Capital Ship Usage

Well well well. I'll bet some of you wondered if I would ever get around to writing this article, and now you have your answer. I've had a couple requests for an article on cap ships in the past, and I guess it's time to put something down. First of all, I don't consider myself the best cap ship player. There are many more who are better than me, though I can usually hold my own.

This actually is a VERY important consideration when it comes to the style of play you will employ with your cap ships. If you choose Kushan, you will most certainly wish to take advantage of the "self-heal" feature of the Kushan SF. Select a SF and double-click on it while holding "z" down will employ the "self-healing". I consider the Kushan to be the "brawler" of the two races with respect to cap ship play.

Taiidan requires more of the "finesse" player. Because of the self-healing SF of the Kushan, the ONLY advantage to playing Taiidan is to gain access to the DFF. Using a DFF most effectively requires a bit of experience, and a bit of luck too. I don't use Taiidan much, so I can't really comment too much on DFF use. I know you are better off force attacking the ships to guard instead of just using the guard command. This brings the DFF much closer to the ships to protect than just guarding. BattleFox used to force attack opposing vettewalls with his DFF to render them ineffective...that works very well. Just remember that your ally's mass driver fire cannot penetrate your field just as your opponent's cannot. So you are going it on your own until your ally can provide ion frigs to fight along side you if you choose to use the DFF.

To sum it up, if you are playing Taiidan,and not using the DFF, then you are conceding the Kushan player an extra 1/2 SF, simple as that (only 1/2 SF because it acts as an extra SF when healing the SF units, but not when healing your attacking units).

In my opinion, one key to being a good cap ship player is micromanagement of the support frigs. This can make or break your game, because if you can quickly heal the ship that is being attacked at a given moment, you can often turn the battle, especially if you have like 6 - 8 SF.

A skilled attacker will target more than one ship, so dealing with this can be a tricky venture. You might be healing one ship, while another ship is getting whittled down. Quick recognition and response to this is crucial. You must be able to split your SF into groups, healing each ship being attacked. I often use two separate group hotkeys for my support frigs for just this purpose.

Proper target selection is crucial to using your cap ships to the fullest. I often try to target the opponent's resourcing with my frigs initially. I am willing to lose a couple frigs to enemy fire if I can kill a couple collectors off in the process. They will not be getting RU as quickly as you then, and so you can replace the frigs you lose more quickly than them. You win by attrition in the long run if you are able to stalemate the opponent for a few minutes while your frigs are replaced.

In general, in a frig only battle, if your opponent has less than 3 SFs then you should target any ion frigs in an enemy cap ship group first. Ion frigs hit the hardest, and therefore are the greatest threat. If you can overwhelm the opposing support, kill those ion frigs off first. If there is 4 or more SF, then you are probably gonna have to target those first in order to be able to dispatch enemy IF's. After you kill the IF's, kill the remaining SF's, then the AF's. Of course this is all dependent on a firepower-to-SF ratio, if you haven't enough firepower to overwhelm the opposing SF, you will have to kill the SF first.

In a cap ship battle with between similar sized fleets with mixed DD's, IF's, AF's, and SF's, I would have this targeting order. IF's, SF's, DD's, AF's. The reasoning is this. Ion frigs are fairly easy to pop with a relatively big fleet, support or no support on them. They have strong firepower, especially when you are facing a lot of them, so the quicker you remove them from the field, the better. Next to go are the SF's. They will tend to make the DD's hard to remove, so they have to go before the DD's. Next are the DD's. Now some people would wonder why we wouldn't kill DD's before ion frigs, since the DD's have greater firepower. Well, you have to remember that you will need to remove the SF before the DD's. By that time the opposing ion frigs would have done heaps of damage, so DD's are actually less of a threat than ion frigs. Last to kill are the AFs, since they have the least firepower.

I tend to avoid formations with most of my cap ship fleet. Yeah it makes healing cap ships with SF easier, but formations will move MUCH slower than free-moving cap ships, and cap ships need all the mobility and speed they can muster. The only exceptions with regard to formations are the following two scenerios. 1) My opponent is helpless, and I am surrounding his MS with my cap ship fleet, so as to avoid a MS ram on my fleet. 2) I am stalemated in a cap ship battle and I'm trying to get an edge on my opponent's cap ship fleet by using surrounding fire to get at the weaker armored areas on opposing ships.

Scenerio 1 needs no modifier, it is cut and dry. However, scenerio 2 should be explained further. I only put my AFs into the sphere, not the ions or any DD's I have. I don't like putting my ions into sphere formation, because they tend to not fire a lot because of their narrow targeting area (like 2% coverage) and slower speed (IF's move only 300 mps, whereas AFs move 325 mps). It is VERY bad not to have those ion cannons doing damage, so I tend to leave them out of formations.

Putting only the AF's in sphere allows them to do maximum damage possible for them, while keeping the IF's and DD's near together so as to make them easy to heal. The AF's are faster than other frig classes and they have a relatively large firing coverage compared to the IF's, so they will continually fire from a sphere position. If the opponent makes the mistake of turning to shoot the AFs that are surrounding his fleet, and peppering it with fire, then the IF's and DD's get to pound on the opposing fleet from the side or behind (weak armor areas), so it is a win/win way to use your cap ships to their most effectiveness.

I don't use gravwells very often, because I favor a more aggressive style of play...more offense, less defense...however there certainly times when I will pull out a well (and boy does that ever surprise the opponents who are familiar with my usual style of play). I try to use wells only against opponents who go with corvwalls, and not against those who are using a swarm.

Whoa, back up a minute, did I say don't use wells against swarmers? I'll bet you thought that's what they were for, no? Well I have news for you. Wells are not the greatest choice to use against swarms, because swarms can often kill a well before it has a chance to do much, if any, good. Bombers will fire twice before getting stuck in the grav field due to their long firing range, and wells have pitiful armor. Add to that the fact that wells slowly push ships out of their field, thus allowing the swarm to get more shots off before becoming restuck. A medium-sized bomber swarm will kill an unsupported well very easily. If nothing else, a smart swarmer will move his fighter swarm away from your well before they get stuck. I use this tactic all the time. I'll just take my swarm elsewhere, like a remote resource op to do my damage.

However, wells do not have the same problem vs vettes. Vettes have a shorter firing range than fighters, and will get stuck and stay stuck whilst you pound them with your cap ships. Do be mindful that SFs do have guns, and if 3 or 4 of them are supporting the vettewall, they can actually quickly wear down an unsupported well if you are not paying attention. Also, you should probably take out any collectors that you can before targeting the vettes. Collectors can be your well's worst enemy. Why?

Well users always need to be mindful of the stray collector collision :rolleyes: Move that well around if you are gonna use it. Sometimes you can force the collector into a glancing blow that will injure, but not kill the well. So if you can heal the well before the collector gets turned around, you may be able to survive it's second pass since the armor on the collector is damaged and your well has more health.

Beware enemy salvettes if you are using a well. Wells neutralize your strike craft as well as your opponent's, so be sure to deactivate a well and get your strike craft after those salvs if you see them.

That's all I can think of for now. If I missed anything, or something needs further clarification, please feel free to ask questions.