Fleets are great but...

[Danny]

I often want to use two fleets, or currently 7 fleets at once, for example when attacking a heavily defended AI world, then I want to divide them up to attack the other planets in the system.

How about a task force option, e.g. you can combine fleets into a task force like you add ships to a fleet.

I could really use an option like that at the moment, I want to move 1 Artificial World Fleet, 5 Battle Fleets, and a bunch of transports to an empty area on the other side of the galaxy, and taking those fleets apart then putting them back together would be a major pain.

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I AM Canadian.

[Courageous]

On a slightly different note, one of the
thing that really drives me NUTTY about
the "next ship" button is the way it visits
multiple ships in the same fleet. ARG. With
larger games, it's usally better just to
visit each system. "Next ship" gets to be
close to useless.

C//

[Noble713]

My problems with fleets:

A fleet forms a single formation, and if your fleet is large enough (20+ ships), many of the vessels don't form up properly. It would be great if we could have fleets within a fleet (task forces/Groups, battle Groups, whatever) that could be assigned a formation. This way, a fleet of 40 ships could be 10 ships with a Left Flank formation, 10 with a Right Flank formation, and 20 with a Wedge formation, instead of 20 with a Wall formation and the rest following blindly in a big clump.

Also, I have repeatedly found problems creating formations in tactical combat. If you clear all of your group assignments several turns into the combat and then form a new one with a few ships, 99% of the time they will move AWAY from the group leader, scattering in every direction. If I didn't have to create formations on the fly (see task forces/nested fleets, above) this bug wouldn't be a problem.

[rdouglass]

Have you tried shift-clicking on the fleets to select more than 1 to move? I know this works on individual ships, but I'm not sure about fleets. When you shift-click and select more than 1 ship, they will travel together as in a fleet; ie. they will only move as many points as the slowest ship has. They will not share supplies like a fleet though.

I'm at work right now, so I can't test this. Maybe someone else knows, but I suspect they may work that way. In theory, shift-clicking multiple fleets will make them travel together, hence enter the same sector together, yet still have different formations and combat tactics.

May work, no????

In response to Corageous, you may need to turn on the option that says:
"Next ship command stops only once at each sector" or something like that.
I think you get to it by going to the Empire Status, then selecting Options but I'm not positive...

[This message has been edited by rdouglass (edited 13 December 2000).]

[Seawolf]

Noble,

Your next select problem is fixed in next patch.

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Seawolf on the prowl

[JDL]

Yes,

Shift clicking works like a dream

BUT - they only move together for the current turn, then they split and head(if the objective is more than the current turns' movement points away) for the objective seperatly.