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[IIE16 Yoshi]

Would it be possible to re-configure escort commands so cruisers respond to an escort command? Or perhaps a new command that tells ships to stay huddled around another ship. (While obviously still respecting the personal space of other ships)
My playstyle of keeping a small fleet usually means I want all my ships within an arms length of me. Escort commands CAN accomplish this to some degree, however, even with a Full Escort command, some ships do not respond to the command, probably due to thinking there are enough ships already responding. Which results in things similar to this happening. My ships represented by the green ship in the link.
I'd much rather the ability to order all ships to keep close to one ship, unless they have other orders, such as to capture a point. And not to blindly ignore enemy ships in the process. Fighters escorting me have an amazing capacity to ignore an enemy frigate bearing down on them until it's practically touching the outermost fighter in the wing, at which point, they finally turn around to engage. Then get destroyed as they try to limp the 10 ft to land on my flagship after having ignored the enemy for so long.

[Vandala]

While it may seem like a good idea to keep all ships together its probably terrible in execution. Remember how bad of a situation it is when all of your ships try to follow and attack a single enemy and the mess of a 'formation' they fly in when they get clumped up? That's probably how its going to turn out if you'd allow for more then just a few ships as escort.

But, can't you mod this in AI behavior yourself? Or are certain classes (or sizes) of ships simply always barred from certain commands?

[IIE16 Yoshi]

As far as I know, cruisers will not respond to escort commands. Escorting ships can usually keep a fairly tidy formation, especially escorts with a lot of fighters instead of ships, due to their no-clipping of ships. As I said, I use escort commands to try and keep my smaller ships under control and stop them trying to brawl with one enemy ship, when 3-4 more enemy ships are flying with that first one. It's almost always gonna go horribly wrong, unless my ship is just a tank of a tank.

[KriiEiter]

I would actually rather have something like a formation command that keeps your whole fleet together.

We could have a triangle, circle, half circle, V, and spread out or clumped up variations on each.  Perhaps even the ability to set up your formation and how tightly ships stick to each other.

Have a formation screen in addition to the map screen, so you can select ships you have deployed and put them where you want them.  Just have it use up your points for each ship you add to a formation perhaps?

[Mattk50]

While it may seem like a good idea to keep all ships together its probably terrible in execution. Remember how bad of a situation it is when all of your ships try to follow and attack a single enemy and the mess of a 'formation' they fly in when they get clumped up? That's probably how its going to turn out if you'd allow for more then just a few ships as escort.

A fleet in a single concentrated group will always win against a fleet spread out provided they are concentrated on a single cap and fighters can hold a 2nd one. You seem to be underestimating the power of groups of ships taking on loners, while yeah sometimes a group of friendly ships can bump into eachother and scratch the armor, the sheer amount of survivability and concentrated firepower that comes out of it is unrivaled. If you can manage to clump up your fleet and chew up enemy capitals, cruisers, and basically everything that will come at you one at a time you will always win.

The main issue with the AI atm is that they do overwhelmingly stupid and inferior things, they dont have any feeling of self preservation or "staying with the group to encourage me not dying to a paragon" by extension. There's a lot of room for improvement here.

[Thaago]

Smaller members of a group are often extremely vulnerable though. Frigates in particular have their maneuvering very constrained by all the ships around and are easy prey to hit and run tactics. I will often pilot a Hammerhead or Medusa with a fighter or frigate escort and go up against the AI balls of death - its amazing how many ships you can just wreck when they don't have freedom to maneuver. Whittle away!