What's tthe secret to Fighters & Missles?

[TerranC]

Although this question has been answered many, many times, I thought I'd put in a little comment:

In my usual AI games, I always research beams first and missles later... But thats not the point.

The Point is:

After I get the Maximum level of Engine destroying missles and Capital Missles, I get a Light Cruiser, Load it up with the basics, Quantum Reactor, One Mulitplex tracking and many missles I can fit in with a ratio of 2 EDM for 1 CSM.

After that, Although I only use this ship for One on One or Capturing Ships and killing the escorts, I fire the Engine Destroying Missles (sorry, I forget the name) first, then the CSMs later.

Also, I make sure that the ships have equal leverage against the opponents:

Escorts-Light Cruisers - One ship.
Cruiser/Battle Cruiser - Two Ship. (Preferred Three ships as with two, you will probably lose one to the battle cruiser.)
Anything Up - 4-6 Ships.

Large Fleet - 10 Ships.

This worked for me, I really don't know if it will work against human players.

[raynor]

If you have a lot of fighters, and your enemy has a lot of Point Defense Cannons on its ships, you might try launching your fighters into space *before* entering combat. Then, when you enter combat, your fighters will be in one group that moves as one instead of many small waves of fighters that are destroyed as quickly as they enter the range of the enemy PDC's.

[ 26 March 2002: Message edited by: raynor ]

[Sinapus]

If you fight in tactical mode, try designing fighters with heavy defenses and send them in first to soak up the point-defense cannon fire, then send fighters w/heavier weapons in.

Of course, in strategic mode this doesn't work very well unless you are lucky.

[Marco]

A useful attack tactic in turn mode tactical combat is to close range to point blank with yours carriers with fighters on board, then suddenly launch yours fighters in Groups. In this case fighters are already in range to shot enemy ships without any movement and enemy PD can’t target them if they don’t move after launch.
This tactic require mixed fleets with carriers with a high tactical movement rate, let say quantum engines and solar sail III, to optimise timing of the approach and range of enemy weapons, and long range fighter’s weapons to counter random pop up placement in the fighters launch routine.

Marco

[Saxon]

This isn’t really a secret for fighters and missiles, but it is related. Should you run into a new race with fighters and missiles, or your opponent has switched on you, it is tough to refit everything with a couple of PDC. A common design, that I have seen talked about a lot and have personally found effective, is the fighter killer. Take a fairly small hull and fill it to the brim with PDC. Put on one small beam weapon to ensure that the ships stays in the heart of strategic battles. Send it out and you have a SEIV equivalent of an Aegis cruiser. They are fairly cheap, quick to build and change the balance of weapons in your favour. They also make nice additions to planet busting fleets, as they eat up sats.

When using fighters, I find sending launching them in the biggest possible Groups is more effective. The small Groups tend to get eaten up by PDC before they get to fire. As another person mentioned, launching them in space before the battle to get very large Groups is also useful, as it leads to the same effect.

[oleg]

quote:

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Originally posted by Sinapus:
If you fight in tactical mode, try designing fighters with heavy defenses and send them in first to soak up the point-defense cannon fire, then send fighters w/heavier weapons in.

Of course, in strategic mode this doesn't work very well unless you are lucky.

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It is possible in strategic: design some ships with one or two fighter bays. Load them with fighters with one or two shields. Load normal carriers with attack fighters and assign to launch in big Groups. You may want to just fighters speed so anti-PD fighters arrives first. Works really nice if you have crystalline energy tramsmission lens: +60 shield to each fighter group. It is NOT easy to shut down a fighter with 180 shield points and high ECM. AFAIK, point defence cannons are made less accurate in Gold. Your oppenent may spent 3 or even 4 PD shots per fighter.

[LGM]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
However, point defenses are smaller and cheaper than missles. Which is the main reason it's hard to get enough missles to overwhelm the PDC.

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[ 26 March 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

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If you are using Organic Missles then they are cheaper in build time than Point Defenses because almost every ship design I have ever seen is bounded by Mineral costs. Rarely do Organic races even hit the bound for Organic resources at their shipyard. A beam ship needs to dedicate time in training to fight at optimal level. A missleship can go to battle immediately. I played against an Organic race once that would create massive fleets of Organic missleships and consider trading 3 ships for 2 of mine a victory. Of course he built enough direct fire ships to keep me honest. My ships were costly because I had to put so many point defenses on them. The other nuance about missles is that in a large battle (80 on 80 for example), point defenses are spread out with the ships where as the blob of missles tends to be concentrated. As a defender my ships could not mass close enough to take out all the missles. When you have 400 missles to target, it is hard to get every ship to use its point defenses. I should also add that combat replay for such a battle takes hours (fast mode) as it pauses for each missle launch.