List of fleet tactics and overall strategies

[soMe_RandoM]

let this be list of all tactics and strategy used in AI war.

[x4000]

That's a pretty broad topic.

EDIT:  But, looking below, it's certainly turned into a surprisingly valuable and cool topic, very quickly.

[Orelius]

I think he's talking about general fleet micro styles that people use.
I'll begin.

Bait-and-Switch
A very common strategy.  Set up large defenses on one of your planets adjacent to one with a large number of ships on alert.  Take a large fleet and bring it into said adjacent planet.  Quickly withdraw all of your ships to your heavily defended world and watch the fireworks.

Teleport Luring
This strategy really only works if you have teleporting ships (teleport raiders are preferred).

So, you take a large stack (Preferably full caps) of teleport raiders and put them on a particularly nasty planet.  Pause the game, and select attack all the guard posts you can with the teleport raiders.  Wait a few seconds, pause the game again and scroll out very, very far across the map, well beyond the gravity well that normally impedes ship movement.  Most if not all of the enemy guard ships should be moving towards them.  If they aren't, put them closer to the guard ships.  Wait until said ships are getting close to your raiders, and then teleport them farther away.  The guards should still be following them.  At this point, feel free to try to snipe off particularly pesky ships, like guardians (but stay far away from heavy beam and electric guardians, they utterly annihilate teleport raiders), but in general, try to keep your stack of raiders alive.  Note that if the planet has sniper ships or ion cannons, this strategy will likely not work at all, as the teleport raiders would go down much too quickly.

Now that you've created this distraction, send in your main fleet to clean up the rest of the defenses while the rest of the ships are far away chasing the teleport raiders.  Hopefully you'll be able to destroy most of it without having to directly confront the guard ships.  Note that this doesn't always work, though.  Slower ships will still be left behind, though they won't be much of a problem for your fleet to deal with, hopefully.  I'm not entirely sure how AI ships respond to the gravity well, either, as I don't use this tactic often.

[chemical_art]

with so much potential material, where does one begin? I'd best start with just a few.

Zerg Tactics
Some units are very tough for their price. Fighters and nenzul come to mind. These cheap ships provide such a good bang for their buck they should be part of all actions you do, whether it be offense or defense. If you have a cap of them and there are no AI offenses, send them out to AI worlds to kill units there, if only to prevent unit build up. The key is to accept that losing a cap is expected and frequent, but you should make sure to at least destroy a lot of AI as they go down.



Static vs Elastic Defense
Many defensive units protect one planet. These static defenses on a ship cap basis are cheap and powerful. They are also simple: Ultimately they prevent the enemy from hitting your command station and/or running to hit other friendly planets.  However, they are helpless to units with longer range and can't help out against that mega invasion happening next door. This is where elastic defense comes into play. This a broad tactic that uses fleets to cover multiple fronts at once. One example is to position a defense fleet several planets back from the front lines so that the fleet can timely arrive to defend 3 fronts. The key is not put all your defensive assets on just the frontline worlds, but to ensure there are several potential checks to the enemy hitting your homeworld.

Here is a completely fictional and erroneous account of why elastic works. Imagine the AI attacks with a fleet using 10 points. You have 20 points to distribute among four fronts. If you spread out the defense evenly, the 5 points of defense will fail to the AI 10 points. If you spend 3 points for every planet, then spend 8 points on a fleet that can defend any four of those planets, then your defense will win because now you have 11 points to the AI's 10 points.

[soMe_RandoM]

Nuking Grounds
this strategy includes using a planet that has very little use (ex: 1 crystal) and using it as place where you place very heavy defenses where when AI attacks it for AI to break it they would need at lease over 5,000 ships. meaning when shields go down and nuke goes off you know that its been worth it (exception FF immune ships), or you could lead enemy into large contested but worthless planet and plant Nuke there to set off, when battle is lost. (at end of every game i feel i just need to nuke crap o AI home surrounding planets when free to do so)

[Red Spot]

Gate-raiding
Well-known, but one of the most important strats in the game. I always keep my "wave-inlets" to a minimum and make sure that that planet/those planets have some additional support. Have a botnet golem at hand and you often can keep the planet defended with just that single unit.

Sniper-turret defence
Always ... ALWAYS .. build sniper turrets on your front-planets and the ones behind it. They by themselves can stop entire groups of raid-starships from ever getting near your home-planet .. when you do find one beating down your home-CC you already lost, so its important to be sure it never happens.

Neutral planet-buffers
Fronts that you dont want to be too bothered with are easy to maintain when you neuter the adjacent planets .. no more constantly having to clean it of build-up, must less of a 'stream' of hostilities, and no zombies that constantly feel like killing themselves.
Exo-waves can be guided, to the max, by neutering planets, which again makes defending against them fairly easy(in general, but often only a bit later in a game).

Alerting Home/Core planets
Never ever ever ever alert them. Where a normal, say mk3, planet may build up to near 1k of ships, core planets seem to get an extra 50% and those are all mk5 ships. Most golems become utterly useless against them and stopping constant waves of carriers that keep dumping 200 mk5 ships on your fronts tends to hurt in the long run.
Try and "blob" them once they have build-up and you'll quickly learn why I so favour transports.

Neutering "out of the way" planets
Want to ofset the AI? Easy, find some nice uninteresting planet, preferably with as many gates as possible .. and take out its CC. Doesnt matter if you leave the posts/Eye/etc. Any adjacent planet now goes on alert (and the planet itself as well if you leave an Eye/Special guard post) -> resulting is less build-up near your real fronts. Want to increase this "distant build-up"? Take the planet and see the adjacent AI planet go into overdrive (build the CC at the border of the planet with an FF over it, by the time AI does attack it and grind through the FF the damage has already been done and the AI planets have reinforced, which is a good thing for your other fronts). Just dont clean the adjacent planets of posts as they can "dump" less ships there after you do so.

[Commiesalami]

Neutering "out of the way" planets
Want to ofset the AI? Easy, find some nice uninteresting planet, preferably with as many gates as possible .. and take out its CC. Doesnt matter if you leave the posts/Eye/etc. Any adjacent planet now goes on alert (and the planet itself as well if you leave an Eye/Special guard post) -> resulting is less build-up near your real fronts. Want to increase this "distant build-up"? Take the planet and see the adjacent AI planet go into overdrive (build the CC at the border of the planet with an FF over it, by the time AI does attack it and grind through the FF the damage has already been done and the AI planets have reinforced, which is a good thing for your other fronts). Just dont clean the adjacent planets of posts as they can "dump" less ships there after you do so.

This can be done a lot more easily with Spire Scouts of the proper mark

[chemical_art]

Military stations:

These buildings are tough and disrupt enemy waves. By using combinations of turrets and units you can deal with any threats. All front line stations are assumed to have a shield generator. These tactics are based on placing the station on a wormhole you absolutely do not want the AI to get through unscathed.

Station alone? MK I's are a bit unstable, but certainly can deal all but long range units up to 25. A MK II can knock away all border aggression but bombards for at least 40 enemies units indefinitely. MK III can be on its own indefinitely with at least 70 units around period. The stations provide effective resistance for three times these unit amounts on their own but risk getting overwhelmed.

To slow down the enemy? 4 spider turrets placed on the four corner outskirts* of you system and 4 placed around your station's force field will slow any offensive. After being engine shot and translocated, enemy units are effectively out of commission for the battle. The longer you can drag out the battle, the more effective this can be. I place these 8 spider turrets on all my front line planets and their connected planets for this works in almost any situation. I like military stations for this more then logistic stations because they translocate away from the station so my own units can engage them piecemeal. Gravity turrets placed between the station and the wormhole but still within your station's shots can compliment each other well.

*Make sure the outskirt turrets are spider and not sniper turrets. Spider turrets are ignored by engineers, which is good because all your other buildings are clumped together so that the engineers are always under a shield generator as they repair/build. Eventually your spider turret will pop but a rebuilder will fix it then.

Want more firepower? Start building turrets around your station. Depending on the amount, you can counter most normal waves with this. The turrets will always be in range on the units attacking the station while ignoring other enemies who are translocated all over the place. Your station will boost their firepower, and as turrets pop your builders hidden in the shield bubble will start rebuilding new ones. By killing the enemy faster, you can deal with more total and therefore can last much longer. Lasers to counter bombers is a good start.

Forts: Forts really don't benefit particularly from military stations. On their own, a logistic station works much better then a military one. As you add in more turrets and other turrets the balance shifts back toward military stations but make sure then the defenses overlap and assist each other.


Exo-wave incoming? This is when you bring in your fleets who will enjoy a constant attack boost. While your defense chip away at the blobs, your fleets should focus remove those threats who can threaten the shield and station (try not to run into the whole blob if you can), then move on to other threats. If a counter fleet cannot arrive in time, let your defenses slow the enemy down as your rally to another location to make a stand. The wave will grind down as the units' engines are blown away and translocated. After two planets of this, most waves are just a mess and can be isolated easily.

[Nypyren]

Warning: These could be considered exploits or bugs and may get patched out in the future.

Spirecraft Martyrs + Cloaker Starships = Invincible Tractor Beams (5.010)

This appears to be an easily exploitable bug.  Move at least one Martyr and Cloaker SS as a group.  When you're next to a bunch of enemies, toggle power on the cloaker(s).  The Martyrs will activate their tractor beams as soon as they become uncloaked.  Power-on the cloaker(s).  The Martyrs will now be cloaked WITH tractor beams active, and the enemy ships will not be able to fire at the Martyrs.

Hive Golem as Threat Repellent (5.010)

Monitor your borders for planets that the AI prefers to reinforce.  If you notice one planet quickly accumulating ships (and threat), plant a Hive golem on your neighboring planet, preferrably with a full load of wasps.

At least on normal difficulty, the firepower from the wasps prevents the AI from EVER actually bringing all of that threat through the wormhole, since your Wasp firepower will always be greater than whatever the AI has accumulated.

The firepower for wasps will probably be fixed sooner or later, but you can have fun with this tactic for now.

Spirecraft Penetrators to assassinate AI homeworlds (5.010)

If you have:
15-25 Xampite asteroids (typically 4-5 worlds' worth)
Cleared all Tachyon guardians out of the path to both AI homeworlds (or enough that Penetrators can make it through alive).
Killed all of the Core Shield Generators (assuming you have them enabled)

Then:
Build a cap of Spirecraft Penetrator Mk1s and send them to one AI homeworld.  Most core guard posts die in a single Penetrator Mk1 shot.  The home command stations die in two shots.  If you can get the penetrators out, that's great, otherwise let them die and build another full cap.  Repeat until both homeworlds are gone.  Use a cap of Pysite and Reptite Martyrs to deal with the massive amounts of core ships that will be freed by your attacks.

If you have Ebonite+ available, build Mk2 and Mk3 Penetrators from those to speed up the process.

[Shrugging Khan]

I don't know who stickied this thread, but I sure hope they come back around to fix it's title.

Grammar and spelling senses...in AGONY!

[x4000]

I don't know who stickied this thread, but I sure hope they come back around to fix it's title.

Grammar and spelling senses...in AGONY!

Fixed it...

[soMe_RandoM]

Neinzul Enclave Star ship + super Cloak
basically you want enemy to attack you when you have overwhelming force.
Set Up: get few super cloakers and set them to rough cover an entire fleet of long range ships
once they get close to full cap, then ship start revealing them self since they can't be cloaked any more. so what happens is AI starts coming towards your fleet.
what happens, when you reach X amount ships, that can kill X amount ship only when at full cap or desired X, then this super cloaker allows for this as when X+1 happens enemy ship start coming towards you X+1 Army. the +1 is extra ship that need to not be can't be claoekd by super cloaker. so what happens is you ship build up to X then once they get Y>X then enemy comes meaning its automated attack.

[superking]

Big Blob of Doom
This works best when you have resources coming in at a good rate; Move all your starships and fleetships into one huge fleet and bind them to ctrl-1, then blindly send them onto an enemy planet you want to clear. Upon entering the enemy planet, put the fleet on FRD and pay it no more attention; your factories should soon be churning you out a replacement doom blob.

In the rare case that your doom blob manages to clear the planet without your attention, roll all your reinforcements into the system and rebuild the doom blob fleet back up to its original strength and roll it into another system. Down this road, gaurenteed victory awaits!

[Shrugging Khan]

Fixed it...

I just wish someone had called me out on my own grammatical mistake before you got to quote it 

Aaaaanyways, *my* preferred strategy: Stealth Commandos!

The easiest way is obviously just picking SSBss as starting bonus ships, then unlocking the higher mark levels. They are more than suited for raiding planet after planet worth of priority targets like EMP guardians, guard posts, data centres...as long as you do the footwork beforehand and take out all the tachyon guardians in the way (The SSBss can do it themselves, but it's usually safer to send something else), you can basically have your stealth sabotage strikes as far into enemy territory as you like - I often get carried away and stop only when I start to get deep-strike-counter-attacks. It requires no micromanagement aside from controlling the SSBss fleet itself, it can clean out heaps of planets while your conventional fleet sits back and intercepts and freed AI ships, and it's even fairly cheap on resources. Not so cheap on time, since you need to watch the stealth fleet pretty much constantly in order to power them up and down (attack orders themselves can be queued up very nicely), but if you play with zero AIP over time (as I do), that's no issue.

Alternatively to SSBss, you can just use ye olde transporters-plus-cloaker-SSs trick; although the level of micromanagement necessary to get it going that way is unquestionably a lot greater. In exchange, your maximum firepower and flexibility are increased a great deal. On the other hand, you might be vulnerable to ion cannons, trigger Eyes, and you might have your defences weakened because to draw to many ships to these commando activities. Cheaper on the knowledge, though.

[soMe_RandoM]

Mega watt Super colliding super Defense
Strategy is basically when you have enough defenses to hold of an AI attack without needing fleet ships to support it, then you can move out, this requires you to wait for some time being passive, waiting until defenses on your home planet can withstand enemy attack it. once this happens you tend to be very aggressive, trying to take as many planets, as you can before AI wipes out your fleet. what tends to happen is you lose your fleet but defenses at home don't get destroyed meaning you can take more planets, more planets you have stronger your defenses get, i used this strategy against, doom core back in they 3.0 days, and Core use to only spawn few ships, now you basically have to do this strategy to survive an extra minute against doom core.