Re: Why don\'t ships obey their $@#$@# fleet orders
 

I think formations work tolerably well if you are using small Groups and they have weapons that fire every turn. But missles or other weapons that have to reload will try to retreat whil they do so. This results in the ships on the right wing crossing over and vise versa and getting bLasted in the process. This is even worse for large Groups as they have farther to go.

It would be nice if you could have small formations within the fleet. Wingmen in effect. 30 ships in Groups of 2 or 3 that are independant of the other Groups would be devastating I would think. Unfortunatly there is no way to do that currently that I know of.

Geo

Re: Why don\'t ships obey their $@#$@# fleet orders
 

Personaly when i create fleet designs i always put an APB or PPB to every ship (including transports, missile ships, carriers) to keep the formation. I always count the max. number for the given formation and try to keep at the number. Makes me have several fleets but thats not a bad thing.

I'll also say that i strongly use Turbine and Butterfly formations and those do work very well for me, keeping the enemy under fire while ships always move making the enemy unable to hit the same ship twice in a row. When armor and shields are there, the life expectanct of my fleets rise greatly. I do not understand why everyone here hates formations so much, they are obviously underrated. at least, this is my opinion.

Re: Why don\'t ships obey their $@#$@# fleet orders
 

Taera
They work for you because you thought it our and practiced. Now I'm going to. Thanks for the ideas.

Re: Why don\'t ships obey their $@#$@# fleet orders
 

One problem with fleets comes when the leader is suddenly reduced to a movement of 1, at which point the entire fleet only moves 1 space per combat turn.

The other problem (at least with older Versions of SE4, this may be fixed) is that sometimes, when the leader is destroyed, a fleet will "lose" a combat turn, which can be devastating...

Re: Why don\'t ships obey their $@#$@# fleet orders
 

My worst fleet experience was in a PBW game.

I forget how many ships were involved, but I was using the Flying V formation, and trying to intercept a slightly smaller enemy fleet.

Because this was a simultaneous game, it happened that when the fleets met, mine started in the center of the bottom of the map, and the enemy started in the lower right corner.

My fleet leader at the base of the V turned right and moved toward the enemy. As the rest of the formation tried to swing around, the entire right arm of the V hung up on the map border, piling up so badly that the fleet leader was blocked from moving further on the next turn. The whole fleet just sat there, pinned against the "invisible wall" while the enemy closed, not moving at all until a ship blocking the leader was destroyed.

That was how I learned the value of breaking formation.

Re: Why don\'t ships obey their $@#$@# fleet orders
 

Yes i've encountered the problem with fleet leader being destroyed and/or damaged and have found several ways to evade this problem.

First and most important is to use correct formations. Several ones, such as the Flying V and Arrowhead are quite useless as my personal expirience shows. Those useful are the ones that hold the leader in the middle (i use Turbine--my fav, Butterfly and Spider, all in appropiate situations) because then the formation spins around putting each time a different ship under enemy's fire, plus putting each ship under PDC protection while half of the ships are away from the enemy fire at time.

Second the leader should be well protected by armor and shields, do not put your weakest ship as fleet leader.

Third is the wise selection of fleet leader.
Remeber the Targeting Options. If its a leader-in-center formation the leader will never be closest/farest. YOu can make it wouldnt be most powerful/least powerful. etc. By using this the leader can avoid enemy fire for quite a while.

Also i have to say i never used the custom formations from TDM because i feel they would give me a major edge over the AI. Some formations such as the Barrage are awesome, good job for the TDM staff.

Re: Why don\'t ships obey their $@#$@# fleet orders
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Interesting. The only TDM custom formation I've ever even tried was the Dark Wing. I don't see any advantage at all to most of them.

Re: Why don\'t ships obey their $@#$@# fleet orders
 

Well not all of them, but some are.
Best example is the Barrage, this is the best formation i have ever seen and i dont even want to use it in my single-player games because considering my personal strategies this would be the perfect formation. Maybe.
Hard flanks is kinda similar, and the double-wall is much perfected wall formation.

No, i still do think TDM formations are great. And dark wing never seemed promising to me.

I'd just stick to TUrbine, i am already used to it.

Re: Why don\'t ships obey their $@#$@# fleet orders
 

Must be play-style differences. Double Wall puts half of your ships further away from the enemy than a normal Wall; I can't imagine why I'd want to reduce my firepower that much.

Re: Why don\'t ships obey their $@#$@# fleet orders
 

Ok, I think why and when the problem with fleet formations has happened.

I started with this 1.58 Version change:

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The reason for this change was the problem with AI that would still use formation strategy when it would break formations. This bug was important for AI because it would not be able to use fleets with different ship designs effectively. So just un-doing it wouldn't be good.

OTOH it seems that the patch makes ships ignore the fleet orders completely, even when the fleet formation is not broken. That makes fleet orders useless. This probably can be fixed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif