explain standard vs squad transits to me

[joeclark77 (OP)]

I can't find any clues as to what it means to do a "squadron transit" vs a "standard transit".  I thought that standard transit might mean one ship at a time, or might split up your TG into different locations, but that doesn't seem to be the case in my game.  So what do these things mean, and why would I want to do one or the other?

[Brian Neumann]

A standard transit does not pay any attention to the number of ships that a single jump ship can take through the jump point.  It is a convenience so that players do not need to micromanage transits that are not going into combat.  It allows you to have 1 jump ship at a jump point and lets any number of ships go through that jump point.  Think of this like a shuttle bus.  It keeps going between the two sides of the jump point and you don't need to give individual orders to get the whole force through the jump.

Squadron transits are what you should use anytime their might be combat.  You will need to split a fleet into separate subgroups with 1 jump ship in each group.  Group size will be dictated by your jump engine capabilities.  Each group goes through the jump point separately and can end up anywhere within the jump radius of that jump engine.  If you don't have enough jump ships then you will need to shuttle them back and forth.  If you are in combat that can be a big problem as you will not have all of your ships available from the start of the combat.

Hope that helps you understand the difference.
Brian

[sloanjh]

Important addendum: Standard transits have severe reaction time and sensor penalties, which is why Brian said you should use squadron transits if combat is possible.

John

[MarcAFK]

I'm glad this got brought up because I had no idea there was a difference, maybe next time I jump into a contested system I'll use squadron transit and not get shredded by precursors.

[Conscript Gary]

To clarify what Brian implied with his mention of jump radius, a standard transit drops you off directly on top of the jump point. A squadron jump will drop you off in a random direction at the engines jump distance.
A vital detail when dealing with beam-armed jump point defenders

[Paul M]

It is at a distance up to the jump radius.  I can assure you the last time I did a multi group jump they arrived at different directions and distances from the warp point even though the 3 jump ships had the same engine.

[alex_brunius]

Important addendum: Standard transits have severe reaction time and sensor penalties, which is why Brian said you should use squadron transits if combat is possible.

John

Wow, I had no idea the same reaction time penalty was not applied to squadron transit! I suspect this will making assaulting heavilly guarded jump points slightly easier

[Charlie Beeler]

Squadron transit penalties are only up to 30 seconds while standard transit is up to 3 minutes.  Penalties include sensors offline (too include fire controls), jump engines offline, missile launchers and hangers offine.  If I recall correctly there is also an delay in orders.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,2480.msg24501.html#msg24501

[Paul M]

From what I can tell...your active sensors are the only ones affected, your passives function normally.

[joeclark77 (OP)]

It is at a distance up to the jump radius.  I can assure you the last time I did a multi group jump they arrived at different directions and distances from the warp point even though the 3 jump ships had the same engine.

So, to be clear: does a squadron transit separate your TG into multiple groups?  Let's say I have two jump ships in a fleet and six other ships, and each jump ship capable of transiting itself plus three.  Will they jump as two separate task groups in two separate locations?  Or will all eight ships be scattered in different locations?

[Charlie Beeler]

For Squadron transit the TG can only have 1 jumpship.  The TG stays intact.  If there are more ships in a TG than the JE is rated for it will throw an error.

It's been some time since I tried a squadron transit with a TG that has more than one jumpship so I don't recall if this throws an error for this as well.

[Erik L]

For Squadron transit the TG can only have 1 jumpship.  The TG stays intact.  If there are more ships in a TG than the JE is rated for it will throw an error.

It's been some time since I tried a squadron transit with a TG that has more than one jumpship so I don't recall if this throws an error for this as well.

I seem to recall this working in version 4/5. Just remember, the jumpship counts towards the JE limit.

[Hawkeye]

To clarify a bit.
In your example (8 ship TG with two JS) you would have to seperate the TG manually into two TGs, each with one JS and 3 others and order the now two TGs to jump individually.
Aurora does neither seperate the large TG for you, nor add together the jump carrying capacity of several JS in one TG.

[sloanjh]

One more thing:  unless it was removed, you can "turn off" the jump drive on a ship, making it act like a normal ship in the TG.  So if you have a TG that consists of two identical jump ships, each with a squadron size of two or greater, you could turn off the jump drive on one of them and have them jump as a single TG (using the other one's drive).

Note that I haven't tried anything like this for MANY years, so like I said this ability may have been ripped out of the code at some point.

John