Fleet performing Funny-Looking movements- Looking for a recommendation

I am playing a long game on the Centrifuge map. The two hard AIs ganged up early on me and pushed me back to two planets. After defeating the Advent fleet at my homeworld the other AI (TEC) turned on its weakened allie and chewed him up. After a lot of cat and mouse with the last AI, I am TEC also, we have the map split in half now. The advantage the ai currently has is has produced/spent twice as many credits as I have to date. I now have a higher credit income and reserve, plus 3X the metal and 2X the crystal which I sell on the black market. He has a huge technical advantage over me as he had hours of much greater economic activity in which to spend on research.

The ai has a larger fleet due to his historical economic advantage. If I could crush his fleet he would not be unable to replace those ships as fast as I could and I could take some territory from him while he rebuilt. That may likely force the ai into a decline that would end the game.

The reason for all this explanation is that my current fleet is made up of 150 LRMs and 50 Grada flak in one fleet. My 1 cap ship keeps getting destroyed in combat but he loses 2 cap ships to everyone I lose. He has 36 carriers and a mixed fleet of everything else including HCs. I attack him whenever he splits his fleet and then retreat when he reinforces trying to buy time to build up to 200+ LRMs.

My question is when my fleet arrives in his gravity well it appears to do a 360 degree turn. It takes a while for this many ships to accomplish this. During this turn his ships either attack my fleet or begin scurrying away. I want the garda to continue to form the wall to protect the lrms from his HC instead of speding away to go after the fighters and bombers, but would like the fleet to attack the ai as soon as possible to inflict additional casualties instead of doing the 360. I do not know what they may be doing, maybe reforming?

Any suggestions?

strategy

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You must have your ships in one relatively large fleet. It is trying to line up in formation upon entering the system. You can fix this by breaking the ships up into smaller fleets or grabbing blocks of them as they enter the system and immediately giving them attack or move orders to get them placed where you want them.

Put the gardas in their own fleet and turn off the auto-attack range so they sit where you leave them. You can just manually position this fleet where you want it, or give it a follow order on another fleet. I'm not certain that HC's will always choose a flak over an LRM. HC's tend to favor killing LRM's, and might ignore the closer flaks.

I would also recommend throwing Hoshikos into your fleet mix to help keep stuff alive. It might save your capital, and the LRM's will certain benefit by having some Hoshikos with them.

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DauntlessAnsible

Join Date 05/2008

+32

one thing to note too, is that if you are using static defenses the ai will continually lose when he attacks as long as your fleet is near by. i was in a similar situation a couple weeks back, and a vasari hard ai was well within his power to dominate me, but he would continuely retreat when he should have pressed.

also since your fleet is LRF heavy, make sure you are fully researched on missile technologies.

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Hah, I won!

11 + hours on a small map.

I did not have my fleet set up to phase jump as one time since it was important for my outnumbered fleet to get out of the gravity well when the ai showed up with his great (almost 2000 slot) smack down fleet. When I changed back to jumping together that seemed to help along with the suggestion to target something when I got there.

I would also recommend throwing Hoshikos into your fleet mix to help keep stuff alive. It might save your capital, and the LRM's will certain benefit by having some Hoshikos with them.

I added 40 Hoshikos.

also since your fleet is LRF heavy, make sure you are fully researched on missile technologies.

I noticed as I followed the missle tech tree it ended with the Novalith.

In order to add the Hoshikos and the tech I had to up the ante with the cat and mouse game with the ai inorder to buy more time to catch up. In this map the sun is surrounded with asteroids. The ai controlled 4 of the 6. I started making laps around the sun destroying the ai's structures but always having to move on before the asteroid got destroyed and when the ai appeared with its smack down fleet. Slowly the ai's 30,000 credit surplus got used up and I added the the hoshikos and another 40 LRM's with their new tech to my fleet. I was now at 60% of his fleet. After two revolutions the ai changed its strategy to counter what I was doing. He split his fleet in half, breaking one of the halves into 3 parts and attacking three of my positions at the same time. This allowed me to substantially damage his fleet when I met it. At that time the Novalith Cannon was ready and it was perfect to destroy his asteroids. I was able to splinter off part of my fleet to chase his three remnant fleets away and was able to occupy all 4 asteroids before he could rebuild his navy.

We had one last major engagement at his homeworld where his level 9 Sova was destroyed and he surrendered.

Your suggestions and the strategy neccessary to accomplish helped conclude my most epic SOASE game.

I thought you might appreciate knowing how it turned out.

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Good job! Next time you are using a hit and run strategy, have a Marza in your fleet and get Raze Planet up to level 3 asap. Immediately put the Marza on the asteroid or un-upgraded planet while your fleet is clearing out the infrastructure. You will find the Marza has probably killed the asteroid about the time your fleet is mopping up.

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