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[hqz]

Don't worry, this is not yet another of these what's-the-best-fleet-composition posts.

I usually reach a stage in every game I play (vanilla + Nexerelin) where I can afford any ship and loadout I want. And basically at this stage, any battle can be won by deploying the right amount of Onslaughts. (I assume it would work with Paragons as well, but I'm just a fan of the Onslaught XIV as a flagship)

I wish it was different though. I've tried looking for the optimal fleet composition for a long time, one that would involve mixing ship types because they would fulfil different roles and their synergy would make the fleet more efficient that the sum of all its ships. But no matter what I try, a single capital ship is better than the same amount of DP in other, smaller ships.

One of the problems I experienced is that smaller ships die. A lot. And then I have to either go home to take another one out of storage, or carry spare ships with me at all time which increases the overall maintenance cost (and fuel). I could use fighters to cope with this, but I've never been able to make fighters worth their DP costs because I have to deploy carriers with them, which cost DP as well. And there's the limit of 25 ships in the fleet which means I can't really have that many fighter wings with me anyway.

And then there are the pure numbers and the ROI you get:
- Onslaught = 40 DP, 40 supplies per month, 15 fuel.
- Enforcer = 9 DP, 9 supplies, 3 fuel.
- Tempest = 6 DP, 6 supplies, 1 fuel.

I have never been in a situation where I would rather have 5 Enforcers (or 7 Tempests) than 1 Onslaught. First because of the actual number of weapon mounts and hull rating, but also because most bonuses from officers and hullmods come as a percentage, which means an even bigger advantage for the capital ships.

So I'm curious how everybody else deals with this. Does anyone have some interesting fleet composition design pattern to share? I'm not really asking for the detailed fleet composition but rather patterns such as "I like to combine X and Y ships with a 1/3 ratio because it provides Z".

[TJJ]

For me, burn speed is the primary deciding factor in fleet composition.

1) Pick the burn speed (BS) you're going to fly around at
2) From the pool of ships at BS, or BS-1, build your fleet. (perhaps BS-2 for your flagship, if you're willing to pay through the nose for a tug)

Generally this means either capital ships spam, or BS9(+1) Destroyers + BS10 Frigates. (Frigates for cap'ing & to prevent fleeing)

I wish it wasn't this way; fleet diversity & the interactions that result from it, is one of the most interesting aspects of combat. (This too is why I think cargo ships need to appear in battle.)

I wouldn't mind revisiting the old implementation of burn speed (weighted average, rather than slowest).

[Thaago]

If it weren't for officers and the 25 ship limit, I would rather go 5 Enforcers. A strike fighter fleet used to be able to deal crippling blows to capitals without escorts, but again officer skills and the ship limit kind of ruined that as well. Taking and holding the nav/sensor posts was much more important too.

[hqz]

If it weren't for officers and the 25 ship limit, I would rather go 5 Enforcers.

I agree. I am a huge fan of the Enforcer myself. It feels like a great combination of range, armor and somewhat mobility. With level 20 officers a couple of them can stand against a pretty wide range of ships. The thing is that they sometimes die, and need to be replaced. Whereas a capital ship is a one-time investment and you never have to replace it. Don't get me wrong, I really wish I could fly a fleet of enforcers. I could probably deal with any enemy fleet with 5 to 10 enforcers.

I'm curious about how you use 5 enforcers in battle. I've tried different kind of commands but I'm not sure any order is actually making them more efficient than the default stance. e.g. if I tell some enforcers to guard other enforcers (or any other ship), they tend to die more often.

What are your thoughts on this?

A strike fighter fleet used to be able to deal crippling blows to capitals without escorts, but again officer skills and the ship limit kind of ruined that as well.

The only wings that seem to work for me so far are the Claw bombers. But I wonder if I feel like this just because I really want to believe that fighters are useful.

Taking and holding the nav/sensor posts was much more important too.

This is the reason behind my initial use of frigates: fast strategic point capping. But then when they're done with this, they try to engage bigger targets and die.

So far the only frigate I've found with a good survivability is an aflictor with 4 railguns (to force it to stay at long range) and augmented engines. It's super fast and the cloaking field allows it to stay alive most of the time (and not bump into my flagship).

[JustNoEffort]

I'm still a newbie but I just beat my first normal game with a large fleet built around an onslaught. I was deploying frigates and destroyers against enemy cap fleets and big bounty targets and I think all I lost was a corvette here and there, usually because I sent it ahead of everything else to try and aggressively capture some nav point.

Maybe this is a dumb question, but do you give your ships orders to protect one another?  In my game I found that giving escort orders to my destroyers and support frigates/fighters helped a ton.  AI Destroyers in particular seem to do a lot better against big ships when they are all directing their fire in roughly the same place/direction.  Even when I was piloting a battleship or a cruiser you feel a lot scarier when you have a sunder or two backing you up with long range artillery.

[hqz]

I'm still a newbie myself. I have only been playing for a few weeks now and only completed 2 games.

I'm sure there is some trick to avoid losing too many units but I'm still struggling with this. I just lost an enforcer XIV a few minutes ago to some random bounty fleet mostly composed of carriers and fighters. I must really do something wrong. I can solo pretty much any fleet with my onslaught, but my AI destroyers and frigates keep dying. And if I ask them to escort me they either get into my line of fire, or they get flanked and killed while trying to follow me.

Do you give explicit escort orders to every single unit (e.g. "frigate X escort destroyer Y") or do you just give the "escort" mark on your destroyers and bigger ships?

Is there a particular loadout that makes escorting work better? e.g. having the destroyer in charge of the long range artillery while the escorting frigates are taking care of the point defense.

[Dri]

I generally have ships escort other ships at the start of battle to keep my fleet together but once the real combat breaks out I release them to attack as they please.

Hate when one of my fast ships charges up the middle, gets overwhelmed and then erased by missiles.

[JohnDoe]

Yes, chain escorting is the way to go. Order other ships to escort a slow anchor ship, and let that anchor ship escort you. This effectively creates a deathball which you can drag around and not impede your own movement.

[Megas]

Deploying multiple capitals will smash enemy fleets... and your stockpiles.  I solo fleets with one ship (except pursuit battles that may need multiple ships to catch them all) so my fleet can loot more than it consumes, even without bounties or commissions.  My fleet is a toolbox of flagships - pick the one ship most efficient for the job and solo the battle.  Sometimes, it is a Medusa.  Other times, it is a cruiser or battleship.

All of my officers have Combat Aptitude 10 so that I can chain-battle more if necessary.  They keep all of my flagships at 100% CR, instead of 80%.

[Schwartz]

I don't use capital ships a lot. Most of the time, it'll be an Odyssey because it's versatile, can mount a punishing array of Tac Lasers and Tachyons and has a flight deck.

But really, I'm a fan of a more balanced fleet composition and high-tech ships. Usually I'm heavy on the cruisers, with a couple of fast frigates and at least 4-8 fighter wings.

Yes, capitals give you more bang for the buck when you look at DPs, but they're just boring to me. I like to mix and match what I deploy to counter the enemy fleet composition more effectively. If they're heavy on the fighters, I bring Auroras with Tac Lasers. If there's a couple of fighters but only middling PD and no flight decks, I deploy all of my fighters and mop 'em up. If they bring big and threatening ships, I might go for shield tanks and phase ships.

Generally, this allows me to fight against superior numbers and come out on top. I don't like soloing, and I don't like deploying everything for easy wins. There has to be some challenge left, even if the numbers say that by deploying 3 expensive cruisers, I'm not being as effective as if I'd brought two capitals instead.

So I tend to end up with..

6 Cruisers
3 Frigates
4-8 Fighters

Sometimes a specialist Destroyer or two.

[Thaago]

If it weren't for officers and the 25 ship limit, I would rather go 5 Enforcers.

I agree. I am a huge fan of the Enforcer myself. It feels like a great combination of range, armor and somewhat mobility. With level 20 officers a couple of them can stand against a pretty wide range of ships. The thing is that they sometimes die, and need to be replaced. Whereas a capital ship is a one-time investment and you never have to replace it. Don't get me wrong, I really wish I could fly a fleet of enforcers. I could probably deal with any enemy fleet with 5 to 10 enforcers.

I'm curious about how you use 5 enforcers in battle. I've tried different kind of commands but I'm not sure any order is actually making them more efficient than the default stance. e.g. if I tell some enforcers to guard other enforcers (or any other ship), they tend to die more often.

What are your thoughts on this?

...

I find two things key to having my Enforcers survive: have a dual flak mounted on each side, have flux resistant conduits, and have a few cruisers in the fleet. I prefer Eagles for their strong shields and good mobility, kitted out for ranged support. Enforcers have terrible shields and just can't stand certain levels of firepower - having a "tank" ship act as a barrier for them to retreat behind works really nicely. It just occurred to me (didn't last time) that this is actually an example of synergy that the OP was asking about .

As for orders, I tend not to escort my enforcers, but actually use them as escorts themselves to said cruisers. Having 2 Enforcers escort an Eagle makes for a very powerful little battle cluster, and their speeds match up well. I use Defend a order in the rear when I want my entire fleet to pull back - the AI follows that order really well if they have a good line, and I cover the retreat with my own flagship. Cancelling the defend order then lets everyone go back on offense.

All that said, my Enforcers are the "poor bloody infantry" of the fleet - sometimes they just get killed. The good news is that the ships are cheap - only around 35k including weapons?

And while fighters in general suck right now, I have found that having a mixed screen of broadswords and thunders drastically reduces my frigate and destroyer losses - as long as they are hanging around my other ships. They draw a huge amount of fire (building up the enemies soft flux) and don't die for real like other ships. Its just that, for the ship slots, they aren't worth it! I also love their high speed - I can call in the cavalry of fast fighter wings to help an Enforcer in trouble... or I used to be able to before they lost the zero flux speed bonus and the speed of all other ships went up by 50. But... for their slots, cost, needing a carrier, and lack of officer, I just can't justify fighters. (I really want to - I used to run carrier fleets as my favorite style).

[Achataeon]

5 Enforcers can handle up to tri-tachyon desertion level fleets. I've been running around with 5 Enforcers with me on a Medusa, and things go down left and right. Even managed to take down a Doom with it. Enforcers get Flaks on the sides, Arbalests, and a Mauler in the middle. With the usual hullmods on it, it works like clockwork. They can do this reliably if they all defend one Enforcer among them.

[hqz]

Ok so it seems like a good strategy is to rely heavily on the escort command. I'll try the chained-escort approach this evening I think.

When it comes to escorting a cruiser, yes this is exactly the kind of synergies I was looking for. I wonder if the Venture could be a good fit for this. It is cheap to deploy (15 DP, 15 supplies), it has a flight deck, enough weapon slots for a good coverage of PD and possibly a long-range weapon, 2 medium missile slots (for some long-range pilums) and the fast missile racks system.

Coincidentally, yesterday I was testing a mod I'm developing where I wanted an AI-driven Enforcer to lose 10% of its hull integrity and I spent quite some time watching a single Enforcer solo fleets without ever taking a dent. It seems like they can only die when I'm not watching them.