Late game fleet engagement-Micro vs. Brute Force

Question to HC MP crowd

from Sins Forums

For late game fleet engagements (mixed fleets), I was wondering if it is actually worthwhile to heavily micro your fleet.

I generally found it most useful just to fleet focus fire on the defensive support cruisers then work from there, using my combined fleet to focus fire whatever target I feel is the priority after that (Usually a cap ship, unless it's a crazy AI going rambo with a titan)

I tried to do use the counter web thing and micro my bombers to the heavy C's, rush my LF past the lines to engage the LRF's, hold my flaks center fleet to take down fighters/whatever wanders into range, then have my caps take down the def support cruisers.   The whole nine yards.

But from what I can gather-it seems to be six of one-half a dozen of the other.  Admittedly, every match up is a bit different, and my data is limited, but late game at least it seems to boil down to how you manage/time your cap abilities more then any over riding strategy after the Hok's/Guardians/Overseers are nuked.  (Well, beyond keeping your own def sup cruisers from getting themselves murdered).

 

Any thoughts/hints?

strategy
6,007 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

First off, never send LF against LRF.  LRF counter LF hard.

Bombers should be reserved for larger targets such as capitals and titans.  HC will soak up your damage quite easily.

High priority targets are pretty much always okay to focus-fire (provided your fleet is sufficiently large), but a lot of times, you'll want focus fire from a certain type of unit, so you'll be doing a lot of Alt+click'ing.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Sounds fair enough.

 

On the LF thing, I've found that 'usually' LF's are all but ignored during a larger battle of mixed fleets (I guess the AI will target them occasionly-what triggers this I dunno).  So you can usually get them into position in the rear/flanks and hammer away at the LRF's with impunity.  I guess that's 'supposed' to be what, the HC's job mid-late/late game?

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Yeah, HC are supposed to go after the LRF later on while your bombers go for the capitals/titans/starbases.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

IMO, HCs are wasted vs. LRF, they're far better suited to abuse flak and support cruisers, which will free up your fighter cover to demolish LRFs. The fighter is the lynchpin of my fleet, and the basic frigates the workhorse. The fighters kill the threats to the HC/LFs, and the HC/LFs will clean everything else up, starting with flak and support cruisers.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

If the fleets are comparable, micro always wins. Hell, I even had a fight where I "won" against a fleet three times the size of my own fleet when I played Advent loyalist and went out to get a vasari loyalist planet in the late game to be greeted by both vasari AIs which would have torn me apart if not for the fact that I pushed away the bigger fleet while pummeling the smaller fleet and their lvl 8 titan. Meanwhile I called my ally to help. After he arrived and I killed the smaller fleet(like 1/3 of the whole enemy fleet +1 titan), the remaining 2/3 fled to an adjacent gravity well. It sounds easy on paper, but that was quite the piece of work keeping the bigger fleet away from mine and annihilating the smaller one. I lost like 37 of my LRFs(out of 50) and all of my 20 LFs and when the giant enemy armada arrived, I thought they would tear me apart.