So how DO you 'Blockade' in AI controlled battles?

[Talenn]

Well, the title pretty much speaks for itself.

I am trying to find a strategy that can allow my ships to blockade a planet, but not engage it. I tried creating a strat for 'Blockade' that didnt allow firing on planets and had 'dont get hurt' as the primary function. They glassed every planet I tried this with.

Any thought or do people just not do it in Si-Move games?

Thanx a bunch,

Talenn

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Talenn:
Well, the title pretty much speaks for itself.

I am trying to find a strategy that can allow my ships to blockade a planet, but not engage it. I tried creating a strat for 'Blockade' that didnt allow firing on planets and had 'dont get hurt' as the primary function. They glassed every planet I tried this with.

Any thought or do people just not do it in Si-Move games?

Thanx a bunch,

Talenn

One way is to send a unarmed ship to the place. It will flee to the corner of the battle map.

[Gandalph]

The "Blockade" strategy you created, did you apply it to your ships, or to the fleet. I successfully use the "blockade" strategy on PBW frequently and the only difference is the "do not fire on planets" and set the the strategy for the ship. If you set the strategy for the fleet, and then ships break formation, they revert back to the ship strategy.
Also, be careful when you upgrade a ship in the design window. It will automatically revert back to "Optimal" strategy.

[Talenn]

Hmm, interesting. When I made the Strat, I disabled the 'Break Formation for' toggles. But they appeared to break formation anyways. Is this a bug or am I just not doing it right?

So basically, I have to assign the 'Blockade' strat to the Fleet AND to every class of ship that is going to participate? That seems extremely clunky.

So, I'm guessing Blockading planets isnt something that occurs in most MP games, eh?

Thanx for the tip, but I hope someone else has more info on this.

Talenn

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Talenn:
So, I'm guessing Blockading planets isnt something that occurs in most MP games, eh?

It certainly can be done in MP games, it's just not all that terribly effective against a human player. Blockading is tremendously effective against the AI because they don't seem to understand how to counter it, but it's easy for a human to counter.

You have to blockade a sizeable portion of the enemies planets to make much of a difference, that takes a lot of effort on your part. It's much easier to simply destroy or capture the planets.

Blockade ships have to either be given no weapons, or be given careful strategies to prevent them from glassing the target world. This makes them very suceptable to a few fighters or a few small blockade runner ships that can come in and destroy them.

Plus Se4 has a nasty habit of starting out subsequent combat rounds by placing your ships too close to the planet, within weapons platform weapons range. That's a quick way to end a blockade. Frustrating too if you are the one trying to do the blockade.

Geoschmo

[ March 01, 2003, 17:15: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[PvK]

In Proportions, blockading can be useful against major planets (especially homeworlds, of course). Capturing planets can be much more valuable in terms of the amount of time saved, too, so blockading rather than glassing is also attractive.

It's not all that hard to do, either. Include planets in the "don't fire on" list, and either don't break formation, or include that prohibition in the design tactics.

If you want to blockade with a huge fleet, and need to avoid long-ranged weapon platforms, it may be helpful to break your blockade into a number of smaller fleets, so none of them start out in range. IMO this isn't too unrealistic either, as a planet with serious long-range weapons would realistically be harder and more dangerous to completely blockade.

PvK