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[SafariJohn]

I lose a ship almost every battle I enter... Is there something wrong with me? Every time I resupply (after 4-5 battles) I also buy a  few hundred crew...

Use more AI friendly variants. Lots of Stabilized Shields, Front Shield Emitter when you can get away with it, etc. Also, Pilums are your friend, since they are the best missile scaling-wise. That's kind of why I want beams to pass over friendlies, too, so Pilums aren't the only scaling support weapon.

[Midnight Kitsune]

I lose a ship almost every battle I enter... Is there something wrong with me? Every time I resupply (after 4-5 battles) I also buy a  few hundred crew...

Use more AI friendly variants. Lots of Stabilized Shields, Front Shield Emitter when you can get away with it, etc. Also, Pilums are your friend, since they are the best missile scaling-wise. That's kind of why I want beams to pass over friendlies, too, so Pilums aren't the only scaling support weapon.

Don't forget accelerated shields as well since the AI just LOVES to drop its shields on high tech ships...

[Serenitis]

Depends on what stage of the game I'm in.

Generally the bigger the ships involved the more I'm likely to tolerate AI silliness with my precious pixel ships.
AI frigates may as well be written off as soon as you deploy them, because no matter what orders (if any) you give them they'll charge right at anything hostile, often alone and end up tumbling away in pieces.
AI destroyers do the same, but being both slower and more durable means it is somewhat less pronounced.
Cruisers and larger don't really have the speed for this to be an issue, and they can take such a beating anyway so I don't really feel like I have to worry about an AI handling them.

None of this would be a significant issue if you could guarantee retrieving your own damaged ships though.

[Megas]

Frigate hordes of about thirty or more (must raise battle size from 200 to 500) can often win without casualties if you eliminate the enemy flagship as soon as possible.  Once I reach level 50+, I use frigate hordes more than solo Hyperion.

None of this would be a significant issue if you could guarantee retrieving your own damaged ships though.

Depends, some weapons are rare and harder to replace than ships.

[Protonus]

Normally I struggle the use of more than 2 ships, even if my partner ship is an Falcon.

Still. Yes, I use my Eagle alone in many situations... until I realize that the pirates I fought get increasingly larger.

[Tommy]

Through many losses, I found that the key to surviving AI ships (especially the small hulls), is to put them back a bit.

I always star by taking/focusing on a single map point. Fighters/Bombers take the point. The other big hulls about .5cm (centimeters of screen size) back, the small hulls another .5-1cm back and the carrier a further .5cm back. After about 20 seconds in the fight, I just do a fleet-wide search and destroy.

Like this:



That way they won't take the blunt of the attack. I almost never lose ships. When I do, it's 99,995% a teleporting ship. Mainly because they teleport in-yo-enemy's-face and until they deploy shields they're already gone. That's why I almost never have teleporting ships in the hands of the AI.

[Cyan Leader]

I agree, putting them back is what does it for me.

I usually fly solo with support ships. Currently I'm flying a Zenith (SS+) and I can take on even 1m bounties because of around 10+ frigates I have equipped with Med Missiles giving me support from far behind. Recently I've added a few fighter wings too and I don't mind that those get taken down during battle since as long as you run a carrier they'll get replaced anyway.

It's really entertaining to me when I'm facing several Battleships with my solo Cruiser and I have to use the opportunities that the missile volleys that my support ships give me in order to break through their shields.

[Thaago]

...

Good strategy, thanks for the picture.

For hit/run tactics: a single "Defend" order placed waaaay back from the battle will effectively retreat all your forces (if you cancel competing orders, of course). It will overcome their innate fear of not getting shot and let them pull away. Then, when everyone is back at good flux/fighters are repaired (and your forces are grouped together) just cancel the order to let them engage again - costs no more CP.

[orost]

I like playing with a big fleet, but I find myself reloading a lot when I take losses that I see as unaccptable. I'm not going to get anywhere if every 300k bounty battle loses me a million in ships and equipment because the AI can't be trusted to keep alive even a Paragon with every possible survivability upgrade. I can't even imagine playing SS in ironman mode.

I want to live a hundred years in the future when computers are smart and AI programming is easy.

edit: I know that battles are supposed to be bloody and that it's unreasonable to expect no losses when many ships are involved, but it just doesn't work with the game as it stands. The supply of good hulls is very limited and losing a ship directly equates to less fun in the game.

That actually goes back to one of my biggest problems with Starsector... that losing isn't ever any fun. There are a bunch of games where when something horrible happens I'm annoyed, yes, but also excited to deal with the consequences... in SS all I can do is roll my eyes and spend another half-hour flying around looking for a replacement hull. But I'm sure that's something that will improve as the game matures.

[Harmful Mechanic]

I tend to play with a fleet, but I usually optimize it as hammer-and-anvil, with my own ship as the hammer. Herons or Knights are decent anvils; their armor and relatively generous layouts make them pretty survivable in the time it takes for me to flank and crush an enemy. So there's a lot of me leading around a cloud of heavy fighters, wrecking the enemy carriers and flagship.

Now that Omnifactory is updated, I've been working more destroyers and frigates back into my fleet compositions.

[Agalyon]

This is an interesting thread, I like seeing how other people play. I do usually stick to one ship for quite a long time. When I do start picking up other ships, I most frontline-esque ship I will usually get and allow the AI to use is super high tech shield monsters, almost elusively tri-tacheon stuff. Other than that, I like fighter wings, big carriers, and long range stuff. I love fragile or risky, high power or fast ships, but I very rarely let the AI use them. Honestly the AI isn't THAT bad, but frankly its pretty much always worse than the player. The AI can manage support, carriers, and fighters pretty well with support, so I tend to stick with stuff like that. Also, if I pick up frigates, I like to leave them either in a big ball, or supporting something else.

When I play alone, or in small groups, I play super aggressively, but when I play with AI ships I usually just support them with whatever the hairiest destroyer I happen to have is. Playing alone is lots of fun, it really makes you feel like a bad ass. But, there are a lot of different fleet make ups you can do, and if you ride them hard enough to stop the AI from being stupid, you can make almost anything work, and I like that too.

[Tommy]

(I wanna know where Tommy found those support fighters.  I could swear I've never seen them at all in this version.)

Standard wings

http://starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Xyphos_Heavy_Fighter_Wing
http://starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Wasp_Interceptor_Wing
http://starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Longbow_Support_Fighter_Wing

You should all make it interesting sometimes. Play with just one carrier and 100% fighters, go all battleships, go all frigates, etc.

[Histidine]

It may be just my imagination, but knowing when to cancel an objective capture order seems to make my ships take much fewer excessive risks.

The things I find that make allied ships die more often than they should include:

1) Frigate is deployed. Frigate runs ahead of fleet. Frigate encounters enemy's lead elements, starts trying to get behind them. Frigate is now caught between lead enemies and enemies bringing up the rear. Oops. (Luckily I remembered Megas's trick of deploying frigates as a second wave)

2) There is no "avoid this unit" command (I'd put it on every enemy capital), or a "BACK AWAY NOW DAMN IT" command.

3) Ships don't tell you when they've encountered superior force, and even if they did #2 applies, and even if it didn't you probably wouldn't have the CP to give the needed orders.

[ahrenjb]

I find that my play style varies a lot from one play-through to another. Since 0.65 came out, I've played 4 games or so. The first one was fairly typical, I piloted a large flagship and used smaller support craft to fill out my fleet. My next game was a major departure from that. I played with small swarms of frigates (5-10 generally) with the occasional destroyer thrown in, and didn't worry about losses. I bought whatever ships were available as I cruised around the universe and outfitted them with whatever was available, upgrading occasionally. I found this to be a really enjoyable way to play the game. Later on when I started facing high-level bounty fleets (using SS+), I moved to cruisers. Three Eagles supported by three Falcons. Really devastating combination.

In my current game, I have a much more extensive mod setup so I've been experimenting a bit. Started off with frigates, moved to a "Fast Cruiser" setup where I'm running two cruisers, and I'll switch between them depending on the fight. I'll probably add a light carrier and a couple of wings, or a couple of frigates at some point to help distract defenses.

[Megas]

1) Frigate is deployed. Frigate runs ahead of fleet. Frigate encounters enemy's lead elements, starts trying to get behind them. Frigate is now caught between lead enemies and enemies bringing up the rear. Oops. (Luckily I remembered Megas's trick of deploying frigates as a second wave)

Sometimes, that lead element is the enemy cruiser or Onslaught flagship with Combat 10 or, if not, right behind the enemy frigates.  If I deploy my Onslaught flagship and thirty frigates at once, my Onslaught is placed so far in the back that no matter what I do, my two or more frigates die before my Onslaught can reach any enemy.  Meanwhile, enemy flagship munches on my frigates like popcorn.  The only way I can stop that and ensure my Onslaught is at the front is to deploy my Onslaught first and alone, and after it finds and starts firing at enemy flagship, I deploy the rest of my fleet to sweep the rest of the enemy.