As an experiment, I put a stationary decoy cruiser in one corner. I then put my battlelines in the opposite corner. I then used the escort command so that in each line, the first two ships were escorting the stationary decoy, and then chain escorted the odd ships to follow the odd ones, and the even to follow the even numbered ships at the appropriate spacing.
The result was that my ships were moving perpendicular to the enemy force, but the battle line stayed perfectly perpendicular to the enemy approach.
Something I am going to try the next time I do a survival challenge. I am going to completely chain my cruisers. 1 will escort 2, 2 will escort 3, and 3 will escort 4, with 4 escorting 1. Have the “keep moving” command so that my ships continually wheel about, hopefully allowing them to recover and repair in turn.
I’ve tried that idea on a couple of occasions too, the old ‘crossing the T’ maneuver. The results are always a bit random for my liking though - I find if the enemy is centrally-deployed, the lead escort ships can end up moving away from the fight.
It is a really cool idea though, so nice work if you’ve got it right - care to post a challenge?
I’ll post a challenge with my version of crossing the T in a while.
I use a single decoy to force my enemy to move to where i want them, then have them hit a line 2-3 deep of fast, cruiser or MWM missile fenrir’s behind a single line of shielded, repairing AM/AA cruisers
It is more of a gimmick than a challenge. The simplest way to beat it is send the whole fleet straight at the stationary decoy ship in the corner. And granted, it won’t die fast, but after that, your entire fleet will be heading in a COLUMN straight at the enemy fleet.
Worse, as a challenge, the players will quickly see what the orders are, and exploit them. They can do a counter set up, with similar escort commands, heading straight for the decoy, with the end result that THEIR fleet will be in a nice line, perpendicular to my hapless challenge fleet’s advance.
Gah, screwed up the pronouns. As a challenge, it is purely a gimmick. A gimmick that is beatable by heading straight for the decoy ship with everything.
At that point, the challenge fleet will be dutifully heading in a column to its decoy fleet, and the player taking the challenge can cross the T.
I suppose the trick would be to have two challenges. Identical appearing setups, the only difference would be in the commands given to the fleet. Then the challenge is to beat BOTH challenges with identical fleets and orders.
yes, but with suffiecent work any fleet CAN be beaten. If i can using ship placement force an enemy to do what i want even once, i won
Likewise, much better to have a column of foes. They’ll spread out based on speed, and the fact it’s a column not a row means you’ll have fewer ships firing on you at once, and fewer targets to concentrate fire on
When I get a bit more familiar with the system, I think I will make a series of challenges. Identical offensive fleets. Identical starting positions. But each challenge has different orders. And the objective is to develop a fleet and order set that can beat each of the challenges.
Imagine you are an real space Admiral, and you have good intelligence as to the enemy fleet make up, and general battle tactics, but you only have one chance to give your orders to beat the enemy, no matter what he does. You can’t just send back and get a different fleet just because the enemy changes their orders.
Or maybe have multiple sets of orders. hehe
Some boolean algebra… You fleet would have multiple scenarios and would react based on the enemy. Or maybe the admiral could change his orders during the battle?