Fleeing from battle -- how?

[mottlee]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
You can't. The best you can do is try to stay out of the enemy's weapons range for 30 combat turns.

If they do catch you in a corner and you have no guns: Ram them!

This WILL work ONLY IF you are bigger than they are! if not YOU still be DEAD!

[dogscoff]

This WILL work ONLY IF you are bigger than they are! if not YOU still be DEAD!

Not at all. Well, you will be dead, but if you have an unarmed ship cornered by an armed attacker, you're dead anyway so you might as well ram anyway. Even if your ship is the smaller one, it might still damage them.

[couslee]

hmmmm. I have tried this with limited sucess. You can avoid the enemy if you have them beat on movement. I have had sucess using two tactics. I don't usually have to use them, so my testing is limited. First off, don't always do a corner run. You will get killed being a chicken (that crossed the road). Two examples.

I had a combat movement of 4, the AI only had 3. So I played "squirrel" using the planet as my tree. Every time he tried to go around one way, I would move to the opposite side, and kept out of his range. This went on until about turn 12 or 13. the AI for the next two rounds did not move at all. I found that boring and was enjoying the chase, so i moved on tile over, and it began again. So there is a way to stagmante the AI movement, but exactly how is still a curious factor. he eventualy got to a position that he could chase me in circles, and it was hard to keep out of range. this continued until about the 22nd turn, at which point I then made my corner run, and he could not get there in time to destroy my ship. iirc, he did get one shot off tho.

Second one: little different situation here. the AI had 3 big ole bullies, with a decent range. given the ship movement of 3, and a weapon range of 7, I had to stay 11 tiles away at all times. One miss-click movement and my ship would not have survived the first volley. I made an agressive corner move, but in the same direction as the AI fleet. (kinda like a reverse feint). with their range, the planet trick obviously would not work, so i used the same kind of tactic, but was running fairly close to the edge of the map. I wanted to keep the AI on that side as much as possible, so my arch in my squirrel turns was very wide. Straight up 4, diagonal 1 (I have 5 moves in combat). sometimes to make the turn i would have to diagonal 2 or 3, but doing so lost the running lead. After about 4 laps around the combat screen, doing this, the combat ended with his 3 dreads never getting off a shot, and my antique PDC lt cruiser left hastily for the nearest safe haven asap.

Superior speed can flee the bigger ships, even when they have a death range of 10. You really need a +2 combat movement over the AI to pull it off. 3 would be easier. and AI position is every thing. you may not need to use all your movement point every round. just stay 1 or 2 tiles out of range and run in a circle...... and pray you ship don't pull a mulligan move and end it's round in the wrong tile.

Edit in:
oh yea, my sucess rate in the few times I have tried this has been about 60% survial, and 20% no damage flawless vic....stalemate.

[ January 30, 2003, 22:27: Message edited by: couslee ]

[Kekkonen]

If I have the speed advantage, how the heck do I flee from a battlefield once a tactical battle has started?

[dogscoff]

You can't. The best you can do is try to stay out of the enemy's weapons range for 30 combat turns.

If they do catch you in a corner and you have no guns: Ram them!

[ January 30, 2003, 12:17: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Kekkonen]

Hey, that's a fabulous idea. I'll switch the default strategy of all my unarmed explorers to "ram" and run through their battle in the strategic mode. Thanks.

[Shadowstar]

Ok, so the next question is, what's the best way to flee when playing a simultaneous game, when you don't have direct control over your units in combat?

To ram or not to ram, that is the question...

[couslee]

Originally posted by Shadowstar:
Ok, so the next question is, what's the best way to flee when playing a simultaneous game, when you don't have direct control over your units in combat?

To ram or not to ram, that is the question...

you can't really "flee combat" in either. you have to go the whole 30 days. That aside, you can't dodge weapons ranges in Simultaneous games. Of that matter, there are a lot of things you can't do in that set-up, that you can do in tactical. I am still trying to figure out if there is an easy way to blockade planets, without haveing to design special ships soley for that purpose.

[primitive]

Originally posted by Shadowstar:


To ram or not to ram, that is the question...

There really isn’t a right answer to this one. Whatever you chose, a lot of times you will whish you had taken the other option.

Here is how I use to do it against the AI (I play all battles on strategic since tactical gives the human player to much of an advantage, and makes the game to damn easy). Against humans it is probably better to vary.

First 20-30 turns:
Unarmed scouts and transports I set to don’t get hurt. If they meet an opponent with the same tactics they will survive, and they don’t have enough bulk to do any damage ramming.
Colonizers I set to Ram. They can often survive relatively unharmed against the AI’s scouts, usually escorts or frigates with a couple of DUC’s. If the AI uses missiles you are dead anyway. The disadvantage is of course when you meet another colonizer, then both players usually ends up with empty hulls they still need to pay maintenance for.

Later in the game I just don’t care, as any unarmed ship is a dead duck.

[Dralasite]

I only run in tactical if I have a decent speed advantage against an AI.

Otherwise, RAMMING SPEED!!!