Carrier fleets --- Strategic combat?

[Tomgs]

Also if you fire any missles I have noticed that a ship with point defence will rush toward you in tactical. In strategic I am sure the same happens. So any fleet with both missle and beam (or any ship with both for that matter) will make short work of any PD only ship.

Try throwing a couple heavy phased poleron beams on your Carrier even a light carrier is big enough for heavy mount weapons. That might be a surprise for anyone who likes to rush "unarmed" carriers. While you may not want to do this a lot because it eats up room for fighters it is a cheap and fast way to get heavy warships early.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 04 February 2001).]

[Jon Brave]

As ever, you guys are great.

I haven't yet had an opportunity to try not making the carrier the leader of my fleet (the theory was this was the only way I could be sure my other ships would surround it), but I will try this.

However, I think you people may be right about PD weapons. I put a couple on my carriers to protect from incoming fighters/seekers --- seemed a sensible precaution. I wonder if, as you say, it's deciding to close in on the planet because of these, whereas colony ships etc. have nothing. What a bummer! Can we please have the AI not count PDs as offensive weapons? If it turns out it's this and not the formation that's the cause, can I put anything on for defence?

While I'm here, I'd like to ask about simulating combat:

1. If I want to simulate *fleet* combat, I found I had to create a fleet from scratch (the "Fleets" button showed me my fleets but didn't let me select them for the simulator), and couldn't set its strategy and leader, so I couldn't test Jubala's theory. Is this true?

2. If I wanted to practice against a planet, I could only seem to pick my own planets and they were friendly and couldn't be made to belong the opposition?

TIA.