Wing and Fleet Commands question

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Cursed Ghost
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Wing and Fleet Commands question

Post by Cursed Ghost » Mon, 21. Mar 16, 21:03

Hi all

I’m curious what precisely is the point of the Wing and Fleet commands, because from my point of view they are completely useless, for example say I want to group a bunch of Griffins together to deal with fighter swarms, currently there is no way to command grouped ships to do that, if I want to do that I need to designate one ship as the leader and then tell all the other ships to attack the leaders target which entirely defeats the whole purposes of the exercise.

I though the idea of the wing and fleet commands was to eliminate this kind of messing about so that I can just group ships together issue one command and then have the whole group carry out that command so in this case that would be Attack Fighters

Why when I group ships are then no commands to tell that group what to class of target to attack aka

Attack Fighters
Attack ( M6 )
Attack ( M7 )
Attack ( M8 )
Attack ( M1/M2 )
Attack Missiles
Protect From Missiles …

This seems like pretty necessary functionality if you are going to be conducting fleet battles.

For example we all know that m5s have little in the way of combat utility as they are simply to lightly armored and to lightly armed but what they are is extremely fast which makes a group of m5s perfect for the job of protecting ships from missiles as they could intercept and destroy missiles before they hit there intended target by grouping them together into a wing and having that wing run the Protect <target> From Missiles command.

conversely you could simply have them run the Attack Missiles command which would instruct them to intercept and shoot down all missiles that are fired against any player ship.

For ships like the Hyperion that can dock fighter this would give the docking ports some use other then for salvaging captured fighters because you could have a docked ship run the protect me from missiles command which would instruct them to take off and shoot down missiles each time missile attacks are detected and then dock back on board ones the threat is eliminated to stop the ship getting blown up similar to the way fighters on a carrier will take off when the carrier comes under attack and then dock again when the threat has been dealt with.

does anyone know if there are any guides that detail] how wing and fleet commands work because i just cant get this stuff working and there seems to be very little information on the subject, has anyone ever gotten these to work in some semi intelligent way ?

fireanddream
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Post by fireanddream » Tue, 22. Mar 16, 00:41

They can't. If it's m5 we are talking about then they will attack missiles with their IRE or PAC in the best case but missiles that hurt, like shadow and tomahawk don't care about those attack. Hell they can penetrate PSG head on.

ancienthighway
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Post by ancienthighway » Tue, 22. Mar 16, 07:22

It's no secret that fleet and wing commands are "broken", or maybe more accurately described as incomplete in the player's eye. The most recent thread on wings is http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... sc&start=0 Somewhere deep in the bowels of this section is one person's attempt to make sense of fleet actions. A search should find it.

I would never put a number of M7s that carry fighters in a wing together. Just to think of the (air) space control off six Griffin Sentinels with nine fighters each makes me start sending replacement fighters. I cringe at the thought of six Panther Raiders or Ariadnes with their 20 and 24 fighters. On top of that, you want them all to attack a single class of ships, one at a time, ignoring more pressing threats. Those big ships will spend more time avoiding collision than they do putting rounds on target.

If you play vanilla, you have to figure out how best to use the wing and fleet commands considering their limitations. Don't forget carrier commands and how they fit into the mix, too. The above linked thread talks about some ways of working with wings.

Modded gives you more options. CODEA is designed primarily for carrier/fighter actions. You can set groups of fighters to launch and attack at different ranges. You can create a recon group of M5s to maintain their position, normally in 6 directions, at the edge of triplex scanner range. You can forbid fighters from attacking small, big, or huge targets, or give them permission to do so. Going beyond fighters, you can attach destroyers, frigates, corvettes, other carriers, other carriers groups, and resupply tenders to the command carrier, any ship that can dock fighters, and instruct missile frigate to fire missiles from a distance, which ships participate in a major offensive. It still doesn't do your dream commands of attacking a specific class of ship, but it's much better than vanilla. A lot of the minutia is handled by CODEA allowing you to focus on the battle and directing carrier groups as needed.

Cursed Ghost
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Post by Cursed Ghost » Fri, 25. Mar 16, 14:03

I would never put a number of M7s that carry fighters in a wing together. Just to think of the (air) space control off six Griffin Sentinels with nine fighters each makes me start sending replacement fighters. I cringe at the thought of six Panther Raiders or Ariadnes with their 20 and 24 fighters. On top of that, you want them all to attack a single class of ships, one at a time, ignoring more pressing threats. Those big ships will spend more time avoiding collision than they do putting rounds on target.

If you play vanilla, you have to figure out how best to use the wing and fleet commands considering their limitations. Don't forget carrier commands and how they fit into the mix, too. The above linked thread talks about some ways of working with wings.
figuring out how best to make used of the wing and fleet commands given there limitations is more or less what I'm trying to do, hence the question because i wanted to see if maybe I was missing something.

With regards to placing M7s that carry fighters in a group together, this is more of an experiment than anything else because in the case of Griffins it is necessary due to there lack of fire power, as griffons where designed as drone launchers they weren't given heavy guns, the problem however is they weren't given the drone launching ability either which leaves them at something of a disadvantage, to be honest the griffon is closer to an m6+ then it is an m7 essentially its just the argon version of the Hyperion as such against even m6s the griffons struggles because flak doesn't do enough damage against m6s stronger hulls particularly true if its an m6+ and there turn rate is to low as well.

Given enough time yes it will eventual kill the m6 but not before the m6 has chewed through the Griffons shields, adding CIGs helps but the issue there is the computer is a bit of a moron and try's to shoot the fighter with the CIGs instead of using the flak, so its something of a loose loose all round, about the best way i have found around this is to set 2 turret positions to always use flak and let the other 2 switch between flak and CIGs.

As for trying to take on bigger targets forget it I've watched a griffon try and fight a Q 1 on 1 and the griffin doesn't stand a chance i just doesn't carry enough firepower, now a griffon armed with plasma beams in its turrets would make for a much fairer fight, there not as powerful as say IBLs no and the computer doesn't use them as efficiently as the player does, but what they lack in power they make up for in accuracy making them a much better option than CIGs under computer control.

under player control of course this is all largely academic as a griffin under player control can take down even M2s if you use typhoon/hornet spam.

Against a carriers fighter wing however a half dozen griffins working together armed entirely with flak is devastatingly effective you just have to make sure to keep them away from bigger targets.

Ultimately the Griffin and indeed all the M7Cs need reworking, if the griffon isn't going to get it's drone launching ability then it needs to be given heavy guns and it need it's missing turrets and main guns back, and then it needs its power plant upgrading to accommodate the heavy guns, along with every other m7 that has an underpowered power plan like the Tiger.

I get your point about busy air space causing collision issues which is why i though griffins would be best for this because they are a lot smaller and have far less fighters so this is less of a problem i guess it would require a bit of experimentation to figure out the maximum number of fully loaded griffins you could have in a group before collisions became an issue I'm thinking if I'm going to have them equipped with fighters i might limit it to 3 griffons but if it was the griffons on there owe then 6 to 12 would probably work ok as griffins are small for frigates.

I wouldn't recommend trying that with bigger m7s like Panther though because as you say that is just asking for trouble not least for the fact that the ships are simply to big for there own good i don't know who though it was a good idea to make m7s as big as an m2 but who ever it was needs to get a clue.

With regards to MODs i generally don't bother because its my belief that if something isn't working right then Ego should fix it themselves it shouldn't be up to the community to fix there mistakes and incomplete work, if ego doesn't have the expertise to fix it then they should probably seek help from the community the same way they did when it came to improving the OOS combat mechanics.

having said this its certainly something worth looking at though, but before i do i wanted to try and get a handle on how this stuff actually works as its not something I've ever bothered with before because the mechanics to support this simply hadn't developed enough to make it feesable and by the looks of thing that is still the case.

Evidently there are still a number of issues that need to be overcome before fleet action and indeed wings are really viable option, unless you are using mods.

shanrak
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Post by shanrak » Fri, 25. Mar 16, 15:09

You shouldn't be comparing a griffon to a m7 anyway.

A griffon is the size of a m6, its basically a m6 except it can't dock at normal stations but instead can hold 9 ships and has a heck lot more shielding/firepower.

The griffon is the perfect carrier support to use to back up your bigger M2s.
1. Its small so less likely to be hit from friendly fire
2. It can put flak all around and CiG in main guns/front turret to handle everything M6 and smaller.
3. It can deploy 9 fighters of any type and has a big enough cargo bay to release a ton of missiles or drones.

If the griffon got heavy guns it would become way OP(especially in player hands) due to its size.

I've never seen a griffon have trouble handling another m6, though yes they struggle against Qs but then so does every other M6 in the game.

I would ditch my hyperion in a heart beat for the griffon if it could dock at normal stations :3

Even as is, I probably spend a good 30% of my time in one.

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