Cheesy fleet tactic

Nice find Cruelsader! Also, AI's with "Warrior" special abilities will build ships with attack weapons only for the fact that they get to 'fire first' and whatever is left can fire back. At least that's what I've seen so far...

Uh, from my personal experience, I usually build tiny ships with 0 attack and 0 defense equipped with those fleet +x% addons. They never get shot at first.

I agree with Radwen. I have never yet lost a fleet support ship. I put them on the smallest hulls I can - no weapons - no defenses - fast engines to keep up with the fleet - moderate life support capablilty (most battles take place along my borders) - very good sensors (the are the eyes for my fleet, I don't put any on my warships).

As far as I can tell, the fleet support modules only increase the weighting of a ship. For instance, I once used a frigate with targeting computers and warp bubbles alongside more conventional combat frigates. The command frigate was a less powerful (but slightly better defended) warship, yet it was always the focus for enemy attacks. However, an unarmed, unarmoured "carrier" craft built off a cargo hull will never be targeted first.

Of course not, the effect of fleet modules seems to be a multiplier of the base targetting score. If your base targetting score is ZERO, putting a fleet module on it isn't going to change that score.

I have lost an all-attack ship out of a fleet even though there was another ship of the same size with fleet modules on it. There is a limit to how effective this tactic is.

Thanks for feedback guys. You are right - i forgot to add that the heavily armored ship has to have at least one weapon. Also, I should have been more specific. By special modules I meant modules introduced in TA that give a ship or entire fleet attack, defense etc boosts. Support, sensors etc do not seem to have the effect. Also, since I have not tested enough I cannot claim that all new special modules have the effect.

Willythemailboy, that was insightful, thanks! Sounds very plausible. I wonder if the impact on the score depends on the type of module. In any case, the impact appears to be quite significant, at least for some modules. My large hulls with attack 4, appropriate defense type 60 and Xalax defense coordinator were being targeted before medium hulls with attack 54 and no defense.

All the fleet modules seem to have this capability of attracting fire when used on an armed ship.  It is still possible for a heavily damaged ship with enough firepower (without a fleet support module) to be fired on first though.  In practical terms, you want to use the smallest or cheapest module you can so that you can pack enough defence to make it worthwhile, or so that the ship is cheap enough to be considered expendable in combat.

Anything you fleet up with one of these armed support ships will get experience but have less risk of being expended in combat.  A swarm of light fighters will for example do quite well with this strategy.  After a while, these escorts have many bonus hitpoints on top of the basic amount they get when built, so you can upgrade and use them without a support ship taking fire.

The thing is, you can't not fire on a support ship if it is providing the fleet with a decisive advantage.  You might as well be wasting one third of your firepower (or having to withstand more incoming firepower) if you leave it until last.  I would go so far as to suggest that all ships with support modules be targeted even if they don't have weapons, that would make defences a necessity on support ships.

i've been lobbying for the ability to establish targeting priorities (for both the player and the AI) for quite some time. i don't expect to see it happen, since it seems GC2 has become very low priority. but it'd be the most ideal way to avoid "cheese" of this nature (though i would call this a strategy rather than a case of cheese).

Well the trouble with the strategy is that if your enemies pack lots of firepower, the ship running interference will not have enough defence or hitpoints to keep the rest of the fleet shielded.  You can scale things up and use a ship with a larger hull (and more base hitpoints) which can pack in more defence modules, but that does mean less logistics for ships with some serious firepower.

That'd go into a tactical combat sort of thing, which really isn't in the cards for GC2.

 

Dystopic, being able to prioritize (not speaking of tactical battles) would be a good feature if AI was capable of handling it. Just putting the feature in without some clever AI code (read: lot of development time) would put the poor AI to a further disadvantage. I am calling the fleet tactic cheese for the same reason: AI is not capable of countering it. (At least, in my limited experience it is helpless)  I think that 2.0 should tweak the targeting formula so that the special modules would have much less impact.

i wouldn't necessarily agree from a gameplay standpoint...

(though, please don't take my tone as argumentative; i've given up on seeing any major changes to GC2 a while back, since it seemed development was mostly winding down, which isn't meant as a "do something about this" complaint, so much as a sigh of resignation).

all ever envisioned was a screen similar to the planetary invasion screen, that would pop up before a battle, list the enemy ships, and allow each side to rank which should be fired upon first. whilei can see the tactical elements in such a proposal, i guess i have a very different notion of 'tactical combat', owing as much to my background in D&D. my idea of tactical combat includes things like flanking, splash damange/area-effect attacks, and range--things that wouldn't come into play in a simple target prioritization menu.

i guess i'm only bringing this up, btw, because i think it's an interesting discussion.

well, having pretty much zero knowledge of how Brad coded the AI, i don't think either of us are in a sound position to do more than speculate. however, it'd seem to me figuring out a simple and mostly effective algorithm for target prioritization wouldn't be nearly as difficult or time consuming as, say, those for planetary development or starbase placement. all i think it'd need to do is use the normal targeting algorithm and then apply a few if/then caveats (if target X might be too well defended to take out, focus attacks on other targets).

/2¢

I wouldn't consider that to be cheese either. It's a tactic that is supposed to work that way. No matter what kinda of ordering calculation the program would use to target ships, there would be a way to design your ships to counter it. This is using strategy to win battles / save your more important ships. Hwere it gets cheesy is that the AI wouldn't be able to think of it, but since the AI probably won't arm the fleet support ships, they would remain safe.

If there wasn't a way to keep the "Command" ship from being attacked first, there would be no need to build it since it would never get to do whats it supoposed to, it would be lost on its first battle. The modules would become as useful as life support on tiny maps.

Even before the use of fleet modules this has been possible to do. I just never took the time to create a ship that is supposed to absorb the enemy's entire attack simply to save tghe other ships in the fleet. By late game all of my ships generally take no damage, once the initial onslaught is over. ANd thats in DA where there are no fleet modules.

 

To Kryo and dystopic:  instead of having the player choose the exact order of attack for each battle (sounds cumbersome anyway) and thereby creating tactical combat in this game, couldn't the payer just get to chooe between 2 options; 1)attack strongest first (as it is now) and 2) attach weakest first (which is just the opposite ordering of the current system). The newer way would target transporst and other unarmed ships first. It would be just the reciprocal of the current formula.  Is this doable?

 

in hindsight, YES it does. an option or set of options somewhere in the menus would be much more preferable.

 well, having pretty much zero knowledge of how Brad coded the AI, i don't think either of us are in a sound position to do more than speculate. however, it'd seem to me figuring out a simple and mostly effective algorithm for target prioritization wouldn't be nearly as difficult or time consuming as, say, those for planetary development or starbase placement. all i think it'd need to do is use the normal targeting algorithm and then apply a few if/then caveats (if target X might be too well defended to take out, focus attacks on other targets).

Well, yes, but note that AI sucks as regards star base placement and development. It has become much better at planetary development but is still clearly inferior to experienced players. So, while it may be true that it is easier to write a code on targeting it is not neccessarily a simple task. Moreover, there are still many areas where extra development time is much more needed (such as the path finding near asteroid fields).

 Even before the use of fleet modules this has been possible to do. I just never took the time to create a ship that is supposed to absorb the enemy's entire attack simply to save tghe other ships in the fleet. By late game all of my ships generally take no damage, once the initial onslaught is over. ANd thats in DA where there are no fleet modules.

Against a fleet with comparable level of logistics, hulls, attack and defense and without Super Warrior or overlapping military starbases? How? In ToA you may lag behind in tech race (to a certain extent) but still easily win every fleet battle without losses by using the special module tactic.  

 

 

This "cheese" of course only works if your fleet module ship has on-typr defences. If you go up against another enemy or if the AI uses another weapon type, that ship  won't be invincible.

 

 

Yes. However, it is hardly a problem. The solution is to build several defense ships each with different type of defense. Before each battle you have to ensure that the fleet includes the appropirate defense ship.For instance, in my current game (the same experimental one - I do not have much time to play) most AIs have mass drivers but one has missiles.I have two defense ships with my attack ships: one with armor and the other with point defense. I rotate the defense ships depending whom I am fighting against and avoid positions where I could be attacked by several fleets with diffrent weapon types in the same turn. This involves some micormanagement but not much.

 

 

that doesn't invalidate my point, and it's all hypothetical in any regard. i remember reading that the only devs working on GC2 at this point were CariElf and CodeCritter, and Brad (Frogboy) did most of the AI coding: unless that's changed, the AI is staying where it is.

this is a fine strategy, but in my mind it's even farther from 'cheese' to employ different ship types depending on who/what you're fighting.

 

My TA 101 guide mentions that fleet support modules will draw the attacks of enemy ships. You may wish to look at it. It would be in the "Fleet support modules" section.

TA 101

However, I was unaware that ships without weapons would not be attacked. I'm going to have to look into this detail and see if this multiplier effect is really the case.

Seriously, anything that takes that much work isn't cheese. I cant say i would ever see myself doing that. Having to have extra defensive ships with the same modules, following behind and then changing the fleet makeup for the next battle would drive me nuts. Doing that for each fleet? not me.

But i'll admit that I'm lazy with my ships. I build the best i can, then lauch them and send them in the general direction of my enemy. When a couple met up, i fleet them.

 

So, in conclusion, don't feel bad about your tactic, its not cheese any more than using on-type defenses is. The AI is lousy at that too.

ditto. plus there are times mainly during late game/cleanup when my ships are so powerful off-type defenses are still typically enough. i'm talking 150 missile and about 2500 armor. after i got to that point, i only lost one ship, and that was to the newly beefed-up precursor ranger.

Ok, guys. Maybe the tactic is not cheese. (Did not know the exact meaning of cheese) However, I still consider it an exploit that ruins some of the fun but is too good to be ignored. :)  Unless the AI is far ahead in tech race I cannot imagine losing fleet battle any more. This sucks considering that I can play only against AI.

 

 

Thanks for the info. I was wondering (playing as a Terran) why my Fleet bonus ships were getting targetted first (1 for +defense, 1 for +attack and +speed).

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ROFL without actually knowing the calculations used in combat I would make command ships in which I lowered attack power and added defensives but guess it was not enough because with having a tech advantage they could still be destroyed after a few battles.

 

Oh about that targeting priority they should add a second calculation somewhere along the lines of

If fleet attack power ≤ highest defence then reverse normal targeting priority.

That way very little balancing is needed and hopefully fixes any defence exploit

I guess the fourms dont like things copied from word and its not letting me even go into the edit thing to delete it