Size of your fleet.

posted on June 17th, 2012, 7:54 pm

After several months playing this awesome mod , reading the guide and playing and losing a few online games I do have a few doubts and would like to know your opinion.

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[list='1'][li]What is the minimal size fleet you feel comfortable with to leave your base?. What I mean is that we noobs tends to try to build huge fleet before leaving our base, but by that time a most experience player have wipe out the noob's expansions or/and main base [/li]
[li]How you build so many ships in short period of time. Seriously guys how you do it.[/li]
[li]What's your strategy to scout with cloak races and not cloakers?[/li]
[li]How many scouts you use?[/li]
[li]Do you expand right after setting your first mining at your base or wait until you have a small fleet?[/li]
[li]In what conditions you go gg?[/li]
[li]What ships you feel are useless in an online game? and why?[/li]
[li]In your opinion which one is the best race? Why?[/li]
[li]What noob vice get you on your nerves when playing online in team games?[/li]
[li]What ship you would like to see fixed? Why? How?[/li]
[/list]

This is just pretty basic stuff and maybe have been asked and answered before, but while we wait for the next awesome patch and it's new things and strategies, we can learn to play the current one much better.

EDIT: Do you know how to use the list command?

[Myles]

posted on June 17th, 2012, 8:40 pm

Last edited by Myles on June 17th, 2012, 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

How many needed ships to leave your base:

Your fleet should be where it's useful, if you have no reason to think the enemy is about to attack you, then don't sit in your base with your fleet. there's no "magic numbers".

can you damage them with a raid? if yes, then go do so. if no, then just annoy them, make them see you near their expansion, then run somewhere else. keeps them thinking. maybe if they think your fleet is not near your base they will attack with a smaller fleet than their max, and you can kill it.

can you defend against their fleet? if not, then there's definitely no point sitting at home, if their fleet will beat your fleet, don't fight it. accept the losses at your base if you can't stop them, go get some kills of your own.

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How you build so many ships in short period of time. Seriously guys how you do it

hax. jk, some people go for optimal build orders, and time things accurately. personally i'm not a fan of that. good macro management of your resources is necessary. knowing when to expand comes with experience, you just "get a feel" for when it's time to expand.

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What's your strategy to scout with cloak races and not cloakers?

There's many many ways to scout, cloaking scouts are easier as you can just move them where you want to see stuff most of the time.

use specials for scouting too, they are useful. like venture sensor special, enemy won't know you used it at max range.

consider having a cloaked scout "guard" an enemy ship to follow their fleet.

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How many scouts you use?

as many as are needed. there's no magic number of scouts that is correct. if your enemy is being predictable then you need less scouts. if you need to know more before launching a carefully planned attack then you need more scouts.

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Do you expand right after setting your first mining at your base or wait until you have a small fleet?

Depends, both are valid, both give different strengths and weaknesses.

Expanding early gives more money (duh), building another yard lets you spam more. what do you want?

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In what conditions you go gg?

100 philosophers are still working on that question. gg too early and you're rude for denying your enemy a real victory. gg too late and you're dragging it out. most obvious situation to gg: you just lost your whole fleet and your enemy still has a fleet. also consider: your fleet is significantly smaller than your enemy's and/or they have way more mining than you. it's a judgement thing. it's mainly for when both sides can obviously see you're beaten.

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Next 2 questions probably belong in their own threads.

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What noob vice get you on your nerves when playing online in team games?

Getting annoyed at newer players isn't nice, everyone started new. expecting them to memorise the guide also isn't fair, a steep learning curve will just mean nobody new ever joins.

the main things new players do that they quickly learn not to do by playing are:

[li]Sit in base, don't play until have many sovvies[/li]

[li]build more turrets despite the fact nobody is attacking you[/li]

[li]Don't ever raid[/li]

[li]don't expand/expand way too slow/expand way too fast and have no fleet[/li]

[li]don't go help allies: you should always go help allies, letting your ally get attacked 2 on 1 will end the game. if you don't have teamspeak to ask them if they need money and they're being attacked a lot, give them some just in case, they probably can't use chat to type need money when they are busy trying to not die[/li]

[li]don't ask for guidance/don't take guidance. new players won't know most counters when starting, they should just ask what ships to build if they don't know yet. eg "my enemy has lots of sangs, should i build monsoon or intrepid?"[/li]

[li]exotic strategies before normal, aka running before you know how to walk. don't do a bortas rush, just build some vorchas, you'll almost never go wrong with vorchas in a team game[/li]

about lists: I can't get them to work either, and I'm reasonably sure I'm getting it right. list tags appear to be borked.

posted on June 17th, 2012, 8:40 pm

Well, I'm not going to go down the line but hopefully I can answer most of your questions in paragraph form.

I know it seems amazing how fast some players build up ships, but once you've played the game enough, you start to wonder how new players manage to build ships so slowly. It's important to realize that this is a fleet building game, and whoever has more ships will usually win. From the beginning of the game, you should assume that both players are going to be building ships as fast as they possibly can. If you have money, build more ships. If you build anything else, it should be because you want to get better ships. Many new players like to build a base just so they can have a base, and that's why they don't have very many ships. You really can't afford to get an Eraudi yard or Starfleet Science until you have several ships on the board, unless you are specifically rushing to SFC or a particular Eraudi vessel.

When you move out is dependent on your race and the build you are using: if you are fairly certain that you can overpower your enemy later in the game, then you should focus on defending your base instead of moving out. Most of the time, however, it will be important to pressure the enemy with small, fast ships very early. Basically you should move out when you have enough firepower to kill something: if the enemy has an expansion with no repair yard you can attack with as few as 2-3 ships, but if he has a yard you will need more so that you can kill miners before they manage to repair. Obviously it's important to scout his fleet strength as well to know how careful you need to be.

There are 2 ways to deal with a cloaker: one is to use your race's active cloak detect, and the other is to simply build up until you can kill them before they cloak out. In team games, you can join up with your ally to increase your firepower suddenly and deal them a crushing blow. Don't engage them if you can't get kills, but as soon as you have a fleet big enough to kill their ships in a few seconds, go fight them at their repair yard.

People in team games will get annoyed if you build up a base with no ships, or a whole bunch of turrets that keep you safe and don't help your allies at all. When people tell you to bring your fleet, bring it right away; if you wait 10 seconds to move they will often die without you and get mad.

You should have a general idea of where your enemy's fleet is and what he is building at all times. If you need a whole bunch of scouts to learn this, then you need to build a whole bunch of scouts. If you are in a team game with a cloaker, pay him to build them for you.

posted on June 17th, 2012, 10:55 pm

Thanks guys both very useful answers.

@Myles: about the gg, sometimes you see players that gg too soon when still have a chance to come back IMO.
you see how your list of vices is related to my first question, the most difficult thing to do is to know when to leave your base, because some want to create a wall of turrets to defends their base, while others stay building ships and never had the chance to attack.

@Tryptic: Thanks for addressing something I forgot How to deal with cloakers. I am practicing what you said how to built faster, sometimes you start building stations you don't need and waste time and resources and get kicked in the ass.

Good input

posted on June 17th, 2012, 10:59 pm

the most difficult thing to do is to know when to leave your base

I think I can make a rough rule about this:

If you're in game and you're doing nothing and your mind drifts to thinking about this paragraph I'm writing then you're sitting in your base too much, go do something. raid / mislead the enemy by making them think you're gonna attack / fly around common traffic lanes in the slim hope of catching miners, just do something. because you shouldn't have time to sit there and recall this paragraph.

posted on June 18th, 2012, 2:01 pm

posted on June 19th, 2012, 4:10 pm

What noob vice get you on your nerves when playing online in team games?

Getting annoyed at newer players isn't nice, everyone started new. expecting them to memorise the guide also isn't fair, a steep learning curve will just mean nobody new ever joins.

the main things new players do that they quickly learn not to do by playing are:

[li]Sit in base, don't play until have many sovvies[/li] Or atleast 10 of each ship from the early yard.

[li]Don't ever raid[/li] When you've got only 6 ships and they have 12 and you put up a full expansion when they did its not worth it.

[li]don't expand/expand way too slow/expand way too fast and have no fleet[/li] I have to have a dedicated fleet(no less than ten) to defend home and then one to commit to an expansion . My defensive mind will accept nothing less to feel safe.

[li]don't go help allies: you should always go help allies, letting your ally get attacked 2 on 1 will end the game. if you don't have teamspeak to ask them if they need money and they're being attacked a lot, give them some just in case, they probably can't use chat to type need money when they are busy trying to not die[/li] The thing is I move my ships there as soon as possible but I hardly ever get there in time and im only like 5k away from them.

As far as scouting I only ever have time to do so for like not even 10 seconds every few minutes because I have to concentrate so much on other things.

I just can't keep up period. I know its because im so defensive but 15 years of C&C games and then doing it for both Aramdas aswell would do that to you since it actually pays to be so really defensive but still being somewhat offensive toowith thoose games. I try to not do it but again its the way thats worked for me since 1996. Why stop now?

posted on June 19th, 2012, 4:24 pm

scouting tip when you have a cloaked scout free and no time to micro it at all:

just send it to unexplored expansions and occasionally check on minimap to see if there's any enemy buildings there. takes very little effort and explores map. and makes sure the enemy doesn't expand without you knowing. that's like a bare minimum scouting action that takes very little time.

that way at least your scout isn't doing nothing.

posted on June 20th, 2012, 12:10 am

How about give your scout a patrol order with a predefined path?

posted on June 20th, 2012, 1:35 am

How about give your scout a patrol order with a predefined path?

Very useful on unknown maps. You remember the direction of your expansion(s) from the minimap in lobby, and set a predefined path to that direction and then near your enemy base (maybe even through his expansion) - and there you go, got rid off a lot of shroud, and you can see key positions, while being able to focus on your build up.

Due current system i wouldn't recommend it in later progress of the game (no minimap usage, takes too much time often with larger distances). Just bind a hotkey to it, and click (on the minimap) where you want it to explore - way more easily as cloaker though.

(edit: just my personal use, it should always suit your gameplay!)