Contents (New bits are normally in red, but the page has been completely rewritten - assume it's all red.)

• Basic advice
• Single ship vs ship combat
• Weapon charging and firing order
• Attack bonuses
• Weapon choices
• Small weapons
• Large Weapons
• Why LTLA's are Worth It
• Point Defenses
• Superweapons
• Wings
• Different races' fighters
• How to kill Wings
• Attacking bases from space
• Protecting your homeworld
• Why Bases can only fight twice in a turn
• Blockades
• Attacking bases by ground assault
• Fleet battles
• How to kill lone monster ships with a mob of weaker ones
• Swarms
• How to use Swarms of weak ships vs. entire fleets
• Advanced tactics
• Exotic Techs
• Capturing ships
• Assault pods vs. ships
• Capturing pods
• Economic warfare with Gold Pods [New]
• Miscellaneous tips
• How to save a VCR
• Combat range: the Chain Effect
• Ship Experience and Skill
  
• Ramming
• High Guard
• Damage from exploding mines
• Summary of different races' special powers
• Bugs
• Moving ships around unobserved
• Tme saving tips for managing fleets

Related useful stuff elsewhere:

• Diplomat, a combat simulation utility
• Sandy Schoen's VGAP4 Tables (compare weapons etc)
• The unpredictable effects of the more complex combat and its potential for glorious chaos!
• Info on basic weapon attributes can be found in Tim's Help Files, p00014.htm.
• See Tim's site for a description of Devices and their effects.

Basic advice. Some of these things may seem obvious, but arise from genuine questions on the newsgroup.

The best way to learn about the mechanics of combat is to do some simulations. For this, I recommend the Diplomat utility. (Yeah, I wrote it, but it's the only dedicated simulator around so far.) It doesn't cost anything, though I encourage heavy users to make a donation to charity. You can also use ScriptZ0r for simulations, but it's more of a universe-creation tool, so isn't optimised for combat sims.

With simulations, you can fairly quickly get a grasp of the usefulness of different weapon types, attack options, and hulls. Diplomat is top heavy with mouse-over pop-up explanations and context-sensitive tips to help users figure out what the buttons do.

The first thing you'll notice is that effective weapons and hulls cost more money! If you enjoy the challenge of fine-tuning the ships you can afford to be most effective, you are probably going to enjoy the game of VGAP4.

Dull VCR's: Quite often, you will see "messages from Host" in your turn about "Minor Ship Conflicts". These are fights where there is no VCR (animated recording) to view, because no ships were damaged. It was found, during Beta testing, that sometimes people had enormous numbers of pointless fights to look at - for example a ship raiding in enemy space might destroy 3 enemy pods, a defenseless freighter, an undefended 1-man enemy base and only have 1 real fight, but you'd get 6 VCR's and have to view them all to figure out that 5 were not worth looking at. So Tim instituted the "no ship damage = no VCR" rule. This is fine 4 out of 5 times, but occasionally confusing. Have you spotted the loophole? If fights occur where no ship is damaged there's no VCR, only a quiet side message amongst several others in your turn. So for example, if one of your Wings is killed by an enemy ship, you won't see a VCR. I lost a major base the other day to an enemy ship, but there was no VCR. However, believe me, overlooking the occasional message is far more playable than ploughing through a 2MB RST file with 40 spurious VCR's! As long as you know why this is going on, it's not a big problem.

Single ship versus ship combat

One-on-one ship fights are the most common form of combat.

Some general points to note:

Weapon charging and firing order

In a ship with a power deficiency, does each weapon grab its complete power drain or is the power divided among all weapons?

Point defense weapons charge first from slots 1 to 10 in that order.
...If any power is left over
Small weapons 1 to 30 charge up
...If any power is left over
Large weapons 1 to 20 charge up
...If any power is left over
The Super Weapon is charged.

No weapon can take more than its rated charge rate, unless there is a power dump taking place from the power bank to the weapons, then there is no limit, other than the size of the power bank and how much power the weapon can hold.

Weapons can charge at a rate less than their rated charge rate.

The order that you place weapons on a ship DOES matter. . .

Attack Bonuses

If a ship's chance to hit is >100% (because its hull has an attack bonus, or because of Exotic Tech), the excess above 100% is knocked off the defender's chances of intercepting incoming fire.

The purpose of this is to make it feasible to design races like Stormers, whose hulls have high attack bonuses to compensate for insignificant shields, armour, eveasive bonus or sufficient PD weapons to survive incoming fire in a fight against ships of similar tech levels from other races. This leads to a different style of play for these races - they build lots of cheap ships and expect to lose most of them, but they attack like a pack of rabid dogs. Example:

• A ship with attack bonus of 70% fires a weapon with an accuracy of 45% against a ship with an evasive bonus of 10%.
• Chance to hit = 70% + 45% - 10% = 105%, ie an automatic hit.
• If the shot is going to hit, the target's Point Defense has a chance to fire at it first. In this case, the chances of the PD hitting the incoming shot are reduced by 5% (because the incoming shot has a 105% chance to hit).

The overall effect of this is that some weapons, like Photon Torpedoes, are (only) useful on ships with very high attack bonuses (like Deth Speculas), which can use standoff range = 900 and blast their enemies from relative safety. Some other weapons can be raised from complete duds to useful-in-special-circumstances types, on hulls with good attack bonuses.

Q. [Jon Nunn]: Can Deth Speculas be used in conjuction with Vickies where the Point Defense Systems waste all their time firing and missing at Deth Specula weapons or are they smart enough to just fire at the Vickie's weapons?
A. [Tim Wisseman]: Yes, the point defense systems will waste some shots on the incoming Speculas' fire, even though they will miss every time.
Q. Does the +100% attack bonus thing help Small Weapons?
A. Any attack bonus causes them to hit better.
. . . does it help them overcome a target's Evasive Bonuses?
Yes. - Tim

I think the defending ship's attack bonus is added to the PD weapon's odds too - but only against fighters. (I ought to check that out one day.)

Exotic tech can increase the attack bonus of all your ships (but not fighters), making low accuracy weapons more useful.

Weapon choices

The first thing to do is print out Sandy Schoen's tables to compare weapon types with each other. In my opinion, they are essential reading for any serious player. It will quickly strike you that there are some deliberate duds amongst the stars.

In addition, the special combat powers of various hulls, weapons, and races are summarised on Tim's site at http://www.vgaplanets.com/v4verse/weapons.htm . This is useful but not vital reading; Diplomat advises you about weapons' special powers when you select a weapon.

My favourite Large Weapons in mid game tend to be "good all rounders" like a Blaster Cannon, perhaps combined with some Disruptor Cannon. As my techs increase I upgrade to Pulsed Phasor Cannon. In late game I can afford a few Large Turbo Laser Arrays. I always mount a Sandcaster on some ships in a fleet in case I run into fighters. On ships with high attack bonuses, I tend to mount Photon Torpedoes and use a long standoff range so enemy ships can't fire back (I'm out of range). (Photon Torpedoes are very long range, but they are too inaccurate to use on most ships. An attack bonus of 50% or so makes them worth using.) My favourite Small Weapons are Pulsed Lasers.

Important factors to consider:

Range. You might be able to tell your ship to stand off at extreme range At the maximum range the weapon is 40% less accurate than at what it would be at point blank, but you might manage to keep out of range of the enemy's shorter range weapons if your ship is more maneuverable ( ie, hull speed is high).

Blast power. Since Host 181 (Dec 2004), the "knockback effect" of Large Weapons is related to their Blast rating.  Large weapons (but not small ones) push their target away a bit when they it; ships have inertia, they push small ships further. This means you can push small, light ships out of range. This can be good or bad. Weapins with high Blast ratings are, from best to worst: Plasma Bolt Cannon (range 250); Blaster Cannon (range 335); Photon Torpedo, (range 954); PPC (range 490); LTLA (range 510); all others are much lower.

Mixing weapons: [Tip from David Ouimet, this is generally true:] If the enemy ships have lots of Point Defense, a mix of weapons is usually very bad design because they will all tend to charge at different rates and fire at different times. This means that enemy Point Defenses have a chance to recharge between your shots, and thus can fire at every incoming shot. What you want is a volley of say 15 shots all arriving at the same time, so if the target only has 8PD weapons, then (let's say 5 of the 15 miss so the PD ignores them), the 8PD weapons can only shoot down 8 of the 10 incoming hits. Exception: if your ships have large attack bonuses, then every shot will get through and specialist weapons become interesting.

An exception to the general rule of Not Mixing Weapons is, that I often mount a single sandcaster on most of my ships, as a good general purpose anti fighter weapon, and because a sandcaster will rapidly remove enemy holo decoys from a battle; and I often have a single Blaster Cannon on a ship, as a good base-killing weapon.

Small Weapons

Unlike Large and Point Defense weapons, where there is a lot of differentiation between weapons, everyone just uses the tech 2 Pulsed Laser for their Small Weapons, because its fantastic rate of fire more than compensates for its minor shortcomings. (Especially when it is boosted by Exotic Techs.) Many experienced players don't bother increasing Small Weapon tech above 2, even when all other techs are maxed out.

Remember that Small Weapons can still blow up a huge ship if they hit its Soft Spot. Of course, not all ships have a Soft Spot, and you can't hit it if the shields and armour are still there. But a cheap Loki with 25 pulsed lasers and no large weapons can be surprisingly effective. Don't ignore small weapons in large numbers. Some races like Centaurs have got almost no large weapons, but they win a lot of games.

Other small weapons...

• The Disrupter does the most damage to life support systems per second. Theoretically useful for capturing ships. In reality, whilst you try to capture with non-damaging weapons, the enemy usually blows you up.
• Streak Missiles are the most accurate, unfortunately they have a very low rate of fire and are easily intercepted. (Though it's quite likely that the enemy has no point defenses which can shoot down Streaks, as people are usually more worried about Large weapons). The interesting thing about Streaks is their long range (950). Long range, however, isn't too useful in the end stages of a game because when big fleet battles occur, there are so many ships in the field of batttle that you cannot maintain range from all of them. Which is why pulsed lasers are good...
• The Phasor is particularly good at destroying pods, which theoretically is useful if the enemy's trying to use assault pods. However, Wings set to "target soft" are good for this too, and I've never been seriously attacked by anyone using assault pods in a space battle.
• Positron Beam looks best at draining armour (useful vs. Lizards). But Pulsed Lasers backed by exotic tech are better.
• The Tachyon Beam is like an improved Streak Missile. It is the other long range (950) small weapon. It fires 4 times as often as a Streak and is the hardest small weapon for point defenses to shoot down. Looks very useful against Swarms of weak ships due to its long range, but I haven't tested that.
• Plasma Gun - I think I saw someone use this once. Despite being top tech, having the fastest shield drain rate, blah, blah, blah, it is too low range, so only begins firing when you're almost nose to nose with the enemy. And it's much slower than pulsed lasers, so not as good as them when you add exotic tech.

Large Weapons

If you can get some Amphibian natives in your bases, they will build free large weapons for you. Since the best ones are normally very expensive, this opens the possibility of being able to use interesting high tech weapons in the early part of the game, and giving neighbours a nasty surprise with a "low" tech ship hull...

About the only time you should use a mix of weapons is, when your hull's Attack Modifier is large (>150%, say). This helps its shots evade Point Defenses.

Michael Richardson analysed Tim's code for Large Weapons in August 2005 and posted his findings on the Wiki.

Favourite Large Weapons used by experienced players

Basically any big ship with >10 large weapons should mount 1 sandcaster, 1 blaster cannon, and all others should be the same type:

• Sand Caster : Most accurate large weapon (99%), absolutely essential to have some around to protect against fighters, and shoot down enemy holo decoys. Eats Ord rapidly though.
• Disruptor Cannon : Theoretically, a good choice for capturing ships, and its fast rate of fire means it's very effective when boosted by Exotic Tech. No ord usage is useful for a fast firing weapon. In practice though, I haven't found it very useful. This low tech weapon isn't too good at damaging things, so the weilder gets killed before having much effect. I guess that by the time your Disruptor-Cannon-armed ship travels to the enemy, he's built higher tech weaponry. Jari Laasonen corrected me on this point. It is extremely useful. Example: for capturing ships. You just need a lot of Disrptor Cannon for them to be effective - say, 20, on a Cube.
• Blaster Cannon: A firm favourite, because it is an effective multipurpose tool. So what if there are other weapons better at, say, shield arc? The specialist weapons are no good on their own. "You can't go wrong with a volley of Blaster cannon". And it's only tech 4. With the possible exception of Photon Torpedoes (tech 7), you don't get a better weapon than this one for general purpose ship-killing until you struggle to Tech 10 and can build the Pulsed Phasor Cannons - but PPC's are three times the price. Unlike the higher tech weapons, the Blaster cannon gets a huge damage bonus when fired upon bases, which is why I always like to have one of these on any big ship with lots of weapon mounts. It uses a little ordnance, so is a better choice vs. Crystals than the Pulsed Phasor Cannon. One thing I would say against it, when used against ships, is that due to its low rate of fire, you can be pretty sure the enemy point defenses will be charged up and ready to intercept it. So, either have one BC, on the grounds that it's a useful general purpose beast; or lots (so you can fire a big volley and be more likely to penetrate PD's). Putting, say, 2-5 on a ship is a waste.
• Ion Cannons are useless due to their low rate of fire, but their big brother the Ionic Gun Array is a little known gem. It arcs thru the most armor (3000) once shields are down; if you're fighting, say, a Lizard ship whose shields you can knock down but whose armour is hard to crack, you could try these backed up by Exotic Techs plus some other weapon just to get the shields down. (So the Ionic Gun Array can begin damaging the insides of the ship as soon as possible.) In practice, I've found in long battles between huge ships which can absorb lots of damage, that one or two of these help a bit, because after a while they knock out enemy weapons. (Sys damage.) But mounting these on small ships is a waste of time. Small ships need something cheap which does damage before they are destroyed.
• Plasma Bolt Cannon is favoured by Coalition players, who have a bonus using it on 2 ships. Apart from that, not a common weapon of choice, as it's too specialised in the damage it does.
• Photon Torpedoes are very powerful when they hit. They have a huge range, so you can set Standoff Range to 900 and blow the enemy away without him touching you. But they are very easy to shoot down. A normal ship firing PTT's can only expect about 10% of the shots to hit, because they are unable to saturate the enemy's point defense systems. The time to use PTT's is on ships with a large Attack Bonus. In practice this means most Stormer hulls, and I've also found it useful on the EE Moscow hull, though that may be because it fires a salvo of 20 at a time! Note that large salvoes of PTT's use up your Ord rapidly.
• Pulsed Phasor Cannon is a favourite weapon with many players. It physically destroys ships quickly (destroying armour, shields and then Blast damage), which is what is really important. None of this arsing about trying to disable or capture ships with fancy weapons with the best System damage or Kill factors, which frankly isn't reliable since they're usually shooting back with something nasty and blow you up before you destroy their life support, etc. And it uses no Ord, which is normally useful (unless you're fighting Crystals).
• The Gatling Phasor is several times the price of PPC's and does little more damage. Where it scores over the PPC is the rate of fire (2 secs). If it's boosted by exotic techs, it is much better. At only 150kT it can be fitted on a large variety of hulls, and its mineral cost is much more affordable than the next 2 weapons:
• Turbo Laser Array is even more powerful than the Gatling Phasor, but with a mass of 800kT some races have no hulls which will mount it.
• LTLA (Large Turbo Laser Array) is the ultimate large weapon. With a mass of 2000kT there are only a handful of hulls in the game which can mount it. Drool. Oh yes.

Why LTLA's and TLA's are worth paying for

Paraphrased from a discussion between Chmmrmm, David Ouimet, Becksen, Mark Heinrich, Roger Norris, Chris Olin

Question. These weapons are very expensive, not just in cash terms but minerals too. Are they worth it? Or to put it another way, is it better having more ships with PPC's or fewer ships with TLA's or LTLA's?

Answer (1) - Your ships do not fight simultanously! Even if you start at the same position they will spread over the whole VCR combat zone very soon. Better 1 ship which can destroy every other ship around solo than 4 ships which will die alone one after one... A ship with LTLA, heavy shielded, maybe some Exotic Tech, costs as much as a whole fleet of average ships. But it also has the firepower of the whole fleet in one place all the time and will win the fight more often than it will lose.

Side comment. One fleet of small ships against 1 or just a few large ships will stay focused much better. Even a super large ship needs some Wings or small ships around just to break up the enemy fleet into a chaotic mob, or it can be overwhelmed by a Swarm with the correct battle orders.

Answer (2) - I have noticed that in all but the largest fleet battles the fights are kind of like in the Karate movies where ships square off one or two at a time. For ships that do not have enough LW slots to overwhelm ememy PD, the LTLA is brilliant. One has to consider the price of the platform relative to the cost of the weapon. Certainly a Bird Man Darkwing G would deserve the extra investment for LTLA's.

Answer (3) - There's another important factor to consider. Since the TLA does much less damage but fires faster, it receives a much bigger boost from the large weapon exotic techs than the PPC does.

Answer (4) - Another argument *for* big, powerful, but expensive ships is what happens in a stalemate:  A portion of the enemy's fleet is destroyed, while your single ship can be repaired to 100% effectiveness...

Answer (5) A smaller, but still substantial, consideration is overkill. What happens when your ship engages a fleet of several dozen small scouts? You may end up "wasting" some of your weapon output by firing your full bank of 20 PPCs at a scout when it only would have taken 4 or 5 to kill it. Then you have to wait another 8 tics before you can fire again. If you were using TLAs, less output would be wasted and you would be able to fire again sooner. Thus TLAs can be better against large fleets of small ships.

Answer (6) Concerning the LTLA, key factor is the cost of the weapon platform. Consider the Empire's Super Gorbie. It costs a whopping 35000 just for the hull! Thus putting 20 PPCs on a Gorbie is really like paying 2300 megacredits per PPC. In this case, the change to LTLA is a GREAT idea, because the LTLA is easily eight times as powerful as the PPC even without exotics, but it's only going to cost you three or four times as much as the PPCs once you factor in the cost of the hull.

Basically, the more expensive the hull of a ship is, the more efficient the LTLA becomes.

Side comment. A ship's reaction to receiving a LTLA volley is usually to back-up out of range, which can give the LTLA ship a breathing space if it is being mobbed.

Further comment: Stormers would probably build 3 Vickies with Photon Torps instead of one "good" Vickie with gatling phasors, because Vickies die so easily they are not worth spending much on.

Point Defense Weapons

See also: this page about the special powers of different Point Defense weapons.

Apart from Holo Decoys, point defenses only protect the ship they're mounted on; ships cannot use them to protect other fleet members. However, they will fire on any fighter that is in range, so they can protect another ship from enemy fighters.
The point defence systems only fire on incoming shots that are going to hit the ship, all shots that are going to miss will be ignored.

I asked Tim for some definitive clarification on the effect of attack bonuses on Point Defense in July 2003. Specifically, does a ship's attack bonus help it shoot down incoming fire? He replied:

• Mivorari ships have a bonus
• The Target Enhancer ship device
• The Auto Blaster has a +20% bonus versus Ordnance-using weapons
• The Quad Laser has a  +40% chance of intercepting Ordnance-using weapons

Holo Decoys (info mainly collated by Thriyon)

Holo Decoys confuse small weapons and large weapons. They are 2.5 times more effective against large weapons than the small ones. In particular they are especially effective versus Photon Torpedoes. Photon Torps' accuracy can be decreased by up to 60% if there are enough holo decoys around, and other weapons by up to 25%. Holo Decoys last a long time after they are dispersed, decaying at a very slow rate.

Tim mentioned on the Newsgroup, August 2002:
 Holo Decoys affect Ion Cannons and AA guns on bases, fighter beams and missiles, Large and Small weapons.

Holos are destroyed rapidly by sandcasters.

So fighter races often find their enemies are using holo decoys to counter the fighters... so fighter races mount counter-counter weaponry, ie sandcasters to protect their fighters... and sandcasters can be partly nullified by Concussion Rockets (can disperse incoming sand caster grains 60% of the time), though that's probably only useful, like most Point Defenses, against sandcaster shots aimed at the ship with the Concussion Rockets. Confused yet?!

Comment. Personally I am dubious Holo Decoys do anything. Any contribution to a battle seems minimal, and can probably be explained by there being an extra ship around pumping the things out. Tim claims they sometimes seem ineffective because a Sandcaster will destroy lots of Holo Decoys with every shot, so their half life is low in a combat where enemies use Sandcasters. Since most fleets have SC's to guard against fighters, maybe this is why I have yet to see a significant effect from HD's...

Point Defenses: see Diplomat's comments. Basically:

• Holo Decoys - Useful thing to have several of these in a fleet, because they have a marginal effect on all enemy weapons (including fighters and ground base ion cannon etc). But do not fit to ships which are intended to fight alone, as you need many holo decoys present to make a real difference. Particularly effective against Photon Torpedoes (ie Stormers). HD's use quite a lot of Ord.
  
• 35mm Vulcan - don't use these, it will drain all your ord and isn't very accurate. Can also fire at small weapons. Has a 70% chance of stopping a Streak Missile
• Flake Cannon - anti fighter. Also effective against small weapons (ie Swarming races)
• Con Rockets - Useless, despite being the ONLY weapon that can stop a sandcaster shot. 60% odds of stopping the sand.
• Micro Sand Caster - decent anti weapon, but no use vs fighters (range too low)
• Auto Blaster - poor range means it will rarely fire against fighters. +20% odds vs Ord Weapons; can fire at small weapons; uses 1/3 power when firing at small weapons
• Turbo Laser - OK against weapon fire and fighters. Can kill up to 3 fighters in one shot and fires 3x faster than most PD. But anti-fighter range of just 90 means it is much less effective than you think.
• Quad Laser - OK as a general purpose PD weapon. +40% versus ord-using weapons.
• Micro Missile - best anti fighter weapon by a long way due to range of 230. But no use against incoming weapon fire.
• Interceptor - best at intercepting incoming weapon fire. No effect at all on fighters. Opposite of Micromissile.

Superweapons

It turns out that, all Superweapons destroy ground base shields, so they are ideal for destroying enemy homeworlds; and it is worth mentioning here that all super weapons take out the shields of enemy ships - even if the enemy has the top shield level (3000 points). - Still true? Simulate.

Miscellaneous Superweapon tips:

A Super Laser will only blow up a planet if (1) switched on and (2) the ship is ordered to KILL the planet. (Set planet to be the ship's kill target.)

Otherwise the Superlaser just attacks nearby ships.

A Superlaser can not fire on a planet in combat until tick 4000, to give defenders a chance to destroy the attacker before he wipes out their homeworld. And if they capture him, its ATTACK switch is turned off and its kill target is cleared.

A Superlaser can not fire on a planet after all movement unless the ATTACK switch is on

Also:

According to the docs ONLY the Super Laser can destroy a planet. (the World Crusher Missile does damage to bases only regardless of its name).

There is more Superweapon information at the end of the Stormer page.

Set Superweapon ships to arrive in Wave 2 (tick 300). Their superweapons will be charged up and fire a devastating shot almost immediately (tick 310).
All SuperWeapons will destroy the entire shield of an enemy ship, and do some armour damage on top of that (and Blast [Hull] damage if they get through the armour). This makes them very useful against other races' top ships e.g. Slayers with 4500 points of shields. World Crushers do 1000 points damage to the armour and hull. Not so useful versus Lizard hulls (5500 points of armour and hulls with 50% damage modifiers) but still helpful.
I usually set a specific KILL target (NAV screen) when using a superweapon to make best use of it, and set the ship to Target Dangerous.
Superweapons do not require any special setting for ship to ship firing in battles, except you must switch the thing ON in the ATTACK screen. Many people don't notice this new button on the screen, which only appears for superweapon ships.
Superweapons generate a lot of sensor noise when fired. Everyone knows you now have SW tech, and where your big ship firing it was, because they get Host messages about "Superweapon Fire Detected!"

Arguments against using superweapons: they...

In practice, superweapons aren't always brilliant. It depends on your own hulls and the enemy's. If you're playing the Evil Empire, it is well worth spending a "mere" 5,000mc and 2450kT of Duranium on a superlaser to help protect your investment in a Gorbie. But I have noticed that adding an Antimatter Maul to a Slayer makes little difference to battles. If you're playing Stormers, building cheap trashy Vickies which are lucky to survive 2 serious battles, it's probably better to build twice as many Vickies (but with the occasional superweapon thrown in to keep them guessing!). If unsure, try simulations with and without SW's to see if they're cost-effective.

The actual stats shown for SuperWeapons are incorrect. All the super weapons have long ranges in VCR combat, ie 1000. Tim has corrected the Client, Nov 2003, dunno if he's corrected the Help files though

Tim wrote the following on the NG, Nov 2003:
All super weapons should have the range to hit anything it fires at  98% of the time. The range math for super weapons has been removed
Damage = vH = 0.1 * ((Blast * (PartsMod / 100)) * (Rnd * 0.75 + 0.25)) * (100 / (hullmass + 50)) + 0.
A hull mass 2000 ship with a parts mod of 10
vH = 0.1 * (( 10000 * (1) * (.25) * 1/2
vH = 125% MINIMUM damage 

Other uses of superweapons (besides simply shooting at ships)

Superlaser: If you fire it at a planet instead of a base, you can blow up the planet. It becomes an asteroid field, which is useless to some races. Superlasers destroy planets after all movement and combat are finished (ie, tick 4000 of the VCR). This gives defenders a chance to knock out incoming Crystal Lights etc, otherwise someone could HYP onto an enemy homeworld, set to appear on 2nd wave, fire an unstoppable superlaser pulse and effectively knock a player out.

Q. In a test game I tried to destroy a planet with a Super Laser. It only works when "Attack Enemy Ships" is on. This might be a problem if you want to attack a planet (with a cloaked ship) without a ship vs. ship fight first. Is this done intentionally or is it a bug ?

A.  It is quite intentional.  Tim wanted to be sure there was a possibility of stopping Darkwings with Super Lasers from blowing up planets.  Without a measure like this one, the DW was judged to be too unbalancing.  So you must strive to win, or at least survive, any battle before you  are permitted to blow up the planet you're targetting. - Mark MacWilliam
(There is a trick..... just set the "enemy" as your ally, and your ships  won't attack the "enemy".  No combat will happen, but your super laser will fire on the planet  - Andreas Benne)

Nemesis Torpedo: Useful for clearing away fighters in a battle. Unfortunately, also your own (unless they're set to "do not launch"). The effect of Nemesis Torpedoes on fighters can be reduced by the Nemesis Shields exotic tech, which means only half your fighters get blown away.

Nemesis Torp Top Tip: Aczanny Fighters are naturally protected against Nemesis Torpedoes at a rate of around 50% to 70%. Aczanny ships take no more than 5% damage from being in the area of a nemesis torpedo blast. Aczanny hulls take no more than 5% hull damage from any super weapon hit.

What exactly are the effects of a Nemesis on nearby ships which are NOT the target? (Docs state that it will destroy "small" ships nearby. And all Wings. How big / armoured / shielded etc does a ship need to be to survive?)

Answer (Tim):

• All ships under 100kt are destroyed. All wings destroyed. All pods destroyed.
• All ships larger than 100kt with more than 50 shield points will lose 50 shield points. A 500kt ship with no shields at point blank range of the center of the explosion would take 43% hull damage.
• A 500kt ship with no shields at point blank range of the center of the explosion would take 43% hull damage.
• A 500kt ship with no shields at 1300 combat vcr units range of the center of the explosion would take no hull damage. (The combat map has a radius of 1000 units, it is 2000 units across the combat screen)

Antimatter Maul: can be used to destroy Jumpgates, in fact it's the only way to destroy them. Just like when destroying a ship, the ship firing the AM will recover the 1000kT moly used to build the JG, it ends up in the ship's hold.

Protomatter Cannon: can be used to reassemble asteroid belts into planets. The planets will have a very high hyperdimensional stress, ie they will be mineral-rich and prone to blowing up!

World Crusher: can shoot at bases up to 100LY away. Extremely useful for whittling down enemy populations on major bases. This can be countered by building a base shield. But if the player shooting WC's has Transphased WC exotic tech, even base shields won't help. Note that any Superweapon will destroy a base shield at point blank range, ie in melee.

To use World Crushers at long range (up to 100LY away) versus bases:

Set waypoint 1 to the target planet and turn on the weapon. You must also set the kill target for the ship to the planet or base you are shooting at. There is a 1 in 3 chance that it will hit any bases on the target planet, even bases you cannot see, but not any ships. If the base has a Shield, you will need Transphased World Crusher Exotic Tech to punch through it. You must also switch the Superweapon ON in the ship's ATTACK screen. The ship doesn't need to be any particular speed to fire in Long Range Mode (Tim's Host release notes imply it has to be stationary, but my experiments show this is not so).

Dan Hammond explained:

World crushers currently do not work "right." They can be used either in Long Range mode or Point Blank, but not both in the same turn.
The only way to get them to fire in long range mode is to set a kill target. When a kill target is set they will not fire till after all movement is over. What a world crusher can not do in long range mode (kill target set) is to fire in a normal combat vcr.

This means that at a range of 5 or less to the target base when set to long range mode (kill target set) the World crusher (without transphased world crusher exotic tech) can not destroy a base shield as can any other super weapon in the same circumstances.

If the kill target is not used and the range is 5 or less to the enemy base then a normal combat vcr does happen if attack ground switch is on and should the enemy base have a shield the first world crusher shot will kill the base shield. And then the second world crusher shot will kill the base after the shield is gone. The World crusher can fire up to 3 missiles per vcr combat. In this method a world crusher can kill a base with a shield without needing the transphased world crusher exotic tech.

World Crushers won't fire (just in Long Range Mode) if the ship has (System?) or Weapon damage.

One thing to watch for in Long Range mode is that although you'll destroy the population and structures, the rest of the base's contents (contraband, minerals, some Natives) will survive and can be regathered. If the enemy cunningly put his population into orbit in pods when he saw you coming, he can land them back on the planet, perhaps not losing much overall.

Wings

General info (Basics) | How Wings Work / Major Tips | Notes on different races' fighters | Defending against Fighter Wings | Miscellaneous (minor tips, obscure stuff)

General info (Basics)

Stuff moved from the main how to play page:

You can build fighters with the Fighter Plant, a Tech 4 structure; but fighters on their own can merely fly in the atmosphere of a planet, and will not engage attacking starships. You need an Air Attack Base to form them into Wings, and this is planetary tech 10. However, Tim has acceded to requests and gives players one free AAB to start with. Incidently, there are two times that you don't need an Air Attack Base. Firstly, loose fighters on ground bases will form temporary "home guard" fighter wings automatically and defend the planet from attacking ships. Fighters return to base after combat and cannot be docked to ships and carried elsewhere like normal Wings until you buy an Air Attack Base. Secondly, carriers have a "replenish fighters" switch.

Wings are groups of fighters which are free to fly in space, and are treated as a single object for combat purposes. They have a range of 10 to 400 LY, depending on race and type, but are almost invariably carried in ships' Wing bays, giving them greater range.

Wings were very ineffective in early Betas, but have become much more useful (powerful). They are faster, fire more often, do a bit more damage when they hit ships. The Sandcaster was too powerful and was downgraded so it now no longer zaps every fighter in a Wing every time it hits - so now, even races whose fighters have no armour can use fighters. Fighters have a small chance of shooting an enemy ship's soft spot once its shields and armour are gone. Fighters firing on an Evil Empire ship have bonuses. Wings of 100+ fighters are a common tool amongst players. (Some races' fighters are poor, but only cost 10mc each, so you hear about wings of 10000 fighters.) To counter this, players equip ships with anti-fighter Turbo Lasers and more Sandcasters. Tip: I find that a couple of small wings - perhaps just 10 fighters - on "anti fighter" duty, distracts enemy wings enough that your ships have a much better chance of surviving a battle.

Fighters can fire through base shields. All fighters have a chance of taking out the base shield generator. Per shot there is a 1 in 100 chance for missiles and a 1 in 1000 chance for a beam weapon to take it out. The Enforcers have better odds of taking out the base shield. They have a have a 3 in 100 chance for missiles and a 5 in 1000 chance for beams.

I moved most of my information on Wings to the Combat Tips Page because this page was getting bloated.

Tim did big changes to Wings round Host 192.

You can merge Wings together by Docking one to another! Whether the one you're docking to is in free space, or in a carrier. (In the latter case, there is a limit to the Wing size, ie the carrier's free space.)

With Host 193, there is a bug where you can dock wings to each other when both are in a carrier. However, they end up occupying just 1 pod bay, ie you can exceed its nominal size!

How Wings Work / Major Tips (how & why they act like they do)
Fighters will fly to very far range range and come to a almost stop and recharge their batteries. When they are near a full charge they will go to maximum speed and close on the enemy ship, fire and run away again.

One major factor controlling fighters' effectiveness is their beam / missile range. If they have to get right up close to an enemy ship to fire (like EE fighters), the enemy PD has several chances to shoot them like sitting ducks while they approach. This has a disproportionate effect because:

Jelmer Renema advises: Simulations show that you should always, always include at least one fighter with long range missiles in any wing. This will give the powerbank of the wing something to do while the beams of your cheap type 1s and 2s are out of range. This is true for almost all races. But I personally have found that mixing EE type 3 fighters into wings of type 1's is bad, so it's not always true. Treat this as a starting point for tactical ideas.

Q. How come the fighters (of the Federation at least) have a longer firing range than point defence? Does this mean that the fed fighters can just stay out of range a pummel a ship to death without even getting touched?
A.Yes, but fighters always make an attack run to point blank when possible and then head out to long range to recharge for another attack run. A small fast ship or a group of enemy fighters could chase them all over the place.
Q. The Fed Kittyhawk has an ord cap of 200; not even enough to fill the ord load on 2 IO fighters (120 each). How is the carrier suppose to outfit 500 fighters for combat (500 * 120 = 6000 ord)? Is this where resupply pods come into play?
A.One ship Ord = 1000 fighter ord. So the kittyhank has a load of 200,000 fighter ord units.

What kind of damage do the Fighter beams and missiles actually do? Are beams, say, good vs heavy shields and missiles vs armour? What are the armour drain / arc etc stats on these widgets? Beam varies from 20 to 90. Missiles, from 0 to 100. Tim says -
"The odds that a beam will hit: range_odds = ((rMaxRange - rRange) / rMaxRange) * 0.4 + 0.6 ((100 - Ship_EvasiveMod + Fighter_AttackMod) / 100) * range_odds * fighterweapon_odds
"If a fighter beam hits it will take the beam power amount of shield power out. If it hits armor it will take 1/2 the beam power of armor.

"A missile rating of 20 means that 20 shield points or 10 armor points will be destroyed."

Q. In the fighter specs there is a beam power, and missile power; how does that translate into the various types of damage done by weapons in the combat logic; ie; sheild drain, sheild arc, armor drain, armor arc, kill, blast, parts...
A.Same types of weapons at a lower power. A fighter beam power of 30 equals about that of a small ship's laser.

"If a fighter has a beam power of 30, every hit will take out 30 shield points or 15 armor points." - Tim. From my experience, I don't believe this. Maybe it does that much damage to other fighters. - PH
"Missiles use the same set of math."

Michael Henderson: "Tim once told me once along time ago the fighter weapon damage numbers are actially something like 1/30th normal weapon damage stats." That would explain the discrepancy - PH

The Ord Load of an Io is 120, Missiles are rated at 30. Does this mean it can fire 4 missiles total, or that they knock 30 points off (what?) To put it another way, how many Ord does a missile use?
Tim advises: "Every missile fired uses 1 micro-ord. A ship with 120 micro-ord can fire 120 missiles." In practice, battles usually end well before all missiles are used.

Once the Shields and Armour are gone, the Wing does Blast (hull) damage. So a Wing of Ios (Beam power 40, let's ignore missiles for simplicity) would need to hit a top class ship with a shield power of 3000, 3000/40 = 75 times before it starts on the Armour, let alone the hull.

So, how is the rate of fire determined? It's like this:
Beams drain 10 energy from the battery, and missiles drain 100.
Take the Fed Io class fighter. It has a battery of 300 and a generator of 10. Its missiles have a longer range than its beams.
As it approaches a target, its missiles fire first (because they have a onger range). It will probably fire 3 missiles, each drains 100 energy from the battery, as the generator (slowly) recharges the battery.
It is unlikely to recharge the battery back up to a level of 100 again during the fight, because once it gets into Beam range it will fire every time the battery has at least 10 energy units in it.
The damage done by the beams and missiles is not related to the energy needed to fire them. For an Io, beams are rated at 40 damage, and missiles 30. 

Note that, if a Wing can only fire a few shots and then runs out of "oomph", it should probably be set to Quick Strike. This helps it to retreat and recharge its batteries.
But the number of shots can be extended by forming a big Wing. Faster rate of fire, remember? There's a wing size "trip point" where they suddenly become very powerful. However, at present this can only be found by simulations.
Because missiles don't fire as often, some people say fighters with great beams are better than fighters with only great missiles... the IMT type 3  fighter, which has no beams and a big generator, is designed to show just how powerful

Notes on different races' fighters

• Colonies of Man fighters are expensive, but worth it; they're the best combat fighters in the game.
• Rebel fighters are extremely powerful. Also, they can all fly at 400 LY per turn, and that mobility makes them the best overall fighters in the game. Just watch out for Laser Mines if flying under their own power.
• Aczanny fighters have an incredible evasive bonus, which makes them almost impossible to kill with other fighters. Aczanny are primarily a fighter race.
• Crystal fighters are very weak. Due to their extremely low cost, these fighters are possibly useful if attacked by swarms of EE fighters.
• Robot fighters: Weak. Several Robot players have commented that they rely exclusively on the Robot ships for combat. Jon Nunn's advice: if you can possibly afford it, use Raiders with their built in Sand Shields in early to mid game. Later, when you can afford Sand Shield exotic tech, switch to Rutzie. In either case, you need a whole lot more fighters with your ships than they carry, so have free floating wings escorting your base class ships. Robot fighters are incredibly cheap and can travel up to 80 LY per turn. This makes swarms of them very easy to build, which coupled with the Gun Zeroes, makes Robot space virtually impregnable except to a fast moving, well stocked up fleet. Robotic type 1 fighters are very poor in combat, partly because they run low on power and have to break off to recharge the batteries. Try your Type I & II mixed at a 5:2 ratio... that gives you a fairly efficient average Generator and a low cost of 12.14 per ship in the wing.  In this way you'll be able to field wings much larger than your enemies. 16 times as large as him for the same cost.  Try wings of 2100 (1500/600/-) flying escort to your Instrumentalities (undocked of course).
• Evil Empire fighters are pretty weak, probably due to low weapon range and low chances of hitting, and though some people report satisfactory results with them I'm not impressed. Small wings are possibly useful breaking up and shooting up swarms of small ships. Small EE wings suffer huge losses and are not cost effective; [they cannot kill enemy targets quickly so suffer high losses themselves;] wait until you can afford a few thousand fighters in a Wing! Set the Wings to Quick Strike and Attack Deadly and they will be more aggressive - otherwise they will hang back and not shoot as much, meaning they take longer to kill the enemy and thus lose more of their own numbers to PD. EE players being attacked by other players' Wings should use large Wings consisting purely of the cheap fighters set to Anti Fighter. It is very cost effective. By mid game, the minimum size of Wing worth building is probably about 2,000 fighters if it has mainly type 1's in it. (To ensure the Wing survives combat: losses are huge). Some EE ships have space for a size 500 Wing: don't even bother putting type 1's in here, stock them with a 500-strong wing of pure type 2's or 3's. Use Wings in conjunction with the EE's ships rather than as the EE's primary offensive weapon. EE players have to set some Wings to "anti-fighter", because EE ships are extra vulnerable to enemy Wings. Use your Dark Sense to ensure you have at least a 3:1 fighter advantage to your opponent. (A higher ratio is advised against COM / Rebels, while a lower ratio would be fine against Robot Ruzties or Crystals.) Because the EE type 1 fighter only costs 8mc, they can field Wings of many thousands of fighters. Fortunately for everyone else, the cheap type 1's only seem useful in truly vast numbers, and only against fighters. Unlike other races, mixing fighter types in EE wings often makes them worse: I think it's because if you add a few type 1's to a wing of type 2/3, the awful type 1's dilute the effectiveness of types 2 + 3 too much. If you add types 2/3 to a big wing of type 1, it can make type 1's too aggressive for their own good: they go too close to enemies, cannot fire at full rate (due to crap generators) and die more rapidly! The type 2 fighter seems generally best - certainly against other fighters and, surprisingly, best against most ships too - probably due to its superior attack / evasive bonuses, and superior beam range. The main reason to build type 3's is to use them to guard tracts of space as a Wing of type 3's has better speed than any EE ship. The EE usually buys Sandcaster Immunity (an Exotic Tech) as early as possible. Swarming races which can mount lots of PD in a cheap fleet chew through EE Wings like butter.
• Stormer fighters have huge weapon range and are very effective in early to mid game even in small numbers, but expensive. Ie, I recommend using lots of small Wings. Lacking armour, they are fairly easy to counter with PD and anti-fighter fighters once the enemy notices you using them, but with just a handful of fighters you force him to split his defenses between anti-fighter and anti-ship. In late game, most enemy races can outproduce Stormers as their fighters are cheaper, whereupon Stormers should switch to using Nemesis Torpedoes and pop ships to kill all fighters in an area and re-level the playing field. All Stormer fighters are very expensive. Against ships, it is best to just build Thunder Hammers (the most expensive type) as these have excellent weaponry and one TH is worth several of the other types in a fight. Use them in lots of small Wings, ie as few as 10 fighters each in the early game and up to 100 in a Wing later on. However, if you're up against a fighter race, build a few small Wings of Lightning V's and set them to "Anti Fighter". Small Stormer Wings kick enemy Wings' butts, and distract the enemy Wings from your ships.
• Solarian type (2?) fighters are very hard and are automatically immune to Sandcasters. The other types are not much use. The type2 fighter is really strong. David Ouimet wrote: The reason, is the RANGE on its beam and yes it was designed this way. While it may only have a power of 15, it has a very long range so can fire very often. Death by a thousand paper cuts. The Type 1 has a very short missile range so will very rarely fire.  Note that there was supposed to be a change where fighters no longer shared ordinance during a fight.. but right now the entire wing is treated as a unit, so ordinance on fighter type 2 can be fired by type 3. Thus the Type 1's are not one shot wonders when paired up with a type 3. Scytale wrote:
  Yes it's strong. .. compare it to the COM's powerful type3 Viper for 5X the cost.  The Fusion's greatest strength is its low cost (40).  According to my  analysis it scales up to large numbers of fighters better than anything else  in the game, both anti-ship and anti-fighter. Of course, its major weakness is its painfully small travel range, and the  fact that the Sols are really not equipped to haul around lots of fighters.
• Bird Men Fighters are average but very limited by being able to travel 10LY only per turn under their own steam. For the most part, these are Anti-fighter.
• Borg type 2's (FB300) are the best Borg type.
• Centaur fighters have a good evasive bonus. They are pretty good.
• Fed fighters are expensive. I know less about these but I believe it is rarely worth building anything but Io's. Plymouths might make a cheap and effective anti-fighter defense, but I haven't tested it.
• IMT type 1 fighters are OK against other fighters, if you build these cheap things in sufficient quantity, but not much use against ships. Type 2's are beam-only anti-fighter specialists, of only moderate usefulness against ships, and type 3's are missile-only; the missiles have very good range; they are designed as anti-ship specialists. When mixing fighter types in IMT wings, keep in mind that type 1's run a power shortage in their generators, type 2 can just about power their own beams so won't help type 1, and type 3 run a big deficiency,  since they need 100 power to fire their missiles (somewhat offset by a huge battery of size 400).

Defending against Fighter Wings

Summary: try Micromissile Launchers, Turbolasers, Holo Decoys, Minefields, Nemesis Torpedoes, Other Fighters, Sandcasters [good range, so especially good vs Stormers], Glory Devices. AA guns on bases are very effective if you remember to keep ordnance on the base. Use a mix of techniques, so enemies have a hard time developing countermeasures.

Tim claims that Micromissile Launchers will enrage fighters and draw them in closer so you can pick them off with the rapid-firing but short-range turbolasers. But I have not seen any evidence of this in real battles. Some people say that pure MML's work lots better than a mix of MML's and TL's. Maybe it depends on the race you are fighting.

Micro Missile Launchers... have a longer range and can pelt wings even when they are not near your ships.  The problem with Turbolasers, when fighting fighters with a long beam range, is their short range... sometimes the fighters will make a pass and shoot your ships and you won't even fire back.

Swarming races against fighters: don't set an attack vector.  If you are truly swarming (20+ ships) it is more effective to be scattered so fighters take more periodic hits. At times fighters seem to get confused when they get shot at.  Once everything converges at the middle then things really get chewed up fast. Don't forget shield exotics as all ships in the Swarm benefit from them. Micromissile launchers are too expensive to be worth fitting to cheap Swarming ships. You get more bang-per-buck from Turbolasers.

Some races have very effective anti-fighter hulls, they have lots of point defenses and a large attack bonus, and are cheap enough to build in large quantities. Examples:
...Stormer Thorn with all Turbo Lasers (10 PD slots and cheap)
...Centaur Zikr (6 PD slots and dirt cheap)
...Fed / Lizard Loki

Wings move essentially randomly.  As Jelmer Renema pointed out, if the relative positions of fighters and target ship is essentially random, the side with better ranged weapons has lots more chances to shoot the enemy up than vice versa. (I'll skip his maths about areas of circles and ranges and stuff, but basically, doubling the range of your PD will increase it effectiveness by 4x.) This Range effect has an intersting consequence: even though the Turbolaser fires 3x more often than a micromissile launcher, and kills 3 fighters per shot, its low range makes it far worse than a micromissile launcher versus fighters. Jelmer did simulations and came to the conclusion that 1 MML is worth about 4 TL's.

Q. What is the meaning of the blast power of PD's?
A. Each PD hit does the blast power in damage to enemy fighters.  There's also a chance that a fighter will take a critical hit to its soft spot.  This means against heavily armoured fighters, fast, weak PD can be useful.
A. I believe it is compared to the fighter armor to determine if the shot kills or is absorbed by the fighter armor.

Q. Does a sandcaster cause damage to all fighter of a wing and is the armor drain always 1 if it hits?
A. Sandcasters used to hit all fighters in a Wing, but this was too powerful, and it was changed. A Sandcaster will now hit a random 50% of the fighters in a Wing. Some old documentation still wrongly states that a sandcaster hits all the Wing. The damage to the fighters it hits is 1. If it already had no armor, it's blown up. There's a chance of a critical hit to each fighter, which makes SC very nasty, until you buy the Sand Shields exotic tech.
Q. At which type do the PD's fire at first when there is wing of different types?

Answers to this question vary. Some people report: "I've never noticed t3s getting shot down before 2s and 1s". Others (especially Robot players) say: "I always see, that the fighterl osses are distributed evenly between the different fighter types! So the rare expensive ones in a mixed wing all get shot up by the end of a battle!" The reason may be that different fighters have different armor strengths, and the values vary from race to race(?)

Q. The documentation says a TL can shoot down up to three fighter per single shot. What does "can" mean? 1/3 chance for either for one or two or three fighters? And does it mean that a TL due to its smaller charge time can under good circumstances shut down nine times the fighter number a normal PD can shut down?
A. That means it will fire at 3 fighters per shot.  This does mean that it can fire 9 times as fast as, say, an MML, which has a 3 tic charge time.  It doesn't necessarily mean it'll shoot down 9 times as many fighters though; armour, range, damage, accuracy, etc would all factor into that.
But against heavily armored fighters, it might very well not kill any.
In practice, when the Turbo Laser hits  it tends to kill 3 fighters at a time, but not always.
TLs work very well when used in swarms deployed in a scatter pattern.  As the fighter wings buzz around in their semi random fashion, they will encounter TLs form the scattered ships.  This works rather well with the very fast fighters like CoM and Rebel.

Anti-fighter computer Exotic Tech
PD shoot twice as often, but they do not use any more power than normal.
The same power is used to fire two shots at the same time.
Charge time until the next firing of the weapon is the same.
The anti-fighter computer beats (overrides) Sand Shields.

Does it work with 50% PD charge exotic?  Also, does it double fire of PD versus weapons fire also or just fighters?
No the weapon must be at 100% charge to fire (twice).
There is no extra bonus against weapons fire.

How often does PD ignore fighter armor, with this exotic on?  From the sims, it seems to render the fighter races moot, unless the attack ships with about 10x or more MCs worth of fighters.
A standard PD ignores armor 40% of the time and the AFC PD ignores armor 60% of the time.

Energized Sandcasters Exotic Tech
Do these get through the normal immunity of Robot Rutzies and Solarian type 1 fighters?
Yes, it gets the Robot Type 3 fighter, I do not see any immunity for the Solorian fighters in the code. . .
Solorian type _2_ fighters are immune to fighter-fighter missiles.
Well that is a whole different can of worms. . .   that has nothing to do with the firing of ship sand casters on fighters so energized sandcasters have nothing at all to do with that fighter immunity.

Of course you'll need some anti-fighter pd (turbolaser etc.) but a fact,
being
ignored most of the time but equally important - perhaps even more - is that
you have to use lots of holodecoys...
In the game I'm currently playing as privateer, the rebel player nearly
wiped out
my homeworld and had already three wings over my homeworld. At the end I
fended him off, but the key to this victory were lots of small cheap ships -
poorly equipped but with holodecoys. I had a wing of type 1 fighters that
would
have sucked completely otherwise, but with the ships and the holodecoys the
enemy
fighters did almost no damage to this wing and most of the small ships
survived too.
I had simmed a lot for this fight and in all other cases (with no
holodecoys) I really
merely scratched his fighters before being blasted away, but with
holodecoys...

Jochen

Host 147: (this was after I wrote the above section): Fixed: Turbolaser PD system shooting down 9 enemy fighters a shot when it should only be shooting down a max of 3. So TL's were artificially good when I wrote the previous section.

In answer to a question on the Newsgroup, "how can I defend against a CoM Wing of 10,000 fighters?" Michael Henderson advised:
Buy the Energized Sand exotic.  Anti-fighter PD exotic is nice too.  Equip medium sized ships with sandcasters as part of your fleet.  (it's a good idea to put at least 1 SC on every ship)  Then laugh at your foolish CoM enemy who relied upon wings to fight with.  With those exotics active, his 2 million MCs worth of fighters have as much chance as a stick of butter in an active volcano.
If you spread your fleet out around the various attack vectors you can damage his wing faster.  If you group your fleet together, it may take longer to kill his fighters, but there's a better chance of individual ships may survive.  It's usually best to spread out versus fighter wings, especially wings with long attack ranges.  This way, when his wings withdraw to recharge, you're still able to chew through his wings rapidly with your energized SandCasters.
If you can't catch him, bring the fight to his territory; force him to defend.

Skies advised:
Here's how I'd go on about destroying it.  In defence: Fortify a base with loads of AA guns and have lot's of .. make that billions of.. smaller wings of your own design. (This way the damage doesn't carry over to other wings and your fighters get lot more damage done, than in a single group)
In attack: Try to sneak in a GA and blast the HW base right from underneath him.  Or bring in a hellish load of anti-fighter ships. (lot's of PD, no mass. cheap)

David Ouimet suggests: one tactic is 6-8 wings of 10-20 cheap
fighters set to "close to deadly" and 1-2 wings of 500+ fighters that stand
off.. By the time the small wings are destroyed the sandcaster ships are
usually out of ammo or low and do negligible damage to the large wings.

Miscellaneous Wing stuff (minor tips, obscure things)

Pendragon writes: If you wish for better fighter cover and can afford your ships to move slowly, make your fighters escort the ship and it will refuel automatically, even from ships with no fighter bays like freighters.They'll be vulnerable to mine hits, though.

To ensure your Wings fire at the maximum possible rate, add up the generator power for all your fighters in the wing, then divide by the number of fighters in the wing. Try at all times to keep the average power generated per fighter to 10 or more.  This will allow the wing to fire every combat tick.  If that's not possible shoot for 5 so they fire every other tick.  In this case, 9 is as good as 5.

• Q. If a Wing drops below 10 fighters after a battle, is it destroyed? (You can't make one without at least 10 fighters)
• A. It still lives.
• Q. How do you regroup Wing function to merge or expand wings which need replenishing?
• A. Dock with a ground base, all the fighters go back into the fighter pool at the base.
• Q. Presumably it is silly to mix fighter types within Wings? I assume they travel at the speed of the slowest member, but are there other disadvantages?
• A (Tim): Example: Cyborg fighters all have the same speed rating. The fighters will share fuel so if you have a fighter type that has a large fuel tank it can share its fuel with the other fighters with the smaller fuel tank. If you have say 500 dirt cheap fighters and 10 really great and expensive fighters the cheap fighters will do a wonderful job of distracting the enemy and taking most the anti-fighter fire. The speed thing is the only reason not to mix fighters, and it's not an issue if they are being moved around in a carrier.
• A (Someone else): I believe some things are weighted by the numbers of each fighter making up the wing, others are reduced to the minimum capability.  Max travel distance for example is limited by the slowest fighter in the wing.  Fuel capacity is a blend of the fighters in the wing.  A few guesses based on observation about other stats that others might be able to confirm or correct would be:  Armour is blended, speed in combat is to the slowest wing, beam range is blended, damage is blended, ord is shared in a common pool.
  In fact, they often act like the best of all worlds (except for speed which is the slowest) - Jon Nunn
  Fighters weapons in a mixed wing seem to keep their stats.  Power generation and storage apears to be shared.  The wing will move at the speed of the slowest fighter type.

Q. Does "ord load=500" means 500 missile shots during all vcr's of one turn?
A. Yes, but that's per fighter.  So a wing of 100 could fire 50,000 missiles before running out of ord.
It's how much Micro-Ord the fighter can carry.  Each missle shot using one Micro-Ord.  Fighters can be resupplied by ships in the same way their fuel is resupplied. 

Exotic Tech boosts for Attack bonus and Evade bonus do not effect fighters.

Q. Will take fighters equipped with missiles take ord from bases?
A. Yes.  But fighters use micro-ord, so in most cases won't be seriously depleting your ord supply. 
1 Ord = 1,000 fighter Ord.  1 fuel = 1,000 fighter fuel, you will hardly notice it.

Jelmer Renema (a fighter expert) has pointed out that it is almost always best to have a mix of fighter types (1,2,3) in a wing, because the three types have different weapon ranges, but pool their batteries / generators. So, as a Wing gets near a target, its longest range weapons start firing continuously - ie you get "free shots". This is countered somewhat because point defenses / other Wings seem to preferentially target type 3 fighters (normally the most expensive) over 2, and 2 over 1, so the best fighters in a Wing disappear first. I'm not convinced this is true for EE fighters - PH.

• One big Wing is usually better than many small ones against ships. Because, with small Wings, the fighters fire at a slow rate whilst the enemy ships simply get more chances to fire back. it's all about concentrating your firepower effectively. A large Wing approaches 1 ship at a time, and gets a LOT of strikes in whilst the defenses on the defending ships have a constant rate of fire.
• New wings formed when a ship replenishes are given a high guard if the base has 5 or more of them. A High Guard leader in a Wing increases its accuracy.
• In order to get a High Guard onto a Wing, it must orbit a planet with spare high Guards for a turn. Thus new Wings are not automatically formed with HG just because the base had HG free. They must wait in orbit for a turn. - David Ouimet
• Wings can have any number of fighters in them (well, there's a minimum of 10). Some people have experimented with wings of 60,000 (far too large for a carrier) and I've heard of people doing simulations with Wings of a million fighters.
• Always set carriers to delay (2nd wave), as they don't live long in a fight. Have a part of your mix set to anti fighter. Always escort your carriers with a reasonable fighting ship, as most mid tech carriers are poor at actual fighting.
• Even a 50-fighter Wing is useful in taking the heat off your other ships - though a 50 fighter Wing is unlikely to survive its first combat.

The Planets4.exe Beta 16 release notes state: - "New: Bases refuel fighter wings New: Ships refuel fighter wings New: A fighter wing's dock target will refuel a wing if the ship flies past the wing during movement." Tim has also mentioned: "Just park any ship next to the Wing. Refueling takes place after all movement is finished."

In response to some questions on this, Sidewinder advised:

• Laser mines aren't 100% effective against Wings. Hitting a laser mine destroys some, not all, of the fighters.
  Detonating laser fields destroy entire undocked wings. So cloaked laser minefields make a good trap against fighter races. (Lure them to a battle they can win, kill an expensive Wing next turn.)
  Hitting any kind of mines kills a random number of fighters. It's just that Laser Mines will be hit more often by the fighters, resulting in heavy fighter losses against them.
• There is a small chance of a Wing hitting barbitic mines, and if it does, it takes a few casualties.
• A Wing hitting grav mines has a similar effect to hitting a laser mine - a random number of fighters die, up to the whole wing.
• A detonating mine field either Laser or Barbitic will destroy an entire free wing. So will a glory device. You are safe inside a detonating mine field or glory device explosion if the wing is docked even if the docked ship blows up. The wing will be ejected after the explosion as a free wing.
• New: Wings don't hit ___ mines (Host 161 or so)

A discussion on Wings from the Mailing List, December 2002

Which explains a few things about How Fighters Work. Drew Sullivan:
 
In general I find mixed wings better, and many small wings better than a few huge wings.

In general I have found that for "fighter cover" cheap and numerous is the best (lots of 1s). The 2s and 3s (better more expensive fighters) shine at destroying ships but the cheap 1s are more cost effective or distracting at fighting enemy fighters.

Markus Worm reported, April 2003:
VCR and VCR-Report are not able to show wing sizes greater than 30,000. I just used a wing of 60,000 fighters, and when selecting it in VCR, I always got a display of 30,000. Also in the report after battle, there were no losses displayed (despite the wing has been fired at by numerous AAGs, and in fact had losses):
Type 1 Fighter START:  30000   ENDING:  30000

Nonetheless, the wing actually had more 60,000 fighters (have been displayed after building it) and still has about 59,000 fighters. This is just not displayed in VCR.

Can you tow a Wing? No.

Attacking bases from space
The ideal base-killing weapon is the Blaster Cannon, which gets bonuses; otherwise, even small bases will survive several turns' bombardment with e.g. photon torpedoes. (500mm gun and antimatter gun get bonuses too, but aren't as good.)

Lizards get a 50X damage bonus firing large weapons against bases.
Q. Is the 50X damage vs bases factor for large Lizard weapons also in effect for base killer weapons like 500mm Gun, Anti-Matter Gun and Blaster Cannon? That way each shot could deliver up to 50000 points of damage! Whoa!
A. Yes. . . but only 50X the weapon blast. +Normal extra bonus. - Tim

Jon Nunn writes: I might be a couple of hosts off, but it seems that now ships with ground attack off tend to stay out of range of an enemy bases Ion Cannon range, while those with ground attack on will make several passes at the base.
Fighters though make several passes at an enemy base whether or not ground attack is on or off resulting in getting shot up without returning fire if the enemy base has AA Guns.

Protecting your homeworld

The Evil Empire and Colonies of Man can move rapidly from the start of the game, and have been known to strike at neighbouring homeworlds as early as turn 10 in order to deal a knockout blow. Even if they don't destroy your main base, they hope to do enough damage to knock you back - maybe kill half your population, to cripple your economy, or destroy a key high tech structure.

By turn 10 or earlier, you ought to have 1 - 2 ships, even just Nocturnes or similar, guarding your homeworld with the following equipment:

• Crucial: A sandcaster or two, in order to kill enemy fighters. The races which can attack early, tend to use fighters. Fighters are able to shoot through a base shield.
• Not so important, but: point defense type turbolaser - this might be tricky by turn 10, but get some orbiting as soon as you can - again to kill fighters. Use an Outfit Pod to upgrade your initial guardian(s)' PD.
• (Lower priority) the small weapon known as phasors. This helps you to kill enemy assault pods, in case the CoM tries to land some of its 1 million (!!!) starting troops to capture your homebase. (People have been discussing how the EE can use Pods to take out homeworlds on the newsgroup recently, so I predict this will become a more common tactic.)
• Set the ship(s) to Attack Ground in case the enemy simply arrives and beams troops onto the surface of the planet. This avoids the need for assault pods, but delays their ground attack long enough for you to kill them from space (possibly next turn). You'll need Blaster Cannon, 500mm guns or Antimatter Guns on these ships to kill enemy ground base.
• You may want to set your guardian ships to Intercept enemy ships within a 5LY range. (If you stay within 5LY, the home base can support the fight with its fighters etc. It's called combat range.)
• You also need a minefield(s) to protect against cloaking races sneaking up and stealing stuff.
• Ensure your base shield is salways switched on.
• Always keep some Ordnance on your homeworld for the AA guns and ion cannon. 100 AA guns need 100 ord per volley, but they're worth it.

In the event of a battle, your home base's fighters will attack the enemy. Your AA guns and Ion Cannon on the base will also attack him. These simple cheap defenses should make enemy attacks so costly that anyone planning a quick strike in the early game will lose most or all of their force, whilst doing little damage.

Why Bases can only fight twice in a turn

Drew Sullivan asked on the Newsgroup:
When does combat occur?
There are some conflicting opinions in the Mailing List as to when Combat occurs. Some say on tick 50, then every 20 ticks thereafter (tick 50, 70, 90, 110, 130, 150, 170, 190).
What about at tick 200?
Others say you have to spend 20 ticks within 5 LY combat range.
What is the real answer?

Tim replied (August 2002):

At movement phase 50 all ships and wings within 5LY of one another and enemies will fight.
After that it is a big mess. . .

After that first fight at phase 50 any ship at all that has not been in combat in the last 49 phase ticks can START a fight and draw in all ship wings and pods within 5LY into a fight.
So you can have a fight on phase 50 and then have a fast moving new ship move in at phase 51 and have it start a second fight with all the same ships that were in the phase 50 fight. . .
After a base has been in a fight it will NOT fight again until phase 200. Phase 200 is very special: it is the last call to fight and all bases left standing must take part in that fight. . .
Back during the dark times. . . we would sometimes have oh say 30 combat VCR's over the same planet as ships from hither and yon staggered in to attack a base. So it was changed to just have bases be in one first fight and then the end battle at phase 200 and the power of ship weapons verses bases was increased.
If you want to attack a base with a ship it is best to just park the ship over it, that is plan on ending movement over the base and staying there a while.

Afterword by PH - this all seems very sensible and fair, but I have heard occasional reports of people managing to use this feature where "bases can only take part in 2 battles in a turn" to initiate a minor combat before an enemy's main fleet arrives, and thus have time to get reinforcement ships there by tick 200 and save the base.. It shows that even the best rule can be abused, or used skilfully (depending on your viewpoint).

Blockade

Three or more ships over an enemy base stops them from launching any pods (blockade). Having one friendly ship over the planet after movement breaks the blockade

There's a bit more on Blockade on the Evil Empire page, blockade section. Prisoner-taking races like the EE use Blockade to stop enemy colonists escaping, while they bring up some forces to Ground Assault the base.

Tim: The blockade rule has been added to REWARD any empire with the power and the will to place its fleet over the planet of an enemy. It is a reward for being bold and taking enemy planets. I have seen too many cowards pod launch everything off of a planet just so my fleet would not be able to claim its prize. If you want to scorch the planets before me do so BEFORE my fleet parks itself in your sky. I favor things that make the game more agressive and bloody, blockades serve that goal. If you want to break a blockade all that you have to do is get one ship in orbit over the planet. You can send in a bunch of cheap high evasive ships set to flee. If just one gets away it will act as a screening ship for your pods the next turn and you can launch all the pods you want. Those blockade breaking ships are your heroic ones that rely on some luck to be successful. They are the ones that they will sing the songs about. Fortune favors the bold.

Ground Assaults

There are only two types of ground assault:

1. You are attacking an enemy base primarily in order to capture prisoners. In this case, the best thing to do is attack with thousands of High Guard using a Base set to "Kill Kill Kill" mode. See this bit of the main "How To Play VGAP4" guide for tips on how to train up thousands of HG. HG skip the normal combat phases of ground assaults (see diagram) so do not suffer losses, but are very powerful when it comes to capturing survivors in the final phase.
2. Anything else. This usually means, either you aren't interested in capturing prisoners (because your race can't build prison camps etc to make money off them) and you're just trying to capture a base in order to get its natives