Matrix Games Forums

To start with: what's the purpose of "Fleet Tactical Overrides" in the fleet tactics? Aren't the fleet tactical settings already supposed to override the fleet's ships tactical settings?

It is especially confusing because there are duplicate settings found in both sections ("Fleet tactical settings" and "Fleet Ships Tactical Overrides"). For instance, "Engagement Range" and "Retreat When" are present in both.

Even more confusing: in the Fleet Tactical Settings, there's an "Attack Stance" setting. And in the "Fleet Ships Tactical Overrides", there are two "Attack Stance": one for "Weaker Targets", and one for "Stronger Targets". So what are the interaction between these three options?

Can anybody shed light on how it all work?

Here is what I make of it:
Think of it this way: every ship in your fleet has its own set of tactics which you can set exactly the same way but per ship.
If you want every ship in the fleet to use its own tactics, e.g. how reckless to attack a target and when to attempt to escape, then you leave it on "Use Ship tactics instead of Fleet". However, if you want uniform tactics for the ships in your fleet, you can override the individual ship tactics and give every ship in the fleet the same set of tactics via the "Tactical Overrides" dialog.

Fleet tactics apply to fleet-to-fleet engagements, i.e. how the fleet behaves as a unit. The ship tactics define how the individual ships deal with their individual targets as part of the fleet engagment. So, for example, the fleet may aggressively jump close to the enemy fleet while its torpedo attack ships attack stronger ships cautiously and weaker aggressively, whereas the deathray mounted shock ships always go all-in.