Flanking: why?

[busfahrer]

Hi,

first of all, sorry if this is a stupid question, that might even be covered elsewhere... I'm not new to strategy games, but I've always been terrible at them.

So here's what I've been wondering about: I know that AI War is more about strategy than about local tactics, but on more than one occasion, I've read about how flanking is a part of the tactics. I understand that in another game (or the real world), a soldier has a "front" and a "back", and the front is stronger, and he can only shoot at the front. I was watching the video tutorial called "General Tactics Part 2" at http://www.arcengames.com/w/index.php/aiwar-video-tutorials, and the guy also split up his group of ships at one point. What I don't understand is what benefit this adds in a game like AI War, where the ships have no fronts and no backs, do not have sides that are weaker or stronger, and can freely fire in any direction.

I'd appreciate any comments or short explanations! 

Greetings,
busfahrer

[Kjara]

Arguably there are (at least) four reasons I can think that one might want to flank someone; however, not all apply here:

1)To increase the number of troops you have fighting at one time, by enveloping, flanking or surrounding, you can have local firepower superiority and win battles with smaller losses--note this one really doesn't apply here since ships don't really collide with each other, it might worth worrying about this slightly if your blob is so large that ships on the far side can't fire, but just moving your blob over enemies can usually take care of this issue.

2) To attack the weak points of enemies(your example of hitting the sides or rear of tanks). --Again doesn't really apply here as you noted.

3) To hit specific troops with troops that they do poorly against.  For example hitting archers with heavy cav, or say fighters with cruisers. -- This is one place where flanking actually can come into play here.  Consider the case where the enemy is strung out, and its cruisers are behind the rest of its fleet.  You could fly your entire fleet through the line of the enemy, and do ok, but you could instead arrange your fleet so that each unit meets its counter, say have the bombers fly around, or fly into range of the cruisers after you take out the fighters with your cruisers.

4) To prevent an enemy retreat or to force the enemy into battle. --Without unit collisions this is more difficult, but you can at least force the enemy to take significant damage if you can surround it enough to cut off all of the reasonable paths it might end up taking or to prevent it from kiting you (running away slowly enough to keep you inside its range of fire for an extended period of time but outside your own for as long as possible).


You also might want to split your fleet to hit more than one target at once, but that not really isn't flanking.

[busfahrer]

Thanks for your reply! Most of it turned out like I imagined it to be. However:

You also might want to split your fleet to hit more than one target at once, but that not really isn't flanking.

From what I understand, the larger the fleet is, with which I engage an enemy, the smaller my losses will be. What could be a scenario where I would want to split my fleet and attack two targets at once? (Outside of letting each unit type attack their counter, I'm assuming seperate targets that are far apart)

[Elukka]

Suppose there's an enemy squadron composed primarily of bombers and another made up mostly of fighters. You'll want to split up your force and hit the bombers with fighters and the fighters with frigates, and you don't want to let the enemy bombers near your frigates. You'd just blob it if you have a surplus of ships and resources, but if you don't you'll save a lot of ships hitting their weak points and denying them the opportunity of hitting yours.

[Ozymandiaz]

To put it this way, if I send in my huge blob, in well one blob, one fighter on one side of the blob will not have range enough to shoot to the other side. if I split them up and get orre ships in range = more effective dps on my target

[chemical_art]

Thanks for your reply! Most of it turned out like I imagined it to be. However:

You also might want to split your fleet to hit more than one target at once, but that not really isn't flanking.

From what I understand, the larger the fleet is, with which I engage an enemy, the smaller my losses will be. What could be a scenario where I would want to split my fleet and attack two targets at once? (Outside of letting each unit type attack their counter, I'm assuming seperate targets that are far apart)

Blobbing is great, and in a slugfest it is best. But you in most maps you won't see a lot of blob vs. blob action till at least mid game. Sometimes your own blobs makes your fleet too slow, too powerful given a situation, or other wise blobing is impractical. For example, if you have an AI eye world,  you might split the blob simply to not trigger it. Another reason to split the blob is so you can engage multiple groups of units. Maybe you split them based on speed; lighter, cheaper units will leave the main blob to engage the enemy at range to distract / weaken them.


Tactically, there is no [explicit] bonus to flanking, but the advantages in maneuvering, engaging the AI on favorable terms, etc. can make flanking effective for other beneficial reasons.

[zebramatt]

Plus if you split your fleet into groups depending on which hull type they're most effective with, you can send each group after an appropriate string of guard posts and they'll more often than not get the job done quicker than if you'd simply sent one large blob to every post one after the other.

[keith.lamothe]

A few things that come to mind:

1) Not flanking per se, but the area-of-effect weapons (some radial aoe, some linear aoe) make positioning more important in those cases.  Particularly with the continuous beams on the Spire capital ships, firing enfilade into an enemy formation can be absolutely devastating, where if the enemy is more spread out you may only do 10-20% of the beam's total potential damage (or less).

2) Within a system, there are often angles of attack against specific targets that expose you to less fire and attention from other defenses in the system.

3) If you have some weak units with high range, maneuvering so that the enemy comes after your main force and passes within your high-range units' range envelope without having much (or anything) with the range to fire back can be quite good for kill-to-loss ratios.  Of course, you can also just keep those units behind your main force, but that gives them less time to shoot.  If you have problems with the AI sending attacks at those harassing units, using cloaking starships and/or transports can help.

4) Sometimes defeating an AI force in detail instead of letting it retreat can save you significant pain later on.  In human territory you'll probably have a sufficient speed advantage to simply overtake them, but with some unit types or in neutral territory (attacking a blob of stalking threat on your borders, etc) having an attack force to hit it on the retreat can make a significant difference.  You can even get pretty brute-force by using units with tractor beams.


But yea, there's no restrictions on turn speed, firing angle, different defenses at different angles, etc.  So most of the heavy tactical stuff is abstracted out.

[chemical_art]

4) Sometimes defeating an AI force in detail instead of letting it retreat can save you significant pain later on.  In human territory you'll probably have a sufficient speed advantage to simply overtake them, but with some unit types or in neutral territory (attacking a blob of stalking threat on your borders, etc) having an attack force to hit it on the retreat can make a significant difference.  You can even get pretty brute-force by using units with tractor beams.

So that's what I'm doing right. There was a time when defensively I used to always let waves retreat. Now I intentionally make traps that annihilate waves outright. It helps reduce border aggression a lot!