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

[tesco samoa]

you can set any ship strag to do not get hurt in the design ship window... THis will make sure that the ship does not attack the planet

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by PvK:
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

This sounds nice, but unfortunatly it doesn't work all that well. Setting your strats to not fire on planets does seem to work ok for keeping your ships from glassing the planet, but your ships have a nasty habit of wandering aimlessly and getting pasted when they wander into range even if you are lucky enough notto start the combat raound in range.

Splitting fleets has no effect at all. It's not the fleet being too big that cause you to start in range of the planets weapons. This will happen regardless of fleet size.

The only way to get them to stay out of range for sure(assuming they don't start in range, there is nothing you can do to prevent that) is to set the fleet orders to don't get hurt and not break formation, or set your ships to don't get hurt. And as I said this makes them a little susceptible to enemy ships or fighters that come by. They will fire on enemy ships if they come in range, but they won't approach the enemy. They'll wait in the corner and if the enemy has decent range weapons will get picked apart.

Geoschmo