Strategy vs. Tactical

Resurrection autocast is broken; use this ability manually.  It's very strategic anyways, you don't use it in the middle of a battle.  

 

Typically early game you should turn all capital ship abilities off autocast, and just time their abilities yourself.  Antimatter is a precious strategic resource, and spending it wisely is important.  That said, the Progenitor's shield restoration is probably one of the abilities that the autocast AI manages just fine.  Malice isn't half-bad, although it will use up all your antimatter spamming it so be sure to turn it off to save AM for shield restore.

Ultimates should never be turned on autocast.  These are powerful abilities that can only be used once every few minutes.  The autocast AI will simply use them at the first opportunity, which is often an outright waste when an ability takes three minutes to recharge.  It's well worth putting in the small amount of effort to wait for the right moment to activate these abilities.

The other case that autocast should never used is strike craft negation abilities.  These are flak burst (for the Kol), telekinetic push (for the Halcyon), and jam weapons (for the Kortul).  These abilities are essential for defeating large quantities of strike craft.  You want to time these abilities to damage and disrupt the most strike craft possible.  This is well worth your time to watch and wait for the perfect moment to use these potent abilities.

Cruiser and frigate special abilities can be always be left on autocast.  Sometimes the autocast AI uses them poorly, and sometimes you'll want to turn off autocast to conserve antimatter, but these are not as big a deal as capital ships.

 

Autocast has two big flaws.  The first is that it's rather wasteful with antimatter, it will just keep using the abilities whether they're really necessary or not and completely deplete your antimatter stores.  This means if you leave abilities on autocast you may run out of antimatter when it really counts.  You should have antimatter regeneration upgrades researched before you leave autocast in charge.  The second big flaw is that its tageting regime is not really that great.  The AI will often use abilities on the closest target, rather than the best target.  For instance, a Dunov might shield restore a small frigate rather than a friendly capital ship that's near death. 

 

As a final note, beware the Marza if you don't pay attention to the battle.  If its missile barrage ability is not negated, it can singlehandedly wipe out your entire fleet.

Thanks. Capitalship Manual Cast isn't a problem for me. Any situation where manual casting would make a difference is when I have the time. I would still likely leave Autocast on when clearing out an asteroid or a planet with only 4 militia. But yah, I figured at least ressurection would be smart enough to know when to be used (How hard is it to program "When something blows up." Actually, how exactly does that ability work, the stickies on this board aren't totally clear. I gather you cast it after a cap ship blows up, and the next cap you build has that ships level).

 

On the issue of placement, I know, for example, that my ships are annoyingly happy to engage starbases even when unnecesary, but what about smaller scale issues? Any ship with side or rear cannons is best when thrown directly into combat. I remember watching an Illuminator fire on a HC with two lasers, slowly rotating until it only fired with one. >_<. Are there any ships that recognize that they have port / starboard / aft weapons and maneuver to use them, or shall I manually command those ships to jump into combat (When reasonable, of course).

Then you're fine. 

If you're not worried about depleting your antimatter, then most of the offensive abilities (like radiation bomb and nano-disassemblers) can be left on autocast.  Hard to screw up an "attack the enemy" ability.

That said, a good strategy is to single out the siege frigates defending the neutral planets.  Once the siege frigates are destroyed, you can sneak in a colony frigate (or better yet, just use the colonize ability on a capital ship) to capture the planet, then build a turret to kill the remaining defenders! 

Yeah, the ability's functionality is poorly explained, and you don't have it right.  If you lose a level 6 Halcyon carrier, you can use this ability on another Halcyon to instantly promote it to level 6.  You can do this as many times as you want, and if you have five other Halcyon carriers you can promote them all to level 6. 

You can change your fleet behavior to "local area" targeting or "hold ground" targeting.  I usually put all my units on local area.  This means they will only attack units that get close to them, and won't attack something on the other side of the gravity well.  The catch is, if you want them to attack something on the other side of the gravity well you have to order them manually.  Trade-offs either way.

Illuminators and flak frigates are the only standard combat units that fire any direction other than forward.  Flak frigates are pretty simple: just put them in the middle of your fleet and they'll shoot down any fighters with little to no management on your part.  There are entire articles written on tactics to get the most out of illuminators, so I can't exactly do justice to them with a short reply.  The golden rule with illuminators is to make sure all three beams are firing.  If they aren't, try moving the illuminators around; even rotating them slightly will cause them to acquire new targets.

Of all units to command in battle, fighters and light frigates probably are best worth your time.  Both these units die very quickly (to flaks and long range frigates, respectively) but are also quite fast, so it's usually a good idea to keep them out of harm's way, and that usually involves keeping them moving.

 

 

"Yeah, the ability's functionality is poorly explained, and you don't have it right.  If you lose a level 6 Halcyon carrier, you can use this ability on another Halcyon to instantly promote it to level 6.  You can do this as many times as you want, and if you have five other Halcyon carriers you can promote them all to level 6."

 

So, in other words, you get a radiance to level 10, build some other ones, send the level 10 to its doom, and then make an army of level 10 Radiance Battleships.  

All those ships firing Cleansing Brilliance at the same time...  

Throw in Malice...  Oh, that would be fun.  2000 damage to each ship plus malice...  You would instantly kill an entire fleet with that.

 

 

By the way though, is there a limited time to upgrade like ships?  Like can you duplicate until another cap dies, until 3 minutes is up, 6 minutes, 12 minutes, etc?

Precisely.  You can just scuttle that Radiance, if you prefer.  You can ressurrect scuttled capitals, as that counts as "destroyed".

You used to be able to kill entire fleets like that.  Malice now has a target limit of about 30 units, so you'll kill 30 units practically instantly, not their whole fleet.

Just the cooldown of the ability.

 

This actually isn't as strong as it may sound in practice.  For one thing, it's very rare to get multiple high level capital ships within the same game (in multiplayer, that is).  For this to work, you need a level 6 Progenitor and a level 6 Radiance, something I almost never see.  Secondly, you need to buy a bunch of capital ships plus those expensive crew upgrades.  If you're going to do that, you may as well just buy mass transcendance (automatic promotion to level 4 for all new capital ships) and build a better variation rather than just cloning the one high level cap you already have.

<3 seeing an EGG autocasting nano on a siege frigate with 13HPs left instead of that goddamn kodiak fifteen metres away.

As aggravating as that is (and why I don't use autocast at all) it's quite rare.

True, but the only things you need to kill are the krosovs...  Besides, the Kodiak'll die soon enough.  The pulse beams on the Kortul and Egg shred enemy forces....

No it's not. Nano always fires at the current target. It's pointless, because it can destroy a siege frig all by itself, so firing it at an already damaged ship is a waste of time and antimatter.

The only thing I usually leave on autocast is migrators and colonization.
When the gravwell is empty and there is one planet (duh) - now there's no room to screw up ;D.

At level 10 with all weapons upgrades they may be shredding something.

Besides, that kodiak is not really important. I usually nano one siege frig and shoot another one. Once all are out I colonize and jump elsewhere.
Everybody does that right?

Eh, I leave most cruisers to their own devices.  I'll toggle autocast to conserve antimatter as necessary, and manually order them around if I need to (the two varieties of subs are notorious for needing babysitting), but I'm not going to go out of my way with ordinary units.

Depends on what you need to do.  If you just want to secure early game planets, then this is your best course of action.  If you actually need to set up structures then you gotta clear it.  Totally depends on your situation.

Of COURSE I meant early game planet securing.

If I want to clear the rebels I don't use the egg. It's a waste of time.

True.  If you want to clear militia, use the Kortul which is why it is generally my second cap (and I think it is the coolest looking cap in the game)...  Power Surge nearly doubles the DPS, which is quite nice...

Quote:

Of COURSE I meant early game planet securing.

I said it is my second cap...  Besides, I only get it once I have the first fleet upgrade with just 50 FP's left...  Because the Kortul can defend pretty well when on a friendly planet with turrets and hangers, I tend to use it and some assailants to secure the front and only call it in to clear militia when my egg is overwhelmed...  It acts as a sort of insurance that some fleet won't come stomp my worlds...