noob question about wingmen

[GokuSaiyan]

Hi, i've read somewhere about wingmen. But what is that? Can someone explain this a little bit? Just what purpose do they have over a normal ship? Thx.

[ceogreen]

Basically if you deisnate a ship to be your wingman you can pass commands to the easier (attack my target, protect me, things like that) there's nothing too great there, though there could be something in scripting and modding that helps more.

[GokuSaiyan]

But i can already give those commands to my ship, wich is not a wingmen. I just dont get the purpose of it.
Also the manual says nothing about wingmen.

[ceogreen]

I think it just adds a hotkey for certain commands, also if you have multiple wingmen then you only have to give the command once to affect multiple ships.

[apogee]

setting a ship as a wing man can also work against you, in the case you tell them to dock somewhere because you dont need them at that moment. If you accidentally send one of the wingmen protect me commands they will set off in search of you, and if that means traversing a xenon sector, they will.

[Psirus]

I usually just use the designation to separate fighter wings in a carrier, so that I can issue different command to all the ships I designate as wingmen as opposed to the broadcast m3/4/5 command

[herocrafter]

But i can already give those commands to my ship, wich is not a wingmen. I just dont get the purpose of it.
Also the manual says nothing about wingmen.

When you assign a wingman it isn't to your ship. A wingman flys in formation with you. You can assign many ships to fly with you as wingmen and you being the flight-leader telling them to attack your target or defend you or whatever all with just pushing one hotkey. Now if you can just keep 'em from crashing all the time....

[jlehtone]

A wingman flys in formation with you.

Wrong. Any ship may fly in formation with you, and wingman does not have to fly in formation with you. Ever.

As apogee and Psirus said, "Wingman" is only a way to send commands to specific set of ships.

[herocrafter]

Wrong. Any ship may fly in formation with you, and wingman does not have to fly in formation with you. Ever.

I am correct. Wingmen will fly in formation w/ you. Its not a formation that the player can change. But the wingmen will always fly in a Line formation with you. I urge you to check for yourself; say buy 5 discos and fly off. Put your view on external and far away and then rotate the view around. They will be flying in a line. It doesn't matter if you tell 'em to defend you or follow you they will come back to the Line formation.

[jlehtone]

Its not a formation that the player can change. I urge you to check for yourself

When I say "wingman", I do refer to ship that has the "Wingman" flag set to yes. That setting does not say a thing what the ship will do. It just adds more ways to give that ship commands. So try this. Buy Disco. Set its "Wingman" to "Yes". Do not give it any command. Will it follow you? No, it stays at the shipyard.

And then the "Formation". You have that flight of the Disco escorting you. And you see a Line. Now go to the command console of the ship you fly, the ship that the rest do escort. There is "Formation". Change it. You will see how the escorts change pattern. Options are:

Line, Delta, X, X-Delta, Pyramid, The Shield, and Dragonclaw.

The escorts fly in Line only when the leader has Formation=Line. And you can change that.


Now here is something to try:

Form groups. Take five fighters. One is Lead. Set "Formation" of Lead to X or X-Delta. Set its "Wingman" to "Yes". Take two fighters and set them to "Protect Lead". Take other two and set them to "Attack target of Lead". Make sure none of these four has "Wingman" set to "Yes". Additionally, you may set the home of the Lead to be a Carrier. That adds another broadcast option for docked ships.

Make four groups. Tell each Lead to fly to position around the spot where Xenons spawn in Xenon Invasion mission. The trap is set. Accept the XI mission and undock from station. Your four groups are already in position to ambush the Xenons. Broadcast to "Wingmen in sector" command "Attack all enemies". And then join the battle yourself too, if needed.

Now if you do have a Carrier, do not set the "Wingman" of every Lead. This way you will have some groups you can reach with "wingman-broadcasts" and other groups that you individually set to tasks such as "Protect Carrier", "Attack nearest enemy to Carrier", and so forth. They will carry on, while you can change the task of the "Wingman-flagged" groups.


Check myself ... You have not seen Dragonclaw spread out in Maelstorm, or The Shield of 65 fighters start missile assault against Phoenix, have you?

[Lone Jedi]

jlehtone, which formation you think is the best for a carrier of 65 fighters?

[jlehtone]

Depends on situation, but if they are not organized into groups, then the main options for such number of fighters are Pyramid (which is more 3D X-Delta) and The Shield (that is in front, bad if you yourself assault a Capital taget). If one does use XaiCorp Group Management System Hotkey script, and its "Escorts, Launch missile" command, then Dragonclaw (the forward linish X-Delta sort of formation) is quite nice.

But, when the fight starts, the ships break formation. The benefit of formation is to have them in nice position, when they break.

[Khaak_Hammer]

The A.I is utterly god-awful in IS combat.

No-matter the target it files towards it, fires, runs back out in a line, turns again, fires again, repeat under destroyed.