If you want them to engage, seeking out officers with the Aggressive or Reckless personality will help a ton. making sure they have the maneuverability and range to compete is also very important. Fighter support will distract the enemy and your ships may be able to move in without being shot at, making them less likely to retreat due to being shot at.
Increasing the Flux capacity of the ship you want to engage will also help, as it seems to back off when it takes a significant portion of its capacity as damage to the shields. having more means it would need a larger hit / more overall damage to make it think that it is in danger.
Making your ships Flux-Neutral ( As in their weapons don't use more flux than the ship can vent ) helps dramatically when the ship is already in range and shooting. instead of it filling up on hard flux ( hits to the shields ) and filling up on soft flux ( shooting its inefficient weapons ) it will continue to fire and wont loose most of its firepower and sit at high flux, then back off because it is high on flux. Safety overrides builds with aggressive or reckless officers benefit from this and increased capacity a lot.
Carriers have a behavior that causes them to escort each-other at the moment, causing fleets of mostly carriers to simply escort the carrier next to it and making the fleet VERY passive, even if they all have reckless AI. The fighters will engage very well with reckless AI carriers, and works fine.
The ship you yourself pilot is also very important on the battlefield. if you create an opening with kinetic weaponry, such as an overload or a high flux target, your allies will see it as an opportunity and may jump on it, or fire missiles like harpoons.
- Weapons like the mortar, or heavy mortar are both cheap on ordinance points and very flux efficient, meaning they leave room for better flux stats while using less flux. Their damage might not be as great as a mauler or light assault gun, but their efficiency and how common they are makes them a great choice.
It still will depend on what you are fighting, the size of the battle and what ships you are using.
I find that this lasher, while not flux neutral- will attempt to engage just about any target when given reckless/aggressive AI. the capacity lets it take enough hits to get into range and unleash the accelerated ammo feeder and the speed helps it close the distance fast before it takes too much damage. The main firepower of the kinetics are put into turrets on the lasher, as when under fire the AI may attempt to outmaneuver missiles/take hits on undamaged armor, so it will continue firing them regardless of where the lasher is facing.
- I hope that helps, I've ran out of things i can remember at the moment.
