X3 Wingmen

[Dragonsfire]

Hey guys,

Gonna try and make this one short and sweet. Crusing around in my burster capping, just capped another burster. This one is in pretty good shape, but its the speed varient, which dosent intrest me much as I've found I value shields over speed at this stage of the game.

Question. Because of it's great condition, I've considered keeping it on as a wingman. Now, in X2 the Wingmen were horrible, often doing me more harm then good, untill I finaly got rid of them all together. As I am still realitivly new to X3, I was wondering if wingmen are any good this time around?

Thanks again for your help guys.

[simonnance]

They can be handy at times, but they are better called in when you need them, rather than jept around you like a small swarm...... they tend to fly into things otherwise........ like asteroids...... or stations you just docked with.

I have a number of Rajin Rader and Sentinel M4s that i capped in the plot, i call them in sometimes if im having trouble with an assasination mission or the like. TBH they didnt have a good resale value, and M4 manuverability and speed with M3 sheilding was too good to sell off for a pittance.

Try it and see how you like it, but the comands havnt improved at all since X2, even if the AI is better.

Having said all that, nothing is nicer than seeing sneaky gits that try and pump lasers into your six turned into a nice ball of gass by your wingmen!

[domin-X]

My Novas Make good wingmen for my Centaur, just dont give them shockwave generators or ion disrupters and you're fine.

With the smaller ships, wingmen are not all that useful, AI should actually be renamed "A lack of I". It will eventually die and you will spend more time trying to protect it than attacking the enemy. Also, the enemy will try attacking the wingman and fly about very iraticaly rather than the straight attacking run on you, which makes them much harder to actually hit.

My advice, either sell it to help advance you to an m3 (Novas are nice), or leave it at a trading station untill you need to give your traders some escorts.

[plawolf]

I have found wingmen fairly useful , especially m4s with PAC or PBE or MD. But you will loose them sooner or later no matter how careful you are with them, that need to be understood especially early on in the game when equiping an M4 can be quite a costly undertaking.

But they definately have their uses. I can remember the number of times one of my wingmen have won me that extra few seconds and bit more breathing room in a heavy firefight to make life that much easier and safer.

The best way to employ them is to have them 'standby' a short while before you engage a large enemy force, then call them in to help after you have have started fighting. That way, you don't have hostile AI blowing your wingmen out of the sky with their first salvo, and with the enemy preocupied with you, your wingmen will have a far better chance of being able to do some good and actually hit something while not being swamped.

This can be a pain, by I have a Iggy-V following me everywhere as a mobile weapons and ecell store, so I have my wingmen set to protect it most of the time, and when I need additional support, I just using the comms function to order all my wingmen in with one command. Although you can also group wingmen into small units and call in 1 or 2 of them if you don't want to leave the transport undefended.

[newdean]

I'll have to try that standby bit. A (non-Yaki) M4 as your wingman doesn't have much survival chance once the silkworms start flying, but that's typically early in the combat. And docking is a little problematic, as wingmen have a tendency to hit the station rather than docking.