So.... "fleets"....?

[RegisterMe]

I can't even get a Nemesis docked on an Ody to disappear from the general ship list, nor form a "fleet", let alone do anything useful.

I've done a bit of googling without finding anything very useful, should I just give up on the idea for now? I'm not sure how I'm going to help HOP in Holy Vision with the 5 Ks and multiple Xenon Defense Bases without working fleet commands .

[vrod]

I tried to assemble a fleet too. Loaded up a carrier with corvettes and fighters. Loaded up 3 destroyers (also with corvettes and fighters). Ordered the ships with to defend it's 'host' ship. Then ordered the 3 destroyers to defend the carrier. Also had a fleet restocking ship, a few traders, and a few corvettes nearby.

It was such a pain to get anything done with them. I then spent alot more time to individually select each ship and then 'remove assignment' from them. (So they would no longer defend that ship and I could use them normally.)

The large ships do absolutely nothing but slow you down. If they had a jumpdrive then maybe they would be worth something.

I use corvettes almost exclusively. (Nemessis). 50 or so Nemessis will take care of your K's easily. You may not lose many at all. With 170 Nemessis, I wiped out the HOP completely. Had over 100 ships left afterwards.

By the way. If you use a corvette, you can quickly fly to the upper rear of a K and ride on it's back. (guns cannot reach you). You then can take your time and destroy him. Just watch out for other bad guys that may come up to you.

[RegisterMe]

Yeah, I'm comfortable dealing with a single K solo, but five of them plus Ps and Ms is more of a challenge (ie I can't do it).

Using a hundred or so corvettes, or bombers etc, is bit naff. I'd much rather use a mixed composition fleet "sensibly" but if that's not viable at the moment, I guess I'll avoid serious combat for now .

[graphicboy]

I haven't kept up with mods (stopped playing during 2.5 beta), but I'd generally say that fleets are a complete waste of time, yes.

Unless you're blobbing 50 plasma behemoths and just facerolling the entire map, you will spend more time trying to recover from losses, figuring out where the ships went, getting death notifications from the wrong side of the map, having ships not dock on their carriers, or dock and not leave their carriers, or get stuck trying to dock at their carriers and dying as a result, or... AGH

There were some mods that kinda helped this - *kinda*, but it was still infuriating with as many improvements as could be found.

[graphicboy]

Also, with the lack of proper RRF, if you ever did get a fleet to work effectively, you could still faceroll the map, except for the non-destroyable stations and glitched out ships... so. I think you get the idea.

[MurryChang]

Unless you're blobbing 50 plasma behemoths and just facerolling the entire map, you will spend more time trying to recover from losses, figuring out where the ships went, getting death notifications from the wrong side of the map, having ships not dock on their carriers, or dock and not leave their carriers, or get stuck trying to dock at their carriers and dying as a result, or... AGH

50? I can faceroll anything in the game with 15 plasmad out Oddys. The smaller ships are pretty much just a waste of time.

[GCU Grey Area]

The smaller ships are pretty much just a waste of time.

Tend to disagree with that point, at least as regards S ships - they provide an invaluable role in my fleet.

Current fleet composition is 8x Phoenix V, 2x Condor V & 48x Buzzards (mostly Sentinels). Destroyers do the bulk of the damage, fighters are there primarily in a distraction role (but are IMO essential to avoid heavy losses among the capital ships), while carriers transport the fighters but ony rarely get involved in the fighting (main exception: assisting with station demolition after it's been disarmed).

Dont have much use for M class ships though - shields & hulls are too weak to survive long against Xenon L turrets, while also being too big to avoid much incoming fire (unlike fighters). Only M class ships currently in the fleet are 6x Osprey Sentinels perma-docked to the carriers to increase their firepower (mostly armed with Plasma turrets for faster station demolition).

[graphicboy]

50? I can faceroll anything in the game with 15 plasmad out Oddys. The smaller ships are pretty much just a waste of time.

True, but when I got to the point of wanting to uninstall, I didn't want to wait days to clear the map. I'm all about efficiency.

[chew-ie]

The smaller ships are pretty much just a waste of time.

Tend to disagree with that point, at least as regards S ships - they provide an invaluable role in my fleet.

I'm also having a lot of fun & success with mixed unit tactics so far.

Current fleet composition is 8x Phoenix V, 2x Condor V & 48x Buzzards (mostly Sentinels). Destroyers do the bulk of the damage, fighters are there primarily in a distraction role (but are IMO essential to avoid heavy losses among the capital ships), while carriers transport the fighters but ony rarely get involved in the fighting (main exception: assisting with station demolition after it's been disarmed).

Dont have much use for M class ships though - shields & hulls are too weak to survive long against Xenon L turrets, while also being too big to avoid much incoming fire (unlike fighters). Only M class ships currently in the fleet are 6x Osprey Sentinels perma-docked to the carriers to increase their firepower (mostly armed with Plasma turrets for faster station demolition).

I'm using small fleets with one heavyily modded carrier (Colossus) to tank attacks (~700.000 shields) and a mixture of Behemoths / Phoenix (3-4). All destroyers & carriers are outfitted with fighters (numbers equal to the available docking ports - I don't use internal docks due to docking operations being way too inefficient for my taste), mostly I'm using Buzzards but I'm also very fond of the Nodan.

All fighters I manage manually for fast attack runs / cleanup operations - always with docking in between to lure enemies back to the capital ship turrets. I am not using subordinates feature as the results are devastating.

I tried M-Ships with heavy torpedos but gave up on that. For now, they are turret extensions on carriers like GCU Grey Area described it already. (though I use point defense guns on them like pulse or chain guns).

[RegisterMe]

How do you guys actually "manage" multiple ship operations? Unless I am missing something obvious it's not exactly Star Craft in terms of GUI / interaction / control.....

[GCU Grey Area]

How do you guys actually "manage" multiple ship operations?

Essentially shift-selection of groups of my ships & making heavy use of the queued order system to automate the battle as much as possible.

For example, against a fleet of Xenon capitals I'll generally divide up my fighters evenly between them & give orders for each fighter group to attack their assigned target simultaneously - effectively locks each enemy capital in place & gives them something to shoot at which isn't an expensive destroyer. When the fighters are on their way I shift-select the destroyers as a single group & give them an order queue to attack the Xenon capitals consecutively, starting with the closest first. As each enemy capital is destroyed fighters assigned to distract it automatically return to their carrier (i.e. 'Dock & Wait' set as default behaviour). Don't tend to worry about enemy fighters - turrets on my destroyers are set up as anti-fighter defences (9x M Pulse + 2x L Beam) & stay clustered at all times to provide intersecting fields of fire, so enemy fighters are pretty much toast almost immediately after entering turret range.

[MurryChang]

The smaller ships are pretty much just a waste of time.

Tend to disagree with that point, at least as regards S ships - they provide an invaluable role in my fleet.

They're a huge pain to manage and don't do a single thing that a destroyer doesn't do except get blown up as soon as fighting starts. As soon as I saw the time it took for a whole ship's worth of small ships to dock with their carrier/destroyer I parked my carrier full of all my S/M class ships at one of my stations and basically never used it again.

[MurryChang]

The smaller ships are pretty much just a waste of time.

Tend to disagree with that point, at least as regards S ships - they provide an invaluable role in my fleet.

They're a huge pain to manage and don't do a single thing that a destroyer doesn't do except get blown up as soon as fighting starts. As soon as I saw the time it took for a whole ship's worth of small ships to dock with their carrier/destroyer I parked my carrier full of all my S/M class ships at one of my stations and basically never used it again.

50? I can faceroll anything in the game with 15 plasmad out Oddys. The smaller ships are pretty much just a waste of time.

True, but when I got to the point of wanting to uninstall, I didn't want to wait days to clear the map. I'm all about efficiency.

Eh, each sector takes like 10 minutes on SATA.

[GCU Grey Area]

Tend to disagree with that point, at least as regards S ships - they provide an invaluable role in my fleet.

They're a huge pain to manage...

In what way? No different to managing other warships - shift-select a bunch of them & then right-click on an enemy & order the attack. No more complicated than that.

...and don't do a single thing that a destroyer doesn't do...

They're pretty good at dodging bullets, whereas my capitals are really, really crap at doing that.

...except get blown up as soon as fighting starts.

Not in my experience. Started out with the premise that the fighters were semi-disposable chaff. However in practice, as long as you use enough of them (recommend around 8-12 per enemy capital), it's hard for the enemy to focus fire on any individual fighter to do enough sustained damage to destroy them. Occasionally happens but nowhere near as often as I initially anticipated - most battles don't lose a single one.

As soon as I saw the time it took for a whole ship's worth of small ships to dock with their carrier/destroyer I parked my carrier full of all my S/M class ships at one of my stations and basically never used it again.

'Dock & Wait' default behaviour really speeds up fighter retrieval - since fighters are returning & docking automatically whenever each enemy capital is destroyed, the only fighters I'm waiting for at the end of the battle are the 8-12 I assigned to distract the last enemy capital on the field & really doesn't take all that long to retrieve the final batch. Generally by the time I'm done hoovering up all the loot after the battle all my fighters are safely back inside their carriers. Would advise however never using destroyers to transport fighters - they don't have nearly enough docking bays & lack of fast launch tubes means they just can't do the job efficiently.

[MurryChang]

I feel like we're talking about 2 different things. Since X3 I always fight large battles OOS and it's especially important to do that in X4 so that your plasma cannons can actually hit stuff and the battles don't take forever. OOS small fighters don't do anything against cap ships. IS is probably a much different beast.

[chew-ie]

I feel like we're talking about 2 different things. Since X3 I always fight large battles OOS and it's especially important to do that in X4 so that your plasma cannons can actually hit stuff and the battles don't take forever. OOS small fighters don't do anything against cap ships. IS is probably a much different beast.

Indeed - we might miss one detail here. I'm talking about IS experience only.

For me, X4 is the first (X)game I use fleets for more then parking at the HQ. I couldn't stand OOS calculations in the past games & IS the expensive ships died way too fast. Starting with X:Rebirth fleet / capital ship combat has improved a lot & millions of credits aren't wasted because of one broad side gone wrong. In X4 IS combat also allows for tactical retreats to minimize losses. Auto-repairs might also get the limping ships back in the fight.

Overall I appreciate the longer battles.

[MurryChang]

Overall I appreciate the longer battles.

I don't appreciate having a half dozen Oddys take 15+ minutes to kill one K when I can jump in, take control and kill the K in less than a minute with a single Oddy because I don't stop firing every 10 seconds to rutch the ship around. Way better to just sit OOS and watch the battle play out with numbers than to get frustrated with my 4 star captains who have no clue how to fly a ship.