Wait... Flanking REALLY works?
... God damn, I need to buy this game.
Yep! It's not based on any sort of modifiers or anything like that, either. Other RTS games have handled it that way, and I found it hard to manage and not that noticeable in most cases. Rather, this is more of a question of group dynamics. You can just move your ships in a big blob at the enemy formation if you want, and on lower difficulties that will work well enough I suppose.
But when you start playing at a difficulty that is at the edge of your skill range (for most people that's in the 6-8 range on our 10-point scale), the tactical management can make a really big difference.
Flanking works because of the distance factor, and because of the distraction of the AI. Having two groups that sweep in from the sides can absolutely slice up an AI formation that is spread out too long, and vice-versa, for example. No bonuses, nothing funny under the hood, just good tactics in a game with a lot of units. By flanking with your units like that you can get more of your units into firing range, faster, and they will do more damage before the enemy has a chance to respond.
Similarly, when attacking AI guard posts it can be really important to use diversionary forces to draw some of the AI ships away, then letting you come in and strike with your real force to get whatever your target is. You can brute-force your way in here, too, but you'll lose
way more ships. When the AI realizes you have caught it with a diversion (which only takes seconds, if that), it will of course react. So you have to be fast with those sort of tactics, but it can really make a huge difference in cases where your forces are outnumber/overmatched but you really need to take out some target.
There are a number of other tactical maneuvers that "just work" based on logic and the overall game design, without the need for special modifiers under the hood or anything too meta-gamey. Keeping your missile cruisers at a distance to pound the enemy ships is smart because at close range those cruisers get cut through with fighters. Similarly, creating a buffer of your own shorter-range ships along the front lines makes a big difference because they can kill the enemy ships that are headed for your cruisers before they get there (hopefully!). And having reserve forces stay back with the cruisers to protect your rear flank from the smaller raiders and bands that will try to come around behind you is also a must simply for reasons of how the AI plays and so forth.
There's a lot of stuff like that, with cool tactics you don't see anywhere else: "gate raids," and ion cannon flooding, and planet-hopping for strategic reasons... it's pretty cool.
A lot of players prefer focusing on the logistics/grand strategy aspects, and so just mostly move their fleets around in blobs, but then they wind up taking much heavier losses and spending more time rebuilding. That can be counteracted somewhat with mobile repair stations or engineers that are brought to the forward lines, but there's still no substitute for actual good tactics. The game has enough difficulty levels that you can play it however you want, anyway -- from something very relaxed and easy, to something that kills most players in under an hour.
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Topic: Its called "AI War: Fleet Command" (Read 88822 times)