[HELP] fleet control - Improvements coming in 3.00.

[Anubitus]

Hey

So i have a carrier with a fighter wing. Went into battle and it was very fun and cool watching the battle. After a while i saw that the xenon was outnumbering my fleet and i decited to whitdraw from battle. I tried using the "Recall Subordinates" button, and some of them came to dock, but not all. Some just hang there, did nothing and others insisted on attacking the enemie resulting in their destruction. How can i make the fighterwing just stop fighting and return to the carrier imediately whitout delay, whitout them wanting to keep attacking the enemies.


Thanks

[KextV8]

Assign the fighters to their own wing rather than as subordinate to the carrier and order that wing to retreat instead of doing a recall

[ApoxNM]

Assign the fighters to their own wing rather than as subordinate to the carrier and order that wing to retreat instead of doing a recall

Can they still dock? AS I don't own a carrier I have no idea how the mechanics work and if they are also buggy.

[KextV8]

Assign the fighters to their own wing rather than as subordinate to the carrier and order that wing to retreat instead of doing a recall

Can they still dock? AS I don't own a carrier I have no idea how the mechanics work and if they are also buggy.

They absolutely can dock on the carrier without being its subordinates. In fact you can set their default behavior to stay docked and wait on the carrier.

[ApoxNM]

Assign the fighters to their own wing rather than as subordinate to the carrier and order that wing to retreat instead of doing a recall

Can they still dock? AS I don't own a carrier I have no idea how the mechanics work and if they are also buggy.

They absolutely can dock on the carrier without being its subordinates. In fact you can set their default behavior to stay docked and wait on the carrier.

Can I also order whole wings to dock, or do I neet to asign every fighter manually?

Thanks for the answer by the way.

[KextV8]

Can I also order whole wings to dock, or do I neet to asign every fighter manually?

Thanks for the answer by the way.

I'm relatively certain that when you issue the wing a dock command, the entire wing and all its subordinates will dock. I am not 100% sure though, I'll have to test that when I get home later unless someone else can confirm it.

[AnomynousX]

Assign the fighters to their own wing rather than as subordinate to the carrier and order that wing to retreat instead of doing a recall

Can they still dock? AS I don't own a carrier I have no idea how the mechanics work and if they are also buggy.

They absolutely can dock on the carrier without being its subordinates. In fact you can set their default behavior to stay docked and wait on the carrier.

Sorry, but I tried working with fleets yesterday, is there any info/guide somewhere? Cause it was an absolute horrible experience for me. They didn't go dock by themself, they don't ALL attack stuff when you set leaders to defend a position... brief worst nightmarish experience seeing everything getting butchered just sitting there doing nothing.

[Agrefits]

Imho Fleet control is broken at the moment.

Yes you can assign ships to form Wings, but they only hold their formation when the lead ship is executing an order that follows a prescripted(?) movement pattern AFTER reaching the Command Waypoint, such as explore command, protect station, or Patrol default behavior. As soon as you give a Wing a regular fly to command (Or any scripted command that sets itself new waypoints on the map) however. the order gets distributed to every single ship, which overwrites its default "escort" behavior resulting them to go loose... Ironically when it comes to docking / undocking, where it actually SHOULD distribute the order to each ship, it doesn't. Resulting in the lead ship docking, and the rest of Wing hanging around, loitering the area "protecting" the docked ship. I usually dock them having them gather at the destination, hold ship -> drag an drop to select every ship in the flight, and send them to dock all at once... same with departure.

If anyone figured it out how to keep them together in any situation while ordering dock and fly to commands buy just using the actually "wing", please let me know. but honestly i feel like i tried anything possible with no result.

Oh and btw.. I'd actually love to be able to rename my Wings.!

[Arze]

Imho Fleet control is broken at the moment.

Yes you can assign ships to form Wings, but they only hold their formation when the lead ship is executing an order that follows a prescripted(?) movement pattern AFTER reaching the Command Waypoint, such as explore command, protect station, or Patrol default behavior. As soon as you give a Wing a regular fly to command (Or any scripted command that sets itself new waypoints on the map) however. the order gets distributed to every single ship, which overwrites its default "escort" behavior resulting them to go loose... Ironically when it comes to docking / undocking, where it actually SHOULD distribute the order to each ship, it doesn't. Resulting in the lead ship docking, and the rest of Wing hanging around, loitering the area "protecting" the docked ship. I usually dock them having them gather at the destination, hold ship -> drag an drop to select every ship in the flight, and send them to dock all at once... same with departure.

If anyone figured it out how to keep them together in any situation while ordering dock and fly to commands buy just using the actually "wing", please let me know. but honestly i feel like i tried anything possible with no result.

Oh and btw.. I'd actually love to be able to rename my Wings.!

Sure: Don't use wings at all. Its absolute jank...
You can use bounding box selection on the map to order multiple ships at the same time! This way they will follow your orders to a letter, always, and you don't have to work with fleet management jankiness.

[Tim Lane]

Do the withdraw from combat pick and then recall subordinates again. Works for me when trying to recall stuck drones after combat. That may be the solution for regular fighters as well.

[Notak]

I know the feeling with this one, i just spent the last 2 hours trying to get 10 Nemesis Vanguards to dock at a Odysseus vanguard and so far i haven't been successful.

Seriously losing my temper with stuff like this...

[ravisoul]

i also have issues here, this is what i posted on the tech support forum:

This is a bit of frustrating behavior. for me it makes all the difference if i pilot or of my Subordinate Pilots.

1st Recall subordinates does not work when i pilot. but as soon as i stand up and give the AI captain the same command all Drones dock (not S ships just the drones)
then i give a move command to the ship the S ships dock and the Pilot starts moving

the other thing is when i Fly and do Recall subordinates, that does not work (already established) so i have to get the S ships to dock manually. click ship and click dock
but then when i get attacked or want to attack i first have to go into the menu click docked ship, select Both S fighters go back to the map and tell them to attack
once the 2 S fighters are out of the Bay and are in the open, the Drones start coming out

its because they have a dock and wait command at the top, so they are just waiting, i could also just remove that command and if they are set to the Ship defense option they will undock and start the sequence

So my ask is, make a right mouse button attack command on the map that cancels out all previous orders, or just puts the Attack command at the top of the order list.
also Please make Recall subordinates work

[Anubitus]

Another thing i noticed, when issued a attack command, the attacking group boosts towards the targets Original location, ignoring the targets movement completely. Noticing the target isnt there anymore, they have to turn the other way and persue the target. Why dont they adapt their flightpath to intercept the target?

EDIT: I have a defensive wing guarding the gate at Faulty Logic, behind the gate are a lot of Xenon. I want my fleet to defend against Xenon that come through the gate, not fly through it and start going on a rampage that will surely kill them. Why do they insist on going through the damn gate?! Another half hour wasted because i wasnt babysitting my fleet… The gate at Faulty Logic, how fitting...

EDIT2: This is not only with attacking a target, it is also happening when you order a ship to dock at a capital ship, it doesnt matter wether the capital ship moves or not, the docking ship always moves to the original location before updating its target location.

[Anubitus]

Inside a Xenon sector, there are multiple targets to attack, and yet the fighterwing insists on attacking the "build storage", wich ofcourse can not be destroyed. I tried removing all orders, giving them another leader, moving them somewhere befor a attack command, but they revert back to attacking the industructible storage thing… *sigh*


A fighter wing, consisting of 3 nova's (one leader and two subordinates), i have the leaders default behaviour set to dock at a capital ship, but when it does, the subordinates just hang there, not doing anything. Shouldnt they dock aswell?

[Sir Derpington]

Best way for docking entire wings I've found is shift-clicking to select every ship in a wing and giving them all the order to dock at once. In combat though is a different story...I still have found no way to stop my ships constantly ignoring orders and overriding them to attack random shit. I have easily lost 100's of ships due to this in my war against the Argon, even with the sometimes functional "withdraw from combat" option. Nothing seems to supersede the "I'm going to attack that thing, even if it's in the enemy sector 2 jump gates over, until I inevitably get blown up AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME BITCH" mentality that my captains seem to share. Really hope they make the player's commands mean a damn soon as any sort of fleet combat is just a complete headache which it really doesn't need to be. Player commands need to be absolute!

[Anubitus]

Nothing seems to supersede the "I'm going to attack that thing, even if it's in the enemy sector 2 jump gates over, until I inevitably get blown up AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME BITCH" mentality that my captains seem to share.

Exacly this, it is taking the fun out of using a fleet in combat.

[Anubitus]

I have a Behemoth patrolling a sector, it has 10 Nova's as its subordinates. First time i added them as subordinates they got the command "Protect Ship" with the Behemoth as the subject to protect. In this mode, they just fly around randomly behind the target trying to stay close to the target. Having the Behemoth flying a bit away from them, only to fly to it when it gets too far away, to wait again so it get a headstart again, to fly after it. This pattern continues. This command does not follow any formation settings what so ever. Its just a pile of fighters following the protected target.

There is also another command, its called "Escort Ship", this command does however use the formation settings. To get the fighters into this command however, i had to find a workaround, because the standard command is always "Protect Ship". To get them to the "Escort Ship" command, i had to change the commander, in this case i used one of the escort fighters as the commander. The other escorts get the command "Escort Ship" and start following the target in formation. I then just simply change the commander again and the command stays "Escort Ship". I then do the same to the last escort fighter seperately and then they all are into escorting mode, flying in formation to the Behemoth.

My question is: would it be possible to please either replace "Protect Ship" with the "Escort Ship" as the default command they enter when they get assigned or make "Protect Ship" similar to "Escort Ship", especially make it use the formation settings.

Another thing i noticed, when the commander, in this case the Behemoth, has to fly to another sector for some reason, it docks all of its subordinates. This is good ofcourse, but when it arrives at the new location, the escorts do not get launched again. They are stuck in the "Dock and Wait" command. Even when the Behemoth gets attacked, it does not lauch any escort ships. I have to manually remove this command from every escort ship after wich they lauch and resume the escorting.

[Anubitus]

Almost a year later and the fleet control is still somewhat messy. A carrier fleet with subordinates with orders to fly to another sector sends its subordinates to the destination. Sometimes a few of them escort the carrier, but mostly they just get to the destination as fast as they can, all at their own top speed. If you have fighters along with M-class ships as subordinates then the fastest fighters will arrive first, followed by the heavier fighters and then the M-class ships, and lastly the carrier. Should there be enemies at the target location, the fleet arrives so devided they are easy pickings. by the time the carrier arrives there are no subbordinates left.

When controlling fleets, you have to use work around after work around after work around and if you get lucky, maybe you have a shot... It is so frustrating... Why dont most of the subbordinates just dock at the carrier? Have a few out escorting the carrier and maybe send a scout to the target location? Fleets are just not (very) usefull at this point. I love playing this game, it has a lot of realy fun gameplay but i always end up quitting the game time and time again each time i reach the point where i start using fleets… I realy want to play the game, i love the X series and i love egosoft but it is so hard to love playing X4.

EDIT: i am sorry if i sound a bit harsh or something, its just frustrating to command fleets this way. Think of it this way, i rant because i care about this game and developer very much. If i didnt care, i would just move on...

[j.harshaw]

A carrier fleet with subordinates with orders to fly to another sector sends its subordinates to the destination.

They will coordinate their movements and stick together better when moving between sectors in 3.0. Still requires more testing before it's ready for public so didn't include it in 2.60, but it's in the works.

[Falcrack]

Almost a year later and the fleet control is still somewhat messy. A carrier fleet with subordinates with orders to fly to another sector sends its subordinates to the destination. Sometimes a few of them escort the carrier, but mostly they just get to the destination as fast as they can, all at their own top speed. If you have fighters along with M-class ships as subordinates then the fastest fighters will arrive first, followed by the heavier fighters and then the M-class ships, and lastly the carrier. Should there be enemies at the target location, the fleet arrives so devided they are easy pickings. by the time the carrier arrives there are no subbordinates left.

When controlling fleets, you have to use work around after work around after work around and if you get lucky, maybe you have a shot... It is so frustrating... Why dont most of the subbordinates just dock at the carrier? Have a few out escorting the carrier and maybe send a scout to the target location? Fleets are just not (very) usefull at this point. I love playing this game, it has a lot of realy fun gameplay but i always end up quitting the game time and time again each time i reach the point where i start using fleets… I realy want to play the game, i love the X series and i love egosoft but it is so hard to love playing X4.

EDIT: i am sorry if i sound a bit harsh or something, its just frustrating to command fleets this way. Think of it this way, i rant because i care about this game and developer very much. If i didnt care, i would just move on...

I notice that when there are wings of fighters assigned as subordinates to a carrier, onlt the wing leader will dock when recalled. The subordinates of the wing leader will follow, but will not dock unless you manually order them to. I hope this is something that is being worked on for 3.0. I notice when the wing leader is docking, I check his command in the advanced behaviors tab, and I see a box checked "subordinates dock". The box is selected, which I assume would mean that the wings subordinates will dock along with the wing leader, but such does not seem to be the case currently.