| Battle plans |
Thu, 28 May 2009 03:58  |
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 Mark Hewitt |
 | Master Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 105
Registered: June 2006
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada | |
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Hi all,
I've been reading the articles on battle plans (especially this one and its thread)
and was wondering if anyone could add more?
I especially was wondering about your experience with the difference damage settings:
*Disengaged if Challenged
*Min Damage to self
*Max Net Damage
*Max Damage Ratio
*Max Damage
With "disenaged if challenged", does a warship stay in the battle until shot at, then it begins to withdraw?
"Min Damage to self" means the ship closes until it comes within range of enemy weapons, then falls back.
"Max Net Damage" means a warship closes while it bring more firepower of its own weapons in range than that added of the enemy?
"Max Damage Rato" means the same as last, but the measure isn't the difference of the firepower but their ratio.
"Max Damage" means close until all weapons are in range of target.
From what I've heard, "Max Damage Ratio" and "Max Net Damage" have problems for human players. Any details?
Thanks,
Mark
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| Re: Battle plans |
Thu, 28 May 2009 20:56  |
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So, I think the gist of it is this:
Max Net Damage is better for different-ranged weapons on the same ship (eg, sappers and gatlings). Otherwise, Max Damage Ratio is potentially a bit better.
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| Re: Battle plans |
Fri, 29 May 2009 15:52 |
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| Eagle of Fire | 
 | Lt. Commander |
Messages: 809
Registered: December 2008
Location: GMT -5 | |
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From personal experience:
- Disengage if challenged
Attack with Maximize Damage until the token is fired upon. Then require 7 moves to disengage before disappearing from the battle grid, assuming the ship survive the retreat.
Not really a good option unless you've built a strategy around this battle order, and even then... If you have a huge stack then all the ships in that stack will be fired upon at the same time and flee. If you split all your ships, you have the max token per battle to worry about. And again, even then, assuming that your ship with this battle order don't die right away, it will become useless in the current fight because it will never fight back while retreating. In fact, I've never ever seen a disengaging ship firing back while retreating, even though other players say otherwise.
The only good use of this tactic I've ever found is when defending a starbase. Assuming a ship strong enough to take at least one direct hit from your opponent tokens (or kamikaze ships if you are sure to fire first, but it's not really the point with this tactic), you could send them toward the ennemy to "soften" them and allow the starbase to finish them off without being destroyed, which would have happened otherwise. The goal being to keep both your ships and your starbase alive at the end of the battle. Such an occasion is extremely rare, but I myself used "sapper chaff" once in such an way. In the end it however didn't exactly helped me much in the grand scheme of things.
In theory, another use for this tactic would be cloaked terror ships which mainly attack unarmed ships. If you happen to meet an unarmed ships with an escort, you could possibly flee before being destroyed. No doubt would require better shields than your opponent weapons... But when you analyze the battle later on, you end up realizing that you either would have preferred the ship to attack all the way, or not attack at all. Again, worst of both worlds always happen here.
- Minimize Damage to self
Consider moving away from enemy weapons range in priority over everything else. Then pick best target from current position.
This tactic is really tricky, because there is no way to really predict what your ships will do with it unless the fight is very simple.
A fairly good tactic to set your missile boats with, it however have several flaws. First, you need to be sure you have range superiority if you set this tactic to any of your ships. Range 4 torpedoes fighting against range 5 missiles would get wasted without much of a fight. Assuming your enemy ships are way faster than yours and rush to you without stopping, your ships would still fire but only if there is a good target for them after moving away from harm. In practice, this mean that your range 4 ship will most probably only fire until it gets to the edge of the battle board and the enemy ship continue to move toward you. Since your ship will move forward if it not yet in range of enemy weapons, it will require several rounds before it begin to fire.
Second, most of the time you want your missile boats behind your beamers and allow your (cheaper) beamers take the hits before the missile boats. "Minimize damage to self" is good for this. It is however not absolute, for your ship will still move forward toward the enemy if it's right about to get into enemy weapon range. Most probably getting hit at least once in the process. On other occasions, especially in huge battles with a lot of different token on the board, any token of lower attractiveness than chaff and which can move and close to your missile boats fast could make your missile boats "fall back" on the battle grid, trying to flee an otherwise almost harmless ship. When it happen your missile boats don't cover or can't cover your beamers well enough, and casualties ensue due to the prolonged fight.
Not recommended for big battles unless you want to make sure weak ships get hit as little as possible while still firing during the battle.
Note: this tactic don't take into c
...
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| Re: Battle plans |
Sun, 31 May 2009 05:11 |
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| Eagle of Fire wrote on Fri, 29 May 2009 21:52 |
Maximise Damage
Locate most attractive primary target (or secondary if no primary targets are left). If any of your weapons are out of range of that token then keep moving to squares that are closer to it until in range with all weapons. If using any beam weapons (as they have range dissipation) then attempt to close to 0 range. If just using missiles or torps and in range then move randomly to a squares still in range.
A lot of players suggested that Maximize Damage Ratio is the best default tactic... But from personal experience, I'd have to say that this tactic is the best default one for beamers. Join this tactic to a beamer ship, and you'll be certain that no matter what your beamer ship will aim for the most attractive target and pursue it until it dies. If not still in range of his target but in range of other targets, it will still fire at his secondary targets. Or if you select "any", then it will fire on anything in range.
I like this tactic because it is the only tactic which never disappointed me at least once. It's very straightforward, even if sometime it means that the ships will kamikaze themselves. But at least, you did plan it that way. Or should have. :P
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IMHO max damage is the best battle orders for beamers with range 1.
With beamers of range 2 or 3 and max dam you might run into Black Jacks (range 0, power 90), Bludgeons (range 0, power 231). As Eagle of Fire said: max dam forces ships to move as close as possible... against Black Jacks this isn't a very good option. With max dam ratio your ships would try to keep the distance that allows them to fire but not the Black Jacks.
Range-0-weapons are of very limited use and easily outmaneuvered but especially in beginner games, players try to attack bases with range-1-weapons or with the wrong battle orders and then this special and often only one-time-usage weapons like Black Jacks are the right thing to smash your enemy's first big fleet.
While talking about attacking bases, there is one very important restriction to all battle orders: all weapons mounted on bases get their normal range+1. No battle order takes into account this bonus of +1. This can be seen most davastingly with "min dam to self" when ships move into a base's firing range, get shot, move out just to move in again, get shot at again...
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| Re: Battle plans |
Sat, 01 August 2009 02:53 |
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| Eagle of Fire wrote on Fri, 31 July 2009 15:45 |
I'd like to raise this topic to report that I did spotted a few of my ships doing the retreat fighting maneuver.
I have not been able to do it until I got the Interspace-10 engine, however. I suspect that battle speed play a huge part of the fighting AI decision. From memory, all my ships set on disengage simply moved around their starting point when low speed engines were used at the beginning of the game.
Anybody have hard data about this?
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My testings indicates that ship weight is what matters. DenHam & I ran a bunch of tests that seem to show that BS doesn't matter.
Denham put together a spreadsheet showing some outcomes. I also have a S/S that shows the chances of moving last given 2 ship weights. Email or PM me if you want it.
[Updated on: Sat, 01 August 2009 02:55] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Battle plans |
Sat, 01 August 2009 09:48 |
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| m.a@stars |
 | Commander |
Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left | |
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| Eagle of Fire wrote on Fri, 31 July 2009 21:45 |
all my ships set on disengage simply moved around their starting point when low speed engines were used at the beginning of the game.
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Of course. They were trying to Disengage, i.e. exit the Battleboard ASAP, and, if there's no advantage or disadvantage difference between their various movement choices they'll choose their next square at random. 
Now if enemy ships were fast enough to enter range before your "retreaters" fled, things would change. You ships would manoeuver to shoot against anything close enough and also to avoid being hit. 
Still, their primary task would be disengaging before being pressed against the wall, so only a few rounds of fire should actually ensue. 
This kind of tactic usually works best against relatively slow (i.e movement 2 or less) beamers, that are still fast enough to get into range before your (faster) retreaters get away from the battle. 
So many Stars, so few Missiles!
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| Re: Battle plans |
Sat, 01 August 2009 18:13 |
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| Eagle of Fire |
| Lt. Commander |
Messages: 809
Registered: December 2008
Location: GMT -5 | |
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| Quote: |
Now if enemy ships were fast enough to enter range before your "retreaters" fled, things would change.
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I guess that's what happens. It looks like my own "retreating" ships actually want to engage the ennemy ships by moving straight toward them in the first few turns, which look wierd and is a clear change of behavior versus the early years.
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