Fight Dirty?

[Loser]

Originally posted by wanker:
If you have the space mount a colbalt warhead or two on the mine sweepers. Set their orders to "Ram".

Oooo....

Yeah, that's nice.

It's always a good idea to have warhead researched to max.

[Hotfoot]

Originally posted by Pooka:
Hmmm.....
How many mines does an escort suck up when running through? How many does a fighter suck up?

*ponders evil, evil designs*

Not enough to really be useful, I think. You're better off using dedicated minesweeper ships.

Will mines force cloaked ships to decloak? The big problem with sending minesweepers through is that it'd require me to fight off his fleet of 40+ ships which is /also/ parked there.

Cloaked ships will take full damage from mines, and cloaked minesweepers do not sweep mines. Mines ignore shields and do damage directly to the ship, starting with any armor they might have and then continuing until the ship is dead. Your best bet would probably be to make suicidal minesweepers (with tactics of "ram" and cobalt warheads as mentioned below) go through the WP uncloaked, but seperate from your main warfleet, at least if you want to avoid a straight-out fight. The minesweepers will die, which is regrettable, but if you're lucky, you'll have swept the mines away and cleared a path for your primary cloaked harassment fleet, as well as hopefully doing some damage to his fleet with your ramming minesweepers (don't count on that being very significant though, it would just be a nice bonus, if anything). Once your fleet has slipped through, you can start doing some serious damage. With any luck, you can get him to split his forces, maybe even making him think that you came around another way to attack. The more you make him spread out, the better it will be for you when you finally do invade in force.

Also, since your group seems to be heavy into the RP aspect, try to gain more allies, and maybe even slowly work at disrupting his alliances with others.

[Pooka]

Originally posted by Hotfoot:

Also, since your group seems to be heavy into the RP aspect, try to gain more allies, and maybe even slowly work at disrupting his alliances with others.

I've been shaking hands and kissing babies from the get-go. The problem is there's 4 of us in this game, who know the game very well, and one other that knows politics very well. The 4 people who don't know the game so well (and one who does but has low self-esteem) have allied behind the politically savvy fellow to 'stop the veterans from killing us all.'

This union of underdogs occupies most of the board at this point and is making life very difficult. I have, (though simulator room screenings and other such techniques.) eroded a lot of the support from this one guy by pointing out certain facts about how the battles will be going when I finally get in his face.

I've tried everything I can think of, including offering to just fork over minerals, etc to recoup their losses from his trade agreement. They won't budge. They keep giving him weapons tech (which I then steal) and in general are making nuisances of themselves.

I may kill one or two of them as an example if they continue like this.

[Pooka]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

quote:

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I'm assuming that's because we're not using Gold so the attacker was going first. (Otherwise I would have gotten a shot off with its single MesonII.

A single meson bLaster, eh?
Even if you did fire first, you probably didn't get through his shields, (or missed) and the damage percentage only shows hull damage (shields completely regenerate after battle anyways)

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Shields? You presume much, good sir. My poorly educated foe doesn't make use of shields.

[Aloofi]

I don't know, but I never got myself to order warships into ramming. I guess I'm a benevolent ruler that doesn't have the heart to sacrifice navy personel for the greater good.
For the "Kamikaze Minesweeper" I always use expensive Master Computers, thus crippling my economy.
At least in Proportions we get the cheaper Computer Pilot......

[atari_eric]

Originally posted by Pooka:
I may kill one or two of them as an example if they continue like this.

NOW you're thinking like a Warlord!

Mind you, you will pretty much have to throw any political edge or maneuvres out the window if you go this route, but it looks as if politics is not being helpful enough anyhow...

Besides, if they're helping your enemy, they're hurting you...

[capnq]

I suppose the empire would be stupid to follow us into their own minefield.

Mines are "smart" enough to only attack enemy ships.

[klausD]

a possibility to conduct some terror on him could be:

-research cloaking or stealth armor
-equip a minelayer with such a device
-sneak past his warp-pointlines in cloaked modus
-check his reeinforcement routes - the pathes he travels with his new produced ships from his space yards to his mainfleet
-mine them with the necessary amount of mines per sector

-boom ...the enemy battlecruiser sinks...

-go back and refill your minelayers
-repeat

the problem is that if he is clever he could send forward minesweepers to clear the reeinforcement path. But this costs him resources and time.

alles gute und viel Glück
KlausD

[Loser]

It looks like this is going to be a thread to remember. The 'big secret' dirty fighting tricks may not be coming out, but a lot of 'lesser' tricks sure are.

If you have the time, and you are not focusing on destroying that WP fleet of his, here is something to try.

First establish, by scouting trips, intel, or whatever, if any system of his has a storm that disables sensors (not combat sensors). Then send in a construction ship and build a construction base in that sector or system. After you build the base, scrap or mothball the ship immediately so that it consumes no more resources.

If this ghetto-cloaked construction base is in the same system as some of your enemies' worlds (a one-sector storm, as opposed to a system-wide storm), build a cargo-&-fighter-bay base and fill it with fighters and troops. Build these fighters for planetary attack. Build minor little troop transports and go start taking his most undefended planets, attacking with the fighters and dropping the troops. He will probably be unable, or at least find it difficult, to retake the planets and may glass them. This is not a loss for you, it is an intentional strategy of demoralization. If he does glass his own world, point this out to your role-playing friends, and point it out before you start using plagues.

If the base is in a system-wide storm, or if you run out of targets in the system it is in, build harassment ships or fleets and go after similarly soft targets. Your main goal here is simply to harass. This will cause him to spend research time on sensor rather than weapons, and then it will pull warships away from his fronts.

Alternately, with domestic or imported harriers, you can attack targets of strategic value. If you can figure out which world have his Resupply Depots, hit those. This will severely limit the mobility of his troops. Mine the warp points within his sphere of control. Glass big worlds with high pop. Blockade his homeworld, glass it, or plague the damn thing.

On plagues... if you need to wax this guy to survive, what does it matter what other players think. If you die because you don't plague him, or die because you plague him, wax him, and the others pound you, what difference does it make. Just make sure you are ready to move decisively after your plague attack: take his worlds, his resources, his power, and be ready to faces his new friends with their righteous anger.

One more thing, if you can get an AS harrier behind his lines, use it on non-combat ships as well as warships. Stealing the guys population transport could be lots of fun, especially if he blats it out of the sky when he can't get it back (see righteous role players).

[PvK]

You can find out what happened in a combat by pressing the "Combat Replay" button while looking at the Log's summary of a battle.

PvK