Tactics

I shall propose some tactical theories i have here, feel free to comment on them or e-mail me with some you wish to add.

General

Some general tactics i have are.

The sacrifice

You will be surprised how many opponents will attack a CH that is out in front of your formation, just because they can. They will become fixated on concentrating their firepower on this especially if it survives a couple of turns thus allowing the rest of your fleet to get into position relatively un-molested.

Speed

If you have fast units use your speed as hull strength is usually sacrificed in the design for speed. Speed also allows you to keep out of range and out maneuver the enemy.

Maneuvers

Sometimes you can confuse an opponent by making parts of your fleet break off at different speeds. Most useful if you have some smaller fast units that wont last very long. You can at least accelerate them to the enemy in a pincer movement, this way they will at least get some shots in and draw some of the enemy fire away from your bigger ships.

Also maneuvering at speeds make your finishing position harder to predict and if the enemy can't predict where you will be then he can't hurt you, as much.

A note about maneuvering at speed. Some players don't like to do this as they feel that if they aren't head on with maximum firepower bearing on a target then they are not playing well. I would rather do slightly less damage and keep my ships from being hit, the game may take a bit longer but you will have more ships left at the end of it an important thing to bear in mind when playing in a campaign.

Fighters

I prefer to use my fighters as a screen against other fighters and missiles. This is because grand plans for massed fighter attacks never seem to work or only work by shear luck.

One way to use fighters is to create a gauntlet either side of where you expect the enemy to be.

Dealing with Flanking Maneuvers

I have found that when an opponent tries to out flank you, if you wait for a turn or 2, depending on speed of fleets and then turn into them you will usually have the advantage.

Know when to flee

If you know that you are about to get a right pasting flee, especially in a campaign scenario where you have limited ships.

NSL

If you are playing NSL forget about speed, maneuvering and grand plans requiring quick strikes and flanking maneuvers. Move slow keep in formation with plenty of ADFC support for your capital ships and let the enemy close into your beam range.

Be prepared to take damage as the NSL's capital and cruiser class ships can take allot, remember if they are hitting you, you are giving them more back than you are getting.

Sa'Vasku

Using the Sa'Vasku is quite interesting, and at the same time a bit of a maths fest. It is very easy to get confused and cock everything up with these.

So far i have played Sa'Vasku against Kra'Vak. The tactics i used were as follows:

In the first couple of turns accelerated to about 30+.

After this i applied minimal power to the maneuver pool, just enough to get a thrust rating of 3 for turning. However just to keep the Kravak on their toes i upped this on occasions.

I applied no power to the defense pool as screen nodes have no use against the Kra'Vak.

Then i maneuvered around to keep out of the Kra'Vak forward arc and tried to keep more than 30 ins away from them as well.

Basically i snipped at the Karvak from long range with the occasional sweeping charge in close.

Neither player used fighters / drones as the anti fighter defenses would have rendered them useless.

I have now used these tactics successfully against the phalons as well, I'm not sure how good these will be against the human races though. I suspect that the humans will fair better against the Sa'Vasku.