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

[capnq]

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.

[Taera]

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.

[capnq]

i never used the custom formations from TDM because i feel they would give me a major edge over the AI.

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.

[Taera]

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.

[capnq]

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.

[Daynarr]

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

I started with this 1.58 Version change:

10. Fixed - If a combat piece was in a fleet it would always use the fleet strategy,
even if it had broken formation.

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.

[DavidG]

I don't think ships completely ignore fleet orders. I often use the wall formation and they do stay in formation. What they do ignore is the don't hurt me orders. And I believe Capture Planet orders which I understand that correctly means a ship will fire on a planet untill all defensese are gone and then cease fire and allow the troops to land.