Assault Pods

[Xmudder]

I was reading the DW2 advanced guide, and I was wondering if there was an automation setting to prioritize assault pods on your auto designed ships? Or do you need to manually design them?

Another question would be is there a way to prioritize long range scanners on some ships?

I'm thinking something like the fighter bay and bombard weapons choices that were added to weapon and component focuses.

[Nightskies]

No, assault pods have to be manually placed, like long range scanners. Though the automation likes scanners and will probably use it a lot anyway, but not assault pods.

[Xmudder]

Sounds like I should include an assault transport or 2 in every formation.
Out of curiosity, why are there no escorts in the default formations?

[Nightskies]

Escorts are comparatively weak in almost all situations because they provide the least in the way of weaponry and durability for the required components to build a ship.

That's not to say that they're useless in battle- and there are circumstances where they are better than frigates (particularly when more cheap ships are preferable to higher performing ships)- but generally speaking, they're so far beneath frigates in fleet combat that automated fleets should forgo escorts entirely. Especially when using auto-designed ships.

I think it would be unwise to use a transport in every formation. They're slow and have poor weapon capability, but more importantly, are required to have a troop compartment. For ship-to-ship combat, that is not only completely worthless, but detrimental. An automated troop ship will try to fill that troop compartment with troops, taking up fuel and time of the attached fleet. That's on top of the maintenance and build cost of those troops. And it makes the destruction of that troop ship that much more costly, both in credit loss and in war weariness as troops are killed.

Instead, design a custom warship with assault pods and add that specific design to a fleet template. Make sure to update the other designs of the same Ship Role to ensure they don't retrofit into that assault pod equipped design while setting that design to not retrofit or to use a specific Ship Hull exclusively for that job, or just use an Escort Role for the job. I suggest going heavy on ion cannons or PD for it, and don't make it faster than the rest of the fleet.

I personally very much like a Light Cruiser assault ship for most races in fleets that I want some assault pods. They typically can equip lots of small weapons- namely ion cannons and PD- and have superior durability to smaller, more firepower-focused ships.

A fast variant instead armed with blasters is capable of being a Raid Fleet on its own! Yes, a fleet of one ship. Its glorious.

Also check your Empire Policies to ensure that they'll actually use the assault pods. Assuming no errors, that should do it!