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[Besharia]

I don't understand how the Fleet AI or Command works, I'm not sure if it is intentionally fighting me or if I misunderstood something. So I'll select ships and click a location for some reason it creates a way point I see this and then try to designate the ships I want to travel there they just seem to do whatever they want. I'll tell them to avoid Ship A and attack Ship B they avoid both even when it's clear they are safe from Ship A. I try to setup flanking maneuvers to take advantage that certain ships have directional shields and defensive blind spots a lot of times they just meander about either moving forward or randomly. I check my command points and I'm not out of them which reminds me I never see them go down... I'm pretty sure I am doing something wrong but I don't know what. I went through the tutorial and had no problem completing it.

[thenumber9734]

Some of the commands are a bit finicky.

Try to confirm you see your ships have an arrow point to the Waypoint you've created, showing they're at least trying to rally there. Sometimes they'll just never quite arrive if enemy ships or order with a higher priority are in the way. Try turning off Search and Destroy on the ship, then assigning it the Waypoint.

The Avoid command directs the ship to stay out of the range of the farthest-reaching weapon on said ship, in all directions. If Ship B is within the radius of Ship A's furthest reaching weapon, but outside the range of the furthest reaching weapon of your own ships, your ships will never really engage. You're better off using a Harass order on Ship A and Engage on Ship B while avoiding using Eliminate.

Unless you have an Aggressive/Reckless officer, ships will prioritize keeping themselves alive rather than following orders, even if said orders may be better at keeping them alive then their own decision making. Not much you can do about that. Try not to create too many orders, no matter the size of your fleet. If there are too many things to do, most of your ships will either congregate around one objective or do nothing at all, at least in my experience.

[intrinsic_parity]

Generally, the AI will prioritize not dying over following commands. When ships feel safe/not threatened they follow commands well, but when they are being attacked/harassed, they focus on that instead. Speed is a really important factor here though. Fast ships are much better at following commands because they can back off from the enemy easily. Once they are out of weapons range, then they will happily follow orders. Slow ships will not be able to back off so they often are perpetually stuck engaging a few ships and they can never get disengaged enough to follow orders. Usually when I tell a ship to run away and it doesn't, it is because it is trying to run away but is not fast enough.

There are a few exceptions though. Eliminate and Avoid seem to take the highest priority.

Eliminate is often too effective, ships will suicide into the enemy to try and get the kill. I use eliminate to confirm kills on vulnerable ships, and also to force repositioning. You really need to monitor and be ready to cancel the order though, because either the enemy ship will die immediately or your ship will die charging towards it. There are no other outcomes unless you cancel. It is still the best way to make ships do what you say, but they will only do what you say and won't do anything to preserve their own life. It would be interesting if there was an eliminate level waypoint order that forced ships to go to the waypoint, but that doesn't exist right now.

Avoid is a super conservative command that mostly guarantees your ships will not die to the avoided ship, but it very much interferes with the ships ability to do other things. Only use it if you are super scared of a particular ship.

[Null Ganymede]

Other tricks to make AI feel safe enough to follow your orders:

• Ton of flux capacity and dissipation. Flux-efficient weapons that don't exceed capacity. If it feels that it has breathing space to shield tank, it'll stick around.
• Range advantage! Range advantage. ECM skill is your friend.
• Safe flanks. AI can't advance if it needs to angle shields to guard against a flanking Sunder or strike frigate. Bring light escorts.
• Numbers and size balance. Big ships "anchor" smaller ones by giving them somewhere to fall back to, but even small ships increase confidence of big ones.