Beginner here, a few questions about combat strategy and fleet movement

[Rowan]

I'm mainly wondering what you can and can't do in terms of strategy. For instance, you can move a few ships somewhere else in battle for a strategic advantage, but can you lock the formation somehow so that they are always separated? Also, how does auto targeting work? If I manually tell my ships to target one thing, is there a way I can cancel that order so they auto-target themselves?

[CDXX]

I don't think you can lock your formation. The ships make one when idle, but fleet battles don't really revolve around strict positioning. Positioning is obviously important, but it's not uncommon to move a fleet through a blockade when needed. Although there is a very useful setting that tells a fleet to only hyperspace jump while in formation. That helps keep your ships together in the same gravity well, rather than trickling in a line. It can be toggled back off if you need to do an emergency evac or something.

Auto-targeting works...but I wouldn't call it optimal. You get a lot a mileage out of micromanaging units and capital ships abilities, although the auto-target and auto-cast are serviceable. Luckily, yes, if a unit you manually target dies, then your ships fire at will. I believe there is a 'stop' command, as well, that cancels their current orders. That would also cause them to auto-target the nearest enemy. Your ships will try to fight anything within a gravity well, unless you manually tell them to hold position.

[Rowan]

Originally posted by CDXX:

I don't think you can lock your formation. The ships make one when idle, but fleet battles don't really revolve around strict positioning. Positioning is obviously important, but it's not uncommon to move a fleet through a blockade when needed. Although there is a very useful setting that tells a fleet to only hyperspace jump while in formation. That helps keep your ships together in the same gravity well, rather than trickling in a line. It can be toggled back off if you need to do an emergency evac or something.

Auto-targeting works...but I wouldn't call it optimal. You get a lot a mileage out of micromanaging units and capital ships abilities, although the auto-target and auto-cast are serviceable. Luckily, yes, if a unit you manually target dies, then your ships fire at will. I believe there is a 'stop' command, as well, that cancels their current orders. That would also cause them to auto-target the nearest enemy. Your ships will try to fight anything within a gravity well, unless you manually tell them to hold position.

Thanks for the clarification

[Tessienne]

The most useful targeting thing I know of is if you ALT + Right click on a stack of enemy units in the top right boxes where all the fleet units are shown, all your selected units will focus fire that type of enemy unit one at a time until the whole stack is destroyed or you switch targets. That way your units aren't just randomly attacking a bunch of different targets, and you don't have to micro manage what they are attacking. That may not answer any of your questions, but it is useful if you didn't know it.

[Sarnath]

what does alt right click do that regular right click doesn't? ( I only fight with my ships in a fleet)

[DM|Hachbubuch]

Originally posted by <c=FFFFFF00>Sarnath</c>:

what does alt right click do that regular right click doesn't? ( I only fight with my ships in a fleet)


:ranger_scout::ranger_assist::ranger_assault::ranger_lead::ranger_techie:

If you right-click units in the upper right corner of your screen, your ships will distribute fire among several ships of that type, to prevent overkills. However, sometimes (especially versus Vasari) you want to focus ships down one-by-one, so ALT-rightclick lets you set an order to focus all ships of selected type one after another.