30+ PSA: Kerr's Guide to Warring (Part 3)

War Strategy

A good war strategy wins the war. For example:

AVG vs RDA

RDA was a training fleet with one or two high-levels and nothing else but mids and lows. AVG was, at the time, one of the strongest fleets in the game, with many high-levels, few mids, and no lows.

I do not recall anymore who declared on who, although I believe it was RDA who declared on AVG, after some snark had been exchanged in the shoutbox for some while. I do know, however, that AVG believed it had a cakewalk in front of it when the war started. When it ended, RDA had beaten them.

RDA went in with a strategy. They had assigned targets. They had assigned methods by which to kill the other fleet. They had mercs for their offliners. They had a hugely overconfident foe whose method of warring was 'show up at shoot stuff'.

It was not a simple fight, but strategy won the day for RDA. And, if I recall correctly, it was the first defeat AVG had suffered.

The most involved strategy I've ever written was for the TSF/BCR war. We spent three weeks prepping stats and getting the timing just right. We had mercs, we had bombs, we had more points than I care to think about, and we warred for hours on a complicated strategy that eventually won us the war, with BCR having only about 300HP left. It was grueling. But wicked fun.

So here are some of the many strategies you can use in a war to bring your fleet to victory.

Mercs

Mercenaries come in two flavors: people who temporarily join the fleet, and people who stay out of the fleet but participate in the war.

Joining the fleet is obvious - the merc joins, the fleet declares, and they help attack the enemy during the war. Possibly the most infamous example of this is my dear, beloved Sunstrike, who switched sides during the BCR/TSF war and fought flying TSF's colors against BCR. Usually the merc does not fight against their home fleet.

Those who fight outside the war are in two flavors: either they are working for you yarding your offliners, or, they are working for you hitting a member of the enemy fleet you simply can't yard. In the first example, the most common merc option, the merc is preventing easy kills for the enemy fleet. In the second, the merc is preventing a high-level target from running rampant over your fleet during the battle.

There is a downside to mercs, which is the immunity timers. Timers during a war are reduced for offliners, and the immunity lasts less for onliners -- but only for the people in the war. For those outside the war, the timers remain the same. This means mercs outside of a war are always at a disadvantage.

Assignments

1. Station Assignments.

If you are fighting a large enough fleet it is a good idea to spread your fleet across all the stations. The pirate assigned to a station will kill the enemy at that station, then wait for their targets to come out of the shipyard. This works well in low-level wars, zombie wars, wars against large fleets. This does NOT work against a live target war or a small fleet - the enemy is usually too busy jumping stations.

2. Pirate to Pirate assignments.

In a live target war or a small enemy fleet, you need to assign specific targets to specific pirates. Each pirate is responsible for that target alone. Go get 'em.

Sometimes you will do this because you have a few pirates only some of your fleet can hit -- either your fleetie is very low-level so has limited targets, or their fleet has a high-level or two only one or two of your fleet can yard.

Pirate v Pirate is common strategy in the higher ladder wars. As you can imagine, assigning your pirates is based on all that stat research you did earlier before deciding to declare.

Sweeps

I'm sure there are other names for this kind of assignment, but this is what I've always heard them called. A sweep is a pirate who sweeps the system looking for targets. They are usually used in conjunction with either station or pirate v pirate assignments. Sweeps are almost always your highest-statted, highest-level player. Their job is to grab live enemy pirates and yard them so the rest of the fleet isn't being attacked, and can hit the offliners. they also pick up offliners too high-level for the assigned pirates to hit.

Sweeping can be fun, but often costs a lost of cargo and points to do well.

Denial of HP

In a standard war, the first fleet to 0HP loses, so obviously you want to deny the enemy a chance to hit you. However, a Denial of HP is a specific type of strategy which minimizes opportunities beyond the normal "If we yard them first they can't yard us as much so we win" idea.

The less members in your fleet, the more likely your fleet will win, because they other side will not have targets to hit. However, a canny fleet with a lot of people can manage the same thing using Denial of HP.

The basic is: attack until you are at roughly 25% energy, then splat yourself on a non-war target. You are in the yard, you've damaged them, and they can't hit you.

Then, if you've the points, use a regen to come out of the yard randomly and go back to attacking. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

(This, by the way, was a prime part of the strategy RDA used against AVG.)

The sneakier version also includes this: remove the pirates who can't be online from your fleet before you declare, starting with highest level first. Remember that the higher the level, the more war points the kill earns you, and an offline target is an easy target. If you know they can't be on, and you are choosing a tough opponent, there's no reason to leave an easy target sitting there. Kick 'em out, and rejoin them after the war. Just make sure to keep at least 10 people in the fleet.

(This, by the way, was a prime part of the strategy I used against BCR. I dropped the fleet to 10 people before I declared, greatly reducing BCR's targets.)

Also, just before your war begins, have a merc yard everyone in your fleet, online or off. The onliners buy out of they yard as the war starts, so they have immunity during the opening salvos and can't be hit. The offliners are in the yard the full 10 or 15 minutes, because the yard time started BEFORE the war did -- buying you a lot of time to hit the enemy during which they have no targets.

The bought war

Warning: this is one of those topics sure to start flamewars. This is one of the epic causes of strife in the game. (But it works.)

War Forays are designed to allow small, low-level pirates a chance to damage the enemy fleet when normally they couldn't hit anyone, or could barely hit anyone on the opposite side. It costs energy and fuel and then you sit there while things regen, or, you spend points to refill energy, and splat yourself so you aren't a target. It is not glamorous, but it can be useful.

The big guns also use war forays, which is where the controversy lies. All it costs is points, and a 15 second cooldown timer, and you can just foray an enemy to death without ever throwing a real shot. Plus, higher levels with better stats get larger foray damage results. Mr A, apparently, can foray for 20-60 points of damage at a time. Not that he needs to, but he can.

Most pirates prefer to duke it out, shooting at each other, but sometimes buying the war is the best way to go. For example, if I were running an FTW war, I'd just buy a heck of a lot of points and give them to you all. "On the count of three...foray!" would be my battle cry, and the sheer number of pirates foraying would do hefty damage to an enemy. Three or four rounds of 20-60 pirates foraying at once? even if you all did only 3 damage, that's significant at lower levels where the fleet HP is small.

This strategy, btw, was successfully used by Tagon's Toughs against SDL (Silver Dragon's Lair) much to Silver Dragon's surprise. SDL picked a large target-rich environment and thought his fleet had an easy win, going so far as to offer to send them pointers and advice if needed to help even it up some. Icemaster Yeti, then a mod and fleet advisor, said 'thanks but no thanks' and taught the toughs to foray. Enough toughs showed up with the foraying that I believe the war was over in an hour, TT the clear winners.

This is an expensive war strategy, however, so not used often. It can be used extremely effectively, especially combined with a Denial of HP and a few Sweepers to keep the enemy hit while the rest of the fleet Forays it's little heart out.

Armadas

Armadas are an excellent way for smaller pirates to gang up on a larger pirate and beat him or her. During a war, armadas also can intercept War Forays, helping reduce damage taken.

I am a firm believer that every war fleet should have at least one armada, just to intercept war forays.

There are various flavors of armadas, although most pirates go with the "Overwhelming Firepower" version: everyone straps on weapons and shoots a whole lot of damage at once.

TSF perfected a 'bomb armada' which was based around certain officers, malf reduction, and a whole lot of bombs. We could successfully, consistently take down Mr. Awesome with this build, without killing ourselves in the process, with only three people and about 80 bombs. (The main disadvantage of bombs is the damage you take from them, and the malf. With an armada, the damage affects only one person at a time, and the malf is spread throughout the armada...meaning your shot will fire.)

G has a crit armada build they use: since the crit bonuses stack, everyone in the armada puts on weapons and items improving the crit bonuses. Not only overwhelming firepower - critical overwhelming firepower.

Constant Damage

in many wars there are small breaks - you are in the yard so you take a moment to breathe. The enemy fleet is all yarded so you grab a quick drink. And so forth.
when you are facing a fleet with a much larger amount of HP than you, you need to constantly be doing damage. this includes: buying out of the SY immediately and going back to shooting, using forays when you run out of targets you can hit, and hitting anything and everything you can that appears in your sights.

Generally during a war one tries to avoid 'stealing' targets from another fleetie, but in the Constant Damage scenario, while you should hit your assignments first, hit anything else you can, too. Spend points and keep refilling your energy so you are always attacking. Their numbers need to be whittled down as quickly as possible. Anything and everything that damages the opponent is worthwhile.

This was a huge part of the BCR/TSF war. We'd actually calculated out how much damage a minute we needed to do in order to beat them before they'd beat us.

Borrowing Items

Nothing is more surprising than having done your stats and weapons research, and run into a pirate with a much heftier build than you were expecting. Borrowing high-level firepower from the armory or from a friend can greatly change the nature of a war.

There are any number of wars I went into with a rogue build of CX drives and Pulsar Beams loaned to me from various friends. Pirates prepared to kill me based on my stats were in for quite the surprise, let me tell you.

The best part of this strategy is it works for any pirate - everyone is tougher with better items.

The Morale Is Everything Strategy

Morale is key during a fight. If you are a leader in your fleet, you should be encouraging your fleeties with how well they are doing, or to keep on fighting when the odds are against. Keeping up fleet morale allows for a good, fun, fight.

On the other hand, you want enemy morale to suck. You want them to get frustrated at a lack of targets and log off. You want them to fall to infighting and forget to attack you. You want them to get flustered and forget their own strategies.

Taunts in the shoutbox, PMs, etc, can all help accomplish this. (Keep it friendly and in the rules, though!) A war where the cakewalk turned out not to be so easy will manage this. Watching a weaker opponent rob you of HP while you do relatively little damage will manage this.

This will give you openings to win.

Anatomy of Two Wars

BCR/TSF

BCR/TSF was a war no one expected TSF to win - the HP difference between the fleets was huge. However, myself, Paulcd2000, and Raziel D had run numbers for weeks and were pretty sure we could do it. We ran a Constant Damage, Denial of HP, Morale, and Multi-layered Assignment war against BCR.

First, I spent weeks negotiating with Sunstrike to get teyn on our side. Then, we timed the war based on Sun's availability, and when we didn't think many BCR would be online. We stockpiled bombs, regens, and points, and distributed lots to everyone. We gave our fleet plenty of notice, and we dropped the fleet to 10 members. Assignments were both station AND pirate to pirate - attack your assigned pirates, then rotate between certain stations. We also had what stations you rotated between change up every half-hour, so that BCR couldn't settle into a groove of where people would be. We also splatted ourselves into the yard to avoid being targets ourselves, and if we ran out of people to shoot, we ran forays. Our littles forayed and yarded themselves, jumping station every single time they came out of the yard. and we had mercs, yarding our offliners.

The war strategy plan I sent to the fleet took up three pages in MS Word. Longest and most complicated strategy I ever did.

Even with that, we could have lost except for the morale issue. First, we'd underestimated BCR's repsonse to Sunstrike - honestly, we thought it'd be funny, and make the war an even fight, not something easy for BCR. BCR saw it as betrayal, which in hindsight we can understand why. This meant BCR went into the fight upset and some people didn't show up because they were so angry.

Second, the Denial of HP really frustrated BCR, as did our refusal to rise to their bait of 'cheater' 'betrayal' and so forth. During the war, one person got upset and stopped fighting for a half hour, going so far as to take off his items and hang out mars, making himself an easy target. If he had kept fighting, I do not believe we'd have won the war - that particular half-hour is when we closed the HP gap and started pulling ahead.

We also got lucky - one of the high-level pirates had to leave during the war to go to work, taking some of the pressure off of us.

So, we won, and our strategy worked. I'll also point out many in BCR thought we played a dirty trick, but it was a good pirate trick, and respected us for it; only a few really got cheesed off about the thing. But it was a controversial war, and I've always felt badly that BCR didn't go into it with as much fun as we thought they would.

TSF/MTD

So we had a week where no one's schedules worked out, and we couldn't war. This left us open to attack, and MTD saw an easy target, so declared.

TSF was very little then -- our highest level pirate (me) couldn't even reach Pluto and Charon at the time. We were facing a similar sized fleet, with larger level and statted pirates, at a time when almost none of us could be online.

I took one look at that and asked the fleet if we wanted to surrender - they said No, we'll let them work for their victory. So I got a list of who in TSF could show up when, and started working out a strategy. I assigned out stations to everyone, and targets. I had a full stat workup done on MTD, and then I went knocking on my friend's doors. "PLEASE HELP ME" I begged.

the 633's loaned me items and helped yard my offliners. RDA loaned me items and yarded MTD's biggest gun, the one i couldn't kill. ITC stepped in to help merc. NEK helped merc. BCR helped merc. AVG helped merc. I called on every friend I had to help me and mine out...because for the first hour and a half of the war I would be the only TSF online. I bought points, and people just gave me points, along with regens, and duct tape (then only used to repair one's ship).

I loaded up on borrowed items, cloaked my ship, and went out to battle for that long hour and a half. But what mattered was the strategy. My friends were all in the fleetchat with me, calling out where the enemy was so i wouldn't walk into an ambush. As TSF members got home and logged in, they knew immediately where to go and who to hit, meaning the fleet was never flustered or wondering what to do. I attacked so much, for so long, my arm was sore the next day. Mercs sat at Pluto and Charon and yarded any MTD who popped up there.

By the end of the war, the shoutbox was all watching the war tally screen as the HP dropped on both sides. The war earned an Admin Sticky Shout, and to my knowledge it is the closest war ever fought in game - MTD won the war with only 63 HP left.

Strategy kept TSF in that war, and strategy nearly won us the war. It was hours of fighting and by the end of it MTD and TSF were very good friends. We warred several times after that, and we always had fun (TSF never lost to them again, btw) until their fleet disbanded.

To this day it remains the best war I fought in, and the one that was the most fun - because both sides had a good time, because we fought a hard war, because both sides got lots of recognition and congratulations over it - and because of my friends I'd made in the game, who stepped in to help when they didn't have to. And because I made friends during the war. Everyone had a good time, which is what mattered.

(Although I would have liked to have won. )


Not all war fleets are strategy fleets - many declare, show up, shoot a lot, everyone has fun, and someone wins. But some of the fleets playing the war game are playing the strategy game, and when you run into one, you know you've been hit hard.

Anyways, I really hope this has been useful and insightful. You are the first bunch I've ever sat down and done this for. i hope it helps when you find yourselves warring.

Kerravyn