A couple of questions about fleets....

[PanzersEast]

I'm close to a purchase, however I need to know a couple of things. How do fleets work and how does the strategic control of them work? I was also wondering can you free roam with your fleets looking for targets of opportunity? What is your opinion of how the fleet ops works...

I'm a former X3 player and am looking for something more militaristic...

Thanks in advance....

[Dragonlead]

My experience has been that fleet control can be fairly unwieldy. The AI for each ship class tends to override specific commands to any particular ship. For example, Frigates are assigned an anti-fighter role. Therefore they tend to go streaking off after any fighter group that comes in range, even if you specifically want to hold them back for a solid close-in defense. This tends to result in them dying very quickly in any mission. (It also provides a pretty nice cheat to the system). Want to take away an enemy's anti-fighter screen - launch a four ship at the task force in question (load out is irrelevant), and then when the frigates start to chase them down, just give the fighters an RTB command. They will follow them all the way in, where your waiting fleet can easily annihilate them. Follwed up with a massive attack/fighter strike of your own, you can easily overwhelm just about anything.
The real trick is to try and keep your ships relatively close together, so they can engage targets simultaneously. If they have gotten very spread out over the course of a mission, you can get them back together in the map screen prior to starting the next mission (assuming you are in command).
Also, you can free roam, but you have to make sure you send your other ships ahead of your own, they aren't real good about following you from one sector to another.
There's more to this, but the post is starting to get long. Hope it helped.

V/R

[PanzersEast]

Yes, thanks for the reply.  I guess in general do you feel like your in total command and is encounters with the enemy dynamic?  

[Dragonlead]

PE,

90% of the time the answer is yes to your first question. And the answer is definitely yes to the second. I will often play the "same" mission 3 or 4 times until I get an outcome I like.

V/R

[Kuokkanen]

You'll get idea of whole game by downloading and playing demo (Starshatter 3.9.4). Graphics and some of audio are outdated, but gameplay and fleet control match closely or even of newest commercial release of Starshatter 5.0 (also known as Gathering Storm). There are five training missions and on last of them player gets to play with carrier and her escort fleet. Only thing to blow up on it is unarmed freighter, but you could create some more serious scenarios with built-in mission editor. Actually I don't remember is mission editor functional in that version. If it isn't, look for Starshatter 3.7.6.

http://www.starshatter.com/downloads.htm

[PanzersEast]

Thanks for the feedback..... I'll download the demo tonight.  Sounds like a purchase to me from what I am hearing.....

thanks again

PE

[Gordon]

Actually I don't remember is mission editor functional in that version. If it isn't, look for Starshatter 3.7.6.

Yes it (3.9.4 mission editor) is functional, you can create your own missions with the editor and run them in .def format only, you can not enable mods in the demo (.dat format), that part is disabled but player written missions will run just fine (less for the bugs of course [;)]). You can even load those missions in the MP part of the game and have your friends join in the fun online.

[PanzersEast]

I played the demo and liked it... however, seeing little activity on the forum and no word or mention of a patch etc.... I'm a little leary of a purchase. I'm not seeing much from the devs. With Medival II almost here, not sure I want to commit by what I am seeing here. I like the way it played with the fleet options etc..... and it seems to fit what I am looking for.... just too quiet and no mods to mention.....


PE

[Adonnay]

There are some mods out there... but they were all posted on a site called StarshatterCentral which, sadly, has gone down without further notice. You can find most (if not all) of them on a P2P tool called Grouper. Ask TurgotZ for further help

I can only say that I bought SS 4.5 quite a while ago and if you're interested in modding yourself it's definately worth the money.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: Adonnay

I can only say that I bought SS 4.5 quite a while ago and if you're interested in modding yourself it's definately worth the money.

I recommend to get Starshatter 5.0 (Gathering Storm) instead 4.0-4.5 (Ultimate Space Combat). Both have same dynamic campaigns and features, but 5.0 has bit better graphics and radio chatter. Not enough for all old players to spend their little money, but highly recommended for new ones.

[Adonnay]

Of course! I didn't mean to get 4.5 instead of 5.0, I just wanted to say that I was very happy with the older version already, so you can expect the new version to be even better (I still don't own 5.0).