Capital vs Cruiser vs Frigate

I find that a well mixed fleet is the best way to go. Use your scout ships to gather intel on the enemy fleet and apply your ship set accordingly. If i know im going to be jumping into a major encounter, i fleet jump as a group so all my ships get there at one time instead of all spread out which lets the enemy fleet pop the first couple of ships that hit the gravity well. Also, i am more apt to focus fire on their highest ranking capitol and work my way backwards. Its worked for me so far. Ive won my first two matches 6 hours on easy and 10 on normal.

yep combined arms will beat a cap ship fleet any day of the week. (as long as it is two actual players going at it and not a player vs. ai). The problem with using cap ships only is that on a damage/fleet point usage and a Health/fleet point usage, the capital ships come up short until you get to really high levels (like 8 or so). The actual ratios break even between frigs, cruisers, and caps at a lower level, but the fact that if all your fleet points are in cap ships, you will lose larger chunks of your firepower that cannot be replaced as quickly since your cap ships are effective because of their level which is most likely higher than lvl 4 (the maximum buyable lvl).

Thanks for the replies.

So the ships work on 'paper-scissors-rock' principle? I hadn't really noticed other than flak vs bombers and siege vs planets. Can you please give an example of what sort of fleet you would send against say a fleet of light frigates at a planet armed with defensive cannon (or any other example that would illustrate the principle)?

@ Daishzen:
I'm sorry but I didn't understand what you meant by the damage/fleet and health/fleet ratios and the impact this has on the fire-power of the capital ship. Do you mean that as a ship takes damage, it loses its fire-power? I wasn't aware of this and I was operating under the impression that it was best to destroy ships one at a time because the fire-power was the same until it was destroyed.

If you let your lighter craft jump in first, they will get targeted and raped. Group them into two different fleets. Jump one 30-40 seconds in before the other, and on opposite endsd of the grav well (ie: One jumps left, other jumps more to the right).

its not paper rock scissors. I think combined arms is a better approach because instead of losing say 20% of your total combat strength when you lose a ship (i.e. high lvl cap ship loss with an all cap ship fleet) you only lose 1% of your total combat capability with each loss (i.e. frigate loss in a combined arms force). Also, you have some really nice abilities in some of the frigs and cruisers like the advent having a cruiser that takes a third of the damage coming into all ships around it and diverts that damage to its shields. Put a couple of those in a force and you've just extended your fleet's life expectancy by an order of magnitude or more. The Light frigates for all three races get an ability that takes antimatter away from enemy ships which is always a good idea as long as you aren't taking it away by getting hit with a bunch of their abilities . Theres examples like these throughout the force structures of the three races. You want to use combined arms not because of some arbitrary rock paper scissors mechanic but because each ship actually adds abilities and strategies to your fleet.

I jump in tons of grunts (those really cheap light units) ... after the grunts have engaged the enemy I jump in the missle frigates behind them .. I jump my capital ship in right after missile frigate and use the capital ship's special abilities right away and then start pounding away....I've had great success highlighting all my units and focusing all my ships on one enemy unit at a time ...

I've always been something of a grognard (hardcore wargamer) my whole gaming life and I am finding the fleet actions in Sins to be remarkably historical in nature. What I mean by that is how the different ship classes need to work together to form a coherent fighting force. I've been in a few battles that eerily resembled the Battle of the Coral Sea or Midway! If you want to get good at Sins, forget everything you learned in other sci-fi games and pick up a few books on the naval tactics and strategies used in the Pacific Theatre during WWII (or just watch the movie Midway). I gurantee you will start to see some surprising similarities.

Here, I'll make it easy for you:

The Battle of the Coral Sea: WWW Link

The Battle of Midway: WWW Link

Let the learning begin!   

True Crusader, the way some battles play out has a WW2ish feel to it. The feel constantly reminds me of naval actions in David Weber's series, particularly Insurrection and to some extent the Honorverse, though the players, physics and nubmer of ships are not as large. The way SINS deals with phase lines is a nice strategic compromise between wormhole chokepoints and wide open space.

Well, I only ever use Vasari so I don't get repair ships. I would say that you only use them once the battle is won so you can keep the fleet moving along. It depends on the situation but most of the time unless I am sure I have won the battle I leave my siege frigates back, I don't like having them destroyed. I only ever build Assiliants since they are cheaper and do more damage, I think the same goes for the LRM. Most of the time I focus all my fire on the Capital ships because I find once somebody looses their capital ship they retreat. It also does a lot of damage to them since it would cost them a lot of resources to replace. If I am facing Illuminaters I destroy them first, they do a lot of damage to your entire fleet if left ignored and since I am using mostly Assiliants it hurts.