Edit: I use the word fleet here to designate multiple ships, not the in-game sub-grouping called fleet.
My problem is quite simple and I think everyone with a couple ships experienced: AI autopilot goes wonkey from time to time and also as fleets grow larger it gets more tedious to manually direct every ship, especially when you are timed (like trying to claim a ship when a capital ship is coming for you).
So I would like to know what are your best tips to make the experience as smooth as possible.
Personnaly my main rule is to have all ships in the fleet with similar max speed: an M5 following a capital ship will fail to adapt its speed and dance around the capital ship, eventually crashing on it. The corollary is that if I want slower or faster ships, I need another ship to dock them in (it also allows to designate a base which is handy to get everyone aboard in a couple clicks). Using centaur, hades and helios for exemple works pretty well.
I would also like to know what does the fleet commander ship actually do, I've been trying to find how to use that to minimize clicks but in practice I have not found a better tool than the command to transmit the order to all ships in the fleet, but then it only allows to broadcast basic orders. Not sure about wingmen, looks like it's a way to select all wingmen ships though just like I can select all ships in a fleet.
[AP] How to best organize fleets?
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RAVEN.myst
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Not a comprehensive reply (I want to get back to my current game 
) but a few quick thoughts:
- I like wingmen (as distinct from "wings") because: you can give them two commands via hotkey ("Attack my target" and "Protect me", which covers the most important aspects while in a furball); and, because you can very easily add or remove ships from wingman status - just flip the flag in a ship's command console. Some players don't like wingmen, but I consistently get good results with them, especially in the early to mid game. I use them with fighters (usually minimum of a strong M4 such as the Solano), and lately I've used it with corvettes too (note: you may need to assign M6s to a wing before the "wingman yes/no" option becomes available - at least, it's this way in X3TC, and in my current game I don't have any M6s so I can't check), also to pretty good effect, ganging up on Carracks and the like from time to time (even Qs, but these can be tricky!)
- I also eventually use wings (as in the colour-coded organisational units.) These tend to be for the later game with me, and are defined by ship type and wing function - so, for example, I typically have a "personal guard" or main fighter wing that lives on my personal carrier frigate with me; I may have a wing dedicated to capital-busting, so it might be made up of M8s or Aldrin fighters loaded with MAMLs; I might have a medium/heavy support wing consisting of M6s or M6+s (I love Skirons for this job - fun, too, though if you're credit-conscious, you'll get better bang for buck with a capital ship.)
- I think you'll find most players tend to primarily use the "follow..." or "protect..." or "attack target of..." commands, rather than mucking about with fleet commands (just a suspicion on my part, mind you.) I do mean to explore fleet commands in more depth, but I find that the degree of abstraction can sometimes hinder rather than help (this can also sometimes be true with wings - it's is a royal ball-ache to issue commands to individual ships in the wing, even something as simple as change that ship's turret command or MDM command - unfortunately, accessing any ship in a wing brings up the wing command menu rather than that specific ship's, which I think is a design flaw.) Thus, for instance, while I enjoy using groups of M8s, I don't use them in a wing if I intend to use their barrage command (which is a given!), but instead I designate one as leader and the rest to follow it (or attack its target, if I'm expecting to have my hands particularly full.)
If I think of anything else that's worth mentioning, I'll add it in. Meanwhile, happy hunting!
Oh, a thought on escorts: the ships escorting a leader ought to be somewhat faster than the lead ship: the reason is that often in a fight, ships moving around and such end up scattered somewhat - if the following ships are slower, or even the same speed as the lead, they then end up lagging behind and can never make up the distance unless you stop the lead ship and make it wait. However, as you rightly pointed out, too much speed disparity causes its own problems... (I generally don't use M5s in my multi-ship engagements - I find the attrition rate unacceptable. I used to sometimes use carriers-full of Valkyries, a long time ago, but found that in-sector I was losing too many, and an unacceptable proportion of those was kamikaze style - so I used them OoS, with far lower casualties, but ultimately still a PitA to keep replacing ships.)
) but a few quick thoughts:- I like wingmen (as distinct from "wings") because: you can give them two commands via hotkey ("Attack my target" and "Protect me", which covers the most important aspects while in a furball); and, because you can very easily add or remove ships from wingman status - just flip the flag in a ship's command console. Some players don't like wingmen, but I consistently get good results with them, especially in the early to mid game. I use them with fighters (usually minimum of a strong M4 such as the Solano), and lately I've used it with corvettes too (note: you may need to assign M6s to a wing before the "wingman yes/no" option becomes available - at least, it's this way in X3TC, and in my current game I don't have any M6s so I can't check), also to pretty good effect, ganging up on Carracks and the like from time to time (even Qs, but these can be tricky!)
- I also eventually use wings (as in the colour-coded organisational units.) These tend to be for the later game with me, and are defined by ship type and wing function - so, for example, I typically have a "personal guard" or main fighter wing that lives on my personal carrier frigate with me; I may have a wing dedicated to capital-busting, so it might be made up of M8s or Aldrin fighters loaded with MAMLs; I might have a medium/heavy support wing consisting of M6s or M6+s (I love Skirons for this job - fun, too, though if you're credit-conscious, you'll get better bang for buck with a capital ship.)
- I think you'll find most players tend to primarily use the "follow..." or "protect..." or "attack target of..." commands, rather than mucking about with fleet commands (just a suspicion on my part, mind you.) I do mean to explore fleet commands in more depth, but I find that the degree of abstraction can sometimes hinder rather than help (this can also sometimes be true with wings - it's is a royal ball-ache to issue commands to individual ships in the wing, even something as simple as change that ship's turret command or MDM command - unfortunately, accessing any ship in a wing brings up the wing command menu rather than that specific ship's, which I think is a design flaw.) Thus, for instance, while I enjoy using groups of M8s, I don't use them in a wing if I intend to use their barrage command (which is a given!), but instead I designate one as leader and the rest to follow it (or attack its target, if I'm expecting to have my hands particularly full.)
If I think of anything else that's worth mentioning, I'll add it in. Meanwhile, happy hunting!
Oh, a thought on escorts: the ships escorting a leader ought to be somewhat faster than the lead ship: the reason is that often in a fight, ships moving around and such end up scattered somewhat - if the following ships are slower, or even the same speed as the lead, they then end up lagging behind and can never make up the distance unless you stop the lead ship and make it wait. However, as you rightly pointed out, too much speed disparity causes its own problems... (I generally don't use M5s in my multi-ship engagements - I find the attrition rate unacceptable. I used to sometimes use carriers-full of Valkyries, a long time ago, but found that in-sector I was losing too many, and an unacceptable proportion of those was kamikaze style - so I used them OoS, with far lower casualties, but ultimately still a PitA to keep replacing ships.)
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Boron passenger: "You must hurry - my testicles are drying out!"
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Born on Lave, raised on Freeport 7...
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The Write Stuff
There are a couple of useful tricks. Yes, too large of a speed gap can be problematic, but you'll want to daisy chain ships of different speeds. So you start with your Destroyer. Assuming it's something fast like a Python, then you want to have some ships escorting it, something like Panthers or Tigers which are going to be a bit faster. Then you can have those escorted by M6's which are again a bit faster. And then M3's that are faster still, and either M4's or M5's. Then the speed differences aren't quite so massive between each successive ship type and the AI seems to respond a bit better I've noticed. (Occasionally stuff will just crash into each other but mostly they won't have such a difference in speed to insta-gib the smaller ship.
Second, the actual wing command can be useful, if for example you put one ship in the wing, and then set the rest of the ships to escort it, usually with the protect... command. Then when you send the 'wing' leader in, the escorting ships follow without the weirdness of the wing trying to organize itself.
If you're going to use M5's on their own, you want something Terran, I'm partial to the Rapier. Load them up with Poltergeists, and no guns. They'll get into missile range and turn into a poor man's M7M. It's actually hilarious to watch them dissolve a Xenon migration on their own.
Second, the actual wing command can be useful, if for example you put one ship in the wing, and then set the rest of the ships to escort it, usually with the protect... command. Then when you send the 'wing' leader in, the escorting ships follow without the weirdness of the wing trying to organize itself.
If you're going to use M5's on their own, you want something Terran, I'm partial to the Rapier. Load them up with Poltergeists, and no guns. They'll get into missile range and turn into a poor man's M7M. It's actually hilarious to watch them dissolve a Xenon migration on their own.
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The Tale of Ea't s'Quid Completed
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain
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Black_hole_suN
- Posts: 362
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There are many different ways, so i'll just tell you how I organize my fleet. My playstyle is something like a "BattleBall" where the fleet move as one, in most cases no ships should fight on their own.
I organize my fighters to wings and put them in a carrier. To assign orders, I usually use the "Wings:Attack" command from the popup menu. "Protect.." or "Wings:Protect me" to call them back if they are too far away from the main body of the fleet. No capital ships or M6 ships are assigned to a wing because they are just too slow to organize.
fast M7 and M6 ships are assigned as "Wingmen" and are controlled by wingmen hotkeys. These ships are used as fast response teams against targets that are threatening to flank my fleet. These ships are also durable enough that I could leave them to fight an isolated capital ship on their own.
M2 and some M7 must be manually ordered one by one so I dont bring more of these ships than necessary. I usually just order them to "Move to position" or "Move to coordinates" to move them to where the heaviest concentration of enemies are. Their turrets will kill things in their path so an appropriate turret command with correct settings should be used. You dont really need to give orders often (mostly just to change their direction). In most of my battles I could do away with just ordering M2s twice/thrice and M7s less that 10 orders in a 30 minute battle. you must be careful with M7s though, since they are faster they have a tendency to outpace M2s.
as you can see, my most used commands are "Attack" to attack a specific target, "Protect" to call the ships back and "Move" to maneuver my slow capital ships. Fancy commands like "Attack nearest of", "Attack target of", "Attack all" (eew, i hate this order), etc are seldom used at all. Also no fancy set up like giving capital ships escorts and giving the escorts their own escorts. (except in special situations like moving a capital ship to destroy a Xenon K that just entered the sector) Escorts tend to mess up the path of the ship they are escorting. and they all tend to drift away chasing something if you are not keeping an eye at them.
another very useful command is "Retreat". What it does is it lets you select a station or a location in the sector map for your ship to retreat to. The unique feature of this command is that ship running it will IGNORE almost all attacks and flies to its designated position/ship/station in a straight line. If the ship on "Retreat" is attacked persistently it will twist and turn but will never stop moving towards its target. In some occasions, I use this command as an alternative to “Move to Position”. This will guarantee that my ship will move to that location without getting intercepted by a lone ship.
I organize my fighters to wings and put them in a carrier. To assign orders, I usually use the "Wings:Attack" command from the popup menu. "Protect.." or "Wings:Protect me" to call them back if they are too far away from the main body of the fleet. No capital ships or M6 ships are assigned to a wing because they are just too slow to organize.
fast M7 and M6 ships are assigned as "Wingmen" and are controlled by wingmen hotkeys. These ships are used as fast response teams against targets that are threatening to flank my fleet. These ships are also durable enough that I could leave them to fight an isolated capital ship on their own.
M2 and some M7 must be manually ordered one by one so I dont bring more of these ships than necessary. I usually just order them to "Move to position" or "Move to coordinates" to move them to where the heaviest concentration of enemies are. Their turrets will kill things in their path so an appropriate turret command with correct settings should be used. You dont really need to give orders often (mostly just to change their direction). In most of my battles I could do away with just ordering M2s twice/thrice and M7s less that 10 orders in a 30 minute battle. you must be careful with M7s though, since they are faster they have a tendency to outpace M2s.
as you can see, my most used commands are "Attack" to attack a specific target, "Protect" to call the ships back and "Move" to maneuver my slow capital ships. Fancy commands like "Attack nearest of", "Attack target of", "Attack all" (eew, i hate this order), etc are seldom used at all. Also no fancy set up like giving capital ships escorts and giving the escorts their own escorts. (except in special situations like moving a capital ship to destroy a Xenon K that just entered the sector) Escorts tend to mess up the path of the ship they are escorting. and they all tend to drift away chasing something if you are not keeping an eye at them.
another very useful command is "Retreat". What it does is it lets you select a station or a location in the sector map for your ship to retreat to. The unique feature of this command is that ship running it will IGNORE almost all attacks and flies to its designated position/ship/station in a straight line. If the ship on "Retreat" is attacked persistently it will twist and turn but will never stop moving towards its target. In some occasions, I use this command as an alternative to “Move to Position”. This will guarantee that my ship will move to that location without getting intercepted by a lone ship.