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New Players > The Academy
Carrier Operations Tutorial
Vandermeer:
This is a tutorial about how to effectively use carriers and most prominently, survey carriers. Organizing many parasite craft, or maybe even many different carriers can be a very tedious process on first sight, which might make many shy away from using them in contrast to easy fleets. I too resigned from using them for a while after I experienced serious problem back in my second Aurora game only, where the coordination of survey shuttles was very click intensive, having to essentially detach every single one by hand in every new system and order them around for 8 shuttles and such.
However, I was wrong and after being through multiple approaches later on, I eventually found some neat tricks that make operating carriers a breeze, up to turning for example survey carriers into extremely efficient one-click auto system survey devices.(...well, some more clicks of course, but nearly) I wanted to do this for long, but the game where I wanted to show it got caught up in a lengthy NPR war that lasted longer than the whole game up to this point.
o Using Naval Organization in place of the Fighter Window
Anyway, so as a big introductory "rule to success" in the beginning: Forget about the fighter organization window. Use the Naval Organization tab in the task force window instead.
I started of by organizing not only fighter groups, but even singular shuttles in the separate window that Aurora offers for this purpose specifically. You can form squadrons and assign them to motherships easily, as well as start and land them from there. However, all these functions are done by the task force window as well if you know how, plus, you get to issue move orders with started squadrons or motherships directly after shuffling parasites one or the other way. Not only that, but the Naval Organization tab actually links relations between mothership and squadrons in an easy tree diagram list, while any operation as assign/land/start in the fighter window requires you to manually browse through all the possible motherships in your empire, and select the right one in order to achieve what you wanted. Though of no problem with only up to maybe 8 carriers around, this can get convoluted really fast, especially if you play the cruiser type way where basically every ship hosts space for 1-4 fighters.
If you mastered all the buttons in the Naval organization chart however, no fragmentation of carriers and motherships will ever get in your way, and you have move, and all the assign, start and land orders all in one place "to go".
o Casual Fighter Operation and Carrier Set-Up
So before starting I must assume that the knowledge on how to build such a tree is mostly already given (that is how to add a branch, and add a branch under a branch, and assign ships to branches), so that it essentially looks like this:
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It is very important to be able to place such groups under each other in this relation, as it will enable you to re-establish the mothership to parasite relation whenever it gets broken and group the two sides together even out of the greatest mismanagement chaos with the click of a button. It will also make it possible to instantly separate all those parasite groups you specified from the current task force instantly by just clicking on the squadron(/branch) name and then the "Branch only" button on the right. Magic! - You instantly have those fighters launched, separated and their new task group already selected and awaiting further orders.
..But let's explain the organization structure above first, as it is something that must be figured out trial and error ways otherwise.
- The overlaying branch over the whole carrier+parasite compound is of course (1), which will be the task force's name if the carrier itself decides to detach from a bigger fleet or out of docks and similars.
- Every independent actor of such a task group (meaning it has no assigned mothership therein) now needs to be grouped directly under it.(2) In the case of the example, there is only one carrier mothership, and though I would recommend to leave it like that to improve oversight of exact relations, there is technically nothing wrong with having multiple motherships together if you really plan to always send them together anyway (like cruiser fleets with fighters maybe). If not however, don't group them like this and make an entry for every carrier individually, and you can still mass launch them into one task group by having a bigger branch around all those under which they get grouped. (example the "alpha centauri monitor fleet" could hold 6 entries of other brances, "monitor 1-6", under which each one has the corresponding monitor ship 1-6, and then more branches for the fighter crafts. Singular monitors{and their parasites}then launched by clicking on one of the "monitor 1-6"s, and the whole formation can be launched together by clicking "alpha centauri monitor fleet" instead.)
- (3) then of course consists all the 'potential separate' task forces of parasites that are assigned to a mothership in the original carrier task force. They are essentially what you would have done while organizing squadrons in the obsolete fighter window, but with the added advantage that whenever you feel like shuffling the usual fighter groups around, you can also do that on the fly by just heading over to the special orders tab and move the parasites around.
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To complete this structure and make the mothership-parasite relation functioning though, you will have to have all the parasites together at one point (likely shortly after building the new ship), and then order a land+assign command:
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..It is possible to do this out of the organization chart, but it always requires more clicks, so I found it easier to just start all the ships at once and land them with assign. If you have to refill loses, it is of course enough to just land+assign only those new parasites, but you have to do it for everyone once, or nothing will work.
Once you have this structure set up though, you are free to launch and land branches/squadrons as you please from optimal oversight.
o Survey Carriers
Survey Carriers require some special trickery in order to work effectively. Of course, survey is only effective if you have many independent operating ships, so a bulk squadron start isn't really the first tool that comes to mind.
..Yet that is exactly what must be done, so first, start them usual 'fighter type' way:
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Now to get that essential separation scattering job done, head over to the "Special Orders/ Organization" tab, click on the first ship and click the "Divide TG" button:
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What happens is of course that everyone else gets spread into their own personal task group, carrying the ship's name, while your selected first ship remains. This is why I found it wise to name the branch of survey crafts after this first ship btw., so it stays in line with automated naming.
What is even more important about the last step though is that every split of single ship task group becomes a subordinate formation towards the first one. This allows us to copy over every order we give it, including default ones, so you essentially can send of any number of survey drones with just one stroke instead of configuring each one individually.
This is how it's done (nearly):
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Better use "survey nearest 5 bodies" btw., but no matter for now. However, doing only that will yield you following error window:
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...Which is because default orders alone don't qualify as orders to be copied (a program weakness), so you have to give some neutral order too. If you just entered a system, you can for example order the nr.1 to fly towards the jump point they are already on, or just move to mother ship which from which they just detached. ...It is just a filler order with no meaning and normally no time loss, though technically you could also use this to define a spreading point (maybe let all geo-survey drones fly towards the middle of the system before starting to scatter everywhere)
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Now watch the beauty of complete automation, as your steve minions gather all the information for you. :)
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///Edit 5.11.15/
As noted by "Nice Save" below, the whole procedure of giving neutral orders to copy the default ones can be avoided by simply setting the default orders before hitting the Divide button. It is better to do that, but I thought I'd leave this documented, so to inform about a likely error window(and how to avoid it) that you will get while using survey carriers at some time anyway, and also since the section simultaneously explains how to issue orders to all crafts in general after division.(needed at least for later docking)
/Edit///
Of course, once they start finishing their jobs you will get these spam massages in the log that require you start configuring every one individually again, right? No, you can also use that copy command function to make a unison docking call to all the drones at once. Often enough though there will be some that still have to do some work, but since these are usually just a couple commands, it is usually preferable to make the full back command call, and then go to one or two individual drones to revoke that and let them do the rest (whether manually or allowing still active default orders to chose freely{/and with better optimzed distances} anew).
...And that is all you need to know about having super efficient and mouse friendly survey carriers. It is obvious what that divide command, and the special orders window in general is capable to do even outside of this specific point. Very practical for many things.
o Planetary Hangars
Another use of carriers I wanted to talk about are of course the planetary hangars, meaning the ones that can even house the capital ships which house numerous support craft themselves already. I notice not many play with such hangars, but I know Rich.h and probably 83athom do, and who knows who tried at least, so here are the actually pretty simple button commands I use that make carriers work perfectly with those.
So assuming you have a carrier filled with docked parasites, and a planetary hangar somewhere where you would want to land on. The thing you can't do, which is immediately clear, is just do a "land" command (no matter if +assign or not). Hangars in hangars is not possible, and Aurora does not automatically start docked craft of ships that are about to dock somewhere themselves, so what happens is that those parasites get lost in oblivion, with which I mean: deleted! Not sure what happens to the officers, but the fighters and such, all gone without a trace. ...So never forget to click the "launch parasites" button in the task force window before doing the docking, so all the parasites will be individual ships who obey all the orders themselves.
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Then land them with the "(no assign)" option, as you'd want to maintain your mothership and parasite relation over the holidays, and voila, they all dock and will function just as usual after.
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If the last step was done right, you can now, just as with a detachment from a fleet, start the whole carrier with its parasites by clicking on the pdc-hangar containing TG, then the branch/TF on the naval organization tab, and finally Branch+sub for a complete launch of all associated ships and crafts.
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You should now have selected the freshly detached complete carrier task force ready for action already, except that none of the parasites are docked. To do that, just use the reverse of the docking procedure of course, and click "Recover Parasites".
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That would be it, but if for some reason at some point you have reseted or messed up that mothership to parasite relation, it is often no problem too. Just click on the main mothership carrier and click "detach" to get him and all his parasites into separate task groups, so the assign command can be carried out again.
This is of course not as easy with many carrier type ships at once, so I recommend not messing that connection up. :P
I mainly mentioned that point, because the procedure is helpful in many different situations which you will see when playing this way quickly, but are too numerous and divergent to name here.
---
So, that would be it. I feel like it wasn't organized enough, especially the beginning, which might be hard to understand if you are completely new to the naval organization tab. I needed multiple games behind me to even bother looking into it aside from RP type naming fun, but it was absolutely worth the learning. Nearly every military ship of mine is a carrier on the side now, even the small ones, because handling them got so easy and intuitive. Only speech command is easier.
So if someone wants me to expand that short section, I can do that, or just answer some questions.
JacenHan:
This is really useful. I've always stayed away from carriers because of the apparent complexity involved, but I guess now I have no excuse. Thanks for the tutorial!
Rich.h:
So astoundingly useful I shall commission a new medal to be named after that man. I have never played with the copy to sub fleets etc before due to not knowing how it works. But this could be a stupidly powerful tool when used properly. One Thing I was not aware of though is the whole hanger in hanger issue. I have always just docked my carriers of any kind to a planet side dock with all craft still docked, so far I have never had any problems. Is this an old issue (using 6.42) or does it sometimes happen and sometimes not?
One quick thought I had when reading the survey part will need testing and could be perhaps an exploit. If you were to make a 20 ship strong fighter wing up, fly the wing at a target to attack and then divide the TG when they arrive on target. Using the copy orders you would essentially have 20 TG's attacking like a big swarm. Now obviously if this were say a large beam ship it will happily cut down fighters quickly with single shots. But having now 20 separate targets would mean that the tracking systems would not be able to keep up, you would in essence have created a copy of large salvo AMM but using fighters who could keep on firing all day long instead of being a one shot wonder. Hell do the same thing but with a bomber wing and you could create instant one click 20 salvo volleys to really make someones day go bad fast. Or how about meson fighters the same way and watch as even the largest ships in the universe crumble under a loss of 10+ components every firing cycle.
Jorgen_CAB:
I have used this method of managing my carriers and more importantly scout and recon crafts on ships for a long time as well. This is the only way I can really manage my ships in a sane way and the organizational hierarchy makes it quite easy to control all your ships. This is certainly a good guide and something I really think many people have not explored enough in their game because that tab is a bit complex before you get how it works.
--- Quote from: Rich.h on June 03, 2015, 04:52:49 AM ---One quick thought I had when reading the survey part will need testing and could be perhaps an exploit. If you were to make a 20 ship strong fighter wing up, fly the wing at a target to attack and then divide the TG when they arrive on target. Using the copy orders you would essentially have 20 TG's attacking like a big swarm. Now obviously if this were say a large beam ship it will happily cut down fighters quickly with single shots. But having now 20 separate targets would mean that the tracking systems would not be able to keep up, you would in essence have created a copy of large salvo AMM but using fighters who could keep on firing all day long instead of being a one shot wonder. Hell do the same thing but with a bomber wing and you could create instant one click 20 salvo volleys to really make someones day go bad fast. Or how about meson fighters the same way and watch as even the largest ships in the universe crumble under a loss of 10+ components every firing cycle.
--- End quote ---
This will not actually work as I suspect you think it does. A beam ship will be able to target one salvo or ship for each fire-control that it has, the number of TG have no impact on this what so ever. Likewise will 20 fighters in one TG or one fighter in 20 TG produce the same number of salvos when they fire missiles.
So... if all your beam ships only have one fire-control it will only be able to kill one fighter per firing cycle no matter what, if it has two fire-controls it can target two separate fighters from the same or different TG, the combat interface don't even register TG as far as I know, just targets.
Vandermeer:
--- Quote from: Rich.h on June 03, 2015, 04:52:49 AM ---So astoundingly useful I shall commission a new medal to be named after that man.
--- End quote ---
Oohh, that is the highest Aurora honors I believe.
--- Quote ---One Thing I was not aware of though is the whole hanger in hanger issue. I have always just docked my carriers of any kind to a planet side dock with all craft still docked, so far I have never had any problems. Is this an old issue (using 6.42) or does it sometimes happen and sometimes not?
--- End quote ---
I also play on the newest version, but the last time I encountered the problem was admittedly in 6.3. Even there I only witnessed it two times before learning the lesson and keeping extra attention to avoid boxes in boxes.
...But I just tried it again in the current game, and nope, it is still there. Down below a picture from the ship window, where it documents how all the survey drones (amongst others) on the "Atlanta" cruiser got lost after I let it dock to planetary hangar with all the parasites landed.
--- Quote ---One quick thought I had when reading the survey part will need testing and could be perhaps an exploit. If you were to make a 20 ship strong fighter wing up, fly the wing at a target to attack and then divide the TG when they arrive on target. Using the copy orders you would essentially have 20 TG's attacking like a big swarm. Now obviously if this were say a large beam ship it will happily cut down fighters quickly with single shots. But having now 20 separate targets would mean that the tracking systems would not be able to keep up, you would in essence have created a copy of large salvo AMM but using fighters who could keep on firing all day long instead of being a one shot wonder. Hell do the same thing but with a bomber wing and you could create instant one click 20 salvo volleys to really make someones day go bad fast. Or how about meson fighters the same way and watch as even the largest ships in the universe crumble under a loss of 10+ components every firing cycle.
--- End quote ---
All the enemies attack this way anyway (one ship per TG), so I wouldn't consider it an exploit even if it came with serious advantages. There is some charm to having all fighters attack individually in some sort of swarm mode, but I personally don't do any divide orders for attacks, because fighting takes place outside of the task force window, and from there you cannot easily copy orders over anymore when they are not part of the same task group.(unless you use "class in system" copy mode, but that obviously is impossible if your attackers don't make up for literally all the ships of the class in the system) ..So this would result in much micromanagement, which I try to avoid at any costs everywhere.
Other than that, -though there is an exploit in another section-, attack strength wise, having them separated doesn't make much difference. Beam strength is just the same of course, divided or not, but the missiles of individual fighters never group up anyway, even in the same TG, and always produce that 20 salvo volley which you describe.(which is admittedly awesome for its defense overloading capacity, and the main reason why I build bombers - where the wiki only sees "extended missile deployment", "overloading PD" is the real seller :) - ...and that you can get them close enough in order to use more efficient warheads...)
The defensive advantage is also relatively meager normally, because AI targets ships anyway, so it doesn't matter whether they share the same TG or fly divided, but still in the same spot. It can be kind of relevant in missile diversion (there is even a secret exploit which I don't want to explain, as nobody should use it), but again, I don't use it because of the targeting difficulties that you get yourself into.
Dividing is a tool that is mostly useful whenever you need multi-tasking and a fleet to actually split up, not just do the same but separated. Great for automated orders, and great for organization. Now, if we could get an automatic "follow nearest enemy signal" default order, then combining that with auto-target could become automated civilian culling or 'white blood cell' type harassment reaction here, so splitting squadrons for multi-task attacking would make sense, which I would much appreciate. We're not there yet sadly.
--- Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on June 03, 2015, 06:43:47 AM ---I have used this method of managing my carriers and more importantly scout and recon crafts on ships for a long time as well. This is the only way I can really manage my ships in a sane way and the organizational hierarchy makes it quite easy to control all your ships. This is certainly a good guide and something I really think many people have not explored enough in their game because that tab is a bit complex before you get how it works.
--- End quote ---
There are so many arcane buttons in the game that you just ignore for long, because things already 'kind of work', so why do the extra learning? The only reason I forced myself to go further at a point is because I made the same experience in other programs, like Photoshop, Vegas and Maya(oh god, convoluted Maya..), where breaking out of your normal cycle of doing things really teaches you how fruitful it can be to take time and explore all the menus.
Still find new buttons though. Didn't know that I could invent custom ranks for the naval officers until the game before the current for example.
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