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Author Topic: Battle Tactics  (Read 14146 times)

Xonok

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Battle Tactics
« on: October 15, 2019, 06:14:51 PM »

Recently I've been playing with the limitation that my fleet must stay small, so I've forced myself to play better.

One thing I've noticed is the importance of anchoring for the fleet.
In a certain fight against spoilers, I took the addention of 4-5 cruisers while my other ships dealt with the smaller enemy ships. Even though I had little chance of beating the ones I was actually fighting, eventually the battle went in my favor, because the rest of the fleet finished their targets and came to support me.
For a good anchor, I use the largest ship I can find(currently a Mokarran). It has to be somewhat mobile, but also have heavy firepower.
The size of the ship allows me to, for a short while, tank enemies that would burst down any other ship in my fleet.
I need the firepower, because being an anchor is just as much about punishment as it is about tanking damage. I use a mix of anti-shield and anti-armor, because in my experience anti-shield weapons alone do not force enemies to back off.
Anyone that doesn't back off ends up being shredded while I use them as a meatshield to prevent the others from shooting at me. Small ships that get too close die after they approach me once.
The rest of the ships in my fleet are all long-ranged and mobile. Frigates and Destroyers tend to get separated and die, so in most cases I use cruisers, but very few ship classes actually work. All the ships must have some capability to finish off enemies, as with how few ships I have, I can't afford to have any for just fire support.
Currently the rest of my fleet consists of 2 vultures and 2 herons. Vultures are good because they can quickly put up pressure with HVDs, then follow it up with harpoons. Beyond that they have little firepower, but it's okay because they are spectacularly fast for their size.
One heron has fighters, the other has bombers. I'd prefer putting fighters on both, but anything with low damage-per-hit would be useless, so I don't have enough decent ones. Carrier AI makes them stay behind the vultures, which is good because the damage enemies take is higher compared to just having 4 frontline ships. I tried the other way and it was weaker.

There are two main issues with playing the way I do.
Firstly, enemies regularly outnumber me. This is fine if I just optimize my ships more, but against tanky enemies it can get difficult.
Secondly, AI is extremely stupid when it comes to fleet cohesion. Any ship significantly faster than the rest will immediately get isolated and die. Even a hammerhead is fast enough for this effect.
If they simply stuck together they'd be more effective, but... escort orders are counterproductive. In most cases, escort ships just die for no reason. I basically only use escort on smaller ships to make sure they stick together somewhat, but even then they're not really worth it. Any escorts beyond the first have a huge chance of both dying out of their own stupidity AND not actually shooting at enemies.
Instead of escort I order ships to defend a location, so they'd stick together.
In extremely difficult fights, I put avoid on every enemy that's even remotely dangerous and engage on the rest. Then I take my flagship and fight the dangerous enemies myself, with survival a far higher priority than actually taking any down. If any smaller enemies come into range, I take them down first, as they can prevent me from kiting the big ones.
While the rest of my fleet deals with the smaller enemies, I try to take down a few of the big ones by the time my other ships come to help.

I'd be interested to hear what other tactics people have found.
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Lucky33

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #1 on: October 16, 2019, 07:34:51 AM »

Using classical battlefleet composition with van, center and rear. Its impossible to transfer officers between ships but it is possible to transfer player. You can start battle with the SO Dominator and some Omens and pick any easy targets while disrupting enemy fleet deployment such as: forcing it into some obscure corner at max distance from reserves area; droping fighter replacement rates to minimum so what carriers left alive will choke enemy's reinforcements while being utterly useless; wasting CR of numerically superior phase/SO force. After that send in the main force and change ship. AI tend to deploy its best ship last so keep some carriers in the van and deploy them after you will get some free DP from destroying most of the enemy fleet so it will no longer have outnumbering bonus.
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TrashMan

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2019, 03:07:01 AM »

Put defense order in the corner of the map, so the enemy can only come at you from the 90° fron angle. Get ships with as much forward-facing firepower as you can.

laugh at how ***-easy the game has become.
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bobucles

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2019, 09:52:58 AM »

Put defense order in the corner of the map, so the enemy can only come at you from the 90° fron angle. Get ships with as much forward-facing firepower as you can.

laugh at how ***-easy the game has become.
Is there any particular way to prevent this? It's important to keep the battlefield somewhat confined, or ships will end up chasing each other all day. Map borders create their own issues, since you can take advantage of the edges as impenetrable walls.

Would it make sense to introduce a penalty for ships that are cornered? PPT is a pretty important resource, so a pile of cornered ships might suffer serious wear and tear. Map edges might have reduced flux recovery, hinting at ships fighting in a "stable" section of space where they start suffering outside the zone. Or is it really not a big deal and nothing needs to be done?

Thaago

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2019, 10:09:03 AM »

Put defense order in the corner of the map, so the enemy can only come at you from the 90° fron angle. Get ships with as much forward-facing firepower as you can.

laugh at how ***-easy the game has become.
Is there any particular way to prevent this? It's important to keep the battlefield somewhat confined, or ships will end up chasing each other all day. Map borders create their own issues, since you can take advantage of the edges as impenetrable walls.

Would it make sense to introduce a penalty for ships that are cornered? PPT is a pretty important resource, so a pile of cornered ships might suffer serious wear and tear. Map edges might have reduced flux recovery, hinting at ships fighting in a "stable" section of space where they start suffering outside the zone. Or is it really not a big deal and nothing needs to be done?

My personal opinion is that all ships that touch the map edge should explode. (Kidding)

Even if there is more restrictive edge enforcement, like auto-retreat of exploding, there is always going to the be the problem that the corner only has a 90 degree approach arc, which is fantastic for defense. Perhaps a circular battle space?

Then there are more involved options of dubious gameplay, like if enemies reach the bottom of your side of the map they can engage your undeployed ships in a raid, so you cannot let the AI have full control of the battlespace. There could also be objectives that carry powerful enough bonuses that they make the corner unviable. Or have the edges of the map be all wavy like hyperspace and filled with terrible energies that blast ships near them with lightning!

...

Ok those are all pretty bad ideas, but maybe something will come of them, and I think the lightning thing would at least be funny.
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Megas

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2019, 02:22:38 PM »

Put defense order in the corner of the map, so the enemy can only come at you from the 90° fron angle. Get ships with as much forward-facing firepower as you can.

laugh at how ***-easy the game has become.
That is not possible in newer releases.  Such points are forced one big map square away from the edge or corner, which leaves plenty of room for enemies to maneuver between the point and the actual edge of the map.  The only way to force ships to camp at the edge is to order your ships Escort your flagship, and camp your flagship at the edge or corner.  That is what I call edge-camping, and I always do this if I suspect combat will last multiple rounds, because I want ships to retreat as soon as PPT expires.
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TrashMan

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #6 on: October 19, 2019, 02:52:20 AM »

It is sill very much possible and I do it regularly.
Partially because your ships will move back too until they hit the edge, and the enemy won't be able to flank successfuly since so many of your ships are bunched up.
If you're asking how to prevent it...dunno. Huge AoE weapons that penalize bunching up? Bigger ship explosions? No map borders?
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AgentFransis

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2019, 08:01:01 AM »

Just stop doing it?
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bobucles

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #8 on: October 19, 2019, 08:35:10 AM »

Just stop doing it?
Pfft. When has the honor system ever worked?

One option to protect against corner camping is to reduce the number of map corners. For example a hexagon has 120 degree angles, giving 1/3 more flanking arc to the enemy. Hexagons are an easily understood and symmetric map shape that gives excellent room for battles to spread across the middle. Octagons are similarly useful. A circular battlefield may be a bit tricky to establish proper entry/exit points for battle.

Another option is to offer more bonuses to capturing map objectives. In a normal combat everyone usually captures at least one strategic point. Camping a corner typically means abandoning all objectives to the enemy, so why not make it extra punishing? If one side has uncontested control of all points, double the bonuses across the board. That gives the corner camper a disadvantage.

The edges of the map might introduce penalties for flux management. Flux is a critical component of all battles, so a disadvantage on it would be very devastating. Losing the +50 speed bonus is very harmful all on its own, and would make chasing down wall huggers a lot easier. Possible flavors of penalty might include direct flux gain, reduced efficiency of weapons/shields (-20%?), or even direct hard flux gain. A very punishing option is to disable ship venting. If ships can't vent, then camping loses a lot of its body blocking potential. If all flux dissipation is totally crippled, only fast ships can take advantage of darting in and out of the map edge. I can't really think of a lore reason for it beyond "flux magic" or "drive bubble magic".

One option is to introduce more PPT penalties for ships huddling in a corner. I dunno if this would really stop corner camping, because the map edge is used as a way to recharge PPT anyway.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2019, 08:42:58 AM by bobucles »
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AgentFransis

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #9 on: October 19, 2019, 08:59:57 AM »

It's single player. If you want to camp the map edge knock yourself out. If it bothers you then stop. The same way you choose to save scum or not, or to edit your save file to give yourself 20 paragons or not. It's up to you to manage your game experience as you see fit.

I never tried edge camping so I may be wrong but to me it already sounds like it has sufficient tradeoffs. Yes you can't be flanked but you also can't kite back to vent or to maneuver so it can be very bad if you are pressed by a strong enemy. I've had some battles when I ended up pressing the AI against the map edge and it went very badly for him. Well obviously it was going badly as it is but after they got pressed against the map they all ended up clumped together, bumping into each other. Also unless you camp the corner you can in fact be flanked at the edges of your formation where the enemy can mass locally superior forces, where as in a center of the map deployment your formation can shift around to respond to enemy movement.

Ultimately I suppose the viability of this strategy is mainly a matter of fleet style. If you like to roll around with Onslaughts and Dominators then it's probably very strong as you say. I usually prefer lighter faster fleets that need to move around to win. Especially my flagship will almost always be an overgunned cruiser or capital with a mobility system that relies on hit and runs and venting. Something like a DME Kormoran or a Blackrock Nevermore.
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Daynen

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #10 on: October 19, 2019, 03:17:24 PM »

I've never tried edge camping, though perhaps there might have been times I should have; I'm more interested in eliminating targets early if I can to reduce enemy coverage and firepower.

The problem with objectives in battles is that not only are they random but they don't have that much impact.  The speed bonus from a nav point is nice but I don't think it's ever been the tipping point for me.  Sensor jamming is kind of an intangible benefit in a lot of my experience and extra command points are kind of superfluous really.  If objectives provided a better variety of benefits or slightly more noticeable ones it might be worth worrying about.  for fragile ships running extreme range missiles with unlimited ammo (read: salamanders) it can work just fine; otherwise it would probably be counterproductive for most of my game time.
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Morrokain

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #11 on: October 20, 2019, 03:41:59 PM »

It's single player. If you want to camp the map edge knock yourself out. If it bothers you then stop. The same way you choose to save scum or not, or to edit your save file to give yourself 20 paragons or not. It's up to you to manage your game experience as you see fit.

I never tried edge camping so I may be wrong but to me it already sounds like it has sufficient tradeoffs. Yes you can't be flanked but you also can't kite back to vent or to maneuver so it can be very bad if you are pressed by a strong enemy. I've had some battles when I ended up pressing the AI against the map edge and it went very badly for him. Well obviously it was going badly as it is but after they got pressed against the map they all ended up clumped together, bumping into each other. Also unless you camp the corner you can in fact be flanked at the edges of your formation where the enemy can mass locally superior forces, where as in a center of the map deployment your formation can shift around to respond to enemy movement.

Ultimately I suppose the viability of this strategy is mainly a matter of fleet style. If you like to roll around with Onslaughts and Dominators then it's probably very strong as you say. I usually prefer lighter faster fleets that need to move around to win. Especially my flagship will almost always be an overgunned cruiser or capital with a mobility system that relies on hit and runs and venting. Something like a DME Kormoran or a Blackrock Nevermore.

You are partly correct, but to me it's mostly an AI limitation. Enemy fleet AI doesn't really understand that the tactic is being used and wants the surround if it has and needs more ships (in its estimation) to beat the fleet in front of it. Because it doesn't realize that's impossible or at least detrimental to attempt, many ships hold off attacking and trickle in to die when they try and flank. This is compounded on by the fact that the player is very aware of what they are doing. Especially while piloting a mobile ship, they can just wait for that opportunity over and over again. Its the equivalent of camping in a room with a single door holding a shotgun in FPS games. Without grenades, no experienced player enters that room if they can help it. Its suicide. The AI can't make that decision and just jumps into the meat grinder.

And that's not even getting into how carriers can capitalize on this strategy even more efficiently.

I'm not saying there are easy ways to solve the AI's problem with this, but I would definitely classify it as an unintended exploit.

Just stop doing it?

Right, single player game and all, but still kind of a bad argument for not fixing an exploit. That's a little like saying "just ignore colonies because they give you so much credits and it makes the game easy, we don't really need an endgame to balance that out." Sure, you can do that, but the second you find yourself truly in a challenging situation that has long term financial consequences (like the game intends) you will likely be sorely tempted to give in. Why is that different than something like imbalanced mods or console commands? I'll try to explain:

Many players can compartmentalize the difference between what the game intends and makes available vs what mods or cheats (console commands) can offer. Its two different categories of content and so, psychologically, you as the player kind of "bought into the imbalance" of the second category.

When a player is playing for the first time (golden experience) they expect something a little different. The bar is higher for balance because its "cannon" design and so exploits in that arena are harder to ignore because they can sometimes feel intentional (since the dev didn't feel the need is the assumption as to why it wasn't fixed rather than they just didn't catch it which is likely more often the case). That's why even in single player games exploits (or obviously overwhelmingly efficient play styles) are often patched out later in the modern gaming era.

Back in the days when you couldn't do that as easily (cartridges, etc) the games with bad or numerous exploits were often just considered sub-par to those without them. It seems easy to just ignore them, but when your reward in learning is so often tied to achieving better prowess at the game, knowing you are ignoring "supposedly intended" (again the assumption the new player often makes not my personal opinion) and far more optimal strategies- just for what they would consider a better balance to the experience- is almost always off-putting.

EDIT: Oh almost forgot:

I think as @bobucles said that a heightened ppt drain around the corners would be pretty easy to implement and make the tactic less efficient. Like the shotgun in a room example, if you can you starve them out. It also gives a tangible effect to track in the combat layer that could actually be hooked into the AI.

Player ship in this zone? Don't follow them (put an Ignore order) and only assign fighter strikes, etc. That would be a lot easier than trying to get the AI to be tactically aware of a tactic like that.
« Last Edit: October 20, 2019, 03:50:07 PM by Morrokain »
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Serenitis

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #12 on: October 21, 2019, 10:11:31 AM »

Another 'map edge' thing you can do is start the battle by deploying only your flagship. Then immediately stop and wait for the enemy to approach.
Once you have a decent group of enemies trying to fight you, drag them down toward to bottom edge whle picking off any ships you can without taking too much of a risk.
When you get the group down into the bottom row of map squares as near to the centre as possible, call in whichever ships you want to instantly surround them. At which point the AI gets really indecisive about which threat is more important and often makes some less than optimal choices.

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Morrokain

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #13 on: October 21, 2019, 10:52:11 AM »

@Serenitis

Oh wow I never thought of that one. That would indeed be brutal. Massed reinforcements like that can already steamroll battles at times without such dirty rotten tricks making it worse for the AI lol. :P

I notice this happening when a battle is roughly even but ships have split up in their own skirmishes across the battlefield. If you save your reinforcement points to deploy a bunch of ships at once they can isolate and pick off the entire AI force piecemeal if they are fast enough.

I would say the AI probably needs some kind of tactical retreat setting to regroup with its own reinforcements based on the evolving battlefield. Essentially it would set a defend order in the top half of the map and perform a fighting retreat with all of their forces until they are sufficiently regrouped and can tackle a concentrated force.

Not gonna lie, that wouldn't be easy to implement. Unfortunately, its probably necessary nevertheless.
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TrashMan

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Re: Battle Tactics
« Reply #14 on: October 22, 2019, 01:19:25 AM »

It's single player. If you want to camp the map edge knock yourself out. If it bothers you then stop. The same way you choose to save scum or not, or to edit your save file to give yourself 20 paragons or not. It's up to you to manage your game experience as you see fit.

I never tried edge camping so I may be wrong but to me it already sounds like it has sufficient tradeoffs.

You are wrong. It has no real drawbacks. You can take out entire remnant fleets that would murder you otherwise.
Your ships can fall behind your other ships to vent (assuming your ships don't bunch to TOO much, but that only happens with ships that have weird collision radius), and any enemy ship that is too brave gets mauled.

Even comparing this to save scammign is silly. Such obvious exploits shouldn't exist.

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