the enemy has decent range weapons will get picked apart.

Geoschmo