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Aeson -> RE: Keeping it organized in the late game? (6/7/2015 3:35:49 AM)
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quote:
I hadn't thought to go after pirate fuel! That's great. I quickly realized that I need to make sure there are plenty of fuel sources for my guys but hadn't applied the reverse logic. Have been bust pirate stations but it seems like they always build more, or are hiding somewhere else.
There's probably a few pirate construction ships floating around. If you can find them, kill them; the computer-controlled pirate factions tend to have some difficulty replacing its construction ships once lost, at least unless they make the transition to a colonial empire. Long range scanners, say on purpose-built exploration ships, are invaluable in hunting down construction ships (and other pirate vessels) and, to a lesser extent, bases, if you keep an eye out, as are the jump denial components that branch off of the Gerax Hyperdrive (long range scanners let you find them more easily, jump denial components prevent them from running and thus allow you to kill them). If you don't yet have or don't want to get long range scanners or jump denial systems yet, proximity sensors can be somewhat useful here as well; they at least give you a shot at pursuing a fleeing target when it jumps out.
Building mines on fuel sites can help prevent pirates from moving back into an area, if the region is reasonably secure, though it's best to be sure that the region is fairly secure before you start building. No sense in giving the pirates free bases, after all. This will also help if you chose to enable respawning pirate factions during game setup, as if I'm not mistaken pirate factions can only spawn on unoccupied fuel sites. Respawning pirate factions are another possible reason for why pirate bases seem to keep popping up in previously-cleared areas.
Be warned, however, that going after pirate fuel sources is not a perfect solution. Advanced ships (even the ones typically used by the pirates, which aren't really advanced so much as 'better than what you have early on') tend to have fairly significant ranges; just because your ships cannot operate effectively in the area due to it being too distant from fuel sources doesn't mean that the pirate ships, whose nearest bases may be just as far or farther away, cannot, and there's always the question of whether or not there's a pirate resupply ship or an unnoticed pirate mining station over a fuel source in the region. I think pirates can also get fuel from the colonies of empires paying them off, though I'm not certain of that, but most computer-controlled empires tend to have fairly poor relations with pirates anyways so that's not usually too much of a concern. Again, long range scanners help for finding out if some of these are present, and jump denial systems help for killing resupply ships once found.
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Also, was unaware of control groups, will familiarize myself with them.
LCNTRL + 0-9 to assign, press the key once to select and again to jump to the assigned object. Pretty much normal functionality for RTS games, and fairly good for keeping a moderate number of fleets under direct control. On larger maps and with larger navies you might want more, though, especially if your empire is fairly spread out and has unfriendly neighbors on multiple fronts. I tend to use them for my primary battle fleets and a couple of invasion groups, and sometimes for a couple resupply ships, but you can assign pretty much anything you control and can select on the main map to a control group - fleets, individual ships, stations, colonies.
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I had experimented with some of the fleet postures but hadn't paid too much attention to it, will remedy that.
I would suggest sticking to the lower end of the engagement range settings when playing with defensive postures, at least unless you're running with upgraded Equinox Jumpdrives (preferably the final upgrade), upgraded Velocity Drives, or Torrent Drives (preferably with at least one of the upgrades). Anything less than about 25000 hyper speed is, in my opinion, too slow to protect an entire sector, unless your responding fleet is moving to something that already has fairly strong defenses compared to whatever is attacking it; preferably your defending fleets will also be able to jump quickly. With Gerax Hyperdrives and the unupgraded Equinox Jumpdrive, I wouldn't go past 'nearby systems' with a defensive posture, and with Warp Bubble Generators I wouldn't go beyond the system.
You will need to occasionally check on your defensive fleets; they'll lose ships and there isn't any way I know of in the game to automatically replace losses, and I don't know that automated fleets in general will consistently bother to go to a shipyard for repairs (which is much less of an issue once you develop repair bots). Automated fleets with a home base will however generally move to that home base if they aren't currently assigned to some other mission, and you can assign colonies as home bases from within the Fleets window (though not all colonies share names with the system they're in, as I'm sure you've noticed). Stations and colonies can be assigned as home bases from the main screen, if you'd rather select the home base that way.
One other thing, not really related to fleet posture but related to fleet management in general, is that it can be helpful to form fleets out of a single type of ship. That way, you can open up the fleets list and look around to see which fleets are under their nominal strength, look at the fleet name, and order replacements of the appropriate type and assign the new ships to the fleet rather than having to select the fleet and see what's missing. Also helps if you want to bring in short-range ships for clearing out enemy fleet resistance and long-range ships for dealing with enemy stations; if the two ship types are kept in separate fleets, it's easy enough to order the ones you don't want in system out until they're needed (or send them off on another mission entirely), whereas if they're in the same fleet it's a lot more difficult to keep the ships doing what you want them to do. While this can multiply the number of fleets you need to keep track of, and does tend to reduce the number of ships which receive admiral bonuses, I find it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for reducing the management headache when trying to figure out what needs to be replaced and for keeping the ships fighting appropriate targets. It'll greatly reduce your fleet losses if you can order your blaster-armed ships to go away from the big defensive stations and hit something else during a system assault without either messing with your missile/torpedo ships and carriers or selecting individual ships to send them somewhere safer. One or two special-purpose ships in a fleet isn't bad, but 10 frigates, 5 destroyers, a few cruisers, and a few capital ships? Figuring out what was lost when you need to round out the fleet can get annoying, and if you don't bother you can end up with similarly-named fleets with significantly different capabilities.
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