[REQUEST of highest importance]

[Mr.Killer]

Perfectionism reflects the skills of the maker, and affects all who bought this game.

How come that a fleet... wait here, please do not tell me that 'there is a setting' I KNOW!.... it is far beyond that. How come I form a fleet of dragon raiders to my found Odysseus Vanguard, and no matter what setting I am using, I have to hold their fuc.... hands all the time....
If I tell them to defend, they do not stay close, no they are occupied , 15 dragons against three Xenon M, and they lose all!!!!
If I tell them to attack what I am attacking, they do not but let them distract from the goal and get them all killed....
If I tell them to intercept, lord knows where they go, I have to select every single Xenon fighter by hand, take this as my target, go to the map again and select from menu FLEET ATTACK!

I know that I complained about this before, but with the Nvidia driver not showing the status of my ship and the (I can not express myself in a normal way about this) pain staking bone crushing blood boiling idiotic behavior of those stupid pilots, as if they were apes for crying out loud.

If this does not change, the whole idea of the game has no purpose anymore, fighting a real battle has become a thing to avoid. By the time I have hundreds of S-class fighters, there is no free space left.

Egosoft, I do really hope you see this too, and about the Nvidia problem? program a number in screen about the shield and hull status, not only the graphical bar that annoyingly keeps getting away, but something on the cockpit wall.....

I hope you do....
Thanks

[zakaluka]

I tend to NOT have my own ship in a fleet, And I tend to use my unattended fleets for zone defense. If I'm taking them to attack an enemy position, I micro manage them.

In zone defense, set the fleet commander (I use a destroyer if I have one) to "defend position" behavior with a small radius, like, 10km. Say, to cover a gate or a travel route. Small radius so that he stays near the spot. Then all subordinates are in an "attack with commander" role, with no special orders. It's working really well for me this time around. The whole fleet attacks anything that comes near.

And also. in 4.0, the new "coordinate attack" command seems to work really well. I need to experiment with it more, but it seems good.

[Mr.Killer]

And also. in 4.0, the new "coordinate attack" command seems to work really well. I need to experiment with it more, but it seems good.

Now what was that? I must have missed that e-mail......
The only coordination that is in the game is ME doing coordinating things, like interception of my fleet, they tend to roam around several enemies not being able to kill them COORDINATED, no, they rather let themselves shot to hell....
SO, where is that? and does it actually works for like every time that I am NOT around? coordinating them holding their hands?

[xant]

Why don't you look at this video from Egosoft?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnP4tMs_yi0

It shows the new feature quite well.

Here's the official description:

Improved Fleet Control
If you've ever commanded huge fleets through the X4: Foundations universe, then there's a good chance that you'll be excited about the following news: we've invested a considerable amount of time in improving fleet combat for the 4.00 update. This includes improved steering behavior and several important AI script changes.

There are a number of different elements to this feature, and we don't want to spoil all of them at once, but we'll start by giving you an overview of a new order called "Coordinate Attack". This tactical order is given to the fleet admiral when engaging a target fleet in battle. The admiral can subsequently give movement, escort and attack orders to all the subordinate ship groups, to coordinate positioning, formations and attacks against the enemy fleet. Once all the subordinate groups reach their positions, the new "Sync Point" feature is triggered. The admiral then moves on, to give orders to the groups of ships to attack specific targets.

This new Sync Point system allows the AI to synchronize orders to ships, but also gives you the freedom to manually trigger the release signal yourself, or let it be released automatically.

While a fleet battle is taking place, the groups of ships will dynamically receive new attack orders and will switch targets if the group configuration changes. This is especially useful once you have seen how the battle is progressing, and allows you to reconfigure your attacks with different group configurations.

Once you've had a look at this new feature and are feeling experimental, you can edit several of the order parameters. For example:

"Fleet aggressiveness" defines how aggressively the fleet should behave, as well as affecting the initial positioning of all ships and individual formation attacks.
"Weak targets first" determines whether to prioritize closer, weaker targets, or go for the larger, stronger ones.
"Ignore rally points" allows all ships to ignore Sync Points.

[Buzz2005]

good but not implemented for stations

[Lord Crc]

Speaking of the new "coordinated attack" function, has IS navigation been significantly improved?

I find I play X4 mostly as an RTS from the map with a dash of FPS space exploration thrown in, given than AI pilots are so braindead.

Like, if I order my 10 Rattlesnakes to attack a Xenon solar station OOS they'll make mince meat of it. Some might get a bit of hull damage but nothing a supply ship can't fix. If I'm IS I'll lose at least 4-5 of them. The reason is their utter braindead navigation. And before anyone mentions captain stars, even the most inexperienced captain should not move closer to the thing blasting them to bits when trying to flee.

I get that a two star captain shouldn't be making the best moves, but he shouldn't be braindead.

[GCU Grey Area]

Like, if I order my 10 Rattlesnakes to attack a Xenon solar station OOS they'll make mince meat of it. Some might get a bit of hull damage but nothing a supply ship can't fix. If I'm IS I'll lose at least 4-5 of them. The reason is their utter braindead navigation. And before anyone mentions captain stars, even the most inexperienced captain should not move closer to the thing blasting them to bits when trying to flee.

Can be done IS without any casualties, if you have highly trained captains & suitably equipped ships:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5zsyygel1083f ... 1.jpg?dl=0
For ships recommend either not using Rattlesnakes (their main guns are very short ranged) or, if you simply must use Rattlesnakes, install Expediter mods on all main guns to bring their range up to a similar level to other destroyers. Rattlers in the screenshot above each had a full set of Expediters & took virtually no return fire as a consequence - never even came close to losing shields, let alone take any hull damage.

I form a fleet of dragon raiders to my found Odysseus Vanguard...

Frankly Dragon Raiders are an awful choice for the role. Really can't think of anything worse. M ships, while they can be a lot of fun as player-controlled ships, are generally terrible as part of a fleet - too big to evade incoming fire, not sturdy enough to withstand it for long. Dragon Raiders are particularly bad at this because they have armour made of soggy cardboard & shields which are almost entirely hypothetical in nature. Their only real defence is speed & they simply can't do that if you nail them in place by using them to escort a capital ship. Strongly recommend using S class fighters for this instead. I generally favour the ones with the thickest hulls and/or strongest shields I can get (Chimeras, Eclipses & Buzzard Sentinels have all worked well for me).

[Lord Crc]

Can be done IS without any casualties, if you have highly trained captains & suitably equipped ships

Yes well, I've "only" played for 6 days in-game, and I have one single 4-star captain. The rest are 3 stars and down. This includes parking the ships outside active Xenon gates for several days, before proceeding to re-take 4 Xenon sectors with that fleet. I now have two Raptors with 100 chimeras each, about 25 Rattlesnakes and a few Monitors. I could easily have had more, I just didn't bother to build them, as I'm pretty sure I can roflstomp the rest of the map if I wanted to.

Yet, as I said, my best captain is a single 4-star one, so the legends of the mythical 5-star captains don't really help me.

Regardless, my point is that even a zero star captain should never ever fly towards the thing destroying it, let alone a 3 star one. A 2-star captain, ie one that has at least a little experience, should know that it is better to fly straight ahead if possible to get away from danger rather than spending 30+ seconds stationary while turning the ship.

I could understand they perform poorly in ship-to-ship combat. But attacking a literally stationary target, a station, is something even a 2-star captain should do without committing suicide due to sheer stupidity. Sure I would accept that they suck at dealing damage, but mass suicide should not be the result.

[GCU Grey Area]

Regardless, my point is that even a zero star captain should never ever fly towards the thing destroying it, let alone a 3 star one. A 2-star captain, ie one that has at least a little experience, should know that it is better to fly straight ahead if possible to get away from danger rather than spending 30+ seconds stationary while turning the ship.

So you don't want them to fly forwards, but neither do you want them to turn round & fly away. Seems just a little bit contradictory. Not sure what's left - a slow shuffle sideways on strafe drive?

Far better just to use captains that know how to maintain distance so they rarely get shot at in the first place. Very easy to train captains with seminars. Many of the missions which provide seminars as rewards don't even need to be done personally. They can often be delegated to other ships (e.g. sat deployments, crew deliveries, etc), making them exceptionally quick & easy to complete (open map, give suitable ship orders, close map, get reward). Often have several such missions running simulataneously in the background. These days using poorly trained captains is purely a matter of choice. I choose not to, I use fully trained captains for all my capitals & don't have anywhere near the level of casualties you've been experiencing.

[Lord Crc]

So you don't want them to fly forwards, but neither do you want them to turn round & fly away. Seems just a little bit contradictory. Not sure what's left - a slow shuffle sideways on strafe drive?

Not really. First and foremost, don't fly towards an active threat. But, despite of that if you find yourself in a position where you want to get out of, and there's clear line of sight ahead, then going forwards is almost always better than turning any significant amount.

Far better just to use captains that know how to maintain distance so they rarely get shot at in the first place.

That would be ideal yes.

Very easy to train captains with seminars.

How so? I've only found one and two star seminars, nothing higher.

[Lord Crc]

Far better just to use captains that know how to maintain distance so they rarely get shot at in the first place.

So I guess that is my point. A zero star captain in a destroyer taking on a Xenon station should be cautious, stay far away. That would mean he won't do much damage, but that's preferable. A better captain should be able to get closer, do more damage, while staying alive.

As it is now, it seems asking any captain less than 5 stars is the same as scraping the ship.

[GCU Grey Area]

Very easy to train captains with seminars.

How so? I've only found one and two star seminars, nothing higher.

Get most of my seminars from guild missions.
For example, this single mission chain had almost everything I needed to train a complete idiot into a first rate destroyer captain:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mepwwh5xjpmz9 ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Was also one of those where every single stage could be delegated to other ships to do in the background, while I got on with more interesting stuff.

Far better just to use captains that know how to maintain distance so they rarely get shot at in the first place.

So I guess that is my point. A zero star captain in a destroyer taking on a Xenon station should be cautious, stay far away. That would mean he won't do much damage, but that's preferable. A better captain should be able to get closer, do more damage, while staying alive.

It's the other way round - the incompetent captains are the ones who are too gung ho for their own good, while the better trained ones know it's better to hang back outside enemy weapon range & calmly blow them to bits in complete safety.

As it is now, it seems asking any captain less than 5 stars is the same as scraping the ship.

4* captains also do fairly well. That's where most of mine start. Can train them to 5* Piloting with seminars but they have to gain Morale on their own. Generally pick experienced fighter pilots with around 3-4* Morale to train as destroyer captains so average overall starting skill tends to be around 4*.

[grapedog]

Also, while dragon raiders might be considered a capable ship in a players hands, it's a terrible ship in reality. Need better ships...