Battle tactics question

The level of micormanagement is completely up to your playing style. I typically play Advent so I'll use that as my example. I usually have 1-2 kick em in the face fleets that consists of 3-5 cap ships. I switch all the abilities to manual to maximize on fleet synergy and antimatter conservation...(Battlecruiser's animosity + Vengance + malice = massive damage). If I'm playing against someone who's good I'll also micromanage the smaller ships to do little things like stay in range of my motherships so thier shields regen faster and attack optimal targets but more often than not I let them do thier own thing.

Micromanaging those fleets requires a bit of time so I also have support fleets that I don't micromanage and those typically consist of carriers and drones. I set them to tight formation and hold position and let the fighters do thier thing.

Its a risk vs reward thing, The more attention you give your fleet the more effective it will be but then your economy and\or progress suffers.

I hope that helps.

Well, you're micro managing is largely dictated by your fleet mix and strategy behind that fleet mix. I'll address your questions as best I can, and I'll give you some examples of what I've been doing. Now I've only been playing for about 3 weeks, so anything I say might not be optimal. I consider myself a decent player (I've played against humans online twice and won both times, but that's enough games to call myself any kind of an expert), but there are certainly better players than me.

In general, I just assign my entire fleet to a control group, but I usually don't designate them as a fleet. The whole deal with designating a fleet is that it causes all the ships in the fleet to stay in either tight, standard, or loose formation with the flagship. Sometimes I will fleet flak frigates together. I tend to not micro manage them as much. I will usually just position them somewhere that I think enemy fighters will pass as they make their attacks so that they can catch the enemies as they flyby.

In any case, I generally don't fleet my ships, just control group them. In a battle, you can hold the alt key and click a unit in the empire window and grab all the ships of that type if I want to task certain classes to firing on certain enemies.



I do this for the most part, but there are some special abilities that lend themselves well to automatic use that I leave on. Two examples from the TEC would be the Marza's siege guns ability and the Kol battleship's gauss rail cannon ability. Most area effect abilities or ship disabling abilities (like TEC Akkan's Ion Bolt or Vasari Evacuator's Gravity Bomb, or Advent Mothership's Malice ability) I leave on manual. The AI is not too good at intelligently using the area effect abilities, and disabling abilities like Ion Bolt I want to keep handy so I can pop that retreating capital ship that I've almost got destroyed.



I usually leave my support cruisers on automatic and let the AI handle them. The TEC's robotics cruiser lends itself particularly well to automatic use, IMO. With micromanaging, you've only got so much attention span. I find that it takes everything I have to manage my cap ship abilities and designating targets for certain classes of ships in my fleet. I just don't have enough left over to manage support cruisers.



Again, depends on fleet mix and strategy. I like to use a 50/50 combo of fighters and bombers in the early and mid game and I do micro my strikecraft some. I generally keep my bombers docked at the beginning of a battle because enemy interceptors usually go after them first, and bombers are dog meat for interceptors. I micro my own interceptors to suppress the enemy interceptors. This can require some attention because your interceptors will target enemy bombers by default, so often times you have to get hold of your interceptors and re task them. Once I have enemy interceptors mostly suppressed, I launch my bombers and I'll usually focus fire them on either enemy capitals first or heavy cruisers if he has a lot of them. I'll focus fire my light frigates against enemy carriers to prevent enemy interceptors from gaining strength again. I'll usually focus my capital ships against enemy capital ships and micro my own capital's abilities to best effect.



Again, it's all dependent on what kind of strategy and fleet mix suits you. I'd be happy to tell what kind of caps I usually get and how I balance their abilities, but this post is already pretty long. I could send you a PM if you're interested though.

In general what I do is get a capital that can colonize as my first capital no matter which faction I'm playing. Besides being able to colonize, these ships usually have good special abilities, especially the Advent mothership. After that I try to choose capitals that will best augment the type of fleet I'm planning on building. Again, if you want something more in depth just let me know and I'll PM you my little treatise on capital ship tactics.



It does take some practice. It helps to be able to quickly identify where your fleet is weak and then identify which ships opposing you are going to be the biggest threat and eliminate them first. For example, if your fleet is mostly light frigates and your enemy has some LRMs, task something to take out the LRMs first since they are really hard on light frigates. Interceptors are good in the LRM suppresion role, BTW.

I found your post very interesting and I too would love to hear your capital ship tactics. So please consider posting it here, or PM me as well, thanks!

I have only played Advent so far and i leave all of the Caps abilities on auto. The only micromanaging i typically do in battle is to focus fire on enemy Cap ships or direct my carriers to a safe position outside the battle.

I really enjoy killing Cap ships, so i usually fill all of my fleet's attack craft with bombers and just tell them to all focus fire on a Cap ship or a structure i want taken out. Once you start knocking out the (AI) enemy's Cap ships, they tend to run bravely away.

My tactical strategy is more about trying to defend multiple fronts simultaneously and deciding what types of fleets i want to make on each front based on what each enemy's fleet looks like and is less about micromanaging battles. If Vasari is massing a bunch of nasty Caps, I build things nearby that kill Caps, if the TEC is building carriers i build a fleet of anti-strike craft, etc.

@ all: thanks for those comments, very helpful and excatly what I'm looking for.

James, very nice post! I'd be really interested in some more information about the cap ships, their abilities and how to effectively use them.

You can certainly PM me, but it might perhaps be better to continue to post it here, since others can benefit from it as well.

Much appreciated!

How effective are flak for taking out enemy lrms?

ATM, pretty darned good so long as your opponent doesn't exploit some loopholes. That said, fighters are even better once you get them, and flaks are being weakened Vs. LRMs in the patch.

Battle tactics wise, I usually leave my support cruisers on their own, and just micro it so my Kodiaks / Cobalts / Fighters/ Bombers are all engaging the appropriate targets for them. Works really well. Alt click a "class", give it its orders to kill all enemy units of a given class, then rinse and repeat. Check back tgo make sure the enemy isn't pulling any fast ones (pulling out and circling with the one getting FF...) and you can frequently do a number.

Can I use the empire tree to tell all my units of one type to attack all their units of one type?

How do I do this? (order a group of units to attack all enemy units of a given class - I know about alt-click to select all units of the same type, but it's "attack all enemy units of the same type" that I don't know).

i'm a fairly new player too (50ish games). one of my favorite micro trick is to pull back the ships that are getting damaged to insure they keep dpsing, or prevent the other team from dpsing. the tactic is pretty simple and works well for small and medium size battles (i think it loses effectiveness around 30+ ships).

lets assume the battle is cap ship and 10 lrms on your side, and the same on the opponent. they are trying to take out your lrms. one of your lrms is getting low on life (i usually wait til it is a little less than 50% hull left, but i suspect this is race dependant, i play visari for the record). retreat that lrm manually, the opponent has a choice, they can try to chase it, and get dpsed to death by your team, or let it go. if they let it go, great, turn it around before it jumps out and let it continue to fight. if they chase it, great, you just fly it out of the zone and they wasted their time.

same works for fights upto about 30 ships, though you may need to retreat multiple ships at a time. once the battle gets much bigger than this, ships just insta die in fights, so its not so useful.

edit - this is especially useful against someone trying to focus fire your ships

i tend to pause the game if i am playing against the computer whenever i am deciding what to research

Shift right click on the units your attacking. You can do this fairly easily via the empire bar.

Thanks Ron. So this answers cscole's question



in the (expanded) empire tree - alt left click to select all units of the same type and then shift right click to attack all units of the same type (wonder why it's not alt left and then alt right?). I guess this info will find it's way into the manual eventually. This forum is a fantastic source of info and advice, but searching for basic info such as this is a bit daunting for new players.

OK, you use alt L. click to select all units of a given type, then you use right click to give an attack order (context sensative, could be move or something else in another location) to an enemy ship. Use shift to queue up orders sequentially. You have to manually select ships to attack one-by-one (if you have stacking on, it doesn't work, but thats been known for so long I'm willing to be it will be fixed eventually).

One more empire tree question:

What does pinning do? It seems pretty useless.

I generally agree that once the fleets get to a certain size, it's practically impossible to micro-manage. The fleet function plus the control-numbers are your friends.

TEC Balanced Fleet

This is a fleet which has all types of units - the close combat, the missle carriers, the capital ships, support, and the fighter platforms. I generally divide the "fleet" into 3 separate fleet organizations.

The Fighter-Fleet is composed solely of the carriers with a small number of anti-fighter frigates to help protect them from fighter strikes. This component will usually phase-jump in at a different point than the rest of the attack force. No micro-management. Fleet command of Tight Formation and Hold Position means they stay in place while fighters do their thing.

The Capital-Fleet is composed of all of your capital ships. You don't want them to share fleet memberships with other frigates/cruisers since wasting time reforming fleet is a poor way of using cap-fleet time. The Dunov should be on its own control number, so that you can cast Restore Shield on other cap-ships. You'll want to be able to direct fire for this fleet against the big targets and for the Sova to drop its missle platforms where they'll do the most good.

The Main-Fleet is all the rest. The support ships can do their own thing, but you should assign control numbers to the missile ships and the close assault ships. The close assault ships generally have such poor turning speed that you should allow them to attack targets of opportunity, but you might want them to help focus on a couple of cap-ships to start with. The missle ships should be on their own control number as well, so that you can make sure they don't get tangled up in the melee. Check on them every once in a while and use them to snipe at targets which are in their arc of fire that are close to destruction.


In a large battle, I would send in a scout to decide the emergence point. Send in the Main-fleet first (to get the targeting set) and then the Cap-Fleet/Fighter-Fleet.

Once the ships are all in, I'd order the cap-fleet to pick 1 ship and then jump to the heavy cruiser control number to pick the 2nd. Then I'd jump to the LRM's and maneuver them clear of the melee to start the sniping. With a large enough fleet, there might be 2 LRM groups to shoot at different angles.

After that's done, I'd check on the cap-fleet to see if any shield restore needs to be done. The Sova's should be ready to drop their missle platforms by then as well. Then back to the LRM's to check their status.


Other variations include the

Close-assault TEC fleet

Nothing but Kol's, Dunov's, heavy cruisers, flak-frigate, and the usual support. No fighters. Charge right in and this requires zero micro-management except for the Dunov's shield restore functions. Once you close the distance, this type of fleet mix can be devastating.

The benefit of this fleet type is that you don't need micromanagement. Just pin the fleet and keep and eye on the shield for the Kol/Dunov's. Jump in just long enough to cast shield restore, and you can be off managing a different battle.

Catch-me TEC frigate fleet

This one requires much more maneuvering and attention, as you'd combine the Fighter-Fleet with Cobalt, Flak, and LRM's.

Control numbers for 2 groups each of Colbalt and LRM's. The flak gets tied into the same fleet as LRM to cover them against fighters. The goal is to send in your Cobalt for close fighting while maneuvering your LRM's around the engagement envelope of the other units. This will require a lot of management, but you can often save a lot of your cobalts this way. Do this ONLY if you have sabotage reactor and cluster warheads researched.

While you're mixing it up, the bombers will be doing terrific damage to the infrastructure and then moving on to the units.

Good raiding fleet, but it'll take more of your time to manage.