What's your favorite formations

[shonae]

I have recently gotten to the point of experiementing with different formations and up til now I've been using the default formations in my games.

I was wondering what the best formations were and in what combat situations. So my question is: What's your favorite formations and for which situtations?

i.e. Defense, Attack, Bombing, Patrolling, etc.

Ciao
Shonae

[rdouglass]

I DEFINITELY do not use the default arrow formation - you're fleet leader gets hammered a lot. I use a 'double wall' for almost all circumstances.

[Commander G2]

Of the Standard Formations, I like Wall and Spider. Spider is nice against incoming fighters and missles. Wall is nice for creating lots of overlapping fire zones (that is why variations of it used frequently in land commbat). The problem with line formation is the opponent can focus one ship if he can swing the flank. Often the AI will do just that if for some reason it decides to go that way.

If I bothered creating a custome formation, I would use a double or triple wall with a extra ships set back on the ends to refuse the flanks. If you outnumber your opponent or your opponent likes to use arrow, I would suggest the V formation and catch his point ships in the cross fire for fast kills.

V is probably better for bombing, but if there are no enemy ships to defend, you have probably won anyway, unless they are mega into storage facilities and lots of Weapon Platforms. However, a V would probably be real suseptible to a wall formation, so a wall is better in most cases.

If you greatly outnumber an opponent with light ships and he has a few heavy duty ships, a wall will work poorly as your flank ships would not join the combat for a couple of rounds. In that case a densor formation might work better.

I suppose to use a custom formation in a PBW game, you probably have to submit the administaitors to edit the formation text file.

[CW]

With the TDM modpack I tend to use the "compact" formation a lot. However I noticed that the AI tends to break formation prematurely with the custom formations, can any one offer a solution?

[Suicide Junkie]

From the name, it sounds like the AI is probably breaking formation because the leader can't move.

If the AI ever decides that the leader is stuck, it will break up the fleet so that it can move the ships.

Before that, you could sometimes defeat a large enemy fleet with the proper manouevering of a quick escort, causing the enemy wingmen to box in the leader, and bringing their advance to a halt. Wait out the 30 turns, and then counter attack with a large defense force.

[Deathstalker]

I use the spider or diamond fleet, and somtimes the V formation....but my favorite is the spider, modified so that ALL ships break formation and follow their own firing orders (max, point blank etc)....

[Puke]

i use a custom formation that spells out my name.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[Master Belisarius]

quote:

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Originally posted by CW:
With the TDM modpack I tend to use the "compact" formation a lot. However I noticed that the AI tends to break formation prematurely with the custom formations, can any one offer a solution?

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}

I did the "Compact" formation... and although I really like this formation, it have problems, because sometimes the leader have not room to move (usually fighting over a warp point, or planet, or defending).
And if the leader can't move, most time, the others ships stay without move too... but, sometimes the formation can break.

[capnq]

I use Wall more than anything else. I'll sometimes use Diamond for convoys escorting non-combat ships. I've gotten fairly good results using Bull for planetary assaults.

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Cap'n Q

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"