Any advantage to being in a fleet?

[Rafkin]

Is a 5 ship fleet any more effective than 5 single ships in combat?

I'm having a terrible time with fleets. I'd like have my Escorts in a fleet but then also have them automated to escort ships when they don't have any other fleet command but putting them in a fleet means they just sit there doing nothing.

[BTAxis]

If the fleet has an admiral, every ship in the fleet benefits from the admiral's bonuses.

If you want an escort to be in a fleet, and you also want a free roaming automated escort, build two escorts.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The point with the fleets us so you can have multiple ships intercept an enemy attack.

Escorts is mainly to defend against raids and pirates and not meant to defeat anyone, mainly to occupy an enemy until an intercepting fleet can come and defeat the opponent. A station being raided by an enemy or pirates can be significantly helped when one or two escorting ships join in the defense and keep the raiding force occupied long enough for reinforcement to appear.

Fleets is about guarding important systems or built for long range interceptions. You are not suppose to use fleets for patrol duties.

I usually station my fleets away from the primary colony in a system... usually around a fuel station if there is one. The reason is that if an invasion comes the fleet will always use their jump engines to engage and not slowboat to the other side of the planet.

It is important to set up your fleets home base, their operational range and so on. I also don't like to have too many ships in each fleet so I can specialize them into task-forces. Most of my fleets are generally on standby in manual mode with the "do not engage" set. It is mostly my anti raid fleets that is set on full auto or any raiding fleets I don't want to micro manage.

For individual ships you also have Auto Escort, Guard, Patrol and Raid options as well as fully Automate. So you can really tailor your ships to certain roles within your empire.