Tactics in battles?

[stevebullpasture]

Thinking about buying this, but it appears to be really lacking in battle tactics, I see nothing at all except point fleet to attack?

[Noob Van Noob]

there is location based damage. if you're being attacked from the front, the front components of the ship will take damage. if your attacked from the side than the side of your ships are damaged but in single fleet vs fleet combat, thats pretty much irrelevant as both fleets generally face eachothers front. if you have more than one fleet you could examine your enemies ship design and position the second fleet so that it can hit the more valuable or unarmored sides but generally it comes down to number of ships/firepower and whether your design is effective at defeating the enemies.

also, while there is an z axis, it has no play on battles/directional damage as ship designs are two dimensional

[Dalo Lorn]

Well, the Z axis does have an effect on which side of the two-dimensional ship design gets hit. If you maneuver right...

Still, you're right in saying that there isn't a lot of actual tactics in the game. (Yet? I hope so.)

[TritAith]

Actually there arent many tactics in the game as soon, as the combat starts, but, as you have been right to mention, the positioning of the fleets is crucial, it is important to choose the best fleet-type to counter your enemy and there is a lot to consider about ship designing, that influences battle massiveley. the combat tactics, in my opinion, are not to be found on the battelfield, but in the designs screen...

[Leyline]

flanking fleets allows you to destroy subsystems from all angles, which criplples enemy firepower faster than brute frontal attacks.

[Syzy]

My favored tatic in concern wuth the composition of fleets is to have gaint control ships and lots of smaller, lesser ships to soak up fire, they tend to be extremely effective vs enemy support groups, but for killing the capitalships i use packs of hunterkillers, controlships with BIG supportships that have nice railguns that drop ships and supplys(the supply of the capitalship..) like a rock.

[thundergawd]

If your design is fast enough, and you practice with the Newtonian physics a little, you can swoop in and draw fire from the enemy fleet to lower their supply which in turn lowers their strength in combat. I have some designs which are fast, unarmored for the most part with very long range weapons so that can do the lure and snipe action, then swarm in for the kill.

Sure you can just as easily build a battle fleet to slug it out toe-to-toe but I tend to play and design based on a theme. Just a personal preference.

[Leyline]

Originally posted by thundergawd:

If your design is fast enough, and you practice with the Newtonian physics a little, you can swoop in and draw fire from the enemy fleet to lower their supply which in turn lowers their strength in combat. I have some designs which are fast, unarmored for the most part with very long range weapons so that can do the lure and snipe action, then swarm in for the kill.

Sure you can just as easily build a battle fleet to slug it out toe-to-toe but I tend to play and design based on a theme. Just a personal preference.

This is of coruse trouble some wh en you are pinned to a location for defense or siege ^^