Combat Strategy

In terms of what I prioritize? Capital ships first, every time. Capital ships have a great deal more firepower relative to the other units, and they're also far more expensive than even the most expensive cruiser.

In terms of how I'd actually approach the battle: My fleet would be one Kol Battleship, one Akkan Battlecruiser, 5 Kodiaks Heavy Cruisers, and 15 Javelis LRM Frigates (or racial equivalent; your mileage may vary). Group the capital ships and cruisers into one fleet, and the Frigates into a separate one. Charge the enemy with the heavy fleet, while the frigates circle around and proceed to maximum missile range. Now the enemy is at knife-range with two capital ships and five heavy cruisers, with cluster missiles coming up their rears. If they try to take out the frigates, the frigates use their superior speed to lure them away from the main battle, thus allowing my capital ships and cruisers to engage them in small groups.

I tend to like the advent carrier and battleship fleet, so my technique is a bit different. I try to guess the enemy's escape route and place my long range ships where they can hit them for as long as possible without eating too much lead, use my light frigates to pound on their flaks to give my bombers clear skies while the flaks pound on their fighters and bombers, then pound their caps with everything I've got. I like to leave my carrier in mid-long range to take advantage of it's abilities and let me swing it in to cover if I need to pull out my battleship. Fill in the gaps on your own if there are any, and realize some bits are rather specialized but some are just good general technique.

Oh, and Arilias, if you don't bring some flaks, you can't muster enough fighters to cover that fleet, so bombers will kill you. painfully.

It's kind of funny, but during four betas I never thought strategy or really used much strategy (econ snowball effect ftw!), but in release I just started using this and it works really well. A TEC carrier will want to stay farther away, it just isn't durable enough, and the vasari carrier wants to get stuck in and use its abilities. Oh, and I use roughly the same fleet as the above, but go for some flaks and one or two of those uber sweet advent shield ships.

It varies. If they have a ton of corvettes imho they have to be delt with. I let the bombers and caps deal with enemy caps. As long as you are on equal or better terms, the bombers should help tip the balance. Especially if you micro a durnov (TEC). The shield regen can really help. KoI's are nice because they can also lend in the fight with lighter craft while still dealing with the enemy caps.

While this is happening your other craft deal with the corvettes. The enemy likes to go after your soft underbelly...atleast in the last two games I have played. Lost a lot of support craft trying to take out their caps. A horde of small craft can be really dangerous.

Oh, I missed the complete lack of a mass of light frigates in the fleet I referenced. Here's my ideal fleet for the midgame (later ones have more varied caps, tailor them to fit their intended roles and nice synergistic effects).

-1x advent carrier
-1x advent battleship with the ability that makes it a giant firesink
-2x shield restore cruisers (advent only, massive synergy with the battleship)
-a few light carriers or another full carrier, your choice
-gaggles (~40) of light frigates to act as a massive battery of antimatter and provide impressive firepower
-some long range frigates if you want, not really necessary but definitely useful for hurting ships as they retreat
-5-10 flaks, depending on enemy fleet composition because you don't want to waste those massive squads on fighters

use is rather self-explanatory if you're familiar with the ships: just use the battleship as a massive fire sink, use the cruisers to prop it up, and the light frigates to keep both full of antimatter, and use the killing strategies i outlined earlier.

I always down the capital ships first. That's a huge investment of resources, while downing a frigate screen takes longer and likely will result in him retreating before you've managed any sort of parity with the damage downing a capital ship does.

What I am using mid-game is somewhat similar to some others here.

My attack group is usually:

Combat Fleet:
Radiance Battlecruiser x1
Mothership (because it is fairly high level and can colonize after I attack) x1
Destra Crusader x10
Iconus Guardian x5
Defense Vessel x5

Long Range Fleet:
Halycon x1
Illuminator x15
Defense Vessel x5

I have found focus firing on enemy cruisers really destroys their firepower, afterwhich I can focus solely on their capital ships. I've found I can typically take out all the capital ships if I focus fire on them from the start, but I find a lose a lot of my supporting fleet (Ie. cruisers, frigates) which is a pain. For some reason, targetting their cruisers seems to either destroy enough of their firepower to save most of my fleet or refocuses their attacks away from some of my weaker ships. Using this method I can typically take out 1 capital ship (assuming he had 3 or 4). I'm unsure as to which is the reality right now.

I like the standoff ability of carriers and LRM frigates, but you definitely need to keep some flak frigates around them to guard against enemy bombers. I try to send a fleet with a couple of battleships and some cruisers in first and make sure the enemy gets away from the jump-in point, and then follow up with the long-range fleet to pound on the enemy from a distance while they're engaged with my first fleet. Seems to work pretty well, but I've only done it as TEC. Haven't gotten to play the other races yet.

What I target first depends on what they have.

If there are significantly more frigates/cruisers than cap ships I will target those first as they die faster and thereby reduce the overall damage output of the enemy fleet faster.

If it is a moderate sized fleet then I will target the cap ships first.

Specifically, if I am using carriers I will target any flak ships to clear the way for the fighters/bombers. I've also taken to killing the LRM or race specific long range ships first in smaller fights, as they usually do more damage than the "workhorse" frigates and die faster.

Essentially, I target whatever I can kill the fastest to reduce the enemy fleets damage output the fastest.

I just bought the game yesterday and I felt I did fairly well for my first game. I have not finished it yet but I have conquered their original homeworld and I am currently spreading devastation throughout the start system (as Vasari of course). Targeting priorities all depends on what you have available in your fleet and what you are up against. I generally tend to go for Caps first because along with the massive amounts of damage they can send at you they also have the most utility (for the most part).

As far as retreating units go I have a couple cruisers that disable phase drives (don't remember the name off hand). This makes the enemy sitting ducks for me as they try to escape since generally they don't fight back once they have started their retreat.

I just started playing yesterday, but I noticed one thing:

I took my very nice fleet and focusfired on one of their three capital ships they had.
As soon as it exploded, the AI re did their threat analysis, noticed the big drop in "oomph" and their chutzpah factor plummeted. They turned around and ran. Ran slow enough, however, that I was able to vaporize another capital ship.

Throughout the game, that was really the tide turn. My fleet then lumbered off from planet to planet, vaporizing them entirely.

Yeah, cap ships are target 1 always. AI will run as soon as last one goes down in any fight. Cap ships gain experience so experienced cap ship is not as replaceable as few frigates/cruisers. Every race has a ship that can disable jump drive, always have that ship close by and ready with enough antimatter to use that ability to prevent enemy from recovering his cap ship.

You gotta be carefull of the enemy fleet having too much healing capability to take down the caps first.

Its not often, but yesterday there was a fleet with 19 Robot Repair cruisers to go with a Kol and a Dunov along with the usual light frigate swarm. The Kol hops out front as the obvious target, but its just bait. I took out most of the repair cruisers first, then the Dunov with its sheild repair and finaly the Kol.

Of course the repair cruisers are easy to replace, so you have to be sure you can pursue the fleet after wittling them as the main goal is to get at the Caps

I usually always target frigates first, at least early on, because if you fire at a cap ship it will just flee at 2/3 life and you can't destroy it before it leaves the system. Frigates you can mow down really fast and there's no danger of them escaping, plus you are continously lowering their firepower.

It's usually best to target frigates first. Capital ships can escape meaning you suffered casualties for not much achievement. Even if you kill it, frigates are a greater portion of fleet firepower than capitals are - so you will still be taking damage at a high rate.

Focus firing is great, but note that you will lose more damage to mitigation than you might otherwise. Against human players there are specific counter strategies to this as well, like tactical use of Dunovs.

Some splash damage abilities badly punish frigate spam, most notably EMP Charge and Cleansing Brilliance.

Here's a quick list of counters I wrote up.

Fighters are most effective against bombers, long range frigates and siege frigates.

Bombers are most effective against heavy cruisers and planetary defenses.

Light Frigates counter support ships like flak frigates, carrier cruisers, and utility cruisers. They are vulnerable to missile frigates and planetary defenses.

Missile Frigates counter light frigates. They are vulnerable to heavy cruisers and fighters.

Flak Frigates mostly shoot fighters, but are reasonably effective against missile frigates and siege frigates. They are vulnerable to light frigates.

Heavy Cruisers counter long range frigates and light frigates and are excellent general combatants. They are vulnerable to bombers and paralyzer cruisers.

I have just started playing the advent and have to say that if you can upgrade radiance battleship so that it has the animosity ability that makes units target it and put it in a group with a rapture battlecruiser that has vengance(fully upgraded does 120% of the dmg taken back to the dealer of the dmg and can be cast on any ship) then one can easily plow through most things as long as one has some iconus guardians healing the radiance battleship. Another great ship and ability is the advents cap carrier as it has the ability to increase the fireing speed of laser 25% in a large radiace around it, meaning if you have lots of illuminator ships and cap ships around, you can quickly decimate whole fleets before they can get away.