Reading the tactics section again, I'm slightly disappointed by the way this actually appears to be worked out. If, for example, the enemy is using glass cannon missile fleets, then no amount of formation tinkering is going to change the result: they'll always use spread fire, wiping out your weaker ships first regardless of your formation. I was originally assuming that this would be done as some sort of calculation, rather than by comparing the lists directly. The way this appears to be written, unless the enemy uses something /other/ than spread fire, the formations make no difference at all. Am I wrong?

could we use damaged ships as shields?

Well, here is your answer

•Use weak ships as a shield: ships with the least weapons are on top of the list;

I am guessing the 'list' is what ships are in front (correct me if I am wrong lol).

T41 wrote:
Well, here is your answer I am guessing the 'list' is what ships are in front (correct me if I am wrong lol).

but would a damage ship be listed as one with less weapons?

Shyrka wrote:
Reading the tactics section again, I'm slightly disappointed by the way this actually appears to be worked out. If, for example, the enemy is using glass cannon missile fleets, then no amount of formation tinkering is going to change the result: they'll always use spread fire, wiping out your weaker ships first regardless of your formation. I was originally assuming that this would be done as some sort of calculation, rather than by comparing the lists directly. The way this appears to be written, unless the enemy uses something /other/ than spread fire, the formations make no difference at all. Am I wrong?

Spread fire forces a even distribution of fire-power, making tanks much, much more effective at adsorbing damage.



The glass cannon strategy (And remember that weapons and defences are also being changed in the expansion) focuses on lots of all damage destroyers, designed to overwhelm enemy defences, however it takes little fire to kill enemy glass cannons, so the best solution is to use ships with enough guns to quickly kill enemy ships like 3 or 4 beam modules, and then fill the rest of the ship with HP, Repair and defence modules to totally dampen enemy fire-power enough to kill them before they kill you.



Destroyers work well for this, but corvettes with tonnage bonuses to repair modules might actually be better at this, evening out your own fleets with your own small ship fodder, and then topping them off with cruisers and up.



Spreading out fire-power will kill the corvettes within a few rounds, probably killing most of the corvs and 2/3rds of the destroyers, leaving the cruisers to finish off the destroyers within a round or two when their fire-power isn't concentrated enough to punch through.





This should technically work in the current ES version too, and should see you into the mid game of cruiser dominated war fair.

Will the formation change the targeting behavior of Fighters and Bombers at all?





if the enemy is using a High HP Ship as a shield (lets say a dreadnought)



will the Bombers and Fighters attack this ship at first?

I'd assume Bombers and fighters are the extension of a ships attack, thus they attack what their mothership attacks.

Formations are only really meaningfull, if you could assign specific weapons / armor to specific regions of a ship. If any formation is offering the same amount of dps (because it doesn't matter which side is facing the enemy!), while the targeting defines, which ships are going to die first, there is no point in a formation. Especially if we are talking about "tanking", there should be also thoughts about "line of sight". Which weapons can fire without line of sight? If it not possible, why should someone protect ships? It would only sacrifice his own dps.

Formations change the line up of ships to be targeted first.



The targeting orders separate targeting into 3 category:



Target every one evenly, target the first 3 enemy ships with 1 third of your entire fleet, requiring ships 1 round to re-target and finally target the first ship with every one requiring one round to re-target.





So targeting decides how many ships are shooting at the list of enemy ships, and formations decide how that list is ordered.



If an enemy likes to use dreadnoughts at the top of their list, then your ships might find it difficult to focus fire, or strong fire but might be able to pick of enemy support ships with spread fire, if you are lucky.



And similarly, if enemy dreads are giving your trouble, then when you warp in with your missile destroyers you might want to use strong of focus fire to ensure that your destroyers aren't wasting missiles on support ships who aren't the problem, requiring a true fleet effort to brake through enemy flak, and get the kill, even if your destroyers were glass cannons, no shots were where you didn't want them.



So yeah:



Targeting: How your ships target enemy list.



Formations: How your list is ordered.

I love the changes but I have one question.



What if you have a fleet with one Dreadnaught filled with tons of defense modules, several glass-canon destroyers and go for the "Defend the fleet" approach. Then you use the "emergency shelter" battlecard. Now, let's say that the enemy focuses his fire on the dreadnaught and manages to take it out (but the ship stays alive because of the emergency shelter). Does this mean that in the next phase the enemy ships will focus on the dreadnaught again or will they ignore it because it was "destroyed"?