In the first phase, if you have just discovered superior technology but have an outdated fleet, put 1 cruiser fleet with your newest weapons up front.
That way people that attack you with just a scout fleet get the impression that you have a respectable fleet, and they often will back off.
Set your spy defense (under Special Operation) to "loose" at server start. It's enough to prevent tech stealing and most unpleasant operations.
You can have 21 fleets in your defense plan, as the restriction on the number of fleets seems to disregard the armada commander. Only 20 when attacking.
Use a formation of side stack left/right with cruisers ahead, when doing suicide hits on allied defense.
Allied fleets are comprised of commanders which have no stats.
Place a few fodder fleets if possible when passing allied fleets to an ally. These will help take damage instead of main fleets + if equiped with nuisance-devices and psi weapons could have even more useful effect.
Allied fleet trick - Two members in the same council send pact to each other. Then one of them accepts the pact, and sends an ally message to the other. Then one of the players jumps out of council. Then whoever has the unanswered messages (pact + ally) (doesnt matter if one person has both, or both have one each), the pact must be accepted first, and then the ally message accepted, and henceforth u will be allied while being in dif. councils.
If possible use commanders which are specific to weapon type of ship. Damage of that weapon type increases by 70-100% on many occasions.
Create a fleet of one ship, of a design which utilizes homing beacon, and escape pod. Keep this in your defense. When it
dies, the commie will most likely survive, and the fleet will refill with one ship and go back in your defense. If u place a mobile fortress in there,
it will force the enemy to have to use stuff other than his raping cruisers to actually hit u every time he wants to take a planet.
Try to make sure u have a partner for allied defense.
When attacking or defending, it would be wise not to have commanding fleet in either of the first two lines of defense at least, as they often get wiped out during initial spray of missiles. and if your commanding fleet is there and dies, there's no bonus left for your fleets, plus a very high chance that some of your fleets may run away.
Always try to have a decent amount of DB equipped ships in your defense plan. DB has been proven to work wonders.
Don't go and suicide your fleets on ppl unless you are properly able to defend back at home. If you don't have 800 dooms + allied fleets to cover your planets, u shouldn't consider suiciding on enemy main or allied fleets an option.
When suiciding on enemy fleets, remember that it's the first fire that will hit, and then ur fleet will die after losing cloak/stealth.
Hence MF's are more effective for damage per cost in this regard. 3MF's cost = 1 Doom cost. which means shots fired -->
MF: 14hbh x 6 slots x 3 ships = 252 hits.
Doom: 22hbh x 7 slots x 1 ship. = 154 hits.
However, building MF's will cause ur net power to rise faster.
^^Useful knowledge for players who have their defense set up, and need ways to take out enemy defense.
if you have allied fleets on you, please remember they are there. In a war situation, if you have to attack... even against good odds.. just remember to use all fleets to attack or station left overs or something.. so that you dont have just a couple of fleets back at home, along with a bunch of vulnerable allied fleets.
Remember to always have a defense plan. The plan is set by fleet IDs, so if
those change (ie. when you make, lose, disband some fleets) you have to make a
new one. Someone without a defense plan can be easily broken by much less fleet
power attacking in a formation.
It is generally a good idea to keep fleets close to each other. Scattered
fleets are more likely to be targeted by several fleets at once, thus they die
easily. Also, try to protect your capital fleet, since if it is destroyed,
other fleets lose morale and may retreat or panic.
It may be time consuming to select Fleet Orders for 20 fleets, but it is worth
the effort. The most important order is Formation - it keeps the formation
you had set up, preventing faster fleets from going too far ahead and getting
killed. Use other orders if you want to hit certain fleets ie. those in the back
or those on sides.
Decoys are usable only if you attack/defend with less than 20 fleets. It is possible
to fill the remaining "slots" with crappy fleets (ie. cruisers, not cloaked) so
that the enemy fleets in front waste their initial missile rounds. It is also possible
to put bigger and bigger ships in front in order to "sweep" the enemy decoys...
This is the most basic thing to learn - scout before attacking. Blockade or (if possible)
siege your enemy with 2 cruisers (or earlier - gunboats, but you must choose a planet from
your own cluster) before sending your armada out. You will learn the size and formation of
enemy fleets. Scout fleet should be fleeted with a crappy level 1 admiral, since he will
most likely die.
In Archspace, raping means taking a lot of planets from an unprotected player. It
is done with a number of "grabbers" (usually fleets of 2 cruisers each, since a fleet
consisting of 1 ship only can be destroyed by planet's Military Bases). This way, a
defleeted player can lose tens of planets in a matter of minutes, and eventually die.
Ship Queuing is widely used at the beginning of the game. By ordering a large ship to be built,
preferably a doom, you can accumulate PP that can be spent later. Even though a doom at
this point may take ages to build, later it can be simply removed from the queue, and
replaced by a large number of smaller ships that will be built in one turn.
Fluffing in AS means increasing your power much above your actual power. This is
done by building small ships, in most cases just gunboats (some will say that anything
smaller than a doom is "fluff", because it makes your power grow faster than your actual
firepower). A player with good production can increase in power in hundreds of thousands
of points per turn, ie. to escape from attack range of other players, or in order to
attack a much bigger (or fluffing) player or council.
Mass Small Ships. This tactic is based on the fact that smaller ships always have higher firepower-to-cost ratio. Example:
Gunboat: 1,000 PP (3 Fusion Missiles)
Frigate: 9,363 PP (8 Fusion Missiles)
Frigate: 9,363 PP (8 Fusion Missiles)
Cruiser: 88,360 PP (28 Fusion Missiles)
As you can see, 9 Gunboats can carry 27 Fusion missiles in total, while 1 Frigate costs the same as 9 Gunboats but can carry only 8 Fusion missiles in total. Same principle applies to Frigate vs Cruiser, 9 Frigates carry 72 Fusion missiles while 1 Cruiser has only 28 Fusion missiles in total for same cost. However, you have to keep in mind that Cruiser can reach other clusters and small ships fluff your power a lot. Last but not least, you can only send 20 fleets into a battle, with 6-40 ships per fleet depending on the commander. So, this tactic is limited yet effective in certain situations.
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