Search for "Command Points". Those tech are on the left part of the tree.

Actually I like the restriction of fleet size. Space is big. If you want your ships to attack in a coordinated way, you need the tech for it. If you decided to research some other tech instead, then you need to accept the consequences.

Not being able to attack with multiples fleets is a terrible design choice. Ever heard of strength in numbers?

madgiraf wrote:
You are looking at the wrong numbers, that is all. Sure Craven are at military advantage, but they have weaknesses also, and not small ones. Now regardless of the race, it's all about defense.



Want to beat those 13 ships with your 7 ? Find out what kind of weapons they use mainly. Once you found out they use kinetics for example, go to your design board and modify your current fleet designs, put 4-5-6 kinetic shield, put 4-5-6 HP armors, put the rest as one weapon type (i would advice 3-4 missiles and if any space left go for more def, if you can). Then retrofit, start the battle and use a defensive card for LR phase and you will see... 1 (fist) can beat 5 (fingers)...



In the early game I advice destroyers (corvettes are not bad either though only if you use modules), mid game destroyers and cruisers and late game cruisers only (or some dreadnoughts). No matter the stage of the game, one mistake I believe is common is to go for too much weapons and not enough defense/hp. I usually use 70% of a ship space for defense+hp and the rest goes for weapons.

^This. It can all be reduced to rock/paper/scissors. Always pay attention to what they're using and then it can be easily countered. High defense+ lots of hp also means that you can wear them down over time and not have to worry about playing rocket launcher tag.

reck wrote:
I'm playing as the united empire and i'm currently battling against the cravers. At the moment i'm finding it difficult to win battles against them because their fleet sizes are larger than mine. At one point they could hold 7 (against my 5) and now they are up to 13! I've found a tech that will upgrade my fleet to 7 but obviously i'm still no match for them when they have 13. In the last battle I took two full fleets with me which held a total of 14 ships (7+7) against his one fleet of 13, so I had one more ship than him in the same system. However when I went into battle it only used one of my fleets so it was my 7 against his 13 so he won again, he then attached my other fleet so 7-13 again and wiped me out.



So even though I could take multiple fleets in to his system to attack it seems I can only use one fleet at a time which means i'll never be able to win. If I took 3 fleets of 7 into his system against his one fleet of 13 (21-13) shouldn't that give me some kind of advantage? I'm obviously not understanding something here, can someone help me out here?



Thanks

Upgrade your other stuff then make better ships with the researched stuff. Add lots of shields and armor with 5 of each weapon. Have a hero who can do camouflage. If going up against a ship that attacks always with missiles just do three of camouflage and they wont hurt you 90% of the time. I do this with 1 ship, it easily wins after several rounds 1 vs 7 (typically 2 draws then a win with all 7 dead). My one ship also wins 1 vs 3 of the white ship in prior post.

My advice. either work on better ship design so 5 can easily take on 7-10 or work on researching the techs that increase fleet size. They all have eagle like symbols in the tech tree to the left.



My latest game with victory conditions disabled (I quit when last enemy planet taken). One of my 6 26/26 fleets. cravers ftw

Mesthione wrote:
This is huge! The first game I played I didn't use this ratio and took massive losses from each battle. I read someone else suggesting this on a thread and in my second game as Cravers I tried to do more defense that attack. This ratio REALLY makes your fleets more durable, which lets them sometimes survive battles and even level up! Early game I was shooting for >100 kinetic defense, with at least enough kinetic attack to go through the average enemy armour (around 50-70 early game).

It really depends on the matchup. If you are outclassed by either technology or fleet size, then you need more defense to stand a chance (or like others said, go all missles for a suicide run). If you outclass them, defense is pointless. Put just enough defense to not lose ships, and maximize offense to quickly destroy them. Remember, a dead enemy can do you no harm, so quickly knocking half their fleet out will reduce your damage taken just as much as a few slots of defense modules.

madgiraf wrote:
I usually use 70% of a ship space for defense+hp and the rest goes for weapons.

This is huge! The first game I played I didn't use this ratio and took massive losses from each battle. I read someone else suggesting this on a thread and in my second game as Cravers I tried to do more defense that attack. This ratio REALLY makes your fleets more durable, which lets them sometimes survive battles and even level up! Early game I was shooting for >100 kinetic defense, with at least enough kinetic attack to go through the average enemy armour (around 50-70 early game).

I find that a well leveled hero in these situations can help a lot, right now I trained a hero that doubles my fleet damage, more movement points and less accuracy to the enemie. When I use this hero against the Cravers I can win even when the fight is fixed against me. Had several fights when I had a fleet with only the first guns of the game, holding against fleets with beams at turn 50.

deputydog wrote:
Just focus on research to get your fleet size up to 15. But yea something about multi fleet battles needs to be done. Seems silly to have 3 7 ship fleets parked and only one gets used.

Actuallly, I think this adds a lot of flavor. If you haven't bought the tech for increasing the CP cap and your opponent has, it makes sense that they have better coordination. So their fleets can be bigger and still be effective. If they change the game to raise the cap, then it all becomes about the "Stack Of Death" that many other games fall prey to. Yes it sucks to have your fleets chewed up piecemeal, but you can address it with better CP tech.

Duk wrote:
I'm having quite a lot of trouble with Cravers myself, due largely to the reasons you've stated. I find, however, that if you examine their ships and find their current defensive weakness, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by sending the correct fleets against them. Oh, and it helps to do a manual battle as well. I kept losing decisively with auto before I figured that one out.

How do you examine the enemy fleets to see what their weapon and defense types are? I can get a little bit of information from the summary dialog at the end of the battle which mentions "kinetic efficiency" and so forth. If I have high missile effectiveness, I know they had little/no flak. But that seems very indirect. Is there a better way?



Why is manual battle mode better than automatic? You only get to make one choice at each of the three steps. It doesn't "seem" like much skill is needed. Does it really give better results than automatic? What does the player AI for automatic do "wrong"?

If you don't have time to research more command points and your fleets are getting eradicated you can try building small ships armed full of missiles. They will get destroyed but will most likely take out some of the enemies. Kind of like a suicide attack but atleast it might take out some of them until you can stand toe to toe with them.

I find this one fleet max one attack to can be easly abused in multiplayer.

So wanna slow enemy adwance?

Send bazylion one(cheap) ship fleets to your system and spam them to enemy systems to harass them.

It will be better if one battle cost some movemnt points so fleet can fight a multiple battles in one turn.

Also automatic intercepting enemy fleets bypassing systems with your fleet will be fine.

You're welcome

Thanks. You're a gem. :P

I'm playing as the united empire and i'm currently battling against the cravers. At the moment i'm finding it difficult to win battles against them because their fleet sizes are larger than mine. At one point they could hold 7 (against my 5) and now they are up to 13! I've found a tech that will upgrade my fleet to 7 but obviously i'm still no match for them when they have 13. In the last battle I took two full fleets with me which held a total of 14 ships (7+7) against his one fleet of 13, so I had one more ship than him in the same system. However when I went into battle it only used one of my fleets so it was my 7 against his 13 so he won again, he then attached my other fleet so 7-13 again and wiped me out.



So even though I could take multiple fleets in to his system to attack it seems I can only use one fleet at a time which means i'll never be able to win. If I took 3 fleets of 7 into his system against his one fleet of 13 (21-13) shouldn't that give me some kind of advantage? I'm obviously not understanding something here, can someone help me out here?



Thanks

I guess I haven't come across that particular technology in the tech tree. Where is the tech that increases your maximum individual fleet size?



Also, that is something I too found annoying...having several fleets stationed in a system and only being able to fight with one of them, defend with one of them, rather.



How do you check the ship configuration of an enemy fleet, to know how to build a counter-ship? Thanks...

Can't you merge all the fleets into one fleet for the duration of the battle?

Just focus on research to get your fleet size up to 15. But yea something about multi fleet battles needs to be done. Seems silly to have 3 7 ship fleets parked and only one gets used.

Just had a game where I had three fully high tech stuffed sophon dreadnaughts in a hosshio system and the AI attacked me 10 times without stop on that turn with fully stuffed fleets.

I burned down every single one of them, even if they had more cp per fleet than me. Technological advantage or counterdesigning your ships to your enemies preferences or using a well leveled hero can all help a lot in such endeavours.

Put ships in roles that reflect the bonuses they give. This will give you a huge advantage in tonnage vs. your opponent. Also destroyer spam is near unbeatable at the moment.

I had this one game where I practically threw 30-40 ships at a system to take it over in groups of 7 vs the 12 that the computer could have. It ended in a 1:1 ratio of my all missile ships to their ships, but I still took over the system. Not sure why as the planet wasn't that important. The NPC really wanted that planet it seems but I wore them down and pretty much ran through the rest of their systems when all was said and done.

Firathmagi wrote:
designing ships right can be a pain some times

if fought a fleet that had 3 ships one ship had all beams one had all kinetics and one had all missiles

what do you build defend for then?

In alpha none, it is wast of time and ressources, the attack defens style needs some rework in my eyes. If u want to have an easy time with ships take the destroyer fit it only with ur strongest weapon mass produce it and done.

The att def system would be better a bit more traditional, ya know shields stoping all dmg till they collaps, rockets work on long range, lasers on mid and the good ol chunk spitters on meele.

Then could there be too stuff like ecms to give the rockets a run for there money. I dunno how fixed the att def system already is, but at least the def stuff needs an boost.

designing ships right can be a pain some times

if fought a fleet that had 3 ships one ship had all beams one had all kinetics and one had all missiles

what do you build defend for then?

You are looking at the wrong numbers, that is all. Sure Craven are at military advantage, but they have weaknesses also, and not small ones. Now regardless of the race, it's all about defense.



Want to beat those 13 ships with your 7 ? Find out what kind of weapons they use mainly. Once you found out they use kinetics for example, go to your design board and modify your current fleet designs, put 4-5-6 kinetic shield, put 4-5-6 HP armors, put the rest as one weapon type (i would advice 3-4 missiles and if any space left go for more def, if you can). Then retrofit, start the battle and use a defensive card for LR phase and you will see... 1 (fist) can beat 5 (fingers)...



In the early game I advice destroyers (corvettes are not bad either though only if you use modules), mid game destroyers and cruisers and late game cruisers only (or some dreadnoughts). No matter the stage of the game, one mistake I believe is common is to go for too much weapons and not enough defense/hp. I usually use 70% of a ship space for defense+hp and the rest goes for weapons.

This is probably the most important thing I have faced. I have several 7 ship fleets flying around as one armada and they get whipped by that single 13 ship fleet. Though I found a good Dreadnought mixed in gets the job done for a while. But later in the game you can't even buy new smaller ships because they get beaten by any other fleet.

Ive noticed that as well, that when ive got 3-4 fleets on a planet(or they do), and I attack, i dont attack/attack with all of them, just one. Then the turn is over and i dont get a chance to finish the rest...



Was a time where i was trying to cap a planet, and they sent 2 fleets, one of a good size to hold me off, and a scout. Every time I tried to kill the larger fleet, i engaged the scout, killed it, then had to end turn. At the begging of the next turn, the AI sent another friggin scout to the system, making me fight the scout yet again.



If we cant have the ability to attack with separate fleets, at least give us the ability to choose our target.

The craver NPCs tend to go with one weapon type... they start with all kinetic, then go a mix of kinetic and beam, then all beam, and then all missiles. Just make some special "anti-craver" ships with the appropriate armor for whatever they seem to be doing and you'll flatten them. I've noticed in general missiles are the most powerful weapons. The first stage is the missile stage so if you have a ton of ships with missiles you'll usually kill the enemy before they can get to the second "beam" stage of the battle.

I'm having quite a lot of trouble with Cravers myself, due largely to the reasons you've stated. I find, however, that if you examine their ships and find their current defensive weakness, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by sending the correct fleets against them. Oh, and it helps to do a manual battle as well. I kept losing decisively with auto before I figured that one out.

As far as I can tell it's always 1 fleet vs 1 fleet. If you attack with multiple fleets selected it seems to choose your most powerful one to attack with first.

This means you need to try to keep parity with your opponents. If they have a larger fleet size, you need to compensate with better techs for what you've got. Smaller, more powerful fleets can still destroy larger, less advanced ones.

On the other hand, if you have way superior production, you could throw fleet after fleet at his, zerging him basically, as long as you don't end fights having done no damage. Your fleets can continue to attack his one fleet in succession, to weaken then destroy it.