Topic: For those of you who think the Hydran IC is bad in SFC......

[Capt_Bearslayer_XC]

Oh yeah..... can't forget about how if you take out the shuttle bay, the entire fighter force is grounded....

[KBF-Crim]

... make sure that none of the ships creates a wild weasel (otherwise the AI will drop it and your nice formation suddenly lags)

Yes that's one of the main tricks with fleets, never give your AIs shuttles, that way they cannot weasel.

Hehe....you can get your wings to generate scatter packs though...and for some reason....at certain times...your AI will make them all on their own....but you are correct....90%+ of the time...they generate weasles...

[Capt_Bearslayer_XC]

That depends on who they are fighting....if you are facing off against Lyrans or Hydrans the AI doesn't try to make WW's....

[KBF-Crim]

That depends on who they are fighting....if you are facing off against Lyrans or Hydrans the AI doesn't try to make WW's....

Ah yes...thanks bear!

[Bonk]

I like flying Gorn fleets, I find they are quite controllable. Have a few nasty CnC compliant combos too, for really cheap BPV... HDD squad or BDD squads in particular.

Slower game speed is a good suggestion but I can manage a gorn fleet at speed 8 OK, there's really not that much clicking to do.

Roms are a problem though, I suppose one could strip the cloak from certain ships in the list and use those as AI fleet members. (just make copies of em... like R-SPLnc or something like that...)

[Dfly]

There are ways to make sure your AI fighters do not launch at or near the beginning of a match.  Same as there are ways to have your ships have shuttles, and have them not make wws even though you are against droners or plasmachuckers. 
It requires that you, as a pilot:
1-temporarily take control of those ships prior to actually locking on to an enemy unit(dont forget to return when done all steps)
2- turn off the wws, make ss or scats instead as wished(the ai will no longer ever make a ww during that mission)
3-tell the ships to liimit fire or even better, you control their fire(only done once back in your ship)
4- as per fighters, do not lock onto the enemy ships till you are at the range you want to either fire, or launch fighters from AI ships.

[Skaren]

Oh that ideal about not locking on is great to save the fighters !!

never knew that.

S

[Hexx]

It's cool (if annoying, some of us like to keep targetting things..)
But again any real use of multiple ship fleets is kinda dumb on any server involving the Kzin.

[FPF-DieHard]

Slave girls 3 (I think, I'm getting old) let you have a vannilla war cruiser (F-NCL+, K-D5K, R-SPA+, you get the drift . . .) as a second ship.  Is there anything worng with this?  F

Fighting a C7 with a CLC/NCL+ combo is fun

[KBF-Crim]

It's cool (if annoying, some of us like to keep targetting things..)
But again any real use of multiple ship fleets is kinda dumb on any server involving the Kzin.

Not when your escorts have 4 AMD's

[Bonk]

It's cool (if annoying, some of us like to keep targetting things..)
But again any real use of multiple ship fleets is kinda dumb on any server involving the Kzin.

Not when your escorts have 4 AMD's

Exactly, that's the fun of fleets, every cheeze whiz has its velveeta counter. The question is do you have the right flavour for that encounter?

[Hexx]

Oh I don't (hugely) have an issue with them in late, but in early?
3X DF (one player) can throw out 18 heavy drones/turn
Wing up with 2 players, each with another DF and you have 3 guys in a fleet that can do spd 31,
throw out 30 drones a turn, and keep 60 in the air. (err space)
Not to many fleets built in early era have that kinda PD.

~ That being said once the 70-75 ships start coming out it's not as much of an issue (imo) and not at all once PF's
are available. (Unless of course you're Lyran, but ..)

And (again) I say Kzin, but the Klinks can approximate it (not as good, but close enough) using F5D's
But Lyran, (I'd assume) Hydran, Gorn, Rom, ISC and maybe Fed (dunno) can't really hold that off.

[Julin Eurthyr]

It's cool (if annoying, some of us like to keep targetting things..)
But again any real use of multiple ship fleets is kinda dumb on any server involving the Kzin.

Not when your escorts have 4 AMD's

Exactly, that's the fun of fleets, every cheeze whiz has its velveeta counter. The question is do you have the right flavour for that encounter?

Please show me a legal ISC (actually any plasma race) fleet that can deal with the drone throw of a massive Kzin fleet, the fighter squads of a full-sized Hydran fleet, or any fleet consisting of a large number of "consumable" weapons (read Kzin carrier force) with the same level of effectiveness as, say, a decently AMD'd Klink / Fed fleet, especially if their AMD-heavy "escorts"...  (this does not mean that the plasma / AMD fleet is expected to survive, but if the AMD boys are gonna kill a cruiser and most of the fighter wing, before dying, the plasma boys should be doing the same thing, with appropriate plasma tactics...)