MACRO STRATEGY: FLEET ALLOCATION

I've pretty much seen the ball fleet of doom , but the AI also does a good job of a sneak attack elsewhere with 2 Cruiser Carriers, and a few cobalts.

I mostly rely on statinoary defenses with a little fleet support(a cadre of cobalts and a few LRMs). This keeps most choke points secure enough untill a larger force arives. Extra important places get a light factory and a few hangars and a repair depot.

Mostly I have a large fleet, or in some cases two prowling around the galaxy killing things. I usually have no less then 3 cap ships per fleet(usually a Kol, Dunov, and Marza combination), the main fleet gets 5(a Sova and maybe another Kol or Akkan). Some of my solar fleets get a few more modifications (extra command frigets or drones), but otherwise is stick to a fairly strick regime of cobalts, LRMs, and carriers.

My scouting is way bellow par, and I usually rely on the information gained by my early scout and my allies. This leads to some messy battling and a few retreats.

I never have a really set strategy besides fast expansion and fast tech to get volcanic, ice and trade at almost the beggining.

I use whatever the situation demands

Frequently one strong fleet and a few weaker fleets, but I try to be adaptable. One thing I love to do early game is "anchor" a flank with a single capitol ship while my frigates are busy elsewhere. Sure, the frigates can't oppose my opponent... but my capship doesn't have to stay in one place. For example, against Blair I used a Sova to first bomb out an asteroid next to his home planet while sending all my frigates off to assist my ally on another front with Blair... and when Blair was threatening that fleet pretty effectively, my Sova jumped out and raided his home world. I just walked around some phase point placed defenses and had the Sova pound some mines while the fighters helped his researchers explore high-energy transfer equations.

He had to pull his fleet away from our other forces to deal with a "mere" Sova

Nice Ron, I like it

you guys are talking about multiplayer games... right?

Yeah, I have a way with words. Sometimes.

Anywho, thanks.

well, time to throw my two cents in:

My fleet strategy is classic: if there really is more than one way into enemy territory, I build multiple fleets of about the same strength. when on the defensive (which is really just waiting to go offensive) they sit aroun gauss cannons within my forwardmost outpost (or at the star, or some other adjoining neutral territory). When I launch an offensive it is usually with only a slight distance between the launch of the two, the result usually is that an enemy who divides up his forces is overwhelmed very quickly, or a steamroller will lose a LOT before he gets both fleets down (in most cases if you can draw the main fleet away, the homeworld as well). Capitol ship allocation falls down to usually having a couple cap ships in each, although more marzas if I'm going against the homeworld (oh, ps. Marza >>> Kol)

although there are exceptions to my rule, when attacking in a big steamroller is a very good idea:
-generally when the game focuses on a single area, like in fire&ice
-when you're enemy only has a few clumped planets (which was the circumstance, because and only because of the pirates)

I pulled this strategy off pseudo succesfully last night, except for two very unfortunate circumstances: I launched two offensives, one with 6 or so cobalts against a lower asteroid while the other was two marzas and a few cobalts against his homeworld. Unfortunately the lower asteroid, while not wiped out, was completely surrounded by pirates of which he had not erradicated from 20 minutes earlier, while they wouldnt have been a problem on their own he chose the moment when they were at my tails to phasespace in. the result, was, well, dissasterous. I had to jump to a neighboring grav well where he chased me with the two caps, where my already damaged sova and 2 frigs (all others were torn by the fricking pirates) were easily destroyed. (basically if the guy had killed the pirates first, I would have easily steamrolled over him)
anyway back with my marzas: I destroyed his point-defense cluster rather quickly and with ease and sent my marzas to go about bombing his homeworld, at this point he began sending a light flow of frigs at me that were easily countered by the few frigs I had. I succeeded in bombing 3/4 out of his planet when his main fleet arrived (freshly leveled from slaughtering my other fleet) IF things had gone according to plan with the sova, he would have been one ship down and defeating him would have been easy... but no, and no, so I had to retreat

but at the end of the day the damage done to him was VERY severe, his planet would take a while to recover, his point defenses had been wiped out, and pirates which he ignored where still diddly daddlying around in his asteroid belt. unfortunately I estimate that our damages were about equal, but mostly due to unfortunate circumstance.

so the entire message of shoddy's post kids, was to ALWAYS scout

see, the thing was that I had scouted out almost all of his planets, it was sheer dumb (bad) luck.

Sounds like you failed too scout to me!

ron, pay attention:

I scouted almost his entire territory looking for his fleet (which I new at the time he had one, and basically I knew its composition) it was at his homeworld, so I had no need to erradicate it (rather I had to pull it away) so I had scouted all of the data I needed.

nevermind.

Purely yes, and only late game. But if you do all weapon reseraches the Kol is stronger

...
are you kidding? please tell me you're kidding. first off the marza has all three weapons in far greater (or equal to, in the case of autocannons) numbers than the kol. second its DPS is far greater globally, this is especially important at the begining, where the marza does far greater damage than the Kol. finally when the marza is late game with its upgrades one can almost kill any number of cobalts with a single barrage of its missiles.

I think the playing field is maybe more equal at the end, but the marza is by far WAY more powerful in the beginning, the only part the kol may win at is its defense, which I dont think the marza can match. also it doesnt have any rear weapons, so if its not facing its target it cannot do most of its damage.

Pfff... whatever, you've obviously tested this.

Dunovs FTW!!!

quite right, padawan.

We will see about that in our first 1v1.

you're damn right I'll see you're cricketness.

My what?

Oh? You didn't make it sound that way...



If you'd scouted before you jumped in, you'd have known they were there.

Ron, its like knowing that bigfoot is in north alaska, and wasting resources looking in yellowstone park.

No, it isn't. And the fact that you don't get it is gonna loose you a few games.

alright, some more input:

I for one don't like it if all players basically just assemble one big fleet and go about attacking everything and everyone with it. it just results in a lot of come and go before the two fleets finally meet. ok, then its a very nice battle and all, but it just doesn't feel right or strategic to pool your forces this much.

but it occurs to me that some abilites even promote having big fleets. abilities like the target uplink or the command cruisers affect the whole fleet (they do, no?) and specialsied ships like those and maybe repair cruisers only make sense at a certain fleet size.

besides, with defenses as strong as they are and a fleet set to arrive sooner or later you almost forcefully have to take as large a fleet as you can with you in order to avoid getting sloughtered.

so lets think of some ways to make big fleets a bad idea from the gameplay mechanics. of course having 80%+ of your navy in one place is strategically risky, because if you loose it you will be in big trouble. so one option is weapons of mass destruction.

explanation: it should be purely defensive weapon for planetary systems and the big catch is, it affects the defenders units and structures as well. so, apart from all reserach and building considerations, if use it you can completely wipe out an enemy fleet no matter the size, but you wipe out everything you have in there as well. this will almost certainly scare off huge ship invasions as no one would dare risk the bulk of his fleet if even the chance of something like that exists. on the other hand it is not something the defender would do if he is only attacked by a moderately sized fleet, because the price is just too high. this should in turn result in more spread out fleets and possibly even in parallel attacks against multiple worlds. the defender knowing this would in theory also spread his fleet out so effectively you have multiple medium sized battles which imo feels more like a realistic take on war and brings its own choices of strategy and choices are usually a good thing.

implicitly, if the capacity to attack is reduced, defenses should also experience some downgrading or the fleet that is the minimum requirement for breaking the defenses is already a target for a mass attack.

lastly, and this is just a cursory thought, if you really do something like this and you have much more spread out fleet, an open map design or even fully connected maps could become interesting. while I do like the maps the way the are, if gameplay mechanics are changed on such a level, the current drawbacks of said maps could be void.

what say the rest of you?

Strategy eh?

1. I build about 3-5 scouts total; and maintain this number, 1 is for the star and he will hang out there and avoid enemy contact, as a result I always know when pirates are out and about. The second will similarly observe any important neutral zone, while the other three will be constantly going back and forth to enemy border systems. Basically I just que up orders to go to the front enemy system and then back to mine and then back to his and so forth. As a result i have to que up some orders once every 10-15 minutes, but its worth it because I can check the status of a frontline enemy system just about every other minute. I get the scout upgrade and I constantly know what the enemy has.

2. For the reasons stated above I often keep my real fleets deeper in my territory to avoid being observed or considered threatening.

3. I actually build up Cobalts early and keep doing so; for the time being so many people are so turtlish that NO ONE goes on the offensive early; so there is no point wasting early time money on Gauss... one or two in key areas is enough to defend from pirates in conjunction with my fleet. As a result I always have a big fleet while my enemy is still building his worlds; I tend to expand faster as a result.

4. I've come to like Sova's allot as they are good for hit and run, and good for retreating defense. I will often place my gauss around the planet; as to give bombers more time to kill the enemy ships before they start firing on mine. This can be a double edged sword and I don't always do it though.

5. I end up with 1 strong fleet and a secondary weak fleet; and then a third fleet which is just 2 Sova's aiding whichever fleet needs it. If I have good allied I will make one big fleet but its ready to split at any time.

6. My big weakness is I lose track during battles and don't build enough economic investments... but I am improving on it. Also I tend to only build 2 research facilities of each; the third would be a rarity as those techs are too expensive for my fleet budgeting to withstand. But then again multiplayer doesn't lend itself to the long haul games where this wouldn't be too big a deal.


PS after my online games I now think the big fleet is adequately balanced. Big fleets will lose to a equally skilled split fleet player; as they will be flying deep into territory killing planets and continuing on while the big fleet struggles to fight ONE of you. Three small fleets with siege frigates can simply murder your empire while your big fleet bothers to fight my one system or medium fleet.

Schem, you going to loose a few games