Round-about Tactics

posted on October 24th, 2010, 2:48 pm

What are some good round-about tactics that can be played?

I was thinking of one where a couple of destroyers are sent to an expansion (two or three tops) while a fleet of battleships and support vessels are sent to the main base.  Unopposed, two or three destroyers will destroy and entire expansion.  How likely is a player going to fall for that tactic?  And what are some other tactics I can play that divert fleets or otherwise cause distractions to make it easier to win?

posted on October 24th, 2010, 3:04 pm

the best tactic i know is blazing_gig's

he heads up the A127 then goes around every roundabout he can find twice clockwise.

use the main attack first. they will prioritise that, and leave the destroyers.

posted on October 24th, 2010, 3:20 pm

Splitting your forces is only generally advisable if your micromanagement skills are quite good - otherwise, you'll just end up losing your fleets twice as fast, since not only do you have to concentrate on two areas at once, but you have half (or so) the number of ships to deal with any one fleet.

Generally if you have access to cheap ships, it is quite feasible to send a single, or even two destroyers as you mentioned to an expansion and let them sit there dealing damage - however, the only way a player will not notice that is if you are hitting something or moving to hit something more valuable with the rest of your ships. In other words, you need to be striking constantly or making your ships appear to be a significant threat on the other side of the map, forcing your opponent to go out of their way to destroy that lone destroyer.

Distractions in general are hard to pull off against people, unless you are willing to make sacrifices.

posted on October 24th, 2010, 3:49 pm

the best tactic i know is blazing_gig's

he heads up the A127 then goes around every roundabout he can find twice clockwise.

There were so many of them! Just one after another after another! 

Anyway, to add onto what Dom said, there are a lot of other variables as well - eg location and size of the opponent's fleet, defenses at the expansion or main, and a ton more, so I guess it kinda has to be dealt with on a game-by-game basis...

posted on October 24th, 2010, 4:27 pm

Additionally, against Klingon and Romulan, there's fair odds that a small number of cloaked ships are waiting near the expansion to eat raiders.  So all the opponent would have to do is issue the order for them to decloak, and then switch to managing the big fight.

Especially with Romulans and their decloaking 'surprise' RoF boost.

posted on October 24th, 2010, 4:27 pm

@ Dom  -    Hear, Hear!! 

posted on October 24th, 2010, 5:00 pm

Dom pretty much sums it up.  If you pull it off, it is great, but if you fail 

posted on October 24th, 2010, 5:07 pm

I just added an expanded version of this type of strategy to the General Strategies and Tactics section of the guide . Other similar strategies can be found there too TCR 

posted on October 26th, 2010, 9:56 pm

Splitting your forces is only generally advisable if your micromanagement skills are quite good - otherwise, you'll just end up losing your fleets twice as fast, since not only do you have to concentrate on two areas at once, but you have half (or so) the number of ships to deal with any one fleet.

Generally if you have access to cheap ships, it is quite feasible to send a single, or even two destroyers as you mentioned to an expansion and let them sit there dealing damage - however, the only way a player will not notice that is if you are hitting something or moving to hit something more valuable with the rest of your ships. In other words, you need to be striking constantly or making your ships appear to be a significant threat on the other side of the map, forcing your opponent to go out of their way to destroy that lone destroyer.

Distractions in general are hard to pull off against people, unless you are willing to make sacrifices.

Adding to this, I have to say that a single destroyer can be very useful as a distraction itself especially when you're a cloaked race. I can't tell you how people will send their fleet after this one or two tiny ship while ignoring something way more valuable. By the time they are near your lone destroyer start moving it away (they still might follow it if you're lucky) while you decloak the rest of your fleet and take out a shipyard, or countless minners. Then they will be in what we call a no win scenario as they will have to decide to head back to their base/where your main fleet is attacking, or follow this worthless, supper, fast destroyer. This decision alone can even delay them further. Oh the fun of cloaking race strats

posted on October 27th, 2010, 12:05 pm

supper fast destroyer? 

posted on October 29th, 2010, 1:28 am

supper fast destroyer? 

Depends on the player. Often however, it can be quite effective, if you cloak especially, to have 4 forces macro'd, two strike forces, and 2 decoy forces.

The decoy forces attack a expansion and something close to the starbase at the same time, you then sit back with the main force and wait to see what they do.

If they send a fleet after the expansion, you can sandwich it.

If they have backup near the expansion, you can cloak/run, or decloak your smaller cloaked strike force and rape them. I often do this as soon as they bring ANYTHING there, and make a show of microing ships, so they thinkthis is my objective, then as soon as they concentrate there, decloak and attack elsewere. Once managed to get a guy to utterly empty his base and his un-upgraded starbase after taking my arty out, I kept occasionly decloaking an arty ship so he thought I was just distracting him there, and when it came time to strike, he assumed the attack warning was another feint as he wiped out my force at the expansion.

I lost a sizable force, but he lost his base.

Depending on who I play however, I'll often turtle up and just build massive fleets, and defend and build up, only wiping out expansions when I have either resources saved to heavily reinforce them right away OR when I am attacked, as a way to just slow them down, of course soon as I got enough ships to give my PC slight FPS lag on occasion, I just rush. It's not subtle, but it works if you're left alone long enough.