Station Siege

[Drakoumel]

when I attack a station, how can I convince my Large ships not to go and hug the station ?

[lnomsim]

Some will tell you you need captains with better skills and turrets with higher range.

I'm part of the DIY crowd. Put your ships outside of the station range and ask them to hold position and put their medium turrets in defence mode and Large Turrets in Attack all.

Go destroy the station turrets. When it's done, let your ships hug the station all they want.
Just make sure you ask them to stop attacking and retreat before it explodes.

[MOK]

Short answer with vanilla stable release is that you can't. They'll suicide intermittently, based on their range to a component they switch to targeting. Or something like that.

However, you can adapt in a few ways until the AI get's improved.

A) pick up the unstable beta for some limited improvements, and risk the problems inherent to a beta. Not the first thing you should try.
B) Use coordinated attack AFTER ships are positioned in a favorable manner. For example, positioning them in such a way that the group of destroyers(etc) are within range of, and equidistant to, most of the station components. Or at least, the ones with big guns. Use the circle or line abreast formations so that you have similar relative distances across the fleet.
C) Personally intervene by eliminating the large turrets. You can reduce the number of relevant turrets by positioning your fleet on a plane that exposes them to fewer turrets. For example, above.

I'd start with C, as this will save you the most time and frustration.

There's more little things you can do, but lets start with the big picture.

[[NOPE] Sigvar]

So a rattlesnake has a main battery range of 6.7 km. and a Behemoth has a main battery range of 10.? km. Xenon turrets have a range of 5.7 km. A behemoth will approach to 8 ish km to make an attack on a station. A rattlesnake will approach to 4.7km. I dont know the Teladi range but they fare pretty well in station attacks as well. Keep Split ships on CAP to defend your assaulting ships. There are numbers for everything in this game if you study it.
Xenon turrets will chew through your ships regardless of build if they break that 5.7 km range.

[robbieray72]

I use my syn, and i destroy the actual def modules, then let the ships do whatever they want, once those are out, usually very easy to beat, and make sure u have large plasma, it has the longest range and keeps ships outta range of them stations, no plasmas ur ships will move in, i noticed that when i sent ships without them

[a pickle bamboo]

Originally posted by MOK:

until the AI get's improved.

lol

[Sel Und Irae]

AI is only bad on low end machines i used to have Minimum Req and noticed questionable stuff being done constantly. I upgraded to Recommended and i rarely lose ships unless i intentionally suicide them or attach fleet to an incompetent (low skill) commander. Idk how system fully works but i usually just get a carrier pilot it into my enemy and have all my ships launch while carrier is being attacked. Depends on enemy size but usually AI will stick to attacking my carrier while my Heavy Fighters just gut them.

[Caedes91]

You don't. EGOSOFT still doesn't address this issue after 4 years and 3 DLCs. They prioritize making money rather than fixing the game. Same with the busted patrol behaviour. Imagine you have an open plain and hire some security to protect it. One of your workers gets attacked and your security doesn't help, because it is 1m outside of their radar range. Even if you're lucky and your patrol spots it, the rest of his colleagues just don't care, even if they see it on their monitor.
This is how it feels in the game. Don't bother putting down adv. satellites either, they won't react to threats outside of their comfort zone.

[Gregorovitch]

There are three ways to attack stations effectively and all of them require your personal oversight and intervention to a greater of lesser extent. You cannot just select a fleet, right click on a station and say attack, even if you use coordinated attack, without high risk of significant and costly losses.

1. Turret sniping. Jump into a destroyer yourself and shoot out the station's L turrets from range using main batteries. It's a 10-15m job on average (once you get good at it) and when it's done you just send in the destroyers and the station is toast. This is the most surefire and safe way to deal with stations on a limited budget.

2. L Plasma turret creep. You put the L turrets of your destroyers on either attack capitals or attack everything and drive thee destroyers to just within range of station modules and give them a halt order so they stay put. The turrets will open up, the destroyer will stay put. This is a fiddly and tedious process. I don't use it personally. I think turret sniping is quicker and more effective.

3. Fighter swarm turret stripping. You order a swarm of fighters from a carrier(s) to attack the station but leave the destroyers on hold out of range. The fighters will shoot up the station's turrets. You must monitor their progress (by cycling through the sub-target keys from your own ship) and when the L turrets are down you send in the destroyers. If you have fighters with optimised loadouts for the task you need a bout 50, if not you need about 100. Note this gambit doesn't work against Xenon shipyards as they have hundreds of defence drones that distract/shoot down the fighters too much.