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I seriously hope Ego is going to revamp the entire fleet control and property management mechanics, because as of right now, it's the biggest barricade to enjoying an otherwise kinda decent game.
There is wing management and as such, follow the advice Sticky provided above.
There is no way to organize your possesions outside of creating fleets - grouping / folder systems to with a preset standard behaviour would've been expected by a game in this day and age.
Actually functional standard templates rather than the trainwreck equipment handling if one wants to mix faction gear?
Changing gear on several ships at once? (Most I can do is batches of 4 at a time, after manually adding what is avaliable locally)
Highly inconsistent behaviour between In Sector fighting and Out Of Sector fighting has been and remains an issue. While In Sector fighting is desirable for the fun in flying around and fighting, usually it is desirable to not participate and use highest DPS weapons due to system calculations.
Instead of dispersing and cluttering across several tabs, all of the management aspects would've been better off as solid lists for crew transfers, fleet management, gear adjustments.
As it is, the UI usually 'burps' and flings the user about unecessarily, no matter if you are trying to get an idea if your captains are competent, ships loaded, etc.
Friggin hell, the game is at version 3.10 now, and it's missing essential gameplay mechanics and tools for doing very basic things in-game. This is pathetic.
I did try this and once you start adding fleets inside of fleets the behavior is very unpredictable. I had about 40 ships. Certain ships would just sit and wait in combat (even after checking their behavior and ensuring they didn't have any orders in queue that would force them to wait). There are still a lot of bugs to work out and it's not smooth. AI development is not easy and on such a grand scale with a small dev team. Also there are multiple forks in the road where you have to decide how long to maintain an order before their default behavior kicks in. I'd say most people have queued up orders and that's why their ships don't behave as expected.
Checkout the X4 Manual PDF page 19. Looks something like this. Along with the interface in game that describes your "fleets".
Combat And Weapons
Fight
Combat
Weapon Types
Main Weapon Aiming (Guns)
Main Weapon Aiming (Missiles)
Main Weapon Firegroups
Main Weapon Heat
Turret Settings
Turret Rules of Engagement:
HUD Controls for Turrets on Medium ships:
Full Controls for All Ships:
Defence Drones
Attacking specific station modules
Loot
Fleet Management
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=427428
This is Egosoft.
But once you create them, and even though it looks odd to see 8 under 1, in combat they seem to work correctly. At that point other AI kicks in and they just attack whatever wherever. I'm not sure why they forced us to have the whole protection mechanism to create a fleet but they did.
Also you can kind of cheat it if you create a defense fleet for a station and then order that fleet to attack a target. Then they actually appear to function like a fleet b/c their report is the station and not any ship within the fleet.
So yeah they kind of work but they are still odd. We just need something like grab 6 ships, create fleet, name fleet, done. Why do they have to protect a ship they report to? Makes no sense. I mean if you look at the US Navy I guess the fleet is protecting the carrier so that would be the 'leader' in this game and the subordinates would be the cruisers and other ships.
This game is more concept prototype than acutally a game.
It is not even a sandbox but more like a framework, delivered with some samples so something is moving.
The perception of devs and players seem to be worlds apart. When devs say something is working, even as inteded, at it obviously isn't. When you think about the core aspects of the game:
- explore (what? empty space. why? data vaults I cannot find on the map. how? crazy AI)
- trade (basic mechanics missing, custom trade rules, statistics.. and not traders flying with 5 pieces of energy cells. trade stations, and much much more if you offer a game with trade as one of the main aspects)
- empire (no way to organize things, no overview but clicking each in a huge list, no bulk operations, no delegating tasks to AI like manage and improve stations or even sectors. fleet management. not even the slightest interaction with other factions, ...)
- NPC AI, seems to be reduced to simplistic scripts
... asf...
not even mentioning all the actual bugs
And then think about how long it took the community to fix some of those non-exists with mods, showing that it is possible to do, even within few weeks/days. It is beyond me why ES doesn't use community improvements for their updates, as idea, as hint, as feedback what it is important. Possibly because everything is working as 'intended' anyways :D
I have heard ES will bring the next expansion next year and then move on to X5. This makes sense since they are not a non-profit organisation. So X4 is now as good as it gets I think, hoping on community to make it a game.
After buying all X titles, pre-ordered XR and X4, I will skip X5.
I hope I misunderstood one of the devs, maybe he just said so to make everything sound more complicated, but it made me really concerned as it was said 'trading code is all over the places in X4'. That doesn't sound like it will be easy to maintain, enhance, evolve.
I think now I did everything for this year:
installed latest 3.2 update, wasted 70h of my time, recogniced (again) there is nothing, wrote a big rant post on forum and now uninstalling the game :D
have fun with the game, because it can really be fun at times ;)
You can give other orders, and what can happen is just like what can happen if a politician shows up in a battle zone and starts giving orders, Total Confusion!
Bottom line, you do not have management of the fleet because you are not the Admiral, only the owner. Don't screw it up... 8-}
1. Almost all orders should be given to the fleet commander.
2. An attack order is every man for himself.
3. A defend order should only be used when you want those ships to only attack the ship that is actively attacking the ship they are defending.
4. An Intercept order means attack all drone/fighters/cruisers that are nearby.
5. Pilot and crew skill matter. to how quickly a ship reacts to orders and combat.
6. The attack order is given directly by you or ships under the captains command who are following an attack order.
7. when a fleet is ordered to move it recalls all ship and gets into formation before moving.
What this all means.
1. When you want a fleet to go attack something. you tell the commander to go attack something. He will then move to attack the target himself and he will give his underlings who are following him with the attack order to attack that thing.
2. Don't issue an attack order across the galaxy, or even across the map. Instead issue a move order that is just short of the target. and then add an attack order. (you could also add a defend position order after the move to order so they attack everything, but be advised once he moves to the location he will wait for you to tell him to procede. at which point in time you can either coms him and tell him to procede. or you can go to his order and delete the move to order. or you can right click the order on the map and select delete this order). If you issue an attack order, they will move to target at best speed breaking the fleet up and out of formation.
3. This is more of a command for ships that are escorting trade ships, Although I do find it handy to have secondary carriers in a fleet set to defend the commander. It pretty much just lets the carriers stick close to the center of battle here the commander is to launch there fighters who are on intercept roles.
4. This is what you should assign your fighters and gunboats and maybe cruisers to.
5. Big difference between a no skill crew and a 5 star crew. Even a 2 star crew ill vastly out perform a no star crew. bassicaly always start with a 2 start crew, its not that hard or costly.
6. The attack role is what I give to destroyers and cruisers with torps, or plasma, or railguns.
7, This kinda plays into rule 2. but basically before you issue an attack order you want them near the target, so if you issue a move order the fleet will group up and then move together as a fleet (they will break up a bit depending on fleet skill and ship styles)
So with all this in mind. my fleets consist of XL/L/M/S ships. with all S/M ships set to intercept. with all S/M ships having a docking bay to land at. I dont manage them at all, the AI manages them just fine. and they take out fighters and cruisers just fine without my intervention. With all L ships, and maybe cruisers with heavy weapons (depending on what I plan on fighting or what assets I have at that stage of the game)
And then all I do is order the fleet commander around. So when I am moving that fleet a long distance. what I will do, before I get to the last system. so the system before I want them to go fight in. I ill give the move order to move there just short of the gate. I will then set the default behavior to protect the area on the other side of the gate. The captain will then move the fleet to that move to location and wait for me to tell him to procede. Once he is there and ready and I tell him to go there is usually a fleet battle on the other side of the gate which I let them duke it out. I will fly around and drop satillites on the system so I know where all the enemy is. depending on the situation I might drop a defense platform to make sure nothing gets away while I secure the system, or I might just go ham.
So once in system and I begin to clear it out. when I want an enemy station destroyed. I order the fleet to move to about 50km from the station. and then a move order 30km from the station. and then an attack order on each of the capital ships and then one on the station itself.
What this does is the fleet groups up and starts to move to the first waypoint. of course they break up a little bit. But when he arrives at the first waypoint he will then regroup and move to the 2nd waypoint. which is a short distance so no breakup should happen. and even if it does happen they are still withen 50km of the battle. and once he reaches the 2nd waypoint he will automatically react to the attack order and go.
if the enemy sends out fighters or cruisers to intercept my my fighters and cruisers will launch automatically to defend. If they send out cap ships I will have to delete the move order (but again your only removing it from the commander).
From there I have 3 choices. leave it alone and they ill fly back to protect the gate once the battle is complete. Or I can move the protect area to the location they are at. or I can issue a new move order and they ill move to that location and wait for further orders.
A thing to not on this. Don't be afraid to issue attack orders to specific ships or wings. Attack orders are just fine, once the target is dead they will go back to doing what they where told to do before. Just dont issue move orders, as those have then you have to tell each pilot you told to move to procede.
For instance I always have atleast 2 wings set to attack. And many times I will have a factory that a wing of destroyers can go take out without the need of the entire fleet. So I will right click one of the wings and select all then tell that wing to go attack. And because each wings consist of the same exact ships they get there at the same time. and once the target is back they fly back to the commander without my ordering them.
So the fleet system works really good, If you use it the way it was intended instead of the way you feel it should work.
Well...that's both sort of both correct and incorrect. I think the game is designed to make micro-management of ships in combat very difficult but also unnecessary.
I think a key design element is that every agent in the game (station, ship pilot, crew whatever) is designed to work independently according to it's own AI logic (based on high level orders you give if they work for you), not your logic. They are not designed to respond automatically and instantly to exactly what you want them to do at any one time and they are also designed to behave like idiots at low skill level and much better at high skill levels.
This is a design principle of the game - part of what what Bernd calls a "bottom up" design. The idea being the simulation is built up from thousands of small parts all doing their little thing and there is no overall "God" code (or player intervention) that can that immediately change behaviour - only nudge it in a general direction. It's one of the reasons why X games are special 'cos very few games are made this way.
Fleet ships behaviour is based on this principle too.
This can be very frustrating to start with, especially when your ships do stupid things (or indeed nothing at all) in combat. But if you grit your teeth and embrace the system as it is, work with the grain of it, it starts to make sense and to work.
It means that the effectiveness of your fleet in battle is not based on what you would like them to do or what you try to micro them to do, it's based on how you outfit your ships, how you organise them, how you approach encounters and what overall orders you give them (each group/wing in the fleet).
If you buy the right ship and loadout combinations, pick the right encounters suitable for their current capabilities, lay the right plans and give the right order combinations then they will do their jobs like clockwork surprisingly effectively.