Tactical Advice?

From my limited experience, the autocast targeting works well for single target abilities, but it often chooses to use area of affect abilities on a lone ship that's close by rather than targeting a group a little farther out. Ships will target whatever they can damage most effectively (long range goes for light frigates, light frigates go for flaks, flaks go for squads, etc.) so unless you really want to focus on particular targets, the AI does an acceptable job.

Considering that your AI opponents' micro is limited to the AI itself, if you lost to them, your fleet composition was worse than theirs. Some micro might have helped, but macro and overall strategy seem to be much more important.

Thanks. This may help me out a good deal.

when i enter the fight i point all my ships at the cap ship they have closest to me. if i have a cap ship which can disable phase jumping i keep all its auto casts off cause i wanna micro that when they run.

i ignore all smaller ships and just focus on taking down their cap ships one by one. when they start to run i chase down the weakest cap ship and repeatedly disable its ability to phase out and destroy it.

the vasari have a cap ship with a area effect repair ability which i leave on autocast and its great. make sure to balance your fleet but focus on high damage cruisers and of course carriers for fighters/bombers

I am by no means a veteran player in this game, I will say that up front. I am in fact still nursing my game that has been set to 'slow' speed over the last week with a total of 3.75/hrs so far. Having said that, I have been watching the forums for gems to ponder for when I get better in the coming weeks, months, "GASP" YEARS! Anyways... what I now want to impart is this... there is a trend going on in these forums that follows strategy games, especially space strategy games, THE micro/macro categorization.

Stop thinking in terms of macro and micro actions and time efficiency. Just look at the tools you have around you on your screen... the "search" menu-ish selector, etc... now, visualize where those tools are with your eyes closed, (i know this sounds corny) with your eyes closed do you know in your minds eye where they all are... now if you do, play a few games (short ones) practicing on using the tools at your disposal. Oh, one more thing... consciously THINK before you act on what you want to do... you will, like most people, 'pause', but after awhile... you will speed up. Also, KNOW the menus. (err.. like the tech tree, from memory).

To take this further... now, if you have a gaming keyboard, which is not necessary, key binding to your hearts delight until YOU and YOU'RE particular memory is comfortable with you're choice of commands to keys / combos.

Now that you have the menus, commands, tech trees all memorized and you can use them well enough to ace a test on them each time you get to go to the level that you want... effortless non-pause intuitive actions all binded to your particular key bindings.

ok! but that doesn't answer my question does it? Well... it answers part of it, in my opinion. Without you knowing the commands fully, how would you ever be able to efficiently manage micro situations. OR have some wisdom on what you can manage macro efficiently and then switch to micro... basically, you just have to get to the 'blink' intuitive level that some people have naturally, but instead through training.

But now... getting back directly to advice that addresses your post. I would suggest, after becoming fluent with what I mentioned above. You play a game that you are comfortable with, that you want to learn from but will 'truthfully' be a challenge to you. Now, make multiple "saves" of parts in the game that you think are important or going to be important 'nodes' to come back to.

Having created those 'nodes' and after completing the game (PLUS record it for replays) try playing it again at points that were very challenging and try out different tactics and implement different empire or battle strategies. Make new saved 'versions' based on some format that you create that you are comfortable with.

I am NOT claiming this isn't the 1000 or 100,000 stairs way to get to the temple on top of the mountain, because it IS... but from this, you can get some ideas of the process you need to setup for yourself. Also... this is homework, no doubt about it... and if this is not the level of effort you want to exercise then don't... dismiss my advice or opinions completely and wholly!

Also... there are some great resouces starting to appear in the forums that have STATS and such... I would collect those, but keep in mind they MIGHT change (just a guess, I don't know for sure) if any tweaks are done to the balancing of STATS etc in future updates.

Excellent advice from everyone. Thanks.

If I tell my fleet to attack one ship, is there a way to get it to resume auto-targeting before that ship dies? The only way I know how is to give it a move order, but that tends to be far from optimal.

Use the stop command - your ship will automatically resume acting according to the AI a second later.

Also, I've found it's good to micro any ship that can fire in multiple directions (cap ships, illuminators, anti-fighter frigates) in order to maximize their damage. Otherwise, the AI will position them to fire straight ahead only. You might also want to micro units to avoid enemies that can fire from multiple directions, or even fly circles around slower ships that can only fire ahead.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but you need to be careful with the progenitor's autocast. If you forget to turn autocast off for its colonizing ability, it will head straight to the planet - getting itself smack in the middle of an enemy fleet.

just my 2c.

Hmm i myself is a great stratgiest....it seems what u lack is experince my friend what you need to do is early off build a small fleet of 5-8 dispicle vessels...then when u can get 5 of the illuminators 2 cap ships all squads fighter ( cap ships best used radiance battleship and progenitor mothership) 3 guardians 2 subjagotors and 4 pruge vessels that gives u a well rounded force but make sure the disiple vessel is the bulk of ur fleet so ur group is well rounded for combat anytime...i know this and ive just started playin it and i played it on hard and i have YET to be matched agasint a AI i command ONLY advent! so dont ask me about any other side cuz i would not know i only replied cuz ur usin Advent so fight on....make the TEC regret exiling you! :CONGRAT: 


Signed Advent_Commander the one and only