Making the War
 

So theirs been some talk recently about wars and such like, whether their good for the alliance or not.

But what does it actually involve?

If two top alliances were to go to war with each other, how would they go about it?

Is it more effiecient to target enemy planets without exception? or is a combination of targetting and gal raids more beneficial?

Or does it depend on the two alliances relative positions?

So I ask you AD what is the best way to make war, and which alliances favour what, in the past and in this round.

Re: Making the War
 

Dont announce it :P entire universe will take advantage of it ;)

Re: Making the War
 

hehe, my reasoning was that it wasn't a huge secret to those of you had been around a while and are involved in that sort of stuff.

But secret tips will be appreciated! :)

EDIT: I just got what you actually meant, silly me.

Re: Making the War
 

Best if 2 or more alliances take on 1 alliance. Top 2 alliances in a war is very tough. Usually such a war allows for other alliances to take advantage and get higher roid counts.

Exillition was fully prepared for war last round and used other alliances to help get the job done.

Also the alliance that is better able to get the enemy alliance to take planet NAPs will usually come out better.

Re: Making the War
 

I can tell of some expirience I have from my time in PA.

Intel is extremly important. Alot of the round you go around wondering if someone is targeting you based on the level of incs you get each night. Gathering intel is very important so you know who is hitting you and to manage to differ a galaxy raid from an attack on your alliance. After a couple of weeks if your alliance sticks out you might get some targeted attacks on your alliance.. You gather intel based on that and alot of it is from the galaxy raids you find with people you have pegged as a certain alliance.

When you pick a target there are so many various smart and unsmart reasons to target an alliance. Three of the most common reasons is: 1) You think that the given alliance is attacking you allready. (Wich they arent, but they sure will when you start attacking) 2) You might just want to nudge out the alliance ahead of you in the ranking, so you use the gathered intel to attack them. 3) The alternative box, you just want to have some fun, and decide to attack someone.

Comfusing? Yes, slightly.

So what do you do when you find out that a certain alliance goes out targeting you. There are several ways to react to that. One way is to launch your alliance's fleets on the gathered coords you got from that alliance. Then you can say that the war is on, because that given alliance will in 99% of the cases know that it is you retaliating and then you have it going.

You can ofc also run around talking to other alliances and asking to switch intel to cross reference the intel you got with their intel. (This is the way I see it, not a smart move, because the more people you let in on your intentions, the quicker you will get noticed that you are planning such)

There is also the direct confrontation. You hunt down an HC of the said alliance, comfront him with your "evidence". Into wich they in 99% of the cases will say that they got no clue what you are talking about, or as someone have done to me in the past, given me a vague hint as to why they attack you.

Sun Tze's Art of war says: Never confront an enemy you for sure know you cant win against. This could roughly translate into pa as: Never attack an alliance unless you know you can beat them, OR that you know you got more friends willing to attack the given alliance.

Re: Making the War
 

It's pretty much undisputed that eXilition was solo and had no NAPs/allies in round 18, and did not use other alliances to fight our wars for us. (Not trying to take it off-topic, so i apologize.)
-
Wars should be strategic, imo. A purpose in mind. It depends on the situation at hand how the war should be fought.

-NitinA

Re: Making the War
 

Every member of an alliance launches on the top planet.

Top planet will get a huge number of def fleets.

JPG and gather all coordinates of his def.

Deal with the retals.

Recall all launched fleets.

Create a database of the gathered intel.

Scan them.

Set up attack LT on scanned targets.

Launch attack.

Someone bitches on AD.

Enjoy.

Re: Making the War
 

The most important thing is to make sure you are ready for a war before you get into one. Too many people are not ready for what hits them once it begins and rollover too quickly.

If you are going to do start a war prepare well. As has been mentioned intel is important, but much more important is having some type of strategy (which in my book is to hit as many of their members as possible every night in the same tick). If they have a weak point (like an aggrogant BG/large player) hit them etc use your imagination.

If you are struggling to hit many of them each night find a partner, there are lots of ways to make it worth their while. In r11 when HR were attacking ND they often BPd with NoS (iirc?) so Insomnia helped out by hitting the NoS in each galaxy. This took some of the pressure off and allowed us to hit more ND planets each night than we could solo.

Last, but no less important, always launch before your enemy. Alliances are happy to drain most of their fleets with defending and too late realise they are left with far less attack fleets than usual. Sure you might end up having most of your incomming defended against, but some will get through. On top of this you will of had a relatively easy night, where as the other sides DCs will of had a nasty time (after a while they will burnout)! Be patient.

(note: War is fun, enjoy the fight, take some time to talk to the enemy. Dont get nasty!)

Re: Making the War
 

This is one of the most common mistakes I come across... in nearly all cases it is far more beneficial to slap enemy planets only. Particularly at the beginning of a conflict.

If you hit galaxies, you throw fleets at other alliances, and less at your target. If your target can stop 30 fleets a night, and you hit galaxies, only sending 40 their way, then you might land 10. If you send your full alliance (say, 120 fleets) their way, then a doubling of attack fleets leads to an 8-fold increase in fleets through on your targets.

If you hit galaxies, other alliances can defend your fleets, and the gal may decide to defend your particular targets anyway. Sheer stupidity. To begin with, it makes most sense to hit enemies in galaxies where there are several of them (eg 4 members of your target alliance in one gal, hit all of them so galdef can't cover all the incs), or hit huge enemy planets so you can justify 6, 7, 8+ waves which will simply overwhelm galaxy defence (in the same manner I described above with regards to ally def)

The only cases I have justified putting galaxy raids in, is when fortress galaxies defend particular targets to the hilt, and these targets are growing dangerously. Even then, I limited the number of galraids to perhaps one or two per night, and only undertook them when a large number of targets had been stripmined.

The other things are to try and have BCs around all the time or have targets up all the time, ensuring that as soon as a fleet slot becomes available, real or fake, it can be launched at an enemy planet. This leads to DC exhaustion, absorbtion of enemy fleets (if they're defending, they can't attack you) and a loss of morale for the enemy. Spare BCing capacity allows the organisation of fleetcatches, which either sap huge amounts of defence (Allowing more roiding), or allow you to genuinely knock back an enemy planet. As you start to win a war, a series of fleetcatches can seal the deal.

Oh, I nearly forgot fakes. Early in hte night, sending all available fleets at the enemy is good. If real ones are covered, recall them. If fake ones are uncovered, recall them. Keep uncovered real/covered fake ones going to sap defence. Additionally, some nice fakes can be organised - I often performed a lancer/FI disguised as frigate fake in previous rounds. CO class defence was then destroyed. In round 12 we wiped out 35k LCH CO this way, and round 15 destroyed respectable numbers of Angels vipers (which were very valuable ships!), and a bunch of beetles being used to fake them with too! :p

Finally, it's a case of not stopping. If you want to knock an alliance out, you don't give up hitting them until they've given up on the war completely. Even then, a day (or a few) of incomings just to ensure they're finished can be worth it, if you don't have another urgent target.

All IMO ofc. :)

Of course, the route you must take for a particular conflict depends on the parameters. Sometimes you will be fighting a minor war for a particular purpose without wanting to cause huge damage to the target. Perhaps you just want to persuade them to leave you alone, or 'skim the fat' off a handful of top planets to prevent the formation of untouchable planets later in the round when you plan to deal with them properly... there are various reasons, but the stuff I discussed above is for

Re: Making the War
 

In my experience the tactics of war depend very much on the type of alliance. There are not many alliances in the game with the resources to be able to successfully pull of the ‘shock and awe” tactic that’s needed with an exclusive targeting tactic, certainly not without targeting an alliance significantly smaller than themselves. Such a tactic needs to inflict significant damage on the alliance quickly as a drawn out war of this style will ultimately hurt both alliances by reducing daily gains and bringing a number of other alliances into a range where they can take pot shots at you. And to do significant damage you need to be attacking the key planets with enough ships to overcome not only the alliance defence but also the fact that you have at least 10 other planets with ETA 5 defence who can throw a spanner in the works as they don’t have their own defence issues to worry about.

If you don’t have the top class resources in your alliance to pull this off and you try you destined for going backwards in the rankings pretty quickly while the alliance your ‘at war with’ just gets stronger and stronger.

This happened a few rounds back when Rock declared war on F-Crew. Rock choose to go for an exclusive targeting strategy but when they did actually get the intel right and land on an F-Crew planet they almost always got caught out by either alliance defence and if not that galaxy defence. At F-Crew we guessed that a shock and awe tactic wasn’t going to be one either alliance would be that successful with and it would end up more a war of attrition we went down that route from the start. It was playing more to our strengths so we continued to do galaxy attacks with the only change being that we focused a little more on choosing galaxies with Rock in them. In the end, most days saw F-Crew cover their lost roids and increase their score by a significant amount while Rock were struggling to cover their losses and had much lower gains.

The only other way that a shock and awe tactic becomes viable for the masses is if the aggressor teams up with another alliance(s). Infact at times even the best alliances really need ‘team ups’ to pull of a shock and awe attack. Numbers can overcome some of the problems you might have if you go it alone and makes the tactic more viable.

Re: Making the War
 

How you declare war?

**** em up get in to em.

Pretty simple.

Re: Making the War
 

Way more efficient. You can only cover a few gals and what's gonna happen is that the alliance covers their planets in the given gals. If you attack a lot of planets in your target alliance and you give a sh*t about their galmates, you'll royally scr*w them unless they're all in top active galaxies.

That's how I did it and I'm sure most does it that way (when at war). Attacking galaxies only belongs to the past in my opinion.

Re: Making the War
 

different stratergies work on different galaxies, it all depends on alliances within the galaxy, who defends ingal, target lists start to grow each night when you collect ingal defenders, as you most likely need to throw at least 1 fleet there way, but it all depends on the situation. Many things to think about before you engage in war.

Re: Making the War
 

agreed :D

Re: Making the War
 

I was told it's courteous to talk to them first informing I don't like you and I'm about to beat the poop out of you. Preferably on pink paper, sealed in an embelow with a heart-shaped sticker.

Re: Making the War
 

5$ cdn somehow despite not having paypal if I get to see an official omen declaration of war in this form.

Re: Making the War
 

As a BC (well, retired, but still!) I might just as well introduce you to the tactical side of waging wars.

Everything starts with choosing your enemy. For a top alliance your enemy should be another top alliance which might threaten your own rank. For lower ranked alliances targets should be chosen to gain ranks.

When a target is chosen (typically in the first weeks of the round or even pre-round) intel comes into play. It would be good if your own alliance is split up into two or three (depending on the memberbase size) wings or battlegroups which would take on galaxies which have known enemy planets in them. With newsscanning/jpgscanning/galaxy status parsing intel will come quite quickly and in a week you will be ready to hit your enemy full scale.

Naturally activity will suffer during the round (especially when you concentrate on a certain alliance) so you might consider merging your weakest battlegroup into the other two. Around 20-25 planets should be chosen for each night according to their roidcount and their galaxy size. Naturally all known enemy planets from one galaxy must be targetted. Around 3-5 main waves on each planet should normally be enough to shatter the enemy's morale and grab their roids.

Now onto the tactics. Faking and launching/recalling will be a key to get the enemy's defence flying and hopefully not recalling. This works extremely well against lower tier alliances (as eX proved in their 3 day campaign against xVx in round 18) but should be devastating against good alliances too. With early launchings and recallings quite a few of enemy's incomings will not be launched because people need to cover themselves or their alliances mates.

All fleets should be flying 24/7. Keeping the enemy's DC department busy will yet again be very convenient and good to bring your enemy's morale down. For special missions your BC department should be concentrating on defence sink planets (typically DC-s) with special (fake) missions. Also enemy scanners should be hit with your own scanners with structure killers (and escorts). Napping your enemy's top planets also works well.

Good luck with your wars! Don't be sad after a few setbacks. Roids aren't that important, just keep your fleet alive. If you have lost the war you can still try to take advantage (Synthetic_Sid style in round 18 for example) and get other alliances to help you take out your enemy. I remember a funny quote from xVx's private channel in round 18 where a member cheered that Subh will help them against eXilition that night. Of course Subh backed down and xVx's morale went to hell. This is another important factor, military power won't be that important. If your enemy doesn't bother to launch/recall like a maniac each night then you'll have far fewer incomings. So keep your own morale up and your enemy's morale down.

Re: Making the War
 

Not to say anything about the fact 'we' lost, nor change anything about what you said as your points have been proven in the past. The eXi vs xVx war is quite a bad example of to how to run a decent war, although you clearly won, it was obvious from the moment we had agreed to hit you that should we be picked as the first one to go down, we would go down. The value advantage you had over our alliance was enormous (close to twice the value on avg iirc).

Nothing was wrong with the morale of our members, after we knew Subh had backed out it was pointless to continue the fight. eXi's value (and activity) advantage was simply to much at that point to handle between 1up and xVx, and with no chance of taking you out (or getting you back in range of the other allies) there was no point for us to continue to take the losses.

Re: Making the War
 

Insomnia v. LCH? Anyone?

Re: Making the War
 

War in planetraion is a funny thing. While it is indeed a war game, and the strength of an alliance is to be measured on its war efforts, war i seldomly beneficial in pa. Sometimes it can be useful for purposes like motivation, activity, fun etc, but your score will normally decrease in relation to non-warring alliances while youre fighting.

This has lead to countless blockrounds, as people try to at least only have to fight one war per round. Boring but safe is the motto. I dont think this will change in the future so i think our chances on a random war are pretty small.

Now what to do when war has started?

Me personally im a fang of bg. and in case of the beginning of a war id start with one bg doing launch and recall. One doing fleetcatch. and one doing serious galraids, planettargetting. But generally thats just a question of style. What is important is to throw as many fleets as possible against the enemy as fast as possible. Dont ever give away the initiative in the fight. Someone who defends cantt attack so draw the enemy out. --> Launch and Recall.
Losing ships really is what hurts planets. --> Fleetcatch. Roids to keep the war efforts profitable. --> Roiding and Planetargetting.

Re: Making the War
 

Please keep any 'off topic' discussion regarding F-Crew and Rock that might arise from my post to this thread

Thanks

Re: Making the War
 

If not someone is soon 'making the war' on eXilition, Pig will be right and laugh so hard that he dies - and we dont want that now do we. Unfortunately there isnt 1 single HC left in the game who has the ability to do anything about it.

I`ll be the 2nd one to do this. Congratz eXilition! :-)

Re: Making the War
 

I think HK sums it up pretty well.

One thing missing I think is dont get into a war you arent willing to finish.

An example would be last round, with Omen v Subh/XvX/escape.

For one reason or another, escape and xvx quickly dropped out of the war, leaving Subh alone. And even though subh were the biggest when the 3 v 1 war started, Subh couldnt handle Omen and also chose to ensure 1up finished em off.
They werent prepared and royally screwed there own round.

Re: Making the War
 

To answer Ceadraths questions...

It does imo depend on the alliances relative position and amount of roids and other circumstances (for example if it's likely that the alliance you're declaring war on will get help or not).

Generally I think it's better to concentrate on mostly/only enemy planets, but for that you need good intel.

To answer your second question; I think they would hit strategic planets for as long as possible without revealing that they're waging war against a particular alliance. Best done if one can get friends(/allies) to help. Announcing wars on the forums isn't done anymore, sadly enough...

Re: Making the War
 

Depends how you see it.

Some people feel any actions that show a bit of personality are worthy of being kicked off the boards and out of pa.

I enjoyed it, though I rarely got a chance to declare war.

Re: Making the War
 

I think you mean that Subh and XvX dropped out of the war, and left Escape fighting..

Re: Making the War
 

I think I know exactly what I mean.

I dont need some second rate ex-hc to tell me ta.

Re: Making the War
 

Right. So you are saying that Subh wasnt the alliance that pulled out and that Omen was infact hitting Subh instead of Escape for the duration of that war?

Re: Making the War
 

I am saying that if after all these rounds you cant see 2 moves ahead of what was REALLy happening, then you really just proved everything I think of you.

Re: Making the War
 

You mentioned the WAR between omen and xvx, subh and escape, and I can here clarify what really happend. The actual war between the four alliances was over in a week, and anything that happend after that with Subh was their own wrongdoing. But in the actual war, Omen got attacked by XvX, Escape and Subh for two days, Omen focused on attacking Escape and Escape alone and XvX and Subh both stepped out of the actual war. That was the only "war" Omen was in for the entire round and it lasted about 5 days.

Re: Making the War
 

No.

No.

And no again.

xVx dropped out of the war and only attacked for one or two nights, for whatever reason.
Subh still hit us, but tried to be sly about it.
Escape got a royal twatting but then was called off, after 2 days or so for whatever reason.
Subh and Omen continued hitting each other, and with Omen hitting Subh (who were unprepared for a war) we gained on them.
Then Subh screwed over 1up (and in the process any other alliance willing to hit Exi, ensuring they had no friends to rely on either), and got thier arses handed to them on a plate.

Therefore, the omen/subh war was the one that outlasted the other two.
I KNOW who omen were attacking, due in no small part to me handing out the targets.
Kinda makes it easy for me to work out who we are hitting, when I was going from the Subh memberlist eh?

Re: Making the War
 

Forest, please attempt to be civil on AD and both of you please do not drag this thread off-track.

Re: Making the War
 

I can assure you Forest there was no war between Omen/Subh once Subh/xVx left Escape to fight Omen by themselves.


edit: omg I am on Kargools side :(

Re: Making the War
 

That wasnt a war, LCH 'won' this 2-day farce because the Insomnia members werent prepared to go along with one HC's grudge against LCH because LCH attacked his planet to death 2 nights. Even his fellow HCs were not happy wth it.

So, what to learn from this:

If your members dont want to go full, dont bother starting.

Re: Making the War
 

Or simply to make your war decisions based on what is best for your alliance and to have a loyal memberbase who will do what you require.

If your members aren't willing to jump when you say, then you're going to have a serious handicap, regardless of why you're fighting (similarly, you will also be handicapped if you're shit/make a mistake and tell them to jump at a bad time).

Re: Making the War
 

:D

You can be my galmate anytime!

Re: Making the War
 

DCing that war was a pain in the arse. Insom lost it not only because people didn't really know why they were fighting, but because LCH had a good dedicated core who were really pissed and went for it all guns blazing.

I remember being in pm with linoge about some of the wave I was dcing. Millions of fakes with some real ones mixed in, the def drainage was horrendus. They were simply better geared for warring than insom was.


Still <3 Insom though, specially Mek and Antigone.

Re: Making the War
 

its quite interesting however.

Kargool says "Attack escape!" (he is HC so he can do that)

Forest says "ok... hmm. escape... escape... escape... oo.. look at that subh... ! kargool said attack subh, didnt he ?"

Reminds me the recent political situation on middle east and certain president of certain country !

And, from my side (peon's side) to be involved in that !

:p

j/k tho. couldnt pass up a chance <3

Re: Making the War
 

Lol Mighteh.

Not all HC were working for the same aim.

I can assure you I was not breaking rank by having Subh hit. Its just kargool being Kargool, was often not in the loop.

And coffee, I assure you there was. Like I said, I PERSONALLY gave out the targets, sometimes I ran the actual attacks, and other times I gave targets for others to organise. I ALWAYS checked the results of every attack that was run.
This isnt hearsay.

Re: Making the War
 

<3 i know... i know...

Its just when someone who was supposed to be leading us was telling us that were supposed to hit alliance X (lets call it Iran, for example) and the actual hit happened on alliance Z (lets call it Iraq, for the sake of analogies)


And i never doubted your BCing skills. I am just having fun with the discussion at hand :D

Re: Making the War
 

We hadn't done anything that round.. going to bed early.. almost falling asleep on our huge amount of roids..

and then suddenly you guys gave us something to do

And everyone was happy happy.. finally some action.. war! :p

Re: Making the War
 

I dont believe a direct order from kargool to hit escape ever came. I have checked logs and cant find it anywhere.

Re: Making the War
 

doesnt matter the round is over and the jackass are history in omen :)

Re: Making the War
 

You left robban?

:D

Dont make me come back and put you on def duty ffs!

Re: Making the War
 

You did not know that eXi and Omen were in bed together for R18? Sorry to bring you the news flash.

Re: Making the War
 

I'm pretty (read: 110%) sure he knows it better then you :)

Re: Making the War
 

wow...sid filled you with so much bullshit...you must be stuffed :D

Re: Making the War
 

He was certainly in a better position to know.

Re: Making the War
 

It wasnt a direct order from me, it was a decision made by the Omen HC.
The Omen HC decided everything as a team, and the decision to start hitting Escape with target assignment was taken as a team. I remember getting Teddy_Bear to "lie" to his GF to set it up ;)

Re: Making the War
 

Well, I am just going by the apparant mutual avoidance and the seeming large number of planet NAPS between the two.

Since Omen never challenged eXi, and eXi never target Omen it would appear that Omen had no political asperations of being the top alliance. They appeared as a support alliance for eXi.

Since everyone seems to say its not true then they might be right. I am only going by appearances.