Green Maritime Pod Strategy

[Mead]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
1. Flubber, you've played a fair bit of PBEM's. I suspected that was the case. Have you ever played in a campaign that got seriously naval?

2. Did any players try "combined arms" stacks of ships, i.e. combining various high/specialized defense plus high attack, with the deliberate calculation they were going to take losses. I would suspect that would work just as well as on land, ***

3. Does anybody know if you can put interceptors on patrol over a carrier group? Never needed to in single player, and I could see a serious need in multiplayer (I might stick this in a new thread if nobody reading this seems to know ).

1. Flubber IMHO has a good reputation. I think he would be a worthy PBEM opponent. I do not think he likes naval combat. I think he, like myself, would prefer to use airpower to sink the ships (IODs). Sea power is vulnerable to destruction (at Air Power's choosing) whereas Air Power, unless based at a sea base, cannot be destroyed by Sea Power.

2. Combined Arms is the way to go in this game. I think it is more of an Art verses a Science in using the various strengths of my divergent units to offset the weaknesses of my others to make a formidable combined force. If you are combining very well-armored (perhaps AAA as well) units to absorb the damage from attacking units, how do you avoid collateral damage to the stack when one is destroyed? Do you have staged stacks?

Generally, although naval units have greater mobility than land units (though far less than air units) they cannot make use of the multiple combat enhancers to the land units. Think Base (*1.25), * Sensor (*1.25), * perimeter (*2), * Aerospace Center - for air defense (*2), plus if available tachyan (*2?), plus since I just discovered SMAX, geowhatever (*1.25). If my units are going to be attacked I want them (unless they are sea units), in a base to make my opponents attack very expensive for my opponent. If my sea units are in a base it gives the attacker a +100% bonus on the attack. This means I cannot have my sea units in a base and they forgo those defensive multipliers.

3. If you are able to use interceptors effectively to protect your carrier groups it would change the dynamics of the game. Please let us know the results of your scenario editor trials. If I was able to effectively develop and use carrier-based tactics, my enjoyment of the game would increase. If I could use carrier airpower then watch out TF 34 and TF 58 here I come.



Mead

[Flubber]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Flubber, you've played a fair bit of PBEM's. I suspected that was the case. Have you ever played in a campaign that got seriously naval?

Not really-- since most games ARE decided by airpower-- As mead points out, collateral damage is the reason that stacking does not work that well. generally ships have only 3 level armour in an era where 6 level weapons are available. You need AA just to give them an EVEN chance . I generally don't stack ships but prefer a swarm approach, trying to limit detection. But for me the naval era is usually pretty much over, except for basic patrol ships, when I get airpower.

I only had one big naval game and my solution was decidedly non-naval. It was back in AXT042 . I had the drones against the sole surviving Gaians and we both had huge empires ( the 3 AI and 2 other humans were all conquest victims of one or the other).

I was advancing naval units down a number of seas and took two seabases. But my opponent was building a HORDE of probe cruisers ( elite and with the MCC) and he probed the bases right back ( killed my probe defender)-- I saw this could be a big issue. tring to hunt down and defend from multiple ships was just looking too hard-- I had to negate his growing naval advantage

My solution -- All my ships returned to port and were disbanded for minerals. YES . .. I abdicated the seas to my opponent and went on huge land raising campaign. ( I had the WP and massive numbers of formers IIRC) There were only three channels to my ancestral homeland so I CLOSED them all. . I created a HUGE inland sea around my original island and eliminated all my vulnerable ports except for a couple where I could patrol heavily.

It took some time but it was key in allowing me to hold my tech lead, and making his probeships less of a threat. I eventually won after getting the cloning vats as I could outproduce him and the CBA was a key when I established new outposts)-- Hardly an epic naval battle but it is an example why I'm not big on navies-- I won my first ever PBEM at least partly by getting rid of my navy

[UnityScoutChopper]

One, you do not limit the development of a productive square.

This will depend a lot on which terraforming paradigm you prefer -- e.g. if you're a "forest/boreholes/treefarms" player, this consideration isn't too important.

Two, the sensor cannot be destroyed.

In SP, this will not be so important, since it is far from guaranteed that your enemy will make a concerted effort to go for your sensors first. In MP before D:AP, you could achieve much the same simply by keeping your first or second sensors two spaces behind the frontier bases. After D:AP, that benefit really comes into play, IF you have nothing with which to scramble against bombers on that frontier. But I still wouldn't slow down the founding of a base or delay some other terraforming for it.

When using Sikander spacing, there is one nice benefit: a single sensor under a base (and ONLY under a base) offers protection to *FIVE* base squares.... well, as opposed to the usual *four* :-).

USC

[sammy1339]

Awww, come on... why's everybody always bashing ships? I agree that air power is more important, but that does not mean that naval power is useless. All it means is that before relying on naval power you need air superiority.
If you have more than 8 spaces of sea between you and your opponent, you will need naval transports if you want to attack eachother. Say you build a big navy consisting of all the foils and cruisers you used to pop the pods in the early game, plus some more cruisers, SAM cruisers, and carriers with interceptors in them, which hide in the back ranks or the fungus with AAA units guarding them. That's a huge investment, I grant. But consider this: every single air or naval unit your enemy sends out into that sea is almost certainly going to die. If he kills your cruiser with a jet, you are guaranteed to kill his jet with a SAM cruiser or interceptor, making it an even exchange. The only way he can come out on top is if he hits your aircraft carrier, and considering that every unit he sends out searching for those carriers is going to die on your turn, going after them is a risky business. That means that you can get units into his territory and he can't get units into yours. And all the while you are bombarding his shoreline.
If you built 20 land units instead, they would sit in your territory waiting for the enemy, or half of them would die on their way to the other continent.
If you built 20 air units instead, you could defend your territory from enemy troops coming in on transports, but you could not send over troops of your own without having enemy air and sea units attack them.
I like boats.

[CEO Aaron]

Boats are swell, but completely unnecessary, given that you can cheaply raise a land-bridge between yourself and any neighboring continents. I do typically build a good amount of naval units, but these are primarily probe foils, a crowd of cheap armed foils to capture sea bases and bombard shore positions, and a crowd of trance transports for pod-popping (I'm a rabid free marketeer, so I usually rely on having the Neural Amplifier)

The purpose of any naval production is to steal tech, grab pods or police up the infinite sea bases the AI insists on seeding all around the globe. I've never gotten carriers early enough to have an effect on a game whose outcome was in doubt, though I have used carriers full of Quantum PB's to great and hilarious effect on an entrenched but stone-aged foe.

[sammy1339]

I agree that there are alternatives to using a navy. However, since you build all those ships early on for pod popping and bombarding, why not capitalize on that in the late game? If you establish naval superiority you can kill your enemy's formers rather easily with cheap kamikaze units like recon rovers (even in the late game the formers have the same defense and a 20 mineral recon rover can take them), or you can counter with sea formers, or you can build enough troops to start your land invasion before he puts that bridge up, or if you have carriers you can try to establish air superiority over your enemy's territory. It takes some time for your opponent to terraform that much (alot of time, if you work to stall it), and during that time you as the player with naval superiority have the advantage.
But you're right, boats are swell.