Like in sword fighting, feint often. For example, an attack on an enemy mothership with a group of small ships may create enough panic in your opponent that he will recall the fleet he has guarding his resource collectors. A temporary attack on the mothership may give you the opportunity to snatch his resource vessels while he's not looking. Remember that your mothership is very resistant to fighter attacks, so do not fall prey to this feint yourself. Don't attempt to repel a large fighter force by building units one at a time, unless you keep them docked until your force is sufficient. Similarly, don't rush your defenses to defend the mothership unless they are organized. A long line of defenders will get munched like a string of licorice. Instead, take the time to organize your resistance before sending it in. Another feint is just the reverse of the previous one: a frenzied attack on a player's resourcing operations may give you an opening to slip a cloaked capital-ship force near his mothership. In all feint maneuvers, put your ships on evasive. Your intent is to cause panic, not to defeat the foe. The longer your unsupervised fleet survives, the better. Combat cloaked attacks by guarding your mothership sufficiently with proximity detectors. Cloak your detectors to make them more difficult for your enemy to kill. Your opponents should guard their resource operations with proximity detectors, too, but more likely they will protect their mothership with detectors first. Cloaked fighters will probably work more effectively against outlying operations, as a result. Be sure to include a proximity detector or two as guards for your resource controllers to defend against this. If you attack a mothership with capital ships, set a grav well generator off nearby. Enemy fighters returning to the scene will lose power, as will any ships launched from the mothership. Wait and see if the enemy mothership releases its fighters from dock before launching your grav well. If an opponent uses this gambit on you, be sure to focus all your efforts on destroying the grav well. Minelaying corvettes should not be ordered to release their mines unless the mines have a clear shot at enemy ships. If you are engaged in a heated battle, fly your minelayers to the far side of the enemy and activate them. If you activate them while your ships are between the mines and the enemy, your ships will pay the price. Clearing minefields will also be an important part of a multiplayer game. Use vessels with many turrets (multigun corvettes and defenders work well) to clear mines, by force-attacking (described in the manual) the field. Further, you can use a durable capital ship, such as a destroyer or heavy cruiser, to simply ram the field. Just be sure to have enough support frigates in tow to repair the expensive capital ship. One of the most powerful offenses during a multiplayer game is to swipe your enemy's resource collectors and controllers during a battle. For instance, say a large strike force and capital ship battle is taking place in the center of the map. Do your best to micromanage the battle, but instead, turn your attention to the location of your opponent's resource collectors. Send in your salvage corvette teams and steal them. Your opponent will be heavily decimated and must produce additional resource collectors (a very expensive unit) in order to survive. The best way to pull this off is by first building a sensors array, which permits you to see the quantity of your opponent's ships on the long-range sensor map. That way you can tell if your opponent is protecting the collectors and with how many ships. |
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Definitive ship and resource management strategies
Masterful movement and combat methods Comprehensive unit information Detailed campaign walk-through Proven multiplayer tactics Requires Adobe Acrobat 3.0 or higher click here for more info... |