You make some good points and I agree with most of them. Just a few comments and additions:
I totally agree that ship and fleet training are very important. The neural combat net can be very useful to give your rookies the needed experience, if you don't have time to train them.
Attack factors: don't forget the talisman that will make your weapons always hit. Very powerful for long range direct fire in combination with engine destroying weapons that will keep the enemy from closing in.
quote:
As you can see, there are more ways to get defense modifers than attack modifers. If you are having trouble hitting, make sure your ships have orders to fire at the 'nearest' ship rather than the biggest or smallest. Consider the following targeting order: Has Weapons, Nearest, Most Damaged, Smallest.
I am in agreement with you except for the Last word. If you have trouble hitting, you should probably set the order: Has Weapons, Nearest, Most Damaged,
Biggest.
Otherwise you will waste a lot of shots trying to hit that small ship, while the nearby dreadnought rips you apart
.
ship hulls: my favorite hull is the light cruiser. While still getting defense bonus, you can use the large mount. Destroyers aren't bad, but they really lack the punch, because of the normal mount. They could still be good missile launchers, though.
missiles, ramming: really can't say much about that, because I have never used those, but since you can put 2 PDC (40t) for each missile (50t), I doubt that missle heavy fleets can be used well in the long run. They might work, though, if your enemy doesn't know your designs, yet
. Ramming ships (frigates/destroyers) can be used effectively on warp points, if your opponent has a higher player number than you (just found that out today when I lost my elite ships to a ramming attack).
Depending on what you trying to accomplish with your fleet, maximum range can be quite effective with direct fire weapons. Especially if you hit better than your opponent and you use engine killers. Also max range gives you more time to shoot down enemy seekers.
Rollo
[edit]: typos
[This message has been edited by Rollo (edited 26 September 2001).]