I think missile decoy is better because to my understanding it doesn't actually do anything against any other kind of weapon system, unlike other kinds of decoys.

"Missile Decoy" is the name currently used for the decoys that are launched by missiles, which do work against all weapon systems.
"Anti-missile Decoy" is okay for the ship-launched decoys, though I personally might just call them "flare" colloquially anyway, even if it's not perfectly accurate, cause it's short and gets the point across.

I asked ChatGPT for some suggestions, and it had a few reasonable ones:

False signal emitter
Countermeasure decoy
Anti-missile decoy
Missile bait
Defensive countermeasure
Defensive countermeasure drone
Interceptor decoy

Quote from: Pedroig on Yesterday at 06:24:47 PM

Quote from: Iceranger on Yesterday at 04:44:46 PM

I agree with the above posts that Decoy Missile is a confusing name for ship decoys. Flare or chaff is probably a more straightforward name for its purpose.

Those both do very different things though, neither of which is being described.  Signal Decoy or Ship Decoy would both work.

The Nixie is close to what is being described, but it is a towed device, Tactical Air Launched Decoys are probably the closest, so perhaps just Tactical Decoy would work.

What's being described is kind of like a flare, really. Or at least I'm visualizing it as a device you chuck out into space that blasts out a huge signature to try to make it look like the ship for a few seconds and then burns out. A bit more complex than just being hot to attract heatseekers, sure, but the same general principle.

In the Starfleet Battles boardgame similar countermeasures were called Wild Weasels, but that's apparently different to the real world Wild Weasel.

My vote would be to just have a generic descriptive name, even if it ends up a bit long: Anti-missile defense decoy.

Well, if you're not moving, why would you need to be in formation? Why not just move the scout ships to where you want them and toggle off anchor fleet until you're underway again?

I'm sorry, that really just rings of "Why not ignore the feature and just micromanage everything". I'm trying to set up a situation where I can keep my main fleet running dark, so I can lob fighters and missiles from long range without being detected. I am also taking advantage of Steve's changes to sensors in C#, which favor smaller sensors rather than larger ones.


If I have a set bearing and range for escort craft, then I want to have a picket ring a certain distance away. Why should that matter whether or not I'm moving? When I am stationary, I don't want to have to manually set 8-10 waypoints for each escort fleet, assign a move order for them to go there, then later on go back and delete them when I'm ready to move again.

It also prohibits taking advantage of the fact that formations will auto respond to a higher priority target when they have an anchor fleet set. For example, if I want my escort fleet with an active sensor to automatically position itself between my missile destroyers and a known target as soon as it appears on my passives, I have to have the fleets already in anchor mode. Using your method of manual waypoints, that further increases the micromanagement of setting the waypoints, than idling at set waypoints until hostiles appear, then manually delete waypoints and toggle on anchor modes again.

Help me determine if this is a bug or if it is working as intended, and if intended, how I might make effective use of it:

In the Naval Organization window, fleets have a "Formation Orders" tab, which on the surface appears to be for setting up escort craft to maintain a certain distance and bearing from a parent fleet.

After some testing, due to the behavior of escorting fleets, I cannot find an effective use case for this setting.

Escorts must be in their own fleet. You assign an 'anchor fleet' to the escorting fleet, and a distance and bearing. Bearing is relative to the toggles of Specific Threat, Nearest Hostile Warship/Contact, or Anchor Fleet destination, with priority given to higher ones on the list.

For example, if distance is set to 1mkm, bearing is set to 0, and Nearest Hostile Contact and Use Anchor Destination are both set to yes, the escorting fleet will attempt to position itself 1mkm out from the anchor fleet first in the direction of the nearest hostile contact then, if no hostile contacts are known, 1mkm out toward the anchor fleets current movement destination.

The problem is that if the parent fleet is not moving, and a hostile bearing target isn't visible, the escorts return to 0 distance from the anchor fleet.

This means, if you want to have sensor escorts that form a ring of detection around your main fleet, it will only work if you already see hostile craft. If you are searching for them and not moving (such as using a carrier group that doesn't want to close on potential targets) , the escorts will stay at distance 0. It's fine for using small detection craft when moving your main fleet, but once you have your fleet where you want them, you have no ability to maintain the escort.

What I would like to see for this to be useful is the following behavior:

1.) When none of the toggles are set to Yes, Desired Bearing Offset is relative to cardinal directions on the tactical map. For example, if I have 4 escorts set to 0, 90, 180 and 270 bearing offset, I'll have escorts at the four cardinal directions, where 'up' is 'north' on the map. This can be with 0 degrees being 'north' or 'east', I don't have any specific preference here.

2.) When none of the toggled options are true, or no options are toggled, escorting fleets maintain their desired distance. Thus, stationary anchor fleets who do not currently see hostile targets are capable of maintaining their escorts' positions.

--

I have discovered a workaround to achieve my requested behavior: Setting a Deep Space Population (DSP) on the tactical map allows the anchor fleet to issue a "follow" command centered on the DSP, which is immobile and thus the escorts will maintain their set distance if they have "Use Anchor Fleet Destination" toggled to Yes. Aurora will consider Bearing 0 to be due-east.

This is a crude workaround as it creates empty populations that need to be cleaned up after engagements.