Re: The joy of bad choices

> One tactic I like is trying to give my opponent the choice between two
> evils:  To divide his forces or take a Nona cannon hit. To go after
the
> SLMs, the fighters or the MT missiles.  Does anyone have any good
> combinations that cause an opponent to do something bad for the health
of
> their ships?

I've got a few catch-22's...

1.  Fighters and needle beam flankers.	Take your pick.  Do you hit the
throttle and take a charge at their carriers in hopes that, once you
weather
the first fighter storm, they won't have anything left to reload, and
risk
losing ADFC or drives (or both) to needle beams?  Or do you aim to try
to
make the needle guys' jobs harder by maneuvering around and let the
carriers
have free rein to send however many waves of fighters at you that you
want?

2.  Fighters and plasma bolts.	I stand by my point earlier... if people
don't flat-out overload on PDS, this is a nasty combination, probably
worse
than fighters and needle flankers.  Do you go after the carriers in a
charge
and get annihilated by the plasma, or do you try to maneuver around and
give the fighters that much more time to annihilate you themselves?  If
you
get caught in a pincer move between clear-to-fire fighters and plasma
bolts,
which do you fire at?

3.  Nova cannons and missiles.	Stay in an area defense phalanx and get
hit by the novas, or split up to make the novas harder to connect and
leave
yourself far more vulnerable to the missiles?

4.  Borrow a page from the Romulans in Star Trek... the NG Warbirds
(torpedo-
armed cloaking megabattleships) together with the OS Birds of Prey
(small
cloaking battlecruisers with nova cannons).  The Warbirds hold a tight
phalanx
while the Birds of Prey take position wide and distant to throw the
cannons
as artillery support.  Who do you go after?  The Warbirds would suggest
holding
a tight force of your own so that they can't pick you off a ship at a
time...
but the Birds of Prey suggest that you don't want a particularly tight
formation at all because that makes it easier to hit multiple ships at
once.
What are the Warbirds doing while cloaked?  Do you try to set up an
ambush
or play it safe and let them come to you... either way risking that
they'll
pop up in a spot you don't expect?  The sheer number of mind games
involved
in this sort of fleet action are really, really fun, and if you can
execute
them well this is a very effective tactic.
-- 
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 The Stilt Man		      stiltman@teleport.com
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