0 Introduction
Control (the most popular game mode for Nebulous: Fleet Command) hinges on capturing and controlling more control points (CPs) for longer than the opposing force (OPFOR). Play that prioritizes capturing CPs is colloquially known as the cap game. One fleet in a team will typically bring a fleet containing small ships that specialize in playing the cap game. Such a fleet is called a cap fleet by the Nebulous community. This guide seeks to introduce this play style to players that are already familiar with the controls of Nebulous who would like to start running cap fleets.
A good cap fleet has ships that are specialized towards four roles: capturing CPs (capping), killing light ships that approach CPs, giving the team sensor coverage and killing the OPFOR's sensor ships. These roles and how they might be fulfilled will be covered. Next, we will talk generally about the concentration and dispersion of cap fleet assets. Afterwards, a few cap fleets will be discussed in the context of the four roles.
This guide was last updated before just before the carriers update. Cap fleets have seen rapid evolution in the last two years and will most likely continue to evolve. Consequently, you are encouraged to consult more recent guides on this subject matter should they exist. Carriers will undoubtedly change the threat and opportunity landscapes for cap fleets and it is expected that many of the builds will go through a period of rapid evolution in the months following the carriers update, but many of the discussions regarding how cap fleets conduct themselves should remain somewhat salient. Time will tell just how hubristic the expectation that "the roles of cap fleets will say the same" is.
0.1 Table Of Abbreviations
AMM Anti-missile missile ANS Shelter Alliance ARR Adaptive radar receiver CH Heavy cruiser CIC Combat information centre CL Light Cruiser CP Control point DC Damage control DD Destroyer ELINT Electronic intelligence EWAR Electronic warfare (equipment) EWR Early warning radar FCR Fire-control radar FF Frigate LN Marauder line ship LOB Line of bearing LRT Long-range tracking MMT Multi-mission tug OPFOR Opposing force OSP Outlying Systems Protectorate PD Point defence RPF Radio proximity fusing SA Situational awareness SP Ship point (the points by which ships are valued.) S# Size # missile S#H Size # hybrid missile TC Track correlator VLS Vertical launch system VP Victory point
1 Roles
Cap fleets can be expected to perform a variety of roles for their team: capturing CPs, preventing the OPFOR from capturing CPs, providing sensor coverage and neutralising the OPFOR's light sensor assets. Most good cap fleets will have one or more hulls that can cover each of these roles. It is generally best to specialize individual ships to perform no more than two of these roles at a time. Half-cap fleets may elect to have worse performance at one or more of these roles so that they may also bring 1000 to 2000 ship points (SP) worth of front-line asset (such as a CL, CH or LN).
1.1 Capturing Points
Capturing CPs is the primary task of the vast majority of cap fleets. Every ten seconds after the start of the match, the teams are awarded two points for each CP they control. Generally four or more ships in a cap fleet will be primarily used for capturing CPs. Such ships are called cap ships. Since CPs are often exposed positions and their capture is time-sensitive, the best cap ships make use of cheap, fast hulls such as the Sprinter class corvette on ANS and Ferryman class shuttle on OSP. The first orders given to a cap fleet at the beginning of the game should be vectoring cap ships onto CPs. Try to prioritize capturing CPs in descending order of how likely you are able to successfully capture and successfully defend them.
The cheapest cap ship that is worth taking (also called a cringe capper by the community) typically has a drive, reinforced magazine, CIC, VLS-1 containing a 1pt offensive missile (to count as being armed for the purposes of capturing CPs) and a rapid DC locker. This build will cost 111 SP for ANS and 86 SP for OSP. Due to their low cost and impotence, these ships are best relegated to capturing CPs that both you and the OPFOR are covering with anti-cap ship weapons. Your ship must survive on the CP uncontested for 60 seconds to capture it, so it is often worthwhile to invest more SPs on increasing survivability of an individual ship (such as auxiliary steering, a stronger drive and a reactor for power redundancy), or hull redundancy (throw enough cringe cappers at a strongly contested CP such that they collectively exist on the CP for the full minute). Hull redundancy can be worth using in some scenarios such as capturing CPs as OSP that are covered by a beam DD, since no amount of SP investment will meaningfully increase the survivability of a single shuttle that is getting beamed.
Cap fleets will often take some cap ships that are capable of fighting other cap ships, such as torpedo corvettes, gun corvettes, or gun shuttles. These ships can be quite useful for situations where your cap ship cannot be effectively covered by a larger anti-cap asset. Additionally, these ships can be used to defend your CPs from capture by OPFOR's cap ships. Some examples of these ships will be discussed in the 'example fleets' section of this guide.
1.1.1 Naturals
Naturals describe CPs that are significantly closer to one side and can be captured without much expectation for enemy opposition. At the start of the game, you should plot courses to capture these CPs first. Capturing naturals quickly is important since close games (and ties) can happen and you never know when every victory point (VP) will matter. It is therefore recommended to install drives that will get your cap ships onto the naturals as fast as possible (this will be either the raider or whiplash on ANS depending on the distance to the cap point and the sundrive for OSP). Once the naturals have been captured, it is a good idea to move your cap ships off the CP and hide them somewhere nearby.
Occasionally, the OPFOR's missile player may launch a strike against the naturals, so bringing soft and hardkill is strongly recommended. Some CPs may also contain some sections of rock (such as C point on pillars which your cap ship can hug to avoid most missile strikes). ANS can launch hybrid missile strikes against naturals, so OSP cap ships should bring chaff and anti-missile missiles (AMMs). Likewise, OSP can launch cruise S2s or containers against naturals so ANS cap ships should bring softkill and defenders. Since naturals are only contested by indirect fire methods if at all, ships that capture naturals do not necessarily need the capability to fight opposing cap ships.
1.1.2 Neutrals
Neutral CPs are points that are roughly equidistant from both spawns. You can expect opposition from the OPFOR’s capping ships and any anti-cap assets that are able to fire onto the CP.
Cap ships that are sent to neutrals should be built with the expectation that they will come under direct fire from guns and missiles. It can be desirable to equip cap ships that are sent to neutrals with the ability to fight other cap ships.
1.1.3 A-point
When a map has only one neutral CP, the map is called a centre point map and the neutral is most often the A-point. Getting the initial capture of the A-point places the onus on the OPFOR to push into your defences. As such, this CP is heavily contested and ships sent to capture this CP are unlikely to survive long enough to get off the CP and into cover. A good A-cap ship is agile enough to dodge most ballistic fire levelled at it, durable enough to withstand fire that does hit it and have point defence (PD) for dealing with the likely types of missile threats to the ship while being cheap enough that the loss of the ship will not be a detriment to your fleet.
1.1.4 Mid And End Game
The midgame begins when the two front-line forces make contact with one another and spans until there is a clear military winner. In the midgame, the cap ships are charged with defending CPs, skirmishing with the OPFOR's cap fleet, or scouting and/or capturing lightly defended CPs, depending on the situation and what they are designed to do.
If you are ahead on VPs and CPs, there is little point risking your ships to capture CPs unnecessarily unless you are quite confident that a CP is unguarded and can be captured without consequence. Since you want to maintain a game state in which your team has more VPs than your opponents it is often more effective to focus on defending the CPs that you control over trying to capture more CPs. Ships that cannot harm an enemy ship can still defend a CP from capture by moving around on the CP and staying alive for as long as possible.
If you are not ahead on VPs and CPs, you will need to extrapolate out the VP scores to find out who will win and how many CPs you need to control in order to win. Combined with the knowledge that two VPs are awarded per CP every ten seconds, you can determine how aggressive you need to be when capturing CPs. If you have the time, it is best to be cautious when capturing the OPFOR's CPs since rushing into a CP from the quickest and most obvious path comes with the risk of being ambushed or mined. It is good practice to pay attention to your cap ship as it moves onto a CP (and to burnthrough often to catch mines early as ANS). If this is not possible for whatever reason, it may be best to instead hide your ship in cover near the CP until your attention is no longer diverted.
Later in the midgame, you will likely have spotted most or all of the enemy team at some point in the game and have an idea where all but about 1k of their SPs are located. If you think you can slip a cap ship into one of the enemy’s CPs without being detected, it is worthwhile to take the free point, but be wary of any ships or mines that might still be covering the it.
For the purposes of this guide, the endgame begins once the front-line combats have developed somewhat and there is a likely winner or loser in most of these engagements. By this definition, not every game will necessarily have an endgame. Often when the game reaches the endgame, one or both teams will be close to winning.
In the endgame, if the scores are close, it is every player’s responsibility to secure CPs by parking armed ships on CPs (some team-mates may require encouragement to split their formations and send ships to sit on nearby CPs).
1.1.5 Cost
If there is not an urgent need to capture a CP (i.e. you will not lose the game if you do not capture a CP soon), we could make a rough estimate for how long the CP would need to be held, , to make up for a lost cap ship with value in order to capture a CP by making the assumption that you must lose your entire fleet of cap ships in order to accumulate enough VPs to win:
Where is the total SP value of all of the cap ships controlled by you and your allies and is the number of VPs that the win condition is set to.
Ideally, outside of the early game, you avoid sending ships to CPs where they are likely to die.
1.2 Anti-Cap
The anti-cap role is described by the destruction of the OPFOR's light assets that may be used for capturing CPs. There are two different scenarios where anti-cap ships may be used: covering (preventing the enemy capture of) a CP, or hunting down cap ships that are not threatening to capture a CP.
Anti-cap ships that are covering CPs need to kill light assets within a minute, meaning they should favour weapons systems that can quickly kill shuttles and corvettes. Beams, R2s, S2s, S2H, S3s, S3H, 100HE, 120HE, 250HE, and 600mm HESH are all suitable for this purpose. Some cap defence ships want to be farther away from the CP and in cover with an unobstructed view to the CP such as beam DDs, while others such as torp tugs want to lie in wait near a CP and pop-out when the CP starts getting captured by the OPFOR. Neutral CPs tend to be more suited for the longer range anti-cap options since they are less likely to expose themselves to effectively cover the CP and they can more easily get the CP into range. Conversely, naturals lend themselves to the short-range ambush-oriented anti-cap ships where it is much easier and safer to keep a ship close to the CP. Some enemy naturals can be covered with fast anti-cap assets such as 250 CLs or rocket shuttles. Examples of vulnerable naturals are Pillars E and Yukon E and C. Killing OPFOR cap ships while they are capturing their team's natural is commonly called poking.
Mines may also be used to defend a CP. When using mines, you want to lay sprint mines against a rock in such a way that they will all trigger the moment a cap ship crests a rock as it enters the CP. Mines can be countered by approaching a point with care, thinning the field with RPF and angling PD appropriately. Consequently one must always be cautious not to over-invest in mines.
See Tuna's mine guide for more precise details.
Anti-cap assets that are not covering a CP can also be used to hunt the OPFOR's cap assets in areas of the battlespace where the front-line is not present. It is quite common for anti-cap ships that hunt cap ships rather than defend CPs to also act as sensor assets (multi-mission tugs (MMTs) are a good example of a ship that excels at both the sensor and anti-cap roles). 100, 120, 250, S2, S2H, and S3H are all suitable direct weapons systems for hunting cap ships. Not every anti-cap asset is suitable for hunting cap ships. MNs and DDs are great for defending CPs, but are too slow and cumbersome to be used in the hunting role because their powerful anti-cap tools are spinal mounts. Since most cap ships have limited options for missile defence, cruise missiles may also be used to great effect against cap ships that are tracked by friendly sensor vessels.
1.3 Sensor
Sensor assets provide situational awareness for your team. In a game like this one where consequences can lag several minutes behind your decisions, having a rough idea where the OPFOR is and what it is doing (more commonly called situational awareness or SA) is a force multiplier for both the cap fleet and front-line.
Huntress and spyglass radar provide SA in all directions while early warning radar (EWR) provides SA in one direction at long range. Bloodhound long-range tracking radar (LRT) when paired with a couple of track correlators (TCs) can give radar tracks in a narrow cone that are accurate enough to be worth shooting at. Bullseye fire control radars (FCRs) on sensor vessels can give offset locks which is useful for long range fires or resisting jamming. At risk of editorializing, cap fleets should only supplement the rest of the team's FCR capability, and not be the sole or major provider of FCR quality tracks. ANS also has access to electronic intelligence (ELINT) tools in the form of the pinard. ELINT gives a line of bearing (LOB) to radar sources from beyond their ranges.
If the source of an ELINT LOB is within range, a bullseye on the same ship as the pinard can lock a track from it. If two ships with ELINT detect the same radar, they will provide a crossfix which increases in accuracy as the angle between pinards at the crossfix increases. OSP's directional radar emits side-lobes which can be detected by ELINT albeit at shorter ranges.
Sensor ships can have a lot of build variety since sensor ships can also specialize in the anti-cap or anti-sensor roles. Ships that purely specialize in the sensor role are often quite cheap, mounting nothing more than pinards, bullseyes, EWRs or LRTs as well as a VLS-1 with softkill, an offensive S1, and sometimes AMMs. These ships will also mount a spyglass or huntress radar.
More expensive sensor ships will also mount electronic warfare tools (EWAR) to reduce the chance that it gets spotted while it is tracking the OPFOR. Sensor ships that also hunt down cap ships or other sensor ships will typically mount direct-fire missiles for incapacitating its target and small calibre guns for finishing-off the target. One of the most famous sensor and anti-cap builds is the MMT which carries a huntress radar and mounts an MLS-2, C30, bellbird, VLS-1 and either a pinpoint FCR or a PD turret.
Sensor assets typically get placed on the flanks of the main front-line such that they provide an extra 0-4km of radar coverage and/or can see around any obstacles that the front-line must pass. Care should be taken to not push the sensor assets too far ahead of the front-line or else the OPFOR may opt to quickly hunt your sensor asset with their front-line before engaging your friendly front-line. Try to keep an eye out for the spotted symbols next to your ships in the list in the top left and pull spotted ships back if you can still provide adequate sensor coverage by doing so. Once you know what and where roughly 75% of the OPFOR is, you can afford to be more aggressive with any sensor assets that have anti-cap or anti-sensor capabilities to hunt down the enemy cap fleet and any squishy backline targets such as container liners or missile FFs.
1.4 Anti-Sensor
The first step in destroying the OPFOR's sensor assets is to detect them; ideally without being detected yourself (the only way to stop a bad guy with a sensor asset is a good guy with a sensor asset). One of the main differences between ANS and OSP is their sensor tools (ANS has ELINT while OSP has EWR and LRT). Consequently, the two factions play the anti-sensor role differently.
ELINT gives ANS the ability to detect any OSP sensor from 1.25 times that sensor's maximum range. EWAR can be directed down these lines of bearing once your ship is detected to prevent the OPFOR from holding a track on you for very long. Missiles can also be fired along the direction of the ELINT LOB to generally good effect since sensor assets often lack adequate missile defence to protect against all of the common seeker combos. Bullseyes on the same ship as the pinnard can be tasked to lock the line of bearing or crossfix to the sensor if its range allows it. OSP's sensor ships are most likely to be tugs, meaning 450mm fire can be used effectively against OSP sensor assets when a lock is obtained. A lock enables direct CMD missiles (especially S2H and S3H) which can be very effective due to OSP's inability to softkill these missiles outside of the CC. Bomber corvettes are a popular anti-sensor corvette build equipped with ELINT, EWAR, bullseyes and CMD S2H. Bombers rely on ELINT to detect OSP sensors before locking them with a bullseye and launching CMD S2H under the cover of EWAR.
OSP sensors can track ships at longer range than ANS thanks to EWR and the burnthrough-capable huntress radar, but should expect a competent ANS player to know roughly where active sensors are thanks to ELINT. Outside of LRT, the long range track quality will generally only be suitable for missiles or 600mm bombshell if you have a friendly MN ball nearby. OSP anti-sensor assets will generally rely on direct S2s to cripple ANS sensor ships before closing range and finishing the ships off with guns.
If you suspect bomber corvettes are hunting your sensor assets, put some ships with anti-light weaponry with their radars switched off in cover between your sensor assets and the rough location of the bombers (you may also want to back-off your sensor assets). Once the bombers are close enough to your screening ships, reactivate their radars and attack from as many directions as is practicable.
2 Concentration And Dispersion Of Force
As the cap fleet, your goal is to control over half of the CPs. This requires dispersion of your forces such that you have sensor coverage over your CPs and their approaches, you have anti-cap assets covering the CPs that are most likely to be challenged by the OPFOR, you can prevent the OPFOR from detecting your anti-cap asset on top of getting your own capping assets onto these CPs. If two equally competent cap players with competently built fleets fight over a region of the battlespace, the player that invested more SP of ships into this fight will be most likely to win. This introduces a tension between the need for dispersion and concentration of force when playing cap fleets.
The cap game is a lot like gambling against the OPFOR such that you want to use as little force as necessary to over-match the opposing cap and anti-cap assets to control a CP lest your opponent over-match you at too many other CPs. Missile all-ins gamble in the lobby; cap fleets gamble in game. Good sensor coverage can help you determine the disposition of your opponents, making it much easier to decide how you want to allocate your own assets to make safer gambles.
It should be stressed that the cap game does not occur in a vacuum and there exist frontline assets (allegedly) which can defend points from capture. If you have a beam capital in close proximity to a CP or ships with small calibre guns watching a CP on your team, you do not need to also watch the point with your own anti-cap assets. You can instead use these assets to concentrate your force elsewhere.
3 Example Builds
Let us now look at some example cap fleets and discuss how they fulfil the four main roles of the cap fleet: capping, anti-cap, sensor and anti-sensor. We shall look at two starter cap fleets Tantalum Squadron (OSP) created by Goodnut and Xenophon of Athens, TF Willow (ANS) by Xenophon of Athens, a fleet from Mathblob (MATH-VTXBEM-PG2JAM (ANS)) and a fleet from Jraamus (Mines;Torps;Teams (OSP)). These fleets offer examples of many of the more common cap fleet ship archetypes.
3.1 Tantalum Squadron
SGM-101 Buckler DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts] SGM-247 Slider DIRECT - ACT(RADAR)/[CMD] - HE SHAPED [8pts]
Tantalum squadron is an OSP starter fleet by Xenophon of Athens and Goodnut and contains three types of ship.
Brainiac is an MN fitted with an LRT, EWR and an intelligence centre (often called a CIA MN). The LRT and EWR are buffed with three TCs and an adaptive radar receiver (ARR), allowing the LRT to provide accurate tracks while having good sensitivity on the EWR and LRT.
Hale and Hearty, All At Once, All Together Now, and Joint Action are examples of MMTs equipped with a huntress, bellbird, S2s, C30, VLS-1 and pinpoint. Do not let their names fool you, these tugs are meant to operate independently from one another to provide good sensor coverage while hunting down the OPFOR's dispersed sensor and capping assets. The huntress is buffed with an ARR for acquiring sensor and cap assets at which point the bellbird can be used to hide the MMT and S2 can be fired at the target. When it is safe to do so, the MMT can close to pinpoint range and finish-off the target as needed.
Scoundrel, Charlatan, Swindler and Hustler are cap ships. Their load-out of a T20, VLS-1, and pavise is the most popular for capping gun shuttles since the softkill and AMMs provide adequate protection against cruise missiles and the pavise provides good protection against S1s and S3s. The pavise only covers half of the space around the shuttle so the shuttle's heading and roll should be set to keep the pavise and T20 pointed towards enemy corvettes.
This fleet fulfils all of the main roles of a cap fleet: the shuttles capture CPs while the MMTs perform anti-cap, sensor, and anti-sensor duties. The CIA MN supplements the sensor capabilities of this fleet.
3.2 TF Willow
SGM-111 Night Dances DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [3pts] SGM-H-355 Blossoms DIRECT - CMD/ARAD(RADAR) - HEKP [51pts] SGM-H-377 Black Amnesias DIRECT - PSV(EO)/PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [27pts] SGT-333 Forgetfulness DIRECT - ACT(RADAR)/[CMD] - HE SHAPED [13pts]
TF Willow is an ANS starter fleet by Xenophon of Athens and contains three types of ship.
Beyond Conventional is a CL equipped with 250mm, S3s and S3H. It can be used to supplement the front-line or be used in the anti-cap and anti-sensor roles.
Word Cadence is a FF with a spyglass, blanket, ELINT, and EO S3H. It is primarily a sensor ship, but the S3H can be fired along ELINT LOBs to damage OSP sensor assets (the CL can subsequently finish off these ships with her 250s as needed).
Cloaked Intentions, Be Objective, Daggers Drawn, and Golden Iris are examples of one of the two common loadouts for torpedo capping corvettes (also called torp corvs or torp sprinters). They have a CLS-3 CLS-3 and VLS-3 are both common, but TLS-3 should not be used since it delays launching until it has traversed towards its target introducing an unnecessary delay before launching. filled with torpedoes, a VLS-1 in the nose and defenders on the wings. AMMs keep them safe from small amounts of S2s from MMTs whilst the defenders provide good defence against rockets as well as the odd container or S2 that leaks past the AMMs.
Depending on how it is played, TF Willow can be viewed as either a cap fleet or half-cap fleet.
The CL can perform the anti-cap and anti-sensor roles, but if the CL is primarily used as a front-line asset then this fleet will be a half-cap fleet. The FF provides some sensor coverage and can perform some anti-sensor work while the torp corvs perform capping and anti-cap duties.
3.3 MATH-VTXBEM-PG2JAM
SGM-1 ADMC-370 DIRECT - HOJ(RADAR) - HE SHAPED [1pts] SGM-1 Technically Still A Threat DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts] SGM-111 Carapace RH-2 DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts] SGM-112 Aegis RH-2 DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [3pts] SGM-2 EA69 Killjoy II DIRECT - NONE - NONE [6pts] SGM-222 grummy bonk DIRECT - CMD/HOJ(RADAR) - HE SHAPED [7pts] SGM-H-202 Turbulence-A DIRECT - CMD/PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [12pts] SGM-H-204 Vortex-W.A DIRECT - CMD/PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [14pts] SGM-H-204 Vortex-W.B DIRECT - CMD/PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [12pts] SGM-H-360 Pathline-C DIRECT - ACT(RADAR)/[CMD] - HE SHAPED [18pts] SGM-H-365 Pathline-EJ DIRECT - PSV(EO) - HE SHAPED [25pts] SGT-303 Lowballer DIRECT - ACT(RADAR)/[CMD] - HE SHAPED [10pts]
MATH-VTXBEM-PG2JAM is an ANS cap fleet by Mathblob which contains 5 types of ship.
Fool Mower is a beam DD used for covering neutral CPs -- especially A-points in centre-point maps.
Perky Bloat and Super Shotgrum are a pair of bombers. Between them, they have ELINT, blankets, bullseye, S2s, S2H and missile defence. This pair sweeps around the flanks searching for radar emissions on ELINT before locking the ELINT LOB and jamming the sensor ships. The CMD S2H can then be fired on the sensor ships to cripple them before the bombers move on to search for new targets. The 'vortex' missiles are designed to dodge AMMs.
Dysphoria Disaster and Moral Love are the second type of torp corv that were anticipated when we discussed the torp corvs from TW Willow. These move the VLS-1 to one of the wing mounts and have a 120mm gun in the nose. The addition of the gun allows the corvette to finish off targets that only get crippled after being hit by a torpedo. These corvettes also carry S3H which more easily hit pavise shuttles. The heading and roll of these ships need to be controlled to keep the defender pointed towards enemy ships.
Mop Wads, Dig Firm, and Epic Cost are cheap ELINT gun corvettes which can be used for capping initially before using their ELINT in the sensor role.
No Fries is a cringe capper for throwing onto heavily contested CPs.
The torp corvs, ELINT corvs and cringe capper capture CPs, the anti cap role is fulfilled by the beam DD and torp corvs fight the enemy cap ships, the ELINT corvs provide some sensor coverage and the bombers are excellent anti-sensor assets.
3.4 Mines;Torps;Teams
SGM-100 Ammulous DIRECT - ACT(RADAR) - HE FRAG [2pts] SGM-100 Parade missile DIRECT - PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [1pts] SGM-200 T1 DIRECT - ACT(RADAR)/[CMD] - HE SHAPED [7pts] SGM-200 T2 DIRECT - ARAD(RADAR)/ACT(RADAR) - HE SHAPED [6pts] SGT-300 Aggregator DIRECT - CMD/PSV(WAKE) - HE SHAPED [13pts]
Mines;Torps;Teams is an OSP cap fleet that contains 5 kinds of ship.
Balestraite, Eastonite, Aspidolite and Annite are paired-off into tug teams. Between the two tugs in the team there is two C30s, two bellbirds, AMMs, EO jamming, VLS-1, a grazer and S2s with two different seekers. These pairs behave like more powerful MMTs. When in the pair, one of the radars can be turned-off to look like only one ship on ELINT. Pairing-off tugs gives a more complete softkill suite, lets you fire mixed seeker salvoes of missiles and gives better jamming at the cost of reduced map presence.
Tainiolite is a torpedo tug which can fire up to four CMD corkscrew torpedoes at a target. It hides near a point and pops out to bury torpedoes into light ships attempting to capture the point.
Bityite and Margarite are mine shuttles. They have sundrives to rush towards the naturals as quickly as possible, AMMs and chaff to protect against cruise missiles and a mine launcher and 5 sprint mines. Once the shuttle has captured the natural, it plants a clutch of mines against a flat surface near a corner that a cap ship would need to round. These shuttles carry an offensive S1 to count as armed after they have laid their mines.
Glauconite and Garmite are gun shuttles. These ships can be used to guard or capture points or can follow the tug teams to help them finish-off cap and sensor ships.
Paragonite is just a shuttle with a pavisem chaff and AMMs which is effectively a cringe capper that is more protected against missiles.
The mine shuttles capture the naturals before going-on to serve as cringe cappers along with the pavise shuttle. The gun shuttles may also be used as supplemental cap ships. Points are defended from OPFOR cap ships by the torp tug and mines. The tug teams fill the anti-cap, sensor and anti-sensor roles.
4 Miscellaneous Advice
Try to play in a voicecall with others.
Playing in a voicecall helps to ensure that your allies can help you to deny CPs and can also act as another set of eyes that can warn you when the OPFOR is threatening CPs.
Try to push your micro ability when possible, but do not overwhelm it.
Your attention can only be stretched so far. Try to focus on as many ships/fights as you can at one time and keep the remaining ships hidden from the OPFOR.
Adjust cap ship speeds to arrive at CPs at different times when playing multi-neutral maps.
Running some ships at lower speeds helps to ensure that your cap ships arrive at the neutral CPs at different times so that you do not need to focus on too many fights at once.
5 Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Xenophon of Athens and Mathblob for letting me discuss their fleets. I would also like to thank Scrubus, Subtle Hubris, Vastol and Xenophon of Athens for their feedback.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3404289915
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