Fleet not stay in formation?

[BLKCandy]

I wonder why the fleet not staying in formation hasn't been fixed yet. I mean, they CAN stay in formation.

Having player fly the ship in auto pilot will have the fleet fly in formation.

Giving any order then cancel all fleet member auto assigned fly to and wait will have them try to keep up in formation and actually defend the ship.

Putting escorts as station defense subordinates will have them properly fly escort for traders.

Faction AI fly in formation.

Cancelling recall subordinates order will have escorts fly alongside the lead ship.

So they can fly in formation, just not without player intervention because weird automatic behavior of fly to and wait and the deploy/recall. Then why does this problem persist this long?

[AfghaniGoat]

Best solution I have found, you have to set a default behavior for your lead ship. Without a default behavior other than 'Hold', fleets seem to be pretty incapable.

Changing the lead ships behavior will also automate their combat sequence.

They will engage on their own, and repair/resupply on their own (when an available support ship is in the fleet).

[BLKCandy]

The fleet that has the most problem would be the non station bound auto traders with escort going far ahead, leaving freighter vulnerable. They don't even return to help the freighter when it get attacked.

Station traders get station assigned escorts. My combat fleets do reasonably well with defense position command, though I still have to oversee the relocation. They would break formation in moving across sectors or waste time recalling corvettes otherwise.

[CubeBix9000]

there is no fleet managment yet ^^

[MaGicBush]

Originally posted by CubeBix9000:

there is no fleet managment yet ^^

Yea I am struggling to figure out why they have not focused more on such an important feature that is a basic thing instead of things like tracking software for 3.0. I mean I get that there is a crowd that uses that, but everyone has to use fleets. There's also alot of other random additions no one asked for. I appreciate the update though so don't get me wrong! I just question the priorities.