Tactics

[beyond.wudge]

Hey guys, I'm new to the game but quite eager to get good at it.

I've noticed that this game actually has a lot of depth to it. Even just realising that a pair of Raid Starships could zip into a system, knock out the Ion Cannon and get back without a scratch has opened my mind to all sorts of possibilities.

However, I know am I a fairly straight forward player sometimes. I have firm ideas of what is good and what is bad. I can be very conservative when I'm new to something.

Recently in a two player game with my friend came up against a system with a gravity drill, a fortress and lots of zenith bombardment ships. Wanting to take the system gravity drill intact with only Mark 1-2 level ships I would have suggested he sledgehammer the command centre and then beach-head outside the range of the fortress and missile turret it to death. Bombard ships would be dealt with once the command centre death forced them to counter-attack.

Ofcourse, he instead realised that the system had no real tachyon tech. He unlocked the cloaker starship, built two and took a strikeforce in of (was it around 80?) ships in low power mode and snuffed out the command centre in a single volley (well, almost, the counter-fire killed half his ships before he could shoot again).

It was a real Klingon moment.

Anyways, it hit me that I would have probably not have explored that option and have spent the next hour sledgehammering the system to bits.

So, what other cool and cunning tactics are out there for killing things like:

1) Fortresses
2) Ion Cannons
3) Orbital Mass Drivers
4) Heavily reinforced planets
5) Gravity Drill planets (with any of the above)
6) Etc

I know that transport ships can be used to real effect for instance. 2 Transports, 1 for taking damage, the other loaded with enough starships to pulverise the target and then survive long enough to load back up and leave.

What other cool things are out there?

[Drjones013]

Generally speaking I prefer to approach those structures with stealth units (my favorite unit is Space Planes); hit the structures that are most dangerous to your main fleet and run. This will divert the AI units away from your entry point (and thus your main deployment).

Look for cheaper units to lead the assault against structures which you know will inflict heavy casualties. Using 'L' to split your forces to split enemy fire is critical to avoid massive casualties against beam platforms. Fighters are a good shock option out of the basic units.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and reduce Clausewitz down to three maxims: Mass, Maneuver, and Mobility. The critical task for a commander is to split his forces to prevent destruction until the specific moment when he's willing to strike. Massing your forces to achieve maximum firepower is crucial to reduce casualties. The ability to maneuver your forces is entirely dependent on their speed and your ability to create advantageous formations. AI War allows you great amounts of freedom to micromanage your forces-- your ability to maneuver your forces will ultimately determine how many casualties you take. Mobility is of the utmost importance when determining defensive and offensive strategies: the ability to quickly muster your forces across multiple systems determines your ability to survive AI Counterattacks while balancing out your offensive strategies. There are obviously more aspects of Clausewitz theory to AI War but this is the short and dirty version.

It may be possible to approach AI War through a more modern version of tactics, such as Boyd's OODA Loop, but frankly I've never really been able to give this an appropriate trial because of the playstyle of my friends: in single player games, the AI doesn't have the same limitations as a human player and there are no additional forces to call for reinforcement.

[Hearteater]

When travelling through hostile territory in transports, using a lead and rear empty transport makes the center transports much more survivable.  In fact, they take very little fire at all.  Just line up your transports pointing toward the first wormhole with an empty in front and back and send them off.

When using Cloaker Starships, Transports make things a lot easier because you can order the attacking ships into the cloaked Transports and they instantly become protected without having to wait for the cloaking timer.  For serious raiding, Mark II Transports repair ship inside them, allowing you to repair the incidental damage your raiding force will take without fiddling with Engineers (they become uncloaked while repairing, so you need to back off out of range to use them).

Fortresses can be beaten by removing supply (kill the AI Command Stations on their system and all adjacent systems).  Note that Super Fortress does NOT require supply.

Don't try to Missile Turret a Fortress down however; last time I tried this they appeared to have Counter Missiles (in addition to the listed Counter Dark Matter).  Use Sniper Turrets instead.

Heavily reinforced planets can be broken by freeing some of the ships in the system (get in range of a Guard Post or shot it) and then backing your fleet out of your system so the AI thinks it is poorly defended.  When it rushes in you can counter-attack.  Use a Force Field over the wormhole to prevent them from retreating.

Ion Cannons are almost never worth capturing.  Use Raid Starships to eliminate them in advance of attacking a system.

You can kill an AI Eye by claiming a system.  Kill the AI Command Station with a raid and build your own Command Station.  The AI Eye will explode without you needing to kill all the guard posts first.

When using Teleporting units, always group them separately and micro them.  Send them in after your other units have engaged and they'll take little fire and live a lot longer.  On defense, retreat them to a Mobile Repair Station or Engineers often for quick repairs.  You can engage/disengage 4-5 times a fight and still be extremely effective with them.  Since you mentioned Bombards, teleporters love killing Bombards .

Speaking of Bombards, you want them targeting your Fighters.  So if you get a wave of Bombards, put your Fighters (especially Mark I) out there to eat the opening volley, and put everything else in Transports out of range to charge in and finish them off.  Riots and Plasma Siege Starships will cripple their engines making it very easy to chase them down.

[keith.lamothe]

Don't try to Missile Turret a Fortress down however; last time I tried this they appeared to have Counter Missiles (in addition to the listed Counter Dark Matter).  Use Sniper Turrets instead.

Forts don't have missile immunity (which is different from counter-missiles; that protects nearby units from missiles too), but they do now have a 30k radar dampening range.

[Hearteater]

Last time I tried to Missile Turret down a Fortress, something had Counter Missiles (small dots that intercept and destroy the missiles).  Those dots came from the Fortress.  I've never tried since.

[keith.lamothe]

Last time I tried to Missile Turret down a Fortress, something had Counter Missiles (small dots that intercept and destroy the missiles).  Those dots came from the Fortress.  I've never tried since.

That's really odd.

[Hearteater]

I mentioned it my first AAR.  The homeworld of a Fortress Baron:

Two Core Force Fields and a Mark III Fortress.

...

Using a Mobile Builder, I try many things to break the Fortress Baron.  Sniper Turrets go through shields according to tooltips.  Reality disagrees.  Missile Turrets to stop shield repairs.  Again, tooltips are wrong or incomplete; apparently Fortresses have Counter Missiles.

I'm not sure why I thought Sniper/Spider turrets ignored Force Fields.  Maybe it was an old tooltip issue that's since been fixed.

[TechSY730]

Doesn't look like someone mentioned this yet.

Fortresses have a .01 multiplier against things with polycrystal hulls. Bomber ships and Bomber starships have this kind of hull. Basically, this means that fortresses can barely scratch these units. If you need to take out a fortress, but cannot afford cutting off its supply, a detachments of bombers should be able to do the trick. It will take some time, but they should be able to pull it off.

Things get a bit more complicated when there are other units guarding the area with the fortress, so you will need some way to lure them away from the fortress so your bombers can live.
Also, while the superfortress also has a .01 multiplier against bombers, superfortresses have such a high damage per second that even with that severe penalty, your bombers will start struggling to stay alive long enough.

[beyond.wudge]

Don't think so. I've killed two fortresses now with missile turrets this week. Maybe... I don' t know. I imagine you checked for anything else that would have had interceptors.

But that AI eye strategy is good. It does make them a fair bit easier if not coupled with Command Centre shield posts/forcefields. Didn't think you could just bypass them with a quick little raid.

Thanks!

[Martyn van Buren]

I feel like raiders are pretty much always the right answer for taking out command stations (unless there's a grav drill); a cap of Mk I's only takes two or three volleys to destroy it, and they can survive long enough to do that and get out on all but the toughest worlds.  For fortresses, just in case you don't know, bombers are all but immune to their fire, so if you have one isolated they're easy.  Generally simpler than building mission turrets.  If you have to deal with a really inconvenient one on an important world, there is always the method of skipping past the world and destroying all the neighbouring command stations to cut off supply.  But that's only practical in very specific situations.

[PokerChen]

TBH, the three ways of transport, cloak, and raid starships are all that's really efficient in assassination for the base game. You'd have to start looking to the bonus content for different tactics.

[keith.lamothe]

TBH, the three ways of transport, cloak, and raid starships are all that's really efficient in assassination for the base game. You'd have to start looking to the bonus content for different tactics.

Cloaker Starships are TZR.

But there are several cloaking fleet ship types in the base game, including the much-maligned eyebot, assassin extraordinaire.

[beyond.wudge]

What other tricks are there then? How do you force multiply your army against theirs?

I.e. if you enter a system do you fly away and draw them all into a long line where you can focus your firepower on the front end of the stream, ensuring kills as quickly as possible with minimal damage.

How do you make AI's chase you into your own system.

Then how do you best punish an AI who chases you into your system. What tricks do you use? (Warheads? Massed turrets? Are there great brawlers  to leave on your side etc?)

[PokerChen]

Let's see... what can we do to separate the ships? I'll give a couple of example play from te history of the forums...

Scenario #1: I want to activate enemy defenders at heavily defended planet and hope they will chase through the wormhole.
 - (Default) Send a team of raid starships and have them skirt around the edges. Guards normally have an activation range. Repair when necessary, sometimes with a set of cloaked engineers.
 - Send a small team, with golems or ship-types using infinite range, and attack the guardposts. Retreat when sufficient enemies have been aggravated.
 - Send 1 Spirecraft Attritioner to the enemy planet and back (assuming it survives, mark-I is usually sufficient as a sacrificial unit).
 - Any bonus fleet ship that can accomplish the above tasks. Raptors come to mind.
 - One EMP warhead, according to some.

Scenario #2: I want to activate the enemy defenders, but have them drawn out and separated.
 - Raid starships don't usually succeed in attracting enough AI ships to chase it. You'll need something juicier, such as a sniper turret built at the edge of the wormhole. Engineers are also juicy targets, but aren't really fast enough to outrun the some AI ships, (Eng-IIIs might do the trick. Keep your fleet out of the way until needed.

Scenario #3: I want to goad the AI into cross the wormhole into my turrets.
 - No sure method, they usually cross along with a CPA/Exo/large AI wave. Sometime they will just cross, it depends on what the ships decide when they get to the wormhole entrance. You can fake weak borders by retreating your fleet into an interior system. This increases the chances, but do this before you activate the defenders.
 - Just kidnap them with mobile tractors. Etherjets, Tractor Plats, and Black Widow Golems. Requires slightly different tactics each (experiment).

Alternative standpoint: Wait with your fleet and turret ball on an AI planet and attack another planet deeper in.

= = =
*sigh* Anyway, I think you go on about tricks too much. Relatively few ppl want to be here all day thinking on an individual's behalf (it's inefficient use of time. On that note, would you like to spend some time and put some of these suggestions on the wiki?), and AI war can't always be boiled down to recipes. Some ships, like Paralyzers, offer some of what you're looking for. Other times there isn't anything more to it than trap and kill. It's definitely more fun if you went through each ship as you find them by asking "what can I do with this ship?"


Just... try to forget your firm ideas of good and bad sometimes. Take a chance on what appears to be a sub-optimal idea - it's what the AI's been doing all the time.

[keith.lamothe]

Scenario #3: I want to goad the AI into cross the wormhole into my turrets.
 - No sure method, they usually cross along with a CPA/Exo/large AI wave. Sometime they will just cross, it depends on what the ships decide when they get to the wormhole entrance. You can fake weak borders by retreating your fleet into an interior system. This increases the chances, but do this before you activate the defenders.
 - Just kidnap them with mobile tractors. Etherjets, Tractor Plats, and Black Widow Golems. Requires slightly different tactics each (experiment).

Riots (mkI and mkIII) also have tractor capability through modules, and are available in all games (that don't have starships turned off).

Another common tactic to goad is to pull all your mobile assets off the planet you want the AI to attack; if you still have a ton of turrets/fortresses/etc on the planet that may not be enough, but sometimes it is sufficient.

Also, though I'm not sure on the math, often attacking the planet with the big pileup (very preferably from a different direction so you aren't sailing right into their teeth) will cause the blob to move forward.  I did it many times when playing Fallen Spire and it always seemed to work; I honestly don't know if the AI ships thought they were attacking or retreating