Pursuit space battles

You can use Sector View to reposition your ships so that they are already in range of the enemy before initiating combat.

Sorry to warm up old topic, but can't help it, I may be too old and/or too stupid for this game, but I like to learn to play this...

I really can't understand how to use Sector View to position my ships near enemy's ships. I know where Sector View - button is, but don't know how to use it (tried with several wrong ways already). Please can somebody tell me exactly how to get it work. I mean instructions like 1) selct x 2) then 3) and then.

Manual (of course) not even mention Sector View. Please, be patient with me, it is also frustrating for my self to ask these "how to..." questions which seems to be so clear for others.

Wenla

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Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

1. Go to the sector view.

2. Click on the ship you want to move somewhere

3. Click on the minimap (because I assume the colony ship is quite a distance away) to center your view to the ship you want to destroy. Don't worry, the ship you clicked earlier is still selected.

4. Move the mouse pointer as close to the enemy ship as possible with your ship still having a green rectangle around it, preferably in the direction the enemy CS is going, forcing it to turn before being able to flee.

5. Click on the spot you chose in 4, if you haven't done anything wrong, the ship you chose will now be close to the enemy CS.

6. Repeat with other ships.

If you still have problems, tell it here.

One of the patches since the original post has disabled placing ships in sector view if there are enemy ships in the sector. This means that the only way to get rid of those pesky colony ships is to catch them with something fast. You can still place your ships and units in the sector view if there are no enemy ships present.

Okei, later reply from Thighzen told that this doesn't work any more, but any how I couldn't get it to work, because "3) Click the minimap" I just couldn't find out what is minipap. If I toggled out from sector view to move to the sector where enemy ship is located, I 'lost' selected ship. So, just for my curiosity, can you tell where I can click minimap?

Any how, thanks. It's allways pleasant to see that community is ready to help new players.

Wenla
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Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

The minimap is the map in the bottom left hand corner. It shows little colored dots representing all the ships and units in the sector. The point of clicking on the minimap while having your ship selected was just to get you to the enemy ship without having to pan the whole way using your mouse.

Yes, suddenly when playing I just realized what minimap was, but I was first confused because I couldn't (after patch correction) locate my ships and enemy ships into the same sector without fight but tried to move view to the other sector.

Perhaps I have finally admit that when you get older, you get also slower...

Thanks everyone and someone

Wenla

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Before you can develop a strategy, you have to have a vision.

I use drones to attack those idiot colony ships, because one of the AIs I played against had super-fast colony ships that I just couldn't catch...

Drones make short work of them.

An alternative is to make two cheap frigates, max movement but you only really need one decent gun on them unless the enemy's colony ships are armed (if they're running, they aren't)...

Position the frigates on opposing adjacent hexes, then have one attack the colony ship. It will retreat, right into the jaws of the other frigate which will kill it.

The advantage is you can reuse the frigates. Drones do work great for mop-up, but they can get expensive if the enemy has lots of stuff to mop up, or if he keeps sending colony ships through a given system one at a time...

Another possibility is completely surrounding the hex with the fast enemy ship in it (one fighter in each adjacent hex will do) and then attack, preferably with several ships/units.

The enemy will not be able to retreat, and will proceed in a circle along the edge of the sector. If you attacked with two or more ships you can send them along the edge in opposing directions and be sure of pincering the enemy. I just had to do this with 136 enemy fighters who were damaged enough to retreat en masse, but still had full movement.
I attacked with one frigate and one satellite-layer full of PD sats. Sent my freighter along the edge of the sector dropping off sats and let the frigate pursue on its own. The frigate proceeded to herd the enemy fighters past my satellites. Took a few revolutions of the sector, but I got all 136 fighters in one battle.