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Topic: Tactics and strategy of SC ships (Read 41304 times)
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Valaggar
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1) Equip the 'Synth with those long range Blazers mentioned in the story. Of course, but they're expensive, probably. Anyway, worth it, if I judge carefully.
3a) Remember that the Ilwrath can approach from all directions since they have the enemy surrounded. With ships as slow as the Avengers, I doubt they will be able to surround the enemy so fast as to be effective.
3b) Uh.. When did I say that the fighters go first? Well, you didn't. It's just that there are two ways of providing cover for the fighters with plasmoids:
1)Continually spit a sea of plasma (which requires many Podships), and the fighters are inside. This is dangerous for the fighters, but gives them a heavier cover. Anyway, it may only be considered as a torture method for rebellous slaves. Bad.
2) Launch a wall of plasma, and the fighters go behind it. But one or two layers of plasmoids can easily be dispersed by Shofixti Scouts. Not that Good.
There's also a... main problem: In such a case (Star Control fleet battles), fighting separately (one group at a time) is not that good since, for example, charging Umgah can easily be repelled by a couple of shots. You need a bigger firepower in the same time, otherwise they'll be defeated one at a time.
It's also due to the fact that the ships are so specialized.
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Valaggar
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A specialized tactic, as I said. Of course, if the enemy are loose, and since the Drones are so cheap, it would work.
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Valaggar
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...Story? Am I missing something here? Is there an SC novel or something? No, but in the manual there are mentioned some modified Guardian ships with extended Blazer mode that had attacked the Tobermoon at Zeeman prior to the discovery at Vela 1.
Hayes mentions these modified Blazers too, saying that they pertained to the "Hit-and-Run Squadrons".
Well, that's assuming we're talking about a 2D melee battle....in a real, 3D battle, the stars are gonna be faaar away from the battlefield, hopefully. Huh? No matter how far away the stars are, they can be obscured by any object staying between them and the observer.
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Valaggar
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Nope, tractor beams are targeted abilities. Otherwise you'd attract asteroids too.
Also, don't forget that cloaked Ilwrath can't be tracted.
Plus, you won't want the Avatars to be that overpowered, would you?
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Holocat
Frungy champion
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Posts: 84
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Massed cloaked Ilwrath can easily be detected since they obscure a large patch of stars. Well, that's assuming we're talking about a 2D melee battle....in a real, 3D battle, the stars are gonna be faaar away from the battlefield, hopefully. 
Before I begin I should mention, as I have before in this thread, that I believe that Ilwrath can, to some small extent, be seen by sensors and that's why we roughly know where they are in supermelee. That said...
As far as Ilwrath obscuring stars behind them, if they do this then their overhead profile stands little to no chance of nondetection. Stars may be far away, yes, but I don't think you fully grasp how many of them are out there.
-From experience, this is common for non-astronomy nuts that live in cities, as when you look up you generally don't see *that* many stars. That's not because the stars out there are all that dim, but because in a city there's heavy light pollution; One never realizes how much light there is in a city until you either get away from it, or above it. If you can ever, truly get outside on a clear night away from ALL light sources (and I mean anything) and look up, you'll see just the barest glimpse of the sheer magnitude that lies outside, and that glimpse, to me, is still absolutely awe inspiring.
-In space there's another magnifier that will make this more pronounced and that's the lack of atmosphere. They built hubble because of that you know, and observatories are generally high up and away from civilization for this and the previous reason.
In short, I firmly believe that something Ilwrath-shaped blocking out a section of stars would be seen. At anything less than incredible distances it would be seen easily.
Now, their forward profile is different; It's implied to be highly flat, which makes it difficult. Still, it will be this slim proflie, rather than lack of ambient light.
Space is not black. It's only black compared to the burning ferocity that is our sun, which is in turn nothing more than average campfire in a endless sea full of phenomina that can make that torrent seem nothing more than a speck.
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Valaggar
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Since we can't say if it's canon or not that a cloaked Avenger can be detected by sensors, I'd just pick the most balanced option:
- No, it can't be seen by sensors (Don't forget, homing weapons can't lock in a cloaked Avenger), since it can anyway be seen fairly well enough with the bare eyes/based on visible light. So the cloak would be useless if sensors could detect it, so the ship would be imbalanced, so this had better not be true.
Don't forget the Shofixti Scouts flanking the battlefield to detect cloaked Avengers - if you can't see the Avenger from the front, you can do it from more "above"/"below".
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Valaggar
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The Hit-and-Run Squadrons seemed a rather usual enemy there at the Coreward Front. Hayes and the other (at least Human) crew members lived in a perpetual fear of them, so they weren't that few (otherwise, there'd be plenty of other things to worry about, even unmodified Guardians).
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Draxas
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Perhaps, perhaps not. Just because the Hit-and-runners were the most feared, doesn't mean they were the only thing to fear. This is like saying that nobody fears the regular army because they have special forces units.
I can remember at least one source describing an Androsynth tactic of hiding among asteroids before ambushing using blazer attacks (SC1 manual, maybe?). Going by that, no modifications would be necessary to make an effective, deadly, and paranoia-inducing hit-and-run squad.
Also, even if the Hit-and-runners were all piloting modified ships, it could be that they are a very elite and well equipped special forces unit, responsible for most (or all) of the described attacks. This could be as little as a few dozen ships, heavily modified with Precursor relics which grants them speed and killing power far surpassing anything else. A setup like that will earn even a small unit an infamous reputation very quickly.
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« Last Edit: April 17, 2007, 09:04:05 pm by Draxas »
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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Agreed on two counts - hit and run squadrons would be the Androsynth MO in general; but if they had additional range, that would greatly extend their threat. That, and the modified, specially powerful ships, if used heavily, will tend to be the most feared.
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Valaggar
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ARILOULALEELAY SKIFF:
With any other ship than close-quarters ships, fight Skiffs in a loose formation. Otherwise a single infiltrated Skiff can defeat any number of your forces - or they'll at least make you to friendly fire a lot.
CHMMR AVATAR Tractor Beam Tricks:
- A group of Avatars use the Tractor Beam to speed up to the other side of an enemy, so that he is attacked from two sides. Group A tractors the enemy to a high speed, then it stops tractoring. Group B suddenly brings the enemy to a halt by tractoring from the other side, thus converting a HUGE amount of energy to heat, thus setting the enemy ships ablaze from a distance.
- Two groups of Avatars stay aligned near a planet, moon or asteroid and tract the enemy at the same time. Thus making them crash into the planet/moon/asteroid without passing near enough to the Avatars to shoot them.
- Tractor enemy ships in every second row in their formation, so that they crash into the other ships.
- Tractor ships into their own projectiles (we're assuming a realistic combat situation)
- Pull ships one at once
- The famous Scout Rocketing trick.
Mmm... Avatars are invincible.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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- A group of Avatars use the Tractor Beam to speed up to the other side of an enemy, so that he is attacked from two sides. Group A tractors the enemy to a high speed, then it stops tractoring. Group B suddenly brings the enemy to a halt by tractoring from the other side, thus converting a HUGE amount of energy to heat, thus setting the enemy ships ablaze from a distance.
Tractoring ships does not seem to do damage to them, so I don't see how this'd work.
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