The joy of bad choices

One tactic I like is trying to give my opponent the choice between two evils:
To divide his forces or take a Nona cannon hit. To go after the SLMs, the
fighters or the MT missiles. Does anyone have any good combinations that cause
an opponent to do something bad for the health of their ships?

Andy A

> One tactic I like is trying to give my opponent the choice between two

I've got a few catch-22's...

1. Fighters and needle beam flankers. Take your pick. Do you hit the throttle
and take a charge at their carriers in hopes that, once you weather the first
fighter storm, they won't have anything left to reload, and risk losing ADFC
or drives (or both) to needle beams? Or do you aim to try to make the needle
guys' jobs harder by maneuvering around and let the carriers have free rein to
send however many waves of fighters at you that you want?

2. Fighters and plasma bolts. I stand by my point earlier... if people
don't flat-out overload on PDS, this is a nasty combination, probably
worse than fighters and needle flankers. Do you go after the carriers in a
charge and get annihilated by the plasma, or do you try to maneuver around and
give the fighters that much more time to annihilate you themselves? If you
get caught in a pincer move between clear-to-fire fighters and plasma
bolts, which do you fire at?

3. Nova cannons and missiles. Stay in an area defense phalanx and get hit by
the novas, or split up to make the novas harder to connect and leave yourself
far more vulnerable to the missiles?

4. Borrow a page from the Romulans in Star Trek... the NG Warbirds
(torpedo-
armed cloaking megabattleships) together with the OS Birds of Prey (small
cloaking battlecruisers with nova cannons). The Warbirds hold a tight phalanx
while the Birds of Prey take position wide and distant to throw the cannons as
artillery support. Who do you go after? The Warbirds would suggest holding a
tight force of your own so that they can't pick you off a ship at a
time...
but the Birds of Prey suggest that you don't want a particularly tight
formation at all because that makes it easier to hit multiple ships at once.
What are the Warbirds doing while cloaked? Do you try to set up an ambush or
play it safe and let them come to you... either way risking that they'll pop
up in a spot you don't expect? The sheer number of mind games involved in this
sort of fleet action are really, really fun, and if you can execute them well
this is a very effective tactic.

> One tactic I like is trying to give my opponent the choice

For the truly arrog...er, confidant, you could say "face my fleet, or lose
your planet"