Strategies

Use Artillery Wisely

The artillery units of the Federation and Romulan army both have strengths and weaknesses. They can fire incredibly long distances, but their sensor radius is extremely limited and they are very slow. Despite the long firing range, the lack of long distance visibility forces a player to either blindly fire into the fog of war or move their ships towards the enemy until the opponent is in sensor range. This poses a great threat to your armada of steamrunner class ships as their weakness lies in close confrontations. The enemy can then also see your artillery in their sensor range and can assault your ships, which have very weak shields and can be taken out easily. Also, since artillery ships do not have close combat weapons, opening artillery fire at the now point blank range enemy would only result in massive damage on your own fleet.

The secret lies in giving the artillery units a large sensor radius so that they can attack from safe distances, often times beyond the normal sensor range of the enemy fleet. The scout ship has the largest sensor radius among the ships, about equal to the sensor radius of stationary sensor arrays. Build a scout and send it toward your fleet of artillery. Do NOT group the scout with your artillery fleet. Instead, tell the scout to GUARD your artillery group. Normally, if you group the scout with your artillery and command the group to move or attack, the scout would move much farther ahead of the artillery ships due to its speed. When you instruct your group to attack, the scout would head straight into the enemy and quickly be destroyed by your own artillery fire. By instructing a scout to guard your group of artillery, it will follow the slow moving group at the same pace, staying in close with the pack. When you instruct your artillery to open fire, not only do you have clear sensor visibility of enemy ships some 10 grids away but the scout will also continue to stay in formation and not fly directly into the line of artillery fire. The result: artillery ships that can fire long distances, and see long distances.


**The Romulan Phoenix super weapon is a thing of beauty, however the ship itself is very fragile and needs to be protected. What I like to do is send a couple of freighters in front of a Phoenix ship, that way when any other vessels or Starbases begin shooting at them, I can sneak the Phoenix ship just past enemy defenses, and watch them get obliterated by the resulting blast. Yeah, you lose freighters that way, but hearing the screams from your opponent is more than worth it.

**The Borg Transwarp Gate is a 2-way street. When you find one popping up in your space, immediately send anything nearby to the wormhole through it, that way you get a great sneak attack at where ever they put their gate. Those Borg will get one very interesting surprise that way......

:cool: ***Planets
If a Starbase is built close by a planet it will receive crew at a faster rate than otherwise.

***- Use Nebulas Wisely

Do not underestimate the importance of nebulas in Armada! Use them wisely; they work very nicely. There are countless strategies regarding how you can reverse the tide of the battle by using nebulas to your advantage.
Nebulae
These gaseous areas of space will be used by the player for strategic purposes depending on the type of Nebulae. There are five types of Nebulae each of which affect ships differently. Each type may be identified by its color or some other visual effect.

The five nebulae types are:

Metreon Nebula
Redish, electric, volatile. Slows down movement of ships. Damages ships shields at a steady rate, then begins damagings systems when shields are down.


Radioactive Nebula
Yellowish, light greenish. Kills off crew at a steady rate, regardless of ship status.


Metaphasic Nebula
Dark green. Removes all negative effecting weapons currently on ship. Increases repair rate. Increases shield recharge rate.


Cerulean Nebula
Light blue. Lowers shields. Disables all special weapon abilities. Disables all weapon abilities. Disables cloaking.


Mutara Nebula
Purplish, silver, sparking electricity. Disables sensors. Slows down speed. Disables shields.

:roll eyes: ****Not many players do this, but the better defender players do. This involves taking 1 construction ship (sometimes 2 if the Dilith. allows), picking a spot facing your enemy, and building turrets, one after the other, in a strat line, following the style of trench warfare in World War I. Some players, after they have reached the end of their trench, will go back and fortify the line with a second, and even a third line of trenches. This means that an enemy must break a hole in the line before he can get to your base, By the time he gets through, your whole fleet can usually be mobilized to stop a very damaged aggressor. This also creates a defensive line for your fleet to fall back upon if a push (assault on the enemy) goes bad.

: ****though I’ve never seen this used, only heard about it, is to slowly build turrets towards your enemy. That is, start from your farthest moon, and start building turrets, heading towards your enemies base. This way, if he assaults you, he has a line of turrets to try and avoid, and as you start to reach your enemies doorstep, the enemy not only has to deal with an incoming fleet, but has to deal with turrets as well. Again, I’ve never seen this strategy used before, but it is an interesting and effective way of going about attacking an enemy with a defensive posture.

There are MANY drawbacks to this way of playing the game. First, and most important, I would never go about a “Dig for your life" strategy while facing off with the Romulans or Federation. The simple reason being Artillery ships. While you spend valuable Dilith. building massive turret defenses, it is very easy, early in the game, for your opponent to be building Artillery. Artillery easily destroyers base defenses, and with cover support from normal, close combat ships, can be a deadly combination. 6 Artillery ships can destroy any turret in one barrage, and usually, with 6 or 8 2nd tier normal ships, can stop any attempt to attack the arty fleet, especially if your spending most of your Dilith. building base defenses. Many players forget about this aspect of the Federation and Romulan race. As a rule of thumb, if I’m playing against Feds or Romulans, I will usually allocate my Dilith. to building up a nice 2nd tier fleet, rather than wasting money on easily disposed of turrets.

Secondly, it is easy to rush a player that is attempting to go about a defensive strategy. Let me rephrase that, not easy, but possible. When a player goes about a defensive strategy, he is using massive amounts of early Dilith. in building turrets. If you build up your two first moons fast, build a shipyard, and build 8 of the 1st tier, second level ships (the more expensive of the initial shipyard ships), the enemy won’t have a chance to get full turret cover on both of his initial processors. If you maneuver carefully around his turret cover, you can usually get at an uncovered side, and cause massive problems by either killing a construction ship, or destroying a processor. By the way, you don't have to wait till you have 8, nor do you have to wait till you have 2 moons. The idea is rushing the player before he can get a decent defensive perimeter up. Also, don’t try to attack the turrets. It takes about 2 wings of 1st tier 2nd ships to take on just 2 turrets. You must maneuver around the turrets, not fight them.

Third, and most important if you are trying to use either the build to the base or the trench line strategy, it can sometimes be easy for your enemies to just go around your defensive line, flanking your position so to speak. This could result in a tragic loss of Dilith. in turrets that never get any use. With this in mind, if you are going to use either of these strategies, make sure you have a good idea of your enemies main base, and you place your turrets in a position that makes it very hard for him to flank you.

Probably the best way to Dig for your life is to try and combine all these ideas in some way or another. For example, create a small trench line facing your enemy's shortest way to attack your base, dig in your processors, and slowly build a line of turrets from your trench into the enemies base. I personally don't use this strategy, but a lot of people enjoy playing a defensive game, and so it does deserve mention.


***Capital Ship Rush: This is a very elementary, newbie style strat. that is not used very much, but enough to deserve mention. The name shows exactly what you do. Get your moons claimed as fast as you can. Usually these players build a modest amount of turrets around each processor. Next, build a shipyard, 1st level research station, and advanced research station as fast as possible, building very few ships out of your initial shipyard. Then, they building the 3rd tier, capital or starship (whatever title you use for them). After you get a couple of them out, start attacking.
This analysis might be short, but the strat. is simple. It can work if your opponent doesn't build many starting ships, and doesn’t rush your position. However, the drawbacks on this strat. are harsh. If you build a strong amount of 2nd tier ships, you can usually catch the enemies base right when his first or second capital ship is coming out of the docks, if that. Usually, you can just annihilate him then. Conclusion: Don’t try this, it doesn’t work very well. If someone has a variation of this strategy that works well, I’d love to hear it, but rushing to caps as fast as you can usually costs you the game.

**Learn to form battle groups by dragging a box over a group of ships, then pressing Ctrl # (number) you can assign vessels to fleets. This is useful as you can switch between fleets quickly by tapping the # key you assigned to the fleet twice. You can fit a maximum of 8 ships in a fleet, and I suggest that you group the same kind of ship together. As in a fleet of mixed ships, it does not show all the special weapons, which should be used in battle. For example, as the Federation, have a fleet of 8 Sovereign class that you want to make into a fleet. Push Ctrl and 1. This makes them the first fleet. Push 1 from now on, and it will hi-light them. This is very useful in battle to get all ships to target one vessel, instead of multiple vessels. Always stick to this strategy. However, if you do group different ships together, and you want them to travel to a certain point, but stick together, all you have to do is press Ctrl and click destination. The maximum number of fleets you can have is 10(#'s 1 -0), so you can have a maximum of 90 ships grouped.

UNLIMITED MONEY FEDS
***This strat will allow any player with access to a NEBULA class starship with the GEMINI EFFECT to a source of unlimited money. To do this have your NEBULA class parked close to a ship yard with another ship (should be a ship which can be quickly dismantled, [any of the first three classes of ships should work fine]) parked close.
Fire the GEMINI EFFECT onto this ship and once it hits have the cloned ship sent for dismantling. If done quickly enough you will gain money for the dismantled ship, without losing any ships this process can then be repeated as many times as needed as a continuous source of money. Be carful though this is very time consuming and u could be caught of guard. I only use this when my dilth. processors have been destroyed and there is no money avail.

TFA GateKeeper

DEFENDING TURRET RUSHES:

The most effective way to stop a turret rush from doing damage to your mining is to actually build your mines on the arc facing away from the Starbase.
That way your dilithium freighters can mine close to your starbase without any person building turrets to knock the freighters out. Beware though that if the enemie decides to defiant rush you, your dilith moons are wide open so it's good to actually get an educated guess of what they are going to do. Most clans actually have their same styles of playing and different strats. [TheBorg] like to turret rush but some of their real good members like defiant rushing. Both of them together can be devestating. *UA* in general love turret rushes. [DLG] practise defiant rushes more and more nowadays. But never take it for granted that i am right. They're is always someone who likes to f**k up my idea's
I hope you know what i mean so far

Right, another way to defeat a turret rush is basically have more con. ships building more than your enemie is doing. I have actually nearly mastered the act of defending turret rushes but that is only after nearly every game i used to play with DLG or *UA* they'ld turret me. The truth is if your quicker than them by even just 1 second then you nearly have the turret rush won.
ALWAYS be careful when Feds or Roms try to turret rush you, as you know well that them raps are good. Never give leighway to roms or feds. You can ignore klings and maybe borg though as more than likley you'll have more ships than them and they have to dog-fight.
Practise defending from turret rushes and then you've probebly mastered turret rushing itself. It's a cunt of a stratigy though.

USING TURRET RUSHES:

Well the thing about being on the offensive with turret rushing is that YOUR IN CONTROL, Always!! You call the shots of where to put them, the defending party can only shadow your ships until you start laying down your turrets. So...............
Annoy them! Bring your 1 or even 2 con ships around their base just back and forth, so while he's concentrating shadowing you, you have a chance to micro-manage in your own base, this may give you the edge in the middle of the game. Try make them lay down their turrets first and then quickly move your ships to another area and start your rush there. You may have at least a 10 second headstart which will more than likley win you the rush.
Another great move is to actually lay down your turrets first and when he starts laying down his, you stop yours and move to another place, again you'll have the headstart.

After that you'll wana fortify yourself with more turrets surrounding yourself and then if your Feds or Roms, build that shipyard and away you go.

It's probebly one of the safest stratigies in the game but not that much fun.

Hylo