Boneheaded tactical mistakes you've made? (And did you pull through?)

[Redshirt (OP)]

I was thinking about my lastest tactical blunder- accidentally pressing "5 Days" instead of "Event Log" and ending up with 90 enemy FAC a mere 10k away from my fleet, rather than the 50m I was intending.

Pretty bad and (as Theokrat mentioned in the initial thread) only attributable to a massive computer failure or rogue AI RP-wise. Nevertheless, the doomed fleet managed to pull through...
As soon as the hostiles were spotted, the carrier group immediately launched all remaining fighters, who split into small wings and activated onboard sensors. The carriers and accompanying collier then began a transition through the jump gate.

Meanwhile, the destroyer group began targetting the FAC, while heading away from the jump point as quickly as possible.

It was only seconds later that the enemy, the Sian Republic- a race of hyperintelligent, meter long caterpillars- turned on their active sensors and fired on the fleet- but by then, the carriers were out of the system. Half the Sian's missiles self-destructed, lacking a target. The remainer destroyed half of the fighter wings, but with so many targets, they neglected the destroyers.

This was a big mistake- if they had been beam FAC, the Terran fleet would have been doomed. As it were, they were armed with missiles- and only had one shot before they needed to head back and reload. The destroyer group, nearly as fast as these FAC, began using the extreme close range to take all the time they needed to hunt down and destroy the enemy ships.

A salvage craft is now en-route. Recovery of the wrecks (and their crew, by the carrier group) promises to be a very rewarding endeavor.

[Theodidactus]

soooo many:

- I thought my missiles had a range of 30 million kilometers when in fact they had a range of 25. Fired 4 destroyers dry, then wept as the barrage of missiles flamed out before the target even saw them. Fortunately, I had also fired a batch of ultra-long ranged drones from a distant command ship, which were set to drop their payload at the same time. This did enough damage to slow the enemy fleet and ultimately, I prevailed. Still, a colossal waste.

- sent a squadron of archangel class stealth bombers into battle. Their mission was to covertly blast a slumbering precursor ship apart. Trouble was, two of the fighters had active sensors on...they were shot down before they had a chance to engage their target.

- sent an entire battlefleet of perhaps 30 ships from one star to its companion, on a mission to fight the attractive amazonian women that I suspected were waiting there. The trouble was that the distance between these stars was utterly immense...200 days later, the entire fleet ran out of fuel and this was the first time I realized the distance. Now I have a significant portion of my entire space navy stranded a little less than halfway between two distant stars.

[OAM47]

As seen in my story, I forgot that I'd installed backup PD sensors on all my PD ships, because I tend to be rather cheap on how many command ships I build.  Of course, by the time they go into battle I've forgotten this, leave my main sensors on, get that ship taken out, and only remember the backup sensors after I lose three more ships.  About 6 ships made it home, but it was still 2-3 years before the fleet was ready for a rematch.

[Bouchart]

Forgetting to put power plants on my X-ray laser warships and sending them off to fight a few precursors.   Forutnately they were fast, heavily armored and had gauss cannons for point defense.   I flew right up to the three enemy ships and sandpapered them to death.

[Redshirt (OP)]

And then there's the days you just want to bang your head on the command console:

Task Group Captain Mitchell Glover, of the DEJ Blackjack: "Thank God, we finally destroyed the last of those enemy missile boats. That was so tedious- all 90 of them? It seemed to take forever. Don't know what we would have done without those Active Sensor groupkiller missiles. Well, let's slog on over to their homeworld and see if we can't take out their shipyards before they build more. Have the Hellcat missile destroyers dump their active sensor missiles into the colliers and restock on the Valkyrie Long Range ASM's."

Some time later-
"Sir, the Hellcats have finished resupplying."
Cpt. Glover- "Good, send the colliers back through the jump gate, and proceed to June B-II."

A short time after that-
"Sir, the colliers have transited and are well on their way back to Sol system."
"Sir, we've detected another large group of enemy ships approaching... Tonnages vary from 6000 to 20,000 tonnes. Estimated numbers are greater than 100."
Cpt. Glover "... Ensign... Recall the colliers..." (softly sobbing.)

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I had to call off an assault on a home system recently because I accidentally jumped all 4 jump cruisers through without of the ships they were supposed to bring along.  Fleet Command dubbed it a successful reconnaissance force with lower than projected casualties, which should greatly improve the chances of our planned assault... in a couple years.

[Shininglight]

Had my destroyer and cruiser squadrons jump into a spoiler held system, picked up the ships on actives, painted them, hit fire.......... aaaand i forgot to load my ships ordanance.

[ShadowLop]

Encounter with (I think) Precursors.  5 ASM ships, 2 AMM ships survived a point-blank, post warp tousle with a beam-armed warship.  ASMs had their sensors on.  AMMs, as it turns out, did NOT.  I only found this out when one of my ASMs exploded from a missile volley from a heretofore undetected missile frigate.

[Zook]

"What do you mean, there is no jump gate on THIS side?"

(pause)

"Canned ravioli for 18 months? For the entire fleet?"

[xeryon]

@Zook:  I think every new player has done that one at least once.  lol

[LoSboccacc]

forgot (again) that posted missile sensor range is not the same as the detection range of your average size 4 AS missile.

point blank AMM doesn't work that good.

[Hazard]

Hey, atleast while they are waiting for that gate to be build you can keep sending in supply ships with new flavours of ravioli. 

[chrislocke2000]

Discovered the hard way last night than when firing my very expensive size 16 multi war head missiles at fleeing precursors they were fast enough to out range the stage 2 missiles that are set for close to extreme range on their separation distance. Sob.

Also discovered that it's a very bad idea to send warships with first generation AMMS on board....

[Havear]

I've had my share of tactical blunders, including things like orbital planet-crackers that miss basically every enemy troop but wipes out my colony and accidently clicking the wrong increment letting hostile fleets jump past my own fleet and bombard my homeworld, but probably my favorite was the Battle of Stein in my LS campaign. I sent a task force towards Stein separated into two squadrons, each with a carrier, command\jumpship, and a meson\laser hybrid escort. Stein had a known Precursor presence and had already been the final resting place for several small destroyers out on patrol along the frontier. Deciding to not risk too much of what was the entirety of my striking forces, I sent Squadron #2 to a nearby asteroid to watch the friendly side of the JP while Squadron #1 raised shields and sensors then popped in. ...I didn't know that shields went offline for a jump (my ships relied almost exclusively on shields, with barely any armor protection at all), and Precursor forces were waiting on the far side. Luck favored me, as the Precursors were exclusively missile-armed and sat on top the point, as well as targeting the beam escorts instead of their more valuable sisters. After a few minutes the carriers and command ships managed to jump out, and once the beam ship's heavy dual meson batteries started working it was a massacre in my favor.

[madmarcus]

Detected a small thermal signature on a random moon in a system that originally had a couple of precursor ships. Naturally I called in the troop transport which landed an engineer brigade and a full mobile infantry brigade. Overkill of course but its always easier to just hit unload all troops and that's what my rapid reaction force was carrying. They capture a few tracking stations without any opposition. The freighters load the tracking stations and move off.

After a few updates I notice that I have two zero population colonies on the moon which offends my sensibilities. Without thinking I abandon one of them before checking to see whether it was the one with the troops. Too this day they use the story of the lost brigade combat team to scare the new recruits before their first deployment on an alien world.