Strategic Mode Combat - Tricks, Hints, and Advise

capnq · #1 September 27th, 2001, 08:09 PM

quote:
If you are fighting the AI, it seems to me that they usually go after your biggest ships first. I would suggest that Humans who don�t pay much attention to their fleet orders would use this default AI. If you are facing such a person, building a larger than average ship with lots of shields and armor may draw the early enemy fire while your offensive forces are unhindered.

I sometimes use specialty ships with one of the Massive weapons from ruins in this role, if I've found any. They're usually the first thing the AI targets, even if there are larger hulls in the fleet. My impression is that the AI tends to go after the most expensive ship, not necessarily the biggest.

------------------
Cap'n Q
My first mod! Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

dumbluck · #2 December 2nd, 2001, 10:48 AM

A couple of quick points

quote:
Originally posted by Commander G2:
To Hit modifiers are vital for Direct Fire weapons. Important Technologies to have are Advanced Military Science (Fleet/Ship training), Armor 4-6 (Stealth Armor and Scattering Armor), Sensors 1-3 and Combat Support 1-3 (ECMs). Also consider using a smaller hull to get better defense. For example, if you oppponent has a 20% chance to hit you, a smaller sized hull can decrease the chance to 10% or maybe even 1%, depending on how much smaller you go.

Some Racial techs have facilities that affect tohit bonuses for combat in-system. Temporal has the Events Predictor, and Religious (IIRC) has a couple of Shrines that help in combat in system, as well. (Keep in mind that these would NOT stack. I think...) And Psycic has a varient of the Ship/Fleet training facilities.

Also, Fighters get BIG tohit bonuses, and require no maintenence. Just two or three big carriers can (IMHO) replace a fleet of 15-20 missle ships (give or take). But BEWARE THE PDC!!! Once he is protected by a couple of PDC cruisers, your fighters are in for a world of hurt. You could try to add some missle ships to your fleet in an attempt to overwhelm the PDCs, but that is getting expensive on the maintenance side of things....

quote:
Also, remember to give your fleets a better formation than arrow. Arrow is about the worst thing to use in most cases. Try using wall or spider. I usually use wall, unless I am defending a carrier or some other valuable ship, in which case I use Decoy or Spider instead.

About formations... I don't use them anymore. I got REALLY tired of having half my missle fleet move out of firing range while the other half closes to point blank range (ouch), all because the leader decided to make a 90 degree turn! So anymore, I just mark ALL ships to break formation. That way each ship moves to the best position for IT.

I wish I could take credit for this idea, but alas, I read it somewhere here on these Boards and said to myself, "that sounds like a good idea!". I haven't looked back since. The only thing I _might be concerned about are how a carrier group would fit in to this.

[ 02 December 2001: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[ 02 December 2001: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

Gorgo · #3 December 3rd, 2001, 12:06 AM

quote:
Originally posted by dumbluck:
A couple of quick points

About formations... I don't use them anymore. I got REALLY tired of having half my missle fleet move out of firing range while the other half closes to point blank range (ouch), all because the leader decided to make a 90 degree turn! So anymore, I just mark ALL ships to break formation. That way each ship moves to the best position for IT.

I wish I could take credit for this idea, but alas, I read it somewhere here on these Boards and said to myself, "that sounds like a good idea!". I haven't looked back since. The only thing I _might be concerned about are how a carrier group would fit in to this.

[ 02 December 2001: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[ 02 December 2001: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

This sounds like a really cool idea, yet one problem comes to mind immediately - what about if you have ships with really different speeds? If you have stolen some or play a psychic race, your fast ships could have already been killed when the slower ones have just moved into range? Apart from that, it sounds great to me.

AJC · #4 December 3rd, 2001, 04:21 AM

I prefer to use the Wall formation , Optimum weapons range on the ship designs and Short range for fleet strategy.

[ 03 December 2001: Message edited by: AJC ]

dumbluck · #5 December 3rd, 2001, 10:50 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Gorgo:

This sounds like a really cool idea, yet one problem comes to mind immediately - what about if you have ships with really different speeds? If you have stolen some or play a psychic race, your fast ships could have already been killed when the slower ones have just moved into range? Apart from that, it sounds great to me.

Ooooooo. I never thought of that.

I don't usually play Psycic, and usually when I manage to take w/ boarding parties, I either scrap it (because you can't repair what you haven't researched) or I Analyze it for tech. So I've never really had many ships that were of greatly varying speeds. Something to consider...