Starting a Fleet

[Energy Addict]

Okay, this is my first rodeo with creating a full-on military fleet.

There are guides out there that really get in the weeds but I really just want a 10-cent approach. I am sticking with ARG for now since it was simply how I rolled and just want to keep a theme even if it is sub-optimal in some areas. I am also basing my logic on real-life approaches to naval fleets for things like screening elements which, being a video game, that logic may be a total waste of time.

Screens: My idea was to produce frigates as anti-fighter ships (heavy on flak turrets), with some minor med/capital shield busting capabilities so they aren't totally inept when facing big boiis. Fleets would have a large compliment of frigates.

Corvettes can fall into this space as well. More of a support role against larger ships?

Screens are mostly 'disposable' and make up the most numbers in the fleet and play a defensive role (primarily) to let Destroyers do the lifting from relative safety.

Bang Bang Pew Pews: Destroyers more heavy on the anti-capital ship and station weaponry and mostly reliant on Frigates to handle fighters and carriers for fighters. Solid at Hull and Shield damage with range. Destroyers being the meat of the fleet.

Big Boii: Carriers as a the flagship of the fleet. Mix of fighters. Mostly short-range defensive turrets and anti-fighter turrets and acts as the 'nexus' of the fleet.

I know there are attack/defend orders and a mess of fighters intermingled into all this but I wanted to see if I had a general idea that makes sense for making a fleet in 4X. This mentality may all be bunk so feedback on my thought theorizing is appreciated.

[Maffin]

I like your thoughts and that you stick to one faction. I had a similar approach. Try it out, adjust your fleet setup, and most importantly, try different commands and find the ones that work best for you.

Personally, I use mods that have smaller L-class ships that fit the frigate role perfectly, so I don't have to rely on vanilla corvettes as screens. I treat Corvettes/M-class ships more like heavy fighters and have them grouped with S-class heavy fighters.
However, if I had to, I would use them as second line damage dealers and send them in after the destroyers are in combat.

Ship loadouts also make a huge difference. Look at the different turrets and weapons in combat. Flak turrets sound cool and all, but they cause a lot of friendly fire and can trigger AI ships and stations against you. I have banned them all from my ships.

[Yuki]

Not everything in X4 works sadly, and what works might be very limited in its use cases, mostly thanks to quirky AI behavior.
Generally speaking your ideas are very sound already. Its that quirkiness you will face- or get a few advices for ;)

Carriers: Are in a rather special spot and can be used like "in real", from far behind to send out Pearl Harbor swarms. In that capacity you will want to let them follow your fleet. The "system wise" actual main or flag ship would probably be a destroyer (or battleship, but- thats not Argon ;) )
Thats probably for the best. A few things about those:
The Raptor, despite having that many turrets, should never face an enemy. The Shark however is a frontline ship. I didnt really use the Argon that often so far, go test it!
For the many issues with them many people rely exclusively on destroyers and battleships.
Even Captain Collins, a rather well known X4 youtuber, obviously never used a single carrier in his whole X4 life (he gets so many things completely wrong about them in his latest ship comparison video-its cringe).
So one thing right off the bat: They are complicated. And one of the main stats you want to look for the moment you aint limiting yourself to one type: Capacity.
A carrier can "carry" as many ships as it has docks AND capacity. So in case of your Colossus Vanguard probably: 8 s docks and a capacity of 40 means you can field a total of 48 figthers (!). With 4 docks + 10 capacity for mediums for a total of 14.
If you go through the troubles of "making a carrier work" however- no ship can say you shall not pass as good as them.
Their turrets are utterly unimportant though. Its all about the fighters. And how fast they can deploy them.
A small example: A Shark can, with missiles, have 913 turret dps. Thats wow right?
A common "load" of a Shark, so a "Shark group"- lets the mighty "instant death beam" Asgard run pale in comparison. We are talking six digit numbers in sustained output with a cheap setup.

Fighters: Set to intercept they start for everything in radar range. You will probably want to have a few interceptors. Pick fast ships with weapons that hit- so they plug enemies out of travel mode. Bolts work well.
Bombers: Figthers set to bombard. it means they only start for the big boys.
Relying on carriers would mean also letting those take care of enemy capital ships. And: they are best for it. For ships, stations are... a thing, a bad one in regards to AI. Bombers usually make up the bulk of your fighters. A function rather than a figther class. Defined by carrying the "big booms" vs what interceptors usually have. Plasma's, Blast Mortars and torpedos are common choices.
For the Argon i would probably go for 8-16 interceptors, rest bombers for a first try.
For fighters: Shields do matter not. You will want to have >500 m/s speed. Thats all.

"Screens": Thats indeed what you use Mediums for. The destinction ingame is mostly: Corvettes vs Gunboats. Frigates by X4's distinction are in a special place as they are mostly corvettes with an additional fighter landing spot, they are more "players personal mission ship".
Corvettes are neat to bring a LOT of damage towards an enemy capital ship. Think torpedo-boat. Gunboats can give you massive flak-shields with their turrets. Think AA-frigate. Depending on model and weapon loadout some corvettes may be good interceptors and some gunboads perform well against capitals too, its not a hard limit as much as a blurry line, but think of them like that strategy wise helps.
Gunboats are thereby usually pretty slow. A common setting for them is "defend". They will attack whatever attacks their defend target and stay in close range. Like some disposable flak around a carrier. Their turrets will still attack everything in range but the defend command makes sure they stay close and dont chase enemy speedy crafts into an enemy station - too often.
Corvettes are usually kept on "bombard for commander" like bombers, they will now automatically move out and attack enemy capital ships and: stations. The moment you go for the station set your corvettes to defend instead. They wont survive a close encouter (unless they have the range too, >8km. But only few do)

Destroyers: Are the first ships to field weapons with a range long enough to securely stay out of range of a station (~8 km). Thats their common use. Some are in a special spot. The Ray can also act as maybe THE fighter shield, but thats not Argon.
For most people they make up the bulk of the fleet. Mostly because: You will need a lot of them to down a station in any reasonable ammount of time.
(Carriers are WAY faster but that- would be a wall of text on its own to make it work. Dont touch stations with your carriers for now probably, you will just loose many)
You usually put them on "attack with commander" and - attack with one of them manually.

One thing you forgot: The Aux.
We are talking fleets, you need your supply ship. It can repair the big ones and:
Refill your carrier.
Aux act as your personal shopping and shipping center. Carriers need materials to resupply their fighters. Aux can provide those. And you can assign a few trading ships to an Aux to refill these automatically. Its a special for Aux, dunno why you cant do so with a carrier, but thats what it is. Your supply line.

So TLDR:
Fill your carrier with a few interceptors on intercept and a lot of bombers on bombard command. Thats your shield. Destroyers with long range turrets for stations, the L turrets on Plasma and the Mediums on Flak are common choices for good reasons.

Enemy Capital ships will be intercepted by your fighter shield. For stations you bring your destroyers into range and babysit the AI so they dont get too close. Keep the carrier on a guard position far away in that moment. Because close to a station equals instant death. Done, fleet is battle ready.

[StormhawkV]

Argon ships are trash. It looks like Egosoft went with a linear progression type of approach when they designed the ships of X4. I have no idea why but it really shows when you start comparing them. There's a complete mismatch of values between firepower, shielding and speed that is really hard to ignore while playing and they doubled down on it with every additional DLC.

[Yuki]

The Argons are for the most part a solid baseline.

Ego did apply learnings step by step, DLC by DLC without updating the former, its plain obvious with carriers especially. But that doesnt necessarily make the Argons trash, as they are suppsoed to be "the average baseline", and that in itself can be a good thing.

Pulsar are my second most frequently used fighter craft going by numbers, second only to the notoriously known to be imbalanced Moreya.
Mercury and Shuyaku are a common sight in my trading fleets, albeit not the most common. But thats mostly because i purchase most "civilian" rather than build, and i only purchase Boron ships for no reason.
I would add the Barbarossa if i had the blueprint.
I do have swarms of Manticore, thats also Argon, and Teuta's are my best crew training ships.
(you see the Argons got a DLC buff too ;) )
The Behemoths main adantage is: its cheap. But the capacity it is used in requires quantity over quality. So its perfectly well suited.
And combat-performance wise i would take a Colossus over a Raptor every time. The Colossus just looks like trash while the Raptor gets my award for most fancy by far

(Im right now equipping a Colossus for a more detailed test (including undocking time challange and whatnot), so far they where more build for export while the backbone of my fleet is of course the Squid. Eh Shark.
But from the very first impression i can already pretty safely say: A single Condor > Raptor for IS combat. Lets see how it performs compared to Tokyo let alone Shark. Raptors should only be used OOS, they are so terrible at everything a carrier is supposed to do its - cringe.)

[ArcticISAF]

Seems fine to me. I'll throw in the way I conceptualize the fleets. One is the purpose of the fleet - e.g. fighting vs ships or fighting vs stations. I would highly recommend having a dedicated fleet for station or separating them out from the fleet when it comes time to siege down and blow up the station. I have used fighters and frigates against stations (e.g. vs VIG) and it was fine but vs Xenon it may be a bit riskier. The main point is know what you want to take against a station, and what to use against a fleet.

From there vs ships, much like you said, you need something to take down the large ships, and something to deal with the S/M swarm. Lots of options there - I think the key is having enough fire to take down the large ships before they can snipe your destroyers and such (thinking of K/I ships).

I agree with Yuki about the Argon. They are mostly standard but they make up for it by being cheap as pretty much can be. I love the Terran and they are my go-to in all ships (a bit of RP) but kitting out a max level Osaka or Syn is really expensive. Looking at my current game, a behemoth on high is 17 million, while an Osaka is 51 million. Quite fully a 3 to 1 ratio. On low setting it's 8 million to 23 million still. 100% 3 behemoths would kill 1 unmodded Osaka. And probably a lot more use all-around as a 3-man team. Rattlesnake needs double the hull parts, high hull/low shields, low-range front guns, meh...

I haven't played with the Argon fighters but Wraith has some videos where the AI completely demolishes with Nova fighters, due to their free-rotating engines. A group of 10 or so in a 10 minute duel with a ton of xenon, and they're just dodging enemy fire way beyond a human can do. Good to check out.

[StormhawkV]

Well, X4 uses a lot of design ideas that didn't work out. It would have been nice if Egosoft had addressed issues they created alongside the DLC releases but all we got was more content. That's not bad ofc and I really like many of the new ships but it feels like selling us better tools at times.

You're right when you say they applied what they learned, I just don't think their basic concept for X4 is all that good and I feel like it was better if they went back to what they had before Rebirth (design wise).

Edit:
Oh yeah, almost forgot. I don't think price is a good way of balancing ships in X games simply because money becomes a non-issue so fast. It's even easier to make money in X4 than ever before. Two to three hours of playtime and you can afford a corvette with ease.

[ArcticISAF]

Yes I thought about the money aspect as well. But the prices don't come from nowhere, it's from the total component costs of the ship. So if you want to depend on your own economy, it depends on how much you scale with Terran or Commonwealth components. And if you're at the point of 'I can slap down 50 ships or have 15 better ones' you're kind of past the point of caring about any of that. There's a guy here that sends 10 Asgards at stations.

[Yuki]

Originally posted by ArcticISAF:

I have used fighters and frigates against stations (e.g. vs VIG) and it was fine but vs Xenon it may be a bit riskier.

Thats actually what id id. More out of happenchance. Carriers didnt seem to work properly and i went with the "usual" Asgard Syn mix at the Xeno frontier.
Then VIG declared war on me because im Boron (water...)- surprise attack not story triggered. And all i had back home was my carrier group after they annihilated my two stations in their territory in a minute or so.
It worked but- the losses where high.
It made me figure out how to use carriers properly though (and to put my Raptors back to station duty. They are so... cringe its hilarious)
And now- i use carriers for Xeno duty where they perform much better than the usual battleship destroyer combo. For Vig however i would use destroyers- due to the way lower HP of normal NPC stations but more dangerous turrets when it comes to anti fighter. So- vice versa ;)
Destroyers work well here. A Ray (use net launchers!) works awesome against Vig fighter swarms and the comparably low damage of destroyers isnt as much of a problem, normal NPC stations aint tanky but got massive AA.
Xeno stations are more aimed against destroyers. They can instakill an Asgard! But can be stripped by fighters quite easily. Just be aware that blowing them up with fighters triggers a lot of module explosions at once. That- can kill whole fighter swarms.

And that is also an even bigger problem with Vig- or "normal" NPC in general: If you "strip" a station (attack all surface modules)- a normal NPC station will also blow up due to its lower HP. A Xenostation is left with about 50% hull, maybe 1-2 module explosions, thats it. You can then finish it off however you like, even with destroyers that by their awesome AI decide to hug the station.

Originally posted by StormhawkV:

Well, X4 uses a lot of design ideas that didn't work out. It would have been nice if Egosoft had addressed issues they created alongside the DLC releases but all we got was more content. That's not bad ofc and I really like many of the new ships but it feels like selling us better tools at times.

I totally agree. My favorite example is the Raptor and my love hate relationship with it. It looks awesome. Its a DLC ship with the numbers to "sell it" (it easily more than doubles on the capacity of all carriers before). But then their ideas for it didnt work out at all to the level it looks as if they wanted to troll DLC buyers. I mean seriously- it takes 40 seconds(!) for the first fighter to even leave the Raptor. If a K comes into range you have 12(!) to stop it. And then it has no tank-capacity whatsoever.
That leaves more than enough time to outright kill the Raptor before the first figther is even out yet. If you aint lucky and accidentally destroyed the most important turrets of the K with the Raptors many guns. Chances are you didnt- most of them are probably flak. But it did likely destroyed yours. And even if- you are probably at least deep in hull.

At the same time a GUPPY (L not XL!) can tank and shred not one but two K. Thats just.... silly.
But its a newer DLC. They learned. Applied new now actually working launch systems.
And i just now out of curiosity calculated the numbers for a "battle ready" budget-Shark.
Numbers are always a "thing", see Raptor, they dont necessarily mean much. But this time It does add up to what i see ingame. And its the one way to compare. I mean at least "burst" damage is pretty much comparable. Sustained needs context.
A "budget shark", so not even with torpedos or anything too pricey, can fling all its 80 fighters into battle in 15 seconds flat. Now with the numbers that means:
After the first second the Shark group has about the burst and sustained of 4-5 Syn, or half a budget Guppy (yes the lil one is 10 Syn for < 20 M).
At 10 seconds they surpass an Asgard in burst damage output. The K isnt even in firing range yet. Actually- skip that. We can stop right here. Its long dead by now.
At 15- the sustained output would be in Asgard burst damage ranges, equalling ~ 20 Asgard for just a tiny bit higher pricetag. Keep in mind the first Raptor fighter isnt even in the middle of the tunnel yet.
Yes the Shark seldom deploys fully. That takes an I with escort at least, which it can then still easily handle solo. And then some.
There is a reason carriers are my fleets backbone these days.
My favorite new toy to deal with Xeno stations? The moment the system is otherwise in control i bring in!

Drumroll here!

The one, the two, the mighty, the incredible expensive totally endgame multi billionaire!
Two Guppy.
32 torpedo bombers. 3.311.232 Burst output, or roughly 10 Asgard. For a fraction of the price of one (< 40M total). At that moment you stop worrying about what the station could do to you. How much range shield or speed you need. What station?
They are for "active use" though. Its "Budget Sharks" who can "auto" defend gates.

[Energy Addict]

@Yuki, @ArticISAF, @StormhawkV, @Maffin, Thanks for such a knowledge dump while also not being so in the weeds that you begin telling me about stats. I am one of those who understands that there IS numerical optimization in all things, but I also want to do some "light role playing" in sticking with a theme and a faction as it imposes it's own set of challenges for better or worse. Since I am also new it helps to also keep me focused on one specific faction and not attempting to compare similar ships cross-factions all at the same time which only adds to the initial confusion.

Originally posted by Yuki:

Not everything in X4 works sadly, and what works might be very limited in its use cases, mostly thanks to quirky AI behavior.

I had a feeling that was the case, as is for most video games. But it was nice to see my initial assumptions were not too far off the mark. In effect, what I gathered is don't take the ship sizes and naming conventions as set in stone rules as each ship, regardless of type, can be customized to fulfill a specific role based on your customized load out. Now, whether or not that role is best suited to said ship type is entirely up for grabs and some will clearly work better than others in specific situations. I.e., Destroyers v. Stations.

So, Here is the Summary

Hopefully this helps summarize this discussion and maybe helps other new people get a rough grasp. I will also be experimenting a lot as well - name of the game, after all. I am also doing this totally Vanilla. No mods yet.

1. Flak Cannons are strong. But they can also invoke friendly fire due to splash damage. For this reason, Flak Cannons should probably not be utilized in fleets designed for fleet vs. fleet combat where dog fighting will happen as you run the risk of splashing your own fighters or heavies being swarmed by enemy fighters. Flak is possibly best used by Stations for defense (as heavies such as Destroyers will out-range your Station anyways) or "lonely" ships for a strong anti-raider fighter defense where ship congestion is less of a concern.

2. Carriers are a pain. But can be extremely versatile and powerful when used correctly. Do not shy away from them even if they can seem convoluted at first. Albeit, it is possible to field effective fleets with no Carrier support. Carriers, despite being some of the strongest and most expensive ships should not be used as a Flagship. Carriers should sit back away from a fight and provide Fighter support (of course) and their own weapon composition should be purely defensive in nature. Carriers should field both Interceptors and Bomber fighters. The bulk of which should be Bombers. Interceptors will dispatch to any detected enemy on their radar and an engagement will lock an enemy down from traveling, buying time for the remainder of the fleet to engage. Bombers are the meat of your Fighter squads and designed to whittle down enemy fleets.

Side note; Fighters really should only care about Speed. Like a real life shark, speed is life. This allows them to dodge incoming fire, evade, etc., and Fighters are already squishy (and much cheaper) targets in comparison to heavy ships and as such worrying about shields and hull values for them is like trying to equip someone (Fighter) in a suit of armor who is about to be shot by a tank (Destroyer) - just don't bother in the long run.

3. Frigates, despite the name and real-life usage, are relegated primarily as personal Player limos and little else. Don't get overly confused here. Although, creativity is up to you here.

4. Corvettes would fill in the role of a "real-life" frigate here which was what I was confused on. Corvettes would be your main screening element in a fleet designed to combat other fleets. Corvettes should be your moderately jack of all trades support ships to assist in engaging enemy fighter swarms, and subduing and tying down enemy heavy ships. Much like how fighter swarms work, Corvettes would be to a degree doing the same thing (as, outside of Fighters which I am excluding in my count, Corvettes would make up the most ships in a fleet, numerically) but with much heavier weaponry and should attempt to take or block most of the blows away form your own Destroyers/Battleships, all going as planned.

Side note; Corvettes should be set to Defend when attacking Stations due to AI shenanigans.

5. Destroyers/Battleships are what their name implies; they're the big brother of the fleet designed to do just that - Destroy targets. Although not making up the most in numbers within the fleet, they are the heavy hitters and should be primarily tasked as an anti-capital/heavy ship arsenal and less worried about dealing with Fighters (hence the usage of Corvettes and Carriers). Set your Destroyers to 'Kill' and watch them clean up the neighborhood.

Side note; Destroyers/Battleships are the only ships that can effectively out-range a Station's defense turrets and as such should be used to siege down Stations. However, large quantities of them will be needed to do this effectively.

6. Never forget your Auxiliary ship(s) for resupplying fleets. Like any real fleet, your men need supplies. If you have no beans or bullets you're gonna have a bad time.

7. Argon (my currently chosen faction) are not the "best", but this is arguably subjective as all Factions have their quirks. Argon are pretty much middle of the road and good at all things but masters of none. Other factions may specialize in certain weapons or ships, but each Faction has its downsides. You can really optimize here with ship and weapon compositions but failure to do so will not lose you your game.

8. Create different fleets with a purpose. It appears it may be difficult to have one singular fleet that can easily do "all the things" you need them to do. Create entire fleets dedicated to Station attacks. Or fleets purely dedicated for fleet on fleet combat and interception. Or defensive fleets designed to simply patrol sectors and hunt down obnoxious raiders and pirates. Pick the right set of ships/weapons for the right task and don't keep trying to create one monolith fleet 'to destroy them all' per se.

Boom.

After all of those chats, and my online digging, I hope this was a fairly valid summary and I hope it helps others as well and not just myself. It is time to begin building!

[StormhawkV]

Originally posted by Energy Addict:

Side note; Fighters really should only care about Speed. Like a real life shark, speed is life. This allows them to dodge incoming fire, evade, etc., and Fighters are already squishy (and much cheaper) targets in comparison to heavy ships and as such worrying about shields and hull values for them is like trying to equip someone (Fighter) in a suit of armor who is about to be shot by a tank (Destroyer) - just don't bother in the long run.

3. Frigates, despite the name and real-life usage, are relegated primarily as personal Player limos and little else. Don't get overly confused here. Although, creativity is up to you here.

Looking back at older X games fighters weren't like that at all. For some reason Egosoft couldn't be bothered to create at least two different classes for them. Back then slower fighters had much stronger shields that made them just as viable. Let's hope they realized it themselves for the sake of the next game.

Frigates... I have no idea why they even exist in this form. They used to be massive warships back in Terran Conflict and now they're corvettes with a landing pad instead of firepower. There's no niche where they could do well and no one uses them.

Those are two of the 'design ideas that didn't work out' I guess.

[Yuki]

1. Flak:
No. Go ahead use as many as you can. The AoE is actually pretty small in the vastness of space. Enough to ensure a hit on a fighter instead of a near miss, not enough to hit your friendly trailing 400m behind. Friendly Fire AoE is only a concern for dedicated AoE weapons, e.g. Blast Mortar, which have much larger areas and are used in such a capacity that friendlies may fly close by the impact site.
Or for destroyers. Dont ask me why but the Ray destroyers seem to think of their Mass Effect Reaper-beam as repair beam. They must have missread Reaper.
Or of course the Raptor, there flak does do friendly fire. But it doesnt matter what you put in there. That thing is outright designed to shoot itself with "internal" turrets

2. Kind of, if you re bound to use Argon only. There are other options among other races and i didnt test the Colossus in detail at that time (spoiler: Colossus > Raptor, not set on its relation to Tokyo yet)
But that distant usage is also the safer and more easy way to start with and test things out.
And they aint even that expensive. The "dont use as a flagship" is more a controls thing:
You dont want to "shoot" a station/enemy with a carrier, it has no noteworthy guns. But you want to do that with your "central destroyer/battleship". So make the rest of the fleet follow this ship as "commander". RP-wise the carrier is my flagship, just system-wise that didnt work out well ;)
it does however mean that my favorite early game wingmate now admiral of my northern battlegroup- stands on the bridge of a blue colored modded Asgard and not on the fleets pink Shark. Keep that in mind, you need your best man at the system-flagship.

3. They are neat for boarding for their higher crew capacity. But weapons wise they are indeed often identical to their direct corvette brethren, just a bit slower, a tiny bit more tanky, you get it.
And i use frigates. As my main mission runner ship, for boarding (Cobra) and for patrols.
The later is more of a RP thing again.

4. P-much on point.

5. Some "game destroyers" are actually even more so the "real life frigate". The Ray is my favorite example being probably the best anti-fighter shield you can have. An "Aegis" with (very) limited long range capability too.

I kept that part a bit short but this might have to be noted:
There is a huge difference in AI between S/M and then L/XL.
One of them is also how they approach a station.
L/XL ships will actually stop once their L turrets are in range (or dont, you saw that in various AI discussions probably, lets say they are supposed to just often fail at it for many reasons )
S/M do "approaches", think of them like dive-bombers.
Now SOME smaller weapons can have enough range too. But an S/M ship would still approach a station and "dip" into the danger zone even if they could potentially fire off their guns while they likewise sit at a further distance.
The distance still matters though as they "turn around" sooner with higher range.
To the point that "some" (noteworthy the Boron hydra for another AI special, the Boron travel drive usage) can be decent station busters too.
But if you use them as AA shields: stations spawn drones and fighters. So they would move in close to get them, at which point the station commander probably just thinks "Yummy!". On defend they stay at their assigned leader but their turrets will still automatically open fire on everything close instead. While "torpedo boat style" corvettes aimed at busting capital ships may even be a nice rapid reaction squad in case of approaching enemy reinforcements if you put them elsewhere.
Use at your own risk and you have been warned ;)

6. Yep!
7. On point. Also you may want to take a look into "closed cycle" with Argons if you have the Avarice DLC. Especially in your first game- that makes a lot of things less complex and- cheaper ;)

8. We may want to distinguish between a fleet "system wise" and "Rp wise".
See flagship.
You may want to have parts of your fleet not engage in certain activities and thanks to how the system is designed the way to do that is to split fleets.
Carriers dont need to and as a result should not be at a station. You wouldnt bring a carrier as first ship in line while you bombard the french coast in preparation of operation Overlord, would you? But it may very well move with your fleet during anti-fleet operations. In its center from where its protected to all sides and launches fighters to sink enemy ships long before your destroyers and cruisers are in any danger.
But if you issue fleet commands- keeping them in the fleet may indeed make them move in to fire at the station with their meager low range flak turrets.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3021140809
This is how my "northern battle group" looks like as example during "redeploy" mode. Its system-flagship is the battleship Oni.
The "Alpha Group" is the carrier Akagi set to follow. Its figthers still provide cover for the whole fleet.
The Carriers now have their own sub-groups. Alpha- interceptors. Beta-bombers. Gamma-Flak corvettes, Delta-Heavy hitter corvettes.
Other carriers are to follow the Akagi (Epsilon) but otherwise have the identical setup themselves.
Back one level up all destroyers are set to "Attack" with the Oni in Oni's beta. So if i take the controls of the Oni and fire at a station, so will they. I dont need the destroyers to swarm out and attack things. The Rays net launchers will still fire at passing by figthers anyhow, K in range will feel the plasma barrage of the Syn. Turrets open fire on everything in range no matter what.
Now if i go into station siege mode i just grab the Akagi, "remove assignment", and have two fleets. Now i can move all carriers as one on their own. And for example let them guard the gates or so. Activate Point defense, go shopping at the Aux in the meanwhile (...)
Back to the fleet? Grab Akagi, rightclick Oni-> follow. Done. All carriers get back in formation.
System wise they may be their own fleets. Rp wise they aint, and planning wise- also act as one. Its one "group", one "fleet" that occasionally may split up.

And for sector fleets: My sector patrols are their own fleets. Mainly because: You need a fraction of ships for that compared to attacking a system or defending a gate. It would be really... strange, hilarious even, to try and have your one fleet to rule them all- rush from one attacked miner to the next just to be late to every encounter :D
Thats like giving main battle tanks to the cops and tell them to only ever use them in a convoy of 100+. Though careful- thats exactly what the NPC police does!

For fighters i put it in another discussion but it fits here as well:
Speed matters, shield does not.
For 1 on 1 dogfights, okay. But the moment you have fleet battles, let alone send them against large ships:
The difference between some of the most flimsy recon crafts and the heavy tank beasts is:
A few seconds of uninterrupted fire. like 12 vs 20 iirc. But the small craft can boost away faster than an enemy bullet can fly, the heavy can not.
Now if there are two, three, four fighters... where was the difference again? Except for like five times the price.
Or a capital ship! Less than one turret hit. And a Xenon capital has 40 of them.
What difference is such a shield even supposed to make?
500 m/s round about seems to be a magical barrier at which most begin to get a decent survival. But that- will be tough in an Argon only game. There are some exceptions, i read Nova being one of these but i didnt test them too detailed yet. I can attest Borons Barracuda being such an exception to the "only speed matters" theme. But exception still means there is a general rule to be exempt from.

Happy building! And carve my name into a few bullets :P

Edit: Edited the fleet composition theory with a hands on example

[ArcticISAF]

I had written out a longer thing but I lost it :P So I’ll say that I agree with the takes on frigates, and generally should be treated cautiously if you’ll use. But I think they can be useful, depending on the model and purpose. The Falx I’ve been using for guarding and some assault purposes due to their slower, more maneuverable approach while having some speed still. Though it’s a bit tricky where you want speed and not. The katana can often try to do ‘drive-by’ attacks and the amount of time hitting a target during that attack can be lesser due to it boosting at 4-5 km/s or something at the target, then sloppily crashing into it (a K in this case). A Falx can have more sustained fire on the target, while maneuvering away without a big slide. Other classes may act more like gunboats. Honestly I need to do more experimenting with this, but overall I think it may be worth just keeping in the back of your mind as some form of option and not necessarily always a ‘never use’ state. I’m trying to explore gradually some of the lesser used classes (like gunboats) but it’s a bit tricky to figure a good test area, have to judge their impact without it just being dominated by fighters blasting everything away… etc.