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[Rigel]

so how people use commanding in-battle? the fleet command tutorial didn't seem have to explained much.

it just gave few basics and then "experiment yourself" however even after seeing some of those assignments and orders they seemed like too much to bother.

commanding also doesn't seem to be mentioned much in places so i'm pretty much lost. (for example the wiki doesn't have a page for it believe)

the only times i've used commanding in my two runs are avoid orders (for capitals), capturing/assaulting and fighters. (that's gonna change so idk if its worth talking about it) i don't remember anything else.

so how do people use fleet command effectively?

[Harmful Mechanic]

Because you have a limited number of orders per battle, you have to trust ships to look after themselves a decent amount.

Off the top of my head:
1) Have a rally point for your fleet, somewhere near the center of the map. Especially important for low-tech ships, which can get separated easily.
2) Make sure your heavy hitters are escorted, if they need to be.
3) Have a rally point for your bombers, so you can throw them in all at once for maximum effect. Going to be glad when this is handled automatically.

In general you should use as few command points as possible in the early stages of a battle - most of the time you just want a rally point to keep your fleet semi-concentrated and prevent ships from wandering off. Most of the time you don't need to order specific ships to attack specific targets; place your attack order on the enemy ship, and trust your fleet to respond organically.

I tend to pilot high-speed destroyers at the head of a fast carrier fleet, so my typical opening orders are something like - 'capture that nav buoy and/or that sensor array', 'fleet rally to this point over here', right in front of one of them, 'carrier rally behind that', 'bombers rally over here near the carrier' if I'm deploying any, and sometimes 'one or two ships follow me as we flank around the edge'. Call it 4-7 orders depending on the size of my fleet.

[borgrel]

pick the control point closest to a corner (preferably on ur side of the map, order rally carrier to keep ur carrier out of harms way and make it useful at the same time. (assuming u have a carrier ..... )

-then-

order one wing of med  to heavy fighters to intercept each phase frigate on the battlefield (their peak time runs out quickly and ur units can fight much better if they aren't getting shot in the ass every time they launch an offensive

-then-

order the capture of 1 cmd point (so u get 3 extra commands) (unless u plan on flying around and capturing points manually) each time it gets captured order the capture of another (be careful having orders for 2 many will split your forces when they get recaptured by the bad guys because the order stays for the entire battle (unless ur willing to give 2 orders)

-then-

order assault against the nav point closest to ur carrier so the battle field is at a place beneficial to u

-then-

start with your biggest ships (best officers) order the closest matching ship in speed and maneuverability to escort it (the defensive ship escorts the offensive ship if your loadouts or ship systems are differant) until u run out of commands

-then-

try to earn enough command points from the control points quickly enough that u can order individual ships to retreat when their peak time runs out or their hull reaches 50%


and presto flamingo

[Rigel]

Because you have a limited number of orders per battle, you have to trust ships to look after themselves a decent amount.

Off the top of my head:
1) Have a rally point for your fleet, somewhere near the centerof the map. Especially important for low-tech ships, which can get separated easily.
2) Make sure your heavy hitters are escorted, if they need to be.
3) Have a rally point for your bombers, so you can throw them in all at once for maximum effect. Going to be glad when this is handled automatically.

In general you should use as few command points as possible in the early stages of a battle - most of the time you just want a rally point to keep your fleet semi-concentrated and prevent ships from wandering off. Most of the time you don't need to order specific ships to attack specific targets; place your attack order on the enemy ship, and trust your fleet to respond organically.

I tend to pilot high-speed destroyers at the head of a fast carrier fleet, so my typical opening orders are something like - 'capture that nav buoy and/or that sensor array', 'fleet rally to this point over here', right in front of one of them, 'carrier rally behind that', 'bombers rally over here near the carrier' if I'm deploying any, and sometimes 'one or two ships follow me as we flank around the edge'. Call it 4-7 orders depending on the size of my fleet.

about that, what exactly does rally point do? from what i seen it seems to just put certain ships (or your selected ships with rally task force) on a point until all the ships are in it, then they just continue as normal.

and as for escort does it also work good? escort seems to work a bit weird in my case - when ever i tell my ships to escort it seems they just become "meatshields" and die than create a effective "deathball", i've used wolfs as escort for this case so are certain ships good or bad for escorting?

[HELMUT]

and as for escort does it also work good? escort seems to work a bit weird in my case - when ever i tell my ships to escort it seems they just become "meatshields" and die than create a effective "deathball", i've used wolfs as escort for this case so are certain ships good or bad for escorting?

"Escort" is regularly misinterpreted as "support" despite being closer to a "protect" order. Glass cannons like the Wolf makes for very poor meatshields, you'd get better results with tougher ships like the Centurion or Brawler. Add a few more big ships on top of it and you'll eventually get your deathball rolling.

[borgrel]

Your fleet should be made up of 4 types of ships:
1) Player ships (scalpel - or hammer - depending on your playstyle) (fast, deadly, and capable of turning a single opponent opening into a gravestone)
2) Decoys (normally frigates - or destroyers late game) (very very very fast with massive range and absolutely no punching power) (good for point capping and scouting and chasing retreating opponents)
3) Line ships (Anvil) (relatively slow but huge shields and a semi good punch ...... range is not that important)
4) Support (Missile Boats, Carriers, etc)

ordering a line ship to escort a support ship ... ok (but a bit of a waste)
ordering a decoy to escort any ship at all ...... erm not a good idea
ordering a support to escort a support ........ depends on speed so they stay together

ordering a line ship to escort a line ship ........ ridiculously effective
(2 scorpions, 2 legionaries, 2 centurions, 2 dominators, etc) they live more than 4x longer than if they fight solo normally

[Megas]

There are four types of ships in my fleet (thanks to 25 ship limit):  playerships, superfreighters (to scoop up loot from multiple endgame fleets), tugs (to make superfreighters as fast as a battleship), and spoils (i.e., boarded ships).  If I could have 40 ships in my fleet, I might consider matching numbers with the AI, but since I cannot, solo or chain-flagships for nearly all fights for the entire game.

[Rigel]

Your fleet should be made up of 4 types of ships:
1) Player ships (scalpel - or hammer - depending on your playstyle) (fast, deadly, and capable of turning a single opponent opening into a gravestone)
2) Decoys (normally frigates - or destroyers late game) (very very very fast with massive range and absolutely no punching power) (good for point capping and scouting and chasing retreating opponents)
3) Line ships (Anvil) (relatively slow but huge shields and a semi good punch ...... range is not that important)
4) Support (Missile Boats, Carriers, etc)

ordering a line ship to escort a support ship ... ok (but a bit of a waste)
ordering a decoy to escort any ship at all ...... erm not a good idea
ordering a support to escort a support ........ depends on speed so they stay together

ordering a line ship to escort a line ship ........ ridiculously effective
(2 scorpions, 2 legionaries, 2 centurions, 2 dominators, etc) they live more than 4x longer than if they fight solo normally

can you give me a few example ships for the types you mentioned? (except support)
and

There are four types of ships in my fleet (thanks to 25 ship limit):  playerships, superfreighters (to scoop up loot from multiple endgame fleets), tugs (to make superfreighters as fast as a battleship), and spoils (i.e., boarded ships).  If I could have 40 ships in my fleet, I might consider matching numbers with the AI, but since I cannot, solo or chain-flagships for nearly all fights for the entire game.

(might be a bit off-topic but) why did you mentioned 40 ships specifically? i heard something about ai having 40 fleet size but not sure - is it true? (just want to confirm)

[borgrel]

Decoys: (if it has light in its title its normally and its the smallest ships on the battlefield its normally a good choice - eg. a light cruiser is dead vs 15 frigates if the AI is pilotting) (cautious or timid pilots only)
(frigates) Wolfs, Undines, Tempests, nautilus, hecate, mantis, locust, omen (undines almost never die)
(destroyers) Arachne, Vertex,  Medusa could probably manage but thats a waste of a good medusa
(cruisers?) falcon maybe?
(requires hardened subsystems, max capacitors, at least 1000rng weapon, lots of PD (and preferably autonomous ships so it can auto retreat)
(most vulnerable to ships faster than them (so engines is also a good hullmod if u have the OP) and large volleys of fast missiles (clarent and trebuchette basically)
(2 or 3 at most deployed at a time .... but their peak time is always lower than the fleets invilved so having 4-6 to deploy extra when they retreat is recommended)

Line Ships: (if it has heavy in its title its normally a good bet) Legionary, Scorpion (love these 2) Apogee, enforcer, Eagle, Archon, Beholder, Clade, Stenos (if ur only fighting frigates mules can normally manage .....)
steady pilots best, cautious are ok
(requires Flux efficient weapons - 700-ish range is normally ok but higher range is obviously nice, high maneuverability, heavy armour, hardened shields, bulkheads etc if u really feel like it, hardened subsystems is also a plus (if u deploy destroyers vs. cruisers like i do))
(vulnerable to being surrounded - hence why u assign him a butt buddy)
2 pairs deployed ... 3 at a push ..... if u need more than 3 pairs, ur ships arent big enough


Playerships: that would be personal choice ...... scarab, medusa, desdinova, phase ships, sunder, aurora, etc are common choices
(if u need an escort to make ur life easier, ur wingman will also need 1 of these ....... line ships are 2 slow to keep up and decoys well .... shatter)

each of the decoys will pull off a bunch of the faster ships (by pressuring the control points) preventing ur line ships from being encircled
ur line ships will change the big groups of enemy ships from balls of death that are tough to crack into pretty little lines for u to eat like packman
(and hopefully stay between the enemies and ur support ships >.<)
then u move in from opposite ur line ships (and when u overload them (and ur missiles are already finished) if they run away to stop u shooting them they run into the line ships and poof) (which is why they are called anvils - they hold things still while u smash them)

[Megas]

(might be a bit off-topic but) why did you mentioned 40 ships specifically? i heard something about ai having 40 fleet size but not sure - is it true? (just want to confirm)

A single large endgame NPC fleet, detachment or equivalent, has about forty ships, give or take a few ships.  Admittedly, about ten or so are fighter wings, but I have seen some fleets with up to about thirty or so ships between frigate and capital size if fighters were ignored.  This is a significant number advantage even if player dedicates all twenty-five ships to combat.  Also, multiple NPC fleets of various sizes can combine into an even bigger force.  My personal record was 107 enemy ships (which my Paragon slaughtered singlehandedly, except for the fleeing Dram).

Maximum fleet size can be changed in some configuration file.  (I do not resort to this myself because I would change much more than that to cheat more.)

[woodsmoke]

Maximum fleet size can be changed in some configuration file.  (I do not resort to this myself because I would change much more than that to cheat more.)

Out of curiosity, would anyone happen to know how easy of a fix this is? Could I just do it with a .txt file tweak or something? I'm not particularly interested in facing down conjoined superfleets until doing so has more of an effect than simply generating a lot of loot, but I really dislike the 25-ship cap that's in the game right now. I dislike hard caps in general, really. Logistics may not have been a perfect system and was probably open to some abuse, but I vastly prefer the breathing room it granted over the current model of "only this many ships allowed."

[borgrel]

its a very easy fix
yes it is just basically a text file tweak (but its not a .txt)

nexerilin (or maybe ss+) changes it back to a logistics system, just fyi

[Megas]

It is a relatively easy "fix".

That "some configuration file" is the settings.json buried in <your Starsector folder>\starsector-core\data\config\.

Open it up, go down to about line 256 (or search for "maxshipsinfleet") and look for this line:
"maxShipsInFleet":25,

I guess changing 25 to some other number will change your max.  (I have not tried this myself.)

[woodsmoke]

Excellent, I'll give that a shot tonight and report back on the results. Thanks folks.

[korda]

I'm currently flying small fleet (I started new game recently) and commands (and careful use of reinforcements) seem crucial when fighting against much bigger fleets.

In my specific case I usually start fight by deploying my destroyer, monitor and some small frigate (can't remember the name) that has some missiles and turned out to be very good harasser. I order them to follow me, I try to destroy as much small enemy ships and fighters as I can, then order harasser frigate to retreat (it can't take much beating) and start calling reinforcements sometimes with specific orders but usually I jest let them attack enemies on their own. (and monitor stays with me soaking up damage)

This tactic is very specific and I got to it through experimenting (aka reloading fight I had trouble to win couple of times). It seems to work for me much better than just spamming all ships (too much fragile frigates got crushed before dealing any significant damage) and is not too complex (I don't invest in 'green' skill tree now, so I have only command 3 points.

I guess that's why tips are very generic - your fleet setup may need very specific tactic, or perhaps no tactic at all.




Oh. Also, hello, my first post here.