Lets start talking tactics...

[LonghornXtreme]

Hey guys... With Pheagey about to put his site up with the intentions of the being a comprehensive SS resource, I felt that we should start gathering together all our experiences into what works, what doesn't, realistic ranges for weapons, how many of a certain class cap ship to take out another different class cap ship, yada yada yada...

Proper use of decoys in fighter combat,

If anyone can provide how the EMCON system works since the manual is kind of sparse... We all know puttering around in 3 when going on a bombing run is suicide... but if anyone has any more information I'd greatly appreciate it.

Basically any strategy tips and tricks ya'll know of I'm looking for! I'll be compiling this into one mother of all tactical manuals for everyone to peruse.

[Harry Tuttle]

Well, I'll give some of my observations so far, but accuracy is not guaranteed [:)]

EMCON
Level 3 - all systems active and fully powered; multiple radiators (reactor, drive, scanner, etc) make you easy to spot

Level 2 - sensors go passive, guns are de-energized, and reactor is throttled back; there is less power available to engines; I've never had a problem being spotting before reaching missile range on bombing runs with this level

Level 1 - ship goes dead; no guns, no engine, can't even use the radio; so far I haven't seen the point of this, but I'm wondering how well seekers would home on a ship at emcon 1; it might have some escape potential if you already have some speed built up

Missiles
Range (as indicated by "Shoot") is highly dependent on relative velocity to the target. In a high speed head-on engagement I can launch MRM's at 40k+ and SRM's in the low to mid 30's. So far I'm finding that the extra quantity of SRM's is more advantageous than the longer range of MRM's. When outnumbered (which is usual) I've been able to have some success by sending 2 missiles to each target in rapid succession at max range. That usually kills a few and damages enough of the others that I can finish them off in a knife fight. The missile hit ratio is not great at this range, though, as they have plenty of time do evade and drop decoys. I think it does make the AI worry about other things long enough that he's slower to start launching missiles at me.

Decoys
Not sure what works best here. I drop one, take evasive action, and cross my fingers. I did read somewhere that using your afterburner (augmenter or whatever) is a really bad idea if you're trying to decoy a missile.

Antiship Strikes
Forget about AAM's (or maybe use 1 pylon for a pair of SRM's). If you don't bring enought ASM's to take out the ship, then you're going to have a hard time finishing it off with your guns. Avoid fighters with emcon level 2 rather than trying to carry the ordinance to fight them.

All the above is related as the experience of a fighter pilot. I haven't gotten to the cap ships yet.

[LonghornXtreme]

I fully agree about carrying more SRMS's than default though you get into trouble if the SRM launcher gets damaged...

I have been using the augmenter when trying to avoid... man its been long since i've played an aviation game... i should know you shouldn't hit your burner after launching a flare....

I've found that using emcon1 works extremely well on bombing missions... Get your element in formation and at the speed you want to cruise at and then just kill everything to emcon 1. When you reach your waypoint, switch to emcon2 change course, gather speed and then go right back to emcon1... as this is a newtonian physics game, you only need thrust to alter your vector. You have to be ready especially when timeshifting to order your wing out of emcon1 or 2 very fast... if at emcon1 make sure you raise yourself to 2 or 3 then give the order.

Does anyone have a thourough working knowledge of the targeting system? Like what ranges they operate at? I'm picking up targets visually WAYYY before my sensors even say something's out there... and then when i attempt to target something far away it will target it just momentarily then the targeting system has no target. Or the difference betweend STD and PAS on your MFD? And how much your sensors are cut down when in emcon2 or 1? Thanks in advance!

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Not using your afterburners w/ Decoys is especially important when being targeted by Mk 7s... ( the ship-launched interceptor missiles).

[West_419]

Doesn't passive sensors normally have to do with being determining local causes for being pinged by another object's sensors as opposed to actively pinging out?

STD and ACM are just different ranges so target allocation is easier to manage.

[altmunster]

Since most of the ships' firepower comes from the front, it seems like the battles come down who can get a torpedo through someones defensive pdb fire first (often at long range). At close range it seems that the battles break down in a face to face firing fest. The first one to turn exposes a side with less pdb cover fire and more access to the fusion reactor for lasers or ,worse, torpedos.

Sensor profile 1 should make your ship untargetable to torpedos, but i am unsure if this is the case.

The jury is still out as to single capital ship tactical possibilities, in my opinion. It still seems like the tactics relate more to management of multiple ships, with flanking, decoy, and drawing moves.

Still trying to see what can be done, though. When mp is more active it will be easier to see the breadth and depth of 1v1 tactics.

[Harry Tuttle]

ORIGINAL: West_419

STD and ACM are just different ranges so target allocation is easier to manage.

I don't think they are different ranges; I think that function is handled independently. My understanding is that they are different targeting modes. ACM will automatically lock on the nearest target in your sensor cone. STD requires you to manually choose targets. In either case, you stay locked on target even when it leaves your sensor cone which doesn't seem accurate.

[Dirt12]

Has anyone come across a mission requiring the use of the camera? Also, has anyone found a use for assigning a "recon" waypoint to a ship and what it does?

thanks

[Pheonix Starflare]

Has anyone come across a mission requiring the use of the camera? Also, has anyone found a use for assigning a "recon" waypoint to a ship and what it does?

IIRC its for use inconjuction with the CAM recon pod that the Stormhawk can mount (I'd think the Falcon should be able to also). It basically makes the fighter act like a mobile probe, you send it and it'll take 'photos' of the enemy ships, i think. I personally havent seen any recon missions and I've never used the pod, but I think thats its use.

[Kuokkanen]

milo, could you explain that camera thing?

[LonghornXtreme]

Regarding the ECMON levels and the scanners... have any of ya'll been able to tell a difference between STD and PAS setting in the sensors? Does it just mean that you can't target any ship but they will still show up as blips on the scanner?

Regarding the camera, I haven't found any use for it yet... I just might go load up a mission and see if it does anything when flying with it... perhaps it lets us ID ships based off of visuals instead of the shorter range sensors?

Do any of ya'll have any words of wisdom for cap ship combat? I've been struggling a great deal being successful with cap ships in the single player campaign... I feel i've worked out all the aspects of fighter combat but no matter what I try i've been having a great deal of difficulty in figuring out how to win with cap ships, whether its a DD or a CA. Any pointers?

[Kashre]

Do any of ya'll have any words of wisdom for cap ship combat? I've been struggling a great deal being successful with cap ships in the single player campaign... I feel i've worked out all the aspects of fighter combat but no matter what I try i've been having a great deal of difficulty in figuring out how to win with cap ships, whether its a DD or a CA. Any pointers?

Im pretty new at this, I have not even advanced enough in rank to fly a CA yet... but, I have been enjoying running destroyer squadrons. Here's my (decidedly noobish) thoughts...

1> Where you send your ships and what you tell them to do makes the most difference. Actual capital ship combat in this game seems to pretty much come down to sitting face to face and pounding on each other. Make sure you check your squadrons nav points and adjust them as needed to all get to the target at once, especially all of your destroyers. Since the key to killing stuff woth torpedoes is saturating their PDB's.

2> Use flanking commands, either through nav points or with the "bracket" command. That way you might get lucky and get one of your destroyers into a PDB-blind spot and get some torps through.

3> Often times if I still have both of my DDs in my Desron I keep the frigates out of it all together, using them as a rear guard against fighters or sending them off after fighter groups in the distance. they just die too easily if the enemy cap ships decide to concentrate on them and not you.

4> Lately Ive started saving my torps until I have a side shot on a target, since the sides seem to be the most vuleranbe portion of DDs and FFs as far as point defence goes. Too many battles Ive been in where I spammed all of my torps at someone only to find out none of them hit.

5> When assaulting carriers, they always seem to Quantum out to the first selection on the Q menu, and they never seem to take their escorts with them. I killed one of the carriers in the third campaign (which is as far as Ive gotten thus far) by ordering my sister DD to Q jump with me to the first planet and then we spend 10 minutes pouinding on it till it died. Not very realistic, but a trick to use. Personally though, Im kind of hoping the upcomming patch addresses this. They should at least take their escorts with them.

So... thats just my opinion, any or all of that might be wrong. Like Im said, Im pretty new at this too.

[norstad]

I too have had problems with cap ship combat. The biggest challenge does seem to be coordinating your ship movements. Part of the solution lies in patience and refining your tactics to ensure that you bring maximum weight to bear on enemy cap ships, ideally from multiple angles.

I have gotten better at coordinating my DD movement (not up to CAs yet either). However, in the game at present FFs do not seem particularly useful for cap ship actions. Ideally I would like to be able to order them to hang just behind my DDs and use their Mk7s and PDBs to intercept incoming torpedos aimed at my DDs. The "escort" command, however, tends to leave them too far back of the DDs to be of any use in that capacity. When I order them to engage they often end up overruning my DDs and getting toasted right quick. I guess I could keep issuing "move patrol" orders to keep them just behind my DD, but that is tricky in the middle of a cap ship fight.

One solution would be to tweak the "escort" command to bring FFs closer. Ideally, I would like to see some way to manage fleets in formation. I notice you can give formation orders to individual cap ships (via the radio menu), but it doesn't seem to do much good. Is this because each ship thinks it is its own element? Is there any way to fix this? I would love to be able to drag select my ships and order them into a battle line or diamond keyed on the lead ship. . .

[Mehrunes]

ORIGINAL: Kashre

5> When assaulting carriers, they always seem to Quantum out to the first selection on the Q menu, and they never seem to take their escorts with them. I killed one of the carriers in the third campaign (which is as far as Ive gotten thus far) by ordering my sister DD to Q jump with me to the first planet and then we spend 10 minutes pouinding on it till it died. Not very realistic, but a trick to use. Personally though, Im kind of hoping the upcomming patch addresses this. They should at least take their escorts with them.

Carrier's should always order their subordinate units to quantum out when they're going to. I don't know why they would fail to, they always have for me.

[Deathifier]

ORIGINAL: Mehrunes

ORIGINAL: Kashre

5> When assaulting carriers, they always seem to Quantum out to the first selection on the Q menu, and they never seem to take their escorts with them. I killed one of the carriers in the third campaign (which is as far as Ive gotten thus far) by ordering my sister DD to Q jump with me to the first planet and then we spend 10 minutes pouinding on it till it died. Not very realistic, but a trick to use. Personally though, Im kind of hoping the upcomming patch addresses this. They should at least take their escorts with them.

Carrier's should always order their subordinate units to quantum out when they're going to. I don't know why they would fail to, they always have for me.

Some tend to stick around though, I frequently had a captial ship thats attached to a carrier group hang around and fight IF I got close enough to shoot at them (and no, I didn't see any systems damage).
If they jump out when nothing is around (or <100k away) then yes, usually everything goes.

- Deathifier

[TheDeadlyShoe]

If a ship is on quantum-out and then it auto-engages a new target i think that delays the quantum until the target is destroyed. I mean, AI-wise. Like I had this cruiser squad surrounded by two enemy cruiser squads and I set them navpoints to another sector before the mission started. They engaged a target and wouldn't quantum out. I'm not a grand admiral so I couldn't just right-click quantum them out. However they did manage to destroy their target (an enemy cruiser) when the destruction of the CA squad's destroyer heavily damaged the target's fusion reactor. When that happened they immediately quantum'd out. Worked out fairly at least.

[Kashre]

I kinda wonder then. I know that the carrier had at least 1 destroyer and one baikal (frigate?) right next to it, so I assume that it was the ships escorts.

I had a full squadron still, and I left both of my frigates behind fighting the Baikal and the destroyer and only ordered my other spectre to quantum to the planet with me looking for the carrier, so perhaps the fact that they were both already giving my poor frigates the lube optional treatment is why they didnt go.

[Dirt12]

Most of you probably are aware of this but it’s not made clear in the manual and I didn’t discover it until I had completed the first campaign. Although you can only issue commands to your element (if you’re assigned to the command ship of the element) while in game, you can issue waypoints to all the vessels on the map screen prior to starting the mission. This is a crucial element of the game for me and I spend considerable time before each mission laying in waypoints for all the ships. I make sure to get my carrier on the move and even sometimes translate it to an adjacent sector if I feel it’s going to be under threat. I always keep a couple of CA in escort of the carrier since they’re most capable of taking down fighter/bombers which appear to be the greatest threat in the game to the carrier.

By the way, has anyone figure out a use for the camera pod. I took it for a test flight the other day and I couldn’t discern a use for it.[&:]

[vorkosigan]

I always keep a couple of CA in escort of the carrier since they’re most capable of taking down fighter/bombers which appear to be the greatest threat in the game to the carrier.

I think that carriers are the game sitting ducks "par excellance". If a DD gets close enough it can toast it with torpedoes at pleasure. I just lost the first campaign because the AI admiral decided to deploy the carrier escorting cap ships too far away from it. It was pretty frustrating, after my wingman and me taking down three waves of Marakan bombers, to see the carrier torn to pieces by the DD. I suppose that the Marakan DD took some lucky shot that disabled jump engines or something...

On the other hand, I have noticed that FFs in general are pretty deadly against fighters. It is strange that CV groups OOBs are not FF intensive. If someday I get the admiral stars I will be sure to make the FFs stick to the CV. It makes no sense to deploy the carrier escort 200-500 klicks away: if you need eyes it plan some fighter sweep missions.

Finally, I have found also that the fleet-level AI does not use aggressively its fighter assets. The most common sweep mission generated by the AI consists in deploying just a pair of fighters alone. I have got fried several because there was no one else in the "air" to help.

[Pheonix Starflare]

ORIGINAL: vorkosigan
Finally, I have found also that the fleet-level AI does not use aggressively its fighter assets. The most common sweep mission generated by the AI consists in deploying just a pair of fighters alone. I have got fried several because there was no one else in the "air" to help.

Ditto. See my 'few things' thread for elaboration