Fleet Destinations Lesson Learned

[Euler]

Just thought I would share a tip I learned in my most recent game. This is just my second complete game, so I am still pretty new. Whenever I saw the AI moving aggressively toward one of my starbases, I would send a fleet in to defend it. However, if the starbase was destroyed before the fleet got there, the fleet stopped dead in its tracks instead of going in to fight the attacking fleet! Because the destination that the fleet had was removed from play. In the meantime, the attacking fleet continues to invade my world and I have no defending fleets coming to the rescue.

This little lesson cost me several worlds until I realize what was happening. Lesson learned: set the destination to the planet, or the enemy fleet, not the friendly base, so that your fleet will continue to move even after the base has been destroyed. Seems obvious to me now, but it frustrated me until I learned what was happening.

[Franky007]

Another thing about fleet:
I get a message like detected Fleet 1 vectoring toward mine xyz.
I have a fleet in defense posture in the target system.
Why my fleet wait until the enemy fleet arrive and destroy the mine?
It could at least move at the mine to defend it before the attacking fleet arrive !

[Spidey]

Fleets don't tend to be proactive but you can reduce the issue by giving them warp drives with short warm-up durations. This is actually one very good reason to invest in multiple kinds of ships for offensive and defensive purposes. Defensive ships get the fast drives with slow warp speed (which still takes them anywhere in the system almost instantly) while offensive ships get the slower drives with faster warp speed. This way you have mobile garrison forces and strike forces that don't take forever to get to their target several sectors away.

[Deathball]

Thats odd, whenever I use defensive fleet postures and find an enemy fleet on an attack vector the fleet will move to intercept. Though I haven't been able to test this in the most recent version so maybe its broken?