Question about Support Ship attack

Starting Positions from BattleBehaviorDefs.xml:
Interceptor: 1800
Assault: 1700
Escort: 1600
Capital: 1400
Guardian: 1200
Support: 1000
Starbase: 800
Values are probably distance from the bounding box of the battleviewer but how large that is, is nowhere to be found.
You could look at the range of missiles (in the designer) and use that together with the starting postions. (ranges are hard coded as well and as such not in the xmls)

Thanks.  That info is on the wiki too.  I'm interesting though in knowing the range between my Support missile launchers and the enemy's Interceptors at the beginning of a battle.  Anyone know the dimensions of the battle field, for example?

I didn't find the dimensions of the battleviewer in the xmls, but the weapon ranges are listed in the ship designer(also not in the xmls)

Interestingly (to me), I didn't know that the ship roles had any meaning, until yesterday.  I thought the roles were merely a nice added touch so we could keep track of our intentions for a particular ship's purpose.  But I wanted them positioned similar to how they are actually positioned in the game, so I was putting triple thrusters on my Interceptors and single thrusters on my Assault ships.  I didn't know about the targeting preferences either, and was trying to create a gap between my first two waves and my capital.

That must have been some heck of a gap.

I didn't find the dimensions of the battleviewer in the xmls, but the weapon ranges are listed in the ship designer(also not in the xmls)

 

Thanks for looking.  Yea, missiles are just over 1k.  Which means my Support can launch over the head of my Interceptors, but not by much.  And since the Interceptors move forward, and the Support don't, that 'not by much' should quickly become 'too dang much.'  So I guess I'm answering my own question without knowing the factual specifics. 

There are also three movement types: attacker, defender and stationary but what the exact difference are is again not in the xmls.

Edit: Max speed is 3.2 and acceleration is 2 base line, might be usefull if you intend to use thrusters...

The wiki discusses the ship roles, and does a fine of doing it.  And it was just posted here recently, but briefly:

Support - stays in the back and won't move until enemy offensive ships are all dead (Interceptors, Assault, and Capital).  If a ship comes in range, however, they will shoot.  I like to use at least one Support which I load with sensors, but will probably give that role to my Capital now (or again, as I had just recently switched to using a Support ship for this).  Or just not have high sensors within the fleet itself.

Defensive - stay with the ship they are assigned to protect and target ships targeting their protected ship first.  Guardians prioritize protecting Support, so if you have Support in your fleet, Guardians are not moving forward either.  Escorts, on the other hand, give priority to protecting the Capital ships, so WILL move forward.  It is important to note that the heavy guns of your enemy, offensive ships sized smaller or bigger, will target your Escorts first, once your Escorts are in range.  High armor would not be a bad idea for your Escorts.  If you do not use Support ships, thrusters on your Guardians might be a good idea too, because they will then be prioritizing your Capital for defensive targeting, and will be soaking hits from enemy Interceptors if they can catch up to your Capital.

Offensive - move forward and have no designated defensive role.  Assaults and Capitals both target enemy Escorts, then Capitals, then Assault ships, before other stuff.  In your entire fleet, only Guardians and Supports target Interceptors first.  Everything else will only target Interceptors if nothing else is in range or after destroying several lines of other ships first (but since Interceptors are first in line, your ships should be able to take shots at them before moving on to prioritized targets).

Of course, you could just make all your high armor ships escorts and high offensive ships capitals, but where is the fun in that?

edit:  Yes, thanks again, max tactical speed is good to know.  Difference of 1.2.  Got it.

A not-so-sub-topic is the role of carrier modules, and the ship roles of the fighter spawns:

Assault drones (Escort, small, mixed weapons and mixed defenses)

Interceptor drones (Interceptor, tiny, beam)

Guardian drones (Guardian, tiny, kinetic)

*as per the wiki

So having at least 1 carrier per line can help soak up shots from the enemy, as once the enemy ships have classified which type of ship to target, if there is more than one of that type that can be targeted by them, the target choice is random - the more of that type, the less chance a ship's defenses will be taken down.  Escorts, by the way, are the only ship that will target Assault ships first (if not defending), so some Escort drones among your Interceptors and Assault ships is a nice touch.  And some Guardian drones among your Interceptors is handy too, as they will be targeted first by enemy Interceptors and target them first as well.

nm

How do sensors help in a fight?

They don't. They're actualy hindering you because you waste the capacity. It's better to have a sensor ship that is not part of the fleet.

If I'm not mistaken, the 'attacker' movement type is the simple 'close with the enemy' movement that ships display in the battle viewer, 'defender' movement type tries to remain close to the highest-priority escort target while closing with the enemy (if no escort targets are available, I believe it behaves like the 'attacker' movement type), and 'stationary' movement remains at the spawn location.

Note that despite the visuals of the battle viewer indicating that Support ships (which are the only standard role which can be incorporated into mobile fleets available with the stationary movement type in the unmodded game) are more than happy to close with the enemy fleet alongside the rest of the fleet, it appears as though the simulation considers them to have remained at the spawn location. Most of the time, when the ships accompanying a support-role vessel are destroyed, the surviving hostile ships consider themselves to be out of range of the support ship for a second or three, and if I recall correctly support ships frequently do not fire any weapons they carry until they themselves are engaged (which is usually too late to contribute anything worthwhile since by the time they're directly engaged everything else is probably dead) due to being out of range, despite it looking as though the ships should be in range in the battle viewer.

How do sensors help in a fight?

 

They don't in battle, as someone pointed out above.  I just like the 'feel' of having a detection ship in my fleet.  On a practical level, though, sometimes your scout shit gets blown up.  Its rare, haven't seen it in GC3 yet, but I've had it happen, and then your fleet is effectively blind.  So a nice super-charged scout ship is great, but I like to toss a few sensors on an in-fleet ship just in case.

 

For now, in my current game, I'm using a Guardian with just 1 shield of each armor type, heavy missile damage, and 3 or 4 sensors, and a military scout ship for each armada since my sensor range can cover most of the average sized star clusters at the moment.