Formations - what's your strategy

[Suicide Junkie]

Shift clicked fleets will move together to the same places, but not neccesarily at exactly the same moment. I did some tests with it and could never get them to attack at the same time, regardless of varying fleet speed.

I used it to attack a super-heavyweight defended planet in simultaneous (Play by LAN). I shift-clicked to send in an unfleeted Battlemoon, a fleet of support ships, and two 120 ship fleets.
Result: one combat, with 250 ships spread across the entire right half of the combat map.

About five ships shot at the planet (since they started in range), and a transport decided to retreat to the far corner. As it passed the planet, it decided to drop its troops as well.
The fleet stopped firing at the 30-odd massive platforms since my troops were on the surface, and my ships got ripped to shreds.

The only survivors were: the battlemoon, the minesweepers and repair ships, and the troops on the surface.

[Skulky]

that sure sucks. Why didn't your troops capture though? I would've thought that would've been good as you could've gotten the planet at least semi intact.

[Fyron]

In P&N, there is only 1 ground combat round per game turn (or is it 2, I forget). In the normal game, there are 10. So, it takes a while to capture the planet. Of course, dropping more troops on the planet starts another ground combat, so multiple transports can make more than 1 round of ground combat happen in a turn.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

quote:

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Shift clicked fleets will move together to the same places, but not neccesarily at exactly the same moment. I did some tests with it and could never get them to attack at the same time, regardless of varying fleet speed.

I used it to attack a super-heavyweight defended planet in simultaneous (Play by LAN). I shift-clicked to send in an unfleeted Battlemoon, a fleet of support ships, and two 120 ship fleets.
Result: one combat, with 250 ships spread across the entire right half of the combat map.

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Interesting. Apparently this was changed at some point since I tested it, cause I just ran some more tests now and confirmed what you are seeing. Don't remember what Version I was using before when it didn't work. Nice to see it does now, but I dont' see anyhting in the history anywhere that it was changed.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

Why didn't your troops capture though? I would've thought that would've been good as you could've gotten the planet at least semi intact.

They did eventually capture it, but the troops took heavy losses, and almost two years. (See fyron's note)

I'd dropped at least 5 thousand troops, but the planet was huge, breathable, and had 12 billion people on it.
(Don't ask me how the AI crammed 'em in; that size planet only holds 9.6 billion with advanced storage)
My -50% to ground combat hurt, but with 5,000 troops, you just can't go wrong

PS: yep 2 years = 20 turns
I didn't dare try to send reinforcements during all that time, 'cause the platforms were still operational.

[ November 04, 2002, 03:03: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Q]

Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:

quote:

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Originally posted by Skulky:
Leader Position Xpos := 10
Leader Position Ypos := 9
Leader Design Type := Any
Number of positions := 59
Position 1 Xpos := 9
Position 1 Ypos := 10
Position 1 Type := Any

What does the type entry mean? can you give a certain type of ship a certain position?

The type entry describes the type of design of the ship. IE. attack ship, defense ship, carrier, mine sweeper, etc. I have tried entering specific types on this line with no luck. The game seems to put in whatever it pleases.

Kim

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A very old post but I did not find a newer one about this problem. I have observed the same as Kim: the ship types seem to be ignored. Anyone knows something else??
Another observation I made: Ships with no weapons at all (no point defense too) are placed outside the formation and at random at the beginning of the combat. Sometimes with deadly consequences!

[Erax]

Hey, use it to your advantage. Build some heavily armored/shielded weaponless ships and let them soak up initial fire. Give your real support ships one weapon to make sure they start in formation.