Capital ship tactics....

Games Homeworld HW1 Strategy Guide
1

Seems that alot of you out there don’t know how to attack with your frigs or super capital ships. So I am starting this thread to help shed some light on your tactics and help improve you over all combat skilz…

Please feel free to view this not as an ULTIMATE cap tactic, but rather the start of a thread sharing ideas on what works best…just don’t embarrass yourself and post some nOOb suggestion, unless it has been proven in battle.

First off,

There are 2 ways you can look at building your frig fleet:

#1…you can go for the total out gun early method and start production of Assualt frigs asap, then add Ion Frigs once they are available to build. From here you can go 2 ways again:

a. continue to build BOTH assualts and ions (only if you have sufficent RUs to support both builds)

b. stop production of assualts and switch over to Ions to finish out the builds

#2…or you can continue to develop your RU ops and hold off on building anything but Ion frigs once you have the tech, …by developing your RU ops early and NOT building Assualts, this will allow you to build non-stop later on once your building your main fleet. Build alot of collecters (or as Malone likes to do Max collecters and controllers)

Just be careful and be ready incase you have a swarmer at your door…have a counter ready to go.

Now that you have your fleet what are you gonna do with it?..

I’ll tell ya…

DO NOT put your fleet into one big wall formation!

This will slow down targeting rates and make for slower turning and killing, as the whole wall must turn in order for the ions to lock back on.

Rather… order your fleet to a point out infront of your MS as the fleet is being built ( remember to add new ships to an existing group # by clicking the ship then holding down the shift button and hitting the group # you want to add the new ship to).

By adding the ship to the group as it comes out of the MS it will make for easier selecting later on when things start to get hairy.

Now this new group of ships will be a bunch of different ships in no formation so they will all turn at their own rates, target and shoot at an enemy ship as soon as it has a lock, rather then waiting for the rest of the group to finish turning…

Now here comes the tricky part ALOT of you are missing, (this I know cuz I have smurfed and played against ALL of you and ALOT of you do this).

Attack one ship at a time…this means hit the # that you have assigned for your ENTIRE cap fleet (# 3 for me) and ctrl click one enemy ship at a time.

NOTE

Do NOT hold down the mouse and drag a box around the enemy fleet…this will only serve to get YOU killed even if you have a superior fleet.

By killing one ship at a time you take out 1 gun faster that is shooting at you (a damaged ship still has the same firepower as an untouched ship).

by box attacking, your ships will basiclly each attack ONE ship each and keep firing at that ONE till it is dead, which takes FOREVER.

Now I personally attack and kill ions first followed by destroyers (sometimes I will go for dessies if they don’t have support).

This is my attack order and it has been lab tested to work most efficently:

-with support

ions

support frigs

destroyers

missles destroyers

assualt frigs

-without support

destroyers

ions

assualt frigs

missle destroyers

Ok now that you know what to kill…here are some tactical ideas to help keep your fleet around longer…

You already have you fleet in no formation, once you have engaged the enemy, hit F4… move your fleet around to be behind his fleet (I do this by moving my fleet in 2 separate halfs ::no particluar ships tho: :slight_smile: .

I move half one way and the other half the opposite way, by doing this, no matter what ship they are attacking you will end up behind him.

You may need to hit F4 and give the move order a couple times to make them actually move but they will go.

If this seems like too much to do during battle…try the bounce method.

This is done by engaging the enemy on F4…hit F10…F2…F9…F4…F10…

keep doing this but don’t do it real fast, wait about 5 seconds before hitting the next key and your ships will constantly be moving, making it harder for his ships to hit you…cuz they will have to keep moving inorder to lock on…

If the whole this is still too hard…Hit F10…F9…

Just don’t forget to keep attacking a new ship once you have killed one.

2

Zulu has a lot of awesome ideas here - I use quite a few of them too. The one I’m going to really work on in the next big battle is what I’m going to call the “Fleet Split”, the idea to make 1/2 of your fleet go clockwise around the enemy, the other 1/2 to go counterclockwise. No matter which way the enemy turns he will be exposing his flank to half of my force. The armor is a lot thinner in the back of the ships so they will be destroyed faster, and meanwhile he will be spinning in place trying to get a lock on the other half of my fleet.

Great Idea Zulu!

Malone out.

3

Reaper and I did a lab a while ago on supports, I think Coit was watching it.

We wanted to see what is a better fleet, 4 ions and 4 supports or 8 ions.

I built the ion/support fleet, Reaper built the ion fleet, and we met in the middle.

Neither one of us did any of the fancy stuff Zulu suggested, it was just a head on bash.

Reaper targeted my supports first, and as soon as he did, I put the supports to supporting each other, and moved them backwards away from his ions, meanwhile attacking his fleet with mine, one ship at a time.

Well, 8 ions make short work out of even a supported support frig, and he took out my 4 supports as I took out 2 of his ions.

So he had 6 ions and I had 4, and it ended up he still had 2 ions left after killing mine.

So. When going against a skilled player who is going to attack your supports first, don’t build them. Depending on the tempo of the game, either go straight ions, or get some assaults in there too. Don’t build repair vettes because they get killed in a big hurry. You are better off using your vette allowance for mines (I max out) and salvs (whatever else is left). If anything, he will shift his big guns to your vettes, which you immediately put in evasive and tell them to go home, making his caps try and target something that is faster than they are.

If going against a not so skilled player, I think it is fun to toy with them a little :slight_smile: and build some supports as well as a few repairs. By the time he figures out he isn’t doing any damage to that dessy with 4 supports and 10 repairs on it, half his fleet is gone and it’s time to clean house.

I’d like to add here that SF has been doing great on our new map “Domination2” and we must be something like 50-2 on that sucker. There is usually a couple scout skirmishes, but this is a cap map, and we are “Dominating” on it. I’m trying to get Iam to add a controller and another research ship to the start, which I think would help with our strat even more.

Malone out.

4

I love too love the suggestion of moving around both sides of enemy fleet. It is a natural addition to my love of doubling someone from both sides :laughing: Zulu, I will have to try your attack order on fleets, I’ve always hit the dessys 1st unless they are supported, then i’ve hit the support 1st.

Drew

5

I think that hitting the ion frigs first is a good idea. Usually there is some support, but with a nice fleet (can’t say wall anymore) you can probably take out a frig before the supports get a chance to react. Or you could target a frig on the oppisite side of the enemy’s formation with your frig most in front, which will send the enemy’s support way over there, meanwhile the rest of your fleet puts the hammer on the opposite frigs. Hope that didn’t get too confusing.

With the level of people that we have been playing, it’s just not enough to send a nice fleet over to the other guy’s fleet and just box attack them. At the best, you’ll both end up with no ships.

The reason that SF excels (I went undefeted this week, thanks to a lot of help, playing a few 4 vs 4 every night) is the teamwork. Whenever possible, concentrate firepower so it’s 2 vs 1, 3 vs 2, 3 vs 1, whatever. There is usually some goofball busy harvesting at the back of the map or just has his fleet in the wrong place at the wrong time and we make the best of that.

GG all!

Malone out.

6

This is an extremely simple Tactic that frustrates people incredibly.

The advantage assaults have over ions, is Turrets, and increased maneuverability.

When going up against a group of ions with a group of assaults, take your assaults and CHARGE! fly right through the ion frig formation then quickly issue orders to start your assault frigs strafing in circles around the ions.

Ions turn too slow to attack the strafing assault frigates, however the Assaults DON’T NEED TO! They have turrets, and can turn quickly enough to bring their area of coverage onto the enemy ships while they strafe!

This strat works beautifully against destroyer groups as well.

Now lets take this to the next level.

Since your assaults are now distracting the ions/destroyers you sent them after, feel free to send in your OWN ion group. Wait for the enemy ships to all be turned in the opposite direction then press the attack and take out as many as you can!

This strategy is easily tweaked and works every time if you pay attention to what your doing, and are fast with those move orders.

7

Rather than spinning your forces to hit them from the sides of thier fleet, I like to hit from the tops and bottoms of thier fleet. It confuses people when they forget that HW is a 3 dimensional game. You have half your forces shoooting up thier tailpipers and half of your caps ontop of them. If you want, bring in some bombers on F4 wall and hit thier undersides, since thier ships will be straight up and down, but dont forget to defend with your own scouts…