fleet strategy question

[Dogboy]

I've read in the newbie FAQ that you are best off having all ships break formation, but are fleet strategies useful in SEIV gold for anything other than initial position?

Could I, e.g., hold back a few defense ships to protect my transports, while allowing others to break formation and go after enemy transports?

Also, where can I find out how fleet strategies interact with ship strategies?

Thanks!
DB

[Xrati]

OK, bare with me here as it's been a while since I had SE4 up. You can do what you asked. Place the escorts on a 'don't get hurt' order and they will fall back with the transports. Your better offf at setting them to a 'long range attack, but don't put any long range weapons on them. You can test out the strategies IIRC in the battle tester program within the ship builder.

You will have to give careful thought to your designs, to get the orders to work right.

Breaking formation is the only way to get ships to operate in a maximized fashion. For best effects keep all ship speeds the same and use small groups as a fleet. You would probably want a carrier group to stay in formation with it's escorts, launch and run to the corner of the map. While your combat fleet breaks and starts pounding the enemy ships with direct fire. Dont forget to set target priority too! This will have a big effect on how the AI uses your ship.

[Fyron]

"Long range attack" will just make them charge forward and fire at the maximum range of the weapons mounted on them. AFAIK, SE4's combat AI will not keep them out at 12 squares distance if they have no weapons that can fire at that range.

Setting them to "don't get hurt" will cause them to flee to random corners, and not necessarily the same ones as your transports. Sometimes, you might even get all escorts fleeing to the SW corner, but all transports fleeing to the SE.

You cannot get any ship with a non-attack strategy to stay in a formation; as soon as "don't get hurt" comes into the picture, the ships will break formation automatically. With carriers, for example, you have one of two choices. One, give them weapons and watch them act as attack ships, staying in formation and charging forward. They will launch their fighters as they charge forward to certain doom. Two, give them no weapons, and they will break formation and flee to the corners of the map, launching fighters as they fall back.

I don't think SE4 has any AI strategy settings that will achieve what you want with any predictability.