List of fleet tactics and overall strategies

[Argonic]

Big Blob of Doom
This works best when you have resources coming in at a good rate; Move all your starships and fleetships into one huge fleet and bind them to ctrl-1, then blindly send them onto an enemy planet you want to clear. Upon entering the enemy planet, put the fleet on FRD and pay it no more attention; your factories should soon be churning you out a replacement doom blob.

In the rare case that your doom blob manages to clear the planet without your attention, roll all your reinforcements into the system and rebuild the doom blob fleet back up to its original strength and roll it into another system. Down this road, gaurenteed victory awaits!

I use a strat called The Blob. It consists of every Mobile shield gen you can make (if you have that unit), engies, and everything else you can pile into it. Send them to a planet and group move them from post to post. Only time i ever really lost units is to Ion cannons. Its a mobile 160million or so shield that is constantly getting repaired. Just stop the blob in one place if you start to get hit hard and the engies will constantly repair the shield gens.

[chemical_art]

Gravity turrets and beam cannons  intercept waves well. Since the wave comes from a single point, they can remain very close together for long periods of time allowing the cannons to cause full damage. Lightning turrets and other area attacks can use gravity turrets as well.

[Bleek]

I've just seen this topic, very cool, not sure I'm going to be able to add to it though! 

[chemical_art]

Military MK III stations as defensive tachyon warheads.

Finding rogue cloaked units on own planets is annoying. One either sweeps with units taking up precious micro or spends AIP to get the process done quickly. But with a MK III station you can be quick and AIP free. If at least one building slot is saved, a planet with an annoying amount of cloacked units can be upgraded to a MK III station temporarily so that all cloaked units can be exposed and removed. Once done, the station can go to its previous state.

[chemical_art]

Turret niches:

These assume all turrets are available if desired.

To help provide a concise idea of a turret's strengths, and how to use it.

Basic: Anti missile frigate, general purpose cheap turret (in both resources and knowledge). Place between wormhole and command station.

Sniper: Maximum range instant damage. Super effective against raid starships, bombers, and melee craft. All these vessels somehow defeats your shield. Place on outskirts, unless using a single shield defense, then maybe place just outside the shield.

Spider:  Like sniper, so you can double your cap of that function. Also able to neutralize most fleetships in a single shot through engine damage. Due to cost, would suggest to always keeping them on outskirts for protection.

MLRS: Anti-fighter. Anti melee.  Can outrange most things. Ineffective against armored vessels.

Missile turret: Anti-bomber. Wide range of damage. Effective vs raid starships. Usually can cover the whole distance between wormhole and station with plenty of room to avoid passing attacks.

Laser: Anti-bomber. Anti-starship. Place where the enemy will be a while. Like wormholes or around station bubble.

Lightning: Localized attrition. The harder and longer the fight, the stronger they get. Always combine with gravity turrets or tractors.

Flak turrets: Short range. I use them exclusively at wormhole entries. The text doesn't explictly state it but I think they have AoE like grenades, or maybe an even shorter ranged version of it. with AoE they get much more powerful and can dispatch some units themselves.

Counter sniper: Never have used them. Ever.

Tractors: Can be placed at wormholes if mines aren't used much. Doesn't lose effectiveness under a shield if it can get units from outside bubble.

Gravity: Effective regardless of numbers, making it very handy as difficulty numbers go above 8. Doesn't lose effectiveness under a shield at all. Higher marks may provide a stronger benefit then first indicated as it's power increase is not as linear as other turrets.

Tachyons: I always invest in military stations, making these redundant. Can't comment.

Heavy beam cannons: Very effective if combined with gravity or tractors so as to maintain "bunchiness". Not enough in caps for my taste on their own, but if doing fallen spire then highly recommended.

[Clearbeard]

Sniper: Maximum range instant damage. Super effective against raid starships, bombers, and melee craft. All these vessels somehow defeats your shield. Place on outskirts, unless using a single shield defense, then maybe place just outside the shield.

Gravity: Effective regardless of numbers, making it very handy as difficulty numbers go above 8. Doesn't lose effectiveness under a shield at all. Higher marks may provide a stronger benefit then first indicated as it's power increase is not as linear as other turrets.

Tachyons: I always invest in military stations, making these redundant. Can't comment.

I've seen a few comments suggesting sniper turrets are good against raid starships.  Thing is, don't raid starships have good radar dampening, meaning sniper turrets seldom can engage them, especially if placed on the far edges of the system?

As for gravity turrets, higher marks are definitely improvements, with max speed reduced from 8-->4-->2 with each level, giving you 2 or 4 times as long to kill with your longer ranged turrets and ships.  Since relatively few ship types ignore grav effects compared to tractor beams, they're doubly useful.

Cloaked tachyons are good, regular ones, meh.  The level 1 ones are low hp and tend to get targeted early, but the cloaked version are superb.  Personally I prefer the stealth tachyon/logistics/grav turret combo to military stations, which are just too chaotic for my tastes.

[chemical_art]

I've seen a few comments suggesting sniper turrets are good against raid starships.  Thing is, don't raid starships have good radar dampening, meaning sniper turrets seldom can engage them, especially if placed on the far edges of the system?

Raiders don't have radar dampening unless this has been added. But even if they do sniper turrets ignore it readily.

Snipers are best because they both pierce the raiders very heavy armor and can't be outrun in system.

[aordy001]

yess Ok Thank For you SoMuch info! 

[Nodor]

Turret niches:
Counter sniper: Never have used them. Ever.

Counter sniper: This is how to shut down Sentinal Frigates and Sniper guardians.  Place 1 on important command stations and in turret balls.