Ok, first run ended in defeat at the 1st or 2nd floppy disk town depending on how you count. I was doing well but then had two consecutive hard victories after which I was down to to just 2-4 ships in pretty bad repair. I probably should have retried at least one of them but in the rush and surprise of winning I forgot to and stupidly clicked "continue". I got to a fleet HQ, found nukes but was found by 4 missle cruisers who utterly mullered me. I suppose that was the strike group I'd been dodging for a while.
My primary miscalculation was probably not buying enough fuel to allow me to leave a town when when radar defence started bleeping.
I see what reviewers and streamers are saying about under-tutorialisation but frankly the setting and the combat together are so compelling that I'm willing to wade in. Maybe some of you can clear some stuff up for me.
Firstly: missiles. Firing them from one of my craft in combat: fine, that's an ok opening strategy. I don't always remember to fit them but when I do they help a bit. But when should I be firing them over the horizon at others? And at what? At towns? At radar contacts? The manual heavily hints not to fire nukes lightly, for fear of beginning a nuclear exchange but the game opens with the baddies nuking your capital so that doesn't make a lot of plot sense.
You seem to be conflating missiles in the real time dog fight phase with the "tactical" screen missiles. R-5s, dog fight missiles, are best used at the start of combat when enemy weapons are being loaded. Sometimes I use them to take out the smallest craft to just not have to deal with it, or to weaken the strongest. Even if you can't see enemies yet, use your target ship info pannel in the bottom-right to see which enemy ship you have in focus - that's the one you'll be firing your missiles at. Move your cursor to cycle between then and then launch against the ship you identified at the fight prep screen to first strike against. I can't reliably use missiles any other time during dog fights, outside of rare lulls, because combat is too hectic to time it correctly. Which means my missiles are shot down.
TLDR: missiles in dog fights, use an opening salvo when you need the help. Don't be wasteful tho, if you can easily maneuver and take out the ships without using missiles, don't use them. Also, armor and protect your missiles so they aren't needlessly destroyed. See
here and
here for examples on my favorite dog fighters.
For cruise missiles: K-15 have a long range (1400 km) and are useful to use against SGs or garrison troops (when landed). Anything large-ish that isn't moving or is moving slowly. A-400 have much lower range (400 km) and people tend to shoot down enemy cruise missiles with them. For radar activated missiles (both of these), make sure they're fired at a target about 100 km in front of where you want them to go (unless garrisoned ships), because they need to switch on their active radar homing (ARM, or SARM for semi-) to be accurate.
FYI - once you start using nukes, the enemy uses them quite a lot. I haven't done this myself, but be forewarned.
Secondly: ship repair/refitting. I haven't really ventured to adjust the loadouts of any of my ships yet save buying some alternative ammo. I take it I probably should Incendiary ammo is presumably best used against ships with larger fuel tanks. I can't say that I've had a great deal of success trying that yet though. When should I think about using AP ammo?
So I get that buying different ammo types is easier than thinking about how to modify ships, I did this as well, but really you need to get comfortable making some basic adjustments to ships in the dock so that they live longer. Once you have more survivability, you don't need specialty ammo at the start of the game and can save more money.
Incendiary: works well against unarmored sections of hull. If I have the Gladiator starting combat with a mixed frigate / corvette fleet, I'll consider equipping with incendiary to quickly take out corvettes, and switch to regular for taking out the frigate.
AP: self explanatory, helpful for frigates+.
Prox: I don't use them, i've read they do well against missiles and small, fast targets like aircraft.
Specialty
aircraft ammo is really important. Bombs, buy them. All of them. Not the bombs in the shipyard, but the ones in the supply store. Super useful against SGs, large / slow targets, and grounded planes. Also buy air to air missiles, your aircraft can use them to shoot down cruise missiles. Much cheaper than burning a 2k A-100 to knock out a CM. I haven't found rockets very useful on aircraft, if the enemy can dodge they dodge them, and if they aren't moving then bombs are more effective.
Thirdly: intercepting messages. To begin with I was getting gaps in messages even though I did a perfect decryption - which contradicts the manual. And with respect to intercepting encrypted messages - if you later get the cypher can you then read old encrypted messages? But would there be any point given that messages largely contain enemy movements which would be very out of date?
There are always gaps outside the prologue, and yeah old info is... old. Not much value. Pay attention to the direction of the incoming radio signal, that's one of the most useful pieces of information. Often you can work out which route the ship(s) are on. Also, don't be afraid to use aircraft to scout, just make sure they're approaching/leaving from a vector that doesn't trace immediately back to you, or you've given up your location. Also - this is how you can trace enemy carriers, planes often making a b-line from enemy carriers. Trace that route back to the originating city and bam, there's a carrier group.
Fourthly, when I restart, is it worth my while (mechanically) to run through the prologue again?
Finally: IR detection? The tutorialisation was telling me that I had contacts but I couldn't see shit on it.
I probably need to go back and re-read the manual now on the basis of my new experience.
If only to get better at combat. It used to be the prologue could give you a good campaign bonus, so it made sense to complete it with as much $$$ remaining as possible (including selling ships), but now it doesn't matter outside the extra experience you get in dog fights.
IR is just an early warning system in my experience. Maybe if you pick something up that isn't actually headed directly towards you, but is somewhat parallel to your trajectory, it could be useful for that. But mostly its telling me I have aircraft / missiles / ships coming right at me just before they become visible. T-7s intercept!
