General Strategies and Tactics

Keep Your Eyes Open

Always Scout! Always. If you don’t scout you will lose because you won’t know what ships your opponent is building/hiding and where his/her shipyard, mining, and starbase(s) are being built. Usually it is wise early game to set your scout to a “fleet” of its own, and then use the minimap to set it exploring so that you can pay attention to it at the same time as building your base (as you will also be able to quickly access it by tapping the correct fleet number).

It is preferable to place scouts (equipped with a cloaking device or not) in a place where your opponent will not think to look, or locations that are difficult to get at. For instance, the corners of nebulae, the peripheries of asteroid fields (especially sharply concave areas), and the crook behind your opponent’s base are perfect places to hide scouts. Generally players do not use cloak detect in these places or scout out these regions often enough as well. Even if your opponent does manage to spot your scout, it is difficult to see or target it onscreen before you can move the vessel, as these scouts tend to blend in with the surroundings due to their small size. Even on the minimap, a single pixel of [insert color] is quite hard to pick out when there is a large green/blue/red nebula blob or grey asteroid field practically on top of the scout. Lastly, place your scouts on “green alert” so they do not immediately dart off and attack your opponent if his or her ships fly nearby.

Cloaking Devices

Cloaking is a great advantage that the Klingons and Romulans have (as well as the Dominion Breen Cruiser). Cloaking ships can be used to spy on your opponents and to make surprise attacks. When you have been playing a game for a long time, surprise attacks on mining and shipbuilding operations are not often as feasible because cloak detection has probably been researched by then. Cloak can be used for cunning ambushes, map surveillance and escaping from battle. After cloak detection is researched, cloak will not become useless by any means, but it will limit the possibilities, as retreating from battle under cloak will become more difficult.

One problem that cloak has is that it is possible to use the Intelligence Report to ping cloaked vessels from a sensor station (or for the Borg, from the Probe), which will show you the positions and numbers of all cloaked vessels. However, the Intelligence Report ability costs a significant amount of resources and requires research (which is itself very expensive - except for the Borg who get the ability free), which limits its viability.

If you use cloaked vessels for surveillance, it is often a good idea to move them from sector to sector or have those ships patrol some area as it will make revealing them with the Tachyon Scan much more difficult. You can also use cloaked scouts to shadow your opponent’s vessels (this can be made easier by using the guard command) to extend the sensor range of your other warships.

When researching cloak detection, always consider your resource situation as well as your current battlefield position. For instance, if you have confined your opponent to his or her base or your opponent is always on the defensive, it is unlikely that you will need to research any form of cloak detection.

If someone is trying to retreat from battle using cloak, you can expose their unshielded hulls by using a sensor station's (or for the Borg, the Probe's) Graviton Detection Grid ability (this must first be researched, except for the Borg). To counter this you can set your fleet to explore mode (by pressing E) while cloaking. That will scatter your fleet and minimize loses. This works only when the enemy can't use other cloak detecting mechanisms.

Take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves: if you see a cloaked fleet that is not moving, attack it before the ships get a chance to decloak and regain shields. Romulan ships may recloak almost immediately (2 seconds, or 1 second with the upgraded Tavara), but Klingon ships take 4 seconds to recloak.

Mining Operations Strategies

A good strategy, although cruel (so refer to etiquette) is to simply attack your opponent’s mining and leave without having a firefight with enemy ships (use your scouts to ensure the coast is clear!). If you are planning to raid some of your enemy mining operations, the main objective should be the destruction of your opponent’s mining vessels. Often this is best accomplished with your interceptors - your fastest vessels. If you succeed in destroying all of the freighters, it will take quite some time for your opponent to recover, because the income of your opponent has been decreased and building new mining vessels takes time and resources. While destroying a mining station can seem like a delectable goal, if you need to get in and out quickly, this will be too much of an encumbrance. Remember that vacant mining stations act as a magnet for freighters, so leaving the station in one piece can often entice your opponent to send his or her vulnerable miners to be annihilated once again. This style of strategy will give you superior resources, as it forces your enemy to rebuild, without losing your own fleet. You can imagine that this is best performed with factions that can cloak. The Dominion can recover a bit faster than other factions because they can change their construction vessels to mining vessels.

This tactic can also work against you, as you will be sending your ships out to attack leaving your own research and mining defenseless. Consequently, when you expand to a second set of moons as a non-Borg faction you should usually build one or two defense platforms surrounding each moon (building Borg platforms will tie up your constructor too much so that you can’t build Collective Uplinks etc). This especially holds true if your opponent has access to cloaking units and thus has the power to easily strike where you are not. Early in the game, any faction’s defense platform can handle several destroyers and because you are limited on ships (and perhaps not on resources), you can often not afford to spread ships between your expansions and wherever else you’d like your fleet to be. Thus the defense platform - while a static defense - offers you the chance to protect your mining and discourage your opponent from attacking with weakly shielded units until your fleet returns.

To further ensure that you are able to protect your weak freighters, place your first non-Borg shipyard close to your moons, making sure to carefully note where ships will enter for repairs (so as to better position your shipyard). Make sure that your shipyard is still right up against your starbase so that it is still protected as well. By carefully placing shipyards in such a fashion you can repair your slow freighters (and even defending destroyers) when they are attacked with little fear of them being outright destroyed.

Likewise, you might choose to immediately build a second shipyard at this mining outpost to allow an easier defense against rushes (especially if you have pulse-based Rhienns or B’rels going up against a Descent), because you can continually cycle your ships to repair at the facility and then attack again. As non-Borg shipyards have strong shields, usually there is little worry that your opponent’s destroyers will be able to destroy it this early in the game. Against the Federation Warp-In, this strategy contains severe risks due to the powerful units that will arrive.

Countering the Federation Warp-In Rush

Go for killing Steamrunners first because they will do the most damage to buildings with their special and normal attack, but are relatively weak compared to the other Warp Ins in terms of defense. Nebulas should be killed next because their pulse weapon will murder the freighters. Kill Excelsiors next because although they have a weak attack, they attack the fastest and killing them will reduce your opponent’s firepower faster. Last go for Galaxies as they do the most damage through torpedoes, but which will often miss your ships and the freighters. Against the Ambassador-class, pay close attention to the defensive value of this vessel. If it suddenly increases to 45, do not attack this cruiser, but concentrate on the other Warp-In ships until the Ambassador’s defense drops back down to 30 (to allow easier destruction). If it is a Descent, it is pretty self explanatory: just kill it! Take advantage of the fact that your opponent most likely is not micromanaging these units so that he can keep building, so cycle your ships into repairing, and trick your enemy into letting his ships fly next to your starbase by taking the freighters/ships he is attacking, and retreating them into range of the starbase. Note, that although this is a risky maneuver, you can also try to capture these vessels after their shields goes down by using any nearby base structures to transport crew.

Nebulae Tactics

If you want to get a look in a nebula without sending all of your ships within it, simply place a scout in a periphery of the nebula. Of course, this works both ways: you can put a scout on the outside of a nebula that disables sensors in order to increase your sensor range to allow you to target ships outside of the nebula. Note that the blue Fluid Nebula and the purple Mutara Nebula cause all ships firing from the outside of the nebula to be unable to actively target the ships inside (phasers, torpedoes, and pulse weapons will simply miss), even if you can see those vessels. Area of effect weapons will obviously still damage ships within these nebulae. The ships in these nebulae will have no trouble killing those on the outside however, so you must either draw the ships out or risk going into the nebula yourself. Note that the color of the nebulae and player color can be combined to be tactically useful: the dull green will hide you effectively in Crystalid nebulae and the light blue will hide your ships in a Fluid nebula (using purple is usually pointless, as Mutara nebulae kill sensors anyway). This is only really effective against a player who is casually glancing at the nebula or who relies on the minimap to see if enemy forces are present.

There are of course some general tactics that can be quite useful in the presence of nebulae. For instance, if your units are being chased by superior forces and you need to escape, dashing into a Fluid or Mutara nebula and changing your flight path (usual perpendicular to your angle of entry) can provide you with enough time to either lose yourself in the Mutara nebula, or, in a Fluid nebula, to simply pop out of another side of the nebula, regain shields, and leave while the chasing forces have been left further behind as they most likely will not have anticipated your sudden course correction.

If on the other hand you simply want to gain a slight firepower advantage, a Fluid nebula will serve your interests most adequately. As you can see out, and your opponent cannot fire in with conventional weaponry, that extra second whereupon you have fired all phasers from within the nebula might be all you need to inflict the mortal wound. However, realize that you will lose shields and your opponent will likely follow you in to destroy your exposed hull. Consequently, do not stop moving, but following the similar “perpendicular to entry” ruling as in the above paragraph, try to get out of that nebula to regain your shields and increase the distance between you and your attacker. Common sense perhaps, but sense is not always so common.

Remember to read the tooltips on nebulae carefully. For instance, if you are Borg, do not stay within the light green Crystalid Nebulae that regenerate only shields, as these will put you at a disadvantage if your opponent is non-Borg. Nebulae that disable shields and cloaking are the most effective ways to ensure survivability of Borg units while Nebulae that decloak and regenerate shields are best for non-Borg units. Make sure to read the tooltips for nebulae before sending in your ships and try to stay within protective nebulae or lure your opponents out of theirs.

Picking Your Battles

The sure fire way to ensure that you win a battle is to pick favorable ground in the first place. If your adversary is lurking in a nearby nebula or even in fortifications, lure out your opponent’s vessels with long range attacks, special weapons, or quick forays (making sure to take minimal damage in the process). This will usually succeed in drawing out stragglers and forcing your opponent to keep cycling his or her ships through a repair yard – or to come out and attack you. Usually it is best to engage in battle where there are no enemy structures - it doesn't matter if these base structures can't fight back - because any ships that are out of range of your quarry will fire upon these facilities and waste their normal and special weapons (especially those that have limited total effects).

Similarly, choose where you fight in relation to what gives you an advantage. If, for instance, you have long ranged weaponry and there is a narrow corridor, you can pound your opponent’s fleet for longer before they get in range of your own vessels.

Running and Chasing

Occasionally a battle might not be going as well as you’d hoped, and suddenly you've found yourself in the death grip of faster and superior enemy forces. Obviously your best bet is to run in the direction of your fortifications, friendly fleets, or into the welcome arms of a nebula for a quick respite. However, if your opponent has enough warships and you are too far away to get to the tender arms of your Negh’vars, it is unwise to send all of your ships scrambling to get there, as they will most certainly never make it. Although it is up to you to get a feel for how far you can run before you will be pulverized, if you do realize you are facing an unsalvageable situation, split your forces.

If you are playing as the Borg with few numbers of vessels, sending the attacked vessel in one direction, and the other ships in an opposite path will force your opponent to either expend more effort to split his forces to follow your two groups, or to continue chasing after the one vessel. If your adversary chooses to split his or her forces, your opponent will likely loose many more forces due to the strain of micromanagement and might not even be able to kill any one individual ship because of the split firepower. Even if he or she chooses to simply pursue and destroy that one damaged vessel, your other ships will likely escape (when before they would have not).

Other factions can also take similar precautions, although it is usually only wise to split your forces into two groups to allow you some chance to defend your retreating vessels. Remember to pay attention to movement speeds when you decide which vessels to group together.

If on the other hand you are the pursuer, it is up to you to pay attention to which vessels are being damaged, and to “peel” them off your chasing fleet once their shields begin to flicker so that they can be repaired. If your repair bays are located in the direction enemy forces are heading, don’t be a fool and hit “R” so that they get shot to pieces. Just select the unit in question and hit stop (or if you have more micromanagement skills, send them one by one into the nearest Crystalid Nebulae to recharge shields).

Initiative

Arguable one of the most important aspects of any real time strategy game, deciding when to attack can often determine the entire course of a match. If you can keep your opponent on the defensive, damaging expansions without incurring losses and keeping him or her guessing where you will attack next, your adversary will likely never even leave the confines of the base. This will undoubtedly give you the time to construct additional freighters and mining facilities with little risk of repercussions.

Of course, always be careful that you are not too aggressive. If you are wasting short ranged ships needlessly when you could simply build artillery to shell your bunkered opponent from afar, you will end up conceding your advantage. Attack enough of the time to confine and starve your opponent, but do not do it in a pyrrhic style (a victory where your forces are left depleted). Remember that veteran units can sway the course of a battle, so if you are losing forces just to kill that last miner at the expense of leveling up your opponent, you are doing something wrong.

Teching up rapidly can cause you to lose the initiative (if you ever had it). If you don’t have enough ships to keep your opponent fearful of an attack (the mere promise of that big bad battleship isn’t enough), it leaves your mining facilities and other structures to the mercy of your opponent’s forces.

Although that it is best to be the first to attack in a given match (so you can determine exactly where a battle will take place), you must temper this with judging how quickly your opponent is producing units. If that adversary can outproduce you early on, there is a good chance that if you attack them, they will either be en route to your own defenseless mining facilities (pyrrhic victory), or cloaked and waiting for you to strike (leaving you at the mercy of superior forces).

In the end, attack often, but minimize your losses. If you can save a ship, do it. Don’t leave heavily damaged or disabled enemy warships floating around - they might be repaired and it isn’t wise to wound what you can’t kill. Take your time: the rush to win often ends up denying you that very prize.

Getting Rid of Mines

To get rid of Romulan mine fields (or Klingon Mixed-Tech Defiant anti-matter mines) you can build a few scout vessels and send them one at a time into the middle of the fields. As mines will only be attracted to a ship which has not already physically blown up, the fastest scouts you can build are ideal because they will cover the most area and thus attract the most mines—in fact continuing to attract mines until they complete the actual explosion animation. Consequently, even if these scouts have lost all their hull points and are no longer controllable, they will continue moving forwards for quite a ways because of their momentum. As a result, they will draw even more mines.

Base Operations

The Klingons, Dominion, Federation and Romulans all start off with two construction ships and one scout after selecting an avatar. The Borg begin with one construction ship and one scout (the Detector). Generally this is as many construction ships that you will need throughout the game. Do not leave these constructors at your expansions where they are easy prey for mining attacks.

Always build your research and shipbuilding stations as close as possible to the starbase, to allow it to defend your miners and stations. You can lure non-micromanaged ships that are attacking your miners by sending them closer to your starbase.

You should never, EVER build Mixed-Tech facilities as your first shipyard (despite the facilities being initially cheaper than a normal shipyard) as they take far too long to build, research, and finally produce units (the mixed-tech shipyards produce units slower than their normal counterpart vessels). Usually you will build a Mixed-Tech facility after you have a defensible position, as they don't even have repair capabilities! Thus, you will usually build a Mixed-Tech facility as either your second or third shipyard in your normal build order. Consequently, the early game phase of a game is typically over by the time these special units enter the stage. Factor this into your game play accordingly.

Once you do attack your opponent’s base, do not engage main starbases first, but try to micromanage to attack from out of range. Against the Federation, destroy Starfleet Command initially to prevent instant reinforcements. Against the Borg, destroy the Conduction matrix (no more Collective Uplinks). When attacking the Klingons, attack the central small squarish portion of the most Field Yard to destroy the entire expanded station at once. Against Dominion, try to destroy any prototypes. In general go for destroying shipyards and then research stations.

Near the end of a game, if you go in for the kill, some players will ignore their dying base to attack your base and hopefully destroy you faster. Make sure that if you gamble with this strategy, you can still win. Even if you end up destroying your opponent’s base, if you don’t get all the construction ships and their scattered warships, they might still end up winning by building another base.