In theory fine - in practice doesn't always have the desired effect. However, if you are content to be patient/tactical when doing then biting, by preemptively wrapping yourself in your squad, it may live up to its intention.Brinnie wrote:- A personal squad comprising a couple of fast L fight ships to follow me around for some extra muscle when I bite off more than I can chew. Set up so that one is protecting me with one or two other ship watching its Rs, so that I could control the whole squad by commanding the one follows me.
A fine reason on its own Keep in mind that such fleets tend to be VERY (read: "extremely") cumbersome - the ships end up spending more time veering to avoid colliding than actually going where you tell them, unless you are out-of-zone with them, which means you (disappointingly) don't get to watch them in action. Not that it can't be fun. And there is a particular engagement where you will, in fact, NEED such a battle group.Brinnie wrote: I don't really have any need for this, at the present time, other than to satisfy my megalomania.
Brinnie wrote:- A trader mini-fleet, made up of a Lyramekron and something heavy to protect it. The idea is to use this set up for all my traders as to reduce, if not eliminate, the chance of them been destroyed while stopped in space for a cup of coffee or something.
Personally, I don't like to trade manually - I prefer to set up factories and have them do their thing, and set up warehouses for system-wide auto-trading. However, I have enough experience with it to say this much: pairing combat vessels with trade vessels (to act as escorts) sounds like a great idea, and even works sometimes, but you need to keep something in mind when it comes to combat: different enemies treat combatant and non-combatant vessels differently. So, you could have a freighter that can move freely and unmolested through a region, but as soon as you give it an escort that ends up drawing heat. However, this really only applies to "legitimate" factions - pirate factions, on the other hand, don't care, so there the escorts are theoretically a good idea - if only the group actually moved together - which it won't. Sadly.
Only you can really answer that After all, if setting up these things is fun for you, maybe it doesn't matter how effective it works out to be... Alternatively, however, if the end result is your priority, then the effectiveness is significant.Brinnie wrote:. First of all, are my plans doable or more trouble than they are worth?
Why? The more I've played this game, the more I've leaned on M sized vessels, along with some fighters (S), though admittedly the latter are still quite tricky to put to proper work, given how they can't jump and also can't be taken along on carriers. But M-sized freighters form by far the bulk of my trading operations.Brinnie wrote: understand that only L/XL ships are to be considered.
Mostly, you can set automatic behaviour. MostlyBrinnie wrote:Do I have to baby sit them for things like refuel and rearm or can I set them up to be self sufficient?
I've never tried, in part because I can't think how I'd do it (certain tools that were present in the previous Xs, such as CLS and Supply Command Software, are conspicuous in their absence in Rebirth.)Brinnie wrote:Can I do a support fleet to autonomously rearm/refuel my fleets if needed?
I'm afraid this one I can't even attempt to answer - I'm a pure vanillaist But I suspect there must be *something* out there to suit your needs in this regard...Brinnie wrote:and are there safe mods that you would recommend for fleet management/support, for example something to use a carrier to dock small ships even if not for fighting but for transport of captured crafts?
Happy hunting