The only mechanic that is bad is combat.

[ThatBlondeGuy]

A CAP airmode for fighters would solve most of those problems. Fighters assigned to CAP rotate in squadrons and protect the carrier (attacking anything that comes near thats hostile automatically landing to rearm and so forth). This would take out micro managing individuals fighters and mean that smaller squadrons of X size would be beneficial. It also makes combat a little simpler for carrier based fleets.

[swarm_sadist]

A CAP airmode for fighters would solve most of those problems. Fighters assigned to CAP rotate in squadrons and protect the carrier (attacking anything that comes near thats hostile automatically landing to rearm and so forth). This would take out micro managing individuals fighters and mean that smaller squadrons of X size would be beneficial. It also makes combat a little simpler for carrier based fleets.

The other way would be for the computer to determine flights inside of squadrons automatically, switching active flights inside of a single squadron.

So First Squadron could have three flights; A, B, C which rotate on an 8 hour shift around the carrier. The computer could just pick the fighters and pilots who are in the best shape whenever a crew shift happens.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I know its quite late but,

@se5a
there are a few automation tools to make what you are talking about easier.  Most importantly the Same Loc (Multi Targets) button in the combat overview.

[Paul M]

What the game really needs is a formation editor.  It is extremely difficult to position ships in the current display.  Something like in Harpoon would be wonderful, but equally effective would be something that allowed you to select a ship as the reference point and then position your formation with respect to it.

I would love to have my two terriers 5000 km appart as a base and the London 30k km ahead of them (making a triangle) with the pinnance 60 k km ahead of the London.

It is also hard enough to position your forces on the system map since the accuracy of your clicking is limited.  There is no grid for reference so again maintaining a formation is all but impossible.

Most of these problems could be solved with a formation editor or some kind or another.

[Bgreman]

I would love to have my two terriers 5000 km appart as a base and the London 30k km ahead of them (making a triangle) with the pinnance 60 k km ahead of the London.

You can do this without a TON of trouble.  Put each of your ships into its own TG.  Set your London TG as the superior formation for the other two.  Then set Terrier 1 to Protect Threat Axis as follows:

Threat: Protected TG Destination
Task Group: London
Distance: 30.1k km
Offset Bearing: 5 degrees clockwise.

Set your other Terrier to the same settings, except 5 degrees counterclockwise.

You have to do a little right-triangle trig to get these values, but you could always just round them and be slightly less precise.  As long as the two Terrier TGs are escorting with mirrored settings, you'll have your triangle.  Importantly, you can now use 'Save Escorts' on the London TG, and then freely use Recall and Deploy escorts to reform and redeploy.

[Paul M]

That is good to know, thank you.  I figured there was a way to do it if I broke the ships up into individuals and played with the orders.  I just would rather not have to break them up...lazy of me I know.  I guess I just really really really like the formation editor in Harpoon. 

I will do this next battle and see how it goes.  Thanks again.

[Jorgen_CAB]

It would be even more fun if the final fire setting would fire at anything in range. Currently it only protects their own TG. So if you split them up and even if they are just 10k km apart they can no longer use their short range beam weapons to fire at incoming missiles.

Hopefully there will be some change in these mechanics in the future.

[Steve Walmsley]

It would be even more fun if the final fire setting would fire at anything in range. Currently it only protects their own TG. So if you split them up and even if they are just 10k km apart they can no longer use their short range beam weapons to fire at incoming missiles.

Hopefully there will be some change in these mechanics in the future.

Final fire protects all nearby ships, not just those in the same TG. Check your max range settings for the point defence. Ships will only use their PD to defend friendly or allied ships within that range.

[Jorgen_CAB]

They do!!!  I must have missed that... good to know. 

[doomsought]

Having an order along the lines of pursue/attack enemy ships as a fleet order would be nice.

Also being able to set up default fire control assignments in class design would eliminate a lot of pointless copy/paste work.  A restore default button on the ship controls would round it out nicely.

[GenJeFT]

My two cents.

I do like the detail of the combat. The biggest problems I have is that I seem to only be able to automate final defensive fire and that's all. Whenever I set the fire control to Area Defense it resets itself to final defensive fire. I find this incredibly annoying due to the design of my Gauss cannon defense system. My escort ships have 3 twin half size turrets with each gun firing 6 rounds each, 36 rounds per ship every 5 second interval. Now multiply that by the number of ships (the minimum being 5 ships) and you get an awe inspiring number of rounds. My larger ships have full sized twin turrets and my missile ships use two singles. One of my fleets right now fires a total of 408 shells every 5 seconds and that's not counting the rail-guns. So even at long range I am going to hit something and personally I would rather take every single opportunity to hit that I can. If I manually aim my guns not a single missile can even get close to my fleet, but I should not have to micro the aiming. Unfortunately my game does not accept area defense orders with anything.

Side note, I dont have a single AMM designed, I dont use them. I do have AFMs but never deployed them because I have yet to run into fighters.

As far as the game combat being focused around missiles, it entirely depends on your play style. I do have long range ASMs but my main combat is up close and personal with Gauss turrets and rail guns with BIG short range torpedoes (the weakest having a nuclear blast power of 49). I have yet to run into anything I cant close with unless I screw up and hit the wrong time increment button but then enough of my heavily armored fleet survives to destroy the enemy. Unsurprisingly I cant wait for shock damage in the next version. A nuclear blast power of 49 should disable most enemy ships in one shot.

One big problem is combat reports. I dont read the 400+ reports of hits or misses, its just to much. There really does need to be a summary system or something.

[Charlie Beeler]

@GenJeFT,  What specificly have you done for setting Area Defense? 

@any mod...  perhaps this sub-discussion is best split to it's own topic in either Academy or Bugs.

[GenJeFT]

@GenJeFT,  What specificly have you done for setting Area Defense? 

I go into Ships, select the specific ship to set up the fire controls. Click on the pull tab menu for select fire mod for SFC and select area defense. Then I put in the range in Max PD range and put in 50 so it fires at the 50,000km range of my gauss turrets. But the settings dont stick. I would like my Rail guns (or MAC guns as I call them, yes I played HALO) to auto fire on enemy ships but that does not happen either. Most of my combats leaving me manually targeting everything on every ship.

Doing some testing with some really old ships.

[Charlie Beeler]

I go into Ships, select the specific ship to set up the fire controls. Click on the pull tab menu for select fire mod for SFC and select area defense. Then I put in the range in Max PD range and put in 50 so it fires at the 50,000km range of my gauss turrets. But the settings dont stick. I would like my Rail guns (or MAC guns as I call them, yes I played HALO) to auto fire on enemy ships but that does not happen either. Most of my combats leaving me manually targeting everything on every ship.

Doing some testing with some really old ships.

Try a value of 5 instead of 50.  

Just curious, why are you trying to use area with such a short ranged system?  Final would much more effective all things considered.

[Brainsucker]

Well, I have experienced my first combat.  I think the thing that Steve must repaired or change is "The Combat Assignment Overview".  The flow of combat is good.  In my first combat, It was very confusing.  Because I didn't understand about the combat mechanic at all.  I faced many trouble there.  From chasing the enemy because of my ship design flaw (my ship is a laser corvette that fire every 4 charged time), etc.  But after I understand the mechanic, it's fun.  Yet, Steve needs to repair, or if not to change a lot of things in "User Interface" here.

1st.  Rather than changing from one form to another (just because we need to direct our involved ships in combat from "system Map" and other forms (like combat assignment overview, Fleet Order, Individual Ship forms, etc), why not making a special form that will focus to combat system.  In this form, we will get a system map, individual involved ships, to buttons that involve ships and fleet maneuver in combat.  It will simplify the game a bit, but not cut the feature and the mechanic.

This form will act as CIC / Bridge / Flag bridge of the commander of individual ship / fleet.  There, you can see the map around the ship that involved in combat, buttons to "Fire", turn on/off Active sensor, etc.  You can even arrange the ships that you can control in this form (rather than choose one among all the ships that you have - it won't add micro, but consume more unnecessary time that we can cut to enjoy this game.  And there, you can read "Combat log" without opening "Event Update" form all the time.  It will simplify unnecessary micro but still keep the fun of time calculating etc that the game has.