Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » Going to war
| Going to war |
Tue, 02 June 2009 21:02  |
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 Mark Hewitt |
 | Master Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 105
Registered: June 2006
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada | |
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What should you have when you go to war? Or preparing to withstand it? What do you need in terms of:
* tech
* planets
* resources
* minerals
* ships
I imagine this is different for each of the eras:
* pre-cruiser
* cruiser
* battleship
* nubian
I have an idea of what to have, but I'd like to improve that. 
[Updated on: Tue, 02 June 2009 22:06] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Going to war |
Tue, 02 June 2009 23:37  |
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| neilhoward | 
 | Commander |
Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023 | |
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| Mark Hewitt wrote on Wed, 03 June 2009 02:02 |
What should you have when you go to war? Or preparing to withstand it?
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Knowledge and Will
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Know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things. As if it were a straight road mapped out on the ground ... These things cannot be explained in detail. From one thing, know ten thousand things. When you attain the Way of strategy there will not be one thing you cannot see. You must study hard.
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I believe knowledge of both your enemy and yourself are the greatest assets you can possess.
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So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battles.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
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Second, if victory is your goal you must pursue knowledge and subordination of politics economy and astrography.
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Seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful.
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Also the prescient(or anticipatory) will to act.
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Timing is important in dancing and pipe or string music, for they are in rhythm only if timing is good. Timing and rhythm are also involved in the military arts, shooting bows and guns, and riding horses. In all skills and abilities there is timing.... There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this. In strategy there are various timing considerations. From the outset you must know the applicable timing and the inapplicable timing, and from among the large and small things and the fast and slow timings find the relevant timing, first seeing the distance timing and the background timing. This is the main thing in strategy. It is especially important to know the background timing, otherwise your strategy will become uncertain.
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And the will to manage every aspect of your empire, no matter how time consuming.
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In war, discipline can do more than fury.
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Edit: Expanding
[Updated on: Wed, 03 June 2009 00:26]
By the time you realize how steep the curve is, you will be using five types of calculus to get to the market. You will then need three different calculators to perform what you once considered basic arithmetic.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Going to war |
Wed, 03 June 2009 03:22 |
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| iztok |
| Commander |
Messages: 1206
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
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What should you have when you go to war?
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 About 10-20 turns of preparation.
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Or preparing to withstand it?
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About the whole game up to the current turn. You know, "Si vis pacem, para bellum".
Seriously, you can't successfuly fight without proper info, so do SCOUT, SCOUT and just to be sure SCOUT some more. Collect any info you can on your neighbours: colonies, friends and foes, tech, trading relations, ship designs... So when sh.t hits the fan, you're not in its path, or (in case you can't avoid it) you already wear an umbrella, trenchcoat, high rubber boots and have friends en-route to help you showel it away. 
BR, Iztok
[Updated on: Thu, 04 June 2009 02:38] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Going to war |
Wed, 03 June 2009 07:06 |
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| Mark Hewitt wrote on Wed, 03 June 2009 03:02 |
What should you have when you go to war? Or preparing to withstand it?
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You are surely aware that, when most things in Stars can be answered only specific, this is even more true for war. But I'll try to show some general lines of thinking and planning, spiced up by some examples.
The thing you need the most you haven't mentioned:
A plan!
Concepts Of Warfare by Mikkel
One fo the basics of this plan is to assess your time line:
1) Is it important and to your advantage to attack asap?
2) Or are you relatively growing better and faster than your enemies and thus to delay war should be of advantage for you?
In case 2) better don't interprete this as inactivity because your enemy might come to the same conclusion: to delay war is better for you than for him... so you should think about measures stopping him from attacking you: minefields, diplomacy, 3rd party war...
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What do you need in terms of:
* tech
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This includes what ships you need: main warship, bomber, minesweeper, scouts etc. but also other stuff like defending a flank with mines (uups, only bio 3 available), setting up a package thrower on planet a and b (but energy tech is too low yet). Obviously your ship designs are dependent on what you know about your enemies (scout, scout, scout!!!).
Try to find a middle line of tech goodies you deem essential and the time you still need to reseach. You are the first to have reached weap 12 and con 13 which enables you to build jihad-BBs... is it really necessary to research another 8 years to get en 10 and elec 11 before building your first BBs?
Another decision is wether you want to build an attack fleet that gets a specific job done (eg "conquere that pesty HW much too close to my space") or wether you want/need a fleet able to survive in the unknown deepth of the enemies' space for quite a while. The latter is usually more expensive and takes more time what especially in an early war you want to avoid (scenario: win a war but loose the game because other players get ahead).
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* resources
* minerals
* planets
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Calculate!
Write down what all ships you need for the attack. Make sure to include not only warships but bombers, minesweepers, xports, freighters, scouts etc. Be prepared that all the auxils and supply ships will cost more than your warships. It's always good to be ready and able to produce another bunch of bombers in case the first group gets destroyed by eg kamikaze-tactics.
Now you can estimate what kind of resources and minerals you need... and discover, oops, you lack the boranium to build all those bombers or it's on the wrong planets.
Always a tricky question:
How many to build of those shiny new warships?
On the one hand, if you are still in the phase of economic development, every warship built weakens you in your relative economic-race against those players not involved in a war.
On the other hand, every warship you haven't built might endanger your whole attack... you don't want that, either.
Very difficult to answere.
Just one rule of thumb for early wars with DDs or CCs:
The minimum number of ships should be able to shoot down an enemy station in a reasonable time (1-3 rounds). assume this station to be big, bad and nasty: fully armed, shielded and armoured. Assume the enemies' tech AT LEAST your own plus some (after all your enemy hasn't build this bloody expensive fleet but might have researched instead).
So, if you attack with bazookas, assume the enemy to have weap 10, better shields and better armour... and either pray that he hasn't already reached weap 12 or send enough ships that they survive even jihads and get the job done.
Pre-cruiser-era:
Don't attack developed enemy planets with frigates. They are too vulnerable to torps and missiles (IS with croby is an exception, WM with speed bonus might be another exception). Use shielded DDs instead, more expensive but worth it while with FFs you mostly need stealth and luck to succeed (it's basically a gam
...
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| Re: Going to war |
Fri, 05 June 2009 12:32 |
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| Thorby |
 | Civilian |
Messages: 1
Registered: June 2009
Location: Eastern North America | |
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| Mark Hewitt wrote on Tue, 02 June 2009 21:02 |
What should you have when you go to war? Or preparing to withstand it?
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Mark,
Maybe you've already looked at the "big picture" and are just looking now at different responses about the details. But I'd like to stress my belief that the big picture determines the details.
If you are in a war because you're being attacked/invaded, you must respond, obviously. But what are your objectives? Resistance/counter-attack so that you can negotiate a peace treaty based on the status quo ante? Or do you need to wipe the offender out of the whole space/time continuum? Or maybe something in between?
The main thing about any war is to know your strategy.
What exactly, in detail, do you need to accomplish?
When deciding whether or not to initiate a war, it's probably as important to think about what you do not have, as what you do have.
#1 Do you have a choice?
Is it absolutely essential that you attack a particular player at this time? Why? What factors have taken away your freedom of choice?
#2 Do you have active allies in this plan --or at least passive ones? A "passive" ally is one that at a minimum will not attack you while you're busy, and even better, will trade you tech/minerals/intel to help in your war.
If you do have a choice, then you also have the time and ability to fine-tune your intelligence gathering operations and to craft battle plans to meet your strategic objectives.
If you don't have any allies in this war. . . why not? If your neighbors think you're a bigger problem then your prospective enemy, maybe you need to make love, not war. At least for a few more years.
Race design plays a big factor in the details. For example: If your race's success is predicated on taking advantage of a high growth rate, then the details of your current planets and the availability of new worlds to colonize will strongly influence Question #1.
Usually, all the details in your list are highly dependent on the big picture:
What is my strategic objective?
What does my enemy currently have with which he can oppose me? [Hint: You need accurate INTEL, not guesswork!]
What will happen if I can't achieve my strategic objective by the date [fill in the blank].
After all, if you start a war in the "pre-cruiser" era and can't end it, maybe you will never have the research resources to make it to the BB or Nubian era. . . while you're slugging it out with clubs & arrows against tribesman #2, the other players will be peacefully researching & advancing.
all the best,
Thorby
Just another Citizen of the Galaxy. . .Report message to a moderator
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