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« on: June 03, 2020, 10:55:54 AM »
I find that the best way to manage AI for a lot of different fleet compositions is to create a sort of daisy-chain at the beginning of the fight using a string of escort commands--there are a number of slow & tanky cruiser-class ships (even a handful of civilian hulls suited for combat; especially if you're playing with mod-ships) which make for excellent intermediary anchors, or an in-between for your backline & the big ships trading-flux upfront. This three-or-four-layered formation goes a long way to ensure that your backline has a lot of buffering between themselves and the enemy, the less-durable ships like destroyers & heavy frigates have somewhere to settle in the middle where they can by repositioned at a moment's notice, and everybody is positioned whereas they can do their job. As the fight starts to turn in your favour, systematically turn ships off escort-duty to engage the enemy freely.
I've been playing modded for too long to pull names of good vanilla anchor-candidates out the hat bc I cant specifically remember which *** is vanilla or not but there are a number of them--and in the case of mod-ships, just have a look at how many retooled Venture-variants there are, for example... their individual loadouts as it relates to stuff like PD & swarming-srm/medium-to-long-range missile support (good qualities for an anchor), and their deployment-cost relative to their size.....it may seem inefficient to deploy what is essentially half-a-cruiser but when properly used it can invalidate stuff like fighter swarms or mass frigates the enemy might employ as well as helping keep formation, can be well worth the cost.
