Winning Fleet Actions

[Morgan Shackelford]

The following are recommendations from your friendly neighborhood tactical officer. They are by no means official Fleet 7 regulations unless otherwise deemed so by Fleet leadership at a future time. They are, however, practical and useful rules of thumb when competing against other captains against AI enemy forces in Fleet Actions.

1. Fleet Action rewards are based solely on one thing - damage output.

1.1 It is adviseable to generally run on full power to weapons because of this; although there exceptions.

2. Stay Alive. This is where you may want to make an exception to running with full power to your weapons. If you find yourself taking a lot of fire, switch full power to shields to stay alive. You can't do damage if you are dead, and in the amount of time it takes for you to wait for the respawn timer and fly back to the main engagement area, you are losing a lot of time when you could be shooting something.

3. Stay Focused. To borrow a phrase from a popular science fiction novel, the enemy gate is down. You have a list of objectives associated with each Fleet Action listed on the right hand side of your screen. They will change as you progress through the action. This is where most people are going to hamstring themselves in terms of final ranking once the action is complete. If the current objective for the action is kill enemy cruisers, shooting frigates does not add to your score.

3.1 Watch your Area Map, especially as objectives change. When new objectives appear, they are likely going to be in a different area than the one you were just working on.

4. The 'FedBall' is slow and stupid, but it is also safe. Most of the time captains will tend to stay in one large pack; but they don't always stay on the objective. This is where you and your fleetmates (hopefully you have some with you) can distinguish yourselves from the rest. While the main fleet is playing it safe and has no real direction, a small team can zoom to the actual objective and clean house.

4.1 You will invariably find yourself flying with the 'Fedball' quite a bit, nonetheless. For some reason, the tab targeting in this game tends to point all captains to the same target. This isn't always true, but more often than not I will see everyone shooting at the same battleship even though I know there is no actual leadership going on. Do yourself a favor - don't shoot at the same thing everyone else is shooting at. Single out the battleship everyone else is ignoring and kill it on your own if possible. While the rest of the Captains are getting damage credit roughly worth 1/19 of a battleship hull, you are getting credit for a full one.

5. Save your damage powers. Wait for your targets shields to drop before lighting up your attack patterns and weapon batteries. I may be wrong on this, but I do not believe that damage you do to enemy shields counts toward your ranking. You want credit for hull hits on objectives. However, when it comes to torpedo volleys, you must anticipate when the shields are going to fall versus the flight time of your volley. Ideally, you want your torps to strike a split second after the shields fall; if you wait to fire them until you hear that the enemy shield has failed, you will be too late. By the time your torpedoes get there, the target will most likely be dead already.

While these tips are no gaurantee of putting you in first place at the end of the action, they will hopefully help you improve your ranking if you have been having trouble in this area. Employ some of these methods and it doesn't matter what class of ship you fly - I am a cruiser pilot, and rarely rank less than 3rd in any action I join. Why? Because flying smart always trumps an escort captain who flys dumb. Escorts will naturally have an advantage over most everyone else in a setup where captains are ranked on damage output, but this does not necessarily mean cruiser and SV pilots have to be relegated to the bottom of the rankings. Learn your ship, learn the encounters, stay focused, and fly smart, and you will do well no matter the challenge.

Combat dynamics continue to remain fluid; as such, this document is subject to change.

[Akulax]

Additional point: Don't be in a Science Ship! Although I prefer to be in a Science Ship because while I'm zipping around in my little Ferrari, I'm laughing at the Soccer Moms in their Giant Mini-Vans armed with Photon Cannons and the Rednecks in their 4x4 Pickmeup Trucks.

Oh ... not that there is anything wrong with that. Excuse my Human side for getting the better of me, that was not logical...

[Morgan Shackelford]

Akulax wrote:

Rednecks in their 4x4 Pickmeup Trucks...

Ha! Remind to ignore you if you ever need help 'moving' ;)

I love my cruiser, but I will certainly acknowledge that SV are simply awesome to play and often underutilized by teams.

[FiGiN]

Pretty good stuff. These types of ideas generally apply to any action, not just Fleet stuff, although the respawn points sure do seem a lot farther away in the few FA I've seen thus far.

So to piggy back on your ideas, I'd also like to mention one thing in particular.

The mission, the mission, the mission. Don't lose sight of your objectives. Sometimes you don't have to kill everything, sometimes you just need to scan something, pick it up, etc. The game should be here for a long time so be creative. Can you fulfill the objectives without even firing a shot? Try it sometime. It may be helpful down the road as missions become more complex. The developers may even write some missions with that in mind ...

Following up on that, I would highly suspect that getting killed and having to respawn will have greater consequences in later missions. Really try not to get killed or send those poor BO off to the slaughter. It may come back to bite you one day!

//FiGiN

[Deputy Commander Turner]

Great Points. Let me add. Flanking Damage, Flanking Damage, Flanking Damage, and Never leave your wing man!

[Thunor Stryker]

As always, great information sir!

[One of None]

WOW!, This is the kind of tactical information I NEED.
Thank you Sir.

[FiGiN]

Deputy Commander Turner wrote:

Great Points. Let me add. Flanking Damage, Flanking Damage, Flanking Damage, and Never leave your wing man!

Absolutely, sir.

"That was some of the best flying I've seen to date - right up to the part you got killed. You never, never, leave your wingman."

//FiGiN