Fleet Ops

Shadow Reaper

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Jun 3, 2016
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Shadow Reaper
Cool vid. After watching it twice I’m not certain I have any take aways. I will make two guesses. I think the best teacher here has got to be repeated experience from every position on the field.

First, it didn’t appear the Ares were contributing much. They seemed to die quickly and had inadequate firepower to kill flagships. Could be they’re best reserved for attacking in larger groups—say 5-6 Ares attacking together. They would however be sitting ducks for the light fighters and this makes me question their utility.

Second, they didn’t appear to have any situational awareness. Both the attacks and defenses seemed disorganized and no wonder with so much going on. I’m not sure what’s to be done about this. I am unconvinced the 3D battlefield mapping that will eventually be available on some ships will make much difference. If you were watching this from the bridge of an Idris on the holoviewer, do you think you could ever develop the skill to direct forces? I’m unsure of the holoviewer’s utility.

They did try to organize in groups and perhaps these were more effective than I could tell. I think regardless though, most of the strategy and tactics need to happen before the battle is joined. Simple is better. Organizing fighters around each flagship as a defense, and using the flagships to attack one flagship target at a time is simple.

I would have liked to see more missiles. I’d love to study the effectiveness of a MIS sitting on the periphery launching pairs of missiles at the fighters every few seconds, just to see how much this would render them unable to chase larger targets.

I would have liked to see some chicanery too. There was no draw play. No deception. Nothing that would have taken enemy ships out of the fight even for thirty seconds, which could have made a difference.

If the Sentinel could actually mimic the signatures of other ships and were doing that here, it could have been a disruptive influence, especially given its greater speed and ability to evade the Redeemers and A2s, pulling them away so all three flagships could attack one of the remaining at a time.

So far as player economy—excepting light fighters, best is probably every player possible is behind a pair of S5 or quad S4. You do not have to use every turret and not using them adds power to the turrets you do use, as well as more ships adds to the shield pool. More ships means more targets to watch and easier to engage. This could actually be a good place for solo Corsairs.

View: https://youtu.be/f3qaRXZqrO8
 
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Raven_King

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Thanks for sharing that one - it's well made.

Agree your points about situational awareness. It will be hard for the designers to find a way to represent what is happening during an engagement like this on a holotable in a 'readable' way, much less on an in-cockpit starmap/radar. It's the scale of a battle that makes it tricky. I hope they figure out a way.

These two orgs defined their own battlefield as having a radius of 100 km - seems reasonable to me, but would be interesting to hear other opinions. Ships currently dogfight at ranges in the order of a few hundred meters (as well as joust and maneuver at ranges of several kilometers to several tens of km), but it's the close-in action which poses the problem. When Master Modes are introduced, combat should tend to become closer in range than it is now. So, to be effective, the holotable or tactical map or whatever they call it would have to be able to represent and track instantly identifiable ships which may be separated by around 1% or less of the overall area. It would benefit from some kind of 3D pan, zoom and rotate view controls. And there could be benefit in having two or more holotables to look at, one broad overview, one for focusing on smaller scale parts of the wider engagement.

I'm not holding my breath: I think situational awareness will be difficult for a long time, but as you say, repeated experience should help.
 
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FZD

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Hmm. Kinda seems to me like escorts aren't going to do much to combat pirates. I mean, unlike than in this scenario where the battle ends once you destroy the enemy flag, when pirates attack your convoy, the pirate 'flag' (as in, whatever ship they'll load up the cargo in) is a short Quantum Jump away waiting until the battle is over. And as we can see here, having escorts doesn't mean the enemy couldn't just go straight for your flag (as in, the hauler), and it does seem like disabling your flag to secure the loot before dealing with the escorts is probably going to be a pretty good strategy.
 
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Sky Captain

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Great fleet game play video.

Though the Hammerheads took a beating, it was a good video to see the agility of their turrets in battle.

Given squadrons focused on opponent capital ships vs anti-squadron missions, I wondered if they might have been more organized than it appeared, at least to start, with the challenge being capturing that organization on video? Were we hearing all of the audio from fleet command?
 
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Dirtbag_Leader

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best is probably every player possible is behind a pair of S5 or quad S4
Ah-HA! Finally a departure from the 'traditional' refrain of "why not just put the extra player in his own ship for greater DPS?" I think this means that CIG's attempt to encourage crewing larger ships with better manned turrets is finally starting to work!
 
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