Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » battle orders
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| Re: battle orders |
Sat, 21 March 2009 20:16   |
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Personally, I copy the default orders to "Attack" and alter the default to none/none/disengage/nobody because I inevitable have more frieghters etc that need to run away than I do things that should(or even can) attack. Of course every so often I forget to change orders to attck, but imo that's better than my colony ship not running away.
[ETA bombers need to have none/none/disengage/*someone* or they don't bomb)
as for others...the obvious specialised ones, attack starbase/frieghters/bombers(Starbase or Frieghters or umarmed etc/any or armed/max damage/enemies) are always useful, bear in mind that ships with these orders will usually get very hammered and rarely survive.
Chaff shredders/sappers also usually have max damage orders - again they're not expected to survive, just to do their job ASAP.
Its often a good idea to give missile/torp ships armed/any/disengage/enemies orders so that they run away from beamers etc...they won't stay out of range forever of course and may leave the battle before its over but hopefully your beamers will keep them covered long enough for them to do their damage. unlike the (usually beamer) ships above, their cost and lack of gateability makes their survival more important. Better to take 5 battles to kill off a fleet and take minimal losses than die killing only 80%.
Above all, testbed every battle, with every battle plan you can think of that your enemy might use.
[Updated on: Sat, 21 March 2009 20:17] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: battle orders |
Sun, 22 March 2009 06:50 |
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 craebild |
 | Lieutenant |
Messages: 568
Registered: December 2003
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark | |
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Please keep in mind that your starbases use the default battle plan to determine what and who they will fire upon, so if your default battle plans say to attack who: none, then your starbases will not fire on any ships, not even enemies, unless they fire on your starbase or ships (starbases and ships always defend themselves if fired upon).
A good default battle plan would in my opinion be Bombers/Freighters / Any / Disengage if challenged / Enemies (or Enemies and Neutrals if you also want to attack any Neutrals you meet). That way, if an enemy brought enough warships to bring down your starbase and defensive fleet, then the starbase would have decimated the enemy's capability to pop-drop and bomb the colony. The warships in the defensive ships should of course have Armed Ships / Any / Maximize Damage Ratio / Enemies.
Those default orders also means that armed freighter and snipers will keep attacking until they take a hit, so if they come across enemy unarmed freighters without escorts, then it is probably goodbye to the enemy freighters, while your armed freighters and snipers stand a good chance of disengaging without being destroyed.
Med venlig hilsen / Best regards / Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Christian Ræbild / Christian Raebild
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| Re: battle orders |
Sun, 22 March 2009 07:41 |
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| Micha | 
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Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002
Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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| craebild wrote on Sun, 22 March 2009 11:50 |
Please keep in mind that your starbases use the default battle plan to determine what and who they will fire upon, so if your default battle plans say to attack who: none, then your starbases will not fire on any ships, not even enemies, unless they fire on your starbase or ships (starbases and ships always defend themselves if fired upon).
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Of course your your starbase nor your ships will wait till they actually take a hit before returning fire. Whoever has the highest init will fire first.
Also the 'attack who' orders bleed over all fleets at the same coordinates. If you have a starbase with orders to only attack enemies and one of your fleets has orders to attack enemies *and* neutrals than your starbase will also fire on neutrals.
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A good default battle plan would in my opinion be Bombers/Freighters / Any / Disengage if challenged / Enemies (or Enemies and Neutrals if you also want to attack any Neutrals you meet). That way, if an enemy brought enough warships to bring down your starbase and defensive fleet, then the starbase would have decimated the enemy's capability to pop-drop and bomb the colony. The warships in the defensive ships should of course have Armed Ships / Any / Maximize Damage Ratio / Enemies.
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Check the Starbase FAQ
First: starbases always fire on any/any, in other words they fire on the *most attractive* target in range. Which leads to second: bombers/freighters will almost never *be in range* of a starbase. Unless you can manipulate the battle board positions, also known as battle board crowding, 'bringing enough races to the board and with the correct player numbers to ensure they start in the right positions'. Using this can put the enemy bombers right next to your starbase, possibly even in beamer range. (This tactic was heavily used in Babylon 5 v2, and several times prevented a superior enemy from actually killing allied planets. Check the Game Stories game forum for that, don't start that discussion here. <looking at m.a@stars>  )
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Those default orders also means that armed freighter and snipers will keep attacking until they take a hit, so if they come across enemy unarmed freighters without escorts, then it is probably goodbye to the enemy freighters, while your armed freighters and snipers stand a good chance of disengaging without being destroyed.
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If you want to disengage you better use the 'disengage' tactic. If you wait "until they take a hit" your ship will be plain dead. Think of several (10+) jugger or higher BBs that fire on your few (1-2) tranports, how many hits do you think they can take?
To protect bombers/freighters (see recent discussion about freighter chaff): don't bring them to a battle, or bring enough chaff to protect them (regular chaff if you have armed transports, freighter chaff if you use normal unarmed transports).
mch
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| Re: battle orders |
Sun, 22 March 2009 08:25 |
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| Micha |
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Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002
Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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When starting a new game the first thing I do is delete all present battle orders and insert my own set (unfortunately have to do that every game, wish they were saved like the production and transport orders).
DEFAULT
I copy the 'Default' orders and call them 'DEFAULT'. Reason is that for most missions default orders are fine so I keep the orders, but I sometimes find myself in the situation that I want newly build ships to have specific orders (when a planet is under attack). Since you can't assign orders to ships that haven't been build yet they'll follow the 'Default' order.
To prevent my other fleets using the 'Default' order end up with the wrong orders when I have to use that tactic I give them the 'DEFAULT' order. This of course takes some time since every fleet gets one of my costumized orders as soon as it is build. This takes about a minute per turn, even late game. Not that many fleets are actually build and I simply sort the fleet view according to the battle order column. Better to do this up front than miss one ship due to time constraints and mess up your plan entirely. (Yes, it takes some MM. <g> But it's routine for me now.)
Most of the time my missile ships will use this order.
REAL chicken
None/none/disengage/nobody, this is the standard for my transports. I know they will disengage anyway, but one of my usual teammates ones mentioned he was under the impression ships moved less stupid on the battle board with these orders. I can't confirm but you never know. (With stupid I mean that unarmed ships move forward instead of staying against the edge as far away as possible from the enemy warships.)
DUMP chicken
Same as above but wit the 'Dump cargo' button checked. This one goes to loaded transports that go into enemy territory and risk being attacked. They will dump their cargo and return to their speed without cargo, less 1/4 move (as recently found out in the thread "loaded freighter battle board movement").
SWEEP chicken
Same as 'REAL chicken' but with orders to attack a specific race/neutral/ememy. This is for my sweepers that *only* sweep and if they end up chased try to get out ASAP.
MAX damage
Armed/any/maximize damage/whatever
This is for most of my beamers, they need to close in and start shooting. Range3 beamers fighting a range2 enemy will keep the DEFAULT order.
This is also a must for anti-chaff ships, else they take a step back when facing enemy range2 ships and can't fire at the chaff with their first shot because they are out off range.
DISENGAGE
Armed/any/disengage/whatever
This is for missile ships with 2.5 move for example, they retreate fire on the board shooting up enemy range2 beamers and disappearing before those beamers can get a shot in.
Sometimes used for range5 missile ships to kill enemy anti-chaff beamers. The chaff killers rush forward, the missile ships step back and this puts the anti-chaff out off the protection of their own chaff.
MINIMIZE damage
Armed/any/minimize damage to self/whatever
Depending on test results I'll use this one instead of the DISENGAGE orders for missile ships.
Note that this is a battle orders with a serious drawback! Use this with caution. When attacking a starbase your fleet will not take into account that the starbase has a +1 range advantage. This will cause your ships to move into starbase range, take a hit and move back without firing themselves, repeat and repeat until they are dead or until the battle is over ...
Some other basic orders like 'kill starbase', 'kill bombers', ... all the same except for the primary target and the secondary target adjusted to the particular situation or to your own taste.
And then there are the LAMB battle orders and the 'trick' battle orders which are battle specific ...
Note that you have to test your orders in a testbed that comes as close as possible. Things like attractiveness or an extra race on the board can really mess things up.
mch
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