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[Warruk]

I've gotten to the point in my first play through where I'm fighting Remnants.  I've read a good deal on these forums about how that jump from high level bounties to Remnants is pretty big, and it was.  My early encounters were pretty one-sided.  I have slowly gotten to the point where I can hold my own against 2 Radiant Ordos, but I'm struggling with one aspect of these fights, and I'm curious if my problem is fixable.

My fleet is all low tech.  I use XIV Battlegroup variants of the Onslaught, Dominator, and Enforcer.  For all fights up to Remnants, I had the Enforcers escort the cruisers and capitals, and they seemed to be effective at both protecting the escortee and dealing damage; all the Enforcer officers are either Reckless or Aggressive.  In my Remnant fights, where I need every ship to do some good, I started noticing the escorters often do not join the battle.  I'll find my ship (Dominator) taking a major beating from 3-4 Fulgents/Brilliants while the Onslaughts take on the Radiant, and my two escorting Enforcers are staring down Glimmers threatening to flank.  It's like, you guys do know your escort is not doing well, right?  Those Sabots and Harpoons that you have a ton of, just target a Fulgent and hit your LMB a few times!

I'm currently dealing with that issue by putting eliminate orders on the nearby Remnants from each Enforcer near me.  It works at driving back the pressure, but then their Aggressive/Reckless nature makes (typically) one Enforcer take a silly risk and die.

I read a suggestion that it might be better to ditch escorting, and just assign the fleet to a few waypoints and let the various ships pick their own location near them.  I tried that, but found the Enforcers consistently got in front of the big ships, blocked shots from the bigs, then died miserable.  Their behavior as an escorter is just hugely different than an unguided ship (or when they have an eliminate order, but I think that's supposed to have the ship take more risks than normal).

Regardless, I'm consistently ending these fights either losing one Dominator (me) if I give no orders, or losing one Enforcer if I have them eliminate.  Is it possible to have escorts work better at attacking the main force (non-flanking)?  If that's not possible, would Steady be a better choice for these Enforcers where I'd direct them via orders?

Would appreciate any thoughts you guys have.

[Thaago]

I did a similar playthrough with low tech only ships, and also found Enforcers to be good escorts. They very much stick to escorting and covering flanks if there are any potential flankers around - though they did move to the forward flanking position and provide fire support if they were an HVD/Mauler+ITU variant and flanks were clear. Like you, I would fairly frequently be adjusting the Enforcers, but I had better luck cancelling the escort command and giving them "engage" orders, rather than eliminate, in this specific circumstance. After all I didn't really want them to charge in full bore, just give fire support! When I did use the "eliminate" command they would relive the pressure much faster because they charge, but then I would need to cancel the command fairly quickly. I would also sometimes need to reign in the Enforcers by cancelling the engage and putting them back on escort. It takes a bit of micro which is not so good.

I would not mind the escort order being a little less 'flank protect' driven in the next version, as Alex posted on twitter a while back that they have new behaviors that stop them from crowding fire lines!!

In terms of personality: I vote aggressive for all low tech ships, perhaps Reckless for capitals.

The other thing that helped a lot for me was to systematically kill Remnant frigates by using Condors with Thunders (if following the low tech theme) to reduce the number of distractions my ships face. I had a small group of them (4 at the end) that I had hotkeyed, and would use fighter strike orders to concentrate all 8 wings of Thunders on any remnant frigate that was not with the pack, or against a ship whose flux had been driven up by engagement and was vulnerable to EMP knocking its guns out. Fast fighters work very well in this role vs remnants, especially the cruiser and below who don't have omni shield, and they didn't require any skills invested to be extremely effective when given orders. Unfortunately they don't work particularly well vs Tesseracts because of how many EMP arcs those ships give off.

[Warruk]

Thanks for the advice, Thaago.  I have two questions for you:

1. I don't see an option to assign an individual Enforcer to engage an enemy.  I can choose an enemy and hit 'engage,' but that appears to be a general order.  Am I missing something with the orders I can give?
2. What was your battle size?  I'd love to bring in 4 condors, but I'd have to sacrifice something pretty large to do so.  I currently have a battle size of 300, so my max is 180.

[Warnoise]

Here's an advice: Ditch low tech ships. They have 0 chance against an equally equipped Remnants. Switch to Furies and other fast high techs if you want to win with minimal losses.

Setting aggressive/reckless to your low tech ships will only cause them to be kited then get singled out by the small ships. That's not a good idea on a ship without omnishield

[FooF]

Low-tech works just fine, no need to ditch them. They’re not as optimal but they’re still able to get the job done with a few losses. My low-tech run was successful, just not as successful as high-tech. Its a matter of “good” vs. “better” not “bad” vs. “good.” Also, next patch has a ton of Low-tech improvements so the meta might shift that way soon anyway.

[Thaago]

Thanks for the advice, Thaago.  I have two questions for you:

1. I don't see an option to assign an individual Enforcer to engage an enemy.  I can choose an enemy and hit 'engage,' but that appears to be a general order.  Am I missing something with the orders I can give?
2. What was your battle size?  I'd love to bring in 4 condors, but I'd have to sacrifice something pretty large to do so.  I currently have a battle size of 300, so my max is 180.

1. What I do is I set an enemy to engage, then click on the enforcers and right click them onto it. AFAIK this keeps them on engage instead of eliminate. It does sometimes bring other non-assigned units in to attack but its usually not a problem.
2. I'm playing at 400, so a max of 240. 4 condors is probably too many for 180!

Low-tech works just fine, no need to ditch them. They’re not as optimal but they’re still able to get the job done with a few losses. My low-tech run was successful, just not as successful as high-tech. Its a matter of “good” vs. “better” not “bad” vs. “good.” Also, next patch has a ton of Low-tech improvements so the meta might shift that way soon anyway.

Thats my experience as well. When well built they can still take out an equal sized alpha core enemy 1v1, they just don't have the sheer number of bonuses that the high tech frigates got this iteration.

[Linnis]

Playing low tech and losing an enforcer to an ordo fleet? Sound like success to me.