Examples of maneuvering combat

[PAwleus]

For the sake of gathering them in one place I present here screenshots showing different examples of maneuvering combat from 0.3.109 Skirmish and from my recent 0.3.109-120 campaign. They will probably be outdated with coming 0.4 versions and actually examples done before 0.3.112 are already slightly outdated (mainly because starting distance to enemy is shorter now).

1. 2 Lancehead Adv Pulsar Spiker Escorts vs 1 Alien Plasma Skirmish Dreadnought: https://imgur.com/a/RQZ0BQF (this series of screenshots is supposed to show how powerful missile alpha-strikes can be and that purely Group Orders are enough to win without losses)

2. 9 Ares Adv Pulsar Escorts vs static wall of 9 heavily protected coil cannon human Destroyers: https://imgur.com/a/udCaKvI (this series of screenshots is supposed to show how easily such a wall can be destroyed with proper missile tactics and by extension what the Aliens could do to it with more competent AI)

3. Ares torpedoes stacked: https://imgur.com/LR0er9T (this screenshot is supposed to show that even torpedoes can be stacked when launched properly - in this case during acceleration by a ship with equal combat acceleration as the torpedoes)

4. My first combat against a large ship during the campaign, 4 Viper Fission Spinner Escorts vs Alien Coil Dreadnought: https://imgur.com/a/JpdscCf (this series of screenshots is supposed to show that small early force can deal with a large alien ship without losses and Group Orders are enough to do so)

5. 16 Lancehead Pegasus Escorts vs 3 torpedoe Corvettes and alien station: https://imgur.com/a/X6QKybS (this short series of screenshots from the campaign shows final stages of the attack run on the station after dealing with Corvettes by 2 absent at the moment Escorts - it's supposed to show that Plasma/Laser combo is far from enough defense for the station and can be dealt with without losses even by lowly Escorts)

6. 15 coil cannon Daedalus Corvettes vs alien station and its screen: https://imgur.com/a/XJLruRe (this short series of screenshots from the campaign is supposed to show that late-game Corvettes have to attack at much higher velocity to be equally effective as missile Escorts against alien stations)

7. standard late-game highly-maneuverable wall (5 Destroyers and 20 Corvettes) vs small Mothership fleet: https://imgur.com/a/mGNPW7K (this series of screenshots is supposed to show in details the late-game pursuing combat - redone in 0.3.123 so after winning the campaign)

8. standard late-game highly-maneuverable wall vs Able Station and its screen: https://imgur.com/a/z46ikCR (this series of screenshots is supposed to show in details the late-game maneuverable combat against a substantial alien fleet defending alien main station - redone in 0.3.125 so after winning the campaign)

[DarthVicious]

The alien weakness with missiles/torps i think is that they do not coordinate fire. Or have too few missile boats. So even fleets with 'weak' PD can easily take out incoming alien missiles and projectiles with some mutual support.

I suck at maneuvring battles myself, and dont have the patience to play with the vector controls. For this reason probably dont get the best out of missiles. I tend to just go with wall of death and mixed fleets that can support each other. I also hate running out of missiles (larger battles).

My favorite combination is a mix of plasma cannons and coil cannons, backed up by laser batteries and point defense. For small 'patrol' fleets i will just go with destroyers mounting coil cannons with laser batteries and pointdef, and reserve the plasma cannons for heavier assault ships (battle cruisers or lancers).

I will occasionally build a heavily armored battleship with only lasers and heavy PD and move it out ahead of my fleet to tank incoming fire. Early game i might build a few monitors as dedicated PD ships (4x 60cm lasers). They can tank a suprising amount of fire.

My 'tactic', such as it is, is to force enemy ships into maneuvring so that i can get flank shots with lasers. Heavier enemy ships usually just get taken out by the coilguns regardless, while smaller ships that can evade the coilguns take a lot of laser and plasma damage until they slow down enough to be taken out by the coilguns.

There was a time when UV Phasers would wipe everything in short order. The change that added more armor to alien ships slowed down the laser damage significantly, but it still works. Anything short of a mothership gets wasted by just a handful of coilgun hits. Motherships also can tank massive amounts of coilgun hits, but they do go down to a concerted barrage.

[PAwleus]

The alien weakness with missiles/torps i think is that they do not coordinate fire. Or have too few missile boats.

It's not just that - the key factor in missile combat is to launch at high enough relative velocity to destroy (or at least heavily damage) enemy with what you have while the launching is short enough in time and the relative velocity low enough that running away (at least temporarily) and avoiding most of enemy fire (especially their missiles) is still possible. This is why small, nimble ships are the best for it.

[Starstrider42]

Thanks for posting these. Do you have any tips for maneuvering under laser fire? The aliens have adapted to my tactics to date (attack with missiles, defend against guns) by deploying high acceleration (3-3.5 G), heavily armored (e.g., 52/18/27 gunship) laser specialists. And I've learned the hard way that token side armor won't stop a violet laser strike even at 1000 km...

[PAwleus]

IIRC, Violet Laser of Gunship doesn't even have the range of 1000km. Anyway, your missile boats have to be light and they have fast turning rates thanks to it so after the period of acceleration you should immediately turn your back to laser ships, launch missiles and accelerate away. Try not to show your side to them and if you have to do it then do it for as short time as possible. For me 2 side armor on my missile Escorts was enough until the end of the game.

You should also remember that radiators should be retracted (if it's possible) because otherwise the damage you notice most probably comes from radiator hits.

With such heavily armored opponents it's also important to upgrade your missiles to Lanceheads and launch them at higher relative velocity. Higher relative velocity makes your missiles harder to dodge, it gives higher damage to missiles so even one hit can destroy a Gunship (Lanceheads are Penetrators) and it extends range of missiles so they can be launched outside of the range of even largest laser weapons (laser ships might even not have any opportunity of firing at your ships before they have to do evasive maneuvers and deal with your missiles). The simplest method to achieve it is by moving away from the enemy first and then making your attack run.

[Starstrider42]

No, all alien lasers have a targeting range of 1000 km. Maybe it was different in an earlier version.

I haven't tried an initial retreat except in (human) station attacks; I just assumed the enemy would chase me and close range. I'll give that a shot. As you noted in the OP, the initial range in recent versions is close enough that they can definitely return fire if you just accelerate forward.

[PAwleus]

They don't pursue you immediately so you can easily build enough gap and you don't even need much DV for that - 2km/s for moving away is plenty.

[silburnl]

I've been having trouble executing these fast-pass missile attacks in my current game. I can get pretty solid grouping by launching under acceleration, but as often as not I will see the targets reacting with a hard lateral burn of their own, which the missiles don't, or can't, counteract during their terminal approach leaving me with several dozen burned-out missiles sailing off into the black. My next experiment will see me holding the attack until I'm closer in but I'm already launching closer in than the ranges you cite in your examples so I don't see how I can execute an attack while taking minimal return fire if I have to press in closer before launching.

The alternative is to try a longer approach run by opening the range first to build up more closing velocity than can be achieved by the standard starting separations, but I will need to try out some re-designs to squeeze out more delta-V from my missile boats before I can try this experiment.

I'm not as tech'd up as your examples however (my escorts are using advanced pulsars/copperheads/adamantane) are your tactics successful because you've got the faster/tougher escorts that can pull them off or did you develop them on lower tech platforms, then fine tune as you got better kit?

[Starstrider42]

I'm not as tech'd up as your examples however (my escorts are using advanced pulsars/copperheads/adamantane) are your tactics successful because you've got the faster/tougher escorts that can pull them off or did you develop them on lower tech platforms, then fine tune as you got better kit?

Something I didn't appreciate until recently is that explosive missiles are really bad for these sorts of tactics -- only 10% of their kinetic energy gets turned into damage. Or, put another way, about 2/3 of the damage listed in-game is a fixed amount from the warhead. (I've asked the devs to put some indication in-game.)

Of the early-game missiles, Vipers are much better (about 2× damage) on high-speed runs. Looking at the specs (i.e., haven't tried it), Riverjacks already do more damage than Vipers at 2-3 kps but have smaller fuel reserves of their own.

[PAwleus]

I've been having trouble executing these fast-pass missile attacks in my current game. [...]

With missiles you will usually achieve much tighter swarms when launched after you stopped accelerating - torpedoes should be launched during acceleration. If your targets are nimble and without PD (eg. alien 4G Corvettes) and you don't have deltaV to move firstly away from target, you need to launch missiles (especially with lower than 4G accelerations so Copperheads and Lanceheads) during acceleration (while maneuvering along the axis of the target escape) and stagger them even in more than one combat phase as even such targets won't be able to evade them all so at some point they will stop evading regarding it as useless and turn their front to missiles.

As Starstrider42 already said, it's much better to use Vipers instead of Copperheads (I wouldn't recommend Riverjacks as their firing rate is slower) - they are better for early game optimal missile tactics and they additionally can be used as an anti-missile. You could see designs from my recent game here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1176470/ ... 3682981249

[Starstrider42]

They don't pursue you immediately so you can easily build enough gap and you don't even need much DV for that - 2km/s for moving away is plenty.

Sorry, I haven't been able to get this to work (this was with 2.5 g ships; I'm up to 3.2 g with my latest designs). The aliens consistently reacted at the 4-minute mark, which gave me a maximum separation of 1500 km. However, I ended up releasing missiles at much closer range, and -- maybe because I was going slower relative to the grid -- the salvo wasn't properly compressed. I always got better results if I just started at 650 m/s and accelerated forward (that meant release at 3.5 kps/850 km, and closest approach of maybe 300-350 km).

FWIW, I've never been able to get acceleration-based compression to be worth the trouble -- the results depend too much on your exact acceleration and speed, the missiles' acceleration, range to the target, etc. Releasing at 3-4 kps (depends on the missile, but haven't figured out how) makes the missiles skip their initial burn, giving you near-perfect compression for zero effort, plus extra fuel for the terminal phase.

[PAwleus]

Sorry, I haven't been able to get this to work (this was with 2.5 g ships; I'm up to 3.2 g with my latest designs). The aliens consistently reacted at the 4-minute mark, which gave me a maximum separation of 1500 km.

Your ships have too low acceleration for being good at achieving the separation. However, while 1500km is not enough when you are trying to disengage it might be enough for combat. Anyway, I would suggest to design ships with more acceleration, especially when you are not using torpedoes - it's much better for them to have higher acceleration than stronger armor.

FWIW, I've never been able to get acceleration-based compression to be worth the trouble -- the results depend too much on your exact acceleration and speed, the missiles' acceleration, range to the target, etc.

As I said earlier only torpedoes should be launched during acceleration because only for them you can achieve the perfect acceleration-based compression (your acceleration just has to be the same as your torpedoes) - that's of course only a general rule because there are circumstances when a missile compression isn't important enough (eg. against 4G alien Corvettes).