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[Palladin]

I will start with a disclaimer.
     I never take manual control of my flagship because I REALLY suck at it.

I learned really fast that fleet command is highly dependant on COMMAND POINTS. So I hoard my command points like scrooge on xmas eve.

I normally break my fleet into two battle groups. each battle groups has a main ship and the rest of the ships are put in support mode for that main ship. Then I designate targets for elimination, generally only two elimination targets at any given time. I also go after the com relays as they help to get more command points.

I have found that the computer is far better at controlling ships than I am, and I get way to stressed when trying to control one myself.

I have found that typically any ship in a support roll of the main ships of a battle group will take out targets of opportunity that get to close to the battle group leaders without me having to micromanage. I just set up the battle group's balance them then set elimination orders and sit back and observe the fireworks, which I find highly enjoyable. I have also found that Officers make ships work much better.

So this is my GURU observations on fleet command after playing the game for a week. Do any of you have any additional ideas about fleet command?

[Midnight Kitsune]

Have you been using the flagship hull mod that greatly boosts CP regen?
Also, what happens that makes you so stressed flying the ship?

[Palladin]

Have you been using the flagship hull mod that greatly boosts CP regen?
Also, what happens that makes you so stressed flying the ship?

I just am not coordinated enough or have the attention span to fly the ship well enough to live through a battle. I'd rather set parameters for the fleet then watch the ships slug it out.

You mean operations Center = 250% CP regen. That mod costs 30 OP. I do not have a ship that can afford that many OP for a single mod yet. Maybe when I have a capital ship it can afford that. I jsut got my first Eagle Assault Cruiser and it needs everything I can pack into it so it can survive a 1v1 with another cruiser.

[Midnight Kitsune]

Have you been using the flagship hull mod that greatly boosts CP regen?
Also, what happens that makes you so stressed flying the ship?

I just am not coordinated enough or have the attention span to fly the ship well enough to live through a battle. I'd rather set parameters for the fleet then watch the ships slug it out.

You mean operations Center = 250% CP regen. That mod costs 30 OP. I do not have a ship that can afford that many OP for a single mod yet. Maybe when I have a capital ship it can afford that. I jsut got my first Eagle Assault Cruiser and it needs everything I can pack into it so it can survive a 1v1 with another cruiser.

OP costs change with hull sizes. So a cap would have a higher cost while smaller ships would have lower costs.
One thing though is that SS is easy to mess with so if you want more CP, it is easy to change

[John_A_Tallon]

Palladin you might consider taking over at critical moments. Even a reckless officer is going to be conservative compared to a human player. As soon as the critical moment is over, go back to letting the autopilot run the ship.

I tend to mostly use Reckless and Aggressive officers in ships that are set up to be able to survive a lot of punishment (so either a lot of armor or something very mobile like a wolf or medusa). They mostly take care of themselves, and I only need to issue commands on the hardest fights. I often fly a fast cruiser like an Apogee and just focus on distracting the larger enemy ships while my fleet picks them apart.

[HELMUT]

OP costs change with hull sizes. So a cap would have a higher cost while smaller ships would have lower costs.

Not for Operation Center, it's 30 OPs regardless of hull size. I found it best installed on a "passive" ship like a carrier, or better yet, strap it on a shuttle and let it sleep on the edge of a map (or capture unguarded strategic points, since the AI struggle to do that). If you're planning to keep going with that "Admiral" run idea, Operation Center is invaluable.

I very recently did that, a whole campaign with autopilot only. And while early-game was extremely painful, the strat start to shine during mid-game where you can field a proper fleet. It will unfortunately start to show its limit against end-game opponents (late IBB, etc.), as your deployments point capacity will shrink depending on the enemy's size. I'm still working on some potential solutions though...

A few tips : you can't go with a defensive fleet playing that way. As John said, an agressive player can offset a passive AI fleet, but without your intervention, the battle will devolve into a CR war, which you really want to avoid reaching a certain point. It's why favouring agressive loadouts tends to be important to take advantage of the enemy's weakness. Combo this with elimination orders to quickly take down targets that stray too far from the main pack.

Another thing, while your destroyers and cruisers are the bricks forming  the main part of your fleet, fighters and bombers are the mortar holding everything together. Fighters are extremely flexible and can bring support nearly everywhere quickly, allowing you to wither down an opponent, finish it, or even save an ally. You won't get really far without a bunch of carriers.

Also, you can use control groups (ctrl+#) to create custom squads in your fleet. Very useful when you have to micromanage more than 20 ships.

[Midnight Kitsune]

HELMUT, OPs Center needs to be on the flagship IIRC

[Megas]

Operations Center is expensive, but if you really need the CP, you need it, and you will squeeze that hullmod in (on your cruiser or capital flagship) one way or another even if it hurts.  (Yet another case where Loadout Design 3 for more OP is almost mandatory.)  If you spend CP like water (e.g., Fighter Strike on every enemy), nothing is more effective than Operations Center.  If that is not enough, then skill points in Command & Control may be useful.

P.S.  Oh, yes!  HELMUT is right.  AI is really cowardly, and I often see that if I do not do something with my flagship and let the AI play things out, the AI fleets will happily turtle and stall themselves into a stalemate with both sides at 0% CR.  Not a fun way to fight.  I wish AI was much more brave like in pre-0.8.

[HELMUT]

HELMUT, OPs Center needs to be on the flagship IIRC

It does, but given Palladin isn't too hot about piloting his ship, he can still do what i suggested and did (staying out of battle with a shuttle) while ordering the fleet to do stuff. Another advantage of staying far from the fight, your flagship won't run out of CR, since there's no enemies nearby.

Megas, the AI does indeed struggle on its own, and it took me a little bit of time to find a good enough solution in the campaign (agressive loadouts, squad tactics, and loads and loads of orders). On the other hand there's a very thin limit between efficient bravery and suicidal recklessness. I'm fairly satisfied with the current AI behaviour, especially since the Eliminate order allow the AI to behave sufficiently agressive (for me at least) while the default stance keep them from dying pointlessly.  It's not perfect though, my biggest grip about the AI come from the difficulty it have to capture strategic points in battle.

[zeno]

I know this isn't what the OP was asking for, but I do want to give a few tips that might not be obvious to new players that find the controls difficult.  It'll hopefully encourage the OP to try to manually pilot the flag ship, which imo is a very core part of the game.

- Turn on the setting to invert the behavior for ship turning towards the mouse cursor.  There two ways to turn the ship, either by pressing the turn left/right keys, or by hold down RMB and leading the cursor to where your ship want to be. By inverting this behavior, the ship (and any omni shields) will always automatically turn to where your mouse is pointing. This eliminates the need for separate keys to turn left/right, which greatly simplifies the controls and gives you a more traditional WSAD scheme. This was by FAR my biggest learning hurdle when I first started the game, as I was unused to dealing with accel/deaccel, turning, and strafing all on the keyboard.  Over 90% of the ships can be flown this way without any serious detriments, exceptions are broadside ships that need side-face the enemy to bring their guns to bear and manage their omni-shield at the same time.

- Trust the autofire AI, and absolve yourself of the burden to having to manually target all the guns.  To keep it simple, I'd say the only two categories of weapons that you should manually control are 1) your biggest forward facing guns, because they tend to be flux hogs and tend to be more opportunistic in usage, and 2) missiles if you have them.  Everything else just delegate to autofire, which does a really good job of focus-firing on your target of choice. For example, on a Hammerhead you can typically runs 2x Maulers for HE, Railguns for Kinectic, and Vulcans for PD.  In most cases the only thing you really need to manually control are the Maulers, so you can hold fire until the Railguns brings down the enemy's shields, at which point you can let loose with Maulers. This frees your attention to other more important things, such as flux management, maneuvering, and positioning.

- Try Dark.Revenant's targeting leading pip mod. Another major problem I've noticed some people have is that they're not very good at leading the target, and since very few weapons insta-hit, they have trouble hitting anything. This mod significantly reduces the difficulty of aiming by showing you exactly where to aim based on the relatively velocity of the two ships and the speed of the projectile.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=7921.0

[Megas]

Eliminate helps, but unless the player has an advantage, the reckless behavior plays into the enemy AI's tactics and the attacker's ships (are more likely to) get lost.  It is like in a turtle-friendly fighting game (like early versions of arcade Killer Instinct 1) where one player makes an attack, but gets blocked then punished, and the other player can easily turtle and win by time out.  Eliminate is for when the fight is more-or-less decided and the winning side mops up with Eliminate.

[sirboomalot]

Using a swarm of faster ships, a good tactic I've found is to let the fleet engage without any commands at all until the battle starts forming a clear line, then using eliminate on the weakest points in the enemy line, usually the two ends. This tends to result in a kill and more pressure on the rest of the enemy, which in turn provides more weak-points to trim, until the enemy doesn't have enough firepower to hold off the frigate swarm.

Just imagine the enemy fleet as a big unruly bush that you have to trim down into a nice little hedge... and then keep trimming. The more firepower you have in an area compared to the enemy, the weaker that point of the enemy's line. Large ships that have managed to get into a bad position are especially good targets.

[Sooner535]

I'm usually the big ship in a bad position personally haha

[FreedomFighter]

Have you try using a missile specialist ship? Gryphon might be for you since you are using missiles, no need to get yourself in the frontline. Missiles also can fly through ally (except dumb fire one like torpedo. It hurt). I kit it with two Sabot SRM, that is enough for overload anything smaller than Cruiser. Three Harpoon racks to kill annoying Frigate that been overloaded or high hard flux. One Cyclone Reaper to pop a shot at anything bigger than Destroyer. The rest of slots are DP. It work great. Gryphon system is missile autoforge which replenish every missile weapons once. Your Cyclone Reaper unlikely to run out since it got 40 charges on it. It great to help your fleet knock down armored target or capital when it is overloaded. It is good at overload the flux itself too since it deal 4k damage per shot and it shoot two of them (50% against shield).

[Palladin]

I just want to thank you all for all the great info here. I am already incorporating much of it into my play style.

These phase ships are soooooo awesome. Even with short deployment times the wreck stuff when they are out and about. I have started using them as shock groups to start with then replace ment as they run low on CR. The plan has worked pretty good so far. I make sure all my frigs have really high speed so they can work the flanks and protect larger ships also. I use the simulator all the time to figure out a good loadout for all ships also which takes a good bit of time itself.

I am still very miserly in the use of CP and only give orders when really needed. I mostly give frigs the role of escorts to larger ships. I give the larger ships the elimination orders. I have not engaged anything larger than an Assault cruiser yet though.