Video: Using fleets is both useless and cringy...

[Ragnos28]

Hello everybody,

I am so disheartened I desperately trying to have meaningful fleet action in this game, but apparently this is not possible In my previous video, I have shown how fragile M ships are (even torpedo boats), now I have a demonstration of how derpy destroyers behave...plus the visual bugs

As the topic title says, using fleets is both useless and cringy... Plus, with the upcoming changes that will make dangerous zones affect ships OOS as well, that basicly will make it imposible for M ships to traverse sectors that contain them, will effectively remove M ships from combat fleets composition.
So, what I am to do...just use the Asgard, maybe add a Tokyo + fighter escort to deal with drones and S/M ships and whoopty doo...I will have a "fleet"
Like I said, I wish that I could use a proper fleet, in which all clases of ships would have a role, but that is not posible, unfortunately

As the saying goes...I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4M9RLRADLQ

[GCU Grey Area]

Would have gone better if you'd deployed fighters at the start of the fight to distract the I (i.e. while your destroyers were still on their initial approach) rather than keeping them in reserve for so long. After all, your forces did win in the end, but only when both fighters & destroyers had engaged the target together. Would also recommend adjusting the turret loadout of your capitals. 50/50 mix of TER L Beam & L Bolt is working well for me. An exclusively L Beam setup is nothing more than a pretty lightshow against an enemy capital.

[Aegir86]

I'm not gonna lie I laughed way more than I thought watching that. You basically captured the very essence of how stupid these battles become. Join the club we all have been here. Even the ones who try to continue to jerry rig their fleet setups and menu commands to avoid any confusion amongst their diaper wearing pilots.

2 big Egosoft thumbs up!!

[Ragnos28]

Would have gone better if you'd deployed fighters at the start of the fight to distract the I (i.e. while your destroyers were still on their initial approach) rather than keeping them in reserve for so long. After all, your forces did win in the end, but only when both fighters & destroyers had engaged the target together. Would also recommend adjusting the turret loadout of your capitals. 50/50 mix of TER L Beam & L Bolt is working well for me. An exclusively L Beam setup is nothing more than a pretty lightshow against an enemy capital.

Was not a matter of winning, the Asgard would have 2 shot the I. My problem was with the pathfinding of the destroyers, the unpleasant image of them "merging"...
Your recomandation for turret loadout of capitals is a sound one, but I use exclusively L Beam setup on my destroyers because the only thing I trust them to do is to engage S/M ships in the Asgard vicinity. Anything else is a recipe for disaster...you can't order them to atack a station cuz will "hug" it, you can't order them to atack capital's for the same reason, even if I send 6 of them to atack a K, given their famous "intelligence", there is a chance you will lose a destroyer. Plus, I am a firm believer that destroyers should do damage with their battery's not their turetts (I view them as self propelled artillery).

Anyway, the idea is that the game strongly encourage me to use exclusively the Asgard for large scale combat and I am not a fan of "jack of all trades" ships...but, given the state the game is atm (with no indication that it will change in the future)...my "fleet" will be Asgard+Tokyo+fighters and it is such a shame that the other clasess of ships are useless in a fleet...

[Ragnos28]

I'm not gonna lie I laughed way more than I thought watching that. You basically captured the very essence of how stupid these battles become. Join the club we all have been here. Even the ones who try to continue to jerry rig their fleet setups and menu commands to avoid any confusion amongst their diaper wearing pilots.

2 big Egosoft thumbs up!!

Meh...I am the kind of guy who watch BSG battle clips and thinks..."man, I wish I have something like this in X4"...and then I go in to the game and see my ships derping around in every way possible

[gorman2040]

I had issues with destroyers getting too close to stations as well.
I worked around by ordering destroyers to "fly to" a position near the station (but not in range of station's turrets) and then ordering them to attack.
It doesn't always work and you still have to watch them carefully as some will still try to get closer but it feels better than watching them getting destroyed by station defences.

It makes battle with overwhelming player fleet still interesting as you can try to limit your losses.

Another problem I faced is when a ship try to flee, it seems you cannot override this order for long before it is generated by the ship again.

Edit: Just watched the video and I would suggest making a separate destroyer fleet and maybe using coordinated attack (or "fly to" close to the enemy).
You could also play with the different formations. I personally like circle as it seem to give more space between ships thus avoiding collision or line of fire issues.
I would say that Xenon I was pretty smart to "dash" sideway of your destroyer group ! It's too bad the destroyer captains went fubar after that.

[Ragnos28]

I had issues with destroyers getting too close to stations as well.
I worked around by ordering destroyers to "fly to" a position near the station (but not in range of station's turrets) and then ordering them to attack.
It doesn't always work and you still have to watch them carefully as some will still try to get closer but it feels better than watching them getting destroyed by station defences.

It makes battle with overwhelming player fleet still interesting as you can try to limit your losses.

Another problem I faced is when a ship try to flee, it seems you cannot override this order for long before it is generated by the ship again.

Actually, I am grateful for the introduction of the battleship class via Asgard and I think the other races should recive one too. In my commonwealth fleets, I depend heavily on destroyers for damage (I don't belive in the concept of let's put big guns on carierrs) and most of the time, those things pop like poopcorn when order to atack hard targets. I mean, I used to name my destroyers, after I was Behemoth 1-10...what..all of them went boom?...time to build another set
At least, with the terrans, I have real fire power in the form of the Asgard, making the use of destroyers obsolete for damage dealing purposes.

[Ragnos28]

I would say that Xenon I was pretty smart to "dash" sideway of your destroyer group ! It's too bad the destroyer captains went fubar after that.

Yes, the Xenon I, was the MVP of that battle Hey, we wanted clever Xenon, now we have them

[KextV8]

Don't give your capitals orders to attack/defend or anything in sector. Only OOS.

In sector just load them with turret(I prefer Paranid L Plasma since longest range) set to attack all enemies and order them to follow you. It works MUCH better trust me. They won't try to chase things, they won't try to suicide, they'll just follow you around, mostly in formation, with their turrets blasting.

[xWolfzx]

What are the turrets behaviour for your destroyers if you do not mind me asking? I've heard that might affect the range they will engage the enemy.

[chew-ie]

Don't give your capitals orders to attack/defend or anything in sector. Only OOS.

In sector just load them with turret(I prefer Paranid L Plasma since longest range) set to attack all enemies and order them to follow you. It works MUCH better trust me. They won't try to chase things, they won't try to suicide, they'll just follow you around, mostly in formation, with their turrets blasting.

This - I'm doing a lot of fleet combat because that's what I love X4 for. Basically I'm sitting at the dock of my main destroyer watching the show (either in first person or by switching through the third person views, depending where the most action is going on).

I also recommend fast firing, high accuracy weapons over heavy hitters. Usually the destroyer main weapons are enough (especially if we are talking about TER ships like the Osaka or the Syn) and there is no need for Plasma turrets. (also, I'm bored to death by the low projectile speed )

I also use civic fleets (Split L miner & L freighter) with flak once the main forces are bound to my destroyers. (-> even more fireworks )

But yeah, M ships are useless as are Carriers. I only have one around for show / to pretend I have established a "base" in the sector I'm fighting.

@OP

Not sure what went wrong with your battle group, but I suspect 2 things which may caused that:

• Captain levels are too low
• Wrong formation [for the job]

Formations do matter - they can even help to surround the enemy. Personally I wouldn't choose a formation for destroyers which gives them no breathing room - as the X4 pathfinding has [still] problems here. (the pathfinding came a long way since the release, so this is just an observation, no rant). I'd say your battle group is too densely packed.

tldr: While you will have awkward moments in X4 it is not like shown in the video. At least not for me. Key for having fun with fleets are the proper commands, pilot levels, proper formations. This takes experience and the will to play X4 like X4 - not like some WW2 fleet simulator with bombers, interceptors, destroyers, ... (this will always fail IMHO as their is simply no role AI)

[Pares]

Not sure what went wrong with your battle group, but I suspect 2 things which may caused that:

• Captain levels are too low
• Wrong formation [for the job]

The fact that it is possible for low level captains to make the game look absolutely borked is one of the biggest issues in the game IMHO. I play to have fun, not to watch incompentence. If the AI is already struggling, dumbing its capabilities down in any way is the most baffling "feature" I ever saw in a game. My hope is that in the future they remove/revamp this whole crew level mess completely, it causes a lot of frustration for little if any gain in immersion or fun.

[GCU Grey Area]

Was not a matter of winning, the Asgard would have 2 shot the I. My problem was with the pathfinding of the destroyers, the unpleasant image of them "merging"...

Pathfinding issues looked to me to be primarily a result of not locking down the I with fighters, to keep it distracted & limit it's movement in the early phases of the battle, while your destroyers were getting into position. Different formation may be able to deal with the merging problem. Some formations have a wider ship spacing than others.

Your recomandation for turret loadout of capitals is a sound one, but I use exclusively L Beam setup on my destroyers because the only thing I trust them to do is to engage S/M ships in the Asgard vicinity.

Tend to do the same if I'm using Argon or Teladi destroyers, however Split or Terran destroyers have enough L turrets for a mixed loadout to be viable, particularly for a Terran fleet - TER L Bolt is sufficiently accurate to have a decent chance of hitting S/M targets anyway.

Anything else is a recipe for disaster...you can't order them to atack a station cuz will "hug" it, you can't order them to atack capital's for the same reason, even if I send 6 of them to atack a K, given their famous "intelligence", there is a chance you will lose a destroyer. Plus, I am a firm believer that destroyers should do damage with their battery's not their turetts (I view them as self propelled artillery).

I use the same 'Fly To' approach as gorman2040 for station demolition & can confirm it works. For added safety can also recommend installing Expediter weapon mods on destroyer main guns. The additional projectile speed & lifetime gives those guns a significant amount of extra range, which is does seem to be included in the calculation of the optimal range from which a destroyer wants to fire it's main guns. Against a moving target it's trickier to maintain distance without early deployment of fighter support to keep the enemy distracted.

Anyway, the idea is that the game strongly encourage me to use exclusively the Asgard for large scale combat and I am not a fan of "jack of all trades" ships...but, given the state the game is atm (with no indication that it will change in the future)...my "fleet" will be Asgard+Tokyo+fighters and it is such a shame that the other clasess of ships are useless in a fleet...

Prefer more of a mixed fleet myself, currently 2x Asgard, 8x Osaka (though really must get round to replacing them with Syns sometime soon) & a Tokyo full of Kalis fighters. Works well enough for me, have smashed dozens of stations with it (good money to be had in the station demolition business) & have not lost a single one of those capital ships yet. Most of the time enemy stations don't get to fire even a single shot back at them.

[Ragnos28]

What are the turrets behaviour for your destroyers if you do not mind me asking? I've heard that might affect the range they will engage the enemy.

They are AI control ships, so the turetts behavior is default Defend.

[Ragnos28]

But yeah, M ships are useless as are Carriers. I only have one around for show / to pretend I have established a "base" in the sector I'm fighting.

Actually, Carriers are the only ones that are usefull. For one thing I can order the fighters to stay dock and only launch when I need them. And they are the best for the situation in which you are on the deck of your big powerfull ship and you want to splat those S/M flyes that apear on your radar

I am looking forward for 4.10 to go live, as they promise to not make the fighters landing IS on the Tokyo, the cringe festival it is now

Note: In commonwealth fleets I always use carierrs as command ships. This is an example of fleet combat, when it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SPhn0XYaFI&t=195s

[Ragnos28]

Not sure what went wrong with your battle group, but I suspect 2 things which may caused that:

• Captain levels are too low
• Wrong formation [for the job]

Formations do matter - they can even help to surround the enemy. Personally I wouldn't choose a formation for destroyers which gives them no breathing room - as the X4 pathfinding has [still] problems here. (the pathfinding came a long way since the release, so this is just an observation, no rant). I'd say your battle group is too densely packed.

tldr: While you will have awkward moments in X4 it is not like shown in the video. At least not for me. Key for having fun with fleets are the proper commands, pilot levels, proper formations. This takes experience and the will to play X4 like X4 - not like some WW2 fleet simulator with bombers, interceptors, destroyers, ... (this will always fail IMHO as their is simply no role AI)

The formation is Echelon (accessible by 5 star captains).

As for captains levels, for 6 destroyers, I have 2 - 5 stars, 2 - 4 stars, 2 - 3 stars. Anyway, in my experience with full 5 stars destroyers groups, they are still derpy.

I don't know, I think I will organize my fleets BSG style, fighters engage fighters/M ships/drones, command battleship engage capitals and stations and be done for. Especially, since I fear that the changes in dangeros zones effects, will make it imposible for M ships to traverse the sectors like the Void and the like.

[Ragnos28]

I use the same 'Fly To' approach as gorman2040 for station demolition & can confirm it works. For added safety can also recommend installing Expediter weapon mods on destroyer main guns. The additional projectile speed & lifetime gives those guns a significant amount of extra range, which is does seem to be included in the calculation of the optimal range from which a destroyer wants to fire it's main guns. Against a moving target it's trickier to maintain distance without early deployment of fighter support to keep the enemy distracted.

Too much tinkering, imho. For stations, I just use the Asgard main batery, the distance is so great that the station don't even launch drones. 0 casualties, 0 hustle, 0 aggravation for bad AI. When I was still gathering cash for the Asgard, I put paranid L plasma turrets on the mission reward Syn and run 30kk xenon station goes boom missions.

For moving targets, just buzzz my way around...hell, agains destroyers, I can drop like 3 of them before the Asgard main weapon overheats.

Prefer more of a mixed fleet myself, currently 2x Asgard, 8x Osaka (though really must get round to replacing them with Syns sometime soon) & a Tokyo full of Kalis fighters. Works well enough for me, have smashed dozens of stations with it (good money to be had in the station demolition business) & have not lost a single one of those capital ships yet. Most of the time enemy stations don't get to fire even a single shot back at them.

Despite my rant, I will still use mixed fleets myself, except now I know their limitations...only use destroyers/M ships as a last resort to protect carriers and aux ships when K's apear near them and expect heavy losess for doing so...

My fleet composition:
1 Asgard
3 Syn + 3 Osaka asign to protect the Asgard
1 Tokyo asign to folow the Asgard + 40 kukri on intercept dutty
1 Aux + 20 Jian on defend + 20 Falx torpedo configuration on atack

Like I said, my fear is that the changes in hazardous regions effects in 4.10 will force me to eliminate M ships from my fleets compositions.

[GCU Grey Area]

Too much tinkering, imho. For stations, I just use the Asgard main batery, the distance is so great that the station don't even launch drones. 0 casualties, 0 hustle, 0 aggravation for bad AI. When I was still gathering cash for the Asgard, I put paranid L plasma turrets on the mission reward Syn and run 30kk xenon station goes boom missions.

Just one Asgard? If so you have more patience than me. I like to form up my destroyers in a firing line about 12km from the station, with the Asgards on each end of the line. Then I just leave them to it, while I keep an eye out for enemy fleets that might attempt to disrupt what my fleet's doing.

For moving targets, just buzzz my way around...hell, agains destroyers, I can drop like 3 of them before the Asgard main weapon overheats.

My usual approach is to send a group of fighters to delay & distract each enemy capital, then shift-select all of my destroyers & give them a queue of attack orders to eliminate each enemy capital in turn, starting with the nearest.

Despite my rant, I will still use mixed fleets myself, except now I know their limitations...only use destroyers/M ships as a last resort to protect carriers and aux ships when K's apear near them and expect heavy losess for doing so...

My fleet composition:
1 Asgard
3 Syn + 3 Osaka asign to protect the Asgard
1 Tokyo asign to folow the Asgard + 40 kukri on intercept dutty
1 Aux + 20 Jian on defend + 20 Falx torpedo configuration on atack

Like I said, my fear is that the changes in hazardous regions effects in 4.10 will force me to eliminate M ships from my fleets compositions.

My standard command structure is carrier as fleet command ship, with destroyers & around 1/3 of the carrier's fighters assigned to Attack, remaining 2/3 assigned to Intercept. Don't currently have an auxiliary assigned to the fleet. Honshu's too damn slow, so operates independently. When I'm not giving them manual orders carrier has default Protect Position behaviour. Only use I have for M's is to stick a Jian on every M dock in the fleet to provide extra turrets (defend assignment & docked status so they stay put).

[Ragnos28]

Just one Asgard? If so you have more patience than me. I like to form up my destroyers in a firing line about 12km from the station, with the Asgards on each end of the line. Then I just leave them to it, while I keep an eye out for enemy fleets that might attempt to disrupt what my fleet's doing.

Don't know about pacience...took me what?...15 minutes to destroy xenon warf/shipyards and those are the hardest targets you will find in the game.
Usually, it goes like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoQLw4_UeqE&t=2s

No no, destroyers do not atack stations cuz destroyers pilots mentally challenged...they go sightseeing against the walls of stations and go boom...no no, not good. Stupid pilots do what stupid pilots do...stay near the gate when I engage xenon station in the middle of the sector, even thou they are asign to defend the Asgard and I am clearly under atack (as seen in the video)

My standard command structure is carrier as fleet command ship, with destroyers & around 1/3 of the carrier's fighters assigned to Attack, remaining 2/3 assigned to Intercept. Don't currently have an auxiliary assigned to the fleet. Honshu's too damn slow, so operates independently. When I'm not giving them manual orders carrier has default Protect Position behaviour. Only use I have for M's is to stick a Jian on every M dock in the fleet to provide extra turrets (defend assignment & docked status so they stay put).

My commonwealth fleet composition is as follows(paranid example):

1 Zeus (command ship) + 20 ares - blast mortar config + 20 ares - bolt config
10 Ody's asign to defend the Zeus
1 aux ship + 20 nemesis vanguard's asign to defend + 20 gorgons torpedo config asign to atack

This is the fleet in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SPhn0XYaFI

Notice the nice touch at the end of the video with M ships going to Aux ship for repairs all by themselfs

[KextV8]

I just use like 10 Asgards and two Nomads or Storks with the support ships full of Moreyas or Nodans set on intercept.

I have like 20 or 30 Syn gate campers too that I built before I acquired the Asgard BPs. I usually deploy them in sets of 5 with a Support ship with instructions to defend position at a gate.