Fleet command nightmare

[Snaphaan]

I have a bit of a issue that is getting tiresome.

For every protection detail mission (or most missions actually) I always need to baby sit my ships.They are always way behind me when I use highways so when ships jump the transport ship they are too little too late.

How do you work around this? I HATE using my current Eterscel Sentinel fighters because they need to be herded like #$%# sheep. What about merging a fleet when entering a highway? I dunno.

When I get to a sector I's always pressing SETA waiting for my ships to finally arrive one by one.

And also, I need two commands. Return to formation and attack all in sector. Two hotkeys that will already make difference. Right now I need to Ctrl +P, select my ship, press 3 then 4 then 2, then enter or mouse click and wallah. Now they will attack. Seriously?!

Clicking on a enemy and ordering a attack means just that. They attack that one ship and then... nothing. Why can't they continue attacking enemies?

I don't understand why these convoluted approaches to basic stuff.

Any suggestions or advice will be greatly appreciated.

[RainerPrem]

Hi,

from my point of view X:Rebirth is a single-ship-game. Do everything with the Skunk alone is much simpler than trying to get other ships do the right thing at the right time.

cu
Rainer

[Snaphaan]

If that is the case then I am really confused. So this is basically a lone wolf game but with fleet building options... just not with the skunk.

WTF. So is this some nerfed way to make missions more difficult. Not a chance. That would be amazingly stupid.

Anywayz. Here's a idea for issuing orders...

Sft+1 = Join formation
Sft+2 = Attack closest enemy ships
Sft+3 = Disengage

That's it.

Now to get those following ships better organized. I played X3 years ago but I cannot remember that I had any issues with my fleet. Something in Xrebirth just feels very awkward.

I'm trying to send them ahead to the next waypoint so I can follow but just the procedure is so annoying and I always feel like I'm trying to control a bunch of headless chickens.

I'm just gonna stop doing most of the missions if this is the case. If I don't have proper fleet control then it's not worth it.

VERY disappointing. It feels epic when you have a squadron to yourself. But the way it's implemented here is just bad....


Except if I am missing something.

[Ezarkal]

XR's fleet management got really scaled down when compared to previous titles. I won't get into details, as there are plenty of threads covering this already, but the devs are aware of the issues. Up to now, X4's previews looks very promising when compared to both XR and previous titles.

As for XR's issues, well... I don't really ever bother with small/medium ships personally. They can be great when assigned to a station manager in sufficient numbers, as they will both patrol the zone the station is in, and escort the station's M freighters. They can also be used in massive numbers for take down capital ships, but they are so frail they it's not worth the investment most of the time (except for the fun of doing it, of course). For any decent usages, well they have to already be on the spot. The main issue is, since they can't dock to capships, jump or boost for a long time (they are incredibly slow at using highways), they can't get anywhere fast enough for emergency response. Add to that their frailty when compared to capships, and you have the reason why I just don't bother.

Capships will do the job most of the time. If they're in the same system as you, they will get on site in decent time and blow up the opposition quite willingly. They can be used for missions about hunting other capital ships and they are quite efficient at it. They are also good for zone patrol.

The way escort missions are designed, I don't think they were intended to be played with your fleet as a backup. At least, not since the v4.00 speed upgrade to the freighters.

[zanzal]

This might be a spoiler for some - I'm masking it for those who like to figure things out on their own.

Spoiler

Show

1. Get a nice cap ship, preferably one with good speed and maneuverability
2. Hire / train all crew to 5 star in all skills.
3. Set defense officer from "Defending" to "Attack Enemies"

You might then also assign fighters to your cap ship rather than your squad. IMO its much easier to work with a single cap ship than a bunch of fighters.

Since I am more into the economic sim part of the game than the combat part I don't do a lot of combat or testing with combat, but my elite all 5 star K is superior to all enemy ships I've faced on the battlefield.. It moves around like crazy using boost very frequently to re-position itself and is generally super responsive to orders and quick to engage the enemy. I think the "secret" is 5 star crew, specifically a 5 star captain. I am using CWIR though so not really sure what behavior is vanilla and what is CWIR.

[Snaphaan]

As for XR's issues, well... I don't really ever bother with small/medium ships personally. They can be great when assigned to a station manager in sufficient numbers, as they will both patrol the zone the station is in, and escort the station's M freighters. They can also be used in massive numbers for take down capital ships, but they are so frail they it's not worth the investment most of the time (except for the fun of doing it, of course). For any decent usages, well they have to already be on the spot. The main issue is, since they can't dock to capships, jump or boost for a long time (they are incredibly slow at using highways), they can't get anywhere fast enough for emergency response. Add to that their frailty when compared to capships, and you have the reason why I just don't bother.

Okay, I'll have to rethink my approach. I used to play Evochron Legacy more recently and it's fleet system was pretty damn nice. A simple no-nonsense approach.

I just thought since you have only one ship... oh well.

Just a side question (don't want to make another post). How can I remove a pilot before selling a ship. I already lost a two from selling a couple of mining ships.

This might be a spoiler for some - I'm masking it for those who like to figure things out on their own.

For some reason I can't seem to open/close the spoiler stuff but maybe it's for the better... I don't really want handouts.

Thanks anyway.

[Ezarkal]

@ Zanzal: Just a small pointer, I'm fairly sure Blackrain's crew did a some substantial tweaking of AI regarding combat. (I remember him telling us about it, but I won't look for the post in the 300+ page long thread.) Maybe they didn't tweak as as much as w.evans did with the "misc. combat tweak" mod, but still, ships don't behave exactly like vanilla.

@Snaphaan: Highlight the spoiler area to reveal the text. (Select the text as if you want to copy it.)

As for your pilot question, if you want to keep a good pilot before selling the ship, then you'll have to replace him with another one. On this specific matter, should you replace a pilot or captain that came with the ship when you bought it at a shipyard, that pilot/captain will disappear from the game. Any pilots/captain you hired yourself will return to the skunk once a new one comes to replace him.

[zanzal]

@ Zanzal: Just a small pointer, I'm fairly sure Blackrain's crew did a some substantial tweaking of AI regarding combat. (I remember him telling us about it, but I won't look for the post in the 300+ page long thread.) Maybe they didn't tweak as as much as w.evans did with the "misc. combat tweak" mod, but still, ships don't behave exactly like vanilla.

Its possible, but most of my cap ships behave very badly. That's what happens when you put *ssholes in charge.. Keep firing *ssholes!

[Snaphaan]

Since I cannot really command a personal fleet I'm probably supposed to utilize drones a lot more. But aren't they kind of useless? I've read a couple of places on the forum that they are quite weak. Almost not worth the expense.

[RainerPrem]

Since I cannot really command a personal fleet I'm probably supposed to utilize drones a lot more. But aren't they kind of useless? I've read a couple of places on the forum that they are quite weak. Almost not worth the expense.

Hi,

what I see is that cap ships only use them in groups of 5. A single salvo of Hydras is often enough to blow them into smithereens, since they don't have shields.

cu
Rainer

[zanzal]

Since I cannot really command a personal fleet I'm probably supposed to utilize drones a lot more. But aren't they kind of useless? I've read a couple of places on the forum that they are quite weak. Almost not worth the expense.

Yeah neither the skunk drones nor the cap drones are worth it. The other day I equipped my personal cap ship with drones and while it was going to equip found and crippled a K. When my ship returned full of drones I ordered it to attack the defenseless K... I was annoyed beyond belief when it lost 10 of 15 drones simply because the drones were too stupid to avoid the cap ship exploding... In general what I've seen in just a few fights is that the drone AI is entirely ineffectual. Often drones bounce around harmlessly against the enemy cap ship or when they are moving seem to move slowly and much less than max speed and spend more time wandering around than performing attack runs. I think drones would be more effective if they split up and tried to surround and strafe rather than act as fighter and perform attack runs.

Skunk drones work about the same, though they can actually kill if you launch 8 of them, they will quickly take losses. As I recall though a Behemoth shielded Skunk can benefit greatly from shield regen drones, but I typically just use the Trojan (limpet bomb drone).

For soloing fighters with the Skunk the Heavy Laser with range mod and flying backwards will quickly eliminate small opponents as they fly into range. Enemy drone swarms will be vaporized before they even fire. That is less effective on higher difficulty levels but on Normal it will chew through most opponents quickly. I don't use auto-aim though, so may not be more effective depending on your play style.

[RAVEN.myst]

In general what I've seen in just a few fights is that the drone AI is entirely ineffectual. Often drones bounce around harmlessly against the enemy cap ship or when they are moving seem to move slowly and much less than max speed and spend more time wandering around than performing attack runs. I think drones would be more effective if they split up and tried to surround and strafe rather than act as fighter and perform attack runs.

However, and cruelly, drones can be pretty effective at swarming the player, so it's not as though the potential for them to be effective isn't there - it simply isn't leveraged properly.

As I recall though a Behemoth shielded Skunk can benefit greatly from shield regen drones...

This was where I eventually settled, after realizing that the combat drone attrition rate is untenable - and since I favour speedy engines, only the Interceptor drones could keep up with me, and they're the most fragile. So 6 shield support drones, a Beholder, and a Trojan (hacker, not limpet mine - that's the Traitor) are my usual loadout.

For soloing fighters with the Skunk the Heavy Laser with range mod and flying backwards will quickly eliminate small opponents as they fly into range. Enemy drone swarms will be vaporized before they even fire. That is less effective on higher difficulty levels but on Normal it will chew through most opponents quickly. I don't use auto-aim though, so may not be more effective depending on your play style.

The auto-aim isn't a factor with the heavy laser, as it is targeted differently and doesn't appear to be guided at all by the auto-aim (which seems to be tied exclusively to weapons requiring target motion-prediction, aka "leading".) I also really like the heavy laser in dogfights, very effective (and there's nothing quite like taking out several drones that are coming in single-file with a single beam *pop-pop-pop* )

[Ezarkal]

Since I cannot really command a personal fleet I'm probably supposed to utilize drones a lot more. But aren't they kind of useless? I've read a couple of places on the forum that they are quite weak. Almost not worth the expense.

-They are nearly useless in capship vs capship fights when you're in-zone. They will mostly just distract turrets for a very little while. Your standard Taranis will swat them away like flies.

-They can still be of help for capships with weak defense against fighters (like the balor).

-However, I think a ship's full loadout of drone is taken into account in his combat strength when you're OOS. In that regard they can turn a fight around. (It might have been induced by mods I'm using, though. Older players or devs should be able to confirm if it's vanilla or not.)

-They can be a major hassle when you're trying to board a ship. That helps to even out the overpoweredness of the skunk. But that's way beside the point.