Managing Support Vessels

from Sins Forums

I have a question for you regarding the management of support vessels. What is the most effective way to make them stay evenly spaced throughout my fleet and to make sure they are fulfilling their desired roles? Here's an example of what I've been doing thus far with late game TEC.

Fleet 1: All Capital Ships + ~5 Hoshiko Robotics Cruisers + ~5 Garda Flak Frigates. Set to hold position and all tight so the Hoshikos and Gardas stay with the caps and don't go anywhere.

I then set the Capital ships to ctrl group 1 so that the support ships and flaks aren't included in attack orders as I want them to focus on repairs and fighters.

Fleet 2: All Javelis Long Range Missile Frigates ~40-60 + ~10 Hoshikos + ~10 flaks + ~3 Cielo Command Cruisers. Set to all tight and hold position.

Like ctrl group 1, I only put the Javelis (Javeli plural?) into cntrl group 2 so that I don't select the support ships when issuing attack commands.

Depending on what my opponent is using, I'll typically have more fleets, but they all follow essentially the same structure, so I think this is sufficient for my example.

This strategy works to a degree, but I find that my Hoshikos make odd choices of who to repair, and my Cielos often designate non-priority targets. 

Short of microing every support vessel on top of selecting targets, managing capital ship abilities, and keeping tabs on other battles happening around my empire, what can I do to get more out of my support vessels?

 

 

strategy
4,788 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

here are 2 things that I do sometimes

1. if I'm in a hurry to tell my ships to focus fire on one target (or a chain of more then one) and I don't have them in ctrl groups i will select then all tell then who i want them to attack then tell the Hoshiko to stop this will make them go back to repairing.

2. if I'm worried about my repair ships not repairing a key ship or structure i will manually tell them to repair it, otherwise I will leave them on auto even though this isn't optimal.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

The Hoshiko and Cielo are very low-management as far as support cruisers go.  Nothing near the effort it takes to effectively use a Domina, and no high-maintenance tactics like you see with the Guardian or Subverter.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

i find overseers pretty annoying to manage, their autocast and autoattack are a bit unpredictable

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Usually one particular ship takes enough damage so that all the Overseers attempt to cast RNA on it, ending up in several wasted casts on that one ship.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

i find overseers pretty annoying to manage, their autocast and autoattack are a bit unpredictable
End of quote

Overseers come somewhere down the middle.  Their utility in keeping capital ships and starbases alive makes them well worth your effort.  Not so much useful for individual frigates, though, especially since Enforcers are not favoured by Vasari.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Micro all day. Some support ships I leave on autocast or even manually select said ship. Plus the AI isnt really great in prioritizing which ships need repairs or support.