30+ PSA: Kerr's Guide to Warring (Part 2)

War Preparation

War Prep is one of the most overlooked portions of a war. Many fleets simply begin their war prep far too late in the process, and without enough coordination or thought.

Spying

Spying involves several factors. First, most basic, and often the only level most fleets use, spying gathers intel on the enemy fleet's stats. This is usually posted to the fleet so everyone can determine who they can hit, and who they can't. Useful, but no where near enough for the higher levels of the ladders. A war fleet has to play at a higher level.

Stats can be gathered by either paying to use the spy function (here, the fleet vault is used to repay expenses) or by attacking the other fleet to get lists of their stats.

Fleet leaders have a function they can use called "Defense Log." This log shows all the pirates who have attacked the fleet. It is very useful to see if someone is scouting your fleet. Either you will be lucky and they won't be cloaked, in which case you will know the fleet scouting you; if cloaked, you'll usually see a big list of your fleeties one right after another matching to the fleet list when you "View" the fleet. Most people just run right down the fleet list. At least now you know you are being scouted.

Being scouted like this also means you're facing a fleet with a clue, since a lot of fleets don't even scout until they declare.

Spying should take place at least a week in advance of the projected war date. This allows plenty of time to determine if this is an enemy you wish to hit. Once the declaration is made, a second scouting run can be done for up-to-date stats.

It is usually good to have several fleets scouted at all times. The 633s, back when they warred at least once a week, used to have 5 fleets scouted at any moment and constantly updated stats. TSF used to have about three sets of stats to hand.

Choosing the target

Once you have stats, you need to look over your own fleet's strengths and weaknesses and decide who to attack. There are some rules of thumb to go by:

1. The less pirates in the enemy fleet, the harder it is to beat them. This is why you'll see most of the top 10-15 fleets are around 15-20 members. You simply run out of targets to shoot. Conversely, the larger the fleet, the easier the war - you have a target-rich environment.

2. Levels. You want to make sure your fleet has people that can reach all of their fleet. Nothing is more frustrating than watching pirates hang out at Pluto you can't touch.

3. Times. You want to be sure a: your fleet will be online with a strong presence, and b: their fleet will be caught at a bad time for them, especially if they have some strong players your fleet can't yard easily. Time it so those players are usually offline.

For example, TSF warred on BCR and DEV; we spent three weeks with everyone, every hour, gathering information on who was online from those fleets. No, really. We also beat BCR. DEV...we were never going to beat DEV, but we gave it a good go.

Timing is CRUCIAL to a war declaration. Make sure your fleet can be online.

Supplies

You need a good run of supplies to provide out to your fleet:

bombs
regenabot summoners
points
diverter mods
rums and other drinks
LUCK

These should be stockpiled whenever possible.

Communication

this depends on fleet internal operations, but many war fleets don't tell their fleet who they will war on. Their intel-gatherers know what fleets are on deck b/c of stat-gathering, but not who the declare will be for. This limits the ability to sell information to the other side.

There are at least two wars where my spies found out we were going to be declared on by an enemy fleet. Once I was able to purchase another fleet to declare on those planning to attack us, tying them up in a war, and giving my fleet a chance to level off the ladder we were on. The other time we allowed the fleet to attack us, taking our chances, but we knew enough to get some good prep in.

Many fleets let everyone know who the enemy will be, or allow a vote, etc. This is fine, but you run the risk of spies. Or pirates selling the information to the highest bidder. War information is worthwhile to the serious war fleets, and they will PAY to know these things.

You do, however, at least need to let your fleet know *time*. If your fleet can't show up in significant numbers, there's no point in warring.