fleet and wing command question

Cursed Ghost · Post by **Cursed Ghost** » Tue, 5. Jan 16, 23:56

Hi all

I’m curious what are the fleet and wing command actually for because so far as I can ascertain they are utterly worthless garbage that do basically bugger all I mean I don’t even seem to able to get them to do a simply tasks.

For example say I want to group a half dozen Springblossoms together and then have them attack all enemy units as a team

If I want to perform an action like that I have to choose one of the ships to be leader and then set the leader to attack all enemies and then set the rest of the wing to attack the leader’s target

Surly I should just be able to group the ships unit and then just set a single wing command like for example wing attack all enemy’s or wing attack fighters or wing attack capitals

Because ultimately that is much simpler and more intuitive groups ships together in wings and group wings in to fleets then assign each group within the fleet a specific task

sadly that doesn’t seem to be the way the fleet and wing commands work however so I’m wondering if anyone can explain how you are supposed to use these to command and control fleets because so far as I can tell they may as well not be in the game because they don’t help at all

Black_hole_suN · Post by **Black_hole_suN** » Wed, 6. Jan 16, 01:16

Don't issue "attack all", "attack all fighters", "attack all capitals"commands to your wing.. When you use these commands the wing will just try to search around in a 10km area for a target then they will just go "idle" or scatter around in the sector to attack different ships..

Instead, use them to attack specific ships. Use "Attack.." command or the one that shows up in the pop-up menu when you select an enemy..

When ever the target ship is destroyed, the wing will try to attack any enemy within 10km. You dont want this to happen unless you want your wing to fight enemy fighters that are escorting your target ship.. Use "protect me" or "follow me" to call them back or give them another target to destroy

Also, I highly recommend Bounce mod so your fighters dont die in a typical auto-pillok death

Bill Huntington · Post by **Bill Huntington** » Wed, 6. Jan 16, 01:22

Cursed Ghost, you've gotten further than I on the question. I found I could do better with my personal ship on almost all tasks. For the hardest ones I used a Tyr.

From the way you explained it, I'm not sure you're using the 'Attack All Enemies' command exactly right. When I had a wing of fighters, I'd issue this command when I wanted each fighter in the wing to attack any target. Then they'd each attack a different target. This was a desperation tactic to cover a retreat.

I found that the AI takes much too long to do any task and that AI ships have too many collisions with my own ships. Then they don't recall worth a damn when it's time for that.

Good Luck!

Cursed Ghost · Post by **Cursed Ghost** » Sat, 9. Jan 16, 21:37

what I'd like to know is why when I issue the attack all command does the wing brake apart and target different targets this is in my opinion incorrect behaviour.

I'm sure we all remember how Khaak swarms worked in X2 well this is the behaviour I expect when I issue the attack all command to a wing the whole wing should focus fire one target until its dead and then move on to the next and the next and the next until there are no more targets left if I wanted my ships to target multiple targets then I wouldn't have grouped them together into a wing in the first place.

I'd also like to know why it is when you go to the wing control panel there are attack command that are missing why is there no

wing attack fighters,
wing attack capitals ,
wing attack shields of,
wing defend station,
wing scout for enemies,
wing patrol sector
wing defend/invade sector
wing retreat

I'd also like to know why there is no way to control the behaviour or your wings either surly there should be a toggle switch in the wing control panel so I can set the wing to focus fire assigned targets if I'm dealing with a single strong target like a capital ship or wing attack multiple targets if I'm dealing with a lot of small weak target like a fighter swarms

another command that would is be useful is

wing missile defence

which would be helpful if you have a bomber with you or you have a m5 loaded up with moz missiles

Ultimately regardless of whither ships are in groups or not the commands available should be the same the only difference is that I only have to issue the command once and all the ships will perform the requested command instead of having to issue the command to every ship individually

to be honest this is another element of the game that needs an overall and really all the attack commands / patrol commands / fleet commands / wings commands need to be combined in to a single bit of software so that it can be properly implemented and more easily checked to make sure each command works as expected

Black_hole_suN · Post by **Black_hole_suN** » Sun, 10. Jan 16, 01:40

Cursed Ghost wrote:what I'd like to know is why when I issue the attack all command does the wing brake apart and target different targets this is in my opinion incorrect behaviour.

because that is what "attack all" does... It became my frustration too when I started playing with wings and fleets...i only issue "attack all" when there is no real threat in the sector so my fighters can mop up remaining fighters and civilian ships..

I'd also like to know why it is when you go to the wing control panel there are attack command that are missing why is there no

wing attack fighters,
wing attack capitals ,
wing attack shields of,
wing defend station,
wing scout for enemies,
wing patrol sector
wing defend/invade sector
wing retreat

Wing Attack fighters and capitals are found in the pop-up menu when you select an enemy ship...

Attack shields command does not take into account the damage of bullets already flying in the air so your ships end up damaging the hull of your target. Now if you have 20+ fighters, you'll end up damaging half of the target's hull everytime...

Are you sure there are no patrol command in your wing menu?? I think there should be one there (i cant remember if wing patrol commands actually exist or not)

You can use "wing protect" for defending stations

I dont know why you want the wing itself to scout for enemies.. A single m5 with triplex scanner can do this without any issue

Can't comment on defend sector since i don't use it even on my non-wing ships... Wing invade works good in theory but if it is like the horrendous fleet invade sector command (which is basically just a jump+attack all command) then it is better that it does not exist

Now, retreat is a very useful command.. I have no idea why ego. didn't in include this in vanilla game.. For now, you can retreat your wing by ordering them to "follow", "protect", or "dock at" a distant ship or station

I'd also like to know why there is no way to control the behaviour or your wings either surly there should be a toggle switch in the wing control panel so I can set the wing to focus fire assigned targets if I'm dealing with a single strong target like a capital ship or wing attack multiple targets if I'm dealing with a lot of small weak target like a fighter swarms

if you want automatic fleet control then CODEA and ADS are the mods you are looking for... I cant comment on CODEA but I have tried ADS but didn't really use it long.. I think it has toggles that you need..

wing missile defence

which would be helpful if you have a bomber with you or you have a m5 loaded up with moz missiles

i haven't messed with MDM.c enough to conclude that it works well at protecting ships in the wing... But, it does work well if you issue this command to a ship and have him follow or protect another ship...

Just enable MDM on all ships in the wing and check regularly if they have enough mosquitoes because if mosqi runs out MDM will disappear and you will have to re-enabled it again

I had many frustrations too when I started playing with fleets and wings...but over time, I was able to get used to how they work that I dont need any mods(except bounce mod) to make them work..

fireanddream · Post by **fireanddream** » Sun, 10. Jan 16, 07:48

MDM works wonder but you have to bring mosquito to every single ship, AND make sure they have another missile installed (like wasp, thunderbolt) so they don't randomly fire mosquito. In TC I always have a wing of tough fighters like Eclipse/Fenrir escorting an M2, and run MDM.c on the M2 instead.

On the other hand, there are some reasons why you might NOT want the attack all command works like you anticipated, here's why:

1) Only about 1/4 of your wing will be able to actually fire at the target, others will be busy catching up, by the time they get there, the target is down, now a new target is chosen and the process repeats. The current fire-at-will attack all command maximizes the dps of a fighter wing.

2) Without bounce, 15 solano chasing an M5 will be an accident waiting to happen. With bounce, they'll just be avoiding collision with each other 50% of the time.

zazie · Post by **zazie** » Sun, 10. Jan 16, 15:23

As an addition:
I mady some good experience in certain combat-situations using multiple wings. Typical scenario: Raid into a Xenon sector.

After having cleared out most of Xenon M2/M1/M7 with missile-attacks and/or own M2/M7, I command the operations from a fast M3 (mostly Mamba Raider). The wings have not fought but taken different positions (move to ...-command).

Now I order them one by one (!) to "attack my target", selecting then carefully targets closest to the different wings. All the wing will now go for that target - that's the reason why I compose the wings with ships of the same speed (+/- 5m/s).

Now you observe the situation: if one wing's target was a single ship then it is easy to give another target - as this wing is waiting for a new order. On the other hand if the wing has engaged a longer fight (the wing of a P that was the original target) then the rest of the same wing will spread out chasing other enemies - see posts above. That will ne the moment to order that wing back to follow you - before you send those ships to another target.

As the "Commander" you must therefore closely observe how the fight will evolve and take your decisions preemptively.

This works best in "Vanilla"-game. In XTC the Xenon patrols act like in X2, it is hardly ever possible to get out of fight without losses of M3 or M6. Actually I am experimenting (in XTC) with Wings that include an M7M full of those Barrage-missiles and the turrets set to "attack fighters". Weakest point: The LXs start attacking the M7M. Not sleved yet

Cursed Ghost · Post by **Cursed Ghost** » Sun, 17. Jan 16, 05:01

Wing Attack fighters and capitals are found in the pop-up menu when you select an enemy ship...

No there no those command are only available when the ships are not grouped in to a wing here are the commands that are available when ships are grouped in to awing

http://s14.postimg.org/b0qhm0nsx/untitled.png

Which as you can imagine is extremely frustrating and renders the whole concept of wings completely redundant since the necessary commands are missing from the command menu

I don’t know why you want the wing itself to scout for enemies.. A single m5 with triplex scanner can do this without any issue

I assume judging by your command that you have never actually used the scout for enemies command well it’s actually quiet helpful.

Here is a basic rundown of what the command does ships running the command will move to the centre of the sector and go in to stand by mode until an enemy ship appears the ship will then move to intercept that enemy ship and any other enemies in the sector until there are none left at which time it will go back to the centre of the sector and go back in to stand by mode until more enemies appear

what makes this command helpful though is that unlike say the patrol sector command the enemy ships don’t have to be visible on radar all the enemy has to do is simply enter the sector and the ships running that command will know they are there and will attack

I actually used this one quite a bit in TC to defend enduring light from the continuous attacks by khaak fighters trouble is this command only runs on single ships which makes it ineffective for dealing with anything other then fighters because you cant bring combined firepower down on stronger targets which is why it would be nice if this command worked for wings of ships because then groups of ships running this command could effectively guard sectors against any target because the whole wing will focus fire stronger targets

One example of where this could help is in sectors like Grand Exchange where the computer frequently spawns Xenon J’s it would be nice to be able to group a half dozen capital ships together and have them focus fire the J and kill it before it can kill my ships

On the other hand, there are some reasons why you might NOT want the attack all command works like you anticipated, here's why:

1) Only about 1/4 of your wing will be able to actually fire at the target, others will be busy catching up, by the time they get there, the target is down, now a new target is chosen and the process repeats. The current fire-at-will attack all command maximizes the dps of a fighter wing.

2) Without bounce, 15 solano chasing an M5 will be an accident waiting to happen. With bounce, they'll just be avoiding collision with each other 50% of the time.

Which is why I only use small wings of powerful ships like a half dozen Springblossoms / Griffons all armed to the teeth with flak and working as a team focus firing targets means that fighters will be crushed on the first volley so there is no chasing anything

Though I do get your point if you are talking about a fighter wing of say 30 to 60 m3s launched from a carrier then yeah that might be an issue but that is why you would have a toggle switch so you can set the wing running the attack all command to either focus fire in the case of stronger targets or not in the case of lots of weak targets like a fighters swarm or even better simply make the ships running the attack all command smarter so they can figure that one out for them selves so they will automatically brake apart to hunt down fighters but will gang up to take down bigger targets

See the way I normally conduct combat is to group similar ships together and then assign each group a task so my capital group will focus fire other capitals and frigates my frigate group will usually be split in to 2 sub groups the group of griffons will be given the task of hunting down fighters while the other half of the group which have the heavy guns will be given the task of supporting the capital group against other capitals and frigates

My corvette group which is usually made up of small groups Springblossoms will be given the task of supporting the griffon friget group hunting down fighters if the griffons cant catch the ship the Springblossoms will mean while I’ll be flying my overturned Hyperion taking on targets of opportunity

The big problem with trying to do this however is that the commands necessary to make this work properly simply aren’t available when I group ships in to wings half my commands vanish and it is extremely slow and tedious having to order every ship individually and the fleet commands are no better I set an order and within seconds I check the fleet commander and it says orders none even thou I just issued a fleet order like fleet patrol sector

Unfortunately the command and control for fleet and wing combat needs a complete overhaul because either it’s so badly done that it’s just doesn’t work or it’s so convoluted that I simply cant figure out how to get it working.

That’s not even taking in to account how completely retarded the computer actually is when it comes to controlling the players ships this afternoon was in Heretic End the rapid cheat squad showed up just to irritate me so I called in 5 capital ships to make there capital ships go away only despite the fact its was a 5 vs 3 fight my ships are the ones that got crushed so in the end after several reloads all of which resulted in failure I had to resort to typhooning the rapid cheat capitals because my capital ships kept failing to get the job done and this is not due to bombers causing issues because I took care of them in my Hyperion its simply that the computer cant pilot and the emergency jump doesn’t work despite all my ships having emergency jump switched on and the percentage set at 50%

its a shame I cant equip my Boreas and my Xenon I with plasma beams and my Osaka and Tyr with Fusion Beams because maybe I wouldn't be having this issue

fireanddream · Post by **fireanddream** » Sun, 17. Jan 16, 05:43

Well, considering that individual ships can't even be that smart to choose its target, I won't be surprised that wings can't either. It'd be good if I can issue my M4 to attack m3 or lower classes and run away from m6 and above. But in your specific case you wouldn't even need to care about fighters, since you use springblossom and M6 wings, just issue them to deal with the big preys and any kamikaze-ing enemy fighters would vaporize under flak and PSSC automatically.

Personally I never trusted the emergency jump, those respawning Qs in Xenon sector taught me that. In TC some light M2 would be killed in ~10s (in AP, taking hull damage) by a well-armed Q, so either I set the jump threshold at 90%, or it'd be too late anyway. Fleet control in X3 is really just menu diving, somebody complained about it another day but hey, you can't put starcraft and crysis into one game and hope both the RTS and FPS part work. So much could go wrong with capital ship combat, like, the one that's having its butt toward the enemy would get crushed in no time, so I'd just be anticlimactic and sit there watching the sector map. Or, since you're flying a hyperion, you can zip through the sector going from front line to front line with a docked kestrel or something. I only trust autopilot with ships that have high turning rates.

Black_hole_suN · Post by **Black_hole_suN** » Sun, 17. Jan 16, 15:07

So, I have installed AP again so that I could retest the commands again and be sure that all I say is correct...

Cursed Ghost wrote:
Wing Attack fighters and capitals are found in the pop-up menu when you select an enemy ship...
No there no those command are only available when the ships are not grouped in to a wing here are the commands that are available when ships are grouped in to awing

http://s14.postimg.org/b0qhm0nsx/untitled.png

Which as you can imagine is extremely frustrating and renders the whole concept of wings completely redundant since the necessary commands are missing from the command menu

Sorry about this false info.. Attack Fighters and Attack Capitals do not exist in the popup menu or in the wing command console...

but still, I do not recommend using these commands because once you used it on your ship, it will only look for fighters/capital ships within 10KM of its initial position.. if it cannot find any suitable target it will attack ANY enemy even if that enemy is not the one you wanted it to attack..

In the event that it could successfully detect a suitable target and destroyed it, it will once again check a 10KM area around itself...

once it cannot detect anything, the ship will go Idle until an enemy ship of any kind enters its range.. (I dont know how large is this range, possibly another 10km)

Use "Attack..." command instead or use "Wing - Attack -----> Wing Color" command found in the popup menu when you select a ship while atleast one wing is present in the sector

I assume judging by your command that you have never actually used the scout for enemies command well it’s actually quiet helpful.

Here is a basic rundown of what the command does ships running the command will move to the centre of the sector and go in to stand by mode until an enemy ship appears the ship will then move to intercept that enemy ship and any other enemies in the sector until there are none left at which time it will go back to the centre of the sector and go back in to stand by mode until more enemies appear

what makes this command helpful though is that unlike say the patrol sector command the enemy ships don’t have to be visible on radar all the enemy has to do is simply enter the sector and the ships running that command will know they are there and will attack

I actually used this one quite a bit in TC to defend enduring light from the continuous attacks by khaak fighters trouble is this command only runs on single ships which makes it ineffective for dealing with anything other then fighters because you cant bring combined firepower down on stronger targets which is why it would be nice if this command worked for wings of ships because then groups of ships running this command could effectively guard sectors against any target because the whole wing will focus fire stronger targets

One example of where this could help is in sectors like Grand Exchange where the computer frequently spawns Xenon J’s it would be nice to be able to group a half dozen capital ships together and have them focus fire the J and kill it before it can kill my ships

What you are describing here is "Defend Sector" instead of "Scout for Enemies"

Scout for Enemies can only be found in an M5 with any/or a combination of Patrol Command Software, Fight Command Software, Explorer Command Software and Navigational Command Software (I did not check for sure whether which of these softwares enables the command).. no other ship class can have this command... and this command does not exist in a wing of M5s

It works like a normal patrol but instead of chasing all hostiles, your scout ship will stop and send you a message with a warning beep that an enemy ship is spotted in the sector. the M5 will not move until it is destroyed or all enemy ships are destroyed

PS. "Patrol..." command for wings exist.. you only have to install a Patrol Command Software in any/all members of the wing

proof: http://imgur.com/vPiiSuw

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fleet and wing command question

fleet and wing command question