Structuring your fleets

[Kinjiru]

Once you have access to a variety of hull sizes and weapon/shield combos, what kind of fleets do you prefer?

I have had the best luck building fleets like look like this:

1 Large or Huge badboy bristling with weapons (single class only) and defense combined with a swarm of Tiny fighters with one or two (high-class) weapon(s) and no defense. I usually have 3 sets of fighters, one for each weapon class.

The fighters are very cheap, so easily replacable, which is why I don't worry about defense for them.

If my enemies have left any gaps in their defensive techs, I will simply go with a single weapon class on the big badboys. Otherwise I will build two or three classes of my large ships, each dedicated to a single weapon class.

At any rate, if there is an upgraded military starbase nearby, this kind of force structure is incredibly hard to defeat. And even if we battle in freespace, it is the fighters that tend to go first, so I just bring up reinforcements and replenish the fleet as necessary.

[Gufnork]

Since I usually play Dratha, I tend to build as large ships as possible with a very high defense rating. As an evil race I'd load up on guns, but still keeping them as big as possible.If you have a swarm of tiny fighters, you will incur unnecessary losses. A fleet of large ships will be completly impossible for the AI to even take out a single ship, especially if you replace any heavily damaged ship and let it repair itself. It won't take long for the fleet to become invincible and the only reason to build more ships is pretty much to speed up the process.

Since the weakest ship is always targetted in combat there is no reason whatsoever to have a varied fleet. I can see the point in having one ship loaded with sensors, but other than that it would only create weak spots for the enemy to take advantage of. If you had any control whatsoever on tactical combat things might be different. This also has the added benefit of reducing micromanagement, you can just set all planets to build the same ship and never worry again.

[LDiCesare]

A fleet of tiny ships is the best against opponents who have poor defense, as you get to fire first when you attack, you will most of the time suffer no casualty. If the opponent has defenses, then using bigger ships with more attack power is mandatory.

[tetley]

I mix-and-match. My low-class planets put out tiny ships, my manufacturing capital is putting out capital ships. The fleets of tinies are nice. You may lose a ship or two every major battle, but the survivors are gaining experience. Eventually you get one heck of a fleet. The larger hulls I actually find most beneficial not from the added firepower, but the speed--I can fit an extra engine on board. For that reason mixing mediums & tinies in a fleet isn't always beneficial (because you move at the slowest speed). But sometimes that's all you have around & all you can do.

[Veblen]

I find mixing ship types is not very useful for two reasons. First, the fleet moves at the speed of the slowest ship; second, the enemy fires on the "most dangerous" ship. Therefore, any speed difference between ships in a fleet is essentially wasted, as is any extra armor on ships that don't get shot.

Because of this, I segregate ships based on speed, and design it so that ships of a certain speed class have approximately the same weapons to armor ratio. This way, "wasted" speed and "wasted' armor tend to be minimized.

I find that putting the speed of the ship in its name is useful for keeping fleets coordinated.

[Peets]

I do the same Veblen
I actually find it interesting that it works this way, brings more strategy imo. I have to think harder what fleets I'm going to create and how many and for what use. Mostly I create one sensor ship too for the fleet, it won't get attacked cause I give it one weapon less then the others. Making it a very nice scan ship.

The same with range, I believe. But I hardly use it.

[tetley]

It's not the fleets I try to mix, it's the production I mix. If I mix a fleet, it's simply because I have to fight a battle, and those were the ships I had in the area.