Battles and Stacking

Transcription

1 Battles and Stacking Alright, time to go over the obvious for the experienced and teach what this game is all about to the newbie s. I will explain it as well. The battle system in SFU is relatively simple. Each individual ship has a power rating (pr) which denotes how "good" a ship is based on its characteristics, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Small ships may have a pr of 8 while large juggernauts have 45,000pr. But, the pr is relative, so higher pr ships cost more, and in the end, thousands of small fighters can be equivalent to a couple battle cruisers. On any system, you can build up to six different "stacks" of ships. The stacks are arranged such that the highest pr is first and lowest last. You can build as many ships as you want per stack, and it is recommended that you use all six stacks with close pr's in all of them. During a battle, stack 1 is paired up with enemy stack 1; stack 2 to stack 2, and so on. Each stack dukes it out as if they were completely alone in the battle. The ship with the higher range shoots first and the other stack returns fire, this is repeated and then the battle concludes. Whoever has lost the most ships (pr wise) loses the battle. Spamming Spamming is defined by using very few stacks (one or two). Stephen has made it very hard for people to spam. For one, the other 5 stacks will automatically flank the spam, doing huge damage, and there is a spamming penalty built into the game. Tips, Tricks and Walkthroughs Step one get a shit list bye looking around on the UC gametotal web site Either you can figure things out for yourself at this point (may take hours with a calculator and multiple experimental fleets) or you can read this. Ok... The first thing about a ship is how "good" it is. The rating system is either offensive Attack/Pr, or defensive Hull/Pr. With this, you can tell whether a ship is offensive, defensive, or balanced. A 2 or more Hull/Pr is a fairly defensive ship, while 4 or more is extremely defensive. The attack quotient is so low, in the ship list Stephen multiplies by 25. With this system, a 4 is decent while a 14 is extremely offensive, ridiculously so. With this ranking system, it is vital to make a fleet: Defensive Defensive Balanced/Defensive Balanced/Defensive Balanced/Offensive Offensive - 1 -

2 A stack like this or very similar is crucial since the highest pr is put first. You want to minimize losses in the first few stacks and maximize damage in the last few. In addition to basic attack power, the game includes attack type and shield type, which makes certain ships more vulnerable to certain attacks, for example Strafez ships are susceptible to kinetic weapons, so a good counter would be a f. Sword which provides good shielding against biological weapons and a decent kinetic weapon. But, you generally won't worry about this unless you are deeply in war with someone and know their stack and want to build a stack specifically to kill them. Some overall tips would be: Always attack below you. The game says 150% below you, so that means a little over HALF your pr. With that much of an advantage you will most likely win. Use retaliation attacks. You can take twice the number of planets, the same amount destroyed by a suicide. AND you can attack from 250% pr. No way they're going to weasel themselves out of that one. Get OP, you can have 4 stacks. 2x25%=100%, so if everyone posts for you, you effectively double your fleet pr, so even if someone attack from 150% above you, you can still hold your ground and flank their fleet to death. Attack NPC's when you're bored, if you have 150% their pr, you are bound to win (they have no OP), you will gain planets and do not risk being retaliated against. Once you have a good economy, do not disband your fleet once in dp, this way, you don't have a few minutes of extreme vulnerability as you build your fleet and you don't waste the money rebuilding it. Also, if you forget to build your fleet and you lose pr in the middle of the night, you don't get pawned, when all your systems are defenseless. Try not to be too cheap or mean. Don't attack someone you KNOW is upgrading. Don't destroy random systems unless you're at war with someone. When building large fleets, build in segments, 6 stacks together not one at a time. This way when you are attacked you actually have stacks instead of 1 big spam. Keep Microsoft notepad or other writing program out. This way, when you attack or are attacked, you copy down the ships lost and rebuild quickly, this is VITAL, since that's the time you are most vulnerable, as you just took a big pr hit and have your stacks scrambled. Neat trick! Today, I found out how to completely pawn people. Ok, you know how a lot of you have been complaining about the a-holes who keep on taking your planets. Today I encountered one. So first he hit me for 12k planets. I was a little po'd, but it was cool, then five minutes later he hit me again for 11k planets. Now I was mad. So, I tripled my pr and retaled him twice, taking 30k planets in each hit, so 60k worlds were gone for him in less than a minute. I was a little impromptu on that attack since I was mad, but what you really should do to guarantee a victory is retal one of their darks first. This way you can see how much OP - 2 -

3 they have, if it's four stacks of maxed out OP, you probably shouldn't attack their main, but if it's small, or you destroy it all, quickly rebuild your fleet and nuke their main. And like I said earlier, always attack done, when you have a retal, you can get up to 250% of their pr, so you can almost guarantee a victory. In the end, I still came out low cause of one fatal mistake, I disbanded my fleet after I pawned the guy from 1 bil pr. While I was getting back up to 200 mil, I was attacked, over and over again and lost in the end 50k planets. Posting OP Op, or outpost, is the main advantage to joining a fed. By joining a fed, you automatically get the outpost of everyone in that fed that is posting within your op range. ====Beginners Guide==== *note* advanced players may skip this part *end note* To post an op, you must go to Military, then Fleet, and then Shipyard. Click the "Outpost" link. From there, you should pick which ships you want to post, how many, and how many stacks. I'll talk about this more later. Three things you need to know about op: 1. Building an op does not take you out of damage protection 2. Do not build more than 25% of your legion mate's pr in op. The op will not reach them. 3. Always, always post op when you log out. Remember, OP goes to an allied empire (Fed member, Lord, or Vassal) and complements their fleet while it is being attacked. The most common misconceptions are that A.) The OP goes to one of your attacked systems, or B.) That OP attacks your ally's opponents. Neither of these are true. It is just for your ally's defense. ===End Beginners Guide=== The three criteria for an awesome op ship for any Fed are: 1. High defense 2. Decent attack 3. Long range capability The c class ships are excellent for these purposes, as they take a lot of damage, but also give a fair amount back. I would say c.taurus would be best, followed by c.cancer. Always, always post 2 stacks. Example: So suppose XXXX has 100 mil pr

4 I want to post as much op as I can for him, without posting too much. The upper limit per stack is 25% of his pr. so... I could post 13,858 c.cancer ships in one stack, and 16,801 c. Taurus in another stack. So, the fleet in your outpost would look something like this: Outpost Ship Units Disband Upkeep Power c.cancer 13,858 x 15,936,700 25,000,000 c.taurus 16,801 x 25,201,613 25,000,000 Now, some of you may have caught the fact that, oh, there is 50 million total in his op! That would never reach him! Well, the only thing that is important is that each stack is one quarter of Terrage's pr. So as long as I don't go over that line, I should be ok. Another thing: You can't post more than two stacks in an op. A player can receive 4 stacks, from up to 4 different people. Next step is to have a decent attack, sure Strafez fodders are cool, but realistically, they suck. They have the highest Hull/Pr ratio (5.45), but the c. Aries follows closely with a 4.9 and it can SHOOT! The basic idea is that having a wall is cool, but you're not doing any damage to your opponent with the wall. A battle is determined by the amount of power rating (pr) each player loses. A fodder provides low pr for a high hull rating, but it doesn't do anything to their ships. The philosophy of this is that a fleet of fodders can't win. So, try posting any c. ship (all have hull/pr greater than 4) or at least greater than 1.5, Last is long-range capability, before explaining this, there are two forms of OP that need to be explained. First of all, when you post OP for a person, your OP generally gets moved to the front of your fedmate's stack because an OP stack is 25% of a person's pr will a normal stack is 1/6 or 16.7%, since 25>16, your OP is bumped to the top. That is the big reason you want a high defence OP, it takes the brunt of an attack. The major problem with this style of OP is that it gets burned killed easily, since it is in the front. So, with this style the poster must refresh his or her OP whenever the postee is attacked. The second style is for the layman who is oblivious to life. This is a flanking OP, one generally posts 10%-15% of his or her fedmate's pr, so instead of being sent to the front, the stack is sent to the back where it flanks, causes huge damage, and isn't attacked at all. Many times, this can be devastating to the attacker and the poster does not have to fix his or her OP since it took no damage. The problem with this is that if the postee's Dark or non-fleet system is attacked, the OP is generally a very offensive, low hull (to do more flanking damage) and gets completely annihilated

5 Long-range is defined as "the ability to attack without taking damage". So basically, it can attack ships when it is not paired up with another stack. So, for a flanking OP, this is a MUST. But other times, it is still suggested since, when an OP is hit it loses pr, and if the poster does not check the OP often, the stack will eventually be sent to the back of the fleet and if it is not long-range, it is absolutely worthless. Thank you for reading. Combatforces Playing for 176 days Highest Planets 535,763 Federation Foundation Vassal of Javidan - 5 -