Fleet problem: Subordinates not following

[user1679]

I have a L class ship as commander and two M class ships as subordinates. Their speed is very close, I think the L ship is slightly slower than the M ships.

I currently have them set to "defend commander" but when I tell the commander to move to a new sector, the subordinates don't follow. I can issue them
a "follow" command in their behavior queue but then they don't seem to attack.

Also, why doesn't mimic work for fighters? Same thing happens. I set my M ships to mimic the L commander and then tell the commander to dock in
another sector and they don't follow or dock.

I see many posts that fleets are broken, but I'm hoping I'm just missing something. What I want to set up seems very basic:

follow the commander and fight when he fights, dock when he docks

[grapedog]

Mimic will only mimic a default behavior. If you set ship A behavior as patrol, then tell others to mimic, they will also patrol. Telling a ship to dock is not a default behavior, it is a specific issue, so cannot be mimiced. You can mimic a behavior, but not really a command.

As for your subordinate 2 M ships and not following your L ship. Are you changing the L ships behavior or its location of that behavior, or just telling it to fly somewhere and do something. If you have an L set to protect position, and 2 subordiate ships set to defend the commander, they will do so within that behavior area.

I believe i am correct in saying that subordinate ships look at their leaders default behavior first for overall command.... like patrol or protect position, then do their subordinate command. So they could be defaulting to protecting a position first, then defending the commander within that space.... but if the commander flys away, they continue to defend the location.

Im at work, so i can't test this out for sure.

[user1679]

As for your subordinate 2 M ships and not following your L ship. Are you changing the L ships behavior or its location of that behavior, or just telling it to fly somewhere and do something. If you have an L set to protect position, and 2 subordiate ships set to defend the commander, they will do so within that behavior area.

What I did was buy two M ships in Argon Prime and made them subordinate to the L ship I found. They all had their default order to "hold position"
and the M ships were set to "defend commander".

Then I selected the L ship and right-clicked in a Xenon sector, which was about 9 jumps away, and chose "Fly and Wait". My M ships didn't move from
the Argon Wharf until my L ship was already to jump through the second gate. Allowing this to play out ended up with my L ship jumping into
Xenon space alone and getting destroyed by some defense drones before my M ships were 1 gate away.

[Shinichi Hakeda]

If you go into the current commands list, and delete whatever it is on currently ie fly and wait. Do they then take off to their commander? I had some issues with newly constructed ships needing to be told to “fly and wait” in order to get them to undock, then when i removed the “fly and wait” from all ships they continued on with their assignment.

[user1679]

If you go into the current commands list, and delete whatever it is on currently ie fly and wait. Do they then take off to their commander? I had some issues with newly constructed ships needing to be told to “fly and wait” in order to get them to undock, then when i removed the “fly and wait” from all ships they continued on with their assignment.

Their current command is empty. It seems the movement order given to the commander doesn't propagate down to the subordinates. They only react if the commander gets attacked by something.

Mimic - doesn't seem to work for military ships
Defend - they wait until the commander is attacked. movement is negatively effected here
Intercept - they may or may not move with the commander but they attack anything in range, often starting a fight they can't win (eg: attacking a capital ship)
Follow - works great but then they often don't attack anything

I've tried setting their default order to "defend ship", choosing the commander and then using the fleet setting to "Follow commander (alpha)" but this results in the same problem; they sit
in space until the commander is attacked because the default order (defend) overrides the fleet order.

I've tried several combinations of default orders PLUS fleet orders and they either directly conflict or one of them simply gets ignored.

[NPSH]

Give them a formation.

[user1679]

Give them a formation.

They are arleady in "line astern" formation.