What does defend do?

[HelicopterGearbox]

How is it different from intercept?

I guess I thought suboordinate ships set to defend only attacks ships that attack the target they are set to defend, but they seem to target all kinds of things, including stations.

[vvvvvvvv]

How is it different from intercept?

I guess I thought suboordinate ships set to defend only attacks ships that attack the target they are set to defend, but they seem to target all kinds of things, including stations.

"Defend" means ship will ignore hostiles until shot at. "Intercept" means the ship will attack fighters in range. Stations can shoot ships, so "defend" ship can end up attacking a station.

[stooper88]

I think defend will also trigger against hostiles that are executing attack orders but have not yet "struck" the subordinates' commander. In other words, defenders may attack hostiles that are mobilizing or bracing to attack (e.g. station turrets armed to attack all enemies) but have not yet caused damage.

[Raptor34]

What is your ships orders to deal with attacks against themselves?
Afaik defend only works on targets that have actually damaged the thing being defended, but your own ships' orders can mess that up.

[jlehtone]

I guess I thought suboordinate ships set to defend only attacks ships that attack the target they are set to defend, but they seem to target all kinds of things, including stations.

A ship that is carrying a task can be interrupted by damage. For example, a freighter on trade run can temporarily flee, if it is attacked. The military ships tend to interrupt to attack their attacker.

You had ship (A) escorting other ship (B). Did A get order to attack foe (C) that did attack B? While chasing B, did it end up near station? Hit by turrets of station? It could have interrupted its (attack C) order to deal with the station first ...

[j.harshaw]

All ships are able to react to attacks on themselves.
In addition:
Subordinates set to defend react to attacks on anything in their fleet as long as reaction does not require them to stray far from their immediate commander. (This is closest to the old subordinate combat behavior where reaction is phased; that is, not all subordinates react to all attacks all the time, but it can cascade to include all of them eventually)
Subordinates set to intercept or bombard attack any hostile targets they detect on gravidar that fit their respective mission profiles.
Subordinates set to attack with commander attack with their commander.

[Raptor34]

All ships are able to react to attacks on themselves.
In addition:
Subordinates set to defend react to attacks on anything in their fleet as long as reaction does not require them to stray far from their immediate commander. (This is closest to the old subordinate combat behavior where reaction is phased; that is, not all subordinates react to all attacks all the time, but it can cascade to include all of them eventually)
Subordinates set to intercept or bombard attack any hostile targets they detect on gravidar that fit their respective mission profiles.
Subordinates set to attack with commander attack with their commander.

Wait, so I don't have to directly assign defend wings to what I actually want to defend and can just assign them to the flagship instead? That's pretty convenient, though less useful if I want to focus defense but proper fleet management can deal with that. For example sometimes my aux ship trails behind when defending a position, so I sometimes assign stuff to defend it, are you saying that I don't have to do that and can just assign them to carriers or something and they'll launch to defend when necessary? It makes the defend command a whole lot more useful if so. Though what does stray too far mean? I also assume this means you can't have a station deploy the fighters sectors away to respond to attacks. Actually is it more limited than you make it sound? Because otherwise I don't see how I can't just assign defend fighters to a mining station and they go out and deal with Khaak. Even if it's limited to in sector that would still be very useful.

For intercept and bombard, to confirm radar range is commander's radar range right? Not their own. And of course only their direct commander? So if I nest them I can still roughly predict what their range would be.

[j.harshaw]

For example sometimes my aux ship trails behind when defending a position, so I sometimes assign stuff to defend it, are you saying that I don't have to do that and can just assign them to carriers or something and they'll launch to defend when necessary?

Assigning some of them to your fleet auxiliary ship can still be useful if you want them to stay close to it rather than the carrier in a situation like you described.

[Raptor34]

For example sometimes my aux ship trails behind when defending a position, so I sometimes assign stuff to defend it, are you saying that I don't have to do that and can just assign them to carriers or something and they'll launch to defend when necessary?

Assigning some of them to your fleet auxiliary ship can still be useful if you want them to stay close to it rather than the carrier in a situation like you described.

Depending on the situation of course. But going further doesn't that also mean that those defenses would go somewhere else? For my use case that probably wouldn't matter because if the other part of the fleet is active, it's not like the AI is smart enough to go snipe the exposed part so that does mean the fleet is already engaging the enemy. My use case being gate camping of course. But hypothetically speaking if I'm defending an open area in hostile sectors, doesn't that mean that even if I assign defenses to the fleet auxiliary as an example, then if the enemy somehow manages to pull off a multi-prong, that the ships I expect to defend the aux could be fighting somewhere else instead?
Other issues would be like in the OP of course, if my other attack ships are attacking the enemy station, then it seems that defend wings would be drawn in too?

And also another thing just to confirm, I run all my ships to ignore attacks. In such a situation, let's say I have a destroyer assigned to defend, if it get's attacked, what happens? Going by your description I assume that the destroyer would then defend itself despite beings set to ignore attacks because it itself is also part of the fleet and it's defend for commander command would get triggered in that case. And of course the other defend wings assigned to various ships which might be nested would all trigger too right? You mentioned something about how they wouldn't all trigger immediately and it's a phased triggering, but putting that aside, all of them could eventually trigger right? Or to put it another way, I wouldn't have ships just sitting out the fight doing nothing assuming it goes on long enough?
The reason I'm asking is that I previously didn't know it works this way and have always seen that command as pointless, but if my understanding is correct, then adding some ships to defend seems like it might be useful as a contingency.
Actually, how does commands flow down for defend? I've never done the thing before where you have several intercept ships and then you assign attack wings to them, so keep in mind I don't have experience in that. So going back, I was thinking I'll have several Guppies set to DEFEND the commander, then assign fighters to ATTACK for the Guppies. In such a case, does that mean that if ANY ship in the fleet get's attacked, the Guppies on DEFEND would then be triggered and they'll send out their ATTACK fighters to deal with them? And of course I'm assuming that the Guppies would still be acting like typical carriers, that is just sticking close to their commander and basically just act like a node that commands flow through instead of rushing in turrets blazing.

[Eyeklops]

For example sometimes my aux ship trails behind when defending a position, so I sometimes assign stuff to defend it, are you saying that I don't have to do that and can just assign them to carriers or something and they'll launch to defend when necessary?

Assigning some of them to your fleet auxiliary ship can still be useful if you want them to stay close to it rather than the carrier in a situation like you described.

Depending on the situation of course...

I feel like j.harshaw just unintentionally signed you up for a ton of self-compelled testing in the very near future. lol. I look forward to seeing the results.

[Raptor34]

Assigning some of them to your fleet auxiliary ship can still be useful if you want them to stay close to it rather than the carrier in a situation like you described.

Depending on the situation of course...

I feel like j.harshaw just unintentionally signed you up for a ton of self-compelled testing in the very near future. lol. I look forward to seeing the results.

I'm waiting for next DLC though.
But I was planning to reorg my fleets a bit anyway with the new station PD thing, could take the time to stare at maps for a bit later.

Edit: I did a quick and dirty test using creatives, and it seems to work out.
By quick and dirty it means I cannot tell what's operating under defend the commander and what seems to be operating under defend the fleet.
I started with a fleet with a carrier, destroyers, Guppies and Takobas in Xenon space. One Shark. 10 Osakas in one defend wing. 2 Guppies in another defend wing. 1 of those Guppies have Takobas in an Attack wing while the other Guppy because I made a mistake had Takobas both in 1 Attack and 1 Defend wing. All that is irrelevant because the only actual solid evidence came from that final mistake lmao.

But anyway, I started with Takobas scouting the sector to see where the enemies are. They scouted far so even when attacked didn't trigger any defend wings.
I've also set global orders to ignore attack then reset all ships to default.
I then rammed the fleet into a Xenon capital forgetting that if they attack the flagship then no shit it would trigger the defend wing, in hindsight I should have brought the fleet close then had one Osaka go ahead and tank. But since I don't know what range these things trigger at, it was a real PITA. Or it would be if I was doing rigorous testing.
So now that the entire thing was a cluster**** and didn't work, I located the one Guppy which due to earlier mistakes still had a defend wing, it was sadly in the middle of a furball so that was meaningless, so I ordered it out of the area and kept resetting the defend wing's orders. It flew away and as I kept resetting the defend wing which was constantly generating attack orders, I eventually reached a point where rather than attacking ships near to the Guppy, they were attacking other ships attacking one of my other ships, which looking at the map, and not IS, so I can't actually tell for sure what the Xenon was attacking, but yeah, it does seem that defend for commander is more like defend the entire fleet, but I still don't know in what range would it generate targeting orders.