Matrix Games Forums

Is it me, or is it impossible to give a fleet a default and permanent disposition. In assembling a large enough fleet to besiege a capital, I had a hell of a time keeping my ships away from the capital, in the same system, without them constantly engaging the defense batteries in small, easily defeatable groups. Apparently, my admirals believe in divide and conquer and enjoy using it to their own detriment.

Is there anyway to make ships default to engage only when attacked? I'm tired of issuing a move and all of a sudden the fleet is set to engage system targets.

This game is like cocaine!

ORIGINAL: karstenchu

Is it me, or is it impossible to give a fleet a default and permanent disposition. In assembling a large enough fleet to besiege a capital, I had a hell of a time keeping my ships away from the capital, in the same system, without them constantly engaging the defense batteries in small, easily defeatable groups. Apparently, my admirals believe in divide and conquer and enjoy using it to their own detriment.

Is there anyway to make ships default to engage only when attacked? I'm tired of issuing a move and all of a sudden the fleet is set to engage system targets.

This game is like cocaine!

I believe if you select the lead ship of your fleet and set the posture to engage only when attacked
the remaining ships of the fleet should follow that posture. In the bottom left corner where the
selection panel is (circled below), the top right-most button on the panel toggles through the orders of
"Engage system targets", "Engage nearby targets" and "Engage only when attacked".
Hope this works for you. Although you can also change the individual ships' posture setting
when you add it to the fleet.

Will it remain that way after I issue a move order? I have no problem telling the whole fleet to do the same thing, the only problem is that after issuing a move order, it goes back to "engage system targets." I think I basically just want to change the default posture to engage only when attacked.

Thanks for the screenshot explanation, though!

Then go into the options menu and you can select to have all your
ships set to "Engage only when attacked" automatically when they
are built. You still can set different options for certain ships
though (which I suggest you do for your system defense vessels).

The "First assemble when this percentage of fleet dispersed" option might be relevant here as well since it determines how spread out your fleet is likely to get. Also notice how in the screenshot the "Default Engagement Stances" are set per mission, every time your fleet engages in one of those missions its stance will be set to whatever you have set there afaik. As the default option for "Other" is "Engage system targets" that might be where your issue is.

Good analysis Aures!

One thing I do is make sure I don't put a bunch of small ships in a fleet. In fact, I basically just leave my esocrts and frigates out of fleets to handle the escort and defense duties.

I usually compose mine of:

1-2 Capital ships
8 Cruisers
8-10 Destroyers
4 Troop transports

This make-up, when you take full manual control of them, is sufficient to defeat most early to mid-game defenses. Later in the game I sometimes use two fleets to attack the same target, or just combine them into 1 big 40-45 ship fleet. If you keep them upgraded, they tend to do well.

One key thing is to make sure that all of your ships have exactly the same fuel capacity and hyperdrives. If you put 6 fuel cells on the capital ships, then make sure all of your other designs have 6 fuel cells. It seriously helps coordination when they can all go the same distance at the same speed.

It is not quite as simple as having the same fuel capacity on all ships. Even assuming they all have the same hyperdrives and reactor types (which means the hyperdrives will all use the same amount of fuel per distance covered) they will have different static energy requirements and different amounts of fuel used due to weapons, engines etc. A capital ship in a battle will tend to use a lot more fuel than a destroyer since it will have more weapons. Things get even more complicated if you throw energy collectors into the mix.

While all you say is true, it does help.

And since I put sufficient energy collectors on ALL ships, they don't burn up fuel while sitting around doing nothing.

What I do works out well for me.