Suggestions on how to build a star fleet

[warman45]

regardless of wether your using microspace or minifig scale starships you will want to build a balanced fleet.

ok you may WANT to build the biggest gun ever but you NEED a balanced starfleet. why? well shut up sit down and i'll tell you.

i have noticed that many people (every person i have seen) uses the strategy to rush with fighters and bombers first, followed by smaller ships, and shortly after the capitol ships.

i have a simple tactic to defeat these rush attacks quickly and effieciently with lots of mayhem and destruction (yay!) this tactic begins with the planning and or refitting of your fleet (if you do not already posses the required ships)

to have an effective starfleet you need to have specialized ships. the "one size fits all" approach to starships won't work unless you build massive 3000 stud long juggernaughts.

the first ship you will need (and the first you will send into battle) is a small escort - corvette class ship (preferably 2) this ship MUST posses STRONG AND DEDICATED AA weapons. what i mean is it must posses many small guns that will easilly track and shoot down incoming shuttles and attack craft.

afterwards you should follow up with destroyers and ships dedicated to taking out corvettes and AA ships. ONLY AFTER THE ENEMY HAS NO MORE AA SHIPS DO YOU LAUNCH ATTACK CRAFT STRIKES! once more, when the enemies AA field is disabled attack with all your strike craft. fighters should intercept attacking craft and escort bombers and boarding vessels.

finally follow up with tyhe big guns, with support from your smaller vessels you should have a minor edge. i suggest boarding enemy vessels at critical points (guns, engines) and placing explosives, then retreating with your forces intact. using this strategy to overwhelm the enemies flagship before it can cause signficant damage.

[Strana]

actually you bring up good points. as such there are ways of defeating the swarming tactics used in the fleet battle, (but not against an actual swarmer force)

heres some of the specialized ships and weapons useful for dealing with fighter groups.

First of all there are space torpedoes, now in the fleet enagement i did not use them in the anit fighter roll, since i had rushed my fighters forward but these are huge warhead carrying vast destructive potential namely because they poses a huge ring of destruction, up to 20" across (1d20) with my fleet having 4 of them at Mk V and mk VII strength that will usually wipe a fighter group. two are specially designed anti fighter ships, i prefer the gunboat class

whils RoC has his frigate class

but most worri some to large ships, and really shat inspired all this anti fighter work was this vehicle
the swarmer

mainly because you could pack a huge mass of these little buggers even in the ships janitorial closet. if the hodgpodge was partially redesigned(internally) it could hold close to 40 or more of these little buggers. one of the answers to this was the RoC's D-pod

But generally shiops tend to fall into these categories

AF- or antifighter is quite clear what its goal is
Beam/Lance- usually one enormouse gun ie at least almost the length of the ship these will be your heavy long hitters
Assault- heavily armed with a mix of weaponry, mostly centered around a primary heavy turret(s), usually backed up with slightly shorter range weaponry.
Carrier, usually heavy antifighter capabilities, but also either a lance type spine weapon or 1-3 heavy turrets. usually high internal capacity
Juggernaught- several large turrets with as much forward facing firepower as possible, no weapons below class V heavy shield and armor. roughly all veseels will fite into these deignations, because thier weapons tend to dictate thier roles.

I have
1 AF gunboat
1 Lancer Gunboat
1lancer Frigate
1 destroyer assault ship and
1 assault carrier destroyer

[pesgores]

All tactics can be countered with better ones.

Nice tips.

[Theblackdog]

I'm not sure that Warman's idea will work. Basically, he starts out with the assumption that a fighter swarm can be a threat to big capital ships, and then goes on to suggest sending smaller capital ships in to fight against it. If you use this strategy, you'll probably get one round of epic destruction as you slaughter the enemy, and then lose both escorts. Especially if your enemy's capships are supporting the fighter swarm with lances, small boarding shuttles, and torpedoes.

Strana makes some good points, especially about torpedoes, but these are pretty vulnerable to attack as they close. You could surround them with a small squadron of escort fighters to block attacks, or refit a shuttle as a "torpedo boat" to carry them into combat.

The best strategy against such a swarm is to use several different attacks to cover each individual strategy's weaknesses. Start with anti-fighter missiles. During the Epic Fleet Battle Strana found that these were a liability in a long battle, but if they had enough range they could tear enemy fighters apart before the fighters are in range. Once you've softened up the enemy squadron with a missile barrage, make one pass with your fighters to hit key targets like torpedoes, bombers, and boarding craft, then send out your escorts to finish the job. You don't want to let the escorts get too far from the main body of the fleet, lest they be picked off by unsupported ships. Personally I favor balanced escorts rather than specialized ones. RoC's escorts are a good example; they carry heavy missiles and a big nose cannon for anti-warship combat, plus small missiles, auto guns, and D-pods for fighter suppression.

[Olothontor]

Hmmm. None of this would work particularly well in my BrikSpace module.

And yet I feel like these kind of tactics should work to some small extent.

Perhaps it's time for a revamp.

[Theblackdog]

Hmmm. None of this would work particularly well in my BrikSpace module.

In your brikspace module, the best way to combat fighters is with burst cannon, no?

Also, I think you should have range limits on your weapons -- without limited range, there's no reason to move your ships at all. The unlimited-range burst cannon is an especially big problem, since it removes fighters' speed advantage entirely.

[Olothontor]

Good point. I believe you brought that up before, and I managed to forget to look into it.

[Strana]

actually fighter can do quite a bit of damage, one of my fighter groups went after rocs af frigate, and damaged it severely, unfortunatly they didnt get a second attack run because they were busy fighting rocs fighters and d pods.

[Theblackdog]

actually fighter can do quite a bit of damage, one of my fighter groups went after rocs af frigate, and damaged it severely, unfortunatly they didnt get a second attack run because they were busy fighting rocs fighters and d pods.

That's just my point -- anti-fighter frigates are more or less pointless, because they're just one ship facing down a lot of enemies. Much better to use fighters and missiles against other fighters, and use escorts to mop up targets.

More space combat ideas I had:

-- Kamikaze troops flying swarmer-type vehicles. The kamikaze wears an mk.III bomb strapped to his back and carries a couple of grenades or a CC weapon to fight off enemy marines. He flies to an enemy ship, jumps from his ship to the hull, fights his way to the nearest control panel, and BOOM! He can also jump onto the hull of an enemy fighter and blow himself up to kill it. The best part is that the fighters are reusable -- just shuttle another group of kamikaze pilots out to the abandoned fighters and do the same thing all over again.

-- Mechanix on carrier ships to repair damaged fighters. Did anyone think of this? Certainly I didn't see it used during the battle.

[Strana]

it was used during the battle, juist it was taking a long time to reapair, if it had lased a couple more turns you would have seen the bomber retocked from the RANCID FISH back in battle. My other fighter got back into the fighter bay of the hodgepodge. but since it was severly damaged on the last turn it was finally fullyt repaired, hence why you didnt see it in action again.

as for AF ships the only problem rock had was his guns didnt have the range. if a fighter is usually based around MK II weaponry you need at least MK III's to deal with them.

as for kamikaze troops Rocs commandos had explosives to plant just the one explosive he used was unseccesful at breaching reactor containment.

[Theblackdog]

But longer range = fewer guns...

[Strana]

longer range might equal fewer guns doing damage but really what it means is

longer range harder to hit target, since damage is unchanged across wepaon count. ie if you ship is 20 inches long has 40 " of weapons one of these being a MK XX gun and the others being 4 MK V's you would still have the same damage as if you had 8 Mk V's only its easier to hit something. with the MK V's than it is with a MK XX

[Olothontor]

-- Mechanix on carrier ships to repair damaged fighters. Did anyone think of this? Certainly I didn't see it used during the battle.

That's going in BrikSpace. Right now.

[dcl32]

I just thought of something, what if you had fighters or maybe even a large ship like a frigate or something and just strapped it with explosives and rammed into someones ship. YAY microscale space kamikazes!!!!

[Strana]

well if you made it explosive enough to take out a ship in one go would be very difficult. it could be done but thats loading it down with somewhere in the realm of 100 mk i explosives. and unfortunatly that is over the allowance of even a destroyer, 50" long ship to destroy a frigate, and in the mean time it can't fight back