Adventures in wing command

[Black_hole_suN]

I find that wings and carriers don't work so well. But then I also don't use the normal wing command method. I have one 'Wing Leader' which is in a wing group. Then the rest of the 'wing' is ordered to protect that leader or attack their target. Makes controlling them much, much easier.

This probably depends on your play style and how you use your ships. I tried doing the "Wing Leaders + followers" method like you have but I found more downsides on this method. If the Wing Leader dies (and they are almost always the first one to die) suddenly you have a chunk of your army that you cant control easily. Then, you have a some fighters not participating in the initial attack because they are running a Protect command. And, docking / retreating is an issue because the followers cant dock unless the Wing Leader docks first. They then spend their time zooming around your ship potentially colliding with it. Retreating by jumping away is also slow because follower ships cant jump until the leader jumps. Lastly, setting up takes a long time.

And probably erases the manually crafted "groups" that the others have described.

jlehtone highlights another weakness of this method. you are literally one wrong command from ruining your entire set up.

Wing Leader + Follower might work better than Wings if you have a fewer ships to control.

To Timsup2nothin

Have you tried using Personal Wingmen Hotkeys? I use "Wingmen: Attack Target" hotkey to order my ships to attack specific targets then use "Wingmen: Protect me" hotkey to call them back so they wont stray away chasing enemies. This is similar on how i use my Wings, use "Attack" to attack ships and "Protect me" to call them back. Wingmen Hotkeys give me some level of control that could be found when using Wings while being able to easily order the ships individually if needed. The downside is you can only control one group with this method

[jlehtone]

If the Wing Leader dies (and they are almost always the first one to die) suddenly you have a chunk of your army that you cant control easily.

In X3R, when the leader of formation did die, one (random?) escort did inherit the leadership. Former leader's command was started on it (IIRC), and the other members of the formation had their "my leader" updated.

For example, if you had:

Code: Select all

A: some command
B: protect A
C: protect A
D: attack target of A
E: attack target of A

A dies, C is promoted =>

Code: Select all

C: some command
B: protect C
D: attack target of C
E: attack target of C

Is that still true for X3TC/AP? I don't know.

If A was member of the Shadow Council Wing, will C get membership? I don't think so.

If the Group leaders are members of some Wing, and leadership inheritance exists, but does not include Wing membership, then death of a leader leaves a degraded Group and it is inconvenient (in the heat of a battle) to find the new leader and add it to Wing. (Gosh, this should be relatively easy to test, unless one of the Group users already knows ...)

[Alan Phipps]

Group responses tried and tested in action. In X3TC/AP if the group leader dies, one of the surviving escorts is automatically promoted to group leader with the previous leader's orders and the others transfer their current affiliated orders to that new leader. So all works well. You do have to quickly check from (one of) their orders which one is now leading the group as the given ship role/name may no longer apply.

One of the reasons that I did not like wings so much was that the appointed wing leadership kept changing to different wing members as you launched or after a game reload. I like my groups to have the slowest tankiest ship as the leader with faster escorts that quickly get into and keep formation. With a wing of mixed ship speeds (easily seen through hull damage even if with all the same ship type) you could suddenly find the fastest ship in the lead with the wing never quite managing to close up and ending up strung out in a line and attacking one by one. Not always, but sometimes.