What's tthe secret to Fighters & Missles?

[LGM]

I forgot to add that Point Defenses are rather expensive in resources and take ship tonnage. If you throw a few fighters/missle heavy fleets at your human opponent, he will have to start increasing his point defenses. Then throw direct fire fleet at him and his point defenses are useless. Make warfare costly for your enemy! (And do not waste your time playing the AI. Humans are more fun and unpredictable).

[geoschmo]

However, point defenses are smaller and cheaper than missles. Which is the main reason it's hard to get enough missles to overwhelm the PDC.

Switching from missles to beams in mid game can devestate your opponent. But if they catch you in the middle of a retrofit cycle, ouch. Timing is everything with that tactic.

IMHO the best use for missles and fighters late game is for defenses. Put the missles on sats and weapons platforms. Keeps your opponent from getting away with glassing your planets cheaply. He has to dedicate real fleets to it. Which can slow him down and give you time to react, or draw his ships away from where you want to attack him.

But it's always good to keep a few of each with your fleets, just to keep the other guy honest.

Geo

[ 26 March 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[TerranC]

Although this question has been answered many, many times, I thought I'd put in a little comment:

In my usual AI games, I always research beams first and missles later... But thats not the point.

The Point is:

After I get the Maximum level of Engine destroying missles and Capital Missles, I get a Light Cruiser, Load it up with the basics, Quantum Reactor, One Mulitplex tracking and many missles I can fit in with a ratio of 2 EDM for 1 CSM.

After that, Although I only use this ship for One on One or Capturing Ships and killing the escorts, I fire the Engine Destroying Missles (sorry, I forget the name) first, then the CSMs later.

Also, I make sure that the ships have equal leverage against the opponents:

Escorts-Light Cruisers - One ship.
Cruiser/Battle Cruiser - Two Ship. (Preferred Three ships as with two, you will probably lose one to the battle cruiser.)
Anything Up - 4-6 Ships.

Large Fleet - 10 Ships.

This worked for me, I really don't know if it will work against human players.

[raynor]

If you have a lot of fighters, and your enemy has a lot of Point Defense Cannons on its ships, you might try launching your fighters into space *before* entering combat. Then, when you enter combat, your fighters will be in one group that moves as one instead of many small waves of fighters that are destroyed as quickly as they enter the range of the enemy PDC's.

[ 26 March 2002: Message edited by: raynor ]

[Sinapus]

If you fight in tactical mode, try designing fighters with heavy defenses and send them in first to soak up the point-defense cannon fire, then send fighters w/heavier weapons in.

Of course, in strategic mode this doesn't work very well unless you are lucky.

[Marco]

A useful attack tactic in turn mode tactical combat is to close range to point blank with yours carriers with fighters on board, then suddenly launch yours fighters in Groups. In this case fighters are already in range to shot enemy ships without any movement and enemy PD can’t target them if they don’t move after launch.
This tactic require mixed fleets with carriers with a high tactical movement rate, let say quantum engines and solar sail III, to optimise timing of the approach and range of enemy weapons, and long range fighter’s weapons to counter random pop up placement in the fighters launch routine.

Marco

[Saxon]

This isn’t really a secret for fighters and missiles, but it is related. Should you run into a new race with fighters and missiles, or your opponent has switched on you, it is tough to refit everything with a couple of PDC. A common design, that I have seen talked about a lot and have personally found effective, is the fighter killer. Take a fairly small hull and fill it to the brim with PDC. Put on one small beam weapon to ensure that the ships stays in the heart of strategic battles. Send it out and you have a SEIV equivalent of an Aegis cruiser. They are fairly cheap, quick to build and change the balance of weapons in your favour. They also make nice additions to planet busting fleets, as they eat up sats.

When using fighters, I find sending launching them in the biggest possible Groups is more effective. The small Groups tend to get eaten up by PDC before they get to fire. As another person mentioned, launching them in space before the battle to get very large Groups is also useful, as it leads to the same effect.