Fighter Strategies and Fleet Questions

[deccan]

Some questions on this topic:

1) Ships can ram fighters in tactical combat but never in strategic combat?
2) How do strategies work for fighters? Once a carrier launches some fighters, do the fighters revert to their own strategy as designed? What if the carrier is in a fleet? What changes if I make the carrier break formation as part of its fleet strategy? And what happens if I make a fleet composed entirely of fighters and assign it a fleet strategy?
3) What about fighters that launch in combat from planets? Do they always then follow their individual strategies as designed?
4) At what point in all this does the "launch fighters in group size" option kick in? For the fighters' strategy, the carriers' strategy or the fleet strategy?

Bug? In the combat simulator, I find that if I give a player a group of fighters, then the entire group only have the supplies of a single fighter. Example, if a fighter carries 200 supplies, then a group of 10 of those fighters ought to have 2000 supplies, but they only have 200 supplies.

However, if the fighters are launched from planets or ships, then the entire group is fully supplied. Yet if I do this, and run the simulated combat in strategic mode, I cannot see the number of fighter losses, only the losses of planet(s) and ships.

[deccan]

No one has any opinions or ideas on this?

[se5a]

im interested to.
one annoying thing I find is that the if you have two diferent designs of figters in your carrier/planet it just launches them in a group but they are mixed. so you have fighters with 9 engines and fighters with 5 engines all in the same group, its rather frustrating.

so which stratigy does it use if both designs have diferent stratagies?

[primitive]

Okey, I'll have a go then
Deccan
1) Thats what rumours says. Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to test though

2/3) Launced fighters (both from planets and carriers) follow their own strategies. I have lost games (or at least crucial battles) when I had forgot to set strategy for the fighters and they reverted to "optimal". They would try to go straight through the enemy fleet, without firing their weapons, while looking for some juicy target at the back.

I have no idea what happens if you make a fleet of fighters and tell them to stay in formation (I assume they would follow the fleet order), and I have also no idea why you would want to do such a thing.

4) Here I am guessing again, but the "active" set of strategies ought to be the right one. For carriers that stay with the fleet; its the fleet strategy, for carriers that breaks; its the ships strategy. The fighters strategy should never come in play. Once again, this is very easy to test

Never noticed the bug in the simulator. I always make a testgame for any serious testing, as I can include training and racial bonuses in the test.

se5a:
The mixing of fighters in the same stack should be counted a blessing.
Usually you would want your fighters to arrive at the target at the same time for maximum punch and minimum exposure and the whole stack will also get the bonuses from ECM and combatsensors.
(Ab)Use it as a feature

[deccan]

Originally posted by primitive:

1) Thats what rumours says. Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to test though

I HAVE tested using ships to ram fighters in the simulator. It DOES work in tactical, but I could not get it to work in strategic. I even set the ship's movement strategy to RAM-RAM, checked "Use type before targeting priorities" and put "Fighters" at the very top of the type list, but no go. The ships just won't ram. I was hoping that someone would know.

Originally posted by primitive:

I have no idea what happens if you make a fleet of fighters and tell them to stay in formation (I assume they would follow the fleet order), and I have also no idea why you would want to do such a thing.

Sometimes, I use large numbers of fighters to defend systems. Whenever I do so, I always put all of the fighter stacks in a fleet for neatness' sake. But you're right, they are always set to break formation anyway.

Thanks for the other replies. I suppose I really should use test games instead of the simulator. How do you usually set it up? Simultaneous mode, hot-seat?

Scout,

Can you manage to make the mixing of fighter designs in a single stack work consistently? If so, I would be very interested. It would be extremely effective as Primitive says. In my experience, mixed designs in stacks happen very rarely, only when the planet / carrier do not have enough fighters of the same design to make up a full stack.

[primitive]

I have a very small map (6 systems) and just start a game with 2 players, full tech and 10 planets each. I usually makes it sequential to make saving easier. All in all it will take me about 5 minutes to get 2 decent fleets together for testing if I start from an old save. If I need to test some racial techs or some strange bonus settings I will have to start from scratch, but it will still only take 10-15 minutes.