> Participating in the AoA-Game that is just starting up, I have been
> pondering a bit about military doctrines and the general tactics people
> use when building their fleets in VBAM. In real-life, there are socio-
> cultural and political factors involved, but in VBAM, it's mostly
> calculated in some way. Since I have never played a game start to 'end', I
> have yet to see people develop a distinct setup for their fleets.

One problem with doctrines in VBAM 1E is that they are essentially defined
for the player at the outset of the game, and are determined by his selected
force list. Now, in a game where units can be designed by the player or at
least with the player's input, that can change. At that point the player can
decide what kind of force he would like to build and play. Even then,
though, most of it ends up boiling down to figuring out just how much AS/AF
he can squeeze into a single squadron or task force.

The concept of doctrines has come up in the 2E email discussions, and I
think the best idea fielded thus far has been to tie them to elite officers
specifically, allowing some traits and denying others depending on a
nation's military doctrines. That has the advantage of providing bonuses
without having them be blanket stat or cost increases, while still allowing
some additional uniqueness.

Now, back to 1E questions:

> Elite Ships vs. Swarms

Large ships can be very powerful, especially in a campaign such as AoA where
you will be using Starmada to design units and resolve combat. In VBAM
itself, small ships tend to die very fast; however, they can also be built
quickly, allowing you to replace your losses more quickly.

The biggest disadvantage to big ships is that it is very much "putting all
of your eggs in one basket." It will be an extremely formidable opponent for
awhile, but once Crippled it becomes much weaker, and once destroyed it
represents a significant loss of resources. Larger units also have higher
Command Costs, which means that you can't have as many of them in a single
squadron.

> Multi-Purpose vs. Specialized ship designs

Both have their place, and which you choose to use depends more on how much
you want to rely on one unit class to perform a specific task. In VBAM
itself, specialized ships are good so long as you have enough of them to
recover from the loss of one or more of them. Flying around with a single
specialized ship (a combat scout, for example) is just asking for the enemy
to use Directed Damage to blow them up and deny you their abilities until
you can move a replacement unit into place.

> Concentration of Force vs. Distribution of Force (i.e. concentrate your
> fleet for one decisive battle or fight many small ones)

This all depends on whether or not piracy is a factor in the campaign, as
well as how many opponents you have. The Starlight campaign showed that the
"massive stack of ships" is extremely effective... until an enemy actually
takes advantage of your lack of ships anywhere else. If the raiding rules
are in use in a campaign, it forces you to assign pickets to your systems
lest pirate attacks eat away at your income and destroy vital civilian
fleets. If pirates aren't present in your campaign, though, there is less
reason to dilute your fleet strength by separating your forces into multiple
smaller task forces.

The thing you do have to worry about, though, is that your opponent might
also put all of their ships in a single stack and bum rush your homeworld
while you're out attacking their other territories. If they have enough
bombardment points or WMDs aboard, they can effectively neutralize your
entire empire by wiping out your homeworld's economic and industrial
infrastructure.

> Strategic Centralization vs. Strategic Decentralization (mainly how you
> treat and use your fleets - are they self-sufficient or do they rely on
> being part of a larger system?)

I would recommend keeping some Supply ships with your larger fleets at all
times, just to keep them from going out of supply should the enemy cut you
off from your normal supply lines. Otherwise, you can spread your fleets
around as desired without too much problem. I know I tend to group most of
my ships into nodal defense fleets so that I can have one large reaction
force located 1-2 jumps from any potential hotpot, with as much overlap as
possible based on the setup of jump lane map. Then I can put a few
destroyers, sometimes with a light cruiser command ship, as pickets in the
other border and frontier systems. Should someone or something decide to
attack me, I can then activate my larger defense node forces and send them
to intervene (and join up together to form a larger, more formidable force).

This kind of strategy doesn't work as well in the current VBAM 2E playtest
rules, however, as you have a limited amount of "scenario intensity" to
spend on scenarios in each encounter, and the player with the highest
surprise gets to choose first. So, if the smaller force wins on surprise,
that player can burn off intensity in order to *prevent* the other player's
entire force from being able to engage his own. It works out pretty nice,
and prevents some of the "mutually assured destruction" mass fleet battles
from 1E.

-Tyrel