Battle tactics

## **Target Priority**

### The first thing you choose is your target priority; in other words, what your ships will shoot at first.

Most hull is used when you want to target firepower but you're worried about gravity wells.

***Least Speed*** is typically used on Station Defense to try to kill carriers to cause the attacker to lose minors due to not having enough carry space to bring them home. The only other use is for targeting the InTech Adamant to neutralize its support capabilities.

***Closest ship*** is the only setting that does not concentrate fire, and is therefore only good on wall-style mirror matches that don't have too much meatshield and a few select missions. It can also help corvettes, but if you're doing a mixed fleet it is really worth considering concentrating firepower.

***Least hull*** is one of the best targeting priorities for missions, and is useful in PvP as well. Use this if targeting the big ships first is going to cost too much time and allow the smaller ships to beat you. Against InTech in particular, least hull is a good idea because wardens can absorb so much damage. Don't use this if taking out a bunch of little ships is going to let the bigger ships sit there and beat you. Also don't do this if your main firepower has terrible aim, because smaller ships tend to have higher dodge. Also, be advised that on least hull, carriers will be targeted before battleships by anything that has long enough range to reach them.

***Most Speed*** is very similar to least hull, as smaller ships with less hull tend to be faster. However, it is worth noting that the Protector is unusually fast for a cruiser. Therefore, minor-based fleets will often target least hull in order to take down Protectors. It will also allow boarding ships to be targeted first, and will mean battleships are targeted before carriers. It will also make sure your ships kill any opposing gravity-wells after they jump and possibly before they jump.

***Firepower*** is one of the most common target settings. Use this if the smaller enemy ships don't pose much of a threat or if the big ships absolutely must go down first. If you go firepower and you're using a caps-based fleet, you must also bring some sort of anti-boarder measures.

Choosing between least hull and most speed is relatively straightforwards; while the right choice is not always obvious at first, ask in chat and any veteran player should be able to tell you which of the two is better. Choosing between least hull/most speed and most firepower isn't easy, and you're gonna make a few mistakes. Don't worry about it. Learn from them and move on, and keep hitting.

Re-Evaluate

Wether to re-evaluate target choice each round. This should usually be on. The one time it should be off is if you are targeting least hull in order to target a specific ship, and other ships taking damage and dropping below the hull of the desired target would ruin the plan. Basically if you don't have a really good reason to have this off, leave it on. Fighter Setting Caps based fleets will use caps defense; on caps defense, each fighter can shoot down up to three missiles per round. Corvette spam will choose between corvette defense and ship-to-ship. Go ship-to-ship if there are enemy minors that need to die. Oddly, fighters on s2s will do a better job meatshielding for corvettes if enemy minors are not on offense, for the first 3 or so turns. If you anticipate the fight going longer, though, corvette defense fighters do a better job covering corvs in the long run. Go corvette defense if the enemy has a lot of tertiary firepower farther back or if you want to shoot down more missiles per turn (corvette defense allows for 2 missiles to be shot down per turn, while ship-to-ship only gets 1).  Corvette Setting If you're doing a corvette fleet, go on offense. If not and you're above 100k, go defense. If neither of those apply:

1.     Do you have a critical mass of corvettes? If not, definitely stay on defense.

2.     Is your opponent corvette-weak? Lots of capital ships with relatively few minors and not StronTech and those caps are probably not anti-minor frigates? If so, go offense.

3.     Do you need the anti-missile or anti-corvette support? If so, go defense.

4.     If you have a critical mass of corvettes and are under 100k and don't need them on defense, I want to say go offense. But this is one you'll have to work out with experience.

Be advised that the default corvette setting is defense. Be sure to check corvette settings before every launch.

Retreat

Let's start with what not to do. If you have utility ships and aren't at an absurdly high strength, DO NOT retreat based on hull. Utility ship hull counts, and those things alone may make up 75% of your hull if you're under 100k. Even if you're higher, they'll definitely cause you to retreat later.

Next is caps retreat. Do this if you're concerned about losing your commander or if you're using a minor-based fleet and you're more worried about running out of capital ships than you are of opposing anti-minor ships. If you have frigates and there's a chance that your opponent is targeting least hull, then lost capital ships will be an underestimate of how well the battle is going, and is therefore not a good retreat condition.

Last is firepower retreat. This is great for caps-based fleets because loss of firepower is a good indicator of how the battle's going. This is also fine for minor-based fleets that are worried about facing protectors, anti-minor frigates, T2 fighters, etc. This is less of a good idea for minor-based fleets that are more worried about running out of capital ships, because if your minors are surviving but your caps are dying, you can easily be above 75% firepower when your last capital ship goes boom. Therefore lost firepower is an overestimate of how well the battle is going, and is a poor retreat condition.

Unwinnable

This triggers if you have less than half the strength your opponent does. Turn this off if you are relying on boarding ships to win, if you are going all out in a bank attack, if you are corvette swarming on homeworld defense, or if you are at very low strength and believe that you could drop below what is considered unwindable and still win. You may also turn this off if you are performing fleet suicide in order to change tech. Otherwise, this should be on.

Stay and Fight

This looks at your chosen retreat condition (caps, hull or fp) and sees if your opponent has lost about the same amount or more. If so, you don't retreat even if the condition is met. If you are attacking, this should probably be on. Turn it off if you think your retreat condition overestimates your opponents losses (i.e., you choose capital ships when your opponent has a massive meat shield, so they will lose capital ships fast without necessarily falling behind in the general tide of battle) or if you have a very low retreat (15%) and are fairly certain that if you reach that condition, you risk losing your commander if you stay any longer (unless you don't care about your commander).

Choosing the Percent

If you are sure that the retreat condition is not only an accurate but a precise measure of how well the battle is going, 75% with stay and fight is a good way to get out if it's going badly and stick around if it's going well. However, on lower strengths, this is generally not the case, as the retreat condition at the end of each turn is generally not a precise enough measure.

75% retreat with "retreat anyways" (the opposite of "stay and fight") is called the chicken retreat, the coward retreat, and a whole host of other names. You do this if you are defending your homeward and would rather preserve your ships than win, or if you are doing a "scout attack" on a bank or other similarly inert target, and you just want to see what they have and then get out.

On the other end of the spectrum is no retreat, unwinnable off. This makes a statement, and is fine if that statement reflects your desires; namely, victory or death. If you are borrowing a significant amount of combat ships from an ally, it is considered courteous to get their permission to use this setting if possible.

No retreat with unwinnable on is also reasonably popular. It eschews firepower or number of capital ships as a measure of how the battle is going, and looks only at strength remaining. In most larger battles, unwinnable will trigger before the losing party wipes completely. At lower strength, it often won't. Additionally, keep in mind that this does mean you will lose at least half your fleet before considering retreat (unless you're attacking way understrength).

Then there are all the percents in the middle. They are rather self explanatory, so I'll just say a few words. Firstly, if retreating caps with relatively few caps, do enough math to make sure that your retreat condition will trigger when you want it to. Protip: if you have only 3 capital ships, you will never trigger 30% caps. 7 caps will never trigger 15%. And so on. Weigh the prospect of victory against the cost of losing more ships. And know that there will be situations when you regret your retreat setting. Learn from it and move on. This is a build-crash-build again game.

Credit to ShinyIguana for writing the above portion of this page

Here are important fleet compositions and tactics.
The first battle displays the importance of a good amount of cruisers. The winning

   player had about 40 cruisers, much more than what the defender had. These cruisers concentrated their fire to destroy any of the defender's threats.

Again, this second battle shows the importance of fleet composition. The intech player (attacker) had a balanced fleet, with a good number of cruisers, battleships, and support ships. The defender really only had corvettes and a handful of ships, allowing the attacker to destroy them one at a time.

[OUTDATED] This last battle shows the importance of fleet composition. The attacking player had, as the player above did, a powerful and balanced fleet composition, and the defender made similar mistakes that the previous defender made. The attacking capital ships destroyed the defending ones with ease, and the corvettes were also destroyed by flak.

In the video on the left, the attacking player makes a bold attacking utilizing a 'wall' of spearheads. Though risky, he pulls off the win WITHOUT minor ships or battleship support.