The Wild Weasel

For instance, escourting a couple medium Attack-4 frigates with a large Attack-9/Defense-5 destroyer. And it's a less expensive alternative to upgrading older model ships.

yea, i ran martyr class heavy fighters built on that principal for a while. it works well if your hurting for cash but i haven't had that problem for a while. 1 expensive martyr escorting my crusaders that cost about half as much was pretty murderous, but that was before 1.2 so the martyr didn't actually receive that much fire either. you also have to take care to keep your tech up near the front of the pack or you can't get too much benefit from that tactic. you can do even better with it if you upgrade a higher lvl ships into the attack ships so the shield ships have lower hp. this happens automatically if you keep a reserve of shield ships to swap out the damaged ones. happens because your shooters keep gaining xp while your damaged ships scoot back to a planet to repair.

Thanks to AngleWyrm and P0rcup1ne !!!!!!!!!
I have added these Wild Weasel/Martyr ships to my battle fleets in ver 1.2 and
in combination the "swap out damaged ships" strat, I have been able to turn the
war in my favor. This forum is a great place for new ideas !!!!!!!

Can you explain the formula a little bit? Never really bothered with this before 1.2, but now its pretty ovious I need to Fill my fleet with these wild weasle ships. I lose way to many in my wars.

Don't understand where your getting the numbers Like 1/(6+0) = 1/6 = 0.1667 where you get the 6+0 stuff. LOL.

Never mind I get it now. DOH. Stupid math.

In case anyone else didn't:
TargetValue = Attack / (HitPoints + Defense)
Attack:1 / (hitpoints:6 + defense:0) = 1/(6+0) = 1/6 = 0.1667

The AI always targets the most powerful ship first from what I've seen. I made a mistake early on by building what I thought would be a nice support element to complement my fleets of standard fighters. Turns out during combat the AI always took out my "Goliath" class vessels which carried an array of 3 Stinger IV missile commponents with a total of 6 missile attack. My "Goliath" vessels were subjected to a concentrated attack, and were torn to shreds during many battles.

But now I have new insight on galactic warfare. Time to bring the fight back to the infidels

yes, this sort of thing is more for saving money, not making uber fleets. if your attack ships have the best weapons, and most weapons THEY will get targeted and your designated victim ignored. just underweapon your attack ships enough to get your martyrs prioritized or keep old ships running with brand spanking new martyrs and it can work like a charm and don't forget your martyr has to be competetive with the enemy ships or this tactic will prove totally useless. it's not a magic bullet.

oh, and one more thing. get master hull building and the other hp techs. more hp means you water down your defense on your martyrs, allowing you to put more firepower on your shooters.

10atk4def16hp=.5 priority rating. the coresponding attack ship needs to have LESS than 8 atk to be protected 8atk0def16hp=.5 priority. now, with 25% hp bonus it turns into 10atk4def20hp=.416 priority and your shooter now can have up to 8.3 attack while being protected 8atk0def20hp=.4 priority. so that 4 hp bonus allows you to upgrade your shooters from 7 atk to 8 while being protected.

hmm, you guys are using a good strat. I often balance my fleets however, using at least 2 types of weapons, and the appropriate defense. I'll have to pull up my stats sheet i made... i'll post it as soon as i find it

This is why you balence fleets with fighters, Frigates and capital ships