NAVAL WARFARE
Here are some tips based on past and current Naval Warfare: 1) A defensive posture will lead to ruin for it gives the enemy the initiative and, in Homeworld, control of the resources hence he will attack, suffer losses, rebuild, then attack again and you will defend and suffer losses only until you have nothing to defend with. 2) In Homeworld, the action is more gun vs. gun. There are no long range but finite number of anti-ship missiles. Therefore the need to saturate an enemy's defenses in order to penetrate them and cause the killer blow is not as important. Gun vs. gun action is more like two sluggers going at it, both getting more and more tired, until one overcomes the other. This is called Lanchester's N-Squared Law. Say there are two groups of opposing ships. Each side has the same rate of fire but one side has one more ship than the other (or it could be that they have the same number of ships but one has a faster firing rate). If they both concentrated their firing against one ship at a time the side with the numerical advantage will knock out an enemy ship first before it loses one. Now the side with the advantage has made its advantage even greater. Although it will lose ships it will lose them at a slower and slower rate as compared to the other side. As time progresses its advantage will increase even more and more until it will dominate and overwhelm. 3) Taking the above into account then leads to this: the use of reserves is absurd and wasteful. You want every available gun out there blazing if you are going to go against a similar platform. 4) You can circumvent the "battles of attrition", however, by keeping this in mind: there are different types of weapon systems and each has strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, just like that rock-paper-scissors game you can also use the strength of one weapon system against the weakness of another. Why pit five of your Ion Cannon Frigates against three of the enemy's. (Even though you will win in the end it will cost you one or two frigates) Instead send in a squadron of interceptors fighers and make mince meat of them at very minimal loss to you. 5) Manuever plays a large part in Homeworld, expecially with that 3-D environment. Manuever your ships for these three reasons: to concentrate, strike, and evade. 6) Your tactics will depend on the level of technology that you have. The more technology you acquire the greater scope of tactics you have available to you. 7) Since you carry the ships you build throughout the game it is to your advantage to preserve them or at least retire them in order to recover the RUs. If you sacrifice your ships you will still need to replace it in the future (due to the N-Square Law). Besides put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you are a Great Admiral and you make it a habit of sacrificing your ships to win the battle. That's fine and dandy, you win the battles and those that survived are thankful to those who sacrified their lives for the victory. However, if I was onboard one of those ships I would constantly be worrying of when it will become time for my ship to be sacrified. It would really bring my morale down to have to dwell on that. ; )