Fleet management help

[Nilserich7]

Since it is unfortunately still quite empty here, I'll make the beginning.

I urgently need help to understand all the settings in fleet management, ship roles, strategy settings and templates. I see partly the same settings in at least 3 different menus. Additionally any overrides of anything. I have read the ingame tour and read Scott's guide. I still don't understand anything at all.

Regardless of whether it makes sense to use all of this or when to use it, I want to understand in detail how this works.

So, do you know of any other sources, besides the two mentioned, that can help me get started or can someone explain it to me directly in the thread?

Thanks in advance.

[Almora]

Some options do repeat in menus, but I know for fleets you can set a "fleet behavior" and have "ship behavior" and you can switch between the 2. Theres a setting called something like "use ship behavior" which you can switch to "use fleet behavior" (idr if those are the correct names) and it decides which behavior overrides the other. There are also basic fleet settings for the overall behavior, but they focus on different things

I don't know a lot, but I can try to help

[ioulaum]

Bring out your question about the fleet management so I can try to answer it.

The option is more or less self-explanatory, just need a bit experiment to figure out what they actually stands for.

For example, the engagement range setting has 5 options:

Do Not Engage - your civilian ship default, meaning hold fire under any circumstance including getting attacked.

Engage When Attacked - as it says, hold fire until getting attacked, idea for cloaking/jammer ship.

Nearby - Engage ship within weapon range, good for manual control, but it will ignore direct attack command out side of the engangement zone, use Move To instead

Same Location - Engage ship within range that do not require an hyper jump, suitable for attack defended area/installation, ship sometimes ignores direct command (i.e. capture) and go with the target they want.

Same System - Warship default setting, it's a bit painful when using this setting with manual control, ship often ignores direct command and jump out to attack other targets in the system.

[Nilserich7]

okay. When I sit down at the computer tonight, I'll write a longer post with more details.

[dunnjona]

I don't want to hijack the thread--but I think my question/issue is very related.

Not sure if this is a bug, a misunderstanding, or just the quirky behavior I need to learn:
I had a fleet set to manual, with a home base set as the mining station, which they are at. I left it with standing orders to guard the station. Fleet tactics were set to Same Location, and Neutral / Neutral. Also set to retreat at 50% greater enemy strength. This is how I saved the game.

After reload and doing a few other things I note that the mining station is under attack by pirates and check it out.
A single pirate frigate with a strength of ~250 is attacking the station. My manual fleet of 6 escorts having a total attack strength of ~500 is sitting right there doing nothing.

First question: do manual fleets ignore fleet tactics completely, and sit there dumb unless directly commanded to do something?

I selected the fleet and long-right clicked on the pirate to select Attack. For a moment the fleet window showed that it was set to attack, and then quickly reset to No Orders. Meanwhile the mining station is getting hammered. I repeated this attempt many times. It never took.

Next I set this fleet to Guard (no longer manual) and waited a bit. No change. The fleet never moved to defend the station or engage the pirate ship.

Finally I reset the fleet to Manual and tried attacking again and this time it worked!

Second question: why did it finally work?

What am I missing about how fleet commands and tactics work?
Was this perhaps a bug with the fleet that went away when I cycled the settings over to Guard and then back to Manual?
Something else?

Side note: it turned out the pirate ship is slightly faster than my ships; they could never quite catch up. Would that matter?

[ioulaum]

I don't want to hijack the thread--but I think my question/issue is very related.

Not sure if this is a bug, a misunderstanding, or just the quirky behavior I need to learn:
I had a fleet set to manual, with a home base set as the mining station, which they are at. I left it with standing orders to guard the station. Fleet tactics were set to Same Location, and Neutral / Neutral. Also set to retreat at 50% greater enemy strength. This is how I saved the game.

After reload and doing a few other things I note that the mining station is under attack by pirates and check it out.
A single pirate frigate with a strength of ~250 is attacking the station. My manual fleet of 6 escorts having a total attack strength of ~500 is sitting right there doing nothing.

First question: do manual fleets ignore fleet tactics completely, and sit there dumb unless directly commanded to do something?

I selected the fleet and long-right clicked on the pirate to select Attack. For a moment the fleet window showed that it was set to attack, and then quickly reset to No Orders. Meanwhile the mining station is getting hammered. I repeated this attempt many times. It never took.

Next I set this fleet to Guard (no longer manual) and waited a bit. No change. The fleet never moved to defend the station or engage the pirate ship.

Finally I reset the fleet to Manual and tried attacking again and this time it worked!

Second question: why did it finally work?

What am I missing about how fleet commands and tactics work?
Was this perhaps a bug with the fleet that went away when I cycled the settings over to Guard and then back to Manual?
Something else?

Side note: it turned out the pirate ship is slightly faster than my ships; they could never quite catch up. Would that matter?

I suspect the "attack" command ticked out means the distance is beyong "same location" definition, the "guard" command should kick in once the station is under attack. I would also suggest you to either set ships using fleet behavior or set ship's behavior individually. It could very well be that your individual ship (especially flagship) is set to "Nearby"

[Nilserich7]

I don't want to hijack the thread--but I think my question/issue is very related.

All good. After all, we are in the same situation.

I have to say, these things are still a mystery to me. I wanted to write things together, which I don't quite understand. I think it would be easier to write down what I understand. Because that's nothing.

In this regard, it might be helpful if there was a more detailed tour that described each button in detail. I guess that's what I need.

[SgtBootStrap]

Here is a TIP I found online and it seems to work "pretty good" for Fleets and Fleet Action selections.

In the Fleet Template creation screen "Add a New Fleet Type" and call it User-Manual Fleet.

This Fleet type will contain no ships (0's in all categories) and allow any Fleet to be set as User-Manual Fleet template just like the Default set.

Then that Template can be told to use any Fleet "action" type specified. It seems, IMHO, that Fleets Hold their Action types better than the standard Fleet templates. aka - Attack, Defend, Raid etc. whereas the default template Fleets often change Roles after a refuel or change location order is given.

Only draw back is the User-Manual Fleet. Fleet type has no "Auto Replenish" option like the others, so adding ships is totally Manual.

Please add some "Grains of Salt" to this Tip as it has not been in use all that long.