Aeson
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Joined: 8/30/2013
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Know that the various engagement range settings use ranges which are dependent on the weapons that you have on your ship. According to a post by Icemania over in the Weapons Balancing thread, 'All Weapons' is an order to engage at 80% of the range of the shortest-ranged weapon carried by your ship. Standoff keeps your ship at roughly its maximum engagement range, while point-blank takes the ship in as close as the game will allow. I am not sure how different all weapons is from standoff if your design includes only one type of weapon.
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Missiles, phasers and fighters - standoff (because no dmg loss over range)
Standoff is fine for these. However, I will point out that missiles are almost ideal weapons for pairing with boarding pods due to the ineffectiveness of missiles against armor, and if you're trying to board an enemy ship you want to get in close so that the boarding pod has a better chance to latch on before enemy point defenses shoot it down or before the enemy ship flees.
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Railguns - point blank because of short range
If you're using railguns exclusively on a design, I see no reason to use point-blank instead of all weapons or standoff. Railguns don't suffer damage losses due to range, so getting closer to an enemy won't actually help you when using these, and against a blaster- or torpedo-armed ship it'll probably hurt you.
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Standard beams?
Assuming you meant Pulse Blasters, Maxos Blasters, Shatterforce Lasers, Impact Assault Blasters, and Titan Beams, which I refer to as blasters, then I would say that you would generally want to engage at point-blank range with these. If you're facing off against a railgun-armed opponent, standoff or all weapons should tend to keep you out of range of the enemy guns, which would be the superior choice; if you're engaging a blaster-armed opponent, then longer engagement ranges are safer and make shield regeneration more effective, while shorter ranges will kill the enemy (and your own ships) more rapidly.
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Torps?
Torpedoes should probably use all weapons or standoff (preferably all weapons, though if the opponent's weapons have a maximum range of at least 80% of the range of your torpedoes, standoff keeps your ships safer; still, even if you're engaging at 80% of blaster maximum ranges, your torpedoes should perform about as well as blasters against hull and shields, and probably a bit better against armor) against any shorter-ranged target, as that should generally keep a torpedo-only design out of range of the enemy weapons. Against a missile-armed opponent, all weapons may be acceptable, but point blank will perform better because it increases the DPS disparity between your torpedo ships and the enemy missile ships.
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Ion cannons?
Ion Cannons are essentially blasters. I'd suggest that you use them in a similar manner, and probably pair ion cannons with blasters in any design which makes use of ion cannons so that you have something that deals damage rather than just disabling the target (although if you're trying to build a capture ship, that may be counterproductive; nevertheless, I cannot recall whether or not ion cannons can pierce or damage shields, so you might need a real weapon anyways).
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Graviton beams?
Graviton beams depend on what else you're using them with. Graviton Beams are good for holding a target in place and doing a bit of damage to them, which is helpful for your blaster-armed ships that have orders to engage at point-blank range or for your railgun-armed vessels trying to keep enemies in range but not too close. These have too little range to really pair well with missiles or torpedoes. I personally would not use these as the exclusive armament on a given ship, though that is your decision and if you want to play with pure-graviton ships, that's your choice. Just remember that graviton beams are supposed to be less effective against ships larger than your own design, and more effective against ships smaller than yours, so if it's the damage you're looking for with a graviton beam, you want to build as big as you can.
Note that the majority of the above was written under the assumption that your ship is using one type of weapon exclusively. There are some things which you will need to consider when you start mixing weapon types on a design, such as how much of the range advantage of torpedoes and missiles you want to sacrifice in order to bring your blasters and railguns into play, or whether you want that graviton beam to hold a target at a 'safe' distance and pound it with whatever you have, or close as much as possible and keep hitting it at point blank with your blasters without letting it escape because it's caught by a graviton beam.
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Point blank mean that your ship tries to get as close as possible before firing? If the opponent is fleeing, does your ship still fire while chasing as long as within range?
As long as an opponent is within range of your guns and your weapons are powered, your ship will fire upon an enemy. Your ships with point-blank orders will attempt to close the range with a fleeing enemy, and as long as they have enough reactor output to cover both the sublight drive and the weapon requirements, they will shoot at the enemy, if in range, while attempting to close.
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What are the considerations in deciding attack strategy for stronger vs weaker? I would think you should consider your enemy's weapons, but since you set these in the design screen rather than on a ship by ship or fleet by fleet basis, then I don't see how this is relevant.
Since you have to choose without knowing exactly what type of opponent you'll be facing, a more significant consideration is what kind of weapons your own ships are using. Standoff range blaster designs aren't going to accomplish much of anything, and a mixed ship with a short-range and a long-range weapon sitting at standoff isn't going to use its short-range weapons. Take a look at your likely enemies, see what kinds of weapons they use on their designs, and go from there. Also consider what kinds of enemies you're likely to encounter which are stronger than your own ships. A big space station is probably far more powerful than any one of your ships, so sitting at standoff ranges and raining missiles, torpedoes, or even maximum range blaster fire down on it is far safer than closing with the station to maximize your blaster or torpedo DPS, especially since a large station can probably kill any one of your ships with only a few seconds of fire, and a station cannot run away when its shields start to go down, so you have plenty of time to just pour on the low-damage long-range fire. Against that 1000-shield missile and blaster capital ship the pirates picked up somewhere, sitting in standoff only means that when you finally start to win, the capital ship will have plenty of time to run away.
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I assume that evade isn't a setting I should consider for a military ship and that, when set to evade, a ship will not fire it's weapons -- true?
Evade vs stronger can be useful for protecting a high-value low-strength ship, such as a true carrier. But in general, yes, you do not want your military ships to have evade orders. I would nevertheless expect that a ship set to evade would fire its weapons at targets within range as long as it has the energy to do so, but I would not expect it to attempt to close to firing range if it were not close enough to engage.
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I believe standoff means that it will stick to missile/torpedo weapon range.
I don't believe so; rather, I believe standoff sets the engagement range to close to the maximum range of whatever the longest-range weapon carried by the ship happens to be. If that weapon is a missile or torpedo, then yes, it sticks to missile or torpedo range, regardless of what other weapons your ship carries. If that happens to be a rail gun, then your 'standoff' range is not going to be particularly far away from your opponent.
< Message edited by Aeson -- 8/16/2014 6:48:18 PM >
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